Monica Yant Kinney: A forensic sculptor enjoys his last days

Frank Bender lives. This I consider news, since the forensic sculptor wasn't supposed to see summer, let alone gallop into the fall.

"Come check out my tan," he teased Tuesday, which seemed as good a reason as any to ditch my leftovers and buy us both lunch from Cafe Lutecia. When Bender greeted me at his South Street home/studio, he looked a bit like Vladimir Lenin in spray bronzer.

"I still go up the stairs and run to catch the bus," quipped the energetic Dead Man Walking. "A couple weeks ago, I danced until 2 a.m. at a club at Third and Girard."

Fellow revelers knew nothing of Bender's gift for sculpting lifelike busts of murder victims using their skulls as a model. Nor did clubgoers know that the dancing fool suffers from pleural mesothelioma, asbestos cancer he traces to years spent in the engine room of a Navy destroyer.

Regular readers may remember my 2009 column about Bender receiving his death sentence while caring for his lung cancer-stricken wife, Jan. She, too, outlived prognosticators before finally dying in April.

After burying his bride, Bender figured he'd best get back to living. Disability rules prohibit him from earning money, so he can only paint or sculpt for pleasure.

Bender had a sublime summer until the release of The Murder Room, the long-awaited book about the Vidocq Society, the crime-fighting cabal he cofounded.

"The book is fast-paced and well-written," he allowed, "but not entirely factual."

Bender's cancer has destroyed his left rib cage and invaded his pectoral muscles. Doctors marvel that he has experienced no weight loss, no fevers, no chills, no shortness of breath, coughs, pelvic pain or palpitations.

"Remarkably, he is in incredible shape," one physician wrote on a June evaluation. "This weekend," the doctor added, "he was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean."

Bender skipped publicity events for The Murder Room, written by onetime Inquirer reporter Michael Capuzzo, because of one strange side effect of the condition:

"I had the hiccups for a month."

Because he could collect royalties from The Murder Room, Bender is pleased the cold case-cracking narrative is a bestseller. But he and fellow subject Bill Fleisher, a former FBI agent, say Capuzzo took artistic license in the work of nonfiction.

They even coined a term for it: faction. That, Fleisher told me, is "a book with facts made to read like a novel."

Fleisher says his complaints were addressed prepublication, but Bender disputes a passage that has him punching out his father. The sculptor also bristles at the promiscuous portrayal of his longtime bookkeeper. In one scene, she greets Fleisher wearing only a T-shirt, which both parties deny.

I sought Capuzzo's side by phone and e-mail, but he did not respond.

"There are parts of that book I know are not true," Bender said. "He cheapened" the story.

Lest anyone think Bender is spending his final days on Earth fretting, know that he had a ball at the bash a friend threw last month to watch the America's Most Wanted tribute to his most famous cases.

I say that's a bit like attending your own wake. "It is!" he clapped, "and I got to see who showed up."

This dying man has no bucket list. Instead, he is deciding each morning how to spend the day.

Often, he spends time with his daughter and granddaughter, who moved from Brooklyn to an apartment across the street. Last week, he went target shooting with his late wife's cousin. After our lunch, Bender thought he might walk to La Colombe for a shot of espresso.

"I keep asking Jan, 'What do you want me to do now?' " Bender explains, keeping her response from beyond to himself. "I feel like the reason I'm still here is just to keep living my life like I always did."