Garden of Evil (13 page)

‘Maybe I've changed my mind,' said Jim.

‘Oh, come on, Jimmy. This isn't the moment.'

‘So you say.'

‘I do, Jimmy. I have to hand in my rezzamay by six p.m. otherwise I'll lose my chance of getting the job.'

Jim raised both hands and pushed her backward, toward the couch. She tried to retaliate, but he pushed her again, harder, and this time she lost her balance on her high wedge-heeled sandals and toppled over on to the cushions.

‘What are you
doing
, Jimmy?'

‘I'm collecting my resumé-writing fee, in advance,' he told her. With that, he clambered on top of her, on to the couch, so that he was kneeling astride her, and he started to wrestle with the golden buckle of her little white safari shorts.

‘
Jimmy
!' she squealed, and pummeled him furiously with both fists.

It was then that he slapped her face, very hard. Immediately, her left cheek flared up scarlet and she stared at him in shock.

‘You hit me! Jesus, Jimmy, you
hit
me!'

‘Too right I hit you!' he barked back at her. ‘And I'll hit you again if you don't shut the fuck up! You want me to write your stupid resumé? This is what it's going to cost you, OK? You don't get anything in this world for nothing, sweetheart! Not even a job at some dumb beauty salon!'

‘Jimmy – what's
wrong
with you? Jimmy – get off me, will you?'

Summer twisted and struggled, but Jim forced her down on to the couch with his left hand, while he wrestled off her safari shorts with his right. She was wearing only a tiny white lace thong underneath, and he pulled that off along with her shorts. He pried her knees apart so that her bare waxed vulva opened up, like two moist petals.

He unfastened his own belt buckle, and wrenched his chinos down below his knees. His penis was so hard he felt almost as if it might break off. He took hold of it in one hand and pushed it up inside Summer as hard and as deep as he could.

Immediately, she stopped struggling. Jim pushed again, and again, but she did nothing to resist him, and nothing to respond to him, either. She just lay there, completely inert. He pushed once more, and then he stopped pushing.

They looked at each other, nose to nose.

‘Well, carry on,' said Summer. ‘You've got what you wanted. Enjoy.'

Jim said, ‘What the hell is the matter with you? You've been prick-teasing me for months.'

‘What
I
was offering you was free, Jimmy. It didn't come with a price tag.'

They continued to stare into each other's eyes for a very long time. Jim gradually became aware of how red Summer's cheek was, where he had slapped her. She would be lucky not to have a black eye by the morning.

His penis began to soften, and he lifted himself off her. ‘You've been asking for it ever since you moved in,' he told her. ‘What did you expect?'

‘I expected sex,' said Summer. ‘You know, like normal consensitive sex, without being pushed around or slapped or nothing like that.'

Jim pulled up his chinos and buckled his belt. He had never forced himself on a woman like that before, and he had no clear idea of why he had done it now. All he knew was that he somehow felt entitled to have her, whenever he wanted her, whether she wanted him or not. His blood was pumping so loudly in his ears that he was almost deafened.

Summer stood up, too. She picked up her thong and her white safari shorts, but she didn't immediately put them on, almost as if she wanted to taunt Jim with what he could have enjoyed if only he hadn't been so aggressive.

‘Oh,
Jimmy
,' she said.

Jim turned away. He couldn't think what to say to her.

‘Listen,' she said, ‘Forget about the rezzamay. There's no point me trying for that job anyhow, with my face all swelled up.'

Jim wanted to say that he was sorry, but somehow he couldn't. Even the thought of saying sorry made him feel as if his mouth were filled with grit.

At that moment the doorbell rang. Jim went to answer it while Summer hurried to pull on her shorts.

Detective Brennan and Detective Carroll were standing outside. They both looked grim-faced.

‘Mr Rook? OK if we come in?'

‘Oh, yes, sure.'

They followed him into the living room. Summer was quickly brushing her hair across the left side of her face, to hide her bruise.

Jim said, ‘This is my downstairs neighbor, Detectives. She just came up to borrow some—'

‘Coffee,' Summer put in. ‘Yes – I was just leaving.'

