The Canal Read online

  Joe, who had been watching Alan cling ever so tightly to the handkerchief, fastened one of his hands atop Alan's. And Joe's hands, by his own admission, were sink traps, feral and coarse.

  Caught mid-speech, Alan's voice made a sharp, and gratifying, leap. "What the fuck!" he shouted, hastily pulling his hand free. He then spent several seconds examining the fingers, looking for signs of rash or atrophy, presumably.

  "Clumsy of me," said Joe.

  "Go fuck yourself," grumbled Alan. He began descending the ladder. "And some soap, while you're at it."

  As he disappeared under the bridge, Joe waited, closing tight the collar of his coat. He'd have stood here all night if they'd have let him. Until maybe they forgot he was there, or until he fused with the bridge, to become invisible, to become landscape. Because he didn't want to do this.

  But unfortunately, that was what they kept him around for. Because he was the only one who could make these kinds of sacrifices. Joe sighed, exhausted. Then he grabbed onto the railing and followed Alan over the edge.

  He climbed down to a patch of gravel than ran alongside the bridge, to the water. He could just make out the flywheels and cables, part of the bridge's machinery. They were standing in the clearing where the bridge was pulled on its rails, to be parked. Alan took out a small flashlight.

  "No," said Joe. "No light." Alan ignored him.

  Joe proceeded toward the river, careful in the gloom. The problem was that you had a manmade waterway with negligible current and only a vestigial connection to the sea. The water, like the neighborhood, went nowhere. Although that hadn't always been the case, there was in fact a flushing tunnel that, when operational, had pushed the unclean water out and brought fresh water from the harbor in. But when the canal's future as an industrial waterway died, so did the tunnels funding. That was almost 25 years ago.

  While the tunnel may have stopped, the sewers never did. Every drain that serviced this corner of town, that begged at the back door of every brownstone and take-out joint and back alley gutter, they all led here. And what went in, stayed in. The canal was like the world's greatest library of scum -- archived, compiled and preserved. An enormous sum total of putrefaction that, from the beginning, had begun paying some particularly weird dividends.

  There had been rumor of a sewage treatment plant being built, probably in a bombed out crater somewhere, a huge assembly of smog shrouded tanks and vats that would chug through each days bounty of discharge, turning it sparkly and clean, with a mountain fresh scent. But Joe knew this would never happen -- talk about the future just didn't apply to the canal. Here the future was as dead as the water. Nothing was going to change because nothing could change. The canal wouldn't let it -- it had been left too long to its own devices, it had gotten too mean.

  Joe rested his foot on the curb of timber that marked the brink of the river. The water crawled just a foot below. A dead rat, blackened and bloated as huge as a beach ball, drifted nearby. Wouldn't want to go in there, probably. That water, it was a toxic hatchery. The perfect medium for insane pathogens and much, much worse.

  Joe glanced at Alan. Alan's eyes were watering from the fumes -- they at least honestly perspired. Alan pointed the flashlight beam across the water.

  "There it is," he said. "Hanging."

  Obscured in the shadows at the far end of the bridge, Joe could make out a pair of arms and legs, reaching almost to the water. The body was slung over the crossbeam at its waist. It looked charred, a grisly crimson, the bone and tendon showing white like marble.

  "Christ," said Joe. He had been right -- Alan hadn't told him everything. "There's no skin."

  "...Ta-daa."

  Joe moved swiftly, blocking Alan's flashlight. "I don't need you here, Alan. Get back on the bridge. And nobody comes down here until I'm through."

  "I'm not going anywhere. We're out of time--"

  "Listen to me, you...you--" Joe was trying to formulate, he needed in this one moment to express perfectly what he was feeling, and desperately. "Listen, you fucking shit. Get up on the bridge and leave me the fuck alone. Nobody comes down until I'm through!"

  He watched as Alan tried to react. There was plainly so much anger and frustration in the man, waiting to come out. But it...it went away. There was a hard twitch, a wavering in the eyes, and then Alan tucked everything back inside. It maybe went where the sweat went, some deep reservoir, back in the attic.

  "Whatever you say," said Alan, coolly, studying Joe with freshly summoned contempt. Then he wordlessly retreated back to the ladder and began heaving himself up onto street.

