The Last Nightingale

by Anthony Flacco

  Shane recognized her as one of the girls from St. Adrian’s. He couldn’t think of her name, and he also couldn’t think of a good reason why any of the kids from that place would be here at the Mission, well after midnight. She appeared to be by herself, but who could say whether anybody else waited for him out there?

  “Who are you?” he asked her. “Who—who—who . . . ah—ah— are . . . yeh—yuh—you?”

  She stared at him in surprise. “Are you all right?” She glanced down at the paper lying on the dirt floor. Shane reflexively stepped over to it and picked it up. But he didn’t answer her.

  “Since you asked, everybody calls me Vignette, and I’m a master spy.” She gave him a “tah-dah” grin, as if that explained everything.

  Shane could manage no other reply but to stare at her.

  “All right, that’s not what they call me at St. Adrian’s. You don’t remember my name, do you? That’s all right. Actually, it’s good. They used to call me Mary Kathleen, so that I would grow up to be a fat housewife. But now I’m Vignette—a vignette is a little story, you see?

  “I ran away, Shane. Today. I’m gonna sneak back in tonight and steal my stuff, and then I’m gone from there for good.”

  “So nobody else sent you?” Shane tried to ask. “Suh-suh-suh-so nobuh-nobuh-nobody else seh-seh-sent you?” He felt his heartbeat beginning to slow down. If others were out there, they would have stormed in by now.

  He thought that a look of sadness flashed across her face. “Shane, you didn’t used to talk like that. I mean, you always got your words out just fine. And it’s funny, but when you were reading just now, you didn’t stutter at all. It sounded just like you. The real you. What happened?”

  He gave her a look of frustration.

  “Never mind, then. Too many words.” She pointed at the paper. “So when you read out loud, you can talk without a problem. Is that right?”

  Shane nodded, wondering why he was the one answering questions.

  “Read me something.”

  Shane scowled at her.

  “No, really. I know you can. I heard you! Come on, just a line or two.”

  Shane had the definite feeling that he should be insisting that she get out before one of the priests spotted her and he got into trouble. But she was a familiar face from the first place he had lived since he could remember. She knew his name. He never paid much attention to her, since she was a couple of years younger. But he remembered that whenever she passed by, there always seemed to be somebody yelling for her.

  He picked up the article and began to read. “ ‘Police have finally put an end to the practice of looting by chasing down a secret list of suspected perpetrators—’ ”

  “That’s it!” she shouted with glee. “That’s how you sound! I recognize that voice!”

  He had to smile at her reaction. So he nodded and mimicked her “tah-dah” grin. He struck a mock formal pose and repeated her new name. “Vign-” He stopped himself, took a deep breath, and started again. “Vignette,” he said, mimicking a stage actor.

  She laughed in delight and clapped her hands. He started to laugh with her, but suddenly realized that they could easily be overheard. He jumped up, startling her as he lurched past her and grabbed the door to the shed. He pulled the door closed, turned to her, and pointed outside.

  “All right,” she whispered. “We’ll keep it quiet here.”

  He nodded and sat down on the dirt floor again.

  What he remembered about Vignette from when she was Mary Kathleen was that she seemed to flutter about the place like a butterfly. Once in a while, she had engaged him in conversation or some little game. He would generally play along, but he never did anything to encourage her attention. Male and female fraternization was heavily discouraged by Friar John and his Helpers. In that place, it would only draw the wrong kind of attention.

  “Um, well,” Vignette began, “I might as well just come out and tell you, right? I mean you must be wondering exactly why I’m here. I would be, if I were you. So here it is. I’m not, my name isn’t really Mary Kathleen. I told you that, right? They named me that. I never told them to. They’re not my parents. They can’t name me. That’s all. So I’m Vignette because I like that name and I picked it myself.”

  She leaned toward him. “Vignette is a master spy. I mean it. She can do things. I can, I mean. And one of the things I used to do at St. Adrian’s is to get in trouble on purpose so that I would be forced to clean Friar John’s office.

