Garden of Evil Read online

  He waved his arm out of the window to apologize, and pulled away. But as he did so, he saw Simon Silence turn around, and catch sight of him, and smile – that same knowing smile that he had given him before.

  THREE

  When Jim parked on the steeply sloping driveway outside his apartment block on Briarcliff Road, he found Ricky Kaminsky sitting on the steps, playing a Spanish guitar and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

  ‘Hey man, you’re back super early,’ said Ricky, the cigarette waggling between his lips. ‘Don’t tell me – you took one look at your new class and totally freaked?’

  Ricky was an artist and lived in the first-floor apartment. He was in his early sixties, with a wild mane of gray hair and a droopy gray moustache. His face was creased and leathery, as if it had been weathered by every outdoor rock concert from Woodstock to Altamont. His bare chest was brown and bony like a kipper, and he wore only a tan leather vest and jeans and six or seven necklaces of colored beads.

  ‘We had some security problems,’ Jim told him.

  ‘Security problems, huh? What’s that a euphemism for?’

  ‘I found a dead girl in my classroom. And some dead cats, too.’

  Ricky narrowed his eyes, but he kept on playing his guitar. ‘No shit. What was that all about?’

  ‘Wish I knew. It looked like some kind of ritual.’

  ‘There’s some fuckin’ weird types out there, man. I tell you. I used to think the sixties were weird. Then I thought the seventies were weird. But today . . . whoa. The whole fuckin’ world is weird. Here . . .’

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth and offered it to Jim with a nod of encouragement. ‘This is good shit, man. You want to try it. Ease your troubles, that’s what it does.’

  Jim shook his head. ‘No thanks. I think there’s enough happening in my head already, without that stuff. Anyhow, why aren’t you working? I thought you had that commission to finish for the Westwood Library.’

  ‘I’m working on it, I’m working on it. I’m having a little difficulty, that’s all. It’s like the paint won’t behave itself.’

  ‘What does that mean? You’ve bought some disobedient paint? Take it back to the art store and get your money back.’

  Ricky stopped playing and propped his guitar up on the step. ‘No – I’m serious, man. I mean, you write a bit of poetry now and again, don’t you? You know what it’s like when the words won’t do what you want them to do?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Well, let me show you.’

  Ricky stood up and led Jim up the steps to his apartment. The faded red front door was open and there was a strong smell of incense and turpentine wafting out of it. The living room was chaos. Three easels stood at angles to each other, and there were dozens of unfinished canvases stacked up against the walls. A trestle table was crowded with paintbrushes and rags and dried-out palettes, as well as scores of half-squeezed tubes of oil paint, like a writhing nest of multicolored worms.

  The walls were draped with Indian durries, in red and brown and green, and brass lamps hung from the ceiling, wrapped in red silk scarves. In the corner there was an oriental-style birdcage, with a red cockatoo perched inside it.

  ‘This is the painting I’m supposed to be doing for the Westwood Library,’ said Ricky. He nodded toward the easel on the right-hand side, on which was propped a large canvas depicting a man in a white cloak sitting in a chair like a throne, surrounded by small children. He had a thick leather-bound book on his lap, and he was obviously reading them a story.

  The painting was only about a third completed, so much of the background was still sketched in charcoal. But Ricky had already painted the man’s face in considerable detail. He was blond haired and very pale, with high cheekbones and pale turquoise eyes and the slightest suggestion of a smile. For some reason, though, he looked as if he were smiling at a private joke, rather than sharing his amusement with the children who were gathered all around him.

  Jim stared at the painting for a long time without saying anything. He thought that the pale-faced man bore an uncanny resemblance to Simon Silence, although it had to be a coincidence. Like, it had to be. Either a coincidence, or Jim’s psychic alarm bells still faintly ringing, in the back of his mind.

  ‘Who is that?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s supposed to be The Storyteller. The library have baby story-time and toddler story-time a couple of times a month, and they wanted a painting to put up in the corner where they hold them.’

  ‘No – I meant who did you use as a model?’

