The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1

by Daniel Kraus

  “It does not. Even if it did, I do not believe I would tell you, not after such treatment. Now, may I be excused?”

  Patches of pink rage again blotted out his freckles. He swiped up the folder, withdrew a stapled packet, thumbed through the pages.

  “There’s no record of you prior to 1925. I turned up a Zebulon Finch who fought with the Marines, but you’re too young. You know what that makes me think? I think you’re using a stolen name. I think you’re covering your real identity. I’d hate to think you were an anarchist, friend. I’d hate to have to turn you in as a dirty Red.”

  I’d been accused of everything else in my time, so why not this as well? The blubbery bear of Russia had fallen in the war’s Bolshevik Revolution, and the clouds of dust that had shot up at its collapse were called Communism. Under the principles of such radicals as Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin (both of whom, incidentally, sported the Van Dyke), the ideal of an anti-capitalist society was taking hold across the world, and America, big and bad though she was, had begun to fear it. The Red Scare was spreading like the Spanish flu, and American men—white men, mind you—had been lynched for Communist sympathies.

  “Help me out,” said Roseborough, “and I won’t dig any further.”

  To say the least, it gave me pause. If so committed a detective panned my past, he might turn up truths he could scarcely imagine.

  “I don’t give a shit if you’re a commie or a socialist or a suffragist or what-all,” continued he. “What I care about is getting this killer off the streets, and if that means I have to do bad shit to you, that’s what I’m going to do. So what do you say? Work with me? We figure this out together?”

  Even you, Dearest Reader, as far in the future as you might exist, must know of the youthful hotheadedness that compels you to shout down a caring parent, an apologetic lover, a recalcitrant friend, when but a single pill of humility is all that need be swallowed. Alack!—I gagged on good sense, a self-thwarting reprobate to the end.

  “An alternate proposal,” said I. “How about you take that file of mine, roll it up good and tight, and insert it into your ass?”

  I shall spare you a detailed catalogue of the phrases, gestures, and jets of spittle that followed, and remark only that Roseborough swore he was not finished with me, that if I so much as ate a sandwich (the joke was on him) or took a piss (ditto), he’d be there to arrest me for doing it wrong. He turned away before he went too far, neck pulsing and fists clenching, and kicked open the door hard enough to splinter it from the hinges. I took this as a signal to show myself out.

  I, too, fumed as I clomped into the snow. That warthog in a suit knew nothing about me, how my time was occupied with protecting Church! I passed a line of dirty children three blocks long, each mutt clutching a frost-sparkled pail, tasked by their jobless parents to purchase a bucket of skim milk for the price of a nickel. Farther down the street I passed a vacant lot that had sprouted a shantytown for those who’d lost everything in the crash. I looked away, always away. Zebulon Finch did not, could not, would not care for those who could not care for themselves. The flappers of New York City were on their own to survive the modern mechanisms of murder, as was everyone else. This was America.

  X.

  ROSEBOROUGH DID NOT DISAPPOINT. OUT with Church buying bruised fruit, there was Babe Ruth pitching potatoes to Lou Gehrig. Waiting at the box office while Church counted change for a cheap matinee, there was Lou pantomiming “va-va-voom” to a movie poster while Babe dropped me a wink. Taking my turn at the grocer, there was Babe and Lou in a parked patrol car, laughing along to a luxury gadget the police were the first to get—a car radio.

  Their eternal presence guaranteed that I could not forget my involvement in the ongoing murders. Even unarmed, I was lethal, for any shop girl, laundress, or female domestic with whom I interacted might end up dead. Thus I became a recluse. I withheld from Church my reasons out of concern that, should he find out, his fragile capacity to hold down a job might deteriorate. He frowned at my every convoluted deferral, cycling through surprise, hurt, and resentment before finally, perhaps to prove something to himself, heading out each night without me.

  Yes, it disheartened me, but I was trapped. While I watched from the window his large form limp down the block, I kept an eye out for anyone casing the building. Would I recognize the Bird Hunter as a former Black Hand rival? Or would it be one of my past victims—one of the tattooed Triangulinos, perhaps? Or had I been chosen by the killer at random, the latest of my luckless strokes?

