Grief Street

suddenly turned to me, his face bright with a new idea. “Do you know what I’ve just this moment come to believe?”
    “What?”
    “Your dilemma’s no dilemma at all. You say you’re after something evil, or somebody evil. You wonder if it’s in your power to grasp hold of evil, to arrest it same as you’d nab a masked bandit. You wonder if you’re man enough. Well now—I say you’re the perfect copper for the job. A doubting Catholic is every bit the match of a doubting devil.”
    “This opening you mentioned—”
    “Find it, boy, and you’ve nabbed your Satan.”

Thirty-one

    F our men in khakis and hip boots slapped wet string mops up and down the spongy canvas floor. They had to work fast and furiously inside the big chain-link steel cage. Out there beyond the steam of dry ice and colored lights was an audience of uncompromisingly short attention span—a crowd perfectly capable of overturning an entire parking lot full of cars. No cage in the world was sufficient sanctuary against such sports fans.
    In a few minutes, the moppers had nearly got it all, filling their buckets with the sopping remains of two preliminary bouts. A puddle or two remained here and there—blood, mucus, spittle, wet cartilage—but when the sports fans began Ramping their feet in earnest, the quick-stepping janitors knew it was time to leave well enough alone and scurry out through the gate.
    After which came an uproar of rock music, and the strobed entrance of the first of this night’s main card combatants. The music was blasted loud enough at first to distract even Doberman pinschers in heat, but faded down low as a steroid-packed fighter took his place inside the freshly mopped cage.
    “Ladeeees and gennulmen!” intoned the tuxedo-clad announcer, perched atop a platform just outside the cage.
    There were few women among the audience, actually, and no ladies. “This here’s the main eeee-vent! Steppin’ into the ring now, weighin’ two hundred and eighty-six pounds and hailin’ from Lackawanna, Pennsylvania—I give you Mighty Joe Fang...!”
    Sports fans were on their feet, variously shouting encouragements and epithets at Mighty Joe. For his part, Mr. Fang circled the ring flashing the wolf canines he had paid an oral surgeon to implant in his upper jaw.
    Johnny Kay remained seated. As did Sergeant Joseph Kowalski, who was a tight fit in three spaces on the bleacher next to his son. It was not King Kong’s habit to stand up and sit down too many times in the course of a day. Son leaned to father and said, “I don’t believe this is even happening.”
    “Same thing I think when I’m sitting in your bar full of fairies. So believe it.”
    “Ladeeees and gennulmen! Now makin’ his way up the aisle, the Hawaiian bone crusher—Kimo!” The Doberman pinscher music reached an early crescendo, then quieted for the announcer to say, “Kimo, who has recently undergone a religious transformation, will be happy to autograph your programs, folks!”
    Kimo was a barefoot sumo wrestler type with a four-foot tae kwon do black belt wrapped around his belly and an elaborate multicolored crucifix tattooed across his massive back, complete with crown of thorns dripping blood down the beatific face of a Polynesian Christ. He lumbered from one side of the aisle to another signing programs for his adoring fans, always the same message: All things are possible through Jesus Christ — Aloha, Kimo.
    “What’s the act?” Johnny Kay asked King Kong.
    “That fat freaking pineapple...” Kowalski paused to down a paper cup of beer. There were eight hot dog wrappers at his feet, along with used mustard packets. “One day he’s bagging money for Honolulu dope dealers and smoking meth himself, the next day he finds Jesus. Anyways, that's according to his public relations.”
    Mighty Joe roared and gnashed his fangs with every step Kimo took closer to the cage.
    “Who’s the champ and who’s the challenger?”
    “It don’t matter.”
    “No, of course not. Just so long as somebody gets killed or maimed.”
    “Lighten up. Only once in a blue moon somebody gets croaked out in the cage.”
    “Sweety, it’s moments like these when I’m proud to say I’m ashamed to be a man.”
    “You call me that again, it’ll be the last time you talk. Somebody here’s liable to tear out your freaking tongue.”
    “Speaking of Jesus jumpers, what’s Mommy Dearest doing tonight back home in good old Queens?”
    “What do you