  Joe dug a cigarette from his coat pocket. Maybe now he could actually accomplish a few things.

  As he smoked he mused on corpses and canals. The body couldn't have been lowered from above; someone would need to be in the canal, or on it, in a boat, in order to reach the bridge. A wall lined the opposite shore of the canal. At its center was a brick ringed sewer outlet, issuing a steady stream of body rot. If you were standing in it, right on the lip of the outlet, if you really stretched, or had something to hang on to, you could just barely hang a body under the bridge. Of course, that was a little risky health-wise.

  Joe took a farewell suck on his cigarette and pitched it. He looked up at the bridge, shading his eyes against the lights. He didn't see anyone. Might as well get this over with. He got to his knees, the gravel digging in.

  "Here's to good living," muttered Joe. Joe tried to think of what that might entail. Playing the lottery? Was that good living? There were also those buffets at the casinos, so much food, although Joe had never been. Maybe ice skating. Or maybe not.

  God, he hated this.

  There were people, people like Alan, who when they approached a thing like this, they apply some common sense. They reconstruct a sequence of cause and effect. Ideally, you want to be able to hone in on what's pertinent to the case so you can write it down, or do a diagram. Alan loved to do diagrams.

  But not Joe. Joe had done diagrams once, but that was too long ago to even matter. Here and now though, in the moment, he was strictly non-diagram. Strictly non-anything. Coincidentally that's what gave him his edge. Here at least -- below the bridge, next to the canal, here his lack of effort and accuracy had always been amply rewarded, time and time again. He'd earned a reputation even, a near legendary one. Anything in the canal -- that case became Joe's case, because he solved them all. Every single one. The canal, it was his thing. It was his curse. Because he did what needed to be done.

  Like now, grimly rolling up a sleeve. He stretched his hand over the water. He felt an invisible pressure coming from the deep, hints of cholera, bubbling in the syrup below like viral fireflies.

  He held his breath, and in went his hand.

  *

  Even Alan had once been in awe of Joe's record on the canal beat -- imagine, everything: solved. To Alan, there was no higher purpose or greater goal. When he was first partnered with Joe this made it easy to overlook the general misfire that was the man himself: the tenacious stink of stress and tobacco that hovered around him like an entourage, or the coats he always wore, with their primordial stains, including the alarming ones near the crotch.

  But Joe was quick to cure Alan of any misguided goodwill. Although, even Alan had to admit, maybe this was partly his own fault. Because in the beginning, Alan had asked a lot of questions. And these questions, sometimes he wasn't so much asking you as he was, basically, mauling you with them, wielding them as if they were lengths of heavy chain. But this couldn't be helped. As a rookie Alan had felt shamefully (and yes, exaggeratedly) unprepared. And this feeling, as sometimes happened with Alan, it became tangible, this shame, manifesting itself as a dust, a repulsive green spore, that collected on him, on his body. No one else could see it but Alan. And in this instance, nothing could remove it, no amount of washing, except for one thing: information.

  So yes, he was going to get in your fucking face a little.

  Eventually everyone in homicide had s
ubmitted to Alan's interrogations. Everyone except Joe. Alan didn't understand this. Joe was his senior partner, he was supposed to be a wise mentor, a font of insight and knowledge. When Alan had first heard about his assignment, he couldn't believe his luck. Joe Lombardi? The Joe Lombardi? But the man ignored him. Intensely. Until Alan couldn't take it, until Alan finally trapped Joe in a corner, wild for the merest bit of counsel. How do you do it? That was the question, over and over. How do you do it? How do you fucking do it? And then Joe, miraculously, he drew Alan close as if to whisper a word of advice, a glowing nugget of hard earned wisdom. He brought his face near Alan's -- and Alan was overjoyed, ecstatic, thinking to himself: at last -- and what Joe did, what Joe did instead was lay a hot, still moist, basement dweller of a belch right in Alan's ear.

