She laughed. “Take a seat, and take your time.”

  I sat down. Cleared my throat. “It’s about this money that Cutter left me.”

  She nodded.

  “Well, can I get at it any time?”

  “Sure. How much do you need?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Okay. When you know, call and I’ll arrange it. How would you like it? Cash? Or I can arrange a direct deposit to your bank account.”

  “I don’t have a bank account.”

  Her head tilted slightly to the side. “You don’t—well, no problem. What about a money order? You can cash it anywhere.”

  “Can you send money to someone else’s account?”

  “Easy as pie. I just need the name and number. What’s this all about?”

  “Um … ”

  She held up her hand. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Thanks, Lakshmi. I’ll let you know.”

  “See you, then,” she said.

  I got up and headed for the door. Then I had a thought.

  “If I ever needed a lawyer,” I blurted out, “could it be you?”

  “Why on earth would you need legal representation?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking.”

  “What, you were scooting past the office on your bike and suddenly decided you required a hired gun?” she laughed.

  “Well …”

  “Have you robbed a bank or something?”

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t murder anyone before breakfast, did you?”

  “Not today.”

  Her smile fell away. “Lee, is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong. I just wondered.”

  She came out from behind the desk and held out her left hand, palm up.

  “Got a buck in your pocket?”

  I fished out a coin and handed it to her. She closed her fist on it and held out her other hand. We shook.

  “You just hired yourself a lawyer,” she said.

  TWO

  REENA HUNG THE CLOSED sign on the door as I was sweeping up after the lunch crowd.

  “Can I have the rest of the day off?” I asked. “I got something I need to do.”

  “Why not do it Sunday when we’re closed?”

  “Because.”

  “Will you be back to help with dinner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My, aren’t you a fountain of information today.”

  “I do my best.”

  “Hmmm,” Reena said.

  For the second time that month I hopped the train to Hamilton, then climbed aboard a city bus. The neighbourhood where I had grown up looked the same—drab and defeated, streets with low-rise apartment buildings, discount and variety stores, FOR RENT signs in empty shop windows. The run-down building where I used to live stood between two identical sand-coloured structures, each with a cracked concrete sidewalk leading to the front doors and a lawn that had barely survived winter. I got out my key, let myself in, and rode the creaky elevator to the third floor. In the hall outside number four I stopped, kicked off my boots—I didn’t want to leave any sign that I had been there—and listened, my ear against the door.

  My father had never missed a day’s work. He’d be at the garage, stretched out under a car or leaning in under the hood, wielding a wrench. But I wanted to be sure.

  I unlocked the door and stepped inside. I smelled burnt toast and warmed-over pizza. Sections of a newspaper were strewn across the couch beside a take-out pizza box. A TV program listing lay open on the floor next to my father’s easy chair, the remote resting on top. I padded on stocking feet into the kitchen, where a radio played quietly. My father thought the sound of the radio discouraged burglars. A bowl and cup sat in the sink beside a pot sticky with oatmeal.

  I pulled open the drawer where he kept his bills and bank book and credit card receipts. He hadn’t gotten any neater since I saw him last. I removed the drawer and placed it on the table, pulling up a chair.

  I had seen him dozens of times sitting where I was now, a calculator and pencil close at hand, shaking his head and muttering, “I just can’t seem to get anywhere with this. No matter what I do, I’m always behind.” Then he’d take a pull on his beer, set it down with a thump, pick up the pencil, and begin punching numbers into the calculator, as if making another run at the calculations would change something.

  It took me a few minutes to paw through the clutter and find what I was looking for. I scanned the figures and jotted down the numbers I wanted on a piece of paper, then replaced the drawer.

  While I was in the apartment, I took a look around. His bed was unmade, the closet door open, loose change on the dresser top beside the matching brush and comb my mother had bought him for Christmas one year. I picked up the brush. If she had still been alive, my mother would have been almost ten years older, now. But I could only remember her the way she was back then, frozen in time while her little boy grew up without her.

  In my room, some school books sat unopened on my plywood desk. My bed was neatly made up, the room tidy, as if he expected me home any minute. I stood in the doorway, wishing I could stay. Just hang up my jacket and turn on the TV and wait for him to come home. Maybe send out for a tub of chicken, shoot the breeze while we ate, then watch a ball game together.

  I pulled on my boots in the hall, and took the elevator back down to the street.

  As the train passed the Oakville station, I keyed a number into my cell.

  “Smith and Associates.”

  “It’s Lee,” I said.

  “Is it indeed?” Mrs. Smith sniffed. “I need to talk to Lakshmi.”

  “I beg your pardon. I can hardly hear you.”

  “I’m on the train,” I said, and repeated my message.

  “Let me see if she’s available to speak.”

  A moment later Mrs. Smith came back on the line. “She’ll be with you in a moment. Please hold. Don’t hang up.”

  “I won’t hang—”

  But she cut me off. Got me again, I thought. I fished the piece of paper from my pocket.

  A few minutes later, I heard Lakshmi’s voice. “Hello, Lee.”