With that, she went, and slammed the front door behind her. When she had gone, Detective Carroll turned around and said, ‘She forgot her coffee.'

‘Did she?' said Jim. ‘So she did! She's so darn scatty, that girl.'

‘Fights with her boyfriend, too, by the looks of it.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘Well . . . somebody just gave her a big fat bruise on the cheek, and she wasn't wearing a wedding band, so I kind of put two and two together.'

‘Oh,' said Jim. ‘Really? I wouldn't know.'

Detective Brennan paced around Jim's living room, taking in all of his bookshelves and all of his pictures and all of his trophies.

‘I just thought you ought to know that we've identified the victim who was nailed to the cypress tree.'

‘Oh, God. Don't tell me it's another of my students.'

‘No . . . as a matter of fact, it's not. When the MEs had washed off the paint, they found a tattoo on his upper left arm: Los Primos.'

‘Los Primos? That's an Hispanic street gang, isn't it?'

‘Oh . . . you're quite the expert, Mr Rook.'

‘I'm a college teacher, Detective. I teach remedial English. All of the street gangs have their own language. It's part of my job to know what the hell they're talking about.'

‘Well, you're right, Clikos Los Primos are a small gang from East LA, pretty much exclusively Hispanic. We showed a picture of our vic to various members of the gang and they identified him right away.

Detective Brennan produced a color scan of a young Hispanic man. He was quite handsome, although his eyes were closed and his cheeks were puffy and his skin was unnaturally gray.

‘His name is Alvaro Esteban, more usually known as Santana. He works as a gardener, right here at Briar Cliff Apartments. He's your gardener, Mr Rook.'

J
im found it impossible to sleep that night. Every time he closed his eyes he saw that dark Satanic face that Ricky had painted, gradually materializing in the shadows. After three hours of twisting and turning and thumping his pillow he switched on his bedside lamp, climbed out of bed and went into the living room to watch
Brothers and Sisters
, even though he had no idea what the story was all about and what terrible secret Kitty was trying to keep from Tommy.

When the sun eventually began to fill his apartment, he took a long shower with his forehead pressed against the tiles, and then he made himself a mug of strong black Java coffee. He watched
Good Morning, America
, and even
Good Cookin' With Bruce Aidells
, but he was still ready to leave for college nearly an hour earlier than usual. Tibbles was still refusing to come out of hiding, but Jim filled up his bowl with tuna dinner and poured him a saucer of fresh milk.

‘You want to sulk, you feline faggot, then sulk!' he called out, before he closed the front door. ‘But just remember who started it – OK?'

On his way down the steps, he hesitated outside the door of Summer's apartment, wondering if he ought to knock and apologize for forcing himself on her yesterday evening. After a few moments, though, he decided against it. She was probably still in bed, and he still found it hard to think of saying sorry. Come on, she was always flaunting herself, wasn't she? She was always asking him if he thought that God had endowed her with big enough breasts, and did she need a boob job, and she would religiously tell him every time she went to Raya for a Brazilian. If that wasn't asking to be jumped on, he didn't know what was.

When he arrived at West Grove, the staff parking lot was almost deserted. He climbed out of his car and stood there for a moment, with the sun in his eyes and the early morning wind rattling in the yuccas all around him, and he was sure that he caught a snatch of that calliope music again.
In The Good Old Summertime
. Then one of the groundsmen started up his grass-cutter, and the moment was gone.

Inside, the college corridors were echoing and empty and smelled strongly of floor wax. As he opened the door of Art Studio Four, however, he was surprised to find that Simon Silence was already sitting in his place, with his spring-bound notebook and all of his felt-tip pens arranged neatly on the bench in front of him. He was listening to an iPod, with his eyes closed, nodding his head in time to some inaudible music. The sun was shining on him through the window, so that it looked as if he were being illuminated by a celestial ray from heaven.

Jim stood in the doorway for a moment, but Simon Silence showed no indication that he was aware of him standing there. He just kept on nodding in time to his iPod music.

Jim sat down and flopped his briefcase on to his desk. He had mended its handle with a wire coat hanger and duct tape. He opened it up and took out two poetry books and a red folder of questions on grammar and spelling.