  A lot had changed since those days. Alan wasn't a rookie anymore. In fact, Alan had managed to develop a noteworthy reputation all his own. Alan -- he was TMP. Thorough, Meticulous, Precise...the holy trinity of getting things done, efficiency's triple threat. For example, Joe, on a typical day at work (if he even bothers to show up), will stare out a window, will stroke his belly, and will smell like a bus station toilet till closing time. But while he did that, while he fizzled away hours, weeks, months -- while he did that Alan worked viciously, ferociously, handling both his cases and all the cases Joe ignored because the canal didn't play any part. Alan did the work of two men -- he didn't just believe in TMP, he lived TMP. And what was Joe compared to that? The man passed wind publicly. He carried a decades worth of impacted food in the spaces between his teeth. And always with the same clothes. The same stink. The same dirt. And that said it all really -- dirt. Despite all that he had supposedly accomplished, Joe was no better than dirt.

  Which was unforgivable. Alan, see, he respected clean. He appreciated the virtue of a washed hand, a spritz of air freshener, a thorough gargling of mouth wash, pre- and post-meal. Because if you thought about it, clean was...it was a principle. It was strength. The sanitizing gels, the baby wipes -- they were the markers of civility. And it even went beyond that. To a higher realm. Because dirt, that was just code for chaos. While clean, that was the mantle of order. Two timeless forces locked in epic struggle. And Alan was there at the forefront, order's tireless foot soldier.

  That's why Alan would be victorious. As he climbed back onto the bridge, he couldn't stay angry with Joe for long, because in the face of the cleansing power of TMP -- he knew that dirt didn't stand a chance.

  On the bridge, Alan headed past the waiting cops, all of them standing, scratching, sweating -- man-hours to no purpose, dollars wasted, and all because of Joe, so he can have a look around and pry asteroids from his nose.

  Alan headed towards detectives Vincent and Womack. He felt an urge to let the momentum carry him, to keep going, nice and easy, all the way to his car, getting in, speeding away from the heat and stink, siren on, windows down, face in the clean, whipping air. He could go home and clean the maddening itch from his hand, where Joe had touched it, he didn't live far, everything in the neighborhood was close -- work, home, even the canal, just blocks away. But those blocks made a huge difference. From skids to high society in the space of a hundred yards.

  But no. Alan would focus, he would do the job. He always did the job.

  "Look alive," snapped Alan, as he approached.

  Vincent and Womack were decent guys. On a scale of clean, Womack was a clumsy 6.5, while Vincent was a well-meaning 7/7.5, depending. Not perfect, but at least they washed their clothes, combed their hair, and did their work. And they did what Alan said, which he felt was an exemplary quality for anyone to have.

  Womack was the less serious of the two. He wore a lot of brown, which Alan guessed was indicative of some deeper, unaddressed problem. He was a big guy, but it was a vertical bulk, like a grain elevator shape, or a tube of dough. Vincent was more together. He had an eye for a good JCPenny suit. Used plenty of deodorant -- which was good, because Alan disliked the human scent. Like Womack, Vincent was also something of a bruiser, but whereas Womack resembled more of a pudding, Vincent was more formidable, more of a blondish ham steak. He could get nervous though, a little overemotional, which was a problem. You'd go to a bar and after two beers he'll be sobbing pretzel sleaze in your face, going on about the things he's seen, the memories he can't forget, and the murderin' animals and what they did to that guy that one time.

  "I got the pictures you wanted," said Womack, fidgeting with a camera. He'd occasionally lean over the bridge's side, his flash illuminating the river below. The mechanical seemed ridiculous in Womack's hands. It was like watching a Neanderthal program a VCR.

  "How's it look down there?" asked Vincent.

  "It's as bad as you'd expect."

  "Poor bastard," said Womack. "Hope they at least greased the guy before they, you know, filleted his mignon."

  "It," said Alan.

  "Huh?"

  "It. You hope they greased it before they filleted its mignon. You start assuming too much -- him, her, them, they -- and pretty soon you're making the whole thing up. Your assumptions begin to influence the way you approach the facts."

  "C'mon, I'm just saying."

  Vincent poked a finger at Womack, "See, that's why Alan's gonna make Captain some day while you'll still be fetching coffee. You're dumb, in other words."

  "Jesus, the two of you -- it was a figure of speech! Alan's way, it doesn't even sound right. Nobody talks like that."

  "Well," said Vincent, "I don't mean to put words in Alan's mouth but..." Vincent looked at Alan for the go-ahead. Alan nodded. "But I think what Alan would say to that is -- if you speak wrong then it means you're thinking wrong. You can't have it both ways."

