Rook & Tooth and Claw (11 page)

“That time you were talking strangely.”

“Yes, what about it?”

John took a silver neck-chain out of his T-shirt. On the end of it dangled a dull black stone. “Look,” he said.

Jim held it in the palm of his hand. “Great. Nice-looking stone. Now, John, if you’ll excuse me—”

But John clutched his sleeve to stop him. “This is not a stone, Mr Rook. This is a crystal. It comes from a
dzong
,
a sacred Buddhist temple. It is supposed to protect me from evil.”

“And?”

“It’s supposed to be clear, and sparkling. It only turns dark when something is troubling me. It has never turned as dark as this before.”

“So what does it mean, when it goes as dark as this?”

“It means that a very great evil has come close to me. It happened at the same time that you were talking strangely.”

Jim hesitated, but he knew that he couldn’t lie. John was clinging on to his sleeve so tightly and there was such a worried look on his face that he would have to tell him the truth – or part of the truth, at least.

“Somebody was there, in the classroom,” John insisted.

“Well …”

“Mr Rook, we have spirit-walkers in my religion, too. Monks who can leave their bodies and visit the sick and the dying.”

Jim glanced around to make sure that the man in black was nowhere in sight. “Yes,” he said, “I did see somebody. The same man I saw when Elvin was murdered. I could see him, but none of the rest of you could. I could hear him, too, and talk to him.”

“He is very evil,” said John, emphatically.

“Well, that’s why I don’t want to tell you too much about him. The less you know, the safer you’ll be.”

“Who is he?” John asked him.

“I think it’s better if I don’t tell you. Not just yet.”

“But what does he want? Why has he come here to West Grove College?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that, either. But I’m doing everything I can to get rid of him.”

John took his hand away, and then said, with great simplicity, “You’re frightened, aren’t you?”

Jim nodded. “Yes, I’m frightened. Not for myself. But I don’t want this character hurting my class.”

John said, “With respect, Mr Rook, if we are in any kind of danger, wouldn’t it be better if we knew about it, all of us? On your own, you may find it a hard fight to get rid of this spirit. Together, we would be strong. My father says that evil loves the darkness; but shrivels up when you shine a light on it.”

“Your father’s a thoughtful man.”

John went off to join his friends, leaving Jim standing alone, thinking. Maybe he was right, and the Smoke spirit of Umber Jones
should
be dragged out into the open. But then he thought of Elvin, bleeding from scores of stab-wounds; and Mrs Vaizey, disappearing into her own mouth; and he knew that if any one of his students was killed or injured, he would never able to forgive himself.

Half-way across the wide, parched lawn that ran all along the east side of the college buildings, he saw Ricky sitting crosslegged, talking and laughing with Muffy and Rita and Seymour Williams, a spotty, friendly boy with heavy-rimmed Clark Kent glasses. Jim felt in his pocket for the bag of memory powder and loosened the ties around it. Then he approached the group at what he hoped was a casual stroll, even though he was so tense that his teeth were clenched.

Ricky looked up and shielded his eyes against the sun. “Hi, Mr Rook. What’s happening?”

“I, er, found something in the boys’ locker-room.”

Ricky immediately blushed scarlet with guilt.

“No, no,” said Jim. “It isn’t anything that belongs to you.” He took the bag of memory powder out of
his pocket and held it up. “It’s some kind of powder. I didn’t want to turn it in to Mr Wallechinsky, though, until I knew what it was. No point in making a fuss if it’s harmless.”

Ricky said, “Let’s take a look at that, Mr Rook. I’m the class expert on suspicious substances.” He winked at Seymour and Seymour gave a goofy laugh. Jim had a strong suspicion that Ricky and Seymour and some of the other boys had occasionally smoked grass in the boys’ washrooms, but he had never been able to catch them at it. He handed him the bag and watched as Ricky opened it and peered inside.

“Doesn’t look like nothing that
I
ever saw before,” he remarked.

“Anything,” Jim corrected him.

Ricky wet the tip of his little finger and dipped it into the powder and tasted it. He wrinkled his nose up and said, “Urgh. Doesn’t
taste
like nothing I ever saw before, neither. Tastes like – herbs, and leaves, and kind of …” He paused, his eyes suddenly unfocused. “Kind of –
yesterday
.”

