The Helper (2 page)

‘Your what?’

‘My writing.’

Her eyes bulge. ‘You write? Poetry?’

‘Fiction, actually. Short stories mostly, although I’m trying my hand at a novel. It doesn’t come easy to me, though. You know what somebody once said about writing? All you
have to do is sit at a typewriter and open up a vein. That’s kind of how I’m finding it.’

‘I know what you mean,’ she says dreamily, like he’s her newfound soulmate. She doesn’t know he hasn’t written a single line of fiction since he graduated from
school.

She sucks up another deep lungful of the musty air. ‘Maybe we could do a trade. One of your stories for one of my poems. Next time you drop in.’

Here we go . . .

‘Or sooner.’

She blinks. ‘What?’

‘I’m not in this area too often. I live upstate. But maybe . . . well, I was just thinking . . . if I could call you or something . . .’

Her mouth opens and closes like she’s a landed trout. ‘I . . . I’m not sure . . .’

‘That’s okay. I understand. Why would you give your number out to a perfect stranger? Tell you what: I’ll give you my number. If you want to call me, that’s fantastic. If
not, then, well, I understand.’

He fishes a pen from his inside pocket, makes a show of looking for a piece of blank paper. Before she can find one he points to her arm. She’s wearing a woolen sweater with sleeves that
reach only to the elbow. Perfect.

‘Give me your arm. Come on, that way I know you won’t lose it.’

She hesitates, but only for a second. Smiling, she lays her arm on the counter. What harm can it do, right?

He clicks his biro, scribbles a number in blue ink across the inside of her wrist.

‘No washing until you call me, okay?’

She laughs as she glances at the number, then follows this up with a frown.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘I, uh, I don’t even know your name.’

He motions for her to surrender her arm again. ‘Close your eyes,’ he says. ‘No peeking. You can look at it when I’m gone.’

‘Why? Is it that bad?’

‘It’s . . . unusual.’

She sighs, then sniffs, then does as she has been asked.

He looks down at the column of white flesh with its network of blue-green veins. Like marble.

It’s the moment. His plan has worked. He’s surprised at how easy it’s been. Perhaps it’s because, even though she’s not conscious of it, her soul is crying out for
help.

It’s okay, he wants to tell her. I’m here now.

‘What’s taking you so long?’ she asks with a giggle.

He does it then. One swift motion.

Her eyes pop open. He sees the total lack of comprehension in them as her brain struggles to switch context, to make sense of this unexpected phenomenon.

Because what she sees is a geyser of blood spurting from her wrist.

And when the pain strikes home and her brain realizes that something is seriously wrong here and she opens her mouth to scream, he tightens his grip on her wrist and strikes again with his
scalpel. And again, and again, moving higher and higher up her bare arm.

And when her hand becomes so slick with her hot blood that she is able to wrench it out of his grasp, he steps around the counter and continues his methodical onslaught. The screams continue as
he slashes at her face and neck, at her full, ripe breasts, and when she finally spins away he stands and watches as she whirls and crashes into walls and bookshelves, the blood spraying from her
body onto all those books, all those words.

When her heart has almost nothing left to pump and her brain has decided the fight is over, she collapses in a corner of the room. The blood leaks more slowly now from the gaping mouths in her
flesh.

He walks over to her, looks down at her twitching figure.

Paper cuts
, he thinks. It was a hint.

Sit at a typewriter and open up a vein
. Another hint.

Hell, I practically told you why I came here.

He knows the precise moment when life leaves her. He’s witnessed it before. It’s as if every cell of the body sighs with the lifting of its burden of coping with the world.

For a couple of minutes he absorbs the peace of it all, allows the calm to percolate through his system.

He surveys the scene. Messy, very messy. But it had to be this way.

He’s drenched in her blood. It’s on his face, his hands, all down his nice white shirt. A drop of it trickles down his cheek and onto his lips. He licks it away.

He walks over to the front of the store, his shoes squelching on the carpet. He turns the lock on the door, flips the sign to ‘Closed’, then moves back to the counter and retrieves
his bag. Carrying it into the small office at the rear, he strips, washes himself down at the sink, then changes into the clean clothes he brought with him. He puts the blood-soaked garments into
the bag and retraces his path to the front door.

