25
The muscle cars are left unattended. This semicircle of obsessively preserved American chrome looks like a secret dealership that caters to a brotherhood of anal-retentive greasers. And sitting out here in the middle of the woods, in the shadow of a half-destroyed factory, it looks like the dealership has been bought out by some pagan with an inexplicable taste for tail fins and spoilers. A red tool chest, standing as tall as a jukebox and filled with an elaborate ratchet set, is open in front of a Daytona. The hood of the Dodge has been left open, as if the mechanic had been called away in the middle of a tune-up.
Gilrein starts to look in on the engine when the sound comes to him. It’s muted and slightly distant, but he recognizes it instantly as the specific hum born from the cojoined shrieks of sports fans engorged on someone else’s gains and losses. He turns to the Kapernaum and heads for the Houdini Lounge. The panel door is rolled up on its tracks and there’s no receptionist at the gun-check table. As he walks down the corridor toward the clubhouse, the noise of the mob gets louder. It’s possible they’ve got the TVs cranked up and are beer-ranting to a satellite transmission of two kick-boxers smashing each other to death in Thailand. But when he enters the Lounge, he finds it empty. The bar is fully covered with discarded bottles of Hunthurst Lager and the money can is overflowing with damp and crumbled bills. Dumbbells have been left on the floor in the weight room. The televisions are on, tuned to a porn channel and a dubbed Hercules movie, both playing to an empty set of couches. The stripper’s stage is abandoned but for an orange polyester waitress’s uniform left dangling from the lip.
Gilrein climbs the stairs to Oster’s office, moves to the exterior window and looks out on the origin of the crowd noise. Down by the interrogation pit, the place Oster has christened “the penal colony,” rimming the crater left by the Tung’s explosion, there must be over a hundred people. The mob is lit by the halogen spot on the roof. They’re perched on boulders and old tires and quite a few are balanced on the edge of foldout aluminum-and-mesh beach chairs. Half a dozen oil barrels are spouting flame, but they’re throwing as much smoke as light into the air. An outdoor bar has been set up directly opposite the rear of the building — a trio of kegs dispensing foam to a nonstop line of men holding all manner of improvised pitchers.
He moves down from the loft and exits the rear of the factory. The smoke and the noise and the halogen light all hit him at once and the combined effect is a little dizzying. As he walks toward the rim of the pit, he begins to recognize faces. And none of them go together. Retired police sergeants are seated next to a few midlevel flunkies from various mob houses. A district attorney’s deputy is sharing a picnic bench with one of Jimmy Tang’s favorite shooters. The Tatarka sisters, whose chop shop is known and respected from San Remo Avenue to Budapest and whose warrants for arrest are both multiple and active, are passing a bucket of fried chicken legs back and forth between the Registrar of Motor Vehicles and City Councilor Frye. It’s as if someone designated this Buried Hatchet Night at the Kapernaum. As if the Magicians have sponsored an open house as part of a membership drive.
Circulating in the midst of it all are a trio of young women, their long hair uniformly pulled back into impressive ponytails that fall through the rear opening of their kelly green baseball caps. They have matching green aprons tied around their waists and green plastic clipboards clutched in their arms. For a minute, Gilrein thinks they must be waitresses, maybe peanut vendors. Then he follows one, watches her step into a circle of drunks waving money, watches her slide a pencil from behind an ear and point to each man in turn, ordering them with her speed and demeanor, taking their cash, making change, scribbling on her notepad, handing out colored coupons, and all of it with the rote efficiency of a bank teller bucking for management. They’re making book on something and Gilrein would like to stop himself from speculating what it might be.
“Hey there, Gilly boy,” he hears, amplified by bullhorn, and turns to see Oster standing on top of a pile of broken bricks. “Get your ass over here, Gilly.”
It comes out in a good-natured, beer-driven roar, a fraternity whoop that draws an immediate share of audience attention down onto Gilrein. People start pointing and waving. Voices come out of the gaps of light.
“We knew you’d be back, G-man.”
“We saved a space for you, bro.”
“Give the bastard a beer, fer Chrissake.”
It’s like some horrible performance poem, a kind of ritual vignette fueled by testosterone and camaraderie and alcohol. And he knows he has to walk through it, so he starts to thread his way into a maze of glad-handing hombres who punch his arm and slap his back as if they’d all passed through some hellish foreign war together. He reaches the brick pile and Oster extends a hand and pulls him up to the summit.
“We need to talk,” Gilrein says.
Oster shakes his head and squints his disagreement.
“Plenty of time to talk, Gilly,” he says. “I’m just so goddamn psyched you made it. I knew — I said to Stewie and Danny— Gilrein’s in. Gilly’s one of us. You are going to love this shit.”
“Oster,” Gilrein starts to say, but immediately the crowd drowns him out with a new roar and it climbs to standing as fast as its drunken legs will allow.
Gilrein looks down to the rear of the Kapernaum, to the same exit he’s just come through, and sees the source of the cheering. Four men have stepped into the pit spotlight. Two of them he recognizes as Oster’s main creatures — Danny Walden and Stewie Green. Boy scouts as trained by Himmler. Rookies born from Satan’s anus. They’re holding the other two men in full-blown chain restraints, manacles around ankles, waists, and wrists. And an additional touch that, to the best of Gilrein’s knowledge, has never been department-sanctioned — choke-chain collars around the prisoners’ necks extending to a pull lead that Oster’s men are using like a leash, hauling the captive parties toward the center of the pit as if they were zoo stock, wild animals so feared and despised they can’t be allowed the decision of when to breathe.
Walden manipulates his choke chain to drive his prisoner down to his knees and when the mob goes loud with the noise of their unbridled pleasure, Green follows suit until both captives are facing each other in what looks like a pray-off.
Gilrein looks down on the spectacle and says, “What’s happening here?”
Oster rocks forward and back, a boy so juiced up on anticipation he may lose bladder control.
“You made it in time for the first annual Houdini Lounge Death Bowl,” Oster says, shouting over the cheers. “I think you still got time to get some coin down if you want.” He leans in close to Gilrein’s ear and adds, “the smart percentage is going with the DR. He’s small, but he’s fast as a bastard.” The voice lowers a bit. “And just between you and me, he’s going to have a little advantage.”
Walden and Green knee their charges in the side until the spotlight illuminates the faces. One prisoner looks small and muscular and Hispanic. The other is older and maybe Middle Eastern. They’re both stripped to the waist, their chests sporting what looks like fresh scarring. They’re wearing gray sweatpants that have been cut off just above the knee. And they’re barefoot.
“They’re supposed to fight?” Gilrein asks the obvious.
“They’re supposed to beat the absolute crap out of each other, Gilly,” Oster says, somehow proud of the event, as if he’d guided the spectacle from initial notion through promotion and finance. “They are going to pound on each other till one of them stops breathing.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.”