The Helper (41 page)

‘Not Jap food. We not Japanese. We Chinese. Is not same.’

‘Whatever. It’s your garbage. From your restaurant. It stinks. It brings rats. Put your crap in your own friggin trashcans.’

He hopes that that will be an end to it. He hopes they will get the message and say sorry, and he can go home, secure in the knowledge that his waste will never again be adulterated by these
people.

But no.

‘Maybe . . .’ says one of the men. ‘Mmm . . . maybe is your people eat Chinese food. Is people in your building trash.’

Harold wonders how these people get by on such piss-poor English. Well, I ain’t got all night to teach ’em how to talk good, he thinks.

He wags a finger at them. ‘No you don’t. I know my tenants.

They haven’t changed for the past five years. I know their trash. This is restaurant garbage we’re talking about here. Your garbage.’

But the waiter is undeterred. ‘Yes, I think so. Is your people trash. Not restaurant.’

Harold looks each of them in the eye. He sees no sign of contrition, and every sign that they are going to continue to act dumb when it suits them. This softly-softly approach isn’t even
scratching the surface.

Time to break out the big guns.

‘I’ll be back,’ he says, thinking they must have heard of Arnie. Everybody’s seen the Terminator movies. Even the Japs.

Tell someone you have a dog called Agamemnon, and they’ll assume you have a Rottweiler or a bull mastiff or some other nasty-ass monster just looking for the next limb to
tear off. Geoffrey Landis’s Agamemnon is a tiny West Highland terrier. The only chance it has of killing something is to get it stuck in its throat. He’s had it for five years now
– two years longer than he’s lived with Stuart. Probably have it a lot longer after his relationship with Stuart too, the way things are going.

He is ambling along East Sixth Street, heading in the direction of Tompkins Square Park. Aggie is on one of those extensible leashes that allows him to have a good roam and to investigate all
those aromas that assail his doggy senses.

Stuart should be on a leash too. I mean, why does he think it’s perfectly okay to entertain other men in bars without even telling me? What if I did the same? What would he say about
that?

Ahead, a burly man turns the corner of the block and starts coming toward Geoffrey. Although not as the crow flies. He weaves along the sidewalk as though he’s aboard a ship in a
storm.

Geoffrey pauses. Winds in the leash a little. Wonders whether to cross the street. The man looks far too inebriated to be capable of putting up much of a fight, but Geoffrey’s maxim has
always been that discretion is the better part of valor.

The man continues his serpentine meandering, but then lurches to his right and trips over his own feet. He crashes into an array of trashcans outside a drugstore, knocking a couple of them over
and causing their contents to spill out onto the sidewalk.

The drunk struggles to his feet again, but then seems confused as to where he was going. Seemingly at random, he selects a bearing and follows it, apparently oblivious to the fact that
he’s going back the way he came.

When the man has disappeared around the corner, Geoffrey resumes both his walk and his train of thought. He gets to the corner of the block, still seething over Stuart’s actions, and tries
to decide which way to go next. It doesn’t seem sensible to follow the path of the drunk – Geoffrey’s other maxim being that it is better to be safe than sorry – so he could
either continue along Sixth or take a left onto Second Avenue. Whichever direction he chooses, he thinks he should take his time about it. Give Stuart something to worry about. And if he phones me
I’ll just ignore it. Maybe then he’ll realize just what—

He sees them then. Seated at the table in the window of that nice Italian restaurant across the street.

Antonio.

Or, to be precise, Antonio plus one. The plus one being a male friend. Although ‘friend’ seems a somewhat weak description, given that he has just twirled something onto his fork and
pushed it into the mouth of Antonio.

Geoffrey’s evening suddenly seems a whole lot brighter.

It’s like disturbing a hornet’s nest.

When he walks back in carrying all those garbage sacks, the staff go crazy. All running around like headless chickens, yelling and jabbering.

Harold can’t stop a smile of satisfaction creeping into his jowly face. This is what you call an entrance.

When they descend on him, he holds his ground. He notices that they seem to have a leader now, an old guy with wild eyes and wild gray hair that looks to have been cut by its owner.

