The Helper (7 page)

‘You know where we are?’

‘I think so. By Tompkins, right?’

‘That’s it. Just ask for Detective Doyle at the desk.’

She ends the call. ‘Shit!’

In the bed, Alex is sitting up. ‘Who was that?’

She starts searching for her clothes. They got thrown in all different directions not long after she got here.

‘Some detective called Doyle at the Eighth Precinct. Gary’s there. Drunk and beat-up. They want me to go get him.’

Alex lets out a snort of laughter. She picks up one of his socks and throws it at him.

‘It’s not funny. You know, one of these days we’re going to get caught doing this. The cops even tried calling me at work tonight. I think Bella must have covered for me. But
what if Gary calls one night when I’m supposed to be working? What if it’s not Bella who answers, but someone who doesn’t know I’m supposed to be at work when really
I’m over here getting my brains banged out?’

‘Yeah, well if Gary did a little more brain-banging himself, maybe you wouldn’t have to put yourself through all this.’

‘Shut up, Alex. You’re really not helping.’

She’s cheating on Gary. She accepts this. Mostly she tries not to think about it. When she can’t avoid it, she tries to justify it to herself. Unreasonable behavior on his part. Lack
of attentiveness to her womanly needs. Her conjugal rights. Whatever. But when others attack him, as Alex just did and frequently does, she feels compelled to leap to his defense. Gary has issues.
After what they went through they both had issues, but she got over it and he didn’t. It’s sad, but there it is. He’s not a bad man, she thinks, and he doesn’t really
deserve what I’m doing to him.

As she starts to dress, Alex relaxes back into the pillows and watches her.

‘Couldn’t you spend just another few minutes here?’

‘No, I couldn’t. The cops believe I’m practically on their doorstep. They don’t know I have to drive all the way downtown to get there.’

‘This time of night, it shouldn’t take too long.’

She ignores him, continues dressing. When she passes the bed on her way to the door, he lunges forward and grabs her by the arm.

‘Come on. Just a little longer. I’ll be quick, I promise.’

‘No change there, then.’

He pulls her closer to the bed. ‘Well, if that’s what you think, I’ll just have to prove how wrong you are.’

She yanks herself free. ‘No, Alex. No. Okay?’

She picks up her bag from a chair by the door, then gives him one last look. In response, Alex pulls back the sheets and shows her what he’s got.

You don’t have a clue, Alex, she thinks. Not a clue.

Shaking her head, she opens the door and leaves.

The apartment is way up on West 107th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue. She knows that what Alex likes about it is its proximity to Columbia University, where he works as a lab
technician, and the karate school where he gets paid as an instructor. The only thing she likes about it is that she can usually get a parking spot on this block. She’s not so sure she would
bother to drive all the way here if she had to leave the car a couple of blocks away and come traipsing along these streets at the unearthly hours she often arrives.

Actually, she’s not so sure how much longer she will continue this anyway. Alex is fun, he’s got a great body, the sex is terrific. But there’s a staleness to it now. The
novelty has gone. What’s worse, the guilt hasn’t gone. She thought it might after a while. She thought she would become so accustomed to doing this that she would eventually become deaf
to the admonishments of that little angel on her shoulder. But it hasn’t worked out that way. If anything, the angel has taken to using a loudhailer. Tonight’s little episode has just
made things worse. Gary’s a mess. He needs her help. Maybe she should try harder.

She steps out onto the dark street, glancing both ways before closing the door behind her. Directly opposite is a Jehovah’s Witness building – another reminder of her sinful ways.
She sometimes expects that she will step out of Alex’s apartment building one night and the young men in dark suits will all be grouped there, pushing the Watchtower into her hands as they
castigate her for her adulterous behavior.

She hurries along the sidewalk to where her Toyota is parked next to a school soccer field. Hearing a noise coming from beyond the graffiti-adorned wall across the street, she hurriedly unlocks
the car door, throws her bag onto the passenger seat, and climbs in.

Only then does she see the note tucked under her windshield wiper.

