The Blue Helmet Page 7

  The waiting was agony. Around me, neighbours whispered excitedly among themselves.

  “Who lives there, anyway?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know,” another answered. “Some guy. I’ve only seen him once or twice since he moved in.”

  “Whatever happened,” a woman commented from behind me, “it ain’t good.”

  Maybe Cutter isn’t even there, I thought. That’s why I haven’t heard from him. He went away someplace. Maybe there’s a gas leak or backed-up sewer inside.

  A look around smashed my pathetic theories. There were no emergency vehicles other than the police cars and the ambulance. Its rear doors hung open, with no paramedics in view. The cops had been inside for a while. Cutter must be in there, too.

  Finally, a man in a suit jacket came out onto the verandah. A badge was clipped to his jacket pocket. He came down the steps and along Cutter’s sidewalk, flanked by two uniforms.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “I got information you need.”

  The plainclothes cop, a tall skinny guy with wire-rimmed glasses, peeled off a pair of medic’s gloves. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I know the guy who lives here. What’s going on?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bruce Cutter.”

  “Are you and him related?”

  “No. He has no relatives here. He lives alone.”

  He ducked under the yellow tape. “Let’s get in the car,” he said.

  He led me to an unmarked car with a revolving red light sitting on the dash. We got in and he turned off the light and tossed it behind him onto the back seat. He spoke into his radio for a bit, dropped the handset onto the seat, then turned to me. Asked me to identify myself, give my address.

  “You say you know Mr. Cutter.”

  I swallowed and nodded.

  “Would you say you were close?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. Then I added, “Very.”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. We can’t be sure yet, but it looks like suicide.”

  PART TWO

  CUTTER

  “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”

  —Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

  ONE

  AUTUMN SWEPT AWAY THE summer heat and brought a blaze of orange and yellow to the maples in the park across the Lakeshore, and new rhythms to the neighbourhood. Droves of students spilled out of streetcars and buses, and the café tables reserved for the street people filled up again as the weather cooled.

  I didn’t go to school that fall. Reena was disappointed. I wasn’t ready for another big change in my life, I explained. I liked my job at the café, and I enjoyed getting out on the tank every day. I wanted things to stay the same for a while. She said she understood.

  I was pedalling against the wind along Symon Street in Mimico one afternoon after a drug delivery, when the phone chirped. I pulled up at the curb.

  “It’s Mrs. Smith speaking.”

  “Yeah?”

  There was a pause. “I see your manners haven’t improved at all.”

  “I’d hate to disappoint you,” I said.

  “Are you able to come to the office at one o’clock?”

  I looked at my watch. “Sure.”

  “Don’t be late,” she said.

  “I’m never late,” I said, but she had hung up.

  Sharp on time I found cheery old Mrs. Smith behind her desk, jabbing stamps into a damp sponge before pressing them onto envelopes.

  “Got a package for me?” I asked.

  “Take a seat. Ms. Smith will be with you momentarily.” She picked up her phone, stabbed a button, and announced my presence.

  “Go on in,” she ordered, and went back to assaulting the outgoing mail.

  I had met Lakshmi a couple of times. She was a tall dark-skinned woman with a wide smile and a way of talking that didn’t fit the businesslike image that her mother-in-law tried to project. She was sitting behind her desk, a telephone headset on, tapping a pencil on a file folder as she talked. When she saw me, she waved me to a chair.

  Her office was small and totally unlike the lawyer’s pads you see on TV. No thick carpet on the floor, no wood panelling, no liquor cabinet. Lakshmi was wearing leather jeans and a shirt rather than a business suit. She ended her call and pulled a file out of a drawer.

  “Nice to see you, Lee,” she said.

  “You, too.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Fine.”

  She was working up to something, but what? Lakshmi had never invited me into her office before. Maybe she wasn’t satisfied with the service. Probably she was going to criticize or fire me for mouthing off at her mother-in-law.

  “Lee, I asked you to come by because I need to discuss something with you.”

