Murder Your Darlings (35 page)

“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,
he 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.”

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.

Battersby looked at Benchley as though he were a buzzing insect—an annoyance to be swatted. Battersby raised his shoe—the one that had stomped the cockroach in the Sandman’s apartment—and planted it against Benchley’s stomach, pressing hard against Benchley’s abdomen while he pulled the lever in the opposite direction.

“Ow,” Benchley groaned, his fingers slipping but still holding on. “You’re taking the ‘power of the press’ far too literally.”

 

Faulkner’s words rolled out of him in a stream of consciousness—without pause, without pretense, and almost without punctuation.

“The flames leaping and dancing and hungry, and he reached and lifted—Don’t do it, I said, for the sin punishes not only the one who receives it but the one who commits it. . . .”

They were getting closer to him, she knew. Officer Compson now scaled an alpine mountain of paper rolls. Woollcott followed, slipping and fumbling.

“Mrs. Parker,” Compson called, “look out!”

A roll of paper tumbled down toward her like a boulder in an avalanche. She couldn’t tell which way it would land. She guessed that it would land directly in front of her rather than bouncing out and landing a few feet behind her. She scurried backward. Luckily, she guessed right. The thing landed with a deep, hollow thump, rolled slowly toward her a few inches, then came to a dead stop.

“Dottie, dear!” Woollcott said aghast. “Are you all right?”

“No need to worry,” she said casually, but exhaled deeply. “I’ve always been good at dodging heavy paperwork.”