Rook & Tooth and Claw Page 12

  “Oh, yes?” The attorney waited expectantly, and then he said, “You’re not going to tell me what it is?”

  “Sorry, no. I’ve been told to keep my mouth shut.”

  “You can’t even give me a clue? I mean, I like to keep abreast of what the kids on the streets are into. Helps me with my job.”

  At that moment, the swing doors opened and Umber Jones walked in, still wearing his Elmer Gantry hat. The reception area immediately seemed to shrink, and even the tallest cops looked as if they were undersized.

  “Here’s your clue,” said Jim, stepping away. The attorney gave him a baffled frown, but then he stepped back, too. Uncle Umber’s sheer size and presence were overwhelming. His skin gleamed uner the fluorescent lights like polished black wood. He went up to Lieutenant Harris and said, “My nephew free to leave, officer?”

  “For now, yes,” said Lieutenant Harris. “We may want to talk to him again. Meantime, I’d appreciate it if he stays in the Greater Los Angeles area and stays out of trouble. I trust you may have some influence in that direction.”

  “Oh, I’ve got influence,” grinned Umber Jones. He cracked all of his knuckles, one by one, waiting for Tee Jay to sign his release papers and collect his watch and his money and his leather belt. As soon as Tee Jay was finished, he took hold of his arm and guided him toward the door. On the way, he stopped beside Jim and said, “You did what you were told, Mr Rook, and I’m pleased about that. Now there’s something else I want you to do for me.”

  Jim shook his head. “No way, Mr Jones. This is where you and I stop being friends. There’s nothing I can do to prove that you stabbed Elvin and that you killed Mrs Vaizey, but I don’t want to see you or hear from you ever again.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Umber Jones. “I really thought that you and me were going to be bosom friends for the rest of our lives. Still – even if you don’t want to be my friend, you can still run a couple of errands for me, now can’t you?”

  “Forget it. I’m doing nothing for you, ever again.”

  “You sure are eager to see your children suffer, aren’t you?”

  “I warned you before. You leave my students alone.”

  “You warned me? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. And what are you going to do if I maybe just cut them a little? Give them some nasty scars? Or what if I burst their eardrums and turn them all stone-deaf? Or poke out their eyes? Or give them the fire sickness so that they feel like they’ve been doused in blazing gasoline?”

  “I told you to leave them alone. If you hurt them, by God I’ll find a way to bring you down.”

  “No you won’t, Mr Rook, because there is no way. Now … stop your blustering, it doesn’t suit a man in your profession. All you have to do is wait and I’ll send you a messenger, telling you what to do.”

  “Go eat yourself,” Jim suggested, bitterly. “Go turn yourself to dust.”

  Uncle Umber ushered Tee Jay to the doors. In all the time that they had been talking, Tee Jay had glanced at Jim only once, and his expression had been very difficult to read. All the same, Jim was sure that he had seen a glimmer of the old Tee Jay, somewhere behind those indifferent eyes – a flicker of his eyelids to show that he wasn’t totally under Uncle Umber’s influence.

  Then they were gone, and the swing door briefly showed Jim a reflection of himself, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking tired.

  Lieutenant Harris came up to him and sniffed. “What was all that about?”

  “Just a word of thanks from a grateful uncle.”

  “You can’t kid me, Mr Rook. I know my body language. That looked more like a toe-to-toe confrontation to me.”

  “Mr Jones has a forceful way of demonstrating his indebtedness, that’s all.”

  “You intellectuals,” said Lieutenant Harris. “What would you call it if the guy hit you in the beezer? A palpable expression of discontent?”

  Driving west on Santa Monica Boulevard, Jim couldn’t help smiling at Lieutenant Harris’s remark. He had never thought of himself as an intellectual. He certainly hadn’t come from an intellectual family. His father had sold earthquake insurance, and when Jim was born he had just lost his job. Jim had been brought up in a house where T-shirts were worn until they had holes in them and it was always meatloaf on Sundays and water to drink instead of Coke. He had never had many friends because none of his classmates wanted to come back to his place and eat plain bread-and-butter and watch television in black-and-white.

