The Last Nightingale

by Anthony Flacco

  Tommie felt his boredom leave him, and while the two officers debated next to the wagon, he walked around to look into the back.

  There was only one body. It was adult sized, but completely covered in layers and layers of cloth wrapping. The whole bundle was so thick, it looked like the corpse was swaddled inside of a heavy winter sleeping bag, bound together by an intricately tied network of knotted ropes. Somebody had gone to a lot of effort for this. Extraordinary effort.

  At that moment, the corporal hurried over. His face was coated in a light sweat and he spoke in anxious tones. "Mr. Kimbrough, I understand that you got clearance, and all. And you know we been letting you alone so far, right?”

  “Oh yes, Corporal. That's quite true. Is there a problem now?”

  “There is a problem for sure, sir, but it's not with you. I've got to ask you not to even think about opening up that body there, not to draw sketches or nothing. We're about to put it under every scrap of ice we got left. There's doctors from Sacramento coming in here to look it over. Until they get here, we got to leave it be. Can you promise me you're gonna leave this feller alone?”

  “It’s a man, then?”

  “Makes no difference. If you can’t agree, then we’re gonna go talk to somebody with more rank than I got.”

  “Certainly, Corporal. Certainly. I completely apologize. You do such important work. Want me to help carry him in?”

  The corporal shook his head. “We already had to put the thing in there. No reason for you to get any closer to it.”

  The other man, Private Something Or Other, stepped up to help, and the two men lifted the body with exaggerated care, making sure not to touch it with anything other than their thick leather gloves. Tommie ducked inside ahead of them to light an extra lantern for the task, and they placed the body in the stone basin farthest from the others. They covered it with several half melted blocks of ice and pulled a thick tarpaulin over the entire mass.

  He followed the men back outside and watched while they shook their leather gloves into a small fire pit. Then the corporal poured a generous helping of lamp oil onto the gloves and threw a match onto the pile. All three men stepped back while the flames leaped up amid an inky trail of smoke.

  “Corporal,” Tommie asked in his best casual voice, “where did you say that body came from?”

  The corporal studied him for a moment before he took a breath and shrugged. “Chinatown.”

  Randall Blackburn sat at a little table in the partially restored café, across from Shane Nightingale. He had waited until they were done eating their filling lunch of heavy soup and bread before he presented Shane with the afternoon paper. Then he listened with satisfaction while the boy followed his request to read the article out loud. The story was accompanied by a generic pencil sketch of a twelve-year-old male that nobody would recognize as Shane, but his name was mentioned several times. Blackburn’s acquaintance at the paper had pulled every heartstring that his editors would allow.

  The writer repeated Blackburn’s story about a young man adopted out of a local orphanage by the Nightingale family of the well-regarded Nightingale Dry Goods Emporium, and who was now the family’s sole survivor. Instead of dwelling on how the Nightingales were killed, it celebrated the fact that even while Shane worked for his keep at a local church, he read the California Star with such regularity that he noticed the article about the murder of Captain Harlan Sullivan. Based upon Shane Nightingale’s astounding insight and the reporting of the California Star, an important clue was delivered to Sergeant Randall Blackburn of the SFPD, and a gross injustice was prevented. The true culprit was arrested and an innocent woman, wrongfully accused, set free.

  “ ‘And now,’ ” Shane finished the last line in a strong voice, “ ‘the true perpetrator sits in police custody, after a full confession.’ ” He sat and stared at the page for a moment, then slowly lowered the paper to the table.

  Blackburn grinned. “Now I see what you’re doing with this thing of reading newspapers out loud! It’s impressive. You never missed a beat.”

  Shane nodded and looked up long enough to show a timid smile, then quickly lowered his eyes again.

  “Don’t worry,” Blackburn went on. “I didn’t tell them which church you’re working at. Otherwise all the young ladies would be sneaking down here to meet up with you.”

