Word Made Flesh

4

Gilrein steers the Checker down Rome Avenue with one hand, tilts the bottle of Spark with the other. The hooch will cut into the real pain until tomorrow, then he’ll have to scrounge for some Demerol down at the Visitation. Worse comes to worst, he’ll head into Little Asia and pay retail to one of the storefront healers.

He aims for downtown and tries to put the past twelve hours into some kind of logical order. Things happen for a reason. Effect follows cause. As Ceil used to say, Nothing is as random as it appears.

But Ceil is in the family plot three years now, buried next to Gilrein’s mother and father, an American flag folded into a stiff triangle of allegiance and cradled into what’s left of her arms like some surrogate for the child they never had.

At nine o’clock tonight, Gilrein was lying on his bed in the hayloft at Wormland, reading a page in one of Ceil’s books on Klaus Klamm for the third time, writing useless questions in a spiral notebook and thinking about having a nightcap. When the phone rang it was Leo Tani, calling, as always, from Huie Tang’s Visitation Diner. Twenty minutes later, Gilrein picked Tani up and was told to head for Gompers Station.

What would Ceil think of it?

Back when he was on the job, Gilrein rode Tani’s chubby ass as if he were God’s own cop, a plague designed specifically to make life unbearable for a midlevel fence with an insatiable appetite for the veal at Fiorello’s. Now he plays chauffeur to the ’Shank, hauling him from exchange to exchange and always pocketing the overgenerous tip.

Tonight was a standard drive — Tani climbed in the Checker dressed in one of his dozens of silk Michelozzi suits, smelling of musk and hazelnut and playing hail-fellow-well-met like a manic campaigner who’s just seen a big drop in the polls.

Leo the ’Shank loved to talk as much as he loved to eat and he had Gilrein circle the city for a half hour while he spieled, telling blue jokes, running down the backroom gossip from City Hall, mourning in a low, priestly voice, another rumor of death from St. Leon’s Grippe. And, once again, relaying his ambitions to one day write his memoirs. The whole freaking story, my friend, names and all. Leo seemed to love the word memoir, as if the sound of it alone conveyed the grandiosity of his life in the business.

When the hour came round, Gilrein was directed to Gompers Station. He wheeled the taxi off-street and crossed into the train yards, where a rupture seems to perpetually sprout in the chain-link fencing, then rolled into hiding behind a line of wheel-less boxcars and cut the engine. Tani adjusted his tie — red silk with baby calves patterned in white — pushed his hair back on his skull with two flat palms and told Gilrein he’d be back in fifteen minutes. Then Tani walked into the abandoned train station as if he was entering some embassy with news that could sink or save a nation.

He emerged before Gilrein could finish a single page of Klamm. Leo looked a good deal worse for the wear, his tie loosened, a film of sweat on forehead and upper lip.

He settled into the backseat, gestured with his head and said, “Let me tell you, Gilrein, there’s no talking to some people.”

The Checker deposited Leo in front of Mano Nero down on the far end of San Remo Avenue. Leo handed a fifty over the seat top and said, “You want to join me? I’m taking a goddamn bath in Gallzo.”

Gilrein begged off and headed for the all-night library branch at Sebond Square, found it closed without explanation. He thought about sampling some cuy at the Floating Kitchen, then realized he hadn’t yet heard of the restaurant’s current location. He even considered heading back to Wormland and going another round with Klamm, but he felt infected by Tani’s cloud of failure, gave up on the idea and changed direction.

So he settled for coffee in the rear booth at the Visitation, waited for his fellow indie hacks to show. Around midnight, Huie Tang took away Gilrein’s empty mug and said there was a fare waiting down on Voegelin for a lift. Recently, the two corporate fleets that dominate the cab trade in Quinsigamond — Red Rover Cab and Bunny Blackman’s Taxi & Limousine — stopped going into Bangkok Park after dark. That leaves all the Park calls to the last three independent taxis in town. For the indies, servicing Bangkok, day or night, is less a case of pride or stubbornness and much more something closer to existential disregard. At least it is for Gilrein. Though he’s never consciously admitted it to himself, every night run in Bangkok is a possible ticket to join Ceil. And, being a Catholic, it’s his only alternative to waiting out this lifetime.

Still, death is one thing and robbery another. And that’s why he continues to keep his service revolver mounted under the dash, the chamber fully loaded.

Gilrein headed for Voegelin. As always, the radio was tuned to the Canal Zone station whose playlist was limited to the recordings of Imogene Wedgewood. “Drunk on India Ink” was oozing through the cab as he pulled up to what should have been the right number, but instead was only the mouth to an unlit alleyway. As he reached under his seat to grab his street guide, the Checker door was pulled open and the meatboys hauled him into the alley before he could get hold of his piece.

