The Blue Helmet Page 6

  Here it comes, I thought.

  “And, well, I have to tell you, he feels real bad about you not wanting to talk to him.”

  She paused, and I said nothing.

  “But that’s another story. Anyhow, he’s agreed if you agree. I’d like you to stay on here for as long as you want. You’re a big help to me, running the café. You’re not the cheeriest angel in the choir. And,” she smiled, “you can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but you work hard, and I like having you around. So, what do you say?”

  I swallowed. My mouth was so dry I could hardly get my tongue to move. “Okay,” I managed.

  “Don’t knock me over with your enthusiasm.”

  “No, really, I want to.”

  “Good.”

  I climbed the stairs to my room, shaking with relief, sat on my bed and looked around, and for the first time thought of it as just that—my room.

  So the Queen had been dead wrong when she asked if I was in a foul mood. Just as she shuffled past the booth on her way to the door, my cell phone began to describe a lazy circle on the table. I picked it up.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a severe thunderstorm watch out for today. Keep your eye on the western sky from about three o’clock on.”

  “Hi, Abe.”

  “Howya this morning, Lee?”

  “Good.”

  “Listen, you interested in another client? My lawyer—she’s up on 8th Street in the old town hall building—she’d like to have you do the odd delivery for her.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Great. I’ll give her your number, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure, Abe.”

  “Drop by today, if you get a chance, willya? I got some paperwork to send up to Lakshmi—that’s the lawyer.”

  Abe was a bookkeeper for a few small businesses on the Lakeshore. He also did tax returns for some of his neighbours.

  “You can meet her then. Catch up with you later. Don’t forget your raincoat.” He broke the connection.

  Cutter had bought me the phone a couple of weeks before, and he paid the fees. “I need to know I can get in touch with you whenever,” he had told me. I asked if he minded if I used the phone for other deliveries. Could I give the number to Abe, Andrea, and Reena?

  “No problem, good idea,” he had replied. “But always remember, your calls are easy to monitor. They have microwave dishes all over town, hunting down signals. Keep your calls short and don’t give too much away. Be vague. That throws Them off.”

  I saw Cutter three or four times a week now. I guess I worked for him, although it wasn’t like that. I took his mail to the post office, delivered meals from the café, cleaned up his kitchen, brought him his pills and took the empties to Andrea, picked up books at the library and returned them when he was finished with them. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything in his office, though, and I was absolutely forbidden to go upstairs.

  We talked a lot, too. Cutter was lonely. And he was an interesting guy—hard to follow sometimes, but if I paid close attention to what he was saying, most of it made sense, eventually. Sometimes I told him about what I was reading. I had made my way through The Old Man and the Sea—it wasn’t really about fishing—and Clancy had gotten me onto some other Hemingways.

  One minute I felt sorry for Cutter, another, I admired him. He was brilliant, just like Andrea had said. His brain was like his office, jammed with facts and ideas, and, like his computers, he analyzed things with blinding speed that left me standing with my mouth open, like someone in the street who’d missed his bus. He saw things in the stories I described, even if he hadn’t read them, and when I thought about what he said I realized he was right. At other times he seemed bewildered and helpless, like a kid lost in a big park. And at still others, when he was way down, he’d move and speak like a zombie, unconnected to the world. He’d get me down, too. On those days I didn’t stay long.

  Although we were different in every way, we had one thing in common. We didn’t fit in.

  Cutter was full of contradictions. He thought They got into his computers and monitored his phone calls, yet he had a lock on his mailbox. If They could watch him electronically, I reasoned, They could open his mail, couldn’t They? And who steals mail, anyway? He knew They were after him because he exposed Their evil designs, but he faithfully took his meds (or said he did).

  “Where do the meds come from?,” I asked him once.

  “The corps,” he replied. “They use the dope to control me.”

  “But it’s not working,” I insisted. “You’re after them.”

