Murder Your Darlings

by J. J. Murphy

  The man nodded, smiling at her. He now casually glanced about the room, as if perhaps Battersby might very well be present. Then something caught the man’s eye. He pointed out the plate-glass windows.

  Below, skulking along the near wall, was Battersby. He dragged along Faulkner, whose hands were bound. Faulkner looked like he might collapse at any moment. Then the two of them disappeared through a high, narrow archway.

  Benchley again enunciated loudly, “Where—does—that—doorway—lead—to?”

  “Never mind. Let’s just go,” Dorothy shouted to Benchley. Then, with a quick shake of the man’s hand, she ran from the room. Benchley followed on her heels.

  They hurried down the stairs. At the far end of the printing-room floor, they could see that Church and the other policemen were not looking in their direction— and they had not seen Battersby and Faulkner either; otherwise, at least a few of the cops would have come running.

  “That dumbwaiter must have been a trick,” Benchley yelled over the noise of the presses. “And we fell for it.”

  “Live and learn,” she shouted. “I’ve fallen for dumb soldiers, dumb sailors and dumb writers. About time I was fooled by a dumb waiter.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  She didn’t answer. They darted through the high archway and found themselves in another enormous room. They faced a forest of huge blank rolls of newsprint, all standing upright in neat rows, like columns of a Greek temple, but placed much closer together, just wide enough for a person to walk between. The paper rolls, hundreds of them, filled the room from one end to the other.

  Dorothy detected movement out of the corner of her eye. At the far end of a long corridor, she saw Mickey Finn and a couple of his men racing toward her. They’d be in the room in a few moments.

  “Well,” she said to Benchley, “we know Battersby didn’t go down that hallway. Shall we peruse this room for Battersby and Billy?”

  “Indeed we shall,” he said. “Why, I spy with my little eye ... what do you call that walkway?”

  He pointed up to a narrow metal catwalk that encircled the upper half of the room.

  “An elevated sidewalk,” she said. “Why don’t you go up there and take a peek around? Perhaps you’ll be able to spot our quarry from that lofty position.”

  “Perhaps I will. And perhaps you can stall Finn and his bootlegging brutes. You let that kind of riffraff in the place and it’ll give this joint a bad name.”

  He jogged toward a nearby iron ladder and climbed it carefully to the catwalk. She turned toward the entrance to the corridor, but Finn and his men were already bursting into the room. Right behind them came Detective O’Rannigan—huffing, puffing and sweating—and two brass-buttoned policemen.

  “Hold it right there, Finn,” O’Rannigan wheezed.

  Finn didn’t even hear him. He shouted at Dorothy. “Battersby! Where is he? We saw him come in here.”

  “There he is,” Benchley yelled from the catwalk. He pointed toward the far end of the room. “He’s dragging Billy like a dog on a leash.”

  Finn looked up at the sound of Benchley’s voice. His eyes narrowed. He grabbed one of his henchmen by the shoulder. “Muldoon, look! See that crane up there? Get it working and drop it on Battersby’s head. Now!”

  Finn pointed to a large, medieval-looking mechanical device that drooped down from the rafters like an enormous rusty metal spider. Dorothy figured it must have been used to transport the giant rolls of newsprint in and out of the room. She traced its chains and wires back to a set of controls up on the catwalk, just a few feet from where Benchley stood.

  The man named Muldoon threw off his hat and trench coat as he ran to the ladder.

  “Stop in the name of the law,” O’Rannigan wheezed. “Finn, you’re under arrest, and that goes for your men, too.”

  Lucy Goosey had somehow appeared at Finn’s side. She chuckled contemptuously at O’Rannigan, a low, throaty sound.

  “Fred!” Dorothy yelled, pointing at the controls. “Don’t let him use that crane.”

  Benchley spun around, unsure of what she pointed to. Then he saw the controls and his gaze followed the wires to the low-hanging crane.

  Finn was smiling, but his voice was ruthless as he spoke to the detective. “I supply all the booze that your flatfoots sneak into the policeman’s ball, not to mention the booze for the speakeasies that all you cops go to.”

