The Canal (20 page)

They were running. Below them the
mustard-colored water frothed. All that was left of Henry were his
legs, sticking out of the river at an absurdly perpendicular angle,
already engulfed to the shins and going fast.

Rose watched the canal swallow her son. A few
large bubbles cauliflowered and then the water went eerily calm.
The balloon was nowhere to be seen. Joe swung over and jumped.

Part of Rose panicked. She thought that Joe
hadn't jumped, that he'd accidentally fallen instead. That the
world was going mad, people from around the city, even miles away,
were tumbling out of cars, out of restaurants, rolling for miles
along asphalt, pulled to this place and then flopping inexplicably
into the canal.

She jumped next. She thought she heard
shouting on the way down, from somewhere on the street, but then
she crashed into the river. The water dragged her in, thick and
still, syrupy and rabbit warm. There was no current. You didn't
float; you were suspended. To reach the surface you had to climb.
There was noise here -- a machinery repeat, pistons, oil burning,
decades of toxic monologue. She glimpsed pitted yellow slush. A
Loch Ness E. coli flared past. Light didn't penetrate so much as it
was captured. She wrestled to the surface.

"Joe--"

A wavelet flopped into her mouth. The taste
was undeniable. It was decay, it was void matter, it was shit, it
was hate, it was everything, it was evil, and it was hopeless, so,
so hopeless. Zombie flatulence. Botulism meringue. Fecal gelato.
The flavor of body swamp, diaper dingle, amputee stub, and
victimless crime. Of toilet tang, typhus, gangrene, spudge, and of
prayers very much denied, of prayers sent back to sender with "Fuck
you," scrawled on the label. The taste clung hard. Her eyes stung
with the aroma of bowels. Joe was there, gasping for air, dysentery
spilling off his hair and face. His eyes were bloodshot.

She dove under and paddled in Henry's
direction. Indistinct, gelatinous fry scooted from her grasp. She
felt warm pockets of unmentionable. But no child. No son. She went
deeper, touching bottom with her hands. The canal floor, the marl,
it was icy. She sunk in it; glue oozing between her fingers and
sliding up her arms. How deep did it go? Could an entire body get
lost in it? Could her son be down there, trapped?

Rose fought her way back to the surface,
feeling explosively ill. She thought she saw Joe, but then the
water started tilting dizzily so that it switched with the sky. She
was drowning in the air, you see. All she needed to do was swim
toward the water where she'd be able to breathe. All she had to do
was breathe the water...

Something pulled her by the arm. Had she
found Henry? Was she saving Henry? No, she was being pulled toward
the canal bank. Joe was doing it -- now he was reaching around her,
pushing her over the top of the embankment. She rolled onto the
sandy ground and retched. Joe climbed next to her. He collapsed and
then didn't move. Both of them were wearing a layer of black
slime.

After that, someone had revived her. A friend
of Joe's, a patrolman named Kozar. The bridge was part of his beat;
he'd seen them jump. He promised that they'd find Henry. He swore
it. But he was lying. And at that point, the fever had begun to
boil away at Rose's brain.

And that was it. The memory. Those were the
names. The name. Henry. It was why she traded Joe and everything
else for the top floor. Where she was welcome to remember, to live
inside that day over and again, experiencing it backwards,
forwards, fast, and slow. Constantly. It was what she needed to do,
because she couldn't face anything else. That life could somehow
resume from the moment her son died seemed so ludicrous to her,
even obscene. There would be no forgetting. There was no such thing
as moving on.

At least the man had stopped talking. At
least maybe now he'd leave her alone--

An unwelcome surge of fitness suddenly welled
over her -- a med must have kicked in or some crucial threshold of
vitamin was finally achieved. The memory slipped from her
completely, taking the names with it. And with that she willed
herself back into oblivion.

*

Rose's breath skated the ridges of Alan's
ear. He was practically in her lap, practically in bed with her and
sharing the IV. She had the vocal power of a cotton ball, a
whisper, but lousier, and even that was starting to thin to a
syllabitic gruel.

She'd talked, sure, but in circuitous
sentences, in phrases that curved back on themselves, dubious
meanings spinning in their structure. From what Alan could piece
together, her story involved her and Joe, together. And something
about the canal. But the rest didn't make any sense. Because Joe
didn't have any kid. Was she making that up? Was it something from
long ago? Either way, none of it mattered, because it obviously had
nothing to do with reality.