  “That’s where you can really learn things, if you pay attention.

  He never tried to look at me in the shower, so I couldn’t get him to give me money. Did they do that to you? Instead, sometimes I would read things that he left lying out on his desk. I’m not such a good reader, but you know, I get the gist of it.

  “They know a lot about some of us, Shane. About what happened to us, I mean. Things like why we were put there, or who our families were. Did you know that?”

  Shane had never asked himself whether Friar John might know anything else about him that he had not revealed. Suddenly, he couldn’t imagine why he never had.

  Vignette went on, “So I had what you might call a hobby, where I tried to find out where some of us came from. You know, what our stories were. And even though most of us are just found on doorways or something, sometimes the Helpers know things that they don’t let on. Extremely interesting things.”

  Shane was starting to get impatient for her to get to the point. It must have shown on his face, because she sped up.

  “Shane, you don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t around St. Adrian’s, do you? ’Cause I don’t remember when you weren’t there. I was only about two years old when they found me. And you were four, right?”

  He nodded, wondering how she knew that.

  “They didn’t get us at the same time, but it was pretty close. A few days.” Vignette steeled herself, then she leaped into her plan, unhesitating. Just do it like you mean it, she reminded herself. The key is to talk too fast to let them think.

  “And so the file said that the notes that got left with us were done in the same handwriting. You hear me? They were done on the same sort of paper. And they think that we came from the same people! But they never tell the kids things like that, because they don’t want you to know if you have a brother or a sister. It’s easier to adopt everyone out, one at a time.”

  She looked at him with an expression of grim, cold truth. Then she made the “tah-dah” smile.

  Shane’s need to speak was so strong that he felt as if he would explode. He started once, and got nothing out. He stopped and gritted his teeth in frustration, then tried again. No good.

  Vignette watched him in concern until he gave up and shook his head. At that point she chimed in. “Wait a minute!” She picked up Shane’s notebook and handed it to him. “Here, take this. Now, just write down what you want to say, here.” She giggled again with anticipation, then went on. “Okay, first write down, ‘My name is Shane.’ ”

  He had no desire for games at this hour, but he cooperated and wrote down “My name is Shane,” just to make her happy.

  “Good!” she whispered. “Next, if somebody asks you where you live, you might say ‘I live in San Francisco,’ right?”

  He nodded.

  “Good!” She cried out in excitement. “So write that down! You live in San Francisco!”

  He cooperated, resigned to playing along. She was irritating but his loneliness had disappeared. Just as he finished that sentence, she added the last one.

  “Yes! Now, just write this,” she began to dictate, “ ‘I would never leave my sister all alone on the streets.’ ”

  He looked up at her.

  “Just write it down! I swear, I don’t recall you being slow like this. ‘I would never leave my sister all alone on the streets.’ ”

  He couldn’t keep from grinning while he shook his head, but he complied and wrote out the words.

  “That’s perf
ect!” she exclaimed, leaning around to look at his work. “Now, I’m going to ask you three questions, and all you have to do is read the answers right there off of your page, get it?”

  Shane looked skeptical.

  “No really. Try it! Here we go: What is your name?” She tapped her fingertip on the paper. He looked down at it and read—

  “Shane Nightingale.” His voice was clear and strong and the words came out with no effort at all. He stopped with a jolt and looked at her. When their eyes met, he laughed with astonishment before he could stop himself.

  Vignette grinned from ear to ear and continued. “Okay then, and where do you live?”

  Shane looked at the next words on the page and read them out loud. “I live in San Francisco.”

  His voice had never been stronger. He laughed out loud in sheer delight. Vignette laughed along with him, then popped up to take an exaggerated bow.

  “All right, now,” she went on with a twinkle in her eyes. “Tell me what you have to say about your sister?” She pointed at the page.

