The Canal

by Daniel Morris

  At the bridge, word went around: Lombardi was on the move. The investigation took its cue, jolting back to life. Orders were given. A forensics team picked up their gear and got ready to climb under the bridge.

  Joe pushed onward, alone. Across yards of rubble and glass, a landscape of weeds and razor wire. Seen yet unseen, these streets were entirely lost to the city's collective memory -- but that didn't mean they disappeared, that didn't mean they stopped existing.

  In his pocket, his hand clenched and unclenched, beating with its own inner life. The spit in his mouth dried to sand.

  He had to hurry; he was going to be sick.

  *

  "They say Lombardi doesn't sleep..."

  They were suddenly everywhere on the bridge, these awed whispers, trailing in the wake of Joe's departure among the other cops.

  "They say the mob won't come near this place because of him..."

  "They say he once solved a homicide before it happened..."

  "They say it's like he's got some kind of, a sort of fifth sense..."

  That one made Alan grimace. More of a filth sense, perhaps. These fucking whispers. Alan wondered, can an ear swallow itself? Because he needed to find a way to make that happen. Anything to not have to hear this inane conversation.

  All Alan saw was Joe's back, in retreat. Joe was already down the road, sticking close to the walls, like how cockroaches do, then he dodged around a corner. This was how things usually went. Joe was there...then Joe wasn't. No explanation. No courtesy. Nothing. You'd think such a wanton act of unprofessionalism could ruin a reputation. But apparently Joe gets a pass. Apparently, Joe could hiccup and it would spawn an entire mythos, the beat cops murmuring about it for years.

  "Hey, Alan," called Vincent. He was down next to the water, where they were finally getting some lights trained on the body. Vincent was vigorously pointing downriver.

  Rumbling towards them was the police harbor boat. Alan quickly jogged across the crowded bridge, handkerchief at the ready, and began climbing down. Normally, this was the point at which Alan would step back from these cases and let Joe go do whatever it was Joe did. But not this time. This time it was war.

  When he and Vincent finally got on board, the spectacle wasn't pretty. The propeller was churning up long dormant pockets of canal filth -- big, ballroom odors, specters of gut crunch. Vincent tried breathing through his tie. The boat moved carefully into position, until the rum of dead flesh was almost as strong as the smell of the canal. Alan leaned over the side to get his first close look.

  "Oh man, how long you think it's been out here?" asked Vincent.

  "I'd guess no more than 24 hours," said Alan. "Any more than that and the bugs would have turned it to mud by now."

  The skull, a bulb of bloody white, stood out in stark contrast against a gorilla costume of gore. The eye sockets were empty. The abdominal organs were missing.

  Alan motioned Vincent closer. "When you hunt," he said, "you dress the animal. Gut it, skin it. You see the similarity?"

  "I-I think so."

  But the job wasn't perfect -- the right foot still wore a leather shoe, which hung by the grace of a tenacious sinew, spinning in the drafts that belched from the canal. "And this shoe -- business type, but low dollar. Its been shined paper-thin."

  Alan leaned even closer, swatting at crowds of flies."There seems to be some kind of oil," he said. "Gluey. Sticky. Make sure you get a sample."

  "From the river maybe? Some sort of...slime?"

  "Possibly. ...And here. Look at this." The neck and chest were dotted with puncture marks.

  "Stab wounds?" said Vincent.

  "Something thin. Ice pick maybe, or a screwdriver."

  "Nail, maybe?" said Vincent. "Or--"

  "PENCIL," shouted Womack, from above on the bridge.

  "What?" Alan shouted.

  "IT COULDA BEEN A PENCIL."

  "All right, add pencil to the list," said Alan. "WE'RE ADDING PENCIL TO THE LIST."

  "OKAY."

  "I still can't figure it though," said Vincent. "I mean, to do something like this. What's the point? I mean it's--"

  "It's just one more problem to solve, is what it is. Remember, Vince -- focus on the details. The connections. That's what's important."

  "I know, I know... But this sort of thing, it's like the heat gets to people. It makes them act in ways that aren't natural--"

  "OR RAPIER," yelled Womack.

  "What!" yelled Alan.