  “I don’t—” O’Rannigan began.

  Finn cut him off. “You arrest me, I shut off the booze. Then you’ll have the whole New York police force down on your neck.”

  That gave O’Rannigan pause—just long enough for Muldoon to leap along the catwalk toward the controls of the crane. But Benchley got there first.

  High above, the crane jolted to life.

  “Ha!” O’Rannigan turned to Finn. “Who’s got the last laugh now?”

  “Oh, no,” Dorothy said, realizing her mistake. “Mr. Benchley should not be allowed near mechanical things. Better that Mr. Muldoon—”

  Too late. The head of the crane dipped sharply. Benchley wrestled with the controls. Muldoon was right behind him, reaching around him.

  Like some kind of prehistoric beast, the head of the crane swooped down as if to strike. Dorothy, O’Rannigan, Lucy and even Finn and the other men crouched low to the ground. Dorothy felt a rush of wind as the thing swung over her head.

  “Not at us!” Finn yelled. “Swing that damn thing at Battersby!”

  Benchley nodded, seeming to finally understand how to work the machine. The arm of the crane twisted sharply to the left, colliding brutally with the top of a nearby roll of newsprint. As if in slow motion, it toppled like a chopped redwood, knocking down the next roll.

  “Oh, no, Fred,” Dorothy said, seeing what was about to happen.

  The fall of the two paper rolls spread in a chain reaction. Like monolithic dominos falling, every roll of newsprint came crashing down in a slow but inexorable wave. The room rumbled like an earthquake. O’Rannigan pulled Dorothy back to the safety of the archway, where Finn and the others also stood.

  As the crescendo of falling rolls of newsprint came to an end, a thin cloud of dust rose over the monstrous disarray. Then, from far across the room, she heard a yelp.

  “There he goes,” Benchley called from the catwalk. “It’s Battersby.”

  “Is Billy with him?” she said.

  “No, he was alone.”

  She filled her lungs and shouted as loud as she could. “Billy! Billy! Are you here?”

  There was no answer.

  “Let’s go,” Finn said to his men. “This way.”

  They turned and dashed out through the high, narrow archway. Lucy Goosey followed them at her own hip-swaying pace.

  As Benchley came to Dorothy’s side, she put a hand on his arm. “You go with them. Maybe Billy got out unobserved. But in case he didn’t, I’ll stay here and look for him.”

  Benchley squeezed her hand and rushed after them.

  She cautiously approached the jumbled sea of fallen rolls of newsprint. “Billy? Billy!”

  From somewhere deep within the room came a weak, nearly inaudible, response.

  “Here ... over here . . .”

  Chapter 43

  Benchley followed Finn and his men but quickly stopped. All this aimless running about seemed misguided.

  A half dozen paces in front of him, the printing presses chugged and thumped along deafeningly. He felt the sound in his stomach. It vibrated up from his shoes.

  He decided to think. What would he do if he were in Battersby’s shoes? Battersby clearly wanted only one thing: to print his lousy newspaper. Above all, he’d want to make sure it continued uninterrupted. That’s what all this was about, wasn’t it?

  Benchley looked up at the massive printing press, spitting out hundreds of those dreadful tabloid newspapers per minute. He searched the weblike network of ladders, stairs, catwalks and cables that covered the enormous machinery.

  Now, h
e thought, how do you turn the damn thing off?

  “Billy!” she shouted. “Billy, answer me. Where are you?”

  A voice came from directly behind her. “Why, Mrs. Parker!”

  She spun around. There stood Alexander Woollcott, still in his silk pajamas, his owllike glasses sliding down his pinched nose, a long, thin cigarette smoldering in his hand.

  “Still looking for Dachshund?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course I am.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Help?” This took her aback. “Yes, you can help by shutting up and butting out.”

  Woollcott approached her slowly. “I certainly haven’t been the boy’s strongest champion, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean I want the boy to come to harm. This very day, I have seen for myself what kind of antipathy your Mr. Dachshund has been subject to. Allow me to make amends.”

  “Well, all right. A Dachshund is amends’ best friend, after all.” She turned back around and shouted, “Billy, where are you?”