  While Shane read the words, he could feel the wry smile stretching his lips. “I would never leave my sister all alone on the streets.”

  Vignette grinned even bigger. “I didn’t think you would.” She stood up, took a deep breath and brushed herself off. Shane was so dulled by amazement that she reached over and easily snatched the tablet out of his hand. She tossed it back onto the shelf and turned to him, glowing with mischievous delight.

  “Now,” she began, “your memory is good enough that you can still picture that page in your mind, can’t you?”

  In his mind’s eye, he could still see the page with the three little statements written out, one by one. He nodded.

  She giggled in anticipation and rubbed her hands together. “So I’m going to ask you three questions, now. And all you’re going to do is read what you can see there on the page in your memory. Don’t try to talk, just read.

  “Hi. My name is Vignette. What’s your name?”

  “Shane Nightingale.”

  They both laughed to hear it work so well again.

  “My, what a perfect voice you have, Mr. Nightingale. So tell me, where do you live?”

  “I live in San Francisco!” he said triumphantly.

  “And now, what do you have to say about your sister?”

  Shane found it impossible to suppress the smile pulling at both sides of his face. “I would never leave my sister all alone on the streets.”

  In that moment, Shane decided that as strange as it was, it was no more strange than so many other things in recent days. But here, now, what could such a thing even mean? What did it mean, to have a sister? And what did it mean to be an older brother, knowing what he knew about himself?

  At least he felt convinced that she didn’t mean any harm. She was bossy, but she was so playful about it that it made him want to play along with her.

  “I’m going to go back and get my stuff,” she said while she teased the door open and peeked outside. She looked back at him and nodded, confirming that it was all clear out there. But before she could step out, Shane reached over to her and took her arm.

  “Ah-ah-ah-are yuh-yuh-yuhhh-you—”

  “Write it down!” she urged.

  He scribbled his question and thrust the tablet at her.

  “No, don’t hand it to me—read it. Read it out loud!”

  “Are you really my sister?” He read the words with ease.

  She paused for a moment to look into his eyes, though she kept her thoughts away from him. This is the test that always comes. You pass it by sticking to your story. Light as a feather, she stepped up to him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “They just didn’t want us to know,” she whispered. She turned and started out the door.

  And then she was gone.

  Shane sat quietly for a few moments, trying to digest what had happened. Someone from the orphanage had finally come looking for him, but it was not as he had feared. Nobody wanted to drag him back, or make trouble for him. The fact was, he had a real sister, a flesh and blood little sister, and she wanted to be with him.

  That’s perfect, he said to himself, in the voice that never stuttered. His life was broken into dozens of pieces. He lived in a

  toolshed in a cemetery. And now his younger sister had manifested out of the midnight fog and just wanted to “leave her stuff” with him.

  What happens when she returns? The padres wouldn’t let them live there together. Does she go off somewhere else to sleep every day and then drop by here for tea and cookies? How much could she be seen around the place before the padres began to ask questions? How much longer after that until they became concerned?

  Once they became concerned, what reason would they have to tolerate his presence any longer? Was she there to doom them both?

  But the main thing, no matter how he might try to twist and turn it, was the promise she’d had him make.

  I would never leave my sister all alone on the streets.

  Whether the idea came from her or from him, he knew that he could never turn his back on her. Not now. If she had only discovered that they were brother and sister earlier, maybe the two of them could have even been adopted into the Nightingale home together.

  Except that if they had, then it would mean that she would be dead now, too.

  Because of him.

  So if this was his sister, then the timing of her discovery was lucky for them both. Knowing that he had a family member alive was the one bit of news that he had never prepared himself to hear. He sat under the weight of it.

  Then it hit him with a leaden thud: How would he protect her from the secret load that he carried after his failure in the Nightingale house? He would have to make up a complete story to cover the family’s deaths. Then for the rest of their lives he would have to remember to never slip, never drop his story. He could never allow her to hear a word about the source of all his nightmares, or about the knowledge that he possessed regarding things a human crea- ture will sometimes do—things that it is best not to know too much about.