  ‘Well, that’s the whole fuckin’ point. This is the model.’ He went across to the easel and picked up a dog-eared color photograph of a man’s face. He handed it over to Jim and said, ‘This is what The Storyteller was supposed to look like.’

  The man in the photograph was round-faced and jolly-looking, almost like Santa Claus without a beard. His cheeks were red and his eyes were crinkly with good humor and he had a broad, cheerful smile.

  ‘That’s actually a guy called Morton Toft, who runs the Brouhaha Bar on Wilshire. I ’specially chose him because he’s always telling tall stories, and he has a child-friendly face.’

  ‘So – what happened? Your Storyteller looks completely different.’

  ‘I can’t paint him any other way, that’s why. I sketch his features, I mix my colors, and that’s how he always turns out. That face you’re looking at there, that’s the third fuckin’ face I’ve painted, one on top of the other.’

  Jim went close up to the painting and stared into The Storyteller’s eyes. There was no question about it, he did look very much like Simon Silence, except he was at least twenty years older. His hair was thinner and there were crows’ feet around his eyes.

  ‘Can you explain it?’ asked Ricky. ‘Because I sure can’t. I think it’s something to do with the paint.’

  Jim heard a rattling sound, like a bead-curtain parting, and then a woman’s voice said, ‘It’s a message from the spirit world. I’ve told Ricky that over and over, but he doesn’t believe me.’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, woman! “A message from the spirit world,” my ass! There ain’t no fuckin’ spirit world, otherwise your ex would be sleeping in between us every night just to keep us apart!’

  A very emaciated woman with her white hair cut into a bob had entered the living room. She was wearing a silver Navajo necklace and several silver bracelets, but she was naked to the waist. Her breasts were small and flat, but with prominent brown nipples, both of which were pierced with silver rings. She wore gauzy brown harem pants and oriental slippers with curled-up toes. She was smoking a cigarette in a long black holder.

  ‘Hallo, Nadine,’ said Jim. ‘How’s the fortune telling?’

  ‘Oh, I’m getting by. Business types mainly, these days, wanting to know when the next crash is coming.’

  ‘So – this Storyteller – you think this is a message from the spirit world?’

  Nadine came sliding up to Ricky and twined her arm around his waist. ‘He refuses to believe me, but what else could it possibly be? All right, he’s not Norman Rockwell, but he’s not that crap at painting faces, are you, bunny-hugs?’

  ‘It’s the paint,’ Ricky insisted. ‘It’s something to do with the paint, I’m sure of it. When it dries, it loses all of its pigmentation.’

  Nadine blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘You don’t believe that any more than I do, do you? You just don’t want to admit that there are forces in this world that you can’t explain. Jim knows all about them, don’t you, Jim?’

  Jim deliberately didn’t answer that question. ‘What do you think this means, then?’ he asked Nadine. ‘This face, always turning out different from the way that Ricky wants to paint it?’

  ‘I think it’s a long-dead relative, desperately trying to communicate with him through the medium in which he is the most proficient – oil paint.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Why not through music? Or why not simply talk to him?’

&
nbsp; ‘Because he’s high most of the time, and he would forget. But if the message is in a painting, then he can’t forget. He needs to find out who this is, this Storyteller, and when he does, he’ll discover something greatly to his advantage.’

  ‘Nadine, will you cut that out? I don’t believe any of your fortune-telling garbage!’

  ‘But you could be rich without knowing it. This man could have left you an untold fortune, bunny-hugs, and then you and I could live in the lap of luxury for the rest of our lives!’

  Ricky turned to Jim and spread his arms wide. ‘Can you believe this drivel? This is what I have to put up with, every day of my life. I leave coffee grounds up the side of my cup, and that means I’m going to sell one of my paintings for a record price. I haven’t sold a fuckin’ painting in months, not at any price.’

  Jim checked his watch. ‘Listen – I’d better leave you two in peace. I have a whole lot of preparation work to finish up for tomorrow.’

  ‘Stay for some chamomile tea,’ begged Nadine, taking hold of his arm and pressing her deflated breast against it. ‘We have so few visitors, don’t we, Ricky?’

