The Canal Read Free Page B

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 submitted
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