(originally published Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, July/Aug 2001
"Dad, I need your help."
Josef had not heard this often from his son across their ten-year acquaintance. It did not sound like an emergency but he put down his oily rag and peered at the boy over the top of his glasses.
"I want to find out who killed Mr. Bellecourt. I need you to open his apartment for me."
Well, had Josef not learned that the infrequency of Ben's requests were often coupled with their startling aspects. He removed his glasses, taking care not to get his tung-oiled fingers on the lenses.
"I have no key," he said simply.
"You don't need a key," his son reminded him. The boy took a breath and relaxed a bit. He had thought he could count on his father to hear him out and help him but this was a rather unusual thing to ask, even he could see that. Good old Dad. A year or so ago Ben had looked up from doodling on a piece of paper to announce, "Hey, Good Old Dad spells God!" Josef had never forgotten that. He was on the shadiest side of religious but this faith of his son had affected him.
"Explain."
Ben knew it was not the issue of the key that was being questioned - they both knew from whom Josef had acquired the skill of getting past a locked door - and he was ready for this.
"I liked Mr. Bellecourt. He was a nice man and a good caretaker and he lived in this building, like family. I feel I must try to honour his death." The old country rested lightly on Ben's Canadian shoulders but he could pull it around him like a cloak when he wished and he knew it influenced his father.
Josef put his glasses back on, picked up his cloth and made some desultory movements across the seat of the fine oak chair Ben had found in a dumpster and which, now stripped of paint, looked like honey under the oil. "What do you want inside his apartment for? Have the police finished there?"
"Of course. I just want to look around."
"But, Ben, the police will have found anything there is to be found."
"I need to do something. Please, Papa."
So, he was to bring out the full range of his arsenal, was he, this son of his. Papa, even. Josef sighed and then he nodded. "This afternoon, when Miz. Shouldoon is out shopping."
"Thanks, Dad."
* * *
Josef opened the locked door swiftly and silently, then pocketed the compliant little tool, all too aware of Ben's eager eyes. It was Ben's mother from whom he had learned this procedure, kept back this tool with some hope, perhaps, of changing her, and he was afraid the boy had inherited more than just curiosity. He had used it on two occasions when locked out of the apartment and regretted having shown it to Ben.
Ben sidled up to the window and looked out and down. "Oh no, Miz Shouldhavedone is down there talking to that woman across the way. What if she comes back and decides to come up here?"
Josef resisted an urge to laugh. "That's not likely but I'll stand lookout," he said mildly and stood where he could see the apartment manager in conversation six flights below. He wondered if she was peppering her sentences with, "I should have stayed home" or "I should have done my groceries yesterday" which is why she came by the name adjustment
Mr. Bellecourt might work in the basement, might have been killed in the basement but he lived on the top floor in what in a grander apartment block would have been called the penthouse suite. There was no access to it by the elevator but by an out- of- the-way stairway from the fifth floor. Most tenants did not know the apartment existed or that the caretaker lived there. He'd been there ever since Josef moved in nearly a decade before.
"Don't touch anything," Josef said.
"Dad," Ben said, using three scornful syllables.
Ben walked around the suite and when Miz Shouldoon had moved off down the street, definitely on her way shopping, Josef gave his attention back indoors as well. Many years ago he'd learned the benefits of focusing on one thing at a time. Now, as he wandered visually around the apartment, he was surprised.
"Nice stuff," said Ben, summing it all up.
Mr. Bellecourt looked like a custodian, dressed like a custodian, talked like a custodian. His home did not look like him at all. Everything was fine, very fine indeed. Quality beyond a custodian's wages. Josef wondered his suspicions. But he said nothing.
He followed Ben into the bedroom, watched as his son got down on hands and knees and looked under the bed, said nothing as he used the tail end of his shirt to open the door of the bathroom, walked back with him into the kitchen. When the boy dropped down and, flat on his stomach, stared under the refrigerator and stove, Josef did give a chuckle.
"There's something under here," Ben hissed into the floor.
"What?"
"I can't tell. Hand me something to swish it out with."
Josef opened a couple of drawers (using his knuckles on the outer edge instead of fingers on the handle, giving himself a wry grin at the action) and when he found a long wooden spoon he handed it to Ben. Ben swished and sneezed as he dislodged dust and then a lump of something shot out and across the floor, coming to rest under the table. Josef stretched under his foot and kicked out a lint-covered cat toy, a catnip mouse. Ben got up off the floor and they both stared at the object.