Nearly a full minute went past. Then, without opening his eyes, Simon Silence said, ‘Sorry about your gardener, Mr Rook.'

Jim looked up. ‘Oh, yeah? How'd you know about that? I thought you never watched TV.'

‘Our cleaner told me. She heard all about it on the local news channel.' Now Simon Silence opened his eyes and gave Jim one of his creepy, enigmatic smiles.

‘Your
cleaner
told you?'

‘That's right. She's a very bright young lady, our cleaner. She wants to be a paralegal, one day, and represent Mexican immigrants.'

‘So what did she hear on the news?'

‘Aha! Apparently, the police have been trying to work out why the victim was nailed up
here,
at West Grove College. So far, though, they've only managed to come up with one connection. The victim worked as a gardener at an apartment building in the Hollywood Hills. And who should happen to live in that apartment building but a certain English teacher from this very same college.'

‘You're kidding me. They said that, on the news?'

‘That's what my cleaner told me. I don't think they mentioned you by name, Mr Rook, but I couldn't help putting two and two together.'

He paused, and then he reached down into his gunny sack and said, ‘Here – would you like an apple? I have plenty.'

Jim pushed back his chair and walked up the side of the classroom. ‘Tell me something, Simon,' he said, ‘what are you really here for? I mean here, in Special Class Two?'

‘I don't know what you're driving at, Mr Rook.'

‘First of all, you speak fluently and grammatically which means to me that you can probably
write
that way, too. Second of all, you have complete self-confidence, which is a quality that almost everybody who tips up in this Godforsaken class sorely seems to lack. You even took it upon yourself to set the rest of the class an essay when I wasn't here. You don't need remedial English, do you, Simon? I don't know what I can possibly have to offer you.'

‘Ah, but that's where you're wrong, Mr Rook. You have more to offer me than you can imagine.'

‘Like what, for instance?'

‘You have a gift, sir. A very rare gift. In fact, it's unique. You can see the world as it really is. Not just
half
of it, like most people.'

‘Meaning?'

‘Meaning that you can see the dead as well as the living. You can see presences and shapes and apparitions. You can even see monstrosities that people don't believe in – or, at least that they don't
want
to believe in. Even the most pious of churchmen find it difficult to see monstrosities like that, if not impossible.'

Jim stared at Simon Silence for a long time before he said anything. What a speech. The sunlight that had first illuminated him had gradually inched away, leaving his face in shadow, and the expression in his eyes began to look darker and much more calculating.

‘Who are you, really?' Jim asked him. ‘How do you know all that about me?'

‘I am Simon Silence, Mr Rook, that's all. The first and only son of the Reverend John Silence of the Church of the Divine Conquest. I am nobody, sir. You shouldn't be afraid of me.'

‘Believe me, I'm
not
. But I still want to know exactly what it is you're doing here. You're having an effect on my class, Simon, and I'm not too sure that I like it. I'm even beginning to think that you're having some kind of an effect on
me
.'

Simon Silence said nothing, but kept on smiling, and with the fingertips of his left hand he traced a complicated pattern on top of the bench, around and around. A face? A pentacle? Circles within circles, like snakes that swallow their own tails?

‘How about that essay on Paradise?' Jim asked him. ‘Did you finish
yours
yet?'

‘Of course,' said Simon Silence. He picked up his notebook and handed it over. Jim didn't read it in front of him – didn't even look at it until he had taken it back to his desk and sat down. Simon Silence returned his earphones to his ears, folded his arms and closed his eyes and started nodding again, as if he didn't care one way or the other what Jim thought of what he had written.

Simon Silence's handwriting was reasonably tidy, although it leaned backward and climbed uphill from left to right. It also had exaggerated loops on the descenders, like the g's and the p's and the y's.

Jim was no graphologist, but he had read enough scrawly and block-lettered English essays over the years to recognize some of the personality traits that were given away by a student's handwriting. A backward slope usually betrayed shyness and uncertainty, although it could also indicate a considerable attention to detail – what Jim called planespotters' handwriting. On the other hand, heavily emphasized descenders showed practicality and a matter-of-fact approach to life: auto-mechanics and builders and plumbers.