The Canal (6 page)

Success.

In the mirror Joe came face to face with a
horrific apparition, something dragged from the bottom of a lake,
its eyes weepy and crude. It was a sight he had seen on other
mornings, too many to count -- always after a night on the job,
after a date with the canal, trying to cure the city's more
peculiar problems. He examined his hand. It was the color of raw
meat where he'd touched the canal; the last remaining sign of
infection.

Joe washed his hands and then dried them on
his coat. It was earlier than he expected. Joe's days were usually
nights, his mornings came at the ends of afternoons. He now
realized that he'd forgotten what a real morning was truly like.
Crisp. Attentive. Alert. Worth avoiding.

But he was done with sleeping. Done with
dreams. And before his startled body could realize what was
happening, and could voice some rather relevant disagreement, he
was pushing away from the mirror, like an astronaut shoving off
from the mother ship. He caromed out of the bathroom and off of
walls, breezing past the meltdown of his bedroom, through the slum
of his living room, and then made an easy leftward stumble into the
kitchen.

He went to work fumbling an empty soda can
out of the sink, prying it from a dense archipelago of beer bottles
and tuna tins. He filled it partway with tepid water, got the jar
of coffee crystals from above the refrigerator and poured them in
the can, then leaned against the countertop and drank, finishing in
one draught. While chewing on the half-dissolved granules he brewed
another can. He took his time with the third and managed to smoke a
cigarette without vomiting.

Last night, while his body was cooking itself
from the inside and purging at will, his fever-whipped brain had
wandered a bit too far afield. Joe sank deeper than usual. He got
into some unnatural places, awoke some unnatural things. But the
message was clear: the body under the bridge, that was just
preamble. It was the part everybody would laugh about later, after
a few beers, or around the coffee machine. It was going to be a
pleasant memory compared to what was coming next.

The sewer, that was probably where he should
start. Fortunately the sewer didn't really bother him. The sewer
was just a place. Maybe not as pleasant as other places, maybe it
didn't have much condo potential, but a place was still a place.
No, it was the other part that bothered him. The part with the
teeth. The part about getting his face eaten off.

Joe finished his cigarette and lit another.
He had another coffee. He observed the cabinet above the sink, the
one that was padlocked shut.

He had known a woman once. She bought
Christmas presents far in advance of December. Over the course of
the year, from the 26th onward, she'd buy and wrap these presents
and place them high atop the shelf in the bedroom closet.
Sometimes, at her most infuriating, this woman kept those presents
there even after Christmas had come and gone. Sometimes they stayed
there for years. The mysterious and unopenable unknowable.

At some point, Joe had begun doing this sort
of thing too. To memories, mostly. Secrets. Sometimes he put them
high on a shelf hidden deep in the scorched casserole he called a
brain. Or, you could put them in a locked kitchen cupboard. The
main difference being that Christmas was something you prayed would
never come. Because if it did...

Joe pulled on the cupboard door. The lock
held true.

He needed to leave. He needed to go to the
office.

*

The police station was a newer building,
built in the grand style of government dull. It was just another
bunker where help got parsed out from behind steel doors and
bulletproof glass. A crowd was gathering -- TV cameras were being
deployed as reporters jostled for a prime spot close to a podium
that had been set up on the entryway steps. Bridge murder was the
talk of the day.

Joe moved shyly along the edge of the crowd.
He found an opening and moved quickly through -- he was up the
steps and pushing through the station's double doors before anyone
could notice.

He walked into chaos. The small lobby was
filled with a regiment of reporters, guys waving pencil and paper
like sword and shield, shouting questions and laying siege to the
poor Desk Sergeant, a normally stoic man who, in a red rage, was
trying to forcibly throw them out.

There was a frozen moment as the doors
flapped shut behind Joe, and the reporters, in bird-like unison,
turned to stare. An unspoken order was passed from man to man, via
face twitch and eyeball shiver.

The nearest flank abruptly charged.

"Detective Lombardi! Detective Lombardi!"

"Any comments on the murder, Detective!"

"Is it true what they say! Is it sex
cannibals!"

"A teen blood cult!"

"Drifters on PCP!"

"A serial killer with a flair for flesh! Can
I quote you on that!"

