The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1 (4 page)

It was only here, in a cold black box that stank of cheap perfume and cheaper sweat, that there existed a person who cared about my physical body and, by extension, the possibility that one day, in the course of my duties, I might die. Death was the last thing upon which I made a habit of dwelling, and yet shivering beside Wilma Sue I had the abrupt, surprising notion that not only did I wish to avoid death but I wished to avoid injury, too, if it meant the happiness of this girl.

But such an arrangement required a pledge of commitment. Had I not made a competing pledge to Luca Testa?

I stood, shaken by these ideas, and went for my coat.

“Aaron.”

“I'll find a doctor. Have this stitched.”

“In this weather? I will take care of it. Get in.”

“Doc Wallace won't be under the table quite yet. I know his tavern of choice.”

“I'm wearing no clothes,” she pouted.

Her underbite was enticing. It filled me with sadness.

“Yes, you are. I can see your collar. As well as the cuffs of your sleeves.”

I pulled on my boots, grimacing at the slush puddled inside, and opened the door to the hallway. Noises to which I was intimately accustomed—drunken mayhem, general depravity—swept inside. It was this
other
intimacy, the one in this low-lit room, that would require the effort, not to mention the courage.

“My Aaron,” said she. “My stupid Aaron.”

The Peacemaker latched to my hip was heavy—heavy as a house, you might say.

“I'll be back, Miss Donkey.” Something caught in my throat. “Keep the bed warm.”

V.

I
NEVER SAW HER AGAIN.
That
night I failed to find Doc Wallace but found his favorite pub all right, and drank until I sweated alcohol, which slid down my temples, partner to blood. I awoke squinting into morning light with a tin stein in my hand and stumbled out into the street. Turning left would lead me back to Patterson's and unanswered questions. I turned right and checked in with Jonesy, the man who acted as liaison between Testa and boys such as myself. There was no work for me that morning but I bumped into two of my fellow heavies and together we banged on the window of a pub, wakening the wild-haired proprietor. We drank throughout the day; only during gaps in the gulping and shouting did I allow myself to think of Wilma Sue and how she wanted me to give up this life, and for what? To love her? Best to drink such thoughts away. The night passed in the same delirium as had the afternoon, and the new day brought new misadventures, new debtors, new opportunities to intimidate and extort. Another day or two passed. Jonesy supplied me with an envelope of money. I spent two full days perusing shop windows and dreaming about which kind of pocket watch I could afford if I could just get myself to save up, which I could not. Soon I was watchless but dressed as fine as you please, and though it had been a full week since I'd seen Wilma Sue, a part of my brain—she may have called it the stupid part—believed that my fresh duds would dazzle
her and we might blame our recent discussion on winter fevers and fall again into comfortable rhythms.

It was my habit at Pattersons' Inn to go directly to Wilma Sue's room. I put my ear to the door and right away knew that something was awry. Without ado I threw open the door and found a man looking annoyed and a woman covering herself. She was as skinny as a coyote and had a light mustache. I demanded the whereabouts of Wilma Sue. The man told me to get out of the fucking room. The coyote said that she did not know any “Wilmy Sue” but if this was the kind of thing that happened at Patterson's Inn then she would have to reconsider her employment.

I believed that I might be sick. I charged down the hall, kicking open other doors and finding girls in all states of undress, though not one shoulder or thigh or breast belonged to Wilma Sue. Downstairs I ran and took the bartender's shirt from across the bar. He began shouting out the name of Mr. Patterson. Presently the innkeeper materialized, wiping his hands on a towel. He smirked and said that Wilma Sue was gone and good riddance, for she had had too many customers—he said this pointedly—who overstayed their welcome. I stood there trembling as he left the room. My paralysis dissevered and I careened after Patterson, finding him in a dim closet counting boxes of produce.

He was a large man and not unafraid. Nor was I. I threw him against the shelves. Tomatoes toppled onto his shoulders and erupted upon the floor. It smelled of food and I experienced a swirl of panic that I'd never gotten around to dining with Wilma Sue at Allagauer's Fireside, never traveled with her on that street car to the North Shore beach, never held her hand at the top of the Ferris wheel, never saw how she looked in any setting aside from this dank, stinking rathole.