  “Exactly,” he said, as if that made things clear. He knew the corps sent control signals from Buffalo—that was why he hung the disks in his windows, to deflect the waves. But when I asked him why he didn’t find a doctor he trusted and have the chip removed from his brain, he waved his hand as if shooing away a fly.

  “Tried that.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “The nice doc assured me there was no electronic device lodged in my grey matter. Showed me an X-ray.” Cutter smiled his lopsided smile. “Told me that thinking there was something in my head was all in my head.”

  “And you didn’t believe it.”

  “Why should I? They’re all in on it.”

  How do you reason with someone like that?

  If you weren’t careful, you’d think that Cutter didn’t notice much, because he often seemed unfocused. But he observed things and stored the information away like a squirrel collecting nuts for winter. One time, just as I had finished unloading his dishwasher, he took my hands in his and examined the backs of my fingers.

  “They healed up okay,” he said.

  I pulled away. “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Skinned knuckles. Swollen hands. I noticed a while back, when you were giving me my mail. You must have been in a fight.”

  “What if I was?” I said, hanging a towel on a rack under the sink. An image of the anger on Eileen’s face flashed in my mind.

  “Do you fight a lot?”

  “Only when I have to. It’s not like I go looking for it.” Which wasn’t really true. When I had been trying to get into the Tarantulas I had done exactly that.

  “Do you like it?”

  “No. I don’t know. What kind of a question is that?”

  “Just wondered. Because, you know, there are other ways to solve problems. Have you thought about why you choose violence?”

  Cutter’s tone was neutral. Not like he was judging me. He spoke as if he was asking about the weather. But I still didn’t like the interrogation.

  “What’s it to you, anyway?”

  He looked away, then lowered his head.

  “No offense,” I added stupidly.

  Cutter almost never looked me directly in the eye, but he did then. “Lee, you’re better than that,” he said.

  I finished my coffee, stashed my cell phone and notebook in my bag and, on my way through to the back door, dropped the mug into the dishwasher in the kitchen. In the courtyard behind the café, the big pots blazed with blossoms I didn’t know the names of. I pushed the tank out into the alley, locked the door, mounted up, and pedalled over to Abe’s house.

  TWELVE

  THE OLD TOWN HALL was a brick box squatting at the corner of 8th Street and the Lakeshore. I locked the tank to the pipe railing at the rear door, went inside, and took the steps to the second floor. I followed the corridor to the end, where gold letters on frosted glass announced LAKSHMI SMITH AND ASSOCIATES.

  Inside were a desk, a couple of ratty-looking chairs, and a coffee table holding up a stack of magazines. A coat rack stood between a grimy window and a closed door. Behind the desk, a thin, grey-haired woman with a gold chain looped from her reading glasses around her neck was arranging files in a drawer. I stood at the desk until she decided to notice me.

  “How may I help you?” she said, looking me up and down as if I had fallen off the back of a garbage truck.

  I held out the big envelope Abe had given me. “Delivery for Lakshmi,” I said.

  “I trust you mean Ms. Smith,” she sniffed.

  “All I know is, Abe Krantz told me to bring this to Lakshmi,” I told her.

  “Ah, yes. The famous Mr. Krantz,” she mumbled, taking the envelope from me.

  “And he said Lakshmi—Ms. Smith—wanted me to deliver something.”

  “And you are?” she asked in a snotty voice.

  “Lee,” I said. “And you are?”

  Behind her half-moon glasses, her eyes flared for a half-second. Her mouth puckered, as if she was holding back a burp.

  “I am Mrs. Smith,” she announced.

  “Her mother?”

  “Her mother-in-law, if it’s any of your business,” she snapped.

  “Must be a bitch working for your daughter-in-law,” I commented. It was none of my business, and I really didn’t care, but the old bat was getting under my skin.

  She pushed an envelope almost identical to Abe’s across the desk. “The address is on the front.”

  I picked it up and waited.

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Five bucks, up front,” I replied.

