Word Made Flesh

2

Oster presses a bell and in a minute there’s the sound of dead bolts sliding out of the loading apron and into the hollow of the door. Then the panel rolls up on its tracks and they step into a dim concrete foyer filled with stale beer smell, cigar smoke, dim lights, and a faint trace of country and western music.

Just inside the foyer, set up like a reception desk, is a short section of industrial conveyor belt. Behind the desk, perched on a fold-out aluminum step stool, is a young cop named Danny Walden. He’s dressed in jeans and a red corduroy shirt and he sports a sparser version of Oster’s mustache.

Walden nods to Oster, smiles at Gilrein and says, “Been a hell of a long time.”

Oster hands over the Ithaca, which Danny mounts on a wall rack. Then Oster takes his department.38 from a hip holster and puts it on the desk, followed by a Heritage.25 that he pulls from an ankle rig. He straightens up, puts a hand on Gilrein’s shoulder and says, “A brother officer just got the shit kicked out of him by a couple of Kroger’s assholes. What do you think about that, Danno?”

Walden puts the handguns into a file cabinet behind him, shakes his head and says, “I think that’s something we’re going to have to look into.”

Oster extends his hand to Gilrein’s far shoulder and starts to pull him down a short, fat corridor and deeper into the factory. Walden calls from behind, “It’s good to see you, Gilrein.”

Oster is wearing steel-toe engineer’s boots and there’s an echo as the heels slap the floor. They take a left down a longer but narrower corridor and the sound of the music gets louder.

“Wait till you see what we’ve done to this place,” Oster says. “I mean the damage was unbelievable. The rear of the building is still demolished. Looks like a quarry back there. But, you know, who needs it? There’s still plenty of room.”

They come to a set of swinging double doors painted pumpkin orange. From his coat pocket, Oster pulls a thumb breaker that he’s modified into a key chain. He unlocks the doors and opens them, steps through into the main work loft of the printing mill.

He says, “Welcome to the Houdini Lounge.”

The place is lit by a few dozen fluorescent fixtures hidden behind an enormous American flag suspended from the ceiling. The oil-scarred concrete floor is squared by high brick walls. One wall houses a bank of small windows, but the majority of them have been boarded over, giving the whole room a sickly, claustrophobic air. The loft is part frat house, part pool hall, and part old-time garage all rolled into one gritty, sweaty package. There’s a makeshift plywood stage at the close end of the room and a chunky stripper is trying to perform to a Waylon Jennings tune off a flashing Wurlitzer juke. There are folding felt-topped card tables clustered beyond the stage, and a half-dozen poker sessions are in progress inside blue clouds of smoke. One full wall is blocked off by an endless bar made of cherry-stained plywood. The front face of the bar is bedecked with aluminum beer cans. There are no stools; everyone stands or leans. Spray-painted across the length of the wall behind the bar, in a loopy kind of child’s attempt at a cursive scrawl, are the words PEOPLE DISAPPEAR.

There’s a clutter of rec room games — Ping-Pong, air hockey, pinball — seemingly plunked down with little thought given to traffic patterns or the necessity of unrestricted arm movement. An extensive Universal weight-lifting system is parked beside two large-screen televisions that sit side by side. One screen is showing dim images of a boxing match to a group of men crammed onto a green Naugahyde couch. The other is beaming a grainy black-and-white skin flick to a group of men crammed onto a matching red couch. Both couches are spilling a coarse, gray-colored stuffing from split seams.

Gilrein can put a name to half the faces in the room. The other half are familiar, like younger siblings of people he might have known at one time. The stripper is the only woman in the place. Everyone else is a cop.

Oster stands with his hands on his hips surveying the scene. He turns to Gilrein and says, “Bet it makes you miss it.”

“Miss it?”

“The camaraderie. You know, being on the job.”

Gilrein says, “I’m really starting to stiffen up here.”

Oster nods, concerned and brotherly. “C’mon upstairs. We’ll get you fixed up. You’re going to be okay, Gilly.”

They make their way through the room, Gilrein’s name being called out over and over, long-neck beer bottles lifted toward him, hands clapping down on his bruised back. At the far end of the hall he follows Oster up a set of stairs to a large office lit by candles and smelling of harsh incense. The room is outfitted with a wooden desk, a leather couch, and what looks like a padded hospital gurney. Hanging in a corner is a heavy bag for boxing workouts. And reclining on the couch is a small, elderly woman dressed in what, at first, looks like an old nun’s habit.