  In May, Church and everyone else picking up hours at the Worthington Steel blast furnaces contracted an itchy toe fungus. I atoned for my immunity by offering to go out and buy for Church a jar of soothing petroleum jelly. In truth, I liked Chinatown best at night. Without the glare of sunlight to enervate you, the babble of Chinese became a burbling brook; the lit signs were divertingly haphazard in the time-honored way of immigrants; I even enjoyed the sewage stink emblematic of such rainy evenings. Most importantly, I need only interact, and therefore endanger, a single female—the store clerk. A jar of petroleum jelly versus a human life? Everything had become a game of odds.

  For these very reasons I took a back route to the store, and that is how I ended up getting the drop on my pursuers.

  Lou and the Babe lounged outside their vehicle, the latter examining a map while the former shelled peanuts. I retreated behind a trash bin stamped, wouldn’t you know it, “Worthington Steel.” Eavesdropping was not my aim; I wished only to wait them out and get back home with the petroleum jelly. But the meeting offered the sort of serendipity at which the frothing pot of New York City excelled.

  “You hear about the old feller they got caged up in the thirtieth?” asked Lou.

  “They got nothing but old fellers in the thirtieth,” said the Babe.

  “Not like this old feller. They got him trying to blow up a candy store.”

  The Babe sighed. “Fergie’s going to serve our asses on a plate. How we’d lose the kid at one a.m. on a Monday? Who even goes out at one a.m. on a Monday?”

  “Besides us?”

  “Good point. So the old feller blew up a candy store?”

  “He tried. Bomb didn’t set.”

  “Sheesh. The Charleston Chews live to fight another day, eh?”

  “The good part is why he did it.”

  “Let me guess. The Dum Dum company owed him big.”

  “Crazy old feller said there ought to be a road there. Quicker path from the Fort Lee Ferry to the Queensborough Bridge.”

  “Crazy old feller was right.”

  “Said it was his job to make the road. That’s what he did—demolish buildings.”

  “We ought to hire him. Sic him on Chinatown, clear out a few of these chinks.”

  Surely the dig won the Babe a chortle, but I no longer listened, so paralyzed was I by the fiercest of hunches. I remained crouched for another thirty minutes before an upsurge of rain convinced the twins to pack it in. I stood, thankful for my fedora, and checked my pockets. Just enough change for cab fare north.

  Amid the scarlet blear of wet streets and brake lights, I disembarked at the Thirtieth Precinct station, brushed off the rain, and presented myself as best I could to the on-duty officer. I was nervous but nevertheless asked after the prisoner, and though the officer surveyed my jar of petroleum jelly with suspicion, he conceded that they did have a jailee by that name, and, after some time spent conferring with superiors, announced that he was free to release the prisoner into my custody. The man was, after all, more senile than dangerous, and they were holding him only until they tracked down a family member.

  A family member—the phrase was exotic to me.

  The “crazy old feller” was my father.

  Spewing words is my forte—this document attests to that—but I fear I shall flounder at describing my emotion when they brought forth the dynamitie
r Bartholomew Finch. The last I’d laid eyes on him had been in Chicago. I’d been fourteen and the circumstance had been one of those blustery-breeze visits that were his trademark. He burst through the front door, ushering in sunshine or leaves or snow, and clapped his hands to announce his arrival. A servant stripped his coat while my mother began her way down the staircase with me peeking from behind. Pop looked hopeful at her approach; I recall feeling the same. All she did, though, was angle her cheek to receive the perfunctory kiss. Then Bartholomew spotted me and offered a formal, if soot-stained, handshake. Diminished by the cold reception of his wife, he never had much vim left over for me.

  A day or two later he left.

  This night’s script, rehearsed in the back of the taxi, was to be a short scene for two players, one heavy with theatrical cliché. I, the spurned son, would look into the eyes of my serial abandoner and unleash the words my audience was impatient to hear. I would hold this pitiless patriarch accountable for what he’d done, or not done, and how his absence had propelled me toward the unqualified replacements of the Barker, Dr. Leather, and John Quincy. I’d raise a fist and demand redress. He might even beg for mercy before the curtain fell.