  "Well put, Vince," agreed Alan. "You've got it exactly right. Remember you two...detail is everything." He let that sink in. Vincent seemed to find it profound. Womack looked away.

  "Now if I might," Alan continued, "I'd like to draw everyone's attention to something more important." He lowered his voice. "And I'm talking about Joe. I want us all to be on the same page here. We all know the plan, right?"

  The plan really wasn't a plan at all. It was just work. TMP. Do the job before Joe did. Alan had been waiting almost an entire year for a canal crime to arrive. And here it was, in all its gruesome glory. And if he closed a canal case instead of Joe, what would they need Joe for anymore? The pleasant companionship? The witty repartee? No.

  Alan didn't think it would even be all that hard. Sure, if you wanted dirt, the canal was the epitome. It wasn't quite the Anti-Christ, but definitely the Anti-Clean. A pockmark on the face of all that was right and just, a wilderness of crud, one of the badlands. But so what? There wasn't a single mess on this great God given earth that Alan couldn't whisk away with rational precision and efficient planning.

  "Don't you worry about us," said Womack. "We'll help you chase this one down, and quick."

  Vincent seemed about to say something, but hesitated.

  "Something on your mind?" asked Alan.

  "I'm just, yeah, I get it and all. I'm just saying. You know the stories about Joe. I'm just saying the guy is good at what he does. I mean, and he's never done me wrong, personally. That's all I'm saying."

  "Get over it," groaned Womack. "Joe's a dinosaur. Alan, Vincent here worries me. He worries me in my sleep, I can't sleep. I want what you want, Alan, no question there."

  Alan looked Vincent in the eye. "Look, all that stuff you're bothered about -- keep it in your pants. I absolutely need this Vincent, and I'm not just saying that. Because this guy, he gives us all a bad name. You, me, the department. And this name, it's not the kind you would dare speak aloud. I'd have punched my own mother in the mouth, may she rest in peace, rather than subject her to this name. In fact, I'd even punch your mother in the mouth, just to be safe.

  "First, in the history of the world, nobody has solved a murder by staring at a fucking river. Second, it's a fact that half of what you've heard about Joe is unverifiable bull
shit. And third, I see through all his hocus pocus, and what I see scares the hell out of me. Something is going on with that man, and my deepest fear is that nothing is going on with that man. That he's incompetent. That he managed to stumble across the truth a few times, and now everybody just assumes he knows what the hell he's doing. Personally, I don't want to entrust the safety of my family, or the safety of this city, to a fucking mystery man.

  "He's clutter, Vincent. He has obscured the process of justice. And we owe it to ourselves to remove him."

  "I'm-I'm sorry, you're right," said Vincent. "I shoulda, I was just thinking--"

  "And that's your problem," said Alan. "Thinking."

  It was all true, what Alan said. Well, he believed it, at any rate. And as Alan leaned over and looked down at the water, to look upon the man himself, Joe Lombardi, he saw something that gave him pause. It took Alan a few moments to make out Joe's shape, hunched over in the darkness at the water's edge, but Alan could almost swear that Joe had his hand in the water.

  Alan smiled. He nearly mentioned it to the others. Something like that, it would have been too perfect, too appropriate -- but it just wasn't possible. It was his own wishful thinking, maybe. And as Alan turned his back on the canal, still smiling at the thought, he knew that for all the man's faults, not even Joe could manage to be that disgusting.

  *

  Joe climbed the bridge ladder and dragged himself over the railing, slow and bleary, like a matinee creature exhaled from the sea. He flopped onto the sidewalk and lay there. He could feel the stares.

  Joe furtively examined his hand. Pink and covered in slime, it looked newborn. He quickly hid it in his pocket and with a groan, got to his feet. Already he felt the first tinge of fever, a prickling heat on his face and neck.

  He started walking, ignoring anyone who approached him, although most men knew to give him a wide berth by now. He maneuvered past the patrol cars, through the pulsing siren light and dueling radio chatter. He blithely went straight through and snapped the yellow police tape that was strung across the eastern end of the bridge. From there, he entered darker, quieter avenues. Strays watched him pass. He tripped on buckled concrete.