Word Made Flesh

19

On the drive to the Visitation Diner, a news break interrupts a Wedgewood dirge to give an updated body count from a war of ethnic cleansing halfway around the globe, in a country whose name has changed three times in the past decade.

Gilrein turns the radio off. Like most people, he has the ability to sense and instantly suppress the kind of helpless, low-voltage depression that comes from living with the knowledge that actions like these take place every boring day in a variety of locales on this planet. They take place as we eat lunch and watch television, as we read generic myth-stories to our children and stand in line to cash our paychecks and sit in traffic listening to quirky, smack-addicted French-Creole singers bemoan an essential lack of communication in sorrowful, if perfect, pitch. In every moment that we’re brushing our teeth or gassing up our cab or rereading Klaus Klamm for the third and, we swear, final time, people are brutalized for the simplest reason of all — because they can be. Because when someone else holds power, they can fuck you over in ways that your imagination has never even considered.

And to Gilrein, the most depressing thing of all is not the fact that these acts of mind-numbing brutality happen. Not even the fact that they happen with a regularity that diminishes them to the mundane. What goes to the core of Gilrein’s understanding and mildly lacerates both his heart and his conscience is the fact that he knows, with a childlike, unimpeachable certainty, that the ability to harm someone in so profound and lasting a manner is written forever on our DNA, encoded as unconditionally as our mortality, part of the definition of the word human.

Most disciples of rationality would tell you the element that differentiates the human species from the beasts of the plain is not, as our superstition-chained ancestors believed, the soul, but rather the enormity of our intelligence, the capacity of our imaginations, and our ancillary ability to eventually enact those dreams, to find a technology that will allow us to physically realize whatever we can mentally envision. The complexity and speed and flexibility of our brain mechanics propelled us to the top of the animal kingdom.

But Gilrein’s take on this is that very likely for every vaccine we’ve invented, we’ve concocted two poisons. For every engineering miracle that raised up new modes of transport and expanses of bridge, we’ve mastered hundreds of systems for the enforcement of isolation. For every method of communication we’ve devised, we have uncovered thousands of monstrous ways of silencing an individual tongue forever. And by virtue of birth, he shares some unmeasured part in this heinous and expanding brilliance. This is the original sin.

There have absolutely been a few rare times of stress and confusion when, more than anything else, he would have owned death like a birthright, would have moved out of the corral of the acted-upon and into the land of the controllers, where nothing is forbidden. Where the idea that power is just an unmarked gunshot away can instantly escalate to a lifelong, egomanical campaign for dominance at any cost.

But though Gilrein has known the temptation of this worldview, he has never acted on the desire. There is still a gulf between thought and action where free will can opt for either compassion or cruelty. And staying on the right side of that chasm is what separates him from Kroger and Kinsky and the Magicians and all of the neighborhood mayors who believe that imposing their will, their vision of the city and the world beyond, is not only a right, but a destiny.

He swings into a parking space outside the Visitation, gets out of the cab, and is besieged by a half-dozen of the tinker kids dressed in their filthy rags and holding out their scavenged aluminum soup cans for alms. Gilrein reaches around for his wallet, catches the hand of a tiny pickpocket and pushes it away. He pulls out half his cash, divides the rest among the begging children, trying and failing for equal distribution as two of the oldest and fastest among the gang make off with the bulk of his offering. One urchin who comes up empty curses the cabdriver in an unknown language and spits on the door of the Checker.

Gilrein shoves through the line of pilgrims in the entryway, edges by Father Clement as the Jesuit yells, “There is still time, young man,” and starts to head for the hacks’ booth, but, surprisingly, nobody’s there, so he slides onto a stool at the very end of the counter and waves to one of the new waitresses for a mug.

“I haven’t seen you in a dog’s life.”

Gilrein looks next to him to see a guy in an EMT uniform finishing a bowl of chili.

“Shaughnessy,” Gilrein remembers. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“We got a call. Turned out to be a headcase. I let Hirsch handle it. He’s got a thing for the night nurses up at the Toth.”

“And you just had to stay for the chili?”

“Listen, Huie’s tomatoes are blessed by the Sisters of Torment and Agony. You can’t go wrong.”

“And you have access to a stomach pump just in case.”

Shaughnessy is about the same age as Gilrein. His mother used to run a rooming house downtown. He’s been working the city ambulances at least since Gilrein was on the force. Over the years, they’ve shared coffee at countless crime and accident scenes, leaning against cruiser and wagon, usually at three A.M., swapping jokes and Bangkok news while a photographer immortalized the victims of car crashes, gang spats, tenement fires, and once even a commuter plane that came down unexpectedly, nose first, into a Little League field. Gilrein always found him pleasant momentary company, a lot less surly than some of the paramedics.

“You believe this place?” Shaughnessy says. “I read about it in the paper. You know, the priest and his followers there. I had to see it myself.”

“So what do you think?” Gilrein asks.

“I think Tang’s raking it in hand over fist. But how long can it last?”

“Not very. Father Clement is telling the faithful the whole show is over by the weekend.”

Shaughnessy reaches for a napkin and raises his eyebrows for clarification.

“The apocalypse,” Gilrein says. “You know, the rapture, the last days.”