“It tastes like
yesterday
?” scoffed Seymour. “What does yesterday taste like? Your old gym socks?”

“Sniff it,” Jim coaxed him. He had never felt so guilty and irresponsible in the whole of his teaching career, but he didn’t dare to think of the alternative.

Ricky took a pinch of the powder and snorted it up his nose, in the same way that Jim had. Immediately he let out an explosive sneeze and then another. “Jesus Christ!” he swore. “What the hell
is
this stuff?”

“Maybe it’s the same stuff that Tee Jay was smoking,” said Jim, hunkering down close beside him. Ricky stared at him with watering eyes. “You know … when you saw him behind the science block, the time that Elvin
was killed. That’s where he went, didn’t he, at five after eleven? So he couldn’t have gone to the boiler-house.”

“Unh?” said Ricky and then promptly fell backward on to the grass, knocking his head.

“Hey, is he all
right
?” said Jane, leaning over him.

“Ricky?” said Seymour, crawling over toward him on all fours and staring into his face. “Ricky, can you hear me, man?”

Jim picked up the memory powder and pocketed it. “It’s all right … he’s hyperventilated, that’s all.” He knelt next to him and gently patted his cheek. “Ricky … come on, Ricky, you’re fine. Come on, Ricky, wake up now.” Thinking: my God, I hope I haven’t done him any harm …

Ricky said something blurry and then he opened his eyes. He looked at the four faces peering down at him and said, “What?”

“You fainted,” said Jim. “You must have breathed in too deeply.”

Ricky sat up, smearing his nose with the back of his hand. “Jesus, that stuff
smarts,
Mr Rook. I don’t know what it is but it sure ain’t coke.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jim. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

Ricky sneezed again. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “My sinus hasn’t been this clear all summer.”

“I think I’ll just drop the bag in the trash and forget all about it,” Jim told him. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s the kind of stuff that anybody would voluntarily put up their nose.”

He was about to leave when Seymour said, “Hey, Mr Rook … what was that about Tee Jay? You know, smoking behind the science block.”

“What about it?”

Seymour blinked. Jim could almost hear the cogs whirring inside his brain. “Well … if he was smoking behind the science block, then he couldn’t have killed Elvin, could he? He couldn’t have been in two places at the same time.”

“The trouble was, nobody actually saw him,” said Jim. “He
said
that he was smoking behind the science block but the police couldn’t find any witnesses.”

Ricky said, “Wait a minute.
I
saw him.”

“You’re putting me on,” said Jim. “Why didn’t you tell Lieutenant Harris?”

“I don’t know. I just – I don’t know. I just didn’t.”

“You definitely saw Tee Jay smoking behind the science block between five after and a quarter after?”

“Sure. I’d swear to it. He left the other guys, then he went behind the science block and lit up. I could see him all the time. I guess I didn’t say anything because I thought he was going to get into trouble for smoking.”

“Ricky,” said Jim, taking hold of his shoulders. “Tee Jay is facing a charge of murder one. That’s a whole lot more serious than smoking.”

Ricky pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “I don’t know why I didn’t say anything before. It’s like it must have slipped my mind or something.”

“Well, now that it’s
unslipped
your mind, maybe we’d better talk to Lieutenant Harris and see what we can do to get Tee Jay free.”

“Sure. Sure thing.” Ricky kept shaking his head, like a confused dog. Seymour and Muffy and Jane looked at each other in bewilderment. It seemed so unlikely that Ricky had taken two days to remember that he had seen Tee Jay smoking at the time of the murder. On the other hand, if he could get Tee Jay released, what did it matter?

Jim said, “Come with me. Let’s go tell Dr Ehrlichman. Then we can call the police.”

They walked across the grass together. Ricky said, “This is incredible, isn’t it? I mean, because of me, Tee Jay’s going to go free.”

“Lieutenant Harris will give you a pretty thorough grilling. Be prepared for that.”

“I’ll tell you something, Mr Rook. He can grill me till I’m well done. I saw Tee Jay smoking. I swear it. I saw him with my own eyes.”