"Give us something, Lombardi. Off the record,
promise!"

"Where is the skin, Detective! Do you have it
here! Is it in one piece or several! Shredded or intact! Was it
worn, Detective! For the love of God -- WAS IT WORN!"

There was too much excitement, too much
commotion. Already Joe felt exhausted, his body depleted from the
night before. The light hurt his eyes. The sound hurt his ears. But
it was the Desk Sergeant who came to his rescue. The Desk Sergeant
valiantly lunged into the fray, towering, grand, Norse,
hip-checking indiscriminately, clearing a path. Joe hustled across
the lobby and through a low swinging gate, where the reporters
stopped short.

"Aw, c'mon Lombardi! Give us something!"

"People have a right to know!"

Joe quickly ducked into the stairwell. He
stood for a moment, still dizzy from exertion. It was quiet here,
and safe. But in his weakened health, the stairs ahead seemed a
ridiculous challenge, looming Himalayan in scope and magnitude. He
began an unsteady ascent. Halfway up, wheezing, altitude-sick, he
stopped to rest. This kind of thing, it didn't inspire confidence.
It made Joe nervous to imagine what horrors must now inhabit this
body of his -- a pair of lungs like charred eels, surely, like two
carcinogenic sausages. Some bombed out kidneys, a landmined liver,
a heart like a trembling, geriatric flea. Everything packed in
black grease. Joe muttered a feeble half-prayer and turned again to
the stairs.

Finally, shivering and on the verge of
implosion, Joe came teetering into the squad office. There was a
patina of exhaustion specific to the place -- they had tried
repainting the walls, replacing the furniture, but it hadn't
helped. The paint had faded in minutes. The furniture was outdated
the moment it came off the truck. The room was cramped with desks;
Joe's was the one sagging under a blanket of coffee cups,
sunflower-seeds, old newspapers, candy bar wrappers.

The other guys were either out or still
hadn't come on shift. Joe made a point not to look at Alan's desk
as he passed -- the color-coordinated pens and prominently labeled
"IN" and "OUT" trays were an affront. The lights in the Lieutenants
office were on. Joe stuck his head inside.

Lieutenant Kozar sat at his typewriter,
pecking at keys with one finger. Despite his hair having gone white
over the years and the expanding gut, Kozar was essentially the
same man Joe had first met decades ago. Same buzz cut, same
ensemble of dark tie, dark slacks, white collared shirt. Every
lunch was a ham and cheese sandwich with an apple and a grape soda.
A man immune to fashion, taste, or variety.

Kozar didn't look up. "I sensed you were
coming. A certain whiff in the air." He glanced at his watch, then
stared closely at Joe. "It's early. I'm stunned, quite frankly. And
here..." Kozar ran a finger down his face. "You got something."

Joe rubbed his cheek. A crust, human in
nature. A lot of it. Kozar handed him a tissue.

"Jesus Joe, you don't look so hot. Compared
to your usual regrettable state."

"Had a rough night. Think I caught some bad
deli. Some real rogue meat."

"Those fucking deli's," mused Kozar. "They
don't respect the mayo. Condiment fucking TNT."

Joe perched on a corner of Kozar's desk. He
was listing terribly. But that's how it went sometimes.

"Listen Lieutenant. We gotta talk."

"Buddy, you don't know half."

"...How's that?"

"Let's just say that you picked a hell of a
day to show up on time." Kozar frowned. He pulled the paper from
his typewriter and handed it over. Joe blearily focused. It was a
vacation requisition form, filled out to Kozar's name. Starting
today. End date unspecified. In the top margin, Kozar had
typed:

Dear all you downtown pricks,

Go F yourselves.

"I don't get it."

"They've assigned a guy, Joe." Kozar snatched
the form back. "Those HQ assholes are asking me to sit this one
out. After all the bullshit I been through, with all the years I
got under my belt, they decided to go and let some other guy into
my shop."

Joe detected something new here. Something
that wasn't a part of Kozar's standard emotional repertoire.

"This case makes front page and all of a
sudden Downtown wants to call the shots. They said it's the Mayor's
call. The Mayor's got a guy, they said. A specialist they said."
Kozar held up the form again. "Well F them!"