For a minute there he almost thought that he
had his guy. He had thought this Henry figure was the cannibal he'd
been looking for. He'd begun making plans to corral every Henry in
the phone book -- he'd bring them in one by one and there'd be no
nice stuff, Vincent and Womack would have brass knuckles and
baseball bats. And one of those Henrys would sing. One would spill
his scumbag guts.

But then Alan started getting the impression
that he was hearing something else. A tall tale. Mere fantasy.

Again, the knocking on the door.

"Rose, stay with the bridge. Think two days
ago, you were there."

She responded with a dose of verbal backwash.
The open eye, it had long since closed.

"What did you see, Rose? Is Henry the
ringleader? Is Joe protecting you? Is he in on it? Rose!"

She was gone.

Alan withdrew and sagged against the chair.
Barely an answer to be found. There was, on the other hand, plenty
of failure, plenty to spare. And disappointment. And impending
doom, that too. He teased a cigarette out of his pack and hung it
in his mouth. He couldn't find the inspiration to light it; it just
lay there.

More knocking on the door, a lot harder this
time. Truthfully, he was afraid. He was afraid that if he answered,
somebody would be telling him about a third body, sucked clean. And
if that happened, well, he'd seriously be finished. He'd strike
himself down with his own fist. He'd brain himself.

Another knock. "Detective D'Angelo?
Detective?"

Alan closed his coat, nervously hiding those
legs of his. "Mind if I, if I step outside for a moment?" he asked
Rose. She had receded back into invisibility, mixing back into the
mattress. No, she didn't mind.

Out in the hallway, he noted the men's grim
faces. So, this really was it then. The end. It would be better if
they didn't speak. If they simply subdued him with their batons and
then loaded him into a van to be delivered to the nearest
granite-walled sanatorium.

Something happened, is what they proceeded to
tell him. There had been a call, they said, an emergency. Someone
had needed to talk to him.

It wasn't what Alan was expecting, what they
were saying.

His wife, they said. Something had happened
to his wife.

>> CHAPTER FOURTEEN <<

Alan skated down waxed corridors, bypassing
bypasses, retreating from treatments. He might have passed Rose's
doctor, he thought he recognized the voice, involved in some kind
of transplant playmaking -- hog heart, robot arm, petri dish
nose.

In the car, he drove dangerously, taking
liberties with other lanes and blindly running the busier
intersections. Until he finally lunged towards the canal, in the
deepening dusk, trading the civilized world for the heathen
one.

As he neared the block, he could see her.
Susan. Standing in the middle of the road, an egregious, foul
looking stain covering most of her, glistening a raspberry black. A
patrolwoman -- fat bottom, skinny top, like a saltshaker -- was
chasing her with a pom-pom of towels, swiping at Susan's skunked
hands.

Alan drew alongside, rolling down the
window.

"BLOOD!" Susan bellowed.

"Are you okay?" asked Alan. He should get out
of the car. He should go to her.

"MURDER!"

The cop with towels grunted. "She was running
crazy. All over in the streets."

"MAYYYHEMMM!"

The cop took another wild grab at Susan's
hands. "Child, lets have it. Be still."

Susan was in shock. Death could do that.
Death could still impress. Alan couldn't help but notice the bag of
leftovers she cradled in her arms, like it were a living thing. She
bounced it, whispered to it, comforted it with soothing caresses.
The woman had flipped.

He should be beside her, holding her. But
there was the gunge to consider, she was dripping with it. And at
the moment she didn't really seem like his wife. More like a
civilian. Part of the report. It was normal to have some sort of
hysterical type hanging around the murder works. Witnesses to evil
deeds. She was just one more. He fought the urge to call her
"ma'am."

A siren announced itself from behind him.
Alan checked his rearview mirror -- it was Vincent.

"Listen Susan..." he said. He couldn't decide
what to say next. There was a whole list of possibilities:
"Everything's all right," "It's over now," "Nothing to worry
about," millions of them, so easy and obvious, all he had to do was
choose. But Alan, in his car, Susan in her soggy clothes -- it was
amazing how unfamiliar two familiar people could be.