‘What you do?’ cries the old man.

‘Your garbage,’ says Harold, dropping the bags onto the floor. ‘I’m bringing it back to you.’

‘No. Not our garbage. We tell you before. Not garbage from here. You take back.’

The man picks up one of the sacks and pushes it into the arms of Harold, then bends to retrieve another one.

‘Not yours, huh? Okay, let’s see.’

Harold digs the fingers of both hands into the bag he’s holding. The flimsy plastic gives way easily, and he rips the whole thing open in one movement. As its contents hit the floor, a
brown wet sludge splashes onto the old man’s shoes, and he jumps back in horror. Harold hears gasps from the customers, and even some laughter. They seem to be enjoying the show. The staff,
on the other hand, are yammering furiously again and looking to each other to decide who’s going to do something about this refuse-slinging lunatic.

‘Well, what do we have here?’ says Harold. ‘Looks like gook food to me. And if my eyes don’t deceive me, I’d say those are napkins just like the ones you got on
your tables here. Let’s try another one, why don’t we?’

He doesn’t wait for an answer. Just picks up another bag and tears it wide open, enabling it to disgorge its stinking sodden payload onto the intricately patterned Chinese carpet.

The staff are working themselves up into a frenzy now. They’re jostling each other and pointing at Harold and barking commands, but nobody seems to know what to do. It’s left to the
old man to take action. He grabs at the third bag as Harold lifts it. Tries to yank it away from him. For a few seconds the pair form an absurd sight as they tug back and forth. It’s East
versus West in a wrestling match for a prize that is literally garbage.

The inevitable occurs when the bag splits, and once again a pile of detritus cascades to the floor.

And that’s when time freezes.

This isn’t Chinese food, or Japanese food, or any kind of food for that matter.

It’s paper, mostly. Newspapers and magazines.

But there’s something else too.

It hits the floor hard and rolls across the carpet, stopping when it bumps up against the soiled shoes of the elderly restaurant owner. Everyone looks down at it. Customers seated at the nearest
tables get to their feet for a clearer view. The yelling stops. The warring factions are on the same side now, united against whatever may have brought about the incredible apparition that has
landed in their midst.

Harold stares at the object in disbelief. Is it really what it looks like?

When the place erupts again – the screams of horror, the yells of fear and confusion, the sounds of people retching and vomiting – Harold knows he is not mistaken. Everybody else has
seen the item for what it is.

A human head.

Geoffrey doesn’t move for several minutes. He remains on the street corner, a huge smile on his face as he dreams about how he is going to break his news to Stuart.

That boss of yours? Antonio? The one who took you for a drink? The one you think is so good-looking? Wanna know something about him?

And then it hits him. How bitchy his imagined words sound. His smile drops away, to be replaced by immense sadness at his planned cruelty to the most important person in his life.

Because what he realizes then is that Stuart was being honest with him all along. There was nothing to it. A harmless drink with the boss – that’s all it was.

I need to make it up to him, he thinks. I should go back there right now and tell him how sorry I am for jumping to conclusions and being spiteful. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

He almost wants to run across the street and knock on the restaurant window and blow Antonio a kiss for his unwitting part in all this. But he doesn’t. Instead, he turns away, feeling that
he is a happier and wiser man.

Agamemnon seems happy too, although maybe not so wise, buried as he is in the trash that the drunk spilled onto the ground. Geoffrey tightens the leash and tries to yank him away, but the dog
continues with its burrowing into the mound.

‘Aggie, come on! What the hell have you got there?’

Geoffrey takes a few steps closer. He sees that Agamemnon is concentrating on one particular garbage bag, ripping at it with his front paws and teeth.

‘Aggie!’

He heaves on the leash, dragging the dog backwards as its claws scrabble on the sidewalk for purchase. It’s only once Aggie is out of the way that Geoffrey gets a good look at the item of
interest now exposed to the air.

It looks like . . .

Geoffrey brings a hand to his mouth as he utters a high-pitched giggle.

Well, it looks like . . . An ass. A tush. A pair of buttocks. All by themselves.