Patterson never had a chance. Between blows I accused him of casting out an angel and replacing her with a toothless, syphilitic witch. When muscle ache forced me to quit, my enemy was a twitching pink lump. I did as trained and emptied his pockets.

That, Dearest Reader, is how I came upon my Excelsior—bright, clicking, indifferent. Its metronome provided me with hope. It had divided hours in its patient fashion long before Wilma Sue had arrived and would continue in the face of her absence. The Excelsior promised time, plenty of it, practically an infinity, and if I kept it near me it might be as if I had climbed into Wilma Sue's bed after all. I slipped the watch into a pocket and felt the familiar, contented beating of her heart next to mine:
tick, tick, tick.

I bolted through the snow. It was simple when you looked at the evidence with a cleared head. A man like Luca Testa demanded the full attention of his army and it would not escape his attention when a promising young soldier missed an appointment, or two, or three, because of extended lounging within the limbs of a common tramp.

Never had I been inside Testa's home but I knew as well as anyone its location. Two men pretending to read newspapers guarded the entrance. They knew me and put on grins. I grinned back and then cold-cocked the bigger one in the face. He wailed and fell to his knees. The other guard spat his toothpick, elbowed me aside, and kneeled down to assess the damage to his friend.

“Finch, you piece of shit. You want to talk to Jonesy, why don't you ask instead of getting violent? Ah, look at his nose. That's gonna break his mother's heart.”

The vestibule was gilded with candleless sconces and vacant art frames and opened into a parlor both lavish and empty. Unopened crates contained the majority of the furniture and finery. A wide
staircase to my left swept upward but before I could go for it a set of double doors parted and out came Jonesy, a bald, pear-shaped man possessed of the unique talent of making bow ties look intimidating. His heels made heavy clumps across the marble.

“You busted Pavia's nose, you know that, you
testa di cavolo
?”

The speed with which he had received this news amazed me, though I resigned myself to letting that particular mystery go unsolved. I reached into my jacket and withdrew my Peacemaker. Jonesy slumped his shoulders in exasperation.

“Have you gone batty?”

“I want to see him.”

“Why don't you put that thing away before you embarrass yourself?”

I lifted my head and shouted into faraway, curtained corners.

“TESTA! GET OUT HERE!”

“
Madonna
,” groaned Jonesy. “You're going to be Swiss cheese if you don't knock it off.”

I pointed the Peacemaker at a lamp and fired. Instead of exploding into dust, as had every other lamp I had joyfully demolished in my life, the bullet punched a hole through one side and exited the other, eliciting a carefree
ding
and a tulip of white dust. I stomped my foot like a child and looked for something noisier to shoot.

Five men arrived at the parlor aiming four snub-noses and a single bolt-action rifle. Among them was poor disfigured Pavia, who used a winter scarf to staunch the blood streaming from his crooked nose. I aimed my own weapon back at Jonesy. There was a clicking chorus of hammers being pulled back. I took a deep breath to shout out for Testa before things got loud.

Like magic he responded before I could do it.

“Kid. You're killing me.”

He appeared at the same doorway from which Jonesy had emerged, draped in a shiny red kimono. He held a small gun, too, but it hung uncocked at his side. He waved back his retinue of triggermen.

“Everyone relax. This is Finch. Finch just recently went insane but we're going to see what we can do about that. Now—” He cut himself off, noticing something to my right. He narrowed his eyes into a red-hot glare.

“You shot my lamp?”

“Boss, I didn't want to tell you,” said Jonesy.

“That was the only lamp in this fucking place that I liked.”

My Peacemaker weighed a ton.

“Why not that davenport behind you?” asked he. “You could take target practice on it for all I care. It'd be a mercy killing.”

“Boss,” sighed Jonesy. “We'll send it back, I told you.”

Testa swore beneath his breath and started back through the double doors.

“Come here. And put that pop-gun down before you murder any more furniture.”

