Kiss Me, I'm Dead

by J. G. Sandom

  “Funny things,” O’Gorman repeated, looking out at the crowd. Somebody laughed. Then somebody else, who followed another, and soon the whole room was guffawing. But I couldn’t laugh, though I wanted to. It just didn’t come.

  “And what, Mr. Lundberg, did you think of the lifeboats? Were they locked into place? Were they worthless?”

  “Well, sir, worthless is a difficult term. In the hands of expert seamen, few things are worthless. Why, I’ve seen men whittle keys out of nothing but pieces of seashell. My diary, which I keep with punctilious care, mind you, tells me: ‘the lifeboats were painted and seaworthy.’”

  “Painted and seaworthy, perhaps. But worthless if lashed to the deck. If the hinges were fused, full of rust, Mr. Lundberg.”

  “Well, there you are, sir. That’s what I mean. Rust is a curious thing. It can enter the tiniest places, at the most inopportune time. Especially when metal’s exposed to the sea. ‘Salt slays,’ as they say.”

  “Do they really? And the hoses. More than twenty eyewitnesses said that they burst. They were rotten, Mr. Lundberg. The pressure simply destroyed them.”

  “Yes, I heard that. Once again, sir. As an expert in these sorts of things, I can attest, first hand, what the sea air can do to the stoutest material. Why, in no time at all, sailcloth can shred, hinges can rust, hoses can crumble. Mother nature, you know, can be the cruelest of mistresses.”

  “Frankly, Mr. Lundberg – and I say this ‘with the utmost respect’ – your inspection of the Slocum was cursory at best. Others have testified that you were aboard the steamboat for less than ten minutes. Ten minutes, Mr. Lundberg. Hardly enough time to share a pint with the captain, which, we have heard from Van Schick, you apparently did. A pint of ale, while on duty. I’m shocked, Mr. Lundberg.”

  The crowd burst into laughter.

  O’Gorman held up his hand. “Is this true, Mr. Lundberg?”

  “It is customary for the master of a vessel to offer the inspector on service a beverage. It’s tradition.”

  “Tradition. Tradition, sir, is honoring your sworn duty. Tradition’s ensuring that what you’re inspecting passes muster. It’s making sure that those innocent children had a chance. Do we, in this city, in this country, actually care about public safety? Does the USSIS really matter?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir, Coroner O’Gorman, but do you have any idea how many steamboats and ships, how many coasters and tugboats and barges and barks, how many schooners and sloops we inspect every year? Do you have any idea?”

  “No. How many?”

  “Well, I’m not exactly sure what the number is, but it’s in the hundreds of thousands, in all forty-five states. To be sure, sir, as you see, we’re not idle.”

  “No,” said O’Gorman. He threw Lundberg a withering gaze. “I’m sure it must take serious effort to ascend to such dizzying heights of incompetence. Please, Mr. Lundberg, lest I tax you further. Please, sir.” He motioned. “Step down.”

  * * *

  Abelard slept in his bed, with his four older brothers, and a sister. It was a large bed, for the Warners were stout.

  Abelard was dreaming of whales. He was master harpooner on a ship from Point Barrow, well out on the cold Bering Sea. It had been but forty years since "Seward's Folly", when Secretary of State William Seward had handed Edouard de Stoeckl, Russian Minister, a check for seven million dollars in exchange for Alaska. The territory was still as foreign to Abelard as Minn-e-so-ta had been to Arvin Brauer.

  He rode on the prow of the ship, his bright harpoon ready. In his dream, he was svelte. And the whale – she ascended, undaunted, before him. She climbed and he threw, and I forced him to pass through his quarry, to become her, as I slipped on his skin like a glove, like a meat puppet. He woke up. He could feel me already. And he wondered – how strange – how his brothers could sleep. They snored and they whistled around him. Nothing could stir them. They slept like the dead.

  It was his face I cradled in my hands, that first time. Not my love’s. It was Abelard’s face. I touched him and he flinched, quite repulsed, and his heart seemed to leap from his chest. He sat up. He grew pale. He grew cold. Very cold. Was it this, or his fear, at the root of his chattering teeth? Was it me or his guilt? This, I thought, as I stroked him.