It has to be something else. A part of a store mannequin, maybe. Something like that. It can’t just be—

But when he steps closer and sees the tattoo of the angel at the base of the spine, its wings unfurled over the wound-ridden globes of flesh, when the aroma hits him and he is instantly
transported into a butcher’s store, when his dog continues to strain to get back to its feast of raw meat – that’s when he knows this is no dummy.

And that’s when he scurries to the curb to empty his stomach.

She hears the voice, but it seems just a faint drone in the distance. She doesn’t catch the words.

She stares at the television, but the pictures make no sense. They are just blurs of color.

There’s a cup of tea on the table in front of her. It’s cold and untouched.

Her senses are almost closed. They will stay that way until things are right again.

Something touches her shoulder. The voice repeats, louder and more insistent this time. The words are forced into her head.

‘Nicole. Come to bed. You need to get some sleep.’

Sleep. What is that? Why is that important? Doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he understand?

She stays where she is. She would sit here for ever if she knew it could make a difference.

Detective Second Grade Callum Doyle is feeling good about this night. Even though he’s reaching the end of an October day that has been dismal and gray enough to thump
misery and depression into the most optimistic of souls, Doyle has no complaints about it. To Doyle this could be the first day of spring. He could be witness to lambs gamboling and daffodils
pushing their heads above the earth and the sun getting its ass into gear with some seriously overdue illumination. Doyle is so full of joy he could sing. And does, in fact. ‘Norwegian
Wood’ by the Beatles, for some reason. It’s not exactly tuneful, but he belts it out anyway, ignoring the grimacing of his partner in the car passenger seat.

The reason Doyle is so buoyant tonight is that he has caught a homicide. Which is not to say he relishes the thought of staring death in the face, or of the consequences of death for the
innocents who are left to deal with it. Far from it. What’s important here is the symbolism. The fact that the Police Department is willing to entrust its lowly detective with solving a crime
of such enormity. Which might sound odd, given that’s exactly the kind of thing Doyle is paid to do.

It wasn’t so many months ago that the relationship between Doyle and his employers was less than amicable. He was being given all the shitty jobs – the cases nobody else wanted to
handle. Cases that served to keep him occupied but out of the limelight and out of everybody’s hair. It got so bad that Doyle was seriously considering abandoning his police career.

And then he got a break. Second fiddle on the murder of a young girl in a bookstore. He was meant to be doing the menial stuff, freeing up the other detectives to do the real investigatory work.
But it turned out to be a whole lot more than a simple homicide. It grew into something gargantuan that threatened to chew Doyle into tiny pieces and spit him out. It could have been the end for
Doyle.

But he survived. He came through it, not exactly unaffected by his experience, but in the NYPD’s eyes something of a hero. And since that time he has become a cop again. A true detective
rather than a helping hand. Back on the cases that matter.

Like this one, for example. A homicide. Handed straight to Doyle as soon as the call came in.

After what he’s been through, how tough can a case like this be?

Doyle practically jogs into the Chinese restaurant, he’s feeling that good. He doesn’t wait for his partner: he’s not even aware that the kid is struggling to
keep up.

Doyle still doesn’t know what to make of LeBlanc. He’s probably a perfectly good cop, but he’s young and he’s inexperienced and he has this aura about him of not knowing
what the hell he’s doing. He doesn’t even dress the part. He goes for trendy instead of functional. Skinny ties and pointy shoes and stupid designer spectacles. When you’re in
need of an authority figure to follow in a moment of crisis, this kid with his waxed blond hair is almost certainly the last person you’d consider.

Inside the restaurant, Doyle’s ebullience subsides a little when the first person he sees there is a guy called Kravitz. It would have been difficult not to spot Kravitz, seeing as how
he’s nearly six foot seven tall. He’s unnaturally thin too, which makes him appear even taller. Or his height emphasizes his lack of musculature. Either way, he’s a man of
mismatched dimensions.

He looks to Doyle like someone who should permanently have a basketball under his arm. ‘Ah,’ people would say, ‘you’re a basketball player.’ And they would no
longer question his freakish frame.