  I braced myself, ready to get up and leave the office. “Okay.”

  “You were a friend of Bruce Cutter’s.”

  “Um, yeah,” I said. How did she know? “So?”

  “I’m—was—well, I guess I still am, his lawyer.”

  I looked at the wall above her head, losing focus. Unwelcome thoughts about Cutter and his self-murder came flooding back. Why had he done it, I had asked myself time and time again. And as many times, stung by guilt, I had gone over my last visit to his house, second by second, raking for clues that I should have picked up on, hints that he was getting ready to pack it in. He had shaken hands with me. At the time I had thought it was just Cutter being his unusual self. Should I have known what he was planning?

  After a while, the shock of what he had done to himself had given way to an aching emptiness. He was, I realized after he was gone, the only real friend I had ever had. At the same time, I hated him because he had taken that friend away from me. Whenever Cutter barged into my mind I wanted to hit something.

  “Lee?”

  “Sorry,” I said. Then added, “I didn’t realize you knew each other.”

  “We go back a ways, since he moved into the neighbourhood a few years ago. He was one of my first clients. I handled all his business and personal affairs.”

  “Oh.”

  “But in spite of that, I knew very little about him. He was very, er, secretive.”

  Images of locks and bars and covered windows passed through my mind. “He sure was.”

  “I also handle his estate,” Lakshmi added. “Which is why I need to talk with you.”

  She straightened up and opened a file. Her voice took on a firmer tone.

  “Lee, this document is Bruce Cutter’s last will and testament. You know what that is.”

  “Sure. But what’s that got to do with me?”

  “It names you as a beneficiary. My duty here today is to inform you of Bruce’s wishes, explain the implications, and answer any questions you might have. It’s taken a long time to get things in order because of the, well, unusual nature of his death. After I’ve gone over everything, I’ll give you a document that outlines your inheritance in detail. Other documents relevant to the bequest will follow.”

  I fell back in my chair. “I didn’t get any of that,” I said. “Bruce left me something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t speak for him, Lee. But you were his friend. Now, let me go through the details. Stop me any time you wish. Ready?”

  Not ready, I almost said. I didn’t want anything from him. I wanted him puttering around his office, guarding his garbage, ransacking the Net for data on the corps. I wanted him not to be dead.

  “The bequest divides itself into two categories,” Lakshmi began. “Real property and securities. The house on 13th Street and its contents are yours, free and clear. All taxes and insurance and utilities are paid up for this calendar year. Okay so far?”

  I hadn’t taken in a word, but I nodded anyway.

  “There are some low-risk investments, earning enough interest to keep up the house, and to further your education, if you wish. It’s held in trust until you’re eighteen, at which time it comes to you in its entirety. But I am instructed to disburse reasonable amounts to you as and when you wish. You only have to tell me ahead of time so I can make arrangements.”

  Lakshmi closed the file and linked her fingers together on top of it. “I know this is pretty hard to absorb at first, Lee. I’m here any time you have a question. Bruce made it clear he wanted me to shepherd you along if necessary.”

  I nodded again, my head fogged in, my throat thickening. Cutter had given me his house? Money? Why?

  Lakshmi pushed two envelopes across her desk. On top of them was a ring thick with keys. I stood, picked them up, shook hands with her, and left the office. In the parking lot at the rear of the building, I stuffed the envelopes and keys into my jacket pocket, unlocked the tank, and pedalled toward the café.

  Along the Lakeshore, I rode as if I had somehow passed into what Cutter used to call Never-Never Land. Nothing made sense. Except that my friend was dead, and I felt as if I had stolen something from him.

  I kept the inheritance to myself, mostly because I wanted time to wrap my mind around it. The keys and unopened envelopes lay in a drawer in my dresser. Every once in a while I’d remember that, according to Lakshmi, I owned a house. I had money. Which in my neighbourhood meant I was rich. But I still couldn’t believe all that was real. So I continued to plod through my routines, going through the motions—as I had since the night I got Abe’s phone call.