"Mr. Bellecourt did not have a cat," Ben said in almost a whisper. "This could be important."
Josef did not risk nudging Ben's fantastic imagination by inquiring how a felt mouse could figure in a murder. Instead he said, "I think he looked after Mrs. Wall's cat the time she went to Hawai."
"I don't remember that."
"That might have been the year you went to summer camp."
Ben made a huge grimace at the memory.
"I still think it could be a clue. Somehow."
Josef did not answer. He was wiping off the spoon, dust and possible fingerprints, and returning it to the drawer. Ben was staring at the mouse, wondering if he should take it with him. Finally he kicked it back under the frig and shrugged in answer to his father's look.
"Thanks, Pops. I guess I've seen all there is to see." He walked back to the door. Josef followed. Pops, he said to himself. Pops!
Ben went off to the scene of the crime - "seen of the crime, s-e-e-n, I'm going to see what I can see, get it Dad?" Josef got it.
He went back to his refinishing on the little terrace at the side of the building. He made an adequate living uncovering the soul of furniture people brought him or which he came by in various ways, like Ben's regular perusal of the local dumpsters. It was amazing what people threw out. "Just some old thing I've had around for ages," was music to Josef's ears. In the old country he had been destined for law, his father's choice, but the war had changed many people's life plans, his own included and he had escaped west. He was not sorry.
The Chinese man who minded his two grandsons trotted onto the terrace and the trio took their usual seats on an old bench. Josef and he nodded and smiled but they shared not a word in a common language. All three of his audience watched solemnly and if he would have preferred not to have their rapt attention of his every movement he had learned to keep his concentration on his task. He wanted his energy to flow undistracted into the wood.
Mrs. Pendergast stuck her head into the enclosure but with a slight sniff did not come in because Mr. Lee and the two kids were there. Josef was glad. Mrs. Pendergast had no problem with verbosity. Josef suspected she was lonely and drank to fill the hours. He also suspected that Miz. Shouldoon was gladly reaping the rewards of her kindness in allowing him the use of this outdoor space as a work area because he was available to those tenants who would otherwise presume on her time.
When he had applied sufficient oil he took the chair from the terrace space, nodding and smiling a farewell to the Lee's as he left, and carried it carefully up to his own balcony to dry. Then he would polish it, over and over, make the patina shine. Grandma's Giveaways down the street would sell it. Grandma's Giveaways were anything but.
Ben exploded into the kitchen as Josef was making himself a cup of coffee.
"Dad, I thought you were downstairs, I can never find you when I want you, you know that guy who took over Mr. Bellecourt's job, you know what he told me?"
"Has 'that guy' not got a name, Ben?"
"He never told me. You know what he told me? He told me Mr. Bellecourt owned this building. And maybe more apartments, too. He was the owner, Dad. Not the janitor. I mean he was the janitor, too, but ..." Words finally failed him and he collapsed on a chair at the table and stared at his father. Josef stared back.
"This is very important news," Josef said.
"But what does it mean?"
"I don't know."
"I can see someone killing a caretaker but I can't see someone killing someone who owns a big apartment building like this. I mean not in the basement like he was nobody. I mean..." Ben stopped, puzzled and confused, the facts playing havoc with his preconceptions. He dragged himself off the chair and went down the hall. Josef could hear the creaking of the old army cot, another found object, that Ben insisted on using for a bed. He'd taken this knotty problem to his own particular haven and if he didn't solve it immediately he would likely fall asleep.
The owner. Josef did some pondering of his own. That far more explained the quality of the penthouse. Of course - a penthouse. He had thought the custodian's wage might be augmented by drug dealings. This ownership put a whole new slant on it. But who had killed him and why. Coffee finished, Josef started back down to the terrace, glancing into Ben's room as he passed. Ben was not asleep. He raised his eyebrows at Josef.
"There's some salmon in the frig. And if you're going by the store we need milk."
"Not hungry."
Nose was on the terrace, looking at a bureau someone had, sadly, stored in a basement. "Handles are worth more than the piece," he said, peering into the drawers and grinning at the coffee grounds Josef had scattered there to try to get rid of the musty smell: he thought it a useless effort.