The door was closed behind me after I entered. We were alone, Testa and I, for the first time ever, in a room centered by a long, sculpted table and a crystal chandelier. No doubt it had been intended for formal dining purposes, but the notebooks and city maps, not to mention the combination safes lined up against the back wall, told me that Testa had repurposed the space as base camp for general operations. On the far side of the table lay a strange two-handled gun with the oddest-looking magazine. Testa wandered toward it and picked it up.

“Just a prototype. Thing's as useful as my nephew. But one day, Finch, when the smart guys figure out the mechanics, a gun like this is going to own this town. You wait and see. I'll have five hundred of these babies. You might have one or two yourself. Replace that lit match you're packing.”

He bent his knees and curled his bottom lip like a boy playing cops and robbers and pretended to shoot. With his spiffy new toy and posh pajamas, he looked happier than I'd ever seen him. He scurried about the room, slaughtering squadrons of imaginary police with a clip of bullets that never seemed to run out. He ducked behind a few slender columns and peeked at me as if getting the drop.

“Bang. Gotcha, Finch.”

“Where is she? What did you do with her?”

Testa leaned his shoulders onto two columns so that his amused face emerged from between them, begging to be hammered.

“You know how many
sciupafemmini
like you come to me moaning about a missing girl? You think I got a spare room somewhere where I stockpile them? That might sound like a fun idea to you, but when you get older, your priorities change. You expend your energy in different ways. What you don't do is go shaking your little
pistola
in the face of the guy who gives you your payday.”

“Just tell me where she is.”

“Where who is? You hear what I'm saying? Look, I don't like to get emotional. But you're emotional, so I'll make an exception. You're just a kid, Finch, but I like you. You think I'd let just anyone come in here and shoot my lamp? That's a compliment, free of charge—but it's the only one you get. Now be smart and back off. We got a lot of work to do together.”

He could see as well as anyone the blood and tomatoes smeared
across my suit. They say that a leopard cannot change his spots; neither, perhaps, can a gunman scrub his clothing hard enough to wash away the red.

My voice was no more commanding than broken wind.

“Is she okay? Can you at least tell me that?”

Testa caressed the columns.

“First off, I'm not saying I know anything about any flatbacker. But I might have heard by the by how you had a special one. Maybe she could screw the paint off a wall; if so, congratulations. Chances are—aw, look, Finch, it's a hard world. Chances are she caught herself the clap. Or met the wrong guy and he did her in. But, hey, why be pessimistic? How about some Arabian prince fell in love and whisked her off to a life of luxury? Shit, she probably just got tired of it. Walked away. Think of it this way: if she was smart, she left. Was she smart?”

I found myself nodding. Yes, that had to be it. I had not misjudged her affection for me. She'd simply made her overdue escape from Patterson's. I should, in fact, be glad about it.

“Well,” said Testa, “there you go. We done here?”

Isn't it interesting how certain moments grow ever fatter in your mind, eating your other memories one by one so that, one day, they will be the last memory left?

I have long wondered if Testa was aware of the double-edged brilliance of his question. If I did not kill him in that room that very second, the only other option was to redouble a dedication to the Black Hand that had eroded since meeting Wilma Sue. There could be no second-guessing my choice between her and Luca Testa, not if I valued my sanity. Besides, how would I ever find her?

I had never bothered to learn her last name.

Said I, “Yes. We're done.”

“Good.” He clapped twice. The doorknobs rattled behind my back and I smelled the dusty inrush of parlor air. “Jonesy, fill in Finch about the De Gravio letter. We gotta deliver this one today. Wait till you see this
buffone
. I wouldn't change into a clean suit, not yet.”

Jonesy gripped my shoulder. I became aware of a letter with the Black Hand symbol being pressed into my palm. Details were supplied regarding names, places, and times. Soon I began letting these facts displace the memory of that “flatbacker” of mine in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. In lieu of her, I had her stolen heart, the Excelsior, which would now beat in replacement of my discarded original. Funny how long I have depended on the thing—for over a century. Like me, it is a machine of astonishing durability.