The Last Nightingale

by Anthony Flacco

  “Thank you for the advice, sir!" Blackburn said with too much enthusiasm. He saluted, waited for the return, never got one. The lieutenant was gone. Blackburn lowered his arm, turned around and headed for the coffee table. That was something, anyway.

  Instinct told Shane to lie still on the Mission floor and do his best to fake being sound asleep. He heard boot steps, along with the scraping of a pair of sandals. Through squinted eyes, he watched the same kindly friar who had given Shane his blanket roll. Now the priest shuffled along beside a police sergeant—the same man who had just been in Shane's dream, the one who was actually in the Nightingale house.

  He was too stunned to react while the footsteps came close . . . The footsteps paused . . . Shane could hear the big man's breathing.

  “So that's it, then?" the sergeant's voice boomed. He stepped into view, just a few feet away.

  The Mission assistant quickly drew close to the sergeant and raised a finger to his lips, then pointed down to Shane's makeshift bed. Shane dropped his eyelids closed the rest of the way and heard the sergeant mutter "Oh," then lower his voice before continuing. "So you haven't really had any other problems here, right?”

  “Sergeant Blackburn, I get the distinct impression that you don't want to hear what I've been telling you.”

  "Oh, now, don't say that. You just don't realize how much good work your volunteers already accomplished here. Maybe they helped keep thieves away, just being here! Amazing teamwork! No outbreaks of trouble, no fistiights, no need for a police presence at all.”

  “Sergeant, this Mission is a valuable part of the city's historical—”

  “All right! All right. Listen, Padre, my head is splitting open. Tell you what; let me get a couple hours of shut-eye here, and after that we'll talk.”

  “You should tell your commanders at City Hall that my position will not change. We need a sizeable labor crew here, and that will require police presence. Just because we've had no trouble yet is no reason to—”

  “Some rest, Padre," Blackburn interrupted. "It's what I really need. Then we'll talk. Aren't you always more cheerful after you've had some sleep?”

  There was a pause. Shane could not tell what it meant, until the padre's quiet voice replied, "I'll get you a bedroll. Take the corner opposite that young man sleeping over there.”

  Shane bit his lip in frustration. The big sergeant—an unknowing witness to the Nightingale family murder scene—was going to lie down and sleep no more than ten feet from Shane's spot on the floor. The situation mocked him.

  He listened to the padre's sandals scuffing out of the room, while his heartbeat hammered so that it felt like it echoed off the stone floor. What if this sergeant could simply take a good look at Shane and somehow see his whole dreadful story written on him? What if, with a single glance, the big man somehow realized that the two of them had been inches from one another, inside of a now-vanished crime scene?

  Shane could hear the big man breathing, almost sighing. He sounded tired. The sergeant yawned and stretched, popping his joints, until the padre finally returned with the bedroll. The two men exchanged a few pleasantries, then the friar disappeared and left the sergeant alone there with him. All he could do was to keep faking sleep while he listened to the sergeant spread out his roll, slip off his boots, and lie down. After a minute, the sergeant's breathing became deep and even.

  It seemed safe enough to assume that the big man didn't have any sense of who Shane was. He felt better, but he still had to wonder how anyone could fail to see the guilt boiling inside of him. Strangely, nobody had so far. He wanted nothing more than to remain as a bundle of rags sleeping in the corner, lost among thousands of faceless refugees.

  He gradually drifted back to sleep, resolved that if this Sergeant Blackburn of the City Hall precinct was still around when he woke up, he would immediately slip away without giving the man a chance to ask him anything.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MONDAY, APRIL 23

  FIVE DAYS AFTER

  THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE

  TOMMIE SIPPED A STEAMING MIX of Oolong tea, honeycomb, and three teaspoons of whiskey while he stood nude but for his slippers before the large window of the top floor study. His Victorian house high atop fabulous Russian Hill stood unscathed by the earthquake and the fire. Such front and center evidence of his essential importance next to the city's ruffian public gave him a heady rush of self-affirmation, to the point that while he gazed out over the ruined city, he could not help but find the rest of its scrambling population disgusting.

  The path of destruction stretched in all directions, even though the rain had finally put out the last of the big fires. The rain, it turned out, had been a true godsend. In spite of heroic efforts from the surviving firefighters and police, almost nothing that human beings did to fight the leaping firestorms had done any good.

  Death was everywhere. For uncountable numbers of terrified residents who thought that the earthquake and fires signified the end of the world, it turned out to be precisely that. Rats now roamed the city with impunity. Tommie was astonished by how many found their way out of burning buildings. Only five days, he marveled, and they've already learned not to fear us.

  So then, how to move in harmony with this turn of events? Tommie knew that the mayor's office was doing its best to crank out in- formation to the newspapers and wire services regarding the numbers of the injured and dead. But the simple truth was that nobody could offer anything better than a well-intended wild guess, and estimates would be held down to minimal levels. It struck Tommie that the authorities were actually trying to cover his tracks for him, in the interest of the city's reputation. Another blessing.