She opens the door again and reaches round to retrieve the note. She unfolds it and reads the hastily scribbled words.

What the . . . ?

She reads it again, to make sure she fully comprehends it. He smashed into my car? And he didn’t even have the decency to leave a name or contact number? What a bastard! And what’s
the fucking point of leaving a fucking note just to say how fucking sorry you are?

She clambers out again, thinking what a shitty night this is turning out to be. Thinking that maybe she’s getting what she deserves, that her shoulder-borne angel has really gone hardcore
now.

She steps around to the rear of her car, her fear replaced by indignation. Wondering how much this is going to cost her.

The car looks fine.

I mean, it’s really dark here, but even so . . .

She squats. Stands up again. Runs her hand over the bodywork. What the hell is the writer of this note talking about?

She unfolds the sheet of paper again, starts to read it through.

A few yards behind her, a car engine roars into life. She jumps, startled, and glances around. She catches a glimpse of a dark hulking shape – some kind of SUV – before its
headlights flare on, blinding her.

Ignore it, she tells herself. Let them go on their way.

She turns back to her own car. The bright light from the SUV gives her an opportunity to get a good look. There’s nothing here she can see. Not a dent, a scratch, nothing.

She is mystified. But now she is also a little afraid again. Something isn’t right. Something about this whole setup . . .

The SUV is on her in an instant. She hears a squeal of tires, a blast of engine noise, and she barely has time to turn toward it before those intense lights fill her vision and their leviathan
owner rams into her, crushing her against her own car.

At first she screams. It’s automatic, driven by the pain and the shock. And then confusion takes over. She loses the ability to make sense of the world. She cannot understand what has just
happened to her. Why can’t she move? Why won’t her legs obey her orders to take her away from here?

She looks down, sees only bent, twisted metal from her hips downwards. And still her brain cannot fully grasp its significance. She opens her mouth to cry out again, stops when she sees she is
not alone.

The SUV’s door is open. Its driver is standing alongside her, looking at her. Studying her, in fact, his head cocked to one side like a curious puppy. He is tall and well-groomed. Could be
considered good-looking in other circumstances. And yet there is an absence of empathy in his face that is intensely disturbing.

‘P-Please,’ she says to him through quivering lips. It should be enough. It should tell anyone all they need to know about the predicament of the fellow human being in front of
them.

‘Sorry,’ the man says.

It makes no sense to her. It’s a word that doesn’t seem to fit the situation, as though it has been chosen at random.

In explanation, the man reaches toward her and plucks out the note still clutched between her fingers.

‘Like I said in the note. I’m sorry. About the damage I’ve done to your car.’ He waves the paper at her and smiles. ‘I like to apologize in advance for these
things.’

She tells herself it’s the shock. He cannot really be saying all this. She blinks and fights the shaking that is growing in intensity in her body. She feels cold. So cold. Why
doesn’t he do something?

‘Please,’ she repeats. ‘Help me.’

The man drops his smile. At last he seems to appreciate the seriousness of what he has done.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Of course. Help. You need my help.’

He gets back into his car and closes the door. She looks directly into his eyes through the windshield. She sees the slight jerk of his shoulder as he shifts the vehicle into reverse.

She braces herself and closes her eyes. She hears the pinging of metal and the tinkling of glass and her own cries as the cars separate.

And then she falls.

She knows she has fallen. She knows she has hit the ground. She knows she is alive. Reality is flooding back again.

She opens her eyes but does not look down. She is afraid of what she might see. Her legs must be a mess. Flattened useless ribbons of flesh and bone. She will never walk again. She understands
that now and accepts it. But at least she is alive. On the edge of death, sure. But there’s hope.

Good one, angel, she thinks. You really told me this time. Are you done with me now?

She can almost swear she hears a tiny voice tell her that she should be so lucky.

And so it’s really no big surprise when the SUV comes thundering toward her one last time.

The first thing Doyle does on Sunday morning is break his promise.