  From far away, the answer came softly. “I-I can’t say exactly. It’s very dark.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ve had better days.”

  “Can you move?”

  “No, I seemed to be pinned down.”

  “Start talking. We’ll find you.”

  She moved forward into the maze of toppled paper rolls. She headed in the direction of his voice. One of the uniformed policemen—she learned that his name was Officer Compson—was at her side. Woollcott followed, shuffling in his slippers.

  “Start talking?” came Faulkner’s voice. “What shall I say?”

  “You’re a writer. Make up something.”

  Then he started speaking. For a moment, they were transfixed by his voice, which began weakly but quickly gained strength. “Battersby wanted his name to be known, not merely for accomplishment, not for fame, not for family pride, most certainly not for family pride, as he’d had enough of that, being that his affluent forebears bequeathed a family name that he indeed disdained, even as he sought to raise his own name in his own right by the quotidian accomplishment of a two-penny periodical—”

  His words now tumbled over one another, rapid and diffuse.

  Meanwhile, Dorothy, Woollcott and Officer Compson made slow progress, turning this way and that, like mice in a maze.

  Faulkner rambled on. “And he labored and he worked and he toiled in quiet, dark silence, his hands ink stained with the fruit of his labor, and all the time he gave a platform for the vituperative voices of others, he standing well behind in the dark—”

  Finally, they came to something of a small clearing. Faulkner’s voice seemed to be coming from just beyond it. The logjam of newsprint rolls was too high to climb over, and there was no gap to squeeze under.

  “This one,” Compson said, pressing his shoulder against a roll. “If we can shove this one aside, we might be able to create an opening to crawl through.”

  She stood next to him, placed her hands on the roll and tried to anchor her tiny feet on the ground. Woollcott, imitating the officer, put his sloped shoulder uncertainly against the roll of newsprint.

  “Ready?” Compson said. “Push!”

  She pushed with all her might. The policeman grimaced. Woollcott groaned.

  The roll didn’t budge an inch.

  They gave up, stood back and took another look at it.

  While they stood there thinking, Faulkner’s voice continued unabated. “And he vouchsafed this to me, his secret, his passion, his lament, his unfulfilled desire, as I listened, inebriated, incapacitated, bound and gagged, though not gagged with a gag but stunned into silence—”

  Compson scratched his chin. “I saw a long iron crowbar, tall as you, back near the doorway. That could do the trick.”

  “Might as well,” she sighed.

  He turned and quickly disappeared in the maze.

  Faulkner continued speaking without pause.

  Woollcott whispered, “Why must he keep talking? Give the poor boy a break.”

  “I don’t want him to think we’ve stopped. I don’t want him to get discouraged,” she said. “Besides, it gives him something to do.”

  Finally, Officer Compson returned. He carried the five-foot crowbar like a shepherd’s staff. He wedged the flat end of it below the newsprint roll they had pushed against. Dorothy, wanting to help, also grabbed the crowbar. Woollcott merely watched.

  With a mighty heave, Compson and Dorothy shoved the crowbar down. Slowly, the roll of newsprint inched up. Then, abruptly, it popped out of place and tumbled backward with a resounding thud.

  They stood facing a blank brick wall.

  Billy’s voice had stopped.

  “Billy?” she said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m still here.” His voice echoed off the wall in front of them, emanating from somewhere else in the room. “Is everything all right? What was that noise?”

  She sighed. “Just keep talking. We’re getting closer.”

  He continued where he’d left off. “And as he reached the apotheosis of his dissertation and his explanation and his confession all rolled into one, we arrived, as though in conjunction with his words, at the printing plant, which was the cranking and sputtering and blackened center of his irrevocable heart. ...”

  Benchley had climbed the metal stairs that were built on the side of the printing press. He then strolled along a narrow catwalk, scaled a ladder and found himself staring down into the belly of the beast. It was a churning, roiling river of black, white and gray—the newspaper sped by as fast as lightning, disappearing between massive rollers, yet continuing on and on and on.

  The fleeting action and the noise made him dizzy and nauseous. He tore his gaze away and looked around.There was no one to ask how to turn off the printing press.