  Jim’s first ambition had been to make a name for himself as a Western movie star, like Clint Eastwood. Then he wanted to be a secret agent, like Napoleon Solo. Later, he changed his mind and decided to be an architect. But more than anything else he wanted to be wealthy. He wanted to give his children peanut butter on their bread, and Dr Pepper to drink on Sundays.

  While he was still at high school, however, his father started his own marine insurance business, and it instantly flourished. By the time he graduated, his parents had moved to a large, comfortable house in Santa Barbara, and Jim was able to take English at UCLA, with the half-formed ambition of being a famous writer. He had a car. He had a generous allowance. He thought he was happy at last.

  But while he was still in his freshman year, his cousin Laura came to stay and his cousin Laura changed his life overnight. Jim had last seen her when she was only six years old. Now she was eighteen – a startlingly pretty blonde with long shiny hair that she could sit on and blue eyes that absolutely mesmerised him. What he couldn’t understand, however, was why she acted so shy. She seemed to have no confidence in herself whatsoever, and she always seemed to prefer to stay inside and watch television rather than go out and have fun.

  Jim appointed himself her unofficial cheerer-upper. He took her swimming, he took her dancing, he took her to parties. He was so breathlessly infatuated with her that he felt as if he were drowning; and it was plain that she liked him too.

  He wrote her a love poem, embarrassingly titled My Golden Girl. He gave it to her while they were sitting on the beach. She studied it for a moment and then handed it back to him and smiled and said nothing at all.

  “You don’t like it?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t really read it.”

  That was the first time Jim encountered dyslexia. Laura had no verbal thoughts at all. Everything went through her head like a movie without a soundtrack, and she simply couldn’t connect printed words to objects or actions or ideas. At school, both her teachers and her classmates had treated her as if she were ignorant or stupid, and once a teacher had ripped up her work in front of the whole class.

  She had often been punished for being late, too, because dyslexics have no sense of time.

  The next day Jim went to the university’s psychology department and took out nine books on dyslexia and reading dysfunction. He studied them all and then he contacted one of the authors, Professor Myron Davies at Boston University. With Professor Davies’ help, he devised a way of teaching Laura to recognise words, using charts and diagrams and pictures.

  He taught her the sentence, ‘I can jump’ by holding a can of baked beans and jumping off a kitchen chair.

  Laura stayed with the Rook family all the way through the summer vacation and slowly Jim taught her to read stories and poems and magazine articles. She became bolder, and more confident, and by the time she was ready to go home, she was able to read whole pages of text, even if it did take her more than a quarter of an hour.

  But he never made love to her; not once. And in December she wrote him a Christmas letter saying that she had found a new boyfriend and that she was ‘crazy in love’. But she also said that Jim had given her, ‘a miracel, a whol new life.’

  It had taken Jim almost six months to get over her, and he had never really gotten over her, not really. He would die remembering what she looked like, on the beach, those fine grains of sand on her skin. But at least he knew what he wanted to do. He didn’t want to be a movie cowboy or
an architect or a novelist. He wanted to save those children to whom reading and writing and mathematics were all incomprehensible. He didn’t care what was wrong with them: whether they stammered or whether they suffered from problems at home or whether they had the attention-span of a gnat. They all deserved to be rescued; and Jim studied for four years to give himself the ability to do it.

  He reached the beach. He parked, and he lifted Mrs Vaizey’s dust from the trunk. He went down the steps and walked across the sand. The ocean sounded uncomfortable tonight, and the surf was surging fretful and luminous all the way from Palisades Park to the Municipal Pier.

  He went to the shoreline and the sea drew back as if it were afraid of him. Then, as he lifted up his plastic bag, it came flooding back in again, and warmly filled his shoes. He tipped the neck of the bag and the dust came flying out, into the wind, into the darkness, and blew across the water.

  He had almost emptied it all when he remembered what Sharon had told him, after class. “There’s a way that you can show him up, so that everybody else can see him, too.”