  The playwright, though, struck the pages, for the actor before me had been miscast. Where was his waxed mustache? The stylish chapeau? This Bartholomew Finch was jaundiced and saddlebagged, bowlegged and pigeontoed, lopsided of shoulder and contorted of torso. His collapsed chest cracked with phlegm. He was in his mid-seventies with the accoutrements thereby afforded.

  The officer loathed playing nurse. He waved me near and, flummoxed, I took the old man’s elbow; it shook badly. With my left hand I steadied his back; the flesh was feverish beneath the layers of damp clothing. He slumped into my grip, and just like that I was cradling him. I was stunned. Never before had I touched my father with such intimacy.

  My emotions, you can be sure, were molten. I tabled deep thoughts and proceeded outside. The trip down seven wet steps was silent, slow, and treacherous. I spotted one block away the salvation of a twenty-four-hour diner. It took us ten minutes to get there, and once inside I dumped the old man into a booth. His knurled shoulder bone clacked against the wall and he coughed. I took a seat and wondered what the hell happened next. A tired waitress asked if we wanted coffee. I winced; she was female, perhaps a flapper, and was unsafe talking to me. I requested more time, then embarked upon further study of this crumpled ancient. At length I spoke.

  “It’s me, sir. It’s Zebulon.”

  Sir? An undeserved greeting that came unbidden.

  His pale tongue wormed round his cheeks.

  “Don’t know any Deborah.”

  “Zebulon.”

  “Carolyn?”

  Descriptions of my father had never deviated from that of a man’s man who insisted on doing everything himself, from prepping the TNT to triggering the detonation to observing the explosion at close range for evaluational purposes. This lifetime of blastwork had left him deaf. I raised my voice.

  “Your son.”

  The dark pits of his pupils fought through cataract mucus.

  “Can’t be. You’re still a boy.”

  This injured me in a way I could not specify.

  “It is just your eyes, sir,” said I.

  He shrugged and searched the table.

  “There are supposed to be poached eggs. They never remember.”

  “I’ll order you some eggs.”

  He cocked his head. A lamp backlit his prodigious ear hair.

  “Zebulon? It’s been a spell. Where you been off to?”

  “Everywhere.” I felt a sudden need to impress him with all I’d done while he’d been off losing his ears, eyes, and mind. “Down South. Up and down the coast. Boston. France—I was in France, sir, in the war, I fought with the—”

  “I’ll never understand it. Who starts a war knowing dynamite exists? Mark my words, there won’t be another one. No one’s that dumb. Now where are those eggs? They never remember to poach them.”

  “I said I’ll order you your damn eggs.”

  “Damage?

  “Damn eggs.”

  “They never poach them.”

  I shouted across the diner.

  “For the love of Christ, could we please get some fucking poached eggs?”

  I sawed my jaws while the old man sat unperturbed.

  “So you have nothing to say to me?” demanded I.

  “To say?”

  “Nothing to ask of my life, of what I’ve made of it?”

  He blinked about, probably on the lookout for eggs.

  “Here,” said I. “I shall provide the dialogue. ‘Tell me, dear son, wherever did you run off to all those years ago?’”

  “Oh, yes. That is a good question.”

  “‘Are you quite all right, dear son? Is there anything you need?’”

  “That is a good question, too.”

  He waited upon the responses to this scintillating self-interview but I refused to further mock myself. The sizzle from the kitchen grill mimicked the frazzle of my brain until I could not help but break the stalemate.

  “Well, you’re sitting here, aren’t you? Go on, tell me your story, get it over with. You live under some bridge, do you? You have big plans to blow up more candy stores? It’s a fascinating life you live; ’twould be a shame if it went undocumented.”

  His skin was blue with veins brought to the fore by the cold. His fingertips were pink and torn from street scrabbling. So defenseless was he, and still I wished to hurt him.