  Shane nodded a little, but this time he didn’t look up at all. The boy was so clearly lacking in self-confidence that a little celebration in the newspaper had seemed like a great way to buck up his spirits. But even though Shane was able to read every word of the article and surely understood that he was being publicly applauded, he wasn’t making any reaction at all.

  Blackburn suddenly felt like a complete fool. Obviously, he had misjudged the boy’s depth of grief over losing his new family. Had he managed to somehow make this boy feel worse?

  “Well, Shane,” he went on. “It’s just a story. Tomorrow they’ll have another one. I just thought you might like for people to know how you helped me out. You deserve it. Take some pride in it.” He smiled and clapped the boy on the shoulder. “Brag on yourself a little bit. No harm in letting people know you’ve done something good for this city.”

  Shane took a deep breath and finally raised his eyes to meet Blackburn’s. “Thank—thank you. I kno-kno-know you tried to he-he-he-help. But . . . I juh-juh-juh-just . . . I just . . .” He stopped and shook his head in frustration.

  “That’s all right,” Blackburn hastened. “No need to go on about it. I should have talked to you first.” He grinned. “Guess I thought the surprise might lighten your day.” He handed the waiter the money for their meal and stood up. “Anyway you keep that copy. If you want to practice reading, can’t hurt you to read about yourself.” He pointed at the paper. “Save it for your kids.” Then he walked away and let Shane have some time to think of himself as a hero.

  For Blackburn, it was uncomfortable enough to be alone with another male who was emotionally overwhelmed. And while it was less disturbing to be with a very young person in such a state, Shane was too old to dismiss as a child. He was close enough to manhood that his pain was awkward to witness, even though it also seemed unfair to expect him to show a man’s stoicism and to put up the strong face.

  What an age to be, Blackburn mused, old enough to see things as they are and too young to do anything about it. In comparison, his own boyhood up among the California giant redwoods was fairly idyllic, all things considered.

  He realized then, that he had actually thought he might fill in a well by pouring in a bucket of water. To offer Shane this little news story as some sort of reward, expecting it to help this troubled boy, was optimistic to the point of ignorance.

  * * *

  As soon as the big sergeant was gone, Shane had to lower himself back into his seat at the table. His wobbly knees had nearly given him away. He was so horrified by the sergeant’s news article that he had nearly blurted out his dismay, half a dozen times. It was only the blessed, goddamned stutter that saved him.

  He began a slow, staggering journey back to the Mission. The cool green isolation of the Mission cemetery seemed to be the only place in the world where he could find any safety. The holy men there seldom concerned themselves with daily newspapers, and many of the city’s residents could not read at all. Once he made it back to his toolshed, he could lose himself there. It was as close as he could come to crawling into a hole.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE FOLLOWING DAY

  SHANE’S ARTICLE CAME OUT in the California Star, and a copy found its way into the makeshift morgue near the City Hall station. It was carried under the arm of the private from the day before, who finished reading it while sipping coffee poured from a pot hung over the fire pit. Instead of tossing the used newspaper into the flames, he pulled it into sections and then used them as protection from the cold for his hands while he carried the day’s delivery of ice blocks inside. He left each section of the paper with each ice block
, piling the ice with the newsprint sandwiched between to help keep the blocks from freezing together.

  He left the pile under layers of burlap for Tommie to distribute over the corpses as needed, since Tommie had been pleased to volunteer to work inside. The ice was never to be allowed to melt off of the mummy-wrapped body located in the back. That particular guest got fresh ice first, no matter what. Tommie worked in earnest, and the stench of decay soon infiltrated the pores of his exposed skin and every fiber of his clothing.

  No worse than a public outhouse, he cheerfully pointed out to himself. He hated those places.

  Now, on Tommie’s second day in the morgue, he was even permitted to make himself at home in that grim place whether or not any of the other men were around. Just him and the quiet ones.

  And since this was the first time that he had found himself alone, he immediately got down to the only thing that he was actually there to accomplish.

