Garden of Evil Read online

  ‘OK, I’m just going to take these down to the cops outside.’

  ‘Hey, Mr Rook?’ asked Rudy Cascarelli. ‘You don’t think that nothing’s happened to that Kyle kid, do you?’

  ‘I sure hope not, Rudy. But if he’s missing, his spectacles may help the cops to identify him. You know – DNA.’

  ‘You’re not saying he’s dead, are you, sir?’ put in DaJon Johnson. ‘Is that what all this emergency thing is all about? They found another student dead? Shit, man, this has to be most dangerous seat of learning I ever sat in!’

  Jim said, ‘I’m not saying anything, DaJon. Just let me take these down to the cops so that they can make absolutely sure.’

  He went toward the classroom door, but as he did so it suddenly opened and Kyle Baxter walked in, blinking.

  He frowned at his spectacles which Jim was holding up in his folded envelope; and then he frowned at Jim.

  ‘I, ah – Kyle!’ said Jim. ‘Where the heck have you been?’

  ‘I went to the bathroom,’ Kyle Baxter told him, obviously baffled.

  ‘Oh – I see. You just went to the bathroom! Sure, yes, OK. No problem with that! The only thing was, I didn’t know if you were coming back or not, so I was taking these down to the lost property room, in case they got broken.’

  ‘They’re broken already, sir.’

  ‘Yes, well, I can see that. But you still wouldn’t want to lose them, would you?’

  ‘I’ll be getting my new ones tomorrow, sir.’

  ‘Good. Great. Anyhow, why don’t you sit down, Kyle, and finish off your essay about Paradise?’

  Jim looked around the rest of Second Class Two, daring them to tell Kyle that he had been thinking of taking his spectacles down to the CSI. One or two of them smirked and looked away. DaJon Johnson slowly tilted his chimney-stack hair from side to side in amusement, and Simon Silence smiled an even more self-satisfied smile than usual.

  Jim sat down at his desk and took out the book that he had been trying to finish for the past seven months, The Human Goldfish, a novel about a man who wakes up every morning with no memory of what happened to him the day before. The trouble was, Jim had very little spare time to read any book that wasn’t included in his curriculum, and when he did get time, he was usually too tired to manage more than two or three pages before he fell asleep. In the morning, just like the main character in The Human Goldfish, he had almost always forgotten what he had read.

  After fifteen minutes, he checked the clock and said, ‘Right . . . you should have had enough time by now. Let me take a look at what you’ve written, and get to know you people at the same time. I’m sorry we’ve had such a screwed-up start to this semester. Let’s try to get back to normal, shall we?’

  First he took her paper from Jesmeka Watson, the pretty African-American girl who sat right in front of his desk. Jesmeka had rubbed out her essay so many times that there was a ragged hole in the middle of the page, but she had managed to write ‘Paradise 4 me is 2 B lik MIA singin n dansn n pantn picshuz n also bein mega famus.’

  ‘So . . . paradise for you would be singing and dancing and painting pictures like MIA? She’s very good, MIA, very original. Very talented.’

  ‘Most of all mega famous, though,’ put in Jesmeka, pointing at the words ‘mega famus’ in her essay with a purple-frosted fingernail. ‘I just want to stand up in front of all of those thousands and thousands of people and they all, like, adore me.’

  For some reason, Jim found himself glancing across at Simon Silence when Jesmeka said that. Simon Silence was talking to the Hispanic boy next to him, and both of them were grinning. Jim couldn’t understand why he found Simon Silence so disturbing. He kept feeling that there was an undercurrent in this classroom, silent communications flowing from one student to the next – communications to which he wasn’t quite tuned in.

  Kyle Baxter was next. He had written, ‘Paradise is happiness/ bliss/ ecstasy/ rapture/ cloud nine/ seventh heaven/ dreamland. Paradise is knowing words all where to put them. Paradise is me cleverer around me all than idiots/ fools/ cretins/ morons/ imbeciles/ halfwits/ clowns/ muggins/ boobies/ dopes/ dumbbells/ boneheads/ saps.’