  Near the end of October, Indian summer glided into the neighbourhood for a few days. On Sunday morning I picked up my book from my dresser, planning to take it down to the marina in the park, sit on a bench in the sun and relax—if I could. I was halfway down the stairs when I reversed direction, returned to my room and pulled open the dresser drawer. I tucked the envelopes between the pages of my book, pocketed the keys, and headed for the lake.

  I took a bench by a small lagoon. Canada geese squabbled among themselves out on the water. Ducks squatted on flat rocks at the edge, heads tucked under their wings. In-line skaters, joggers, parents pushing baby carriages, came and went on the bike path. Dogs pulled their owners across the grass.

  I tried to read my book, but gave in to curiosity. Both envelopes had Lakshmi’s letterhead on them. The first contained one sheet with her signature, saying pretty much what she had told me in her office, only in more legal language. The second held a hand-written note.

  Lee,

  If you’re reading this, Lakshmi has explained everything. Try to forgive me for what I’ve done; and try not to feel bad. I never did plan to stay around for too long.

  Do what you want with the stuff in the house.

  —Cutter

  P.S. Don’t forget to lock up.

  I laughed when I read the last line. I folded the letter and the note and put them back in their envelopes. And then, for a long time, I looked out over the lake to the faint line in the distance where the water met the sky.

  TWO

  I HAD BEEN DOING a lot of work for Abe Krantz lately, delivering his take-out and shuttling documents back and forth to his clients—it’s faster than the mail, he told me, and it makes the old folks feel important.

  One day I found him sitting under a table umbrella on his back lawn, puffing a cigar and reading. Behind him, the propeller on his weather station turned lazily. I put his package on the table and, as always, he invited me to sit for a while. But first I went inside, fetched a lemonade for myself, filled an ice bucket for him, and collected his scotch from his office.

  “What’s it about?” I asked, pointing to the thick volume on his lap.

  Abe was refusing to admit summer was gone. He was wearing checked Bermuda shorts and a striped T-shirt that showed he had once been a muscular guy, but had rounded off. I set down the tray of drinks and poured him a scotch and added ice.

  He took a sip and sat back. “Ah, the staff of life,” he said, his voice a low growl.

  If you say so.

  “Where would civilization be without scotch and cigars?”

  “Sober and cancer-less?”

  He laughed. “Anyway, to answer your question, this book is about weather and history.”

  “Why the dinosaurs died off—stuff like that?”

  “More like, the reason General So-and-so lost the battle of Such-and-such was because of the unexpected blizzard. Or, the rainy weather brought out more than the usual number of mosquitoes, which upped the incidence of malaria among the troops, which depleted the army, which delayed the invasion, which—”

  “I think I get it. The whole book is like that?”

  “Yup.”

  “Your hobby, the weather—you’re a little like Cutter was,” I said. “He was really analytical.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He invented a computer game and, well, I haven’t played it, but it’s based on solving riddles and puzzles. And he did tons of research, put it together to make theories. Sometimes they made sense. Cutter was really smart.”

  Abe nodded. The breeze off the lake flapped the fringes of the umbrella. It felt good, cool and fresh, on my skin.

  “It’s tough, losing a friend,” Abe said quietly.

  “Yeah.”

  “My wife, Helen, she was my best friend.”

  When he raised his glass to his mouth, his hand was shaking.

  Even though it was mine, now—Lakshmi had sent me all the documents to prove it—I stayed away from the house on 13th Street, with its darkened windows and haunted atmosphere. When a delivery took me to the area, I avoided the block between the Lakeshore and Morrison Street. I was scared to go into the place. Cutter had died there. He had gulped down a jar of sleeping pills, fallen back on his bed, and drifted away forever.

  Why had he given me his house? What was I supposed to do with it? Did he expect me to move in? Did he even know why he had left me his home? After all, as he had told me himself many times, “I’m cracked.”