Oster snaps on a wall light and says in a loud voice, “Wake up, Mrs. Bloch.”

He closes the office door and adds, “Couple of Light White Sparks for my friend and me, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

Mrs. Bloch goes to the desk, opens a drawer, and removes a label-less bottle and two clear plastic tumblers.

“Da ist nein eis,” she says in a thick, dry accent, maybe Eastern European. “Der ma’jine brook e’gein.”

And that’s when Gilrein notices her face. Mrs. Bloch has no eyes. Or rather, where her eyes should be are two flaps of skin bulging from below the forehead to above the cheekbones. It’s as if two smooth tumors have grown over the eyes like fat pancakes. It’s possible the skin was grafted onto the face for some unknown but horrible medical reason. The skin is just slightly darker than the rest of the face, but there’s no evidence of any stitching or scarring where it melds into the original tissue.

Gilrein stares down at the floor and Mrs. Bloch comes to him and hands him his drink, then goes back to the desk, opens a new drawer and takes out a small case, about the size and shape of a cigar box, but covered in deep blue felt. She opens the top of the box back on its hinges, puts her hands inside and fiddles with something.

There are two large plate glass windows cut into the long walls of the office and facing each other. The inner window looks down over the club below. Oster moves in front of it, sheds his leather jacket and drops it on the couch, then starts to unbutton his shirt.

He turns to Gilrein suddenly and says, “I’m sorry, have a seat.”

Gilrein walks to the opposite end of the couch and sits down slowly. He takes a sip from the tumbler and tastes something like rum but with an additional medicine flavor.

Oster puts a foot up on the couch cushion and begins to unlace his boot.

“You were driving for Leonardo Tani tonight, weren’t you, Gilly?”

Gilrein’s stomach churns. He lets out some air, wonders if there’s a bathroom anywhere nearby. He says, “You’re the only one who ever called me Gilly.”

Oster kicks free the boot and goes to work on its mate.

“Not the first time you were Tani’s hack-boy. Breaks my goddamn heart, Gilly.”

Gilrein sits up, hunches over his knees even though it seems to hurt more.

“I’m a cabdriver,” he says. “I got a livery medallion. I pay the city a fortune for the privilege of driving its citizens around town. That’s what I do for a living.”

“You are a goddamn cop,” Oster yells, then quiets. “And goddamn cops don’t haul goddamn piglets like Tani around the goddamn city.”

Gilrein takes a long pull of his drink, wonders if Oster would stop him if he just tried to walk out. He goes for a low voice but it just comes out weak.

“First of all, I haven’t been a cop for a long time now. Unless Bendix has been misplacing my check every week for the past three years—”

“It doesn’t work that way, Gilly,” Oster says and moves to the desk to pick up his drink. “It’s like being a priest. You can’t just walk away. It marks your soul forever.”

“And second,” Gilrein says as if he hasn’t been interrupted, “Leo Tani is a passenger like any other. He pays me my fare and tells me where to take him. It’s none of my business what he does once he gets there.”

“Is that right?” Oster says softly, then turns and moves to the far side of the desk. He slides open the middle drawer, pulls out a manila folder, walks back to Gilrein, and tosses it into his lap.

Against his better judgment, Gilrein opens the file and stares down at an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph in sharp focus that shows a human body bound, gagged, hanging by chains from a steel beam. And skinned of any trace of epidermal tissue. The photo is slick to the touch and has a waxy chemical smell that says it’s not long out of the bath.

“Leonardo ‘Vealshank’ Tani,” Oster says, “a.k.a Italo Sciasci, a.k.a. Oreste Calvina, a.k.a. Rollo Griswold …”

“Oh, Jesus,” Gilrein says.

“How many times did you take him down when you were working fraud?”

Gilrein doesn’t answer, just closes the folder.

“How many of your passengers end up like this, Gilly?”

“You whack him, Oster?” in an even voice.

Oster picks up his drink and raises it toward the couch.

“I whacked him, Gilly, there wouldn’t be any photos, would there?”

“The ’Shank was just a goddamn fence. All he tried to do was keep everybody happy.”

“Yeah, well, looks like he dropped the ball sometime last night, doesn’t it?”

“He moved merchandise for people. What the Christ did he do?”