  “Who’s there,” he cried out. “Show yourself.”

  No, Abelard. You don’t want to see me. That I promise you. Not as I really am – bloated and armless, and ravaged by crabs.

  “Come out, I say.” He sat up. He was bare-chested and his milkless breast muscles jiggled and sagged. His hair stood up on its ends. Goose bumps popped out on his shoulders and neck. He was speechless. He had lost all his words. So I uttered two up through his throat. I just pushed them. “The truth,” he exclaimed. And again. “The truth.” As I held his round face in my fingers.

  And it burned. It burned.

  * * *

  Abelard left St. Mark’s school two hours early and walked all the way to the tavern. The Golden Rose was busy. Dozens of patrons crowded the bar, discussing the various inquests. Abelard pushed his way through, up the back stairs and into the private apartments. Bingham was in his room. He was lying down on his bed, trying to sleep.

  It was a grand room, like a model, like a room on display at a store. The walls were papered with castles. The bed featured quilts made from belly wool, from the finest of Swiss Alpine goats. Toys were everywhere. On the two shelves under the windows. In the toy chest by the bed. In the cabinet that sagged from their weight in the corner. Of every description: toy soldiers and wagons and balls; model horses and Roman ballista; tops and puzzles and whistles and boats. I’d never been in Bingham’s room before, and it amazed me. But Abelard simply pushed past me. He poked at his friend. He poked and he said, “Listen, Bingham. I don’t care what you do, but I’m telling the truth.”

  Bingham rolled over onto one elbow. He yawned. “Oh, hi, Abelard. What did you say?”

  “I don’t know how you talked me into this mess, but I’m getting out . . . now. I’m telling the truth.”

  “What truth? Whose truth, Abelard? My truth or yours? And which will they believe? The truth about Dustin?”

  “Look, I don’t care about Dustin. I only care about me. And I . . . me.” He skewered his chest with his finger. “I just can’t take this anymore.”

  Bingham laughed. It was a light laugh. Oddly, he sounded like Arvin.

  “Be still, Abelard. Try to calm yourself. You act as though you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “I just did.”

  Bingham slapped him so hard that Abelard couldn’t hear through one ear for three minutes. It just wouldn’t stop ringing. Abelard crumbled. He slipped to his knees. He whimpered and whined like a dog. “This is the truth,” Bingham said. “The pain that you feel on your face. This, and much worse, will become your existence, your sole reason for living, if you even consider betraying me. Banish it from your mind, Abelard.”

  He slapped him again, even harder. Abelard yelped, crawled away.

  “Do you hear me?” said Bingham.

  “I hear you.” Abelard got to his feet. He rubbed his red face.

  “That’s better,” said Bingham. He scratched at his chin. He pointed at the toy chest by his bed. “Now be a good lad and fetch me my bottle.”

  Ten minutes later, Abelard emerged from Bingham’s room. The door closed behind him and Abelard stood for a moment, in the corridor, alone, simply rubbing his face. Well, alone, save for me. He took his time descending the stairs. He wanted his face to cool down, for the blood to go back where it came from. The last thing he wanted was for someone to say, “Hey, what happened to you?” The well of his shame had no bottom.

  He remembered a potato-bag race he’d once run on Long Island, on some other excursion, before. He had lost his footing halfway down the course, and he’d started to tip, to careen, then to crash into other contestants. He had fallen incredibly slowly, and landed with his face in the dirt.

  That’s how
he felt now. He was careening from one disaster, from one nightmare, to the next. First the Lamp Room and the fire. Then the trial and his false statement. And now this thing with Dustin. It was all too much. Too much! It overwhelmed him. He actually liked Dustin. Sometimes he felt as if he simply couldn’t breathe, as if his lungs were filling with smoke. As if he were still there. The truth. The truth. He couldn’t dislodge the words. They choked him, like two clumps of meat in his throat. The truth.

  “Abelard? Abelard, is that you?”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered.

  Otto Goldstein appeared at the head of the stairs. “I thought it was you. What’s the matter? What’s happened? Your face.”

  “Nothing,” he answered, trying to cover his cheek.