When the street seems momentarily clear, he unlocks the door, steps outside and walks without hurry to his car.

As he fires up the engine he takes a last look at the bookstore. It looks so small, so dull, so lacking in energy and adventure. So absent of life.

God knows how they stay in business, he thinks.

Detective Second Grade Callum Doyle tilts his face an inch toward the grimy window of the squadroom, allowing the slender fingers of sunlight to caress his face. Spring is
calling him. He could so easily follow that call right now. It wouldn’t have to be a long trip – we’re not talking a vacation in New England here. Maybe just a short stroll along
the street to Tompkins Square Park. Somewhere where there are flowers and trees and kids playing and young couples enjoying the sap rising. On a day like today he feels certain he could ignore the
occasional drunken bum sleeping it off on a bench, the drifting odor of canine and human feces, the mentally imbalanced having heated arguments with themselves, the clattering of skateboards, the
junkies looking to score, the childless women talking to their dogs as though they were babies. Sure he could overlook all those things, on a day like today. Anything has to be better than
continuing to listen to the interminable life story of Mrs Sachs.

She has told him about how she came to New York at the age of three, her father wanting to put his tailoring skills to good use in the garment district. Naturally enough she became a dressmaker
herself, but gave it up to go to drama school. It was one night after singing her heart out despite a strained throat that she met and fell in love with Bernard, a jeweler by profession and doing
very well for himself, thank you very much. They married, he continued to prosper. Twenty years ago they had amassed enough riches to buy a townhouse on Stuyvesant Street. Six months later Bernard
died when he stepped out in front of a car. Doyle is not sure whether he is supposed to laugh or not when she tells him that, ironically, the car that killed him was an Opel.

‘You have beautiful eyes,’ Mrs Sachs croaks at Doyle. ‘In the sunlight they’re like jewels. Emeralds. Did anybody ever tell you that before?’

He looks across the desk. Mrs Sachs’s own eyes are milky. It’s hard to tell what color they are behind the film. She has to be ninety if she’s a day. And now she’s
hitting on him?

‘My
wife
,’ he says with emphasis. ‘Sometimes I think it’s the only reason she married me.’

Mrs Sachs sneaks out a hint of a smile. ‘Is she what brought you to America?’

Doyle feels the hurt, although he knows he shouldn’t. When he was whisked across the Atlantic at the age of eight, he made it one of his most urgent tasks to shed the Irish accent that
most of the natives here found impenetrable and some used as an excuse for beating the crap out of him. It comes as a shock to discover he hasn’t been as successful as he has always believed,
and he finds his tone suddenly becoming less accommodating.

‘Mrs Sachs—’

‘Olivia,’ she interrupts. ‘Please, call me Olivia.’

‘Olivia,’ he says, although he intends it to be the last time he gets so familiar, ‘you mind if we cut to the chase here? I’m still not sure why exactly you felt the need
to speak with a detective.’

‘My daughter has eyes like yours,’ she says, and now Doyle wants to pick up his stapler and fire its contents into those orbs of his that she finds so remarkable. For Christ’s
sake, he thinks, what did I do to deserve this, on a beautiful spring day like today?

‘Not green,’ continues the old lady – and she is certainly old: a hundred if she’s a day. ‘Blue, actually. But stunning to look at. Like a wolf’s eyes. Or a
husky. Have you ever seen a husky’s eyes?’

Doyle suppresses a sigh and tries again. He has patience – he has been trained to have patience – but sometimes . . .

‘Mrs Sachs—’

‘She worked in the South Tower.’

And now the spell is cast. She has him. Doyle is a cop, and like every other cop in this city, anything connected with the World Trade Center has a direct line to his very core. 9/11.
Nine-One-One. The mother of all emergency calls. The mere mention of that day is enough to bring a lump to his throat. He can almost taste the dust.

He looks more intently at the woman opposite, and she suddenly seems so frail, so in need of human support. Her beige coat – an expensive one with a fur trim – seems baggy on her
now, as if she has shrunk. She has to be a hundred and twenty years old if she’s a day.

‘Her name is Patricia,’ she says, and Doyle notices her use of the present tense. ‘She worked for Hadlow-Jones. You know it? The insurance company? She was doing so well
there.’

