Word Made Flesh

1

Someone must have been telling lies about me is all Gilrein can think as they squeeze open his mouth and lay the barrel of the Glock on his tongue. Softly, as if it were a communion wafer.

The tall one with the ludicrous overbite asks again, “Where is the package?” the voice accented and a little phlegmy.

The one with the face made of burn scars and the eye that won’t close drives a fist into Gilrein’s stomach and they all lurch away from the wall for a second, then they push Gilrein back against the bricks, drive the gun farther back toward the tonsils until the choking starts.

“Where is the package?”

Gilrein tries to shake his head, to indicate a lack of understanding, but they won’t let him. He forces his eyes to stay open and sees the two men look at each other. The tall one tightens his grip on Gilrein’s throat and the other nods and steps away.

A blast comes from the mouth of the alley, and all three look and in the lights from the Checker they see a silhouetted figure extending a shotgun in their direction.

A voice yells, “Blumfeld, Raban, let him go now.”

Blumfeld and Raban glance at each other as Gilrein tries to suppress a gagging sound. Then the Glock is pulled out of the mouth and the tall one backhands him across the cheek and says, “This is not over.”

The two of them walk out of the alley as Gilrein lets himself slide down the wall onto his ass and begin to vomit. His eyes are pressed closed and he’s seeing bright flashes of light and there’s an awful pain flowing through his temples, a building pressure that feels like it may never stop increasing. He makes himself hunch onto all fours and when his stomach empties, he tries to calm his breathing.

Finally, he’s aware of the hand on his shoulder and he lets it guide him back to the wall. He wipes at his mouth with his forearm, takes some deep breaths. The intensity of the pain begins to diminish slightly. He lets his head come up and opens his eyes.

There’s a face half hidden in shadow and when the voice comes—“C’mon now, Gilly, you’re okay”—he realizes it’s Bobby Oster.

He tries to speak and Oster shakes him off. The savior is down on one knee with the Ithaca pump resting on his shoulder as if he’d just completed some kind of urban cattle drive.

Oster moves into a sitting position next to Gilrein, his back against the alley wall. Pockets of steam gust around them and in the distance a stew of sounds becomes audible — sirens, horns, the bleak purr of machinery.

“Blumfeld was the one with the Glock,” Oster says. “Raban’s his creature. They’re both meatboys for August Kroger.”

Gilrein tries to focus on his breathing, but he knows that as the shock dies out, the reality of the beating is going to arrive. In the kidneys and the stomach and in the groin.

“How bad did it get,” Oster asks, “before I got here?”

Gilrein attempts the first words and stops before the tongue can deliver.

Oster stands up and says, “Can you walk?”

Gilrein nods without looking at him.

“We’ll take your car,” Oster says, reaching down, softly grabbing a forearm and pulling Gilrein up to standing. “You’re going to be okay, Gilly.”

Oster wheels the Checker up onto the interstate. Gilrein lets his head lean against the passenger window and in the reflection cast by the passing halogen lamps, he can see both eyes already starting to swell up. The inside of his mouth is cut and his tongue pokes at the pulp and initiates a flow of blood and a burning like a bee sting.

“You still keep a bottle in the glove box?”

Gilrein shifts to face the driver and says, “What were you doing there?”

“Looks like I was saving your ass.”

Gilrein pops the glove box, pulls out a new pint of Buber Gold, and cracks the seal.

Oster says, “Just rinse and spit.”

Gilrein cranks the window with one hand, takes a small draw from the bottle, and braces for the pain. It’s a goddamn inferno and he holds it for a second, then gets his head out the window and swallows and tears come to his eyes.

“You lose any teeth?”

Gilrein takes a breath and wipes a hand over his face.

The highway is deserted. It’s still four or five hours until dawn. The air feels winter-cold for mid-April. A few drops of rain pock the windshield and then stop.

Oster runs a hand around the steering wheel and says, “I’d forgotten how sweet these babies are to drive.”

They pass a chrome-strangled low rider pulled into the breakdown lane, a couple of kids sitting on its roof. There’s half a moon showing in the west. Gilrein puts the cap back on the pint and stows it.

“What were you doing there, Bobby?”