  Tommie was aware of all these things because just the day before, he had ventured out in male clothing to catch up on general gossip. Although he kept to himself while strolling through the refugee camps, he frequently paused just long enough to eavesdrop here and there, so that by the time he got back home, he knew the state of things all around the city.

  For him, those facts merely added to the self-evident truth demonstrated by the advancing wall of flames, days earlier, when the majestic conflagration split in two. The two sections each proceeded around the sides of Tommie's lovely hilltop neighborhood— completely sparing his house. His Victorian home came through it without so much as a singed window treatment. The only necessary recovery from the earthquake consisted of throwing out a few broken lamps and rehanging some art. Now, all it took was a simmered potpourri of cinnamon and allspice to conceal the charcoal smells from blackened ruins only a few blocks away.

  He stepped out of the slippers. Now stark naked, Tommie set aside his empty glass and began to roll his new, electrically powered vacuum cleaner gracefully across the floor. The diesel generator down in the basement chugged up more than enough power while Tommie guided the machine back and forth, back and forth, using the same slow and sweeping motions that the lady in the magazine advertisement did. He carefully kept his free hand out to the side, fingertips extended, arm raised halfway between the hip and shoulder. The invention itself had only been on the market for a few years, and was priced strictly for the well-to-do. Only the best people had them. He practically danced with the machine.

  The Great Earthquake had done nothing less than vault Tommie into his dream, giving him the power of an avenging angel who rises up to mete out justice. And right from the first moment, Tommie had known where to start: that arrogant bag of skin, Mr. Nightingale, the dry goods man. For years, he allowed Tommie to pay off his tab whenever he got around to it. So what if he neglected payment for a year or so? Tommie could have written a bank check at any time and would have forgotten the whole thing by now, never feeling a hint of difference in his daily life. But it pained him to pay out money. It seriously pained him, and it made no difference that he had so much. Each time he paid a bill, it felt like swallowing a dose of poison. As far as Tommie could see it, every price tag, every line of store credit, every invoice that came in
the mail, they were all nothing more than coded and toxic messages from a world that wanted to take and take and take until everything Tommie had was gone. And where would that leave a creature such as him? He had to wonder.

  It was never necessary for Nightingale to take him to court and win a judgment against him. Everyone knew Tommie was good for it. They ought to know, anyway. All of them. They had no excuse for not knowing. Nightingale had shown no appreciation, no respect at all for Tommie's point of view. First the greedy man put a lien on Tommie's house. Then, the day before the earthquake, the fool actually showed up at Tommie's door to dun him for payment. The arrogant bastard had done all this over a few thousand dollars! The foul man had actually come to Tommie's home, unannounced and uninvited.

  Nearly catching Tommie inappropriately attired.

  And so it made no difference that Nightingale had been out tending to his store, right after the quakes died down. He would have accomplished nothing for the rest of the family, even if he had been at home. Tommie would have just killed him, first thing. The result for the others would have been the same.

  A house full of females, in a time of general civic emergency, when everybody's full attention is focused on the earthquake and fires. What a perfect place. What an ideal set of victims for Tom-mie's new beginning at the true Savoring of his work.

  It was all the better, since none of the Nightingales had any idea of who he was or why he was there.

  The memories swept over him again, in a small wave of ecstasy. Tommie felt good, all the way down into his bones. The thought struck him, there's a poem in this. A fine poem: short, romantic, musical. He picked up one of the notepads that he kept available everywhere in the house, each with its own silver writing pen, and put his calligraphy studies to use.

  Your horror was so pure

  Rays of terror flashed from your eyes

  Like the breath of a dying angel

  Those three lines were all it needed. Something about it made him crave a sexual release. Within moments, satisfaction filled him like warm and soapy bathwater. With it came an inspiration—from that moment forward, each of Tommie's deserving ones would get an original poem left behind with them, to commemorate their contribution to the Savored experience.

  As soon as darkness fell, he got into full makeup and costume and headed for the Barbary Coast. A brief step backward, for old times’ sake. A quick knife kill and an easy escape. The drunks were sure to be back down there, feeding their habits again, earthquake or not. Who among them didn't deserve it? The poem's the thing. What Tommie needed most of all was a deserving corpse to pin one on.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EARLY MAY

  THREE WEEKS AFTER

  THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE

  SHANE'S DOGGED WORK HABITS quickly endeared him to the padres. He became all the more valuable after it dawned on the holy men that neither the San Francisco Police Department nor the United States Army could supply the labor to repair and guard the Mission, despite the good intentions of the Committee of Fifty. The priests already realized that Shane was homeless, so now they asked about his family. All he was able to tell them was that they had been lost to the Great Earthquake. Beyond that, his throat locked up on him when he tried to explain.

  Once they understood what he was trying say, they offered him a position there at the Mission. There was need of a grave tender and night watchman for the Mission cemetery, since some of the more desperate earthquake victims might decide to raid the city founders’ resting places for buried gold and jewelry. The pay was only a few pennies per day, but meals were included at the friars’ table, and they let him set up a permanent living space in an empty toolshed. All he had to do was hang the watch on one of the many nails protruding from the rough wooden walls and he was all moved in. It gave him a place to exist, and some sort of a reason. Work, meals, and rest formed the core of his days.