Doyle remains silent. Spring is put aside while he awaits her story.

‘She called me that day. On her cellphone. Twice, actually. The first time to tell me she was planning to come see me after work. The second time to tell me she thought she was about to
die.’

She pauses for a moment while she turns her own gaze toward the window. Doyle guesses that she is traveling back in time, that she is hearing her daughter’s words all over again. Moments
like that, they never leave you.

‘She told me she didn’t think she would be able to make it to my house after all. A slight change of plan, she called it. She kept apologizing, because she felt she was letting me
down. But the fire . . . She didn’t think she would be able to make it through the flames.’

Mrs Sachs faces Doyle again. ‘In the background I could hear people screaming. Have you ever heard the sound of a roomful of people all screaming for their lives? You don’t want to,
believe me. It’s the worst sound on earth. A sound like that tears your heart out. It made me say a prayer. You want to know what I prayed for at that moment? I said to God, let it be me in
that building. I’m old, I’ve had a good life, let it be me who has to walk into that wall of fire. Anything to save my baby.’

Doyle has been here before. Many times, with the relatives of many victims. Usually he will toss them a crumb of condolence: ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ or some equally pat
phrase that has been robbed of all sincerity through overuse. But Mrs Sachs has stepped over a threshold and touched him. She deserves more. And so he offers her his patience and his silence.

‘They never found her. Not a trace. Not a hair, not a fingernail, nothing. But still they offered me money. She was insured with Hadlow-Jones themselves, and they offered me a lot of
money. You think I needed money? My husband, God rest his soul, was a very successful man. I told them if they wanted to give me something useful, they could give me proof that my daughter was
dead. I’m still waiting for them to get back to me.’

‘You’re not alone, Mrs Sachs. There are many, many victims who still haven’t been identified. In a lot of cases it’s simply that the technology isn’t advanced
enough yet. Maybe one day soon you’ll get the closure you need. I hope so.’

She looks at him for a moment, and he wonders if that’s all she came to hear. A splinter of hope to take back to her empty townhouse.

She reaches for the leather purse on her lap and unsnaps the silver clasp, then reaches in and slips out a buff-colored envelope. She passes it across the desk to Doyle.

He opens the envelope and slides out a grainy black-and-white photograph. It shows a city street scene. Crowds of people hurtling along a sidewalk. One woman in particular stands out because she
is not looking where she is going. Instead, her head is twisted toward the camera and she is smiling. The woman is smartly dressed but not attractive. Her smile seems forced somehow.

‘Your daughter?’ Doyle asks. He wonders why she didn’t bring a better photograph than this. When Mrs Sachs doesn’t answer he says, ‘When was this taken?’

‘Last month,’ she answers.

Doyle stares at her, but finds no trace of mischief hidden in her lined features. ‘Last month? So she’s alive?’

‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘I don’t know. I think so. I mean, it looks like Patricia. But it’s so hard to tell. The photo, it’s so grainy. I . . . I don’t know
what to think anymore.’

‘Please, don’t get upset. Can I ask who took the picture?’

‘A man by the name of Travis Repp. Well, actually, somebody who works for Mr Repp.’

‘And Mr Repp is?’

‘A private detective.’

‘What made you go to him? Someone recommend him to you?’

‘Actually, he contacted me. He just called me on the telephone one day, about two years ago. He told me he’d done a lot of work on the 9/11 victims. Mainly on behalf of relatives,
insurance companies, the firms that were in the Towers, like that. He said he wanted to talk with me about my daughter. About Patricia. I told him there was nothing to discuss. She was gone. She
was killed on that day. I had no reason to talk with him about it. And then he said maybe there was a reason. He said he had learned something about Patricia. Something
curious
, was the
word he used.’

‘Did he say what it was?’

‘Not at first. He suggested a meeting. He even said he would come over to my house to discuss it.’

‘And did you have the meeting?’

‘Of course. Why would I not? Look, Detective Doyle, I know what you’re thinking. I may be old, but I’m not senile. He is a real private detective with a real office. It’s
on Thirty-third Street. Close to Third Avenue. I’ve been there myself on several occasions.’