His name was Alan but everyone called him Nose. Why, Josef had never inquired. His breathing apparatus was not a noteworthy feature. Ben, with great delight, claimed it was because the man made his living as a picker, a person who went around to sales and answered advertisements and often just snooped around and would ask someone if he or she wanted to sell that old desk he could see in the garage or possibly something in the cellar that was in the way or likely rotting away with unhealthy mould.
"Nose is a picker, get it, Dad?" Ben had said. Josef just rolled his eyes at him.
"Got anything for me today?" Josef asked after they had both admired the dozen bakelite handles on the dresser.
"Nope. Just came from the auction. Too many dealers there today. They can outbid the middleman every time. Hey, I heard ol' Joe owned this place, eh? And that maybe one of his kids did him in for the inheritance."
"Who told you that?"
"Heard two guys talking in Mac's"
"You should have been called Ears."
* * *
In the middle of the afternoon, while he was fixing two of the drawer runners on the bureau, Mrs. Pendergast came by and he listened to her monologue for half an hour or so but then his patience wore too thin and his concentration suffered. He straightened and stretched and excused himself. She continued to talk but he knew she would eventually realize he was gone and wander away herself.
He intended to idly amble around the parking lot, giving himself a bit of exercise, mentally smiling at how much he had changed: now he considered this exercise - for a while in his life a walk of ten miles - and back - would have been how he got his mail. And not on cemented ground.
As he passed his truck, parked in a corner of the lot, he glanced into the back Then stopped. Someone had stood on the blue tarp that he had loosely thrown on the empty bed. There were no clear footprints, merely indentations.
Josef had spent three years in the northern wilderness, alone. His natural power of observation had become finely tuned when so much of his survival depended on it.
He stood and stared thoughtfully at the telltale signs on the tarp. The woodsman skills he had acquired itched out from their dormant state. Under normal circumstances he would have registered the information and perhaps checked the truck for any signs of tampering: there was nothing to steal in the flat bed. But a man had been killed a day or so earlier. This was his own 'catnip mouse' and he was not about to kick it out of sight.
He was not aware of it but his posture altered as he began to sweep his eyes around, looking for other signs. In the city his body had adjusted to pavement and noise and many other humans, his stance was straight and rather stiff. Now he relaxed into the posture of the wilderness, resilient, open, directing awareness outward rather than closing it down to cope with too much urban input
Josef wondered why someone had stood in the back of his truck facing the cement wall that led into the area where the garbage cans were kept. If he could track the next movements of the person it might show a purpose. He had not had the truck out for a week or more. It had not rained. He walked slowly around the truck looking at the ground but it told him nothing. The cement block between truck and bushes had been used to climb up onto the truck bed, he could see the slight scraping away of city grime on its edge by a foot pushing off from it. Hands must have been covered because there were no prints on the dust of his truck but there were dusted spots.
And the person had not simply walked across the tarp and climbed onto the cab roof. She or he (the experience with Ben's mother had altered his pronoun priority with regards to law breakers, or law benders, Hilary's term for her way of life) had stood there long enough to leave a definite imprint on the tarp into the soft surface of sawdust below, the leftovers from hauling a storm-fallen tree he'd sawed, collected and sold.
The trail was obvious - at least to him - over the roof of the cab and down onto the hood. It must have been made at night or the person would have realized he was 'dusting' a path, not to mention the possibility of being seen. Wouldn't he? Josef felt that man was far less aware of making tracks than a non-human was.
He had thought perhaps a child had needed the block for access but the imprints in the tarp and the size of the smudge marks in the dust across the top of the truck told him it was likely a short, heavyset adult. At times, in the woods, he would get such a clear image of the cougar or moose he was trailing with regards to height and weight that the actual sight of the animal was like the development of a photograph from a negative. Few surprises.
And sometimes he also was forewarned of character, the marks showing friskiness or stealth, nobility, age.
The woods had taught him more than his home had, more than formal schooling, more than the two contrasting societies in which he had lived. The woods had required him to become still and then what he wanted or needed to know would come pouring in to him. And at the end of those three years of solitude Hilary had come into his life and his learning had continued.
He left the front of the truck and walked around the cement wall into the utility area. Joe Bellecourt had been struck down a few feet from here, inside the area of the basement that led to the storage rooms.
Josef stared up at the wall from this angle. Down at the wall. Slight skid marks of toes sliding until the entire body length was reached - the person was short - and then ending as he dropped. He looked at what he could see so plainly and wondered if the police could, or would.