The only thing he took away from the beating were these erupting bruises and the question, Where is the package?

Leo Tani hadn’t been carrying any package when he got in the cab. He didn’t have a package when he came out of Gompers.

But if Oster was right and the meatboys really did belong to August Kroger, there was only one thing the package in question could contain.

Huie Tang is a poor relation to the notorious Tang Family of Little Asia. Lately, the Tangs have ascended to neighborhood mayor status after the instability caused by the death of the legendary Dr. Cheng. Some years back Huie Tang had a falling out with his cousin Jimmy and lost his position supervising all the domino parlors of Chin Avenue. Something about a skim job that couldn’t be laid off on the underlings. For months Huie tried to wheedle his way back into the good graces of the clan, but when even Auntie Rose stopped speaking to him, he knew he was on his own.

Ashamed, he went to work managing Fritz Henry’s All-Night Diner and by the end of his first year he bought the lunch car, the restaurant license, and the extortion agreement with the health inspector. Now Huie’s plan is to use the diner as the cornerstone, the first step in challenging his ex-family and becoming a serious rival to his ungrateful cousin.

But slinging hash is a tough way to start unseating a mob dynasty, and until last month, Huie was starting to lose heart. It was the end of March and the diner was empty except for the one regular who took all his meals there — Father Clement, a senile Jesuit from St. Ignatius College. Huie had just served the old priest some grouper lo mein, then, on his way back to scrub the grill, he casually, absentmindedly, turned on the radio to WQSG and the local news hour. The diner filled up with an advertisement for a free introductory session of the Camisard Institute of Speed Reading Course at the Armory. And at some point in the midst of the announcer’s hyperbole, just after the voice on the radio promised astounding comprehension and increased recollection, Father Clement went crazy. He leapt up onto his table, sending fish and noodles to the floor. He began to wave his arms and scream out in a high-pitched cackle, stomping his sandal-clad feet, pointing furiously toward the radio with a dripping fork.

“Can’t you hear it?” he finally managed to ask as Huie reached under the register for the lead-filled baseball bat he kept handy for various security purposes.

But before bunting the priest into some degree of control, Huie allowed himself to ask, “Hear what?”

The question stopped Father C in midfit. He ceased flailing and stared at the diner owner, then cocked his head toward the radio and after a moment of intently, maybe desperately listening to what, to Huie Tang, sounded exactly like any other Loftus Funeral Home ad, the priest’s eyes closed up and he said, “It seems I’m to be the interpreter.” And then, “Come here, my son.”

It has been said around the rice carts of Little Asia that no one possesses quite the combination of cynicism and impatience of Huie Tang. But on that afternoon in his empty and failing diner, there was an authority in Father Clement’s voice that convinced the transgressor and exile to drop his cudgel and sit down in the priest’s booth. And for the next half hour, with no customers to interrupt them, Father Clement revealed to his first listener that Yahweh had spoken. That God had decided, for reasons that would soon be made clear, to use the radio advertisements as the vehicles for his messages. That the shouted promises and treacly jingles and earnest testimonials to products and services of every brand and stripe were nothing but the sacred dialect of the Almighty himself.

“With your radio,” Father Clement proclaimed to the bewildered counterman, “and my translation, we will show this city the way to salvation.”

And before Huie’s eyes, his only regular customer was transformed from a lost soul waiting out his last days into a crusader born again with the fervor of the raving mystic. In Huie Tang’s diner the priest had found a new Pentecost, a fresh take on Shavuot and Whitsunday.

By the end of the first week, Huie, at first curious and amused, was so exasperated by the nonstop, instantaneous interpretations that he was ready to evict his sole patron, to call the police and the mental health agencies. Until Father Clement started bringing in the pilgrims. They came, both male and female, in all ages and creeds and ethnic makeups. And they came with money in their pockets. They ordered breakfast, lunch and dinner and they never noticed when the prices on the blackboard menu skyrocketed 50 percent.

Father Clement installed himself permanently in the booth opposite the radio. He ate and slept in the diner around the clock and took to standing on his seat and preaching apocalyptic rants for all customers, believers and nonbelievers alike. Within a month, Huie had a line out the door. He brought in a painter, changed the name on the lunch car to the Visitation Diner, altered the culinary selections to include Our Father’s Recipe Hash and Revelation Stew. One night at two A.M., in the midst of hearing the options that came with the Last Blueplate Supper Special, Gilrein had to tell the restaurateur to calm down.

