Word Made Flesh

27

The cab bumps up and over the curb and jerks to a stop. The engine dies by way of a stall. Gilrein looks up to find himself in front of the Dunot Precinct House. In the quiet, the shallow and labored breathing from the front seat is more pronounced, the soundtrack to a movie about disease.

“You don’t like the noise,” Lacazze says.

“Does anyone?”

“Mr. Gilrein, there is a whole breed of people in love with death. This city is lousy with death lovers.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

The Inspector tries to clear his throat and fails. “Do you carry a gun?” he asks.

Gilrein pulls his.38, holds it up for Lacazze to see.

“Bring it inside,” the Inspector says. “One of us may need it.”

Gilrein looks in the mirror and says, “I’m not going inside.”

“I think you are, Mr. Gilrein,” Lacazze says, without annoyance. “I think you want to come inside.”

The old priest climbs out onto the sidewalk, fumbling with the flap on his breast pocket, finally pulling free a Magdalena and launching into a new search for his lighter.

Gilrein watches him through the window and says, “That’s just what I want to do,” with as much cruelty as he can manage, “spend the rest of the night in a small room with a man in the last phase of the Grippe.”

The Inspector comes up with a pack of matches and with a little difficulty ignites the end of the cigar. Gilrein wonders how he can sustain a draw with the trouble he has breathing, but in moments the barrel end of the stogie is glowing and the air is filling up with a heavy, woody smell.

Lacazze holds the Magdalena like some fragile musical instrument and through the smoke he says, “Do you know what I think the Grippe really is, Gilrein? It’s a parasite. Genetically manipulated but completely organic. It’s a microscopic vermin. Enlarged, I think it would look like a tiny worm. Transferred by the spray of spittle when one has a simple conversation. ‘How about this weather?’ and you’re infected. It crawls through the brain, relatively harmless until it meets the language centers. It lays its eggs as soon as it lands and it immediately starts feeding. Quite insatiable during pregnancy. Gestation is just forty days. The eggs hatch and the offspring join the picnic. That is when you know something is horribly wrong. You can’t find the correct word. Or you can’t find the graphical symbols to represent that word. Any hope of communicating is torn away. Any hope of meaning is devoured. Thank God it’s ultimately fatal.”

He pauses to take a long draw on the cigar and then adds, “I don’t think you could care less about the Grippe, young man. I think you might welcome a chance to contract the Grippe. Such a romantic way to go. Not as dramatic as a shower of bullets, but surely more lingering. A longer period of suffering.”

“You have to be a smug prick right to the end?”

Lacazze taps some ash to the sidewalk.

“You mistake insight for arrogance, Mr. Gilrein. But you’ll follow me inside anyway. Not really for the contagion, however. That’s just a bonus for you. You’ll follow me because I knew Ceil better than you did. And you can’t bear that. After all this time. You want to know what I know.”

Gilrein throws his door open and goes after the old priest, grabbing him by the lapels and running him up against the bricks of the station house. Lacazze doesn’t struggle, just goes limp, lets himself be carried by the force of the attack, eyes open the whole time and staring at Gilrein.

“Why were you waiting in my cab?” Gilrein yells.

“Inside,” Lacazze answers. “And bring the gun.”

The station house is a definition of chaos. It has evolved beyond its standard of extreme clutter and into the domain of the ruined. File cabinets have been overturned and their contents spread like fertilizer over every square inch of floor space. Some of the piles of paper have been saturated with water. Possibly with urine. Others are covered with perfect black bootprints that, when combined, resemble a set of instructions for an elaborately complicated dance routine. There are trails of vermin droppings here and there. Some graffiti artist has had a party on the walls, spraying can after can of Day-Glo and metallic colors, looping and curving and slashing lines of paint into letters, symbols, pictograms, doodles, everything but intelligible words, then crossing out the bulk of the drawing and starting over again on top of the previous layer, painting over the paint.

There are also dozens, maybe hundreds of bullet holes in the walls. One desk is covered with mud and silt and dried leaves. Another desk has a fire axe protruding from its surface, the blade imbedded in the wood up to the handle. And then, in contrast to this, there is Ceil’s desk, left neat as the last night she sat behind it, preserved as a shrine, everything in order, pencils still sitting in a coffee mug that advertises LOFTUS FUNERAL HOMES, reference books lined up along the outer lip, a green blotter occupying the center. And a framed photo of Gilrein, a small candid shot that depicts a content man seated on the edge of his bed in the perfect bungalow. Only someone has altered the photo, defaced it, taken a black marker and drawn onto the picture, making round glasses over the eyes, filling in a pointed goatee on the chin, blacking out the two front teeth. And fixing horns at the top of the skull. Gilrein refrains from touching the picture; instead, he leans down and sniffs at the desktop, smelling the aroma of a recently applied lemon polishing agent.