Back around the wall again and this time he stood on the hood, carefully, non- intrusively, and surveyed the wall. Teeny grey pieces of fluff were caught in the rough surface of the top. Some wooly article of clothing had 'shed' as its wearer climbed across.
Before coming down from the hood he paused and looked around. Why had someone gone over the wall instead of around it? Why had someone stood on the truck bed? What senses were being attended to? He could see easily over the wall but he was tall: a shorter person would just clear eye level, he thought. Josef hunkered down eight inches or so and was just able to see over the wall directly into the area leading to the storage lockers, the garbage chute for papers, the recycling bins. But would not a person be in full view if his intent was to spy. Maybe not at night.
Josef wondered at the acoustics. So often in the woods he had depended on his hearing, on his ability to listen deeply and sort through the various levels of sound. He gathered up some small stones, climbed back into the truck, threw the stones over the wall one by one and listened. Yes, he could hear them as they dropped in the passage.
And then he noticed movement on one of the balconies and realized he was being observed. A tenant he did not know was watching him so he gave a casual wave - the man looked embarrassed and went back inside. At nighttime the area was not well lit. But still, to climb up on his truck and stand there required courage or desperation or both. And why climb over the wall. Perhaps someone had come into the parking area and the quickest exit, up and over, was needed. He could read the signs clearly but how well could he interpret what he saw. And he needed more information.
Best, for the moment, to just follow the trail, see where the person had gone. Or where he had come from. Was it possible after two days. Such a cold trail. And in the city.
He stood there longer, relaxing, opening. He began to smell the sawdust, to feel the subtle wind and identify its direction, to sense what a man might do next. To think with the body and feel with the mind.
Josef spent the next hour patiently tracking the one who had likely killed Joe Bellecourt. He had no idea of motive. Animals seemed to kill from a far more basic need and Josef was often disturbed by his race's behaviour in this regard. Perhaps Mr. Bellecourt had done nothing more than catch a glimpse of a restaurant kitchen help spitting into the soup pot like had happened last month where the youth had tracked down the man who saw him and tried to knife him.
Around the parking area, the perimeter, the central drive, the two paths between the stalls he walked, almost crouched, depending almost entirely on vision and the instinct that comes when intent is so focused. In the woods he would be tracking a fresh path and his nose or his ears might give him a clue. But not here. Not after two days. Still he persisted. Soon people would be returning from work and the parking lot would fill with cars.
He went out onto the street, around the block, stood at the bus stop and then in the shelter, waved on the bus that stopped for him and shrugged an apology to the driver's "make up your mind, buddy," glare. The bus, he supposed, could have been an exit or an entrance for the killer. Mr. Bellecourt had been hit with something like a hammer. Maybe there wasn't much or any blood. But this was all speculation. He needed visible signs.
Returning to the apartment grounds he realized how limited the choices of trails were in the city. In the wilderness an animal, human or otherwise, had almost limitless directions. Mountains could be climbed, streams forded, rough terrain negotiated. If you were willing and able to navigate you could go almost anywhere. In the city, passage between the buidlings was easy, on straight, flat avenues. But the choices were limited.
Back in the parking lot Josef now walked between the cars, glancing into each one. He almost missed it. A tiny grey piece of fluff on the trim above the driver's door as if someone had perhaps put a coffee cup on the roof of the car and retrieved it, a sleeve brushing the trim, a piece of the fabric caught on the roughness. The blue compact belonging to the couple in 416.
It was not some kitchen help who had killed Joe Bellecourt. Josef suddenly had an image of the short, rotund man in 416 wearing an old grey cardigan, the sleeves rolled but occasionally falling past his wrists. They could be pulled over hands to protect, to disguise, to smudge.
He did not touch the fluff. Josef went back up to his apartment and thought about phoning the police. He had pulled the bead on his prey and he was sick at heart. Familiarity between hunted and hunter had disturbed him once or twice before but that was when the characters were man and beast. He had never tracked his own species. It was devastating.
Ben was not there so he got out his pipe for a rare smoke and went onto the balcony. He let himself think of Hilary. She had been hovering on the edge of his consciousness and now he let her in.
They had first exchanged a few words in the store where he took his furs for sale and trade and the next day she had shown up at his cabin. He had not been too surprised.