  Well, any lever, any wheel or any button is as good as another, he thought. He grabbed the largest lever he could find.

  “Stop the presses!” he yelled. “I’ve always wanted to say that.” Then he pulled as hard as he could.

  As loud as the printing press was, this caused a noise that was even louder—a bloodcurdling metallic screech. The nearest set of rollers slowed to a stop, but the other rollers didn’t stop. The steady stream of speeding newsprint kept spewing forth into the stopped rollers, piling up quickly. He smelled burning metal and saw smoke leaking out of the machinery. Then, finally, the whole thing began to shut down—some sort of emergency shutoff, he figured.

  Like a locomotive pulling into a station, it took a few moments for the enormous printing press to click and whirr into silence. Benchley watched it come to a dead stop.

  Then there was a hammering, but it wasn’t coming from the now silent press. Benchley looked around him. Across the distance, almost at eye level, was Bud Battersby. He stood behind one of the large plate-glass windows of the typesetting room. His face was dismayed, his fists up against the window, hammering the glass so hard that Benchley was afraid it would shatter. Battersby mouthed something—curses, probably—but Benchley couldn’t quite make it out.

  “Hey, Battersby!”

  Benchley looked down. There stood Mickey Finn, legs planted apart, his crooked yellow teeth grinning, his hands gripping a Thompson submachine gun.

  “Battersby!” Finn yelled again, pointing the muzzle of the tommy gun directly up at Battersby. “The cops tell me that you killed my man Sanderson. You don’t kill one of my best men and expect to walk away.”

  Rat-a-tat explosions of flame burst from the barrel of the gun. Benchley looked up to see the plate-glass windows shatter into millions of glittering pieces. Battersby had disappeared.

  Tiny shards of glass rained down on Benchley. He covered his head with his arms.

  “Finnegan! Stop that immediately!” roared Captain Church, who appeared behind Finn. Church turned to the three uniformed policemen who were with him. “Go up there and see if Battersby is still alive. If he is, hand-cuff him and bring him down.”

&n
bsp; The policemen turned and ran up the wooden stairs toward the typesetting room.

  “Me first,” Finn yelled, and ran to overtake them. “Leave Battersby for me.”

  Benchley looked at the jagged empty windows of the typesetting room. Battersby’s eyes peeked over the sill of the nearest broken window.

  “Breaking news, Bud,” Benchley called to him. “Mickey Finn and a handful of cops are on their way up.”

  Battersby immediately stepped to the window ledge. Without even looking down, he leaped out toward the catwalk. He landed just a few feet from Benchley, bits of glass tinkling around him.

  “You should look before you leap, Bud,” Benchley said, “or one of these days you’ll find yourself in a mess of trouble.”

  Battersby moved forward. “Haven’t you done enough?” He shoved Benchley aside and then quickly assessed the damage to the printing press. He ripped out the pile of excess newsprint. Then he turned a crank that lifted up the top roller by an inch.

  “Why’d you do it, Bud?” Benchley said.

  Battersby inserted the paper sheet between the rollers and turned back the crank that lowered the top roller again.

  Benchley could hear that Finn and the police officers were now searching among the debris in the typesetting room.

  He spoke to Battersby again. “Far be it from me to presume, but I daresay you owe me an explanation, seeing as you employed a hit man to kill Mrs. Parker, Mr. Faulk—Mr. Dachshund and myself. Not to mention you tried to run us over with a truck full of Bibles. I’d go so far as to say that I’m due—”

  Mickey Finn’s voice shouted out, “Oh-ho, there you are!” He now stood in the same window where Battersby had just been. He lifted up the tommy gun. Benchley and Battersby both hit the deck. Two officers appeared behind Finn and seized his arms. But the gun still erupted in echoing blasts.

  Bullets clanged over Benchley’s head, ringing off the printing press. Then the gunfire stopped. Benchley looked up to see Church snatching the machine gun away from Finn.

  Battersby, scrambling to stand up, grabbed the lever to restart the printing press. Benchley darted forward and grabbed hold of the lever from the other side and pulled with all his might.