They move past Geil’s desk, walk to the door of the Inspector’s office. The interrogation chamber. The place were the ritual of Methodology was performed. A piece of scrap paper is tacked to the door. It features Ceil’s handwriting, or, more likely, a bad imitation of Ceil’s handwriting, that reads

ESCHATOLOGY SQUAD COMMANDER

KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING

and beneath this someone has added, with the dry sarcasm that was one signature of Ceil,

THEN ABANDON ALL HOPE.

The Inspector unlocks and opens the door and Gilrein follows him inside. If it’s possible, Lacazze’s office is even more chaotic than the squad room. It’s as if the chamber were trying to transmute itself into a small municipal dumping ground. The interrogation blackboard has been knocked over and its backing mirror is shattered, slivered glass sprayed everywhere like foam on the crest of a frozen wave. Random holes have been gouged into the plaster, each about the size of a fist. One wall displays an abbreviated piece of writing that’s illegible and could just be a line of smeared blood. Every one of the paper stacks and file towers has been knocked over, covering the floor with a thicket of yellowed reams. The room smells like a lavatory that has never been properly cleaned. There are also traces of burned gunpowder, alcohol, and a cloying hint of dying vegetation.

They sit on opposite sides of Lacazze’s desk, the red chalice in front of Gilrein, the crystal decanter, half-filled, as always, with Spanish sherry, in front of the Inspector. The only other thing on the desktop, spread beneath the chalice like a blotter, is a crumpled and partially wet tabloid-style newspaper.

Lacazze raises the heavy glass bottle to his lips and says, “To your health.”

Gilrein picks up the red chalice and brings it to his mouth, then glances inside and sees fat globules of an oozing white substance refusing to mix with what must be the dregs of some sherry.

“Is it consecrated?” Gilrein asks.

Lacazze breaks off his swallow and comes forward in his seat as if he’s about to choke. He manages a hard gulp before barking out a laugh, then rubs away the dripping sherry with the back of his newly grotesque hand. Gilrein notices some of the pustules are bubbling slightly.

“Didn’t you hear?” Lacazze says, voice weak and raspy, but his tone mildly sarcastic. “I’ve been stripped of my powers.”

“Secular or spiritual?”

“Forgive me,” Lacazze says, “but those two always confuse me.”

“I’ll bet. Ceil used to say that as a cop you made a terrifying priest—”

“She had such a way with the langauge.”

“—or maybe it was the other way around.”

“I suppose we’ll never know,” Lacazze says, then takes another drink, more moderate this time, and adds, “but what do you think she meant by that?”

Gilrein crosses his arms and stares at the old man.

“I think she meant you had all the best equipment for either job,” he says, “but none of the empathy they both require.”

“Empathy,” Lacazze repeats, as if only for the sound of the word. “From the Greek empatheai, meaning affection or passion.”

“If you say so.”

“What I say, once again, is that your knowledge of your late wife is lacking.”

Gilrein holds back another outburst. What he’d like to do is go over the desk and plant the decanter in the bastard’s skull. What he does instead is take a breath, lower his voice and say, “That’s why I’m here, right? That’s why I followed you inside.”

Lacazze seems to study him for a few seconds.

“Drink up, Mr. Gilrein,” the Inspector finally says. “Wine loosens the tongue. That’s what we need here tonight. Free discourse between rivals.”

“Are we rivals, Inspector?”

“We have always been rivals, Mr. Gilrein.”

“And what is it we’re competing for?”

Lacazze frowns at him as if the answer were beneath them both.

“What all men fight over,” he says. “Their own view of the world and the love of a good woman.”

Gilrein tenses up in spite of himself.

“The woman in question,” he says, “is dead.”

“Exactly,” Lacazze says. “And since the day she died, you and I have both been living a series of lies. And those lies have been consuming us slowly, haven’t they, Gilrein?”

“I don’t know, Inspector. I’m not the one with the sores all over my hands and my mouth.”

“But it’s early yet.”

