The Devil_s Workshop

Chapter 22

It was almost one A. M., Monday morning.

Cris drove his father's new Lincoln Continental slowly. He made deliberate stops at all intersections. He made sure he used his blinker. He knew that he had enough unprocessed alcohol in his blood to "pin the needle," and he didn't want to get busted for DUI.

He was back on the Nickel (Fifth Street), driving past remembered alleys. The old thirties buildings of downtown L. A. loomed incongruously, leaning against the new glass skyline like shabby relatives at a posh wedding. Old crates and boxes were pushed up against chipped brick; annex dwellings of the homeless. Deep in narrow alleyways trash-can fires burned like hunger.

The Midnight Mission was on Fifth, a block south of Wilshire. Cris found a parking space across the street from the Salvation Army church. He fiddled with the Lincoln's expensive alarm until it chirped at him, then moved across the street and disappeared inside the "sally," where two years before he had spent many nights on a hard cot, curled around a hangover or a bad dream.

"Clancy around?" he asked an old man, who looked up from a broom. They had never seen each other before, but traded the instant recognition of men who had once found the bottom and been content to rest there.

"Upstairs in the cafeteria," he said, and as Cris headed off, added, "Hey, we're full up, and we got a sign-up sheet now."

Cris didn't answer as he climbed the wood stairs of the Spanish-style building to the second floor. All of the non-load-bearing walls on the second floor had been removed, to make room for a dining hall that was filled with wooden tables and metal chairs. Cris's polished loafers clacked against the tile floor. As he moved into the room, he heard Clancy in the back arguing about something. Cris headed in that direction, pushing through freshly painted double doors.

Clancy had his back to Cris. He was sixty, but still had the quick movements of a "promising boy."

Clancy Black was a legend on skid row. As a young man, they called him "the Black Attack," a middleweight who tended to cut too easily. He'd been matched badly by unscrupulous promoters, who used him like disposable goods. Still, he had the heart of a lion, and finally fought Art Aragon for the middleweight title in the sixties, but Clancy was a bleeder and got decisioned. When his career was over, he had nothing left but memories and a bottle. He became a "client" of the mission, puking up blood from esophageal hemorrhages with the rest of the heavy drinkers out in the alley behind the sally. It was back then that Clancy Black got his miracle. In a drunken stupor, he had a vision: "It was the Lord Jesus come to me at my lowest, fillin' me with his glory," Clancy had proclaimed in a reverent whisper. From that moment on, he had dedicated himself to a higher calling, a higher power. It stopped him from drinking, filled him with the Holy Ghost, saved his life, and gave him a future. God now walked inside Clancy, as surely as the demons who trailed behind the rest of the Fifth Street alcoholics. As Clancy put it, he had gone from a "helpless client" to "God's compliant," from "what's-it-to-ya" to "hallelujah." He found Jesus in the nick of time, just before he puked his life out with his last bottle of 49.

Now Clancy ran the Midnight Mission. He was the only one that had ever been able to get Cris to stop drinking. Clancy got him on the wagon for thirty days before he lost it, three years ago, and took off in shame to ride the rails.

"We can still use them fuckers," Clancy said to a cook, both of them looking at the date on a can of corned beef. "I think you're wrong, Danny, it don't say December, least it don't now." Clancy rubbed the date off with his thumb, and handed the can back. "Git alia them from this batch outta storage, and put 'em in with tomorra's stew. Sure beats eating outta Dumpsters, where rats been pissing." His bald black head was shining in the heat and stark neon light of the kitchen. Now he turned and looked directly at Cris, and his punched-out, slightly lopsided face broke into a smile. "And speaking a' rats," he said, "you musta rolled a banker to get them loafers."

Clancy didn't miss much.

"How ya doin', Clance?" Cris said, feeling slightly awkward, as well as light-headed and ashamed. It always started that way with Clancy. You wanted so bad to please him, to be straight for him. Lucky knew what he looked like, knew that Clancy could see the invisible residue of his addiction leaking out of his sweat glands, turning his skin to a boozer's blush.

"Reckless Reggie and Alabama Jack told me you was off seeing the great USA from under a boxcar."

"I need to talk to you, Clance," Cris said, suddenly wringing his hands uncontrollably in front of him.