  “I got those numbers for you,” I said, and read them to her.

  “Okay, Lee. Consider it done.”

  A week later, when I hauled myself bleary-eyed from bed and clumped down the stairs for my Sunday morning coffee in Reena’s kitchen, I heard voices before I reached the bottom stair. In the hall outside the kitchen, I turned back toward my room. I stopped, took a deep breath. When I entered the kitchen the voices fell silent.

  My father sat across from Reena, a mug of coffee on the table in front of him. I poured myself a cup and leaned back against the counter. Watched closely by Patch the One-Eyed Dog, Reena spooned blueberry jam onto a piece of toast and spread it around, holding the toast on her finger tips, so the jam covered the whole surface. I had told her once that she ate like a kid.

  “I’m young at heart,” she had said.

  I eyed my father over the rim of my mug. In the morning light he looked pale and tired, his dark hair limp, his face creased. He had missed a couple of spots when he shaved. Thick fingers curled around his cup, the nails not quite free of grease from the garage.

  “Morning, Lee,” Reena said before she bit into her toast.

  My father nodded. “Hi,” I said to him.

  He pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and spread it out on the table with his palms. Reena picked up her cup and plate.

  “Time to get dressed,” she said to no one.

  I didn’t want her to leave, but my father spoke first. “Stick around for a little, okay?” he said. “The last two times Lee and me talked, we needed a referee.”

  Reena slumped back into her chair and pulled her bathrobe together at her throat.

  “Sit down, Lee,” my father said, pointing to the third chair.

  “No, thanks. I’ll stay here.”

  “See?” he said to Reena. “Defiance. I haven’t said a word and already—”

  Reena’s voice was harsh. “Look, Doug. It’s been a long week. The last thing I need on my day off is to listen to you two bang away at each other. Lee, would it kill you to sit down? Jesus, the two of you are like a couple of infants.”

  I did as she asked. My father looked at the paper, as if he was memorizing the numbers.

  “Funny thing happened a couple of days ago, Reena. My bank statement came in the mail. I left it a couple of days before I opened it. No use hurrying the bad news, eh? When I got around to looking at it, the statement showed a balance of zero for my loan. The bank made a mistake, I figured, deposited a bunch of money in the wrong account.”

  Reena said nothing. She picked up her knife and ran the point back and forth across her plate.

  My father continued to stare at the paper in front of him and talk to Reena. “I called them from work the next day. They said it wasn’t a mistake. The money came in from another bank by electronic transfer. I told them I didn’t know anything about it. So on my lunch hour I went over there. They said the money was sent from a bank in New Toronto.”

  He looked up, at Reena. “I thought to myself, only one person I know in New Toronto. Only one person I know who would give me that kind of money. My sister.”

  Reena shook her head. “I never sent you a cent,” she said, putting down the knife and reaching into her bathrobe pocket for her cigarettes. She lit up and blew a cloud toward the ceiling.

  “Then,” my father went on, as if he hadn’t heard her, “I realized that this here mysterious electronic transfer was exactly the balance I owed. Somebody knew to the penny how much it would take to clear the loan. Sure is strange, eh, Reena?”

  “A mystery,” she said, and glanced at me.

  “I went home a while ago,” I said to my father, “and looked at your records.”

  He was silent for a moment, taking in the information.

  “Where the hell could you come up with that kind of money?” he demanded. “Thousands of bucks. You stole it, didn’t you?”

  “A friend of mine left it to me in his will.”

  “What? Left it—Who?”

  “I told you. A friend. His name is—was—Bruce Cutter.”

  A crease formed on my father’s brow. He scratched his head. Looked at Reena, who nodded.

  “He’s telling the truth, Doug.”

  “A friend,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “An older guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Then his eyes widened. “Jesus, Lee, you’re not telling me you’re—”

  Reena threw back her head and let out a laugh that rattled the dishes in the sink and brought on a coughing fit.

  “What’s so goddam funny?” my father said, his fingers crumpling the paper.

  When she could breathe again, Reena said, still laughing, “It’s just that, if you saw the way Lee looks at the college girls in the morning, you wouldn’t think what you’re thinking.”

  “Look, it’s no big deal,” I explained. “I wanted to give you some money. To get rid of that loan you’ve been carrying around since…. So you can quit your second job. That’s all.”

  He looked out the window, then down at his hands, then at the bank statement. Quietly, Reena left the room. I heard her bedroom door close softly.

  “No big deal, you tell me,” he whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “I can’t accept it.”

  My hands began to tremble. Then came the rush, the blast of anger, the heat rising into my face. The words burst out before I could think. “Why the hell not?”

  Then I looked at his rough hands, his thick fingers, the skin raw from solvents he used to dissolve oil and grease. His face, pinched from too much hard labour and too much worry. And I realized something I had never seen, because I had never looked. He was lonely. He worked twelve hours a day, shuffled from home to work and back, slept, and then did it all again. For him, tomorrow was nothing but another today.