Alan simply drove away. He slipped his hand
out of the window and waved for Vincent to follow.

They skittered to a stop outside the house. A
couple of squad cars were already waiting. The house looked
terminal. In other words, like part of the neighborhood.

"Oh, God," said Vincent. "I was just here
yesterday. There was this guy, senile as a tree."

They had filled Alan in at the hospital. They
had found his wife and got what information they could. They said
Susan had mentioned a Mr. Zarella. Alan was embarrassed to admit
that, yes, his wife knew such a man. Once or twice she'd even asked
Alan to come along on those visits of hers. But the way she made
him sound, like some cough drop smelling specter, some long toothed
Casper -- well, no thank you. It wasn't that he necessarily had
anything better to do. Just, no.

Alan mounted the step to Zarella's and
carefully leaned inside. Apparently Mr. Zarella had been drowning
in his own rubbish. Reefs of it. But Alan, improbably, he didn't
mind it. Because back at the hospital, they had told him something
else. Something miraculous.

Answers had been found.

Alan followed the hallway, kicking through a
pile of what looked like chicken bones, and eased into the living
room. He hissed, nodding toward the sofa. In the gloom lay a deeper
darkness -- a blast zone of brown plasma that radiated from the
couch, pancaked against the wall like a pagan flag. A police radio
squelched in the backyard.

"Go outside, I'll meet you there," said Alan.
Vincent nodded as he slid past.

Alan carefully flipped the light switch. The
throne of gore came to life, leaping out against the walls. But
Alan was more interested in the open briefcase lying on the coffee
table. Scattered inside were blood stained enrollment forms, an
address book, a street map...and a wad of pamphlets rubber banded
together. A name: Lawnhill Cemetery. He recognized the picture,
bright lawn under a brighter sky...

The brochure from the other morning.
Breakfast. What had Susan told him...about a salesman? A salesman.
If a salesman had been making the rounds, he could have easily
wandered into canal territory, to Mr. Zarella's...

Alan quickly peeked into the kitchen. More
bones, and a large amount of pet collars. The air was gridlocked
with pests. A cockroach waved from the stove.

"Alan," came Vincent's voice from the yard,
sharply urgent. "Alan, this is major here."

Of course it was. Because it had finally
happened -- Alan had information. Data. Progress. And he was
content to savor this, to stand in death's kitchen, knowing he was
about to drop one hell of a law bomb all over this goddamn
case.

Alan lingered over a framed photo, glazed
with dust. It was a black and white portrait of a young man,
presumably Mr. Zarella, smart in an army uniform, strong, alive,
arm in arm with a lady whose dimples went finger deep. It was
difficult to comprehend how the Zarella in the photo had become the
horror that must have haunted this foul swamp.

Alan stepped out onto the patio, a piece of
charcoal crunching like a beetle beneath his shoe. He beheld the
enormous pool of chum at the yard's heart. The glot had dried,
hardening to a crumbly velvet, an au gratin layer. Gouged tracks
showed where Susan must have fallen. Around the perimeter lay
frayed and crusted bits of clothing while a trail branched off
through an opening in the back fence. Two patrolmen stood with
Vincent, by the barbecue.

"Disgusting, isn't it," said one of the
cops.

"Oh...its not so bad," said Alan. What he
wanted to say was, it's beautiful, it's the most wonderful thing
I've ever seen. Because to Alan, it wasn't guts and gurd -- it was
truth. Given to him like a gift, by his wife of all people.

Vincent pointed to the barbecue's handle. A
meat fork hung there. It was coated in a bark of mealy blood,
matter gummed in-between the two tines.

"And look here..." said Vincent.

Behind the barbecue there lay a messy heap of
clothes. There was a suit coat and slacks, both freckled with
small, telltale punctures. Underneath them peeked the heel of a
lone loafer, identical to the one they had collected from the first
corpse.

Alan prodded the pants pockets. There would
be a payoff, he knew this even before he hit the bulge of a wallet.
He knew this because there would be nothing but payoffs from now
on. The answers may have gotten waylaid for a while, but now here
they were, late but welcome, welcome anytime. Smiling smugly, Alan
extracted the wallet with a kerchief.