  "MAYBE IT WAS A RAPIER."

  "...Did he say rapier? Did he? WHAT THE HELL IS A RAPIER?"

  "I...I'M NOT REALLY SURE."

  "Forget it, we've moved on."

  "WHAT?"

  "WE'VE ALREADY MOVED ON."

  "OH, OKAY."

  Alan looked at Vincent. "You all right? I don't want this getting under your skin."

  "I'll-- I'll get over it."

  "Good. Because I want you back out here first thing tomorrow. I'll make the autopsy, while you -- I want you going back over every inch of this crime scene in daylight, you hear me? And when you're finished, do a sweep of the entire canal, from top to bottom, snooping in alleys and prying into people's business, I want your eyes everywhere. Understood?"

  "Understood."

  "D'ANGELO... HEY, D'ANGELO."

  "Jesus. WHAT IS IT, WOMACK?"

  "AH, WE GOT SOMETHING."

  And with that, Alan was quickly back on shore, back on the bridge. Could it really be this easy? Could they have already caught a break? Womack ushered a woman his way, someone from forensics, tweezers held aloft.

  "You're not gonna believe this," the woman cried.

  Actually, Alan could believe it, once he got a good look. She carried a paper roach, soaked in spit and still smoking.

  "It's hand rolled," she announced, squirming with a passion for evidence: body fluids, foreign hair, fingernails, pollen, spatters. She talked about tobacco brands and rolling papers and purveyors. Cigarettes like this were rare, they'd make a suspect stand out.

  Alan just closed his eyes.

  "...Are you okay, detective?"

  Sometimes anger wasn't sufficient. Sometimes Alan needed something beyond anger, some new territory to explore, a place of unmitigated and reckless fury. A red-tinted land, a lush Galapagos of profanity, where abuse and disparagement were the coin of the realm. Normally, Alan would be entering this place now.

  But today was different. Today, he stayed relatively calm.

  "Throw it in the trash and keep looking," he said.

  "But--"

  "Keep looking!" Was this woman not hearing him?

  Alan wasn't surprised, really, that a Joseph Lombardi cigarette should turn up and foul a crime scene. Good ol' Joe, marking his territory with his frustrating spoor. And that about summed it up really, everything you needed to know about Joe. The man was a joke. A waste of a heartbeat.

  Only now, Alan was doing something about it.

  So he settled in. He'd suffer the canal, this night, these tweezers, this woman's wounded pout. He'd put his head down, he'd dig in, and he'd settle for nothing less than absolute diligence. He'd scorch this crew, run them into the goddamn ground. He'd threaten. He'd harass. And he'd do what he always did.

  He'd get the job done.

  >> CHAPTER THREE <<

  The morning light was too bright for sleep-fragile eyes. Alan shaded his as he came into the kitchen, a comfortable, fresh smelling place. He hadn't gotten much sleep; there had been a lot of work to do last night. There was still a lot of work to do. Work was like dirt in that respect -- always plenty of it.

  His wife Susan sat at the small table, reading the newspaper and bouncing their eleven-month-old son Eugene on her knee. Eugene: diaper on, shirt off -- the kid rode her like a dead man in a saddle. Hardly a year old and already over it. Alan often complained that this wasn't normal -- where was the curiosity, the intelligence? He wondered if maybe something was wrong mentally with the boy. Surely there was medication that could brin
g his mind into focus? Susan would tell him that he was overreacting. "Be patient," she'd say. "Eugene's personality is still growing." Alan wasn't so sure.

  Susan looked up from her paper. Alan admired the perfection there, in her face, her nose in particular. Taken from the side it was a mathematically precise triangle, a small pyramid that biology built. You didn't see that too often, the human face could be so awkward sometimes. Completely uneven, everything skewed sideways, geometrically vulgar. It's why Alan had fallen in love with Susan's nose. And Susan too, of course. It was proof that genetics didn't have to be a slob.

  "Leftovers are in the fridge," said Susan, "...and fix your collar." She smiled sweetly.

  Alan did as he was told, smoothing his collar. He felt profoundly better for it. His left pant leg had snagged on the tongue of his shoe. He made the adjustment.