Shaughnessy laughs, wiping his chin. “Shit,” he says, “the end is coming and I got two weeks’ vacation I didn’t use?”

Gilrein nods and says, “How’d you and Hirsch know who was the nutcase in here?”

Shaughnessy shakes his head and looks toward Father Clement standing up in his booth, answering a question from one of his apostles — something about a woman clothed with the sun.

“This is nothing,” he says. “We had to mace and cuff the old bastard we pulled out of here. Guy went after the preacher with a knife. Tang was scared he might break a window. Don’t you love Huie?”

“A man with priorities.”

Shaughnessy pushes his bowl to the inner edge of the counter and lets out a deep breath.

“What the Christ happened to this city, Gilrein?”

Gilrein takes it as a rhetorical question and tries to hear some of Father Clement’s diatribe.

“You miss the job at all?” Shaughnessy asks.

Gilrein shakes his head, takes a drink of coffee.

“I hear you’re driving a hack now. What fleet?”

“I’m an indie,” Gilrein says. “The medallion belonged to my old man.”

Shaughnessy shifts his weight on the stool, starts to dig in his pocket for money.

“You ever see any of the guys?” he asks.

“Not too often,” Gilrein says. “I’m not big on the donut joints.”

Instead of laughing, Shaughnessy says, “I saw Oster and Danny Walden the other night.”

And Gilrein freezes in midsip, lowers the mug and swivels to face the ambulance driver.

“That right?” he says, trying for casual and having no idea if he’s succeeding. “Where’d you bump into them?”

“We pulled a stiff out of Gompers. Looked like a mob whack. Some broker from down San Remo Ave.”

Father Clement is holding a Bible out at his audience like a gun, ranting about “twelve thousand from the tribe of Reuben.”

“How come you rolled on it instead of coroner’s?” Gilrein asks. “That’s against the rules.”

Shaughnessy gives him a look like one of them is joking.

He says, “How many times have we hauled stiffs for those dicks? Jesus, Gilrein, you got a short memory. Those guys hate outdoor work. Besides, this was a small fish. Oster called him the ’Shank. He fenced under Pecci protection. You must’ve kicked his ass a few times back in bunko.”

Gilrein stares at him, finally manages to say, “That was a long time ago, Shaughno. I can’t remember every fence I slapped.”

“Isn’t that the goddamn truth.”

“And the voice said,” Father Clement yells, at the top of his lungs and seemingly in Gilrein’s direction, “seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.”

Huie Tang slides in through the swinging doors of the supply room, dressed in a beautifully tailored Armani suit with show hanky in the breast pocket, looking like he’s just granted a fat loan, at an exorbitant rate, to a Third World nation. He hammers open the register with the palm of his hand, slides out the bulging cash drawer and inserts a fresh one, then disappears back into the storage room with the newfound grace of a professional dancer.

“If the guy could postpone the apocalypse,” Shaughnessy says, “he might start giving his cousin Jimmy a run for Little Asia.”

“If the guy could postpone the apocalypse,” Gilrein responds, still staring purposefully at Father Clement, “what the hell would he need with Little Asia?”

Shaughnessy says, “Amen, my friend,” and slides off his stool. He starts to zip up his leather jacket and says, “It was good seeing you, Gilrein. Hope we bump into each other again.”

“Well, Shaughno, it’s a small town.”

Shaughnessy claps him on the back and heads for the door, stepping over Father C’s attendants sprawled in the aisle. Gilrein drains his coffee, wishing he hadn’t come to the diner. Before he can even start to replay the conversation with the ambulance driver, Huie Tang pushes back into the galley, now wearing a camelhair topcoat with a hefty-looking bank bag in the pocket. This time he sees Gilrein and makes his way to the end of the counter, looking a little agitated.

“Bank’s closed this time of night,” Gilrein says.

“Not the bank I go to,” Tang answers, then adds, “Listen, your friends left a message for you,” and Gilrein bucks at the word friends, not at all sure Huie is referring to the other hacks.

“We had an incident in here earlier,” Tang explains while hand-signaling one of his girls to clear a just-vacated booth.

“I heard,” Gilrein says. “The EMT told me one of the Jesuit’s flunkies went crazy.”

Huie shakes his head.

“It wasn’t one of the priest’s. It was one of your own. Mr. Langer.”

Gilrein leans forward and says, “What are you talking about?”

“Jocasta said to tell you he was taken to the Toth Clinic. That you should go up there as soon as you can. She tried to call you—”

“What happened to Otto?”

Tang shakes his head to show his ignorance.

“He’d just come in from a fare. He was sitting in the usual booth. He ordered a cinnamon bun, was listening to the priest with the others. Then he just went crazy. Jumped up and knocked everything off the table. Grabbed some flatware off the floor and charged at the Father. Miss Duval jumped on him before anything happened, but she couldn’t calm him down.”

Gilrein slides off the stool and says, “Where is Jo now?”

“She went with him in the ambulance. They had to strap the madman down.”

Gilrein heads for the exit, stepping on the hands of several of the faithful, whose howls can’t distract the priest from his oratory. But as Gilrein pushes open the door of the diner, Huie Tang manages to make himself heard, yelling, “Who’s going to pay for this coffee?”