  The death dust: that was it. ‘The physical body will decompose very quickly into death dust.’ Jim stopped pouring out Mrs Vaizey’s remains and angled the bag toward the lights on the pier to see how much dust he had left. Enough to fill a coffee-mug, not much more. But he screwed the bag up tight, and carried it back to his car. He had a feeling that it might come in useful. He had dealt with Laura’s dyslexia through research, and by talking to experts. He could deal with Uncle Umber in the same way. He was fighting against somebody who was practised in magic, and so he needed to equip himself with magic knowledge and magic skill and magic artefacts. Sharon had lent him her books; and now he had death dust, too. Maybe he could find himself a loa stick, if he tried hard enough.

  He climbed back into his car and started the engine.

  “Do you know what you are?” he asked himself. “You’re a lunatic, that’s what you are.”

  When he returned to his apartment, he found a message from Susan on the answerphone. “I’m sorry if I overreacted, but I couldn’t believe what you did. I like you, Jim, and if I gave you the impression that it was more than just a friendship, then all I can do is apologise. But I think maybe that we’d better keep our distance from now on, don’t you?”

  He listened to the message three times. He simply couldn’t understand what had happened today. Yesterday, Susan had seemed so eager. She had cuddled right up to him and told him how special he was and kissed him with her mouth open. Today, he was supposed to keep his distance. He had heard of fickle, but this was ridiculous.

  Oh well, he thought, resignedly. At least he wouldn’t have to rush around acquiring a whole lot of maps to show her.

  There was another message, from Tee Jay’s mother. “I just called to say how much I appreciate what you did, Mr Rook. You saved my boy. He’s still with his Uncle Umber, but at least he’s cleared of any blame for killing poor Elvin; and that’s what means the most to me.”

  And the last message came from somebody who had a thick, gravelly, uncompromising voice. “Remember what you solemnly promised me, Mr Rook, and don’t you go backing down on no solemn promises. My messenger will come to see you soon and tell you what to do. You make sure that you listen to what he has to say, and listen good.”

  Jim went through to the kitchen. He was suddenly feeling ravenously hungry. He opened the icebox and stared at his old piece of gorgonzola for a while. Then he opened the kitchen cupboard and stared at an out-of-date carton of Golden Grahams and at three cans of red salmon. Then he went to the phone and punched out the number of Pizza Express. “Thin and crispy, with extra pepperami, chillies and anchovies.”

  He showered and changed into a purple polo shirt and chino pants. He sat back on the couch and switched on the television. He had never felt so disoriented in his life. The way that Elvin had been killed; the way that Mrs Vaizey had died; the smoke and the spirits and the warnings of terrible tragedies – they had all completely undermined every belief that he had ever held about life and death and the supernatural. He had been certain that death was the end. Now he had been shown – in the most violent and extravagant way possible – that death was just a different state of being.

  Restless, he went back to the kitchen to find himself a beer. On the floor, in the corner, was the bag containing Mrs Vaizey’s death dust. He hesitated for a moment, then he took a blue china mug out of the cupboard, set it down in the middle of the floor and poured the dust directly into it. Then he covered the mug with clingfilm. Pretty damned funny way to end up, he thought. One minute you’re sunbathing and drinking whiskey, the next you’re a little heap of powder in somebody’s coffee mug.

  “‘A heap of dust alone remains of thee,’” he quoted. “ ‘’Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!’” He smiled, and then he said to himself, “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. How true.”

  He drank beer and channel-surfed; and he was still flicking from one programme to another when the doorbell rang. Great – pizza at last. He went across to the side-table and picked up his billfold. The doorbell rang again and he called out, “Okay – okay! I’m coming, don’t worry about it!” He licked his thumb and counted out twenty dollars as he approached the door. He was still counting as he opened up the door and there he was.

  Elvin.

  He was standing right outside the door, wearing a smart dark suit, as if he had dressed up to pay his college teacher a last respectful visit. But his face was distorted with twenty or thirty stab-wounds, his ears were gone, and his eyes were as blind as pebbles. His wounds had mostly healed, but his starched white shirt-collar was stained with a few cranberry-coloured spots of blood and his eyes were still weeping.