She was a professional thief, a break and enter artist, a fun-loving, complicated, restless individual who took pride in her work - "it's not everyone I can brag to about it, of course," - and was taking a little holiday when they met. "Thought it prudent to cool my heels for a bit, far, far from the crowds."
They had spent a year together in the wilderness. He had shown her a way of life as foreign to her as a new country; she had been both attracted and repelled. And, in some strange way he still didn't understand, she had healed the hurt he had been unconsciously carrying at having to leave his native land.
They had ridden on the happiness of the thrill of discovery, she of the situation both good and bad, he mostly of self.
Her pregnancy came as a shock - "I was told I couldn't have children and I never have," she said in initial disbelief. "It's likely just the flu. Or maybe some sort of growth."
"Wait and see," Josef had been courteous in his laughter and when she decided he was right in his assessment of her symptoms she agreed to have the baby if Josef would take care of it.
Neither of them expected the child to be born so swiftly and suddenly. Josef had delivered his son. The experience was a precious gift. And it had given him something to hold when Hilary left. But it had brought him from the wilderness to the city.
Ben thought his mother was dead and Josef let him think that. For himself he did not know but he felt she must be or she would have been in touch over the years. He had watched her face as she tended the baby for that first while.
If she were in prison then she might as well be dead because he could not imagine her living with any reality in a cage. She was, in a way, far wilder than the animals he had come to know, and if he had provided a sanctuary for her, he had never felt he had tamed any part of her.
Ben should be home anytime.
Josef knew who had stood on his truck, climbed the wall, gone into the basement, hammered the life out of Mr. Bellecourt. He hadn't been able to work forward to an apartment but he had worked backward to a car. To him the trail was clear. He would wait to call the police until Ben came home. He had some notion of preparing his son. Perhaps he was preparing himself.
He liked Bill Price, had known him across three or four years. Why in hell had he killed Joe Bellecourt? It would make far more sense if he had killed his wife. Josef did not like Missus Price, could never remember her name. Bill always called her, "the missus." She could slice a person up with her tongue and she had whittled Bill down to a sliver. Josef felt sorry for him and more than once had to turn away from the look in Bill's eyes as his wife belittled him in public. Who could say how she treated him in private.
Once the Price's apartment had flooded and Bill had asked Josef's advice on a cabinet that had gotten wet but he had not invited him to see it. Later Josef had wondered idly to Miz Shouldoon how someone could let their bathtub overflow like that in the middle of the day.
"That's how she heats the place," Miz Shouldoon had informed him.
He had peered at her, puzzled.
She explained. "The hot water comes with the rent so in the cold weather she keeps filling the bathtub and sinks with hot water, buckets too, I expect, and the water heats the rooms."
Miz Shouldoon had laughed, then, at Josef's silent astonishment. "It takes all kinds," she said, "and I should have seen them all."
He thought about all this now. Perhaps Bill Price had finally freed himself. But at what cost. One prison to another.
Josef did not have to call the police. He would find out later that they had followed their own trail.
Ben once again shot into the apartment, eyes enormous. "Dad, the police, the police were here. They got the person who killed Mr. Bellecourt."
Josef felt a wave of sadness.
"They just took her away. She was screaming, Dad. And swearing. They had her in handcuffs, Dad."
"She?" Josef stared a frown.
"You know who it was, Dad. Mrs. Price."
"Mrs Price?"
"She was yelling that he was a - " Ben gulped and swallowed the adjectives, " - a bastard and had laughed at her and she got even. It was awful, Dad, she was laughing and crying at the same time."
Josef gathered his son into his arms and rocked him.
Animals had never shocked and surprised him like his fellow beings did. Mrs. Price? Wearing her husband's sweater? Designs on the caretaker? Maybe she knew he was the owner. Scorned? But - murder?
He sighed and felt a bit afraid of living in such close proximity with other humans.
And into this feeling came a new awareness. He found in himself a need to share with his son what he had learned from the wilderness, to go back to it, if only for awhile. Maybe to restore his faith, somehow. He only now realized how much it had meant to share it with Ben's mother. Perhaps in the winter he'd take Ben to the country, introduce him to the weirdly wonderful feeling of snowshoes, go where it was clear enough to smell the snow.
He had not forgotten his woodsman skills but already he had straightened and stiffened, his son still in his arms. This was, after all, the city.