  “Is Bingham receiving?”

  “I’m just going, Herr Goldstein. Excuse me.” He tried to slip past, but Goldstein was blocking the path. “Excuse me,” he said with more vigor.

  Goldstein snatched at the hand that was masking his face. “Abelard,” he said. The boy’s entire left cheekbone was livid. Goldstein took him by the hand. “Come with me for a moment, won’t you, Abelard? If you don’t mind. It’s time we had a little chat.”

  Chapter 11

  June 22, 1904

  New York City

  Unlike Henry Lundberg, Frank A. Barnaby wore a business suit. It was eminently plain. His posture was that of a soldier, although – save for two years in military academy as a boy – Barnaby had spent no time under any flag but his own. His great-grandfather had been born a rich man, as had his grandfather, his father, and he. The Knickerbocker Steamboat Company was only one of many ventures in which his family had interests. He was not a man to be trifled with, and O’Gorman found himself straightening as Barnaby mounted the dais. But the coroner did not stand up.

  The Official Recorder came forward. “Raise your right hand,” he intoned. “Place your left hand on the Bible.”

  Barnaby dropped a hand on the book. O’Gorman was astounded. In all his years as coroner, after countless opportunities to scan and analyze and generally appraise the body parts of countless corpses, O’Gorman had never seen a hand as beautiful as Frank A. Barnaby’s. The long thin fingers were immaculate, the nails polished and shined. Not a cuticle was out of place. No dirt malingered under any nail.

  “Do you solemnly swear . . . ” And he did. Barnaby sat down. His movements were unhurried, casual, though planned – as if he were leaning back to read the newspaper in his favorite easy chair on Sunday morning after Church. He and his attorneys had spent much time deliberating his demeanor.

  “This panel would like to thank you, Mr. Barnaby, for taking the time to speak with us today,” said O’Gorman. “We know how busy you are.”

  Barnaby lifted his arm with great weariness, tilted his wrist, and flipped his fingers over in a gesture of graceful dismissal. Then he sat there and stared at the crowd. He was but one man, confronted by so many, and yet each face he looked upon turned away. His gaze was like frost on a field. It chilled and congealed. He had the eyes of something dead.

  O’Gorman started with a routine set of questions, confirming Barnaby’s identity, his titles and responsibilities. He asked about the firm’s financial health, assets and debits. He inquired about the makeup of the board, who was responsible for what. His tone was modulated, clear and unconfrontational. It was only when he asked about the life vests that I sensed his agitation.

  “And how often, Mr. Barnaby, do you replenish the vessels?”

  “That depends on what requires replenishment. Again, as I said earlier, I don’t concern myself with day-to-day details. Mine is an administrative post. You don’t find me climbing about the rigging, as it were. My rigging is the annual report, my cables the columns in my ledgers. As chairman of the board, it is our shareholders who concern me. The value of our stock.”

  “Let’s talk about the life vests.”

  “What about them?”

  “How often are they replenished, replaced, rotated out? How often do you change them?”

  Barnaby raised his eyebrow. A young clerk jumped to attention. He took a step forward, leaned down, and whispered into the hairy ear of Cornelius Plimpton, of Thompson, Plimpton, Wilson and Peabody, attorneys at law: New York - Philadelphia. Plimpton pulled at his nose and Barnaby visibly softened.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. Again, that’s something that you’ll have to ask Van Schaick, or someone in inventory control.”

  O’Gorman rolled up his lips. “Well, Mr. Barnaby, let’s try it from a different angle, shall we? Do you, or do you not recall ever getting any requests from Captain Van Schaick for new life vests?”

  “Once again, please understand that such requests don’t go to me personally, as a rule, but to someone in inventory control. We have a central clearinghouse for disbursement. Everything from new scuppers, to anchor chains, to life jackets. Everything comes out of our Brooklyn yard. O’Malley’s the bursar. I think that’s his name. He could tell you. Perhaps you know him.”

  O’Gorman took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting that particular Irish American. Now, Mr. Barnaby. Are you telling me that you have no record, not even in accounting, of requests from Van Schaick for new life vests?”