What was that he said to Rachel last night? Something about making it up to Amy, wasn’t it? And is he making it up to Amy? No. Because while Amy is trying to tell him all about what life
is like in her small world, mixing with all kinds of small people doing small things that seem oh so immense to her, her father is just grunting at her while he tries to concentrate on the local
news stories on the television. Grunting so often, in fact, that she eventually gets the message and gives up and requests the cartoon channel for its greater intellectual challenge.

The news programs continue to demand his attention on the journey to work too. Early Sunday morning is the one time of the week when driving to the precinct station house is a comparative
breeze, and so he knows when he finally gets there that he has listened closely to every local story deemed noteworthy enough to be broadcast without listeners wondering what the fuck they are
being told this for. And guess what? A murder in Manhattan did not figure among them. A councilman fracturing his toe – that made it in. A woman suing her cosmetic surgeon for botching an
enhancement job on her buttocks – that made it in too. But homicide? Uh-uh. Not in this city, buddy.

At his desk he reflects on this. What does it mean? Either butt-jobs have leaped ahead of homicides on the scale of what matters most to people these days, or else there was no killing last
night. The caller got it wrong. And if he got that wrong, then the stuff about the diary is probably bullshit too. In fact, Doyle thinks he can probably disregard everything that was said by that
cuckoo and get back to worrying about poor old Mrs Sachs.

There is, of course, one other possibility . . .

The call comes through at ten-forty.

‘Detective Doyle. Eighth Precinct.’

‘Hey, Doyle. This is Lopez up at the Two-Seven. Sorry to bother you, but we caught a weird one here, and your name came up.’

Doyle feels his insides drop into his shoes. Even without the details, he knows this is his worst fears coming true.

‘My name? Why? What’s the case?’

‘Homicide. A woman crushed between two cars on West 107th Street.’

‘You sure? That it’s a homicide, I mean? Not some kind of freaky accident?’

‘Nah, it was deliberate all right. According to the ME, she was rammed twice.’

‘Jesus, what a way to go. You got any wits?’

He’s thinking there has to be a witness. Surely you can’t make a vehicle sandwich on the streets of New York like that without somebody seeing something?

‘Nope. Nobody that’s come forward so far, anyhow. There are no occupied buildings near where it happened, and it was four o’clock in the morning.’

‘Four a.m.? There was nothing on the news about it.’

‘Body wasn’t discovered until seven-thirty. A woman jogging back from Central Park stopped for a rest and saw a foot underneath one of the vehicles. Then she took a closer look and
found the foot-bone was connected to the leg-bone, and she heard the word of the Lord. Thing is, she’d already passed it on her way to the park and thought nothing of it. Just two mashed-up
cars, looked like. My guess is other people walked past it too and thought the same thing. Who’s gonna call the cops for something like that, right?’

Doyle finds himself nodding in agreement. He knows that many people wouldn’t have called the cops even
after
they’d discovered the body.

‘I still don’t get how it went down. What was this woman doing out on the street at four in the morning?’

‘Yeah, that got us too. Especially when we find the woman’s wallet and learn she lives over in Brooklyn and works on the East Side. We contact the husband, deliver the bad news, wait
for the crying to stop, then ask him the same question. Only he has absolutely no idea what she was doing there either. So we start knocking on doors, and eventually we find a guy in one of the
apartment buildings farther along the street. Turns out she’s having an affair with him. A regular thing, apparently. She tells her husband she’s pulling a double shift, then goes and
pulls something else over at this younger dude’s place.’

‘Still doesn’t explain how she ended up getting squashed.’

‘No. That’s where you come in.’

‘Me? How?’

‘Reason we know she was killed at four was that she got a call on her cellphone when she was in the apartment. She told the boyfriend about it. He says it was a cop, or someone pretending
to be a cop, telling her that her husband had been locked up for drunkenness, and could she come take him home. The boyfriend thinks the cop called himself Boyle, or maybe Doyle, at the Eighth
Precinct.’

Doyle finds himself shaking his head. The sheer deviousness of that bastard.