  She shook her head, rattling the gold chain, took a bill from her purse and handed it over like a piece of lint she’d plucked from her sleeve.

  “Do have a nice day,” she said.

  After I dropped Lakshmi’s package off at another lawyer’s office in Long Branch, Cutter called me on the cell.

  “Can you pick up some mail, Lee?”

  “Sure. Be there in a few minutes.”

  “Don’t take your usual route,” he said.

  Cutter hadn’t shaved yet or changed out of his pajamas and robe. He locked up behind me, avoiding my ey
es. The printer was churning out pages. The shredder had been working overtime. A package sat on a table, balanced on a pile of file folders, duct-taped within an inch of its life.

  Cutter led me into the kitchen. “Can you make some tea?” he asked, his voice small and raspy.

  I set about filling the kettle and rinsing the teapot. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine, yeah, fine,” he lied, his eye twitching. He ran his fingers through greasy hair, sat down and began to dry-wash his hands.

  “Lee, you’re my best friend,” he said, looking up at me.

  I shrugged my shoulders, felt a hot flush creeping into my face. “Can I make you something to eat?”

  “No. Can’t hold anything down today. Put some honey in the tea. Never mind, I don’t have any honey. Don’t even like the stuff.” His voice rose to a shout. “I got them dead to rights, Lee!”

  I sat at the table across from him. Sometimes, I had found, it was better to play along with him until I found out what was itching. “That’s good,” I replied. “So you’re sending off your results in the mail?”

  “Results, yeah, results. In the mail. See, I put it all together. They won’t like my findings. I’m in the shit, now.”

  Cutter never swore. He was more than upset. He was scared. I wondered if I should call Andrea.

  “Someday, Lee, the world will be ruled by the corps. They’ve already gained enough power to influence governments—the corps call it partnership—and democracy is almost dead, but in the near future they’ll have taken over completely. Look at the wars of the last fifty years,” he went on, calmly, resigned, “they were all fought for money. All for the benefit of the corps.”

  The kettle whistled and I got up, dropped a couple of teabags into the pot and poured the water in. I took two mugs down from the cupboard and put them on the table.

  I took a chair. “Go on,” I said. I figured if he kept talking he might work himself loose from whatever had hold of him.

  “They taught us in school,” Cutter went on, “that wars were fought to end evil, or to spread democracy, but it was all lies. Wars were fought for silk and tea, spices, gold, diamonds. Nowadays it’s oil and gas and minerals.”

  He seemed to run down, like a CD player with a dying battery. He stared into his mug. I tried to make small talk, but he seemed to have slipped away somewhere.

  Finally I went into the office. Cutter followed me. I picked up the package. It was addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. At the door, I said, “Maybe you need some sleep.” I didn’t know what else to suggest.

  His voice was a notch above a whisper. He stared at the floor between us. “There are more than fifty wars going on somewhere in the world, right this minute,” he said.

  He took my hand and shook it. “I’ll see you, Lee,” he said. Then he smiled and added sadly, “I was a peacekeeper, once.” He closed the door softly behind me.

  As soon as I turned the corner, I phoned Andrea and told her I was worried about Cutter. She said she’d call his doctor. He wasn’t due for more meds, yet, Andrea said. Maybe he was just having a bad day.

  “He’s worse than bad,” I said.

  “People like Bruce are like that,” she said. “They just have to ride it out.”

  I wasn’t satisfied, but what did I know? What could I do? As if she was reading my mind she added, “The people around the person want to help, but sometimes there’s nothing anybody can do.”

  I took his package to the post office. I didn’t see him or hear from him for over a week. He wasn’t answering his phone. I knocked on his door a couple of times. It was as if he’d gone away.

  THIRTEEN

  “THIRTY-ONE!” I CROWED, and scooped up the pennies from the middle of the table.

  Reena threw down her cards. “I swear, if I didn’t have bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all.”

  “Stop complaining,” I said. “You won the deal. And you shouldn’t swear.”