  ‘So, Kyle . . . Paradise for you is being smarter than everybody else in the class, and all of them giving you full credit for it?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Oh. Maybe I misunderstood what you’ve written here. You want to explain it to me?’

  ‘I don’t just want everybody in the class to know that I’m smarter, sir,’ he said, under his breath, but with fierce intensity. ‘I want everybody to know that I’m smarter.’

  ‘Like everybody on the planet?’

  Kyle nodded so enthusiastically that his spectacles nearly dropped off. Jim gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and moved on to the next student, who was sitting at Kyle’s right elbow. He was a Chinese-American boy whose glossy black hair was cut into a bowl shape, with a fringe so low that Jim could hardly see his eyes. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a large white number 8 on the back, and he had red-and-green dragon’s-tail tattoos all the way up his left arm, disappearing into his sleeve.

  His essay was five lines written in a strange spidery handwriting. ‘Paradise will come on the day when Wo Hop To is gone and Chung Ching Yee is gone and also Vietnamese Boyz and all is Wah Ching. On that day I will walk like a god.’

  Jim said, ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Xiao Chang but everybody calls me Joe.’

  ‘All right, Joe,’ said Jim, holding up his essay. ‘These Chinese names you have here – Wo Hop To and Chung Ching Yee, etcetera – these are all Chinese street gangs. Apart from the Vietnamese Boyz, anyhow, and half of them are Chinese.’

  Joe Chang nodded, and kept turning his pencil over and over, end to end.

  ‘Are you a member of Wah Ching?’

  ‘Not any more, sir. When I live with my parents in Monterey Park I was Wah Ching. But now my father move to West Grove, I don’t hang out with them no more.’

  ‘But you’d still like to? That’s your idea of Paradise?’

  Joe Chang clenched his fist. ‘In Wah Ching,’ he said, ‘I always felt like I got strength,’ although he pronounced it ‘strempf.’

  ‘Nobody stand in our way. Nobody. They dreaded us, is why. They dreaded us! Strength like that, that’s Paradise.’

  ‘Wow, OK. I see. Maybe it’s Paradise for you. But how about the people who dread you? Not exactly Paradise for them, is it?’

  ‘I was only asked to write about my Paradise, sir. Nobody else’s.’

  Jim was about to go on to the next student when there was a knock at the door, and Detective Carroll came in. She crossed straight over to Jim and cupped her hand around her mouth so that the class couldn’t hear what she was saying, although her hair tickled Jim’s left ear.

  ‘Mr Rook? Everything’s clear now, outside, although the primary crime scene is still cordoned off and we still have at least half a day of forensic work to do. We’ve consulted with Doctor Ehrlichman and we’ve agreed that college will close early today, and try to make a fresh start tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ said Jim. He turned around to Special Class Two and said, ‘Looks like Paradise will have to be postponed for now. You can all pack up your books and beat it.’

  They began to push back their chairs back and noisily gather up their belongings, and it seemed like all of their iPhones started warbling and ringing and playing music all at once. As they shuffled out of the classroom, Jim called out, ‘Just one thing I want you to think of overnight! You’re trapped in a space capsule, right? Going round and round the Earth with no prospect of being rescued for at least a year! You’re allowed to take one book with you! Let me know tomorrow which book you would choose!’

  As Simon Silence came past him, slinging his white gunny sack over his shoulder, Jim said, ‘Shouldn’t be a problem for you, Simon, choosing a book.’

  Simon raised his eyebrows as if he didn’t quite understand.


  ‘Well . . . your father being a reverend and all. There’s only one really good book, isn’t there?’

  ‘Oh. You mean the Bible. There are other good books. There is one good book in particular, which I would probably take with me.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  Simon smiled and touched his finger to his lips. ‘I regret that its name is never spoken, sir. Some names, like the name of God, may be thought of, but never uttered out loud.’

  With that, he walked off. Detective Carroll came up to Jim and said, ‘That the fruitcake Dave Brennan was telling me about?’

  Jim nodded. ‘I don’t know. At first, yes, I did think he was borderline bananas. Now . . . I’m not so sure.’