  I thought about it a lot as I pedalled around town, or peeled potatoes for the soup of the day, or emptied the café dishwasher—or when I lay sleepless in the middle of the night. After a while, I told Reena about my inheritance and asked her if she thought I should just sell the house and be done with it. She said to wait a while, not to make any decisions yet.

  And then it occurred to me that if Cutter did have a reason for giving me his house—if it hadn’t been just an irrational flash in his brain but part of a plan—the answer would be in the house itself. And the only way to find out was to push aside my fear and go there.

  It was a cold, dreary afternoon, just after Reena had hung the CLOSED sign on the café door, when I mounted the tank and pedalled off to 13th Street, the ring of keys like a rock in my pocket. The rain, driven by the wind, lashed my face like sleet, and by the time I reached the house I was wet and shivering. The front yard was spattered with sodden leaves.

  The red light glowing on the video camera over the front door gave me the creepy feeling that someone still lived there. I fished out the keys and fumbled through the bunch until I had the locks undone, and went inside, careful to lock up again. Then I shook my head, mumbled to myself, and unlocked the doors, determined not to fall into Cutter’s paranoia. I made a mental note to bring extra rings with me next time so I could separate the keys into categories.

  The place was so quiet I could hear the kitchen clock ticking. I found the light switch and suddenly I was back in the familiar, messy world of Cutter’s office. Little red and green lights along the desk top told me the computers and peripherals had never been switched off, and the TV monitors showed the four outside locations covered by the cameras. I had never noticed before, but Cutter had rigged them to rotate the images through the four monitors, probably to prevent the images from burning the screens.

  The house was warm and stuffy, with an underlying odour in the air. The smell grew stronger as I entered the kitchen. I looked under the sink and pulled out a sack of stinking potatoes in an obscene tangle of white shoots.

  I took a plastic garbage bag and dumped the potatoes inside. In the fridge I discovered a container of yogurt giving off a powerful stench, some limp celery, a few wilted carrots, and half a cheese sandwich. All of it went into the garbage with the potatoes.

  I tied up the bag and unlocked the back door. In the garage I found a garbage pail and tossed the bag inside. I saw a lawn mower, a trimmer, a rake, a few shovels, a couple of fuel cans. Cutter didn’t own a car.

  I went back inside and began to clean up the kitchen. The sense that I didn’t belong in the house was like a voice nagging in my ear, but I kept going, forcing myself to finish what I had come for. I washed the countertop, the table, and the floor. I wiped down the shelves and walls inside the fridge. I emptied the dishwasher and stacked the dishes in the cupboards.

  As I was hanging a towel over one of the chairs to dry, my cell chirped. It was Andrea.

  “Are you free for a delivery, Lee?” I thought about my plan to force myself upstairs to take a look around. Cutter’s room—the place where he’d killed himself—was up there.

  “Perfect timing,” I said into the phone. “Be right there.”

  THREE

  I WAS ON THE MOVE all the next day and didn’t get to Cutter’s until after supper. This time I was determined not to let the place beat me, even though I was going in after dark. Once inside, I kept telling myself, you can’t tell if it’s day or night, anyway.

  I went first to the basement. It was well lit, dry and uncluttered. The furnace rumbled away in one corner next to an old table and a half-dozen broken chairs. There was a shower stall beside the water heater, its taps and showerhead crusted with lime deposit. The door on the washing machine was flipped up, and a sock drooped over the lip of the open dryer door like a hound’s tongue. All the windows were covered with black cloth tacked to the frames.

  Back on the main floor, I thought I’d start a kind of inventory of all the stuff in the office. In a way I was interested to see some of Cutter’s research. But I soon saw that it would take me ages to go through all the files piled on the tables. Hours to toss out the magazines. Days to examine all his printouts. Defeated, I sat down at the desk and flipped through the address book beside the phone. The handwritten entries were neat, listing a yard service, grocery delivery, contact numbers for telephone, natural gas, electricity accounts, my cell number, the pharmacy, the café. Beside the telephone company information was a pencilled note, “They’re in on it!”