  He quickly learned that the padres at the Mission were generally not like the Helpers at the orphanage at all; they left him alone to his chores and his daily life. One or two of them came around, nearly sniffing at him, but he hit them with his practiced blank stare and refused to respond to them in any way. That gave them the opportunity to think that he was crazy and keep their dignity while they walked away.

  Shane hardly felt the time slip by. On the outside, he buried himself in his new job and adjusted to life at Mission Dolores. Inside, he survived his private turmoil with a simple grim march through days that were each the same as the next. Before the quake, a demeanor such as his would have called attention to itself, perhaps gotten him in trouble. Now everybody on the streets seemed preoccupied with their own stock of primal fear, even a lingering sense of doom.

  The natural rage over the betrayal of the very ground beneath their feet gave everyone plenty to wake up screaming about in the nights that followed. Even the quiet ones, those who silently swallowed their nightmares and never spoke of them, slept without resting. They clenched their jaws hard enough to crack their teeth and tried to minimize their suffering by denying it. Among people in such a state, Shane had no trouble passing unnoticed.

  His state of mind was perfect for the job of tending to a graveyard. He craved the isolation. Inside of those first days and weeks, his method of disguise was to do his best to act normally, but without attempting to speak, and to avoid drawing anyone's special attention until he could get clear of them. He took examples from the non-English-speaking Chinese and Mexican laborers, after he realized that they could get through most situations with a combination of shrugs and hand gestures. His reputation as a good worker soon began to protect him. He found that he was able to do a good enough job at his assigned tasks that it made others appreciative of his presence and less inclined to get suspicious about him. By and large, people left him alone.

  Once the friars demonstrated how they wanted the repair work to be done—the careful mixing of fine mortar, the precise fitting and gluing of broken tombstones and statuary—he discovered that he could sometimes escape the grip of his despair for a good hour or two while he was absorbed in his work. There was a small sense of peace and satisfaction to be coaxed from the results, even if the relief never lasted for long. He was grateful to do the jobs right there where he was living, and to spend both the nights and the days among his newly repaired handiworks.

  His first serious solo job assignment was to repair the split gravestone of one Catherine Hoban, who had died in 1854 at the age of twenty-six. Shane's mind filled with images from the woman's time, because the strict monks at St. Adrian's had made sure that he knew all about the Gold Rush era. The stone's inscription told that Catherine Hoban lived through the great gold strike of 1849, as well as the following massive surge in the city population, plus the huge influx of young Chinese men imported as labor. Catherine Hoban was alive when San Francisco exploded into an international presence as a seaport, but she died just as the city was emerging, when she and San Francisco were both still young.

  Shane carefully daubed the fine mortar all along the two edges of her broken headstone, and while he worked, he tried to feel for a presence in her grave. He wondered, was there something that would indicate whether or not Catherine Hoban had died a peaceful death? Or was hers violent and terrible? The markings told him nothing.

  He fit the headstone's two pieces together and made sure that there was a complete bond all the way along the break, then held them in place by hand while the mortar dried. He could have accomplished the job more easily by propping the two pieces in place, but he wanted to give the repaired stone the simple gesture of respect of being perfectly hand balanced.

  Since the city was enjoying a brief break in the pounding rain that had covered it the past few days, it was comfortable enough while he held the two stone pieces together that he drifted in memories from more peaceful days at St. Adrian's. The monks there had always told Shane that he was left at their door with a piece of paper, no note. The paper only said "Shane, 4, born January 1." No l
ast name. No other information.

  He had always found it hard to accept that he was already four years old when he arrived at St. Adrian's. If that were true, it seemed like he ought to be able to remember something of his life before the orphanage. But his memory of anything prior to being there was blank.

  Inside of St. Adrian of Canterbury's Home for Delinquents and Orphans, his daily life had always reminded him of the life of an ant in a busy anthill: a relentless pace of endless chores, one after another after another. Though he was rarely able to leave the orphanage, whenever he had free time he explored the world through the books that the friars taught him to read. And although the friars and their Helpers gave plenty of reason for fear, they employed that fear against their young charges by enforcing the proposition that ignorance was deadly for their Delinquents and Orphans.

  The unwavering focus came from the friars’ conviction that knowledge might actually make a difference in the lives of these children, who were otherwise guaranteed an existence as social throwaways. They could survive a childhood without ever being adopted, but the friars promised them daily that without education they could choose between growing up to be prostitutes, thieves, or thieving prostitutes. And then they could take their natural places among the other denizens of the Barbary Coast district, down by the shrouded waterfront.

  So Shane made it a never-ending point to absorb all of the friars’ lessons and to score well enough on their tests so that they saved their worst torments for thicker heads. The way he looked at it, the constant access to books had saved his life in that place.

  As for the more intimate arts of family existence, it was only over the past year in the Nightingale house that he ever witnessed and participated in the daily life of an actual family. The most awkward part at first, for a boy of eleven, was the unaccustomed closeness of two "sisters" who were so highly attractive to him. He came to hate his penis for being untrustworthy, and made it a habit around the house to always carry something he could swing around in front of himself if the need arose.