  ‘I really must go,’ Jim told her. ‘I have to take my cat for a walk.’

  As he turned to leave, however, the red parakeet suddenly ruffled its feathers and let out a harsh, high-pitched squawk. ‘Silence!’ it screamed. ‘Silence!’

  Ricky snapped, ‘Shut the fuck up, bird!’ Then he turned to Jim and said, ‘“Silence” – that’s the only word he knows. I’ve tried to teach him a couple of good old-fashioned cuss words, but all he says is “silence”!’

  ‘Silence!’ the parakeet screamed back at him. ‘Silence!’

  As he walked along the landing past Apartment 2, the door suddenly opened and Summer stepped out. She managed to time her appearances almost to the second. She was blonde, tall, and stunningly pretty, with enormous blue eyes and a little ski-jump nose and naturally pouting lips.

  This morning she was dressed more demurely than she usually was, in a pink roll-neck sweater with short sleeves, which didn’t quite manage to reach down as far as her navel, and a pair of white deck shorts with turned-up cuffs.

  ‘Jimmy! I thought you’d be at college!’

  Jim gave her a kiss on each cheek. ‘How’s it going, Summer? How’s the pole-dancing job?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? I quit. A guy came in from the Starstruck Model Agency and offered me much better money to do modeling. I have my first shoot Monday.’

  ‘I thought you enjoyed the pole dancing.’

  ‘It’s OK, but it’s much more tiring than you think. And those horrible old men . . . they can never keep their paws to themselves. Why aren’t you at college?’

  ‘Oh . . . there was some kind of health-and-safety problem. We’ll probably be back to normal tomorrow.’

  Summer reached up and twisted his hair around her fingertip. ‘So . . . if you’re not doing anything this afternoon, maybe you could take me to the beach or something?’

  ‘Summer . . . you know how much I like you, and I think you’re the most gorgeous girl I ever met. But let’s just keep it that way, shall we? You know, friends.’

  ‘Friends can go to the beach together, can’t they?’

  ‘I’ve seen your bikinis, when you’ve been sunbathing. How long do you think that we could stay just friends if you wore one of those?’

  ‘Oh come on, Jimmy. I had a Brazilian only yesterday. I haven’t had the chance to try it out yet.’

  Jim gave her another kiss. ‘Get thee behind me, Satan. I’ll see you later, OK – round about eight? Maybe we can have a drink at Barney’s Beanery, and a bite to eat if you’re hungry.’

  ‘I’m hungry for you, Jimmy. You know that.’

  ‘Stop teasing me, Summer. I’m just a tired old college teacher.’

  Jim climbed the last flight of steps to his own apartment. He opened the front door and Tibbles immediately jumped off the kitchen table, as if he had been caught doing something wrong.

  He came up to Jim and rubbed himself against his legs and gave him two or three ingratiating mews.

  ‘What have you been doing that you feel so guilty about?’ Jim asked him.

  He walked through to his living room and unlocked the sliding door that gave out on to the balcony. Below him, in the garden, a warm wind was rustling through the yuccas, and Santana the gardener was bent over the flowerbeds, trying to dig out a gopher hole. He looked up when Jim scraped one of the chairs on the balcony, and waved his frayed straw hat. Santana was young and very handsome in a Mexican gardener kind of way, and Summer thought he was ‘durr-vine.’

  ‘Hola, Señor Rook!’

  ‘Por que trabajo tan duro?’ Jim called down. ‘Why are you working so hard? Se volveran solamente! They will only come back!’

  ‘No cuido! I don’t care! Todavia consigo pagado! I still get paid!’

  Jim went back into the kitchen and opened his briefcase. At least he would have the chance to finish preparing his lesson on the poetry of Rachel X. Speed. He tipped the contents of his briefcase on to the counter, and along with all of his files and folders, the Paradise apple that Simon Silence had given him rolled out, too, and almost dropped off the edge of the counter.

  He caught it, and sniffed it again. Its pink and green colors were slightly striped, almost like candy, and it had the most enticing aroma. He took it across to the kitchen sink and washed it, and then he picked up his file on Rachel X. Speed and went back out on to the balcony, biting into the apple as he went.