But the pilgrims’ gain is the independent cabdrivers’ loss. What was once a quiet hangout to juice up on cheap coffee and swap horror stories about who had the worst fare of the night has turned into a hysterical circus, with patrons speaking in tongues and hustlers in the parking lot selling Day-Glo crucifixes out the back of their vans.

The indie cabbies are nothing if not stubborn. They refuse to relinquish their reserved booth no matter how much they’re offered. And they won’t give up the business phone mounted at their table even though Huie, uproariously drunk on greed and good fortune, has jacked their rental fee twice already.

Gilrein parks the Checker next to the Buick of a guy who has set up shop renting a Polaroid camera to pilgrims who want to have their picture taken in front of the lunch car. It’s the same clown who, last week, was hawking a trunkful of polyester undershirts emblazoned with

MY GIRLFRIEND HEARD THE WORD OF GOD

AND ALL I GOT

WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.

He pushes through the crowd and into the diner, tries to make for the cabbies’ booth, but Father Clement grabs an arm, pulls himself up until their faces are almost touching and says, “You too can be saved, my son.”

Gilrein shakes loose and says, “Where were you an hour ago, Father?”

He wonders if the priest remembers him from the days when they were both at St. Ignatius. He also wonders if it’s possible he’s the only one who smells the bourbon on the old man.

Huie Tang is perched on his stool in front of the register ringing up a souvenir Visitation baseball cap and ordering around his newly hired trio of waitresses.

Huie yells, “What happened to you?”

“Another bad fare,” Gilrein answers and shoves back to the corner booth where Jocasta Duval is counting their night’s receipts, and their shared dispatcher, the legless Mojo Bettman, is finishing up a plate of Redemption Rings, a deep-fried melange of compressed and coiled onion and fish by-products.

Jocasta puts down her roll of cash and says, “Not again?”

Gilrein slides in next to her and nods affirmation.

“How many were there?” in her sweet Senegalese accent.

“More than enough,” Gilrein answers and tries to flag down a waitress for a coffee.

Bettman puts a hand to his left temple and says, “There goes the streak. We were coming up on how many weeks?”

“Sorry to mess up our safety record.”

“You get yourself looked at?” Jocasta asks.

“Yeah,” Gilrein says, “just what I want to do, sit in the E.R. up at General until next Thursday.”

“We need to rethink our policy again. This is becoming more than ridiculous.”

“Bullshit,” Bettman snaps. “We bend on this, we might as well just hand our medallions to the fleets. Couple years, there’ll be one goddamn cab company left in America. That’s our choice, take it or leave it.”

Jocasta gives a glance that shuts up the dispatcher and turns to Gilrein. “You want me to take you up to General? I know an intern.”

Gilrein shakes her off and Mojo says, “How did it go down?”

“Same as it always goes down,” Gilrein lies. “I made a judgment call and it was the wrong one.”

“Man or a woman?” Bettman asks.

“One of each,” Gilrein lies. “I got two blocks down Voegelin and I felt the piece at my neck—”

“I’ve been telling you you’ve got to get the fencing fixed,” from Jocasta.

“You resisted?” from Bettman, eyes raised in rebuke.

“I handed over my roll. They pulled me out anyway and went to town.”

“Bastards,” Mojo says.

“I’ll be fine,” Gilrein says. “Few painkillers and some sleep.”

“Anything I can do?” Jocasta says, and Gilrein seizes on it.

“Matter of fact, Jo, there is one thing.”

She gestures toward him with her chin.

Gilrein tries for a smile and says, “If you could tell me where I could find Wylie.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, mister,” Mojo says. “Stop it right now.”

Gilrein ignores him and says, “C’mon, Jo. I just need to talk to her. Five minutes. Just a phone number.”

Bettman looks from Jocasta to Gilrein and says, “You know the woman doesn’t want to see you, my friend.”

Gilrein is about to get upset when Jocasta says, “I drove her last night.”

“She called for an indie?” Mojo says. “How’d she know she wouldn’t get …” and leaves the last word unspoken.

“Where was she?” Gilrein asks, trying and failing to sound relaxed.

“It was a flag-down. I was cruising the Zone. Guy she was with waved me over. They get in, I turn around, you know, Wylie, what a surprise.”

“The guy?” Gilrein asks.

Jocasta sighs. “You really want to do this to yourself? You’ve had a pretty awful night already.”

“C’mon, Jo.”

“All right. Hispanic guy with a trimmed beard. Wore a Hawaiian shirt—”

She doesn’t have to finish. Gilrein is already out of the booth and heading for the exit, wiping away the holy water that the pilgrims throw at him. And pushing aside Father Clement as the Jesuit yells, “Salvation is yours for the asking.”