"Let's get some joe; this ear-bang still has the best fucking coffee on the Nickel."

They poured two cups and moved into the empty dining hall. It was now after two, and the mission was strangely quiet. Lights out, Cris remembered, started at ten. Clancy sat across from Cris, and waited. Clancy was good at letting you get at it your own way.

"I gotta get straight," Cris finally said.

"Yep, no doubt about that," he answered.

"How?" Cris sort of croaked it out. "I keep telling myself I'm through, but I keep cheating."

"Like I told ya before, you gotta get yourself a higher power, you gotta find your miracle."

"Since Kennidi died, I can't go to God. I used to, but now… I just…" He stopped and lowered his head. "I know it works for you, Clancy. Me, I got doubts, y'know. I got things I can't reconcile."

"You thinkin' what kinda asshole God would take my little girl, torture her like that?" he said.

Cris didn't move or say anything, but Clancy read the agreement in his eyes.

"Yep. Well, sometimes it's like that. Hallelujah won't always do ya," Clancy grinned.

Cris couldn't help himself, he smiled back. "I think the people who gave me and Kennidi this problem are in Fort Detrick, Maryland, at a secret facility called the Devil's Workshop. They're also at a CIA-influenced company called Merck Laboratories. Maybe we shipped bio-weapons to Iraq. Maybe we made Gulf War Syndrome. It was tested here first in the 1980s."

Clancy looked at him, and finally nodded. "So?"

"I want to stop them, Clancy. I want to get them for Kennidi and for Laura and for me. It's the first thing in my stupid life I think I really care about. The first thing I give a shit about."

"Then do it."

"I can't. I can't make myself stop drinking. I try, and then I get the shakes and feel the D. T. S comin', and I just break all the promises."

"I seen guys in here every day for five years, trying to find the answer. They listen to the ear-bangs, look for Jesus to be their higher power, but they can't do it, and ya know why? 'Cause they're compulsive. Mosta my clients could use up a lifetime supply a' anything in three days. For you and them, there's no such thing as moderation." Cris nodded, and Clancy continued, "So, when a man can't find his higher power, he just keeps plowin' a furrow out there on the Nickel. One day somebody else comes in here wearing his shoes, and they tell me my guy's gone 'n' died in his cardboard box, with nobody to say his prayers to, and I be here knowin' it's 'cause he never found his miracle. Ya gotta have a higher power, Lucky. People like us, obsessive compulsives, we can't do it ourselves."

"Why?" Cris said. "Why can't I do it myself?"

"Anybody can stop for a while. Shit, I seen guys quit for a week, so their wives will stop yellin' at 'em, but that ain't no permanent thing. What you got, Cris, is a cravin', and a cravin' is a physical allergy, coupled with a mental obsession. That's a tough combination, so ya gotta have a higher power, something above ya to hang on to, to pull ya through when your resolve crumbles."

"But not God. I'd feel like a hypocrite praying. I've got to find my way back to Him when I'm ready. When I'm not…"

"So pissed off," Clancy finished.

Cris didn't answer.

"If ya can't fall on yer knees to God, then get down on yer knees to vengeance. You want these guys who made the chemicals? Then go get 'em. Make vengeance your higher power. Shit, man, anything works if it means enough to ya. Money, hatred, love, even pussy." He grinned at Cris. "Ya just gotta want it bad, you gotta serve somethin' bigger than yourself."

Cris looked at him for a long moment, then nodded slowly.

"I've known guys, took 'em five years of praying, to get thirty days of sobriety." He reached out and put a hand on Cris's arm, "You gotta take this second-to-second. You're walkin' on a floor that may not hold ya, and each day of sobriety is just a day, and nothin' more."

"How do I beat the D. T. S?" Cris asked. "I can't get past them."

"You gotta go through 'em, son. You gotta buckle yerself in and just do it. There ain't no drugs for that. You got your body all fucked up. Comin' off just ain't no fun. Then you stay clean by seeking vengeance for your daughter's death. That's your higher power."

"Will you sit with me?" Cris asked. "Keep me from falling?"

"It's why I come to work, man. It's how I serve my higher power."

So Lucky went upstairs, got in Clancy's unmade bed, and wondered how long it would take the bugs to find his eyes.