They had almost reached the main administration block when Susan Randall came out of the main entrance, talking to George Babouris, the physics teacher. She was wearing a blue checkered blouse with the collar turned up, like Doris Day, and a short navy-blue skirt. Jim slowed down as he approached her and a wide smile came across his face. He was beginning to think that she must have been avoiding him this morning, for some reason. Maybe she was teasing him. After all, hadn’t she kissed him and told him how attractive she had always found him – how masterful?

He walked straight up the steps, put his arm around her waist, and kissed her on the lips. “Hi, sweetheart. I’ve got some good news.”

Susan smacked at his arm and took two steps back. “Jim!” she protested. George Babouris, big-bellied and black-bearded, stared at both of them in total astonishment.

Jim raised both of his hands in mock-surrender. “What’s wrong?” he asked her. “I just came to tell you that—”

“You
kissed
me, that’s what’s wrong. You kissed me right on the mouth.”

Jim was bewildered. Yesterday she had been so
passionate, and now she was treating him as if he were some kind of sex molester. “Listen,” he said, “you don’t have to blow so goddamned hot and cold.”

“What are you talking about? When have I ever been hot?”

“You didn’t exactly behave like the Snow Queen yesterday afternoon.”

“I said I was interested in seeing your maps, that’s all. That’s hardly a proposition.”

Jim turned to George and gave him one of those oh-ho-ho man-to-man looks. “She’s only interested in seeing my maps!” he grinned.

This time, Susan slapped his face, so hard that it stung.

“What the hell was that for?” he protested.

“What the hell do you think it was for? Do you want me to report you to Dr Ehrlichman for sexual harassment?”

“Now, wait a minute,” said Jim. “Yesterday afternoon it was ‘Jim, I fell in love with you the second I saw you.’ Now it’s assault and battery. What’s going on?”

Susan stared at him in disbelief. “Are you some kind of psychopath, or what?”

Jim looked around. George Babouris was giving him a very odd, old-fashioned kind of look; and even Ricky was keeping his distance. He began to get the feeling that something was very badly wrong and that he was seriously out of kilter with everybody else. He said, “Okay … maybe there’s been a misunderstanding,” and he backed away. “Come on, Ricky, we’ve got something more important to worry about.”

Chapter Eight

Tee Jay was released at ten o’clock that evening, after Lieutenant Harris had interviewed Ricky for over four hours. Ricky offered to take a polygraph test but Lieutenant Harris knew that he couldn’t take Tee Jay in front of a jury with no murder weapon, no fingerprints or footprints, and an independent witness whose testimony seemed to be so sincere.

Jim waited at police headquarters all that time, sustained by three cups of wishy-washy coffee and three sugared doughnuts. Tee Jay’s mother hadn’t been able to come, although Jim had phoned her and told her to expect some good news. Tee Jay’s brother hadn’t wanted to come and so far there was no sign of Uncle Umber.

Lieutenant Harris came out into the reception area in his shirtsleeves, dabbing at his forehead with a balled-up handkerchief. Tee Jay came up close behind, accompanied by his attorney and two uniformed officers. He stared at Jim as if he didn’t recognise him.

“Okay,” said Lieutenant Harris. “He’s free to go. I just wish his friend had come up with this information the first time I asked him. The first twenty-four hours of any investigation are always the most important. Now he’s put us back forty-eight.”

“Come on, Lieutenant. At least you haven’t charged an innocent man.”

Lieutenant Harris pressed his handkerchief against the back of his neck and looked at Jim as if innocence had about as much to do with criminal justice as the price of fish.

Tee Jay’s attorney came up to Jim and shook his hand. He was a barrel-chested Afro-American with immaculately-topiarised hair and a silk necktie with hot-air balloons on it. “Assume you’re Tee Jay’s teacher?” he asked. “You did a great job, bringing Ricky in. Tee Jay would’ve been real hard to defend, otherwise.” He paused, and then he put his arm around Jim’s shoulders and said confidentially, “Be a good idea to keep an eye on Tee Jay, though. That boy has some attitude problem. Keeps banging on about African culture and the power of the spirits and all kinds of stuff like that. Told me I was selling out, working for white men. And this is not your average Black Power thing, either. He was chanting and singing. Practically drove everybody nuts.”

“Thanks,” said Jim. “I think I have a handle on this thing.”

“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.