The comment makes Gilrein decide to go on the offensive.

He sits forward on the interrogation stool, leans on his knees and says, “I was a bunko cop for a long time, Inspector. And I never understood why Ceil couldn’t see that underneath all your bullshit voodoo you were nothing but a lowlife fucking con man.”

This brings another unexpected laugh. Lacazze covers his face with his pus-swollen hands for a moment and leans back in his chair. When he takes his hands away all trace of amusement has disappeared, replaced by a disgusted and maybe pitying look.

“How did Ceil bear it?” he asks. “Taking her brilliance home every night to such an inferior partner. It must be regarded as an act of mercy. On top of everything else, the woman was a saint. Damien to the brain-addled. Mother Teresa to the feeble-minded—”

“Sorry, Inspector, but I find it hard to believe that you can’t think of a better way to spend your final hours than insulting a feeble-minded cabdriver.”

“—Not a saint, a martyr. Sacrificing herself on this lowbrow cross. Giving up her genius to this Golgotha of stupidity.”

“Lacazze.”

“Prostituting herself to a pathetic livery boy,” the Inspector yells, “who couldn’t even make it in bunko. Bunko! My God, what was she thinking?”

It’s not that Gilrein can no longer contain himself, it’s that he doesn’t want to. He kicks out at the desk, knocking over the chalice and spilling the sherry, then he’s up off the stool and around the desk, pulling Lacazze out of his chair and backhanding him across the face, hard enough to knock the Inspector to the floor, down onto a bed of ink-infested notepaper. The decanter flies to the back wall and shatters. And then it’s that one easy step over the line of the rational, and Gilrein is down on his knees, straddled across Lacazze’s stomach, the.38 out and the hammer cocked and the barrel pushed into the swollen left cheek of the old man.

They’re both breathing heavily. Gilrein wants to make the Inspector flinch, wants to make him cower under the threat of the gun. But Lacazze just stares up at him, face strained, swollen lips sucking around the mouth of the gun, skim-milk-colored pus oozing down over the chin.

Gilrein immediately withdraws his piece from the face, angles it toward the ceiling.

“Son of a bitch,” he says, following out a line of thought that’s too late in dawning. “You wanted me to do it.”

The Inspector’s head falls back and even though it’s cushioned by all the paper there’s a perceptible thump.

“Jesus Christ,” Gilrein says, rocking back on the old man’s torso. “You wanted me to pull the trigger. You were hoping you could goad me into doing it for you. You cowardly little asshole. Your own goddamn station house all these years. Such an untouchable hump. And you couldn’t even pull your own plug.”

He gets up, drags Lacazze back into his seat. It’s like lifting a corpse.

“I won’t do it for you, Inspector. But don’t let me stop you.”

And he lifts Lacazze’s limp hand and places the Colt in the palm. The hand falls into Lacazze’s lap. Gilrein picks it up by the wrist and brings it up to the head until the barrel is resting against the right temple.

“Go ahead,” Gilrein says. “You’re all set. Just squeeze.”

For a moment it seems as if he will. Focus comes into his eyes and the grip on the revolver tightens. But then he thumbs the hammer back gently and settles it into its cradle. He places the gun down on the desk and shoves it next to the toppled chalice.

“I guess,” Gilrein says, “intellect is no indication of courage.”

Lacazze sits with his head hung back and his eyes closed. Gilrein stares at him, waiting for a reply. When none comes, he picks his piece up from the desk and tucks it in his jacket pocket and walks to the door.

“It’s too bad,” he says, “you can’t use the Methodology on yourself.”

The Inspector’s eyes come open but don’t track to Gilrein, just stare up at the alphabet designs cut into the tin-plated ceiling. In a voice barely audible, he asks, “Why do you think Ceil loved you?”

Gilrein has no idea why he lingers, but he leans against the doorjamb and says, “She just did.”

“You’re sure of that?”

Gilrein nods, makes Lacazze move his head and look forward.

“From the time we are children,” the Inspector says, “we’re taught that faith is a gift.”

“You’re the theologian.”

“I am an unbeliever,” holding his hands up for Gilrein to look at like some parody of St. Thomas’s vision, “and this is proof of my transgression.”

“The Grippe?”

“The plague sent down as a response to my pride and my doubt.”

“Now that’s an enlightened position,” Gilrein says, shifting in the doorway, suddenly intrigued.

“The sick man tends to regress.”