  He stepped outside into the sunlight and carefully checked his clothing. He had on full body underwear beneath a light pair of pants that he had tied tightly at the cuffs to his cotton socks. His waistline was tied where his shirt met his belt. Over that, he wore another full outfit of long pants and long sleeves that looked normal.

  Just as he stepped back into the darkness of the morgue, he pulled a rolled-up piece of fabric from his pocket and shook it out. It was a fine silk cloth stitched into the shape of a large cone. He pulled the cone over his head and down to his shoulders, and then tugged a pair of thin leather gloves onto his hands. When he pushed aside the heavy canvas curtains, he carried nothing else with him but the sealed lunch pail. He moved quickly to complete his task before returning to his other duties.

  To start, he removed his outer layer of clothing and set it next to the ice pile, remaining inside of his sealed suit. Then he plucked an oil lantern from a peg near the door and headed straight back to the special body basin, the one that held an icy-cool corpse that somebody in Chinatown had wrapped in far too much covering for any normal purpose.

  Whoever was inside of the layered shrouds, Tommie was certain, had died of the Black Plague. He would know the truth soon enough.

  When he reached the rearmost body basin, he set down the lantern and went straight to work, pulling the heavy-bladed knife from his rigged pocket and unsheathing the blade. He had spent hours sharpening it to an edge far thinner than needed, so that now as he sliced away the bottom of the body’s fabric cocoon, the knife passed through the thick layers of cloth with almost no effort. At the foot, he made a perfect cut five or six inches long, separating layer after layer as he worked toward the corpse itself.

  His moves were well studied. In Tommie’s judgment, the best thing about independent wealth was the time it gave one for read- ing and reflection. Such things were paying him well in this tingly quest, providing bits of knowledge more powerful than a sidearm. He now knew, for instance, that while a rat bite could infect a human if the rat was carrying plague, the devil in the disease was that the fleas on an infected rat could also carry the plague. And not only are fleas practically invisible, they can jump several feet. Though it might be possible to successfully avoid the rats, once plague is on the loose, avoiding contact with fleas was much more difficult.

  He only needed a minute of contact with the body, perhaps less. The self-sealed clothing, silk hood, and gloves would keep him safe enough, and by now any fleas that might still be on the body should have been stunned by the cold. The Chinese Oriental Rat Flea thrived on the hides of black rats, but it became inactive in the cold and it was easily destroyed by fire. Thus he felt confident that with only a few seconds of exposure, and with the immediate burning of his clothing afterward, he could dodge the disease.

  As for any remaining danger, what was life without risk?

  The sliced wraps finally parted to reveal the corpse’s lower leg. Tommie picked up the lantern and shined it close to the opening to get a good look. Perfect! The purplish, blackened skin was also covered with red-and-brown circles. It made no difference if there were any fleas to carry this disease. Here, the tissue itself was infectious.

  He set the lantern aside, picked up his lunch pail, unsealed the lid and reached inside. From the box, he pulled a small black rat by the tail, then took the animal firmly in his other hand. In a single, swift move, he stuffed the rat into the corpse’s thick wrappings, making sure to push it all the way down to the flesh, then yanked his arm out and pinched the opening tightly shut. All he needed to do now was to place another large block of ice directly over the opening, and nobody would see anything. He moved the largest remaining ice block and set it in place to cover the opening and hold it tightly closed.

  Between the rat’s frenzy of fear and desire to escape, it would gnaw on the body. It would draw the plague into itself. An hour or two, he thought, should be plenty. In the meantime, he would lug more fresh ice over and completely cover the corpse, making sure the rat had nowhere else to go but into the body, which would be warmer than the ice surrounding it.

  Tommie walked back toward the spot where the fresh ice sat waiting for him, stopping halfway between it and the body to set the lantern down on the floor. Then he stepped over to the pile of ice and picked up the top block, using the same section of newspaper left behind with it. It was the financial section, full of grim indicators that Tommie didn’t bother to read. He carried the block back to the body and rested it against the one that already covered the slit. There were a few half-melted blocks still in place, but he thought that the corpse could use four or five more.