  "Sorry it was another late night," he said.

  "Nothing serious I hope."

  "Just the usual. I won't bore you with the particulars," said Alan, going to the refrigerator. Inside, he made his usual surveillance. Every jar, bottle, and tub had to be turned so its label faced squarely outward. Alan checked expiration dates daily, along with smelling the milk in its carton. Fruits and vegetables were placed in tightly sealed plastic bags. Alan yearned for iceberg lettuce that truly lived up to its name -- cool and blue and crunchy like glass. Satisfied that everything was in order, Alan turned his attention to the leftovers. They had their own shelf, near the bottom. It was darker there. And colder. It was not a place you wanted to linger.

  Leftovers. Chicken to be precise, a bag of unevenly breaded filets. Alan felt some unease. Normally chicken was one of his more ideal foodstuffs: consistent feel, uniform color, dependably conservative flavor, skinless, available in bloodless and boneless format. But in Susan's hands something terrible happened. Something wicked. Chicken underwent a dark transformation, emerging wild and deadly.

  With enormous regret he removed the bag from the refrigerator, placed some of the cutlets on a plate, and put them in the microwave. It was the usual conundrum -- as much as Alan disliked Susan's cooking, he disliked wasted resources even more. And so cruelly, he was duty-bound to eat this food -- efficiency demanded it.

  While he waited, Alan glanced at the front page of Susan's newspaper, scanning the headlines. Taxes on the rise, stocks on the wane, failed diplomacy in far away lands. Nothing about last night that he could see. That was a good thing. Alan liked to keep Susan uninformed when it came to the realities of his job -- she was easily agitated.

  "It says it's supposed to be a-hundred-and-two degrees today," said Susan. "It says rain in a couple of days though. Sounds unbearable."

  Alan gazed at his wife. "What did you and Eugene do yesterday?"

  "Hmm? Oh, you know, just mother and son things."

  "Things?" said Alan, bristling at the ambiguity. "What about some of the ideas we had talked about? The math. The reading."

  "If you must know, all we really did yesterday was spend time in the yard."

  The yard. They were always spending time in the yard. "I think we need a distinct course of action, here," said Alan.

  "I know, honey.

  "To ensure Eugene's most correct future."

  "Of course."

  Eugene was now slumped against Susan's ribs. She had been campaigning hard for Eugene's first word to be, "Momma." Alan had seen her when she thought he wasn't looking, her mouth over the baby's ear, murmuring, "Momma-momma-momma..."

  Alan wanted to push his point further, but Susan had already returned to her newspaper. He turned back to the microwave. Out of habit, he ran his finger across the countertop, feeling it for crumbs, like a blind man searching for specks of Braille. It was clean.

  When the chicken was finished reheating Alan got a plate for his wife and himself, and then carried everything to the table. What he saw waiting there made him pause: an envelope-sized pamphlet lying on his placemat. He maneuvered for a closer look.

  On the cover was a massive lawn, an entire beach of grass. Above that burned an ultimate sky, composed in a blue that was unique to the work of cheap color presses. It read:

  Lawnhill Cemetery.

  Prime location. Companion plots. Mausoleum.

  This was something Susan did. Last week it had been a primer on living wills. Oftentimes eyewitness accounts of cop shootings got cut from the paper and placed on Alan's pillow. Interviews with destitute charity widows appeared taped to his can of shaving cream. Life insurance policies found their way into the pockets of his trousers. It seemed to Alan that his wife had developed a minor obsession with his demise.

  "The Garden of Peace sounds nice," said Susan, putting the paper down. "Lots of shade, lots of flowers. A salesman came by yesterday. And that reminds me, that's the other thing Eugene and I did. But what this man said was very reasonable. He said we're all on borrowed time. That you never know how, or why, something might happen. That's why now is the time to plan. The Garden of Peace, Alan. The Garden of Peace. Doesn't that sound to die for?"

  She realized what she'd said. "I mean...doesn't that sound lovely?"

  It was too early in the morning for Alan to be having this sort of conversation. All he wanted was to have a relaxing, awful breakfast, and then get back to the case.