  He sat down, opened the file, and spread out the poems in a fan shape. Rachel X. Speed was a very edgy, difficult poet, but he thought that her words would appeal to a class brought up on rap and dubstep and grime.

  He took another bite out of the apple. It was delicious, sweet and crisp, but with a sharpness that reminded him of something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A person, more than a taste. A person and a place. How strange was that? An apple that brought back memories.

  He was still reading and eating when Tibbles came out on to the balcony. Tibbles mewed, and mewed again, and rubbed himself up against his ankles.

  ‘Tibbles for Christ’s sake, you just had breakfast!’

  It was then that Tibbles jumped up into his lap, crumpling all of his papers.

  ‘Tibs – what the hell are you doing?’

  He lifted Tibbles up so that he could drop him back on to the floor, but then he saw the figure standing at the far end of his balcony. The same dark shadowy figure that he had seen in the smog this morning, and had almost run down.

  It could have been made of black smoke, or black gauze. It seemed to float in tatters in the breeze. Tibbles crept slowly backward, his fur standing on end, and Jim himself felt a prickling sensation all the way down his back.

  ‘What?’ Jim demanded. ‘What in hell are you?’ He tried to sound stern, although his voice came out much weaker than he had intended. ‘What are you doing here?’

  There was a moment’s pause, while the shadowy figure seemed to ebb and flow like a torn black cape caught on the tide.

  Then it said, in a deep, vibrant voice, ‘I have come for you. I have come for all of you. This time, none will escape me.’

  Jim wasn’t sure if he had actually heard the figure talking, or whether the sound of its voice had vibrated through his bones.

  The shadowy figure spiraled around, and then it seemed to flow off the balcony into the air, and vanish. Jim dropped what was left of his apple, which rolled across to the edge of the balcony and fell down into the garden.

  FOUR

  He leaned over the railing and called down to Santana, ‘Usted vio eso? Did you see that?’

  The gardener looked up from his gopher-digging again and took off his hat. ‘Qué?’

  ‘Esa sombra – that shadow.’

  Santana stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head. ‘Veo solamente la tierra, señor. I see only the ground.’

  Then, however, he crossed
the neatly cropped grass and picked up Jim’s half-eaten apple. ‘Aqui – usted cayó su manzana.’

  ‘Here,’ said Jim, holding out his hands. ‘Throw it up to me, will you?’

  Santana frowned and said, ‘Usted lo quiere realmente? You really want it?’

  ‘Here,’ Jim repeated. The gardener shrugged, and swung his arm back, and tossed it up to him.

  Jim took the apple through to the kitchen and rinsed it. He doubted if there was any connection between his eating the apple and the shadow that had appeared on his balcony. But the apple’s sweet-and-sour taste had provoked such a strange, elusive feeling – partly happiness, partly regret, like a song that unexpectedly brings tears to your eyes, and he badly wanted to know what it was.

  He bit into it again, and slowly chewed it. Tibbles came up to him, sat down on the kitchen floor, and looked up at him with undisguised resentment, as if to say: why can’t you ever let me live a normal life, like every other cat, filling my belly with Instinctive Choice Shrimp Dinner and then allowing me to sprawl on the balcony in the afternoon sun, without some shadowy spirit appearing out of nowhere and making my fur stand on end?

  Jim finished the apple and dropped the core into the trash can under the sink. He closed his eyes for a moment, but he still couldn’t think what memory it had evoked. He thought he could sense a warm wind, and a woman talking to him, and maybe some faraway music, like a calliope, but that was all.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon sketching out his lesson on Rachel X. Speed, and her poem Street Life.

  ‘Wherever I walk, whoever I meet

  They turn their back and won’t catch my eye.

  Love on the street? No such thing.

  It’s all suspicion. It’s all mistrust.

  It’s all graffiti and wrecks and rust.’

  He hardly noticed the sun going down, but suddenly his doorbell jangled and he realized that it was almost dark. Tibbles raised his head and looked at him with his eyes narrowed. Don’t answer that. It might be a shadowy specter.