Fantastic Metropolis

Pickle mounted the second step. He felt a pang in his left arm. Angina or gas? What difference? Heart attack or fart attack, there was no turning back now. Besides, who died on his own birthday? The detective took a few deep breaths and this time encouraged his mind to drift toward another example of malevolence, the terrible assassination of an authentic genius, the inventor C. Crafton Poole.

OCTOBER 15, 1919
POOLE DRAINED — COPS STUCK
ACCIDENT, SUICIDE OR HOMICIDE?

C. Crafton Poole was an ascetic who practically lived in his laboratory. His astonishing work on the arcane properties of polymers galvanized industry. His startled corpse was found glued, face front, to a stained glass window that was the centerpiece of his private chapel.

At first the inventor’s death was ascribed to some bizarre accident. Then there was talk of suicide. Murder seemed unlikely since the man was universally loved. But murder was the final verdict. Poole was buried with pieces of that Tiffany window still stuck to his chin, nose and forehead.

Pickle got the case. The investigation zeroed in on one Emilio Sanchez, a smarmy, draft-dodging tango teacher with a limitless appetite for mature French wines and immature debutantes. On close scrutiny it became crystal clear that Poole’s young daughter, Acadia, who came out at the Junior League Ball that very year, was carnally involved with Sanchez. Acadia admitted that her father had caught them coupling in the very same chapel where Poole perished.

Pickle imagined the tsunami of rage that swept over C. Crafton Poole after the chemist learned of the illicit romance between the slinky Latin twirler and the dewy adolescent apple of his righteous eye. At the least, Acadia was being saved for better. Only hours before his death, Poole threatened to disinherit her if the unholy liaison continued, and there was some evidence that he had attempted to contact a brute nicknamed The Eraser to settle the Sanchez account.

Pickle was impressed by the courage and grace of the so-called TANGO MONSTER who spun himself around and around still singing of his innocence before falling into the lap of the electric chair. When the charge hit, his shaven scalp lit like a candle, saturated as it was with oils and unguents.

The smell of justice was high and sweet, as noted in the obituary: But which burned brighter or wafted a more refulgent odor? That glowing skull or the spirit of the victim? Because of his dedication and determination, C. Crafton Poole has made our lives so much better. In the fields of medicine, transportation, entertainment and production it is he who shines with a more enduring light and enjoys the final sweet essence of eternal glory. Pickle pasted that obit in his album along with the tabloid accolade, headlined, HURRAH FOR SIMON PICKLE — NEW YORK’S HOMESPUN HOLMES.

Still, Pickle was haunted by discrepant shadows in the prosecution’s argument. The tango teacher claimed that, when murder was done, he himself was being educated in the intricacies of the then-new dance, The Charleston, at the studio of one Madame Olga who testified for the defense. She produced receipts and an appointment book. But Olga had been the killer’s mistress for years and the jury discounted her words as pelvic perjury. For some reason, Pickle believed her.

Breaking the Poole case brought the detective more money as well as praise. Pickle proposed marriage to his childhood sweetheart, Hannah Flock and she accepted. They were married in Boston and honeymooned on Nantucket Island since Hannah claimed remote kinship with Herman Melville and had a keen interest in whales. While Hannah searched for old ship’s logs in the library, Simon sounded deep into his own depths trying to confront the unreasonable doubts that kept him restless despite his success. The image of Sanchez scraped at his mind.

On the third step, his head pounding, Pickle rested again. While waiting to regain his equilibrium he blinked and there was the comatose face of an expiring Alderman Tristano Alegretti, spurting blood like a garden sprinkler, his rotund body pierced thirteen times with an ice pick.

DECEMBER 5, 1929
BLOODY BOUQUET BLOOMS IN BROOKLYN
ALEGRETTI SUCCUMBS TO MULTIPLE WOUNDS

Each hole in the Alderman’s body had been filled with a white orchid. The city fathers gasped, then breathed easier when it was learned that the safe Alegretti kept filled with deadly dossiers of municipal sins had been ripped open and torched to ashes. Pickle and his team were responsible for that arson on orders from the Mayor himself after being assured that the destruction of the Alegretti Files, while certainly a happy convenience, had absolutely nothing to do with his mandate to ferret out Alegretti’s perforator.