  "This is our home," he said. "Let this be my garden of peace." Then he unceremoniously smothered the pamphlet with his plate and sat down.

  Susan watched him with a critical eye. She began folding the newspaper, breaking its spine, methodically reducing its fluttery mess to a sharply creased, military rectangle. She held it toward him, tapping the page with one of her cream colored nails.

  "You're telling me I shouldn't worry?"

  It had been there after all, in bold print below the fold: MURDER MOST GRUESOME: BODY FOUND SKINNED.

  "This is right here in our neighborhood, Alan. This is right where we live."

  "It's nothing, Susan. It's not anything. These things happen."

  "Right down the street, Alan."

  "You're...that's an exaggeration. The canal is not our neighborhood or our street. The actuality is, we live closer to the expressway. If anything is our neighborhood, it's the expressway."

  "I don't care about the expressway."

  "I like the expressway." The expressway was momentum, it was progress, it was optimistic. Everything the canal wasn't.

  "You're trying to change the subject."

  "No. No. You were, you were talking about the neighborhood."

  "I was talking about you, Alan." She shook the newspaper at him. "I was talking about these, these crazies and you're out there, you're around them, Alan. It's like...it's like they're part of your workplace. And what if...what I'm trying to say is, God forbid. God forbid one of those crazies were to skin you, Alan. That's what I'm trying to say.

  "I worry, Alan. What would I do if something happened to you? What would I do? Me, a widow? And with a child? Where would I turn? How would I survive? I'd become one of those tramps, Alan, one of those soggy tramps who go to bars by themselves. All alone. Doing anything for a drink. But who would possibly want me, Alan? Who, at all? Except for rough dockworkers! Longshoremen!"

  "Suze--"

  "Don't Suze me, Alan! I will not be Suze'd! You... You might as well take my skin. Take it right now and throw it all away. Throw it out in the street, I don't care! Because that's how I feel, Alan, peeled -- peeled to the core!"

  She was near tears. And Alan was...the truth was, he'd heard all this before. This argument of theirs was a running motif. What had she said the last time? She had said that she couldn't live on a widow's pension. She said she would not be one of those women who clip coupons. She would not hunt bargains.

  "Susan," he began, "nothing's going to happen to me. It can't, if that makes sense. But if it makes you feel better, then the Garden of Peace would be fine. But I'm not..." He didn't want to say the word, it was sour to him, "...dead yet. I'm not even thinking about that, Susan. It's kind
of off the table right now."

  Which was true. You couldn't accept death. Acceptance was acknowledgement. And acknowledgement was defeat.

  Susan averted her eyes. She stared at the baby's head, into the gauze of silken hair. "I'm just saying," she sniffled.

  Alan let out a slow breath. Coincidentally, the real disagreement, it hadn't even begun. Not even close. Sensing a lull, Alan picked up his fork and knife. No, the real war was just getting started. Because where Susan and he exchanged their most acrimonious broadsides was right in front of him. The food.

  Punishment on a plate.

  His leftovers, they looked to be quivering. From palsy, or derangement. And Alan, he had merely to approach a cutlet with his knife for it to burst open with a wet groan and release a sickly steam.

  But Alan would devour every last gelatinous dredge. He would not concede this to Susan, would not acknowledge her insistence on his mortality. Nor could he allow any evidence of this criminal meal to remain in existence, compelled as he was, fundamentally obliged by some deep-seated and immutable force, by the highest principles of justice, to return his plate's porcelain to its former unsullied grace.

  And so, with Susan watching intently, Alan made his counter-argument. He gouged loose a corner of chicken and pulled it free. He placed it in his mouth and hoped for the best...

  Texture: disturbing. Aroma: past due. He detected the taste of refrigerator -- a vague amalgam of Freon and the spirits of onions past. But that was a gourmet highlight compared to the overall spoil, which somehow imparted a rather vibrant and violent memory, that of the original animal itself, stripped of its feathers, naked and pecking, writhing atop a blood-drenched chopping block.

  Swallowing began to assume hara-kiri proportion. All his instinct, all the collected wisdom of ancestral eons begged him not to do it. Alan searched Susan's face for even the slightest hint that she might be enjoying this.