  Traffic was stop-go all the way home on Sunset. The second apple that Simon Silence had given him was lying on the passenger seat next to him, rolling backward and forward every time he stopped for a traffic signal or to avoid rear-ending the vehicle in front.

  He was trying very hard to resist the temptation to pick it up and bite into it. There was something about its pale pink-and-green color that just made it look as if it were going to taste deliciously sweet and sour, and if it tasted anything like the first apple, he knew that it would.

  Yet, strangely, he felt almost virtuous for leaving it where it was. It rolled back, it rolled forward. It came close to rolling off the seat but still he didn’t make a grab for it.

  When he reached the Vine Street intersection, however, traffic up ahead of him had come almost to a standstill because of a burst water main underneath the Hollywood Freeway, and three lanes were merging left into one. He had to sit under the gloomy concrete pillars of the freeway for more than five minutes, half deafened by impatient car horns, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and feeling hungrier and thirstier. Because he had gone to visit Jane this morning, he hadn’t had time to stop for anything to eat or drink.

  He glanced down at the apple. What had Oscar Wilde written? ‘I can resist anything except temptation.’ And if that was a good enough excuse for Oscar Wilde – why not for him?

  He had bitten into the apple before he knew it, and it was just as good as the first one. In fact it seemed even juicier and even sweeter, with that distinctive hint of sharpness which gave it so much character.

  Not just character, either. It had an immediate effect on his emotions. He had taken only two or three bites before he was sure he could feel that warm wind blowing again, and hear that faint calliope music playing.

  Even though he knew he was here, in his car, in the shadow of the freeway, he also felt as if he were on a seashore someplace, although he wasn’t sure exactly where. The sun kept disappearing behind the clouds, so that the day continually brightened and faded, brightened and faded, and seagulls were crying out like lost children.

  Something had happened on that day, long ago, and he was being reminded of it. Something had happened but it wasn’t something that he wanted to remember. It was something hurtful and humiliating. He must have buried it so deeply in his mind that he couldn’t even be sure that it had really happened, or if it had happened not to him but to somebody else altogether.

  As the traffic crept forward along Franklin, he began to feel more and more distressed, and his breathing became increasingly hard and harsh. He felt anger and embarrassment and an overwhelming urge to get his revenge, even though he didn’t understand what for, and against whom, or why.

  Just after he had turned into the narrow uphill slope of Briarcliff Road, he had to pull into the first driveway that he came to, because he was panting and sweating. He was gripping the steering wheel with both hands as if he were trying to wrench it away from the steering column. He was filled with such rage and frustration that he clenched his teeth tightly together and let out a roar like an angry beast.

  He was still sitting there when an elderly man in yellow-and-blue Bermuda shorts came down the steps from the house and tapped with his knuckle on his passenger-side window.

  Jim took three or four deep breaths and then let the window down. The elderly man looked like a Thanksgiving turkey in sunglasses, with a red shriveled neck.

  ‘Help you?’ he asked.

  ‘No . . . no I’m good, thanks.’

  ‘I’ll be wanting to pull out of here in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Well . . . you’re kind of blocking me in here, aren’t you?’

  Jim took another deep breath. ‘I’m having a brief think, OK? I don’t recall anybody receiving a traffic citation for having a brief think. In fact more people ought to do more of it, what do you think?’

  ‘I think I have to take my wife to the orthodontist and you’re blocking my driveway.’

  ‘I hear you. And when I’m good and ready, I’ll go.’

  The elderly man took a step back and looked at Jim’s car. ‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I, in this old junker? You live just up the road a ways, in Briar Cliff Apartments.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, if you want yourself a brief think, my friend, why don’t you take your old junker up to your own driveway and have your brief think there?’

  Jim stared at him. He couldn’t remember when he had ever felt such contempt for anybody in his life. When he spoke, his voice was shaking with anger.

  ‘How old are you, granpa?’ he asked him.

  ‘Eighty-one, not that it’s any of your concern.’

  ‘Eighty-one? Then for your information you have just exceeded the average life expectancy in Los Angeles County by seven months. I wouldn’t take your wife to the orthodontist, old man. I’d visit your mortician and start making arrangements for Forest Lawn.’