Oster gives a smile, shakes his head just a bit.

“You always were a grateful little mother, weren’t you, Gilly?”

“Where are we going?”

“Promise you one thing, Gilly,” as he takes an offramp. “My boys will find those bastards. And you’ll get first chance to stomp some Maisel ass. How’s that sound?”

Gilrein looks out the window and sits up in the seat, his heart punching.

“Where the hell are we going, Oster?” even though he knows.

The Checker slows, cruises toward the end of Bigelow Street, past the long-empty industrial park. They swing right onto Rome Avenue and the road narrows and after about a quarter mile the vacant lots on either side turn into a scraggly wood, nothing clean nor remotely majestic about it, just a lot of scrub and weed and gnarled, petrifying trees killed off by a century of toxic waste.

Gilrein turns and stares at Oster and says, “You should’ve just let them shoot me, you son of a bitch.”

Oster bears left when the road forks and turns to gravel.

“It’s just a place,” he says. “It’s just a goddamned building. It can’t hurt you, all right? We’re safe here.”

The Checker rolls to a stop in a makeshift parking lot filled with a selection of perfectly restored muscle cars. Beyond the lot is a miniature trailer park, a couple aisles of shabby, dented-up RVs and campers on cinder blocks. And beyond the trailers is the place Gilrein never thought he’d see again. Kapernaum Printing & Binding.

It’s an enormous three-story mill, a classic old-time factory out of the heart of the industrial age, all worn-down red brick and age-darkened mortar, smokestacks and concrete loading aprons and double steel doors. The front face of the mill runs about a hundred yards and is fitted with boxy windows lined with black wrought-iron bars and sealed with gray wire mesh. The entry is an expansive granite archway with the name KAPERNAUM carved into the stonework in huge, fat block lettering.

“I won’t make you go in,” Oster says.

“Like hell you won’t,” Gilrein answers.

Oster kills the engine and they sit quiet and stare past the trailers at the factory. And though Gilrein knows there is no way to stop it from happening, he actually tries to think of something else for a minute, to focus on his wounds or the taste of the steel of the Glock in his mouth or the voice that phoned in tonight’s call. But within seconds, staring at the printworks, staring at the section to the left where the bricks degenerate into unrecognizable shards and continue, after all this time, to lie in a sloping pile of rubble, all he can see is Ceil’s prone body being pulled from the wreckage by the EMTs, the whole thing lit by the dozens of revolving lights from the cruisers and fire teams and ambulances, the way her bloodied arm dropped off the stretcher and Lacazze stepped forward and tucked it back under the blanket. The way the stink of the smoke and chemicals billowed out of the factory a full hour later and everyone — Petrashevski from bomb squad and Chief Bendix and Inspector Lacazze and even Oster — kept wiping at their eyes as they walked. And the lines that kept forming at the ambulances for hits off the oxygen tanks. But most of all, Gilrein remembers Ceil’s face when they finally let him look. Just Ceil’s beautiful face, somehow, impossibly, untouched by the concussion of the blast that lacerated her body, stroked red and blue by cruiser light.

“Would it make any difference,” Oster asks, his voice odd and soft now, “if I told you the boys would all like to see you again?”

They both know it’s a lie.

“Old times’ sake,” Oster says. “Brother officers.”

Gilrein pulls in a trembling breath and manages to say, “You miserable bastard.”

“This miserable bastard just saved your lousy ass, Gilly,” almost yelling, then getting hold of himself, bringing it back down to friendly and quiet. “It’s just a building, all right? It’s been empty for ten years and it’s been ruined for the past three. We just took it over, okay? Christ’s sake, it’s just a building.” A pause and then, voice even lower, “You ever think it might do you some good to—”

“Don’t even say it.”

Oster nods, holds up both hands, lets some time pass.

“We’ve got to talk, Gilrein. There’s some things I’ve got to ask you and there’s some things you’ve got to ask me. So let’s just do it.”

“And if I refuse?”

Oster smiles, pats his shoulder.

“Then I put you out of your misery.”

Gilrein stares at him, pushes open the door, and says, “Could’ve been anyplace else.”

Oster shrugs and says, “No, Gilly. It just couldn’t.”