  She blew her cigarette smoke in my direction. “Thanks for the advice, Father Mercer.”

  An hour or so earlier, Reena had called up to my room, where I was sprawled on the bed reading A Farewell to Arms. I still hadn’t put enough money aside for my TV. “Wanna come down and lose some of that extra money you’ve been making?” she hollered. “There’s nothing on TV and I’m out of magazines.”

  So we sat at the kitchen table under the fan, with the window open wide to catch whatever stray breeze wandered down 18th Street. A few wilted fries sat on a plate beside a beach of salt. Reena dealt a new hand.

  I picked up my three cards, arranged them, and banged the table, making the pennies jump.

  “You’re knocking already?”

  “Yup.”

  “Kids nowadays,” she said.

  She drew a card from the deck, squinted at it, and tossed it down with disgust. “I got eighteen.”

  “Too bad. Thirty for me.”

  I collected the pot—all ten pennies of it. The loser of the match had to spring for a take-out pizza. From upstairs came a chirping sound.

  “What’s that?” Reena asked.

  “I changed the ring tone on my cell,” I replied. “It’s supposed to sound like a tree frog.”

  “A tree frog. Which has what to do with telephones?”

  I got up from my chair. “I’ll let you know when I’ve answered it.”

  I climbed the stairs quickly, wondering who would call at ten o’clock at night. I hoped it was Cutter. I still hadn’t heard from him.

  “Lee? It’s Abe.”

  Abe Krantz didn’t sound like his usual merry self. His voice was low and cautious. It wasn’t about the weather this time.

  “Hi, Abe. What’s up?”

  “Um, this pal of yours, Bruce. Does he live on 13th?”

  “Yeah.” Why was Abe calling about Cutter? As far as I knew, they’d never met.

  Abe mentioned the house number. “Yup, that’s him,” I said. “What’s this—?”

  “I don’t want to alarm you, Lee. But I just picked something up on the scanner. You might want to get over there.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Take the cell with you. I’ll be here.”

  I skidded to a stop across the road from Cutter’s house and let the tank fall against a hedge. A cluster of cop cars along with an ambulance clogged the street, their roof lights blipping across the fronts of the buildings. Radios squawked. Cops milled around. One uniform pushed back the small crowd that had formed, another was unrolling yellow Do-Not-Cross tape to form a perimeter around the front yard and driveway. Cutter’s front door was open and I could see flashlight beams jumping around inside. I pushed through the onlookers and ducked under the tape.

  “Hey!” A uniform rushed forward and put her hand on my chest. “Get back on the other side of the tape.”

  “My friend lives here,” I said. “I’ve got to—”

  “Do as I say! Now!” she said, shoving me back.

  I knocked her arm aside, felt the buzz of adrenaline. “I told you—”

  My phone chirped. “Lee? Abe. Are you there, yet?”

  “They won’t let me across the line,” I said.

  “Calm down. Tell me what’s happening.”

  “I don’t know!” I shouted. “It’s a madhouse! There’s cops and—”

  Abe’s voice became very harsh and firm. “Tell me what you see.”

  I described what was going on, which as far as I could tell was nothing but noise and confusion.

  “They haven’t come out of the house yet?”

  “No.”

  “Now, listen. The cops have to follow procedure. They won’t let anyone past the tape, except maybe a relative. Ask one of the uniforms who’s in charge. See if you can get whoever that is to talk with you. Got it?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Take a deep breath and repeat what I just told you.”

  I went over Abe’s instructions. Talking to him calmed me down a bit. I waited, straining to see into the house. Why didn’t they turn on the lights? What were the cops doing in Cutter’s house, and where was he? When Cutter found out the authorities were in his office, he’d go right over the edge.

  Unless, I thought with a terrible sinking in my gut, he’s already gone over the edge and barricaded himself in a room, ranting about conspiracies.

  I called Reena to tell her what was happening. She began asking questions. “I gotta keep the line clear,” I said, and cut her off.