It was the indignation. The ire. It came off
as rather unpracticed, a little bit amateurish. Sort of wild, sort
of panicked, but ultimately unsure. And all the more disconcerting
because Kozar was a man who was always sure. They weren't in ham
and cheese territory anymore. This was more like uncharted ethnic.
Saigon take-out. Kabob city.

"I already talked it over with Marjorie,"
said Kozar. "We made plans. I'm takin' a vacation, and when this
whole thing turns to hell, well, they can come on hand and knee and
beg me to come back. And you know what I'm gonna say? I'm gonna say
that they're a bunch of disrespecting, low-life--"

"Easy, Lieutenant," Joe said. "Don't do
anything you're gonna regret."

"Oh. OH. Thank you Mr. Wise Buddha. Thank you
for coming all they way down your holy mountain just to drop that
shit in my lap. How could I have ever done this without you?

"Listen Joe, lest you forget -- I'm the only
rabbi you've got. So that means this is your problem too. Because
I'm the one running interference every time guys start asking too
many questions. I'm the one who's watching your back. So don't you,
of all people, tell me to take it easy."

Kozar then sat back in his chair and sighed.
He rubbed his eyes. He seemed to rethink things. "I'm sorry Joe.
You know what I mean. I'm...I'm outside of myself here." He pulled
a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and handed one to Joe.
Kozar lit them both.

"Forget it," said Joe.

"Yeah." Kozar studied him as he smoked.
"Question. What was it you said earlier?"

"What?"

"You said you wanted to talk. Isn't that what
you said? Talk about what?" Kozar lowered his voice. "Something
with last night?"

"It was nothing."

"Did everything...you know. Your usual
thing..."

"I did what I could."

"And?"

"By the book."

"Well, that's not saying much. Ain't a book
I'd particularly care to read. But this thing, then. If I'm gone,
you can put this thing to bed right? Just make it go away, like
always?"

"Like always."

"And if there was something more to tell me,
you'd say so, right?"

"I'm gonna say don't worry about it. I'm
gonna say get out of town while you still can--"

The phone rang. "Sorry," said Kozar. He
answered, listened, hung up.

"He's coming," he said quietly.

"...The specialist?"

"Yeah. Some hotshot. Supposed up-and-comer.
He had some big case, some big arrest. The Knuckler, was it? Or
maybe The Grizzler. Hell if I know. The goddamn papers, naming all
these creeps. It was some serial sleazebag or other, that's all I
can figure."

"The Grizzler, was that the guy with the
drill?"

"No, no you're thinking of The
Dejugulator."

"The Dejugulator... I thought that was the
guy with the meat hooks."

"Oh hell, maybe. If that's the case, then I
don't remember a drill guy. I remember The East River Masher. And I
vaguely remember there being a Night Tickler. But the rest...
Jesus, maybe we're just out of touch, us guys. Maybe it really is
time for a vacation, a long, unending one. I mean look how far
D'Angelo's come. What does he need us for? That kid could do the
job in his sleep."

"He should be less smug."

"Well, when you're hungry, it helps to be a
prick."

And with that came the voice of the very man
himself. "Lieutenant..." Alan coming through the office. As if
summoned by the mere mention of his name.

He wafted into Kozar's room. Joe couldn't
help but note all the bright cotton and buttons, and the man's
malaise of hygiene.

"Lieutenant," he sang out, "We've got
someone--"

Alan looked at Joe. Alan's face did a slow
collapse.

"Joe."

"Alan."

"Little early in the day for you, isn't
it?"

"Couldn't help myself," said Joe. "What with
the good news and all. Who'd we get?"

Alan paused. "No one. I was saying we've got
someone...analyzing. We had some evidence on the body."

"Oh good. Good work. You'll get a medal, I'm
sure." Joe looked at Kozar. "We done?"

"You tell me."

"You still taking that vacation?"

"That's cast in stone as far as I'm
concerned. The desert. Dry. Flat. Cheap. Maybe you should come.
There'll be room in the car."

"Vacation?" asked Alan.

Joe knocked on Kozar's desk. "Take us some
pictures." He didn't look at Alan as he left, or at Kozar. Behind
him he heard Alan again, a little more alarmed this time.