Out of the Cold (7 page)

He looked surprised.

“Why?” he said. “Do
you
?”

“Well, he
was
homeless,” I said.

“That's hardly your fault, Robbie.”

“But if I hadn't told Mr. Donovan what happened—”

“I know how you must feel,” my father said. “It's a real tragedy that he froze to death. It's a tragedy that anyone freezes to death in this day and age, especially in a big city like this. But it sounds to me like he had problems besides being homeless.”

“I know,” I said. Still, I couldn't stop thinking about what Ben had said. “But if he hadn't been barred from the shelter, he might still be alive.”

“If he hadn't become aggressive with you, he probably would have become aggressive with someone else. If it had been another volunteer in the kitchen when he snuck down into the basement, even if it had been a staff member, he probably would have acted the same way. You're lucky you weren't badly hurt, Robbie.”

“If it had been someone else, they might have handled it better than I did.”

My father looked at me for a few moments. “I could think of a hundred ifs, Robbie,” he said. “But it is what it is. All you did was answer Mr. Donovan's questions truthfully. After that, it was out of your hands. You had no way of knowing what he was going to do. And you certainly had no way of knowing that this man would sleep outside on the coldest night of the year instead of making his way to an emergency shelter. As I understand it, he had been homeless for quite some time. He must have known there were other places to go.”

I knew my father was trying to make me feel better. I even knew that most of what he was saying was true. But it didn't help.

  .    .    .

“It's terrible that that old guy froze to death,” Morgan said when I called her later. “But it's not exactly a first. It happens every year.”

“I know. But everyone thinks it's my fault.”

“
Everyone?
”

“Well, Ben does. And I wouldn't be surprised if Billy did too.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“He does, doesn't he, Morgan?”

“Billy's a nonjudgmental person, Robyn.”

That was true. “But there's no way he would ever rat on a homeless person,” I said.

“Come on, Robyn, you know Billy. He would probably have given the guy every cent he had to go and buy food if he thought he was hungry enough to steal. But for what it's worth, if it had been me? I would have pressed charges.”

I love Morgan. She's my best friend. But somehow what she said didn't make me feel better.

“I gotta go,” I said. “I have to call Billy. I need Ben's phone number.”

  .    .    .

When Ben agreed to meet me, he was about as enthusiastic as a person booking an appointment for major dental surgery. When I sat down opposite him that night in a coffee shop he'd chosen, he gave me a sour look.

“It was on the news,” he said. “Did you see it?” I hadn't. “Homeless man freezes to death. First one this winter.” He sounded angry. “Do you know how many homeless people froze to death
last
winter?” I didn't. “Four. The winter before that it was three. But nobody cares.”

“I wouldn't say that—”

“You know what the worst part is? The worst part is that no one even knows who he is—who he was.”

“What do you mean?”

“All anyone knows about Mr. Duffy is his name. No one's even positive that Duffy
was
his real name.”

“Come on,” I said. “People must know more than that. Someone must know where he came from. He must have had some identification.”

Ben shook his head. “Mr. Donovan said the police couldn't find any. All he had on him when he died was a couple of paperback novels and a wad of paper napkins. The police asked around, but no one knows anything about him. They don't know where he came from or how he ended up on the street. Even his first name. Mr. Donovan says they fingerprinted him at the morgue to see if they could identify him that way. But they couldn't. He won't even get a real headstone. He'll end up getting a cheap funeral at city expense. But what's the point, huh? They wouldn't even know what name to put on the grave. He'll just be one more pathetic, anonymous homeless guy who drank too much and froze to death.”

“Drank too much?”

“He'd been drinking. They think he passed out and that's why he froze to death.”

“Oh,” I said. I thought about the whiskey bottle I had seen on the sidewalk near where we had found Mr. Duffy.

Ben's eyes zeroed right in on me. “What does that mean—‘Oh'?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly.

“I know what you're thinking,” Ben said. “When people see homeless guys like Mr. Duffy having a drink or smoking, they think they're committing some kind of crime. They think if homeless people didn't smoke or drink, they'd be able to afford food or a place to stay. It doesn't work that way. They're on the street because they're sick or because they've hit bottom and they can't get back up again. Sometimes a smoke or a drink is the only pleasure they have in life. It's not a crime. And, anyway, Mr. Duffy was trying to quit. Mr. Donovan told me.”

Too bad he hadn't succeeded
, I thought.

Ben shook his head impatiently. “When I heard you were Billy's friend, I thought maybe I'd been wrong about you. But I guess I wasn't. You don't see someone like Mr. Duffy as a real person—someone who deserves the same things in life that you have.”

“That's not true,” I said. “I called you because I feel terrible about what happened and because I want to know if there's anything I can do. Anything at all.”

“Right,” he said.

“I mean it, Ben.”

“Really?” he said. “Anything?”

  .    .    .

I arrived back at my dad's loft just in time to see his (young) friend Tara leave the building and climb into a taxi. I wondered how she figured into my father's life. The whole time my parents were separated, he acted as if he thought they would eventually get back together. They never did. He had seemed stunned when my mother finally divorced him. But as far as I knew, he hadn't yet become seriously involved with another woman. My mother, on the other hand, was seeing Ted Gold—Ted had even proposed to her. My mom hadn't said yes, but she hadn't said no, either, and it seemed to me that she and Ted were closer than ever. Had my dad finally decided to move on?

I found him sitting on a stool in his kitchen, sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. He glanced up when I came through the door.

“Robbie,” he said. “Where did you disappear to?”

“I had to meet someone.”