  He went back to the ice and picked up another block, this one covered by the section of the paper that showed Shane’s article. He didn’t bother to look at it, just used the paper to make it easier to lift the block and carry it back to the body. When he was finished, he collected the papers, with Shane’s article on the top, still not noticing the story. He carried them out to the fire pit to burn them along with his clothing after the entire job was done. He tossed a few of the papers into the pit after wadding each one. Just as he reached for the page with Shane’s article, the name “Nightingale” caught his eye.

  Tommie became utterly still, as unmoving as the surrounding corpses.

  No.

  His denial began its automatic responses—there were others with that name, unrelated others. He had seen the name before. The question could be answered in an instant. All he had to do was pick up the page and read the article.

  Finally, with a slow and deep breath, he broke the spell holding him and reached forward to pick up the damp page. He held it close. There was the name, there was the article containing it, along with the drawing of the twelve-year-old boy, captioned “Shane Nightingale.” The first name of “Shane” sent up another red flag. Tommie’s hands grew so shaky that it annoyed him. Still, he began to decipher the smeared words on the page.

  Something about the boy helping the police to solve a High Society murder. Police Sergeant Randall Blackburn tells all about this amazing boy who blah, blah, blah . . .

  And then there it was. It hit him like a nail to the forehead.

  “Shane Nightingale” was some throwaway kid. He wasn’t really a Nightingale; he only took the name of the family who adopted him. A year earlier, he was taken in by the Nightingale family of the renowned Nightingale Dry Goods Consortium, all of whom had perished in the earthquake and fires, except for Shane.

  “. . . except for Shane.”

  There was one Nightingale still left. Tommie missed one.

  “. . . except for Shane.”

  Shane. The human bad penny. Tommie screamed silently in frustration, wondering how such a thing could have happened. Although even as he asked himself, he knew the only possible answer: Friar John. Somehow, for some inexplicable reason, the Headmaster had not only sold out Tommie’s patronage, but he had set Tommie up for an inevitable encounter between him and the boy. Another Nightingale was out there. And because of that, incompleteness now marred the memor
y of Tommie’s special work.

  He took a quick look all around and confirmed that the body wagon was nowhere in sight yet, so he hustled off to the station to ask a few casual questions about this Sergeant Randall Blackburn and his special little friend.

  Randall Blackburn decided to pay a second visit to the orphanage, unannounced. He went in uniform to avoid misunderstandings, but gave no other consideration to the friars. The thing that he gained from reading Shane’s article in print was the realization of the huge hole in Shane’s background. Whatever clue to the boy’s ability that there might be, some evidence must have been left at the orphanage during the years he spent there. Blackburn wanted to get a closer look at the place itself.

  He closed the distance of the last block before reaching the back gate entrance to St. Adrian’s. A familiar sense of danger manifested beneath his stomach and across his shoulders.

  What danger? It was a place full of kids. There were some unusual people taking care of those kids, but it was necessary work, and it was something that few others wanted to do. What danger?

  His mouth instantly soured, realizing that the danger came from whatever it was that prevented a twelve-year-old boy who has been orphaned for the second time from wanting to return to the familiarity of St. Adrian’s. The danger came from whatever persuaded that boy to prefer living all by himself, inside a toolshed at the back of a cemetery.

  He reached the gate and saw that it was unlocked and unguarded. That made it easy enough to walk in, but seemed strange. An orphan might not desire a life alone on the street, but most delinquents would prefer it. How were they kept from running off?

  He moved quietly, but made no effort to sneak around. The grounds were nicely kept and all traces of the earthquake damage had been eliminated outside. The brick buildings showed a few cracks, but nothing of real concern. Either the place was solidly constructed or the shock wave spared this part of town, another one of those strangely untouched pockets of land that existed here and there.