  Tommie Kimbrough lay on an expensive area rug purchased on credit from the Nightingale Dry Goods Emporium, fondly gazing at his experiment. After nearly twenty-four hours, not a single dark speck showed on the pristine white interior of the glass-topped box. But the rat had feasted on the body at the morgue, which meant that it had to be filled with the plague now. Tommie rolled slightly to get a better look at the sophisticated medical book he had purchased by mail from Great Britain for one hundred pounds sterling. He found the listing for “Bubonic Plague” and skipped down to the part that concerned him.

  . . . the most powerful form of the plague bacillus manifests as Septicemic Plague. In this form, it is generally transmitted to humans from the bite of infected rats. The effects develop lethality faster than any other plague form: death in a single day, from onset of symptoms. The body turns purple, then black in the death process, resulting from disseminated in-travascular coagulation. This particularly virulent disease is 100 percent fatal.

  Reverberations went through him in powerful waves.

  One hundred percent fatal.

  And they die in a day . . .

  It was the manifestation of a dream. Septicemic plague. A term worthy of poetry.

  Tommie’s furry black guest inside the stark white box did not appear sickly in any way, and yet it suddenly was so much more than an unusual personal pet.

  It was Death on four little legs. And best of all, Tommie mused, this little creature works for me like the Grim Reaper works for God.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  RANDALL BLACKBURN STOOD at the entrance to the narrow service alley behind the Dash Theater on Pacific Street, one of the Barbary Coast brothels that came through the disaster without any serious problems. He had just been pulled by the theater manager to that very spot, where he now stood staring down at the body of The Surgeon’s latest victim. What was the total? Fourteen? He was los
ing count.

  Blackburn didn’t have to make a close examination to see that the man was dead; the body lay in a pool of blood too large for anyone to lose and survive. The familiar wound was there at the back of his neck. This victim was young, twenty to twenty-five, and his body was massive. Blackburn took him for one of the dockside stevedores. The victim’s pants were still fastened and there was no sign of castration, but if this killing was indeed done by The Surgeon, she would surely have placed a note on the body, leaving her individual stamp on the crime.

  He paused there, steeling himself to read some taunting diatribe. Blackburn’s heart was grim and heavy and he could feel his jaw set hard. There was nothing else to do but go through the pockets for identification.

  Just at that moment, he felt a passing wave of embarrassment regarding the way he earned his livelihood. His mother would have a heart attack if she could see how he spent his time, and his father would be astounded that their quiet and tentative boy had grown up to fight on a daily basis with monstrous people who sometimes compared badly to wild animals. He was glad that his parents preferred to avoid the city and liked for him to come up north to visit them.

  He exhaled more heavily than he had intended and stepped over to the sprawled form. And there was the note. This time it was rolled into a tiny tube and tucked between the man’s lips, like a cigarette. Blackburn plucked up the tube and unrolled the slip of paper.

  Search for me in every hour

  But know that you’ll not find me

  Until I greet you at a time and place

  Of my own choosing

  Blackburn shook his head in disgust. The words themselves were meaningless to him and would probably prove to be useless to the investigation, but no doubt their private meaning gave The Surgeon some special thrill.

  He rerolled the note and put it back exactly as it was, then stood up. There was nothing else to do here but call for a coroner’s wagon and begin all the routine procedures. He saw nothing new in this crime scene to help him.

  This newest murder underscored the feeling that seemed to grip most of the city now, the feeling that everything was out of control and might never get better. Since the disaster, life on the rougher side of San Francisco’s streets had gone completely downhill. Nearly every time Blackburn had to arrest someone, their story of despair poured out of them. The survivors’ shock and pain were so universal, and their vague charge of guilt was so pervasive, that many felt their faith shaken to the core. And some, instead of clinging to their beliefs, gave up all pretense of morality.