“I've got something for you,” he said. He slid off his stool, went into the living room, and picked up some papers that were lying on the coffee table. He handed them to me.

I scanned the top page.
Autopsy report
, it said.
Last name: Duffy. First name: Unknown. DOB: Unknown. Age: Approxi-mately 60–65.

“Where did you get this, Dad?”

“From the pathologist. She faxed this over to me—at my request.”

“She?”

My father grinned and took the report from me. “Basically what it says is that your Mr. Duffy was in poor health.” He ran a finger down the page. “At some point in the past, he suffered a serious head trauma, which may at least partly explain why he was on the street. He also suffered damage to his face. Serena says he must have had poor vision in his left eye.”

“Serena?”

“The pathologist. And—the big one, Robbie—the man ingested a
lot
of alcohol just before he died.”

“I already know that, Dad.”

“You do?”

“Ben told me.”

“Maybe someone treated him to some pre-Christmas cheer. Or maybe he collected enough change to buy himself a bottle. Some people think that alcohol will warm them up on a cold night. They don't realize the risks it poses.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it's having the opposite effect.”

“What I'm saying is, if he drank as much as Serena says he did, then he probably passed out. And that could just as easily have happened even if he hadn't been barred from the shelter. You drink that much, Robbie, and you don't think straight. You did tell me that he was lying
on top
of a couple of sleeping bags, didn't you? He wasn't in them or covered by them. That suggests to me that he passed out before he could take even the most basic precautions against the cold. It's not your fault, Robbie. Chances are what happened would have happened no matter what.”

Maybe he was right. But I still couldn't shake the feeling that Ben had a point. If I hadn't said anything to Art Donovan, the night might have turned out differently for Mr. Duffy. He might still be alive.

“Nobody knows anything about him, Dad. According to Ben, no one even knows if Duffy was his real name. They don't know what happened to him, if he had any family. Ben says he's going to be buried at city expense.”

“At least he gets a funeral and a burial,” my father said.

“But no full name to go with it. Ben says that Mr. Duffy didn't have any identification on him—no birth certificate, no driver's license, no passport. No old letters or bills. Not even a library card. How can that be, Dad? Everyone has some kind of ID.”

My father shrugged. “Maybe he lost whatever he had. Maybe it got stolen. Or maybe he stashed any valuables he had in a safe place so they wouldn't get stolen.”

“The thing is, Ben wants to do something for Mr. Duffy,” I said. “He doesn't want him to be just one more anonymous homeless person who froze to death. He wants to find out more about him so that he can hold a memorial service.” Ben had been so earnest when he'd told me what he wanted to do. He had also been sure that I wouldn't care. But I did. Okay, so maybe guilt had a lot to do with why I'd offered to help. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the right thing.

My father arched an eyebrow. “You seem to care an awful lot about what this Ben thinks.”

“It's not about Ben. It's about Mr. Duffy. I want to do something. But I don't know where to start. The police tried to identify him by his fingerprints, but they struck out.”

“All that means is that the man didn't have a criminal record.”

Mr. Duffy had been so aggressive with me that I found it difficult to believe he'd never been in trouble with the law.

“What about dental records?” I said. “Can't they use those?”

“Dental records are only useful if you have some idea who the person is,” my father said. “Otherwise, how do you know which of the hundreds of dentists in the city to check with? And that's assuming Duffy was originally from here or that he had dental work done while he lived here—which, based on Serena's report, seems doubtful.”

“But someone must have some kind of record of him, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Great. So basically I volunteered for Mission: Impossible.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if the police can't find out—”

“The man froze to death, Robbie. As far as the police are concerned, his death was an accident. They did what they could to find out who he was, but it's not a high priority if no crime was committed. Mission: Impossible, though? I wouldn't jump to that conclusion.”

“You mean there's a way we can find out who he was?”

“I wouldn't necessarily say that, either.”

“Then what
would
you say?”

“If it were me, Robbie—if someone hired me to find out who he was—you know what I'd do?”

I shook my head.

“I'd talk to people.”

“But Ben said—”

“The man lived in this city. He interacted with people. He was a regular at the homeless shelter, probably at other shelters or soup kitchens around town, too.”

“But if no one at Mr. Donovan's shelter knows anything about him—”

“Oh?” my father said. “You spoke to all the staff and all the regulars there?”

“Well, no, but—”

“One person might know one little thing. Another person might know something else.”

“So I should talk to people at the shelter?”

“It would be a start. You could also check out Duffy's turf.”

“His turf?”

“Beggars usually stake out a spot that they consider their own. They're there day after day. And there are bound to be people who pass that same spot every day, maybe on their way to and from work. Some of them may have dropped money into Duffy's hat. Some people make a habit of it—a quarter or two every day.”

“You think that some of them might have talked to Mr. Duffy?”

“It's worth a shot. Just because Mr. Duffy didn't have a regular place to stay doesn't mean he wasn't in contact with people. For example, he had to get his clothes from somewhere.”

“Maybe from secondhand stores,” I said.

My father grinned. “And I doubt he spent all his spare time at the shelter,” he said. “If he was begging, then he probably had some cash at least some of the time. He probably spent it on food or drink, maybe on toiletries.”

I thought about checking with some of the stores and restaurants in the area. This was beginning to sound like a big job.

“Did he have anything on him when they found him?” my dad said. “He carry anything with him? Some homeless people drag their belongings around in a bag or a cart.”

I thought back to the night we had found Mr. Duffy. “All I saw were those sleeping bags and that old blanket,” I said. “I don't remember any bags or a cart. Ben said that Mr. Donovan told him that all Mr. Duffy had with him were a couple of paperback novels and some paper napkins.”