  “Life jackets. I didn’t say that. I’m sure that if such a request–”

  “Requests. Plural, Mr. Barnaby. Allegedly, three separate requests. Over a period of seventeen months.”

  “If such requests were addressed, there would indeed be a notation in the ledgers. We track the cost of maintenance for every ship. They each have their own P and L. But all this is moot. You’re wasting your time, sir, and mine. I have on my person, at this moment, definitive proof that new life jackets were on order for the General Slocum.” Barnaby slipped his right hand in his coat. He removed a piece of paper, displayed it to the audience, like a magic trick, and then returned it at once to his jacket.

  “Mr. Barnaby, the fact that live vests may or may not have been on order wasn’t particularly helpful to the men, women and children who burned to death on your steamboat. Eyewitness after eyewitness has testified that the life vests either crumbled in their hands, or soaked up so much water that they dragged whoever wore them down to the depths. The very thing that was meant to save them,” said O’Gorman, “the instrument of their salvation turned out to be responsible for their deaths. Ironic, don’t you think?”

  “Irony, Coroner, is a thing best left to playwrights and professors. I deal in facts, sir. In dollars and cents. I manage a business that employs hundreds of people, that feeds a good many more than a thousand. Do not be maudlin, sir. I too have feelings. I have a wife, and a mother and sister, and nieces and nephews and cousins. Let us stick to the facts, sir. According to the USSIS, the steamboat was safe. I elect not to march in your sentiment parade.”

  O’Gorman climbed to his feet. “There was nothing sentimental about dragging dead babies out of the surf for a week. Especially after the crabs had been at ’em,” he said.

  A collective gasp filled the room. O’Gorman looked up at the balcony, at my sister, Louisa. Through me.

  “I’m not interested in sentiment,” he continued. “I’m only interested in justice, Mr. Barnaby. Which can only come from the truth. I don’t particularly care what the USSIS reported, or failed to report. You’re an independent business making independent profits. It’s unseemly to cry on the federal shoulder at this date. For years you’ve been filling your coffers with pennies from the pockets of immigrants. From church groups like the one at St. Mark’s.”

  “Profits are fuel to the engine of industry, not merely a byproduct,” said Barnaby. “Profits enable capital improvement. Without them, there would be no life jackets, new or old. And profits drive shareholder value, rewarding the ultimate stakeholders. Who are these villains? Are they the gluttonous demons portrayed in socialist rags? No, sir. They are not. They’re generally pension funds, the collective investments of thousan
ds and thousands of ordinary people – school teachers and merchants, businessmen, clerks, policemen, construction workers, cashiers, your mother and father, and” – he paused for effect – “most probably you.”

  “A rousing and most excellent lesson,” said O’Gorman. “But we’re not here to debate economics, or to indict the capitalist system. I just want to know one more thing.”

  “What is that, sir?”

  “How far does it go?”

  “Does what go?”

  “How high, how deep, and how far?”

  “Be clear, man. How far does what go?”

  “The responsibility,” said O’Gorman. “When a company encourages imbibing with inspectors. When it fails to heed warnings from its own employees. For seventeen months, mind you. Issued on three separate occasions. How high, how deep, how far does it go?”

  “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it may incriminate me. I know my rights, O’Gorman. The Fifth Amendment clearly states: ‘nor shall [he] be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.’”

  “How far?”

  “I object, sir!” Cornelius Plimpton staggered to his feet. He was a stately old man, graceful and tall, with the bearing and affectations of a Southern gentleman. He wore a light cotton suit with blue stripes. He carried a mahogany cane with an ivory lion-head handle, and his longish white hair fell in traces about his thin face, lending his noble appearance a certain unpredictable quality, a wildness.

  “The witness has already invoked his rights under the Fifth Amendment. Kindly move on, sir. Try a new line of questioning.”

  O’Gorman looked down upon Plimpton. To the coroner, the attorney’s face was hawk-like and predatory. If he were a Southern gentleman, he was lounging about his tobacco plantation, on some majestic veranda, waiting to meet out a beating. “I want to establish if Mr. Barnaby and the rest of his Board feel any responsibility for what happened. Do they feel themselves culpable?”