  “You lost all of your money,” surmised I, “in the crash.”

  “Eh. It was Abigail who cared about money.”

  It should not have jolted me to hear my mother’s name invoked, but it did. I saw her again asleep in the bedroom where I’d left her, tasted the saline kiss I’d applied to her forehead. This dodging miser shared none of the burden of such cumbrous memories. Oh, how I oozed distemper! Had he been a true husband and father, I would not have fled home, nor begun a criminal career, nor been shot on the beach, nor become this hopeless, hexed wraith.

  “She had to care about something,” snapped I.

  “Abigail had the house. She had you.”

  “Indeed, indeed, and she treated both as equals—costly investments to be adorned in the most tasteful of trimmings.”

  “You know, m’boy, after you left she was never the same.”

  It was felicitous that this instant paired with the arrival of the ballyhooed poached eggs. Pop mashed the translucent globules into pale yellow gruel that he then transported with a spoon into a gray-toothed mouth. I welcomed each labored step of this procedure, so bewildered was I by his statement.

  “How do you mean she was not the same?”

  He slurped his slime.

  “Every time I came home, she kept up in that study of yours. Checking your schoolwork, reading your textbooks.”

  I struggled to fathom it: Abigail Finch, dispassionate mannequin, lingering over the jejune trifles left behind by her escapee son? I pictured her up there, caressing my dusty workbooks, cocking her head in hopes that an echo of recited French might still be whispering about the corner. In one second I was seized by a great, trembling fear that I’d been the wrong one all these years, that I’d been the one to misjudge. Had Abigail Finch loved me after all?

  Even more painful to consider: had I, deep within, loved her?

  My fork and spoon ring-tingled as I gripped the tabletop with trembling hands. To be a real live boy again, back in that mothballed house, back in those stiff clothes, where mother and child could have another go at the whole shebang. Was all hope lost? No! I remained seventeen! Young enough for a second chance, yet old enough to be bold about it, to wrap my arms around my mother’s bony frame, tuck my cold face into her warm neck, and tell her that I was sorry for every foul
thing I’d said, sorry for every ungrateful thing I’d done. Why, of course—my childhood room was where I could escape the dangers of New York!

  Home: did the English language contain a more hopeful word?

  “Mother,” said I. “Please tell me where I might find her.”

  “Dead,” blurted Bartholomew Finch. “Rabies.”

  He licked his fork with a sore-covered tongue.

  As swiftly as the rare bird of hope had winged me heavenward, I was dropped back to Earth. I knew that after forty years of negligence I deserved no feeling of loss, but loss is what I felt. I pushed fists into my eyes so that my whole lonesome death might be blotted, but my dead eyes, dry of tears, only reminded me that there was no going back. Love, nourishment, shelter: such bright gems were reserved for the living.

  Pulverizing despair clobbered me senseless. I surfaced minutes later still wet from the rain, down a mother, and with nothing to my person except a jar of petroleum jelly. Softly, then, to the slurping sounds of Bartholomew Finch and his eggs, I began to muse aloud, less to be heard by my father than to push myself to a reckoning.

  “There is a killer on the loose,” spoke I.

  “A cow herd?”

  “A killer. I have been asked to help catch him.”

  “This cow herd is on the loose, you say?”

  “It digs at me, this request. I fear that I am a coward, if you want my confession.”

  “Your profession?”

  “Confession.”

  Pop wiped his lips with his palm and nodded.

  “Glad to hear it, m’boy. There’s nothing more important than your profession. Take me. I’m good at one thing, just one thing, and now they don’t let me do it. Why? Because of all this so-called progress. Buildings so tall that one day, mark my words, they’re going to fall down. Airplanes and zeppelins crashing all over when the roadway is as safe as can be. But no one wants anything destroyed anymore. Maybe it was the damn war, everyone lost their appetite. Take my advice, m’boy. Do your job. Even when you’re tired. Even when you’re hurt. No matter if you’re old like me or a whippersnapper like you. It’s the American way: you do what you’re good at and you keep on doing it.”