  “It …” he began, then faltered. “Try to understand, Lee. The vacation your mom and me took, it was all I could give her. She was sick and she was gonna die, and I couldn’t do anything about that. But I could take her to the places she had always wanted to visit. You shoulda seen her over there in Italy, at the galleries and that. She knew she didn’t have long, but she was full of—joy. Only regret she had, she’d say, was that you weren’t there.

  “See, the loan I’m working to pay back, it’s like I’m still doing it for her. I can still give her something. I know it sounds crazy, but if I take your money, I’ll lose that.” He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose and took a swallow of coffee. “Does that make any sense?”

  I sat back in my chair, turning my cup around and around by the handle, thinking. I understood what he was telling me.

  “Yeah, Dad, it does,” I said. “But think about it this way. When Mom got sick, I was just a little kid. You took her to the museums and art galleries. But what could I do for her? Nothing. I haven’t been a very good son. This is my chance. I want to do this for both of you.”

  We were silent for a few minutes. Then my father said, “I haven’t heard that word for a long time.”

  “What word?”

  “You called me Dad.”

  He hung his head. “I miss her,” he said. “I miss both of you.”

  THREE

  I WAS HALFWAY THROUGH a breakfast of bacon and eggs when a stranger shambled through the café door—a not-very-tall guy, wearing an overcoat that hung almost to his broken-down running shoes, a greasy baseball cap and a scarf wrapped around his neck and over his ears, although the sun was shining out on Lakeshore Boulevard. A street person who had heard about Reena’s, I guessed.

  He made his way to the back counter just as the Queen of Sweden turned away, holding her mug of steaming Colombian. She gave him a look that said, They’re letting just anyone in here nowadays, and took a seat at her table. Even from my booth I could see the man’s hands shaking as he picked up a mug. If he tried filling it, he’d burn himself for sure. I hustled over, beating him to the coffee pot, and topped up my own mug.

  “Can I pour some for you, too?” I asked.

  Silently, he handed me his cup. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery, his complexion waxy under a few days’ greying stubble. His mouth had collapsed in on itself. No teeth, I guessed.

  “Cream and sugar?” I asked.

  He nodded, sniffed wetly, and jammed his hands in his coat pockets to hide the tremors.

  “Grab a seat and I’ll bring it over to you.”

  He hesitated, then did as I suggested. I put in three spoons of sugar and lots of cream. Sometimes the only nourishment the alkies got all day was what came in their coffee, Reena had told me one time.

  He was sitting at a table by himself, his back straight, chin up, staring straight ahead. He looked almost dignified. I set the mug down on the table in front of him.

  “How about something to eat?” I asked. “We’re out of cookies, but I could get you something.”

  He looked up, nodded, wrapped his soiled hands around the mug, then carefully, as if lifting a piece of priceless china, raised it shakily to his mouth. He slurped, swallowed, and said, “Ah.”

  I headed for the kitchen, and noticed Reena leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, watching me and smiling.

  “What?” I said, following her through.

  She quickly made a honey sandwich, slipped it onto a plate and handed it to me. “Let’s hope he can keep it down,” she said.

  “Why were you watching me?” I asked.

  “Oh, I was just thinking.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “Nothing.”

  I pushed open the kitchen door. “Tough guy,” she added, as I passed through.

  I put the plate down beside the guy’s cup, then went back to my booth.

  Because it was Sunday, I had phoned ahead to make sure I’d find Sergeant Carpino at the cop shop. When I asked for him at the front desk, the officer on duty picked up her phone, punched a number, mumbled something, and said, “He’ll be with you in a minute.”

  I waited on one of the benches. The place was pretty quiet. A few uniforms came and went. A phone rang somewhere. After a while Carpino, his shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow, his tie pulled loose, came through a door beside the desk. He stood with his hands on his hips and looked at the duty cop, who pointed to me.

  I stood and walked over to him.

  “Long time,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You weren’t supposed to come back here.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Still living in New Toronto? With your aunt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your dad know you’re here?”

  “No. This isn’t about him.”

  Carpino looked me over. “What’s it like out?”

  “Sunny. Warm.”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  He retrieved his jacket from the squad room and led me out of the station and down the block to a micro-park next to a parking arcade. Pigeons strutted around on the dirty sidewalk next to potted shrubs, their heads bobbing, scurrying out of the way when a pedestrian came by.

  Carpino sat on a bench and lit up a smoke. “So, what’s going on?” he asked.

  I sat next to him. “I want to know if you’re going to charge me,” I said.

  He gave me a suspicious look. “Explain.”

  “That day you dropped me off at my aunt’s in New Toronto, you told me if I came back home you’d nail me for the B and E and a couple of assaults.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So I have to know, are you going to charge me? Because, if you are, I want you to do it now. I’m ready. I have a lawyer. If you’re not, I need to know that, too. I don’t want all this hanging over my head.”

  Carpino watched the pigeons for a moment, then seemed to find something fascinating in the traffic light across the way. “You seem … different,” he said.

  “I am different.”