  ‘That’s it!’ the elderly man told him. ‘I’m calling the cops on you! Nobody speaks to me like that, right in my own driveway! I used to be vice-president of Orange-Freeze!’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Jim told him. ‘I’m going. You were just what I needed to remind me of something important.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And what’s that?’

  ‘For some people, old man, death can’t ever come too soon.’

  With that, he swerved out of the elderly man’s driveway and made his way two hundred yards further up the hill, to his own apartment block. He parked with a squeal of tires, and sat in his car for a further few minutes, with the engine and the air conditioning running. When he eventually climbed out he was still breathing hard, and the back of his shirt was clammy with sweat.

  What the hell is the matter with you, Jim? You never shout at people for no reason. Mr Reasonable, that’s you. Yet he was still so angry with that elderly man down the road that he could have walked back and punched him in the face, and broken his beak for him. Well, he looked like a fucking turkey.

  He was climbing the steps to the first-story landing when the front door of Apartment 1 opened and Nadine stuck her head out, almost as if she had been waiting for him. She was wearing a droopy brown kaftan and smoking a cigarette in a very long holder.

  ‘You’re back early,’ she told him.

  Jim stopped in front of her, and shifted his eyes from side to side without actually looking at her directly, like a blind man. ‘Oh yes. And?’

  Nadine’s forehead furrowed. ‘And – you’re back early, that’s all. I was just wondering why. You know, neighborly nosiness. That’s all.’

  ‘If you must know there’s been another homicide, pretty much identical to the first one. Some young man killed and whitewashed but nailed to a tree, this time, instead of a ceiling. He was surrounded by white Persian cats, eight of them, the same as before. You’ll hear all about it on the news.’

  ‘Oh my God. It’s so strange. But it’s so magical, too. Eight white cats! I can’t imagine that this isn’t magic. Why haven’t my Tarot cards picked up on it? Usually, they’re so sensitive to anything at all.’

  ‘Because your Tarot cards are nothing but hocus-pocus, Nadine. You know that and I know that. I could sit down and draw my own deck of fortune-telling cards and
they would be just as meaningful as the Tarot. Or not. The Rook Cards, think about it. I could be the Grumpy Teacher and you could be the Anorexic Hippie.’

  Jim tried to make his way past her so that he could go up to his own apartment but Nadine caught his sleeve. ‘Actually, no BS, Jim. It’s Ricky.’

  ‘What do you mean “it’s Ricky”?’

  ‘Well, you know how he kept on painting that same white face? Now he’s stopped painting it, and he’s painted somebody else. Please – come take a look, would you?’

  Jim hesitated. He still felt fractious, and out of sorts, and he didn’t want to discuss anything with anybody – especially that dopey nineteen-sixties throwback Ricky. But Nadine was looking at him so appealingly that he couldn’t say no.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘But I’m only coming in for a couple of minutes. I have a shitload of homework to mark.’

  Of course he didn’t have any homework to mark, but he desperately needed to lie down and close his eyes and try to get that woman’s voice and that calliope music out of his head. At the moment he couldn’t think about anything else. Even now he could still hear the seagulls crying, very faintly, as if somebody were calling him from very far away. ‘Jim! Jim!’

  Nadine led him through to the living room. The drapes were drawn, so that the room was stuffy and almost in total darkness, apart from a single vertical band of sunlight which was shining in where the drapes didn’t quite meet together. From what Jim could make out, the room appeared to be even more cluttered than usual. There seemed to be twice as many empty Raffallo’s pizza boxes as he had seen in there before, and over by the window stood a half-dismantled moped, which he didn’t remember seeing yesterday. The red parakeet was still sitting in its cage in the corner, noisily pecking at the bars and squawking from time to time, like some bad-tempered senior who was forced to stay in a sunset home.

  The single band of sunlight fell directly down the center of Ricky’s canvas. Ricky was hunched on the backless kitchen chair which he usually used when he was painting. He was still holding his palette, with his left thumb through it, and three or four brushes, all of which were still loaded with various shades of white and gray oil-paint. There were flecks of paint and rolling paper ash in his beard.