“You’re asking me?” Oster says. ‘You’re the one who spent the night driving his fat carcass around town.”

“Did Kroger do this? Is that why you were in the alley?”

Oster gives an exaggerated shrug, picks up his drink, moves to the gurney and strips off his clothes, dropping them on the floor. Gilrein sees a multicolored field of lines, different lengths and widths, that stretch from Oster’s shoulders down to his ass.

Mrs. Bloch moves around the desk, picks up the clothes, folds them against her body and places them in a neat pile on the desktop. Then she goes back to her felt-covered box and withdraws a cinched bag made of black fabric, maybe satin. She tugs open the drawstring and extracts a set of silver needles. She reaches back into the box and takes out a small glass jar.

Oster hops up onto the table and stretches out on his stomach, turns his head so he faces Gilrein.

“I hope you don’t mind if Mrs. B works while we talk,” he says. “If we miss a night, she loses a little continuity.”

Gilrein knows Oster wants to hear the question and so he stays silent, forces his host to say, “You got any tattoos, Gilly?”

Mrs. Bloch gathers her instruments and moves over to Oster. She puts her back to Gilrein so he can’t see exactly what she’s doing, but she starts to work on the area of the unmarked buttocks.

“Mrs. B is the best. No shit. Blind or no, you cannot find a better skin artist on this coast. She says you feel the design with the fingers, isn’t that right, Mrs. B? Spent some time in Tokyo. Worked on some Yakuza meat, honest to God. Big dragons and flowers. All that symbol shit. Goddamn samurai, you know?”

A new wave of nausea coasts through Gilrein. He turns sideways on the couch, looks out the window down on the main hall below, watches as the stripper puts on a terry-cloth robe and joins one of the couch gangs to study how Filipino bantamweights beat the life out of each other.

“I’m getting the whole body done,” Oster says, folding his arms on the table and resting his head on top. “You ready for this, Gilly? It’s going to be a map of Quinsigamond. The whole town. I’ll be a walking goddamn road map. Can’t wait for the first time somebody asks me directions.”

He tries to look back behind him and Mrs. Bloch barks, “Stei steel.”

Oster stifles a laugh and says, “She’s working on Bangkok Park as we speak. Bangkok on my ass. I love this.”

Gilrein finishes his Spark, gets up off the couch, moves to the desk, and takes the bottle. He stares out the rear window onto the demolished half of the factory, heaps of broken brick and twisted metal and charred wood everywhere. It looks like someone has brought in a bulldozer and tried to organize the destruction into grids, pushed mountains of debris to the sides and created an open central crater before giving up any hope of restoring anything resembling order.

“Why’d you bring me here?” he asks.

There’s a couple seconds of quiet. Voices downstairs explode into whoops and cheering.

“I know it’s horrible, Gilly,” Oster says. “I’ve never been married, but I know it’s got to be killing you. You know, we all loved Ceil. Ceil was the best.”

“We all loved Ceil,” Gilrein repeats and brings the bottle to his lips.

“But it’s just a building, all right? And it’s the only place you’re going to be safe for a while.”

Gilrein swallows. “Safe from Kroger, maybe. But what about you and the rest of the boys?”

“Oh, that’s not nice at all, Gilly. That’s out of line. That’s just goddamn outrageous. A fellow officer—”

“People disappear,” Gilrein says, quoting the graffiti behind the bar, “right, Oster? Isn’t that still the motto of the Magicians?”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing here, from a brother officer—”

“I’m just an independent hack-boy who drives piglets like Leo Tani on their mob errands.”

Oster says, “You’re all turned around, Gilrein.”

And Mrs. Bloch says, “Du stei steel,” and swats his buttocks.

“What were you doing in the alley, Sergeant?”

“Saving your lousy ass,” Oster says. “For all the good it’s going to do you.”

Gilrein walks over to the gurney, stands so that Oster has to twist his neck to see him.

“I didn’t want anything to do with the Magicians when I was a cop. I sure as hell don’t want anything to do with you scumbags now.”

Mrs. Bloch breaks off from inking an alleyway in Little Asia, folds her arms and waits for her canvas to explode.

Oster just stares up, then smiles, rests his head back down onto his arms and closes his eyes as if to nap.

Gilrein moves for the office door, taking the bottle of Light White Spark with him.

“You know what, Gilly?” Oster says, and Gilrein stops in the doorway. “I think the wrong cop died when this place blew to hell.”