  Jim held on to the door and didn’t know what to say. He was so frightened that he felt as if his skin had shrunk, and all of his insides had suddenly dropped out, leaving nothing in his stomach but a chilly vacuum of fear.

  “Hello, Mr Rook,” said Elvin. His voice sounded terrible, all foggy and bruised, as if his tongue were too big for his mouth. He stepped forward with an awkward, unbalanced shuffle, his feet dragging on the floor, and as he did so his wounds gaped open, so that Jim could actually see his bright white cheekbones.

  “You’re dead, Elvin,” said Jim, retreating across the living-room. He stumbled against a chair but managed to right himself. “Umber Jones killed you. You’re dead. You have the right to some peace, don’t you?”

  Elvin gave a tilted smile, and swivelled his head around as much as his wounds would allow. “I’m not going to hurt you, Mr Rook. I brought you a message, that’s all.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Elvin. I want you to go.”

  Elvin stayed where he was. It was his blinded eyes that disturbed Jim the most, slit in half from top to bottom, so that his irises were split like cut-up mushrooms.

  “I want you to go, Elvin,” Jim repeated. “I don’t want to have anything more to do with Umber Jones, and you can tell him that from me.”

  “You have to hear his message,” Elvin insisted.

  “I told him back at police headquarters, it’s over.”

  “He says you’re his friend, Mr Rook. He says you’re the only friend he’s got. But he said something else, too. He said that every time you say ‘no’ to him, one of your class is going to die, the same way that I died.”

  Jim said nothing, but licked his lips. His mouth was so dry he felt as if he hadn’t drunk anything in a year.

  Elvin said, “There’s a bar on Vernon called Sly’s. There’s a guy who hangs out in this bar called Chill. His real name’s Charles Gillespie but he doesn’t like nobody to call him that. All you got to do is to go see Chill and tell him that you work for Umber Jones and that Umber Jones knows that he’s just taken delivery of two kilos of best Colombian nose candy. Then tell him that from now on he’s going to be working for Umber Jones, too, and that he’d better make sure that he pays over ninety per cent of his pr
ofits. Tell him you’ll let him know later how and where and when he can make his payment. And if he shows any sign that he doesn’t want to co-operate, tell him that Umber Jones is going to be watching him, night and day, and give him this.”

  Elvin put one mutilated hand into his coat pocket and took out a small fragment of black cloth. He held it out but Jim wouldn’t take it.

  He laid it carefully on the table instead. “Tell Chill that times have changed. Tell him that he’d better change with them, if he values his life.” With that, Elvin turned around and shuffled toward the door, groping and feeling his way between the chairs.

  He opened the door but then he hesitated for a moment. “You’d better go tonight, Mr Rook,” he suggested. “Umber Jones is a very impatient man.” He walked through the door and closed it very, very quietly behind him, which Jim found much more frightening than if he had slammed it.

  For a long time he couldn’t move, but held on to the back of the couch, his head bent forward, taking deep, steadying breaths. He had read articles about the so-called ‘walking dead’, but he had always accepted the historical explanation rather than the magical myth. Zombies were the victims of unscrupulous sugar-plantation owners during Haiti’s great labour shortage in 1918. The owners were said to have hired voodoo sorcerers to administer soporific drugs to any likely-looking worker – probably a cocktail of tetrodotoxin, from the puffer fish; datura, a powerful hallucinogenic; and an extract from the toad Bufo marinus, which gives extraordinary strength. These drugs lowered the pulse-rate and gave the appearance of death – so much so that the zombie-to-be could be buried, and could remain in the cemetery in a trance-like stupor for days.

  The sorcerer would then exhume them, revive them and take them to the sugar plantations to work – but not before taking the precaution of cutting out their tongues, so that they would never be able to protest or to explain what had happened to them.

  But Elvin – Elvin was different. Elvin had been repeatedly stabbed all over. His heart and his lungs and his liver had been pierced. His body had undergone a full post-mortem, which would have killed him even if he hadn’t already been dead. Yet he had walked into Jim’s apartment tonight and spoken.