Gilrein steps back into the room and leans his arms down on the desk.

“The more I know about you, the more I hate you, Inspector.”

“You know nothing about me, Mr. Gilrein. You should consider yourself lucky. Your ignorance has protected you.”

“From?”

“From doubt, of course,” Lacazze says, finally coming forward in his chair, folding his hands on top of the desk like a schoolboy, turning his head to the side and spitting a mouthful of green discharge onto the floor. “Do you know the old saying, Gilrein? ‘Act as if you have faith and faith will be given to you’? Are you familiar?”

“I know the saying.”

“Then act on it. Take the gun out and execute me. Do the honorable thing.”

Gilrein stares at him, not completely sure that he isn’t being mocked.

“Ceil would want it this way,” Lacazze says.

“You’re the second person tonight who’s tried to tell me what Ceil would have wanted.”

“Ceil understood the value of vengeance.”

“Vengeance?”

The Inspector’s expression changes to something between disgust and disbelief.

“Are you really this ignorant? Is it possible you haven’t suspected any part of the truth?”

In fact, and of course, he has, some part of him has always done just that, up in the barn loft of Wormland as he slept or maybe in the Checker when he thought he was just concentrating on the phrasing as Imogene Wedgewood sang “Chinese Boxes.”

He looks down at the Inspector, focuses on the old man’s mouth, and makes himself say, “What truth is that?”

Lacazze manages what could be a smile if not for the fact that the musculature of his lips is decaying.

Gilrein steps forward, reaches down, and pulls Lacazze to standing.

“Why am I here?”

The Inspector lowers his voice to show indulgence and says, “Like all neighborhood mayors, the Lord knows the value of his middlemen. You’re here to confess me in His absence.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That,” the Inspector says, “is because you haven’t heard the story yet.”

And he reaches down to his desk, grabs hold of the soaked newspaper, pulls it up, and plasters it against Gilrein’s chest. Gilrein takes hold of the paper and moves a step backward.

“Did you know,” Lacazze says, moving around the desk and taking a seat on the interrogation stool, “that prior to her death your wife had become a very secretive woman?”

Gilrein tries to listen and read at the same time. Droplets of fresh pus have stained the front page of the paper, making it slightly translucent, the words on the next page close to visible, the ink on the title page almost bleeding into the unreadable.

But he can still make out the paper’s title:

WORD MADE FLESH: A JOURNAL OF LINGUISTIC COSMOLOGY

And he can still make out the headline of the lead article:

SIX MILLION GRAMMATICAL CONSTRUCTS: THE HOLOCAUST AS

LINGUISTIC ARGUMENT

BY ANONYMOUS

Someone has crossed out “by Anonymous” and below it, written in sloppy block letters, written with a finger, using blood and pus as a handy ink, are the words

BY BLIND HOMER LACAZZE

“Ceil came to disappoint me in the last week of her life, Gilrein.”

Gilrein looks across the desk at the Inspector, all kinds of meanings suddenly sliding into place.

“You wrote this, didn’t you?” holding up the tabloid.

But Lacazze is already locked into monologue.

“Ceil betrayed me. In the way only a lover can. She desecrated the bond. In time, all things would have been made known to her. It was impatience that killed Ceil.”

Gilrein drops the paper to the floor and stares at the old man.

“She went behind my back. She began to investigate old problems. Without knowing the history. Without understanding how the Methodology had evolved. Pride is what killed our Ceil.”

“You were Blind Homer,” Gilrein says softly.

“She gave me no choice. If she had just left Sonia alone—”

“The Tung belonged to you.”

“If she had just left Sonia alone, there would have been time—”

“You’re Blind fucking Homer.”

A pause, and then the smug expression that Lacazze knows will push his rival over the divide.

“In the—”

But before Lacazze can finish the sentence, Gilrein pulls his piece and fires twice. The first bullet takes the Inspector in the groin. The second goes into and through the throat, knocks Lacazze off the interrogation stool and onto the floor, rolled on his side.

Gilrein waits for the rush of panic and adrenaline but it doesn’t come. He stares at Lacazze, waits for the Inspector to cry out or move. But everything remains still. Completely motionless and almost silent but for the fading echo of the gunshots.

This is the final criticism.

And Gilrein’s response is to exit the precinct house. To exit this city as soon as he can. To leave the putrefying body in the chamber. As a sign. A language that is as close to pure as he can possibly imagine.