“Do you have any idea what kind of trouble Tee Jay was having?” asked Jim.
“The police asked me that, but I don’t have any idea at all. What kind of trouble does a seventeen-year-old boy usually have with his parents? He wants to party; he wants to stay out late; he doesn’t want to do what he’s told. He wants to experiment with alcohol and drugs. I don’t know. All I know is that Elvin stopped hanging out with Tee Jay so much as he used to.”
A young girl in a black-and-white gingham blouse was standing by the door, listening. She said, “Elvin told me that Tee Jay was getting too religious.”
Elisabeth held out her hand. “Come here, honey. Mr Rook – this is Elvira, Elvin’s sister. Elvira, this is Elvin’s teacher, Mr Rook.”
Jim said, “Good to know you, Elvira. I came here to tell your folks how sorry we are about Elvin.”
“Elvin talked about you a whole lot,” said Elvira. “He said you were crazy sometimes, but you always taught him more than anybody else.”
“What was that you were saying about Tee Jay getting too religious?” asked Jim.
“I didn’t understand that, either,” put in Grant. “How anybody be too religious? Elvin was religious. The whole family, we go to church regular, always have. Elvin sang in the choir before.”
“But it wasn’t that kind of religion,” said Elvira.
“What do you mean?” Jim asked her.
“I heard Elvin and Tee Jay arguing once. Tee Jay was trying to get Elvin to bite the head off a chicken. He said they should drink its blood, and say some prayers, and then they would never die.”
“You didn’t tell us this before,” said Elisabeth.
“I couldn’t. Elvin and Tee Jay caught me listening and they said I had to swear not to tell, otherwise the smoke would come and get me.”
“The smoke? What smoke?”
“I don’t know. But the way Tee Jay said it, I was frightened; so that’s why I didn’t say anything.”
“Okay,” said Jim. “You did good to tell us. Now why don’t you cut me a piece of that pie?”
Elvira went back into the kitchen. Jim turned to Grant and said, “Does any of this mean anything to you? Killing chickens? Or smoke?” He paused, and then continued, “How about crows and mirrors and candles? Or breathing in dust?”
Grant glanced uneasily at his wife. “This isn’t the time to talk about things like that. Nor the place, neither. We’re devout people, Mr Rook. We don’t hold with blasphemy.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about?”
Elisabeth looked up at him and Jim couldn’t understand the expression on her face at all. But Grant said, “Yes. I know what you’re talking about. You’re talking about killing chickens, to please the spirits. You’re talking about crows, which are sometimes crows and sometimes men. You’re talking about mirrors … the kind of mirrors that don’t reflect your own face.”
“Hush,” Elisabeth interrupted him. “You shouldn’t be saying such things … not now, not in front of Elvin’s picture.”
“Maybe there’s somewhere else we can talk,” Jim suggested. Grant hesitated, but Jim said, “I think it’s important, Mr Clay. It may be too late for Elvin but it’s not too late for Tee Jay.”
“Come out on the balcony,” Grant suggested; and so they did, and slid the doors shut behind them. Grant leaned on the railings and looked down at the small concrete yard where children were playing in a sandpit and a group of teenagers were hanging around smoking and playing techno-rock on a huge ghetto-blaster. “Kids,” said Grant. There was no pity in his voice, but there was no judgement, either. “What do they have to look forward to, but this?”
“You were telling me about Tee Jay’s religion,” said Jim.
“I don’t know too much about it, but it’s like voodoo. My grandfather used to tell me stories about it to frighten me, when I was a boy. He told me all about the goofer dust which the priests blow into your face to make you seem like you’re dead, although you’re not. They can stick pins into you and you can feel them but you can’t cry out. Then they bury you, even though you’re still awake.”
“Do you believe in any of that?”
Grant’s eyes gave nothing away. “I’m just telling you what my grandfather told me.”
“All right, then. What about the smoke that Elvira was talking about?”
“My grandfather used to mention the smoke, too, but I could never understand what it was. He used to say, ‘The smoke can always find you; and the smoke can always do you harm; like real smoke can choke you to death. But what can you do to the smoke? You can’t do nothing. It’s there, but it isn’t there. You can smell it,’ that’s what he used to say, ‘but you can’t touch it. You can see it, but you can’t feel it. Watch out for the smoke’, that’s what he used to say.”
“But you don’t know what the smoke actually is.”
“No, Mr Rook, I don’t. And to tell you the God’s-honest truth, I believe I’d rather not.”
“Well, I appreciate your telling me,” said Jim. “I was beginning to think that I was going crazy.”
Grant looked at him narrowly. “You know something about Elvin’s killing, don’t you? Something connected with this voodoo stuff. You want to tell me what it is?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t, just at the moment.”
“You can’t, or you won’t? Which is it?”
“Mr Clay … I don’t know very much more than you do. But I’ve seen some things that aren’t normal at all, and I think they could be connected with Elvin’s death. You’ve done the best thing possible: you’ve put me on the right track. I promise you, if I can find out who killed your Elvin, then you’ll be the very first person to know.”
Grant said, “Thanks,” and relaxed.
The doors slid open and Elvira smiled, “Your pie’s ready for you, Mr Rook.”
“Thanks, Elvira,” said Jim, and followed Grant inside. As he glanced over the balcony, however, he was sure that he could glimpse a shadow in the trash-crowded corner between the swings and garages. He tried to focus, but the garages were too far away. Besides, Grant was taking his arm and ushering him inside to finish his coffee.
Chapter Five
It took him over twenty minutes to find the Jones house, in a tatty triangle of scrubby hinterland right next to the freeway. It was so noisy that you had to shout at yourself to find out what you were thinking; and the air was yellow with photochemical smog.
There was a scrubby patch of grass outside the house, on which a derelict bronze Buick Riviera with no wheels was supported on cinderblocks. A small black boy with no pants on was furiously tricycling up and down the sidewalk. Glistening snot poured from each nostril and he intermittently stopped to lick it. Jim was almost tempted to give him his handkerchief, but one handkerchief wouldn’t do much to solve the problem of child neglect. He had seen kids of seven and eight, openly smoking cigarettes that their parents had given them. What was a little snot?
Jim went up to the front porch and rang the doorbell, although the door was already half-open. The green paint was faded and flaking and one of the windows was cracked. From inside the house came the smell of chicken frying and the monotonous thumping of garage music.
After a while, Jim stepped inside. The house was shabby but well-kept, with lace doilies on all of the side-tables and antimacassars on the backs of the armchairs. The walls were crowded with colour photographs of aunts and uncles and cousins, as well as a garish painting of wild animals coming down to an African waterhole to drink.
He made his way along the corridor to the kitchen, where a thin bespectacled woman in a green dress was chopping peppers. He rapped lightly on the open door, and she looked up, flustered. She was obviously Tee Jay’s mother: he had inherited her eyes and her nose and her firm, determined jawline.
“Mr Rook!” she said. “What brings you here?”
“How are you, Mrs Jones? I just came by to make sure that everything was okay at home.”
“As
good as it can be, with my son accused of killing his best friend.”
“Have you seen him yet?”
“Saw him this morning, over at the police headquarters. They were fixing to find him a lawyer.”
“How is he?”
“Not much different from always,” said Mrs Jones, scraping the chopped-up peppers into a saucepan. “He hardly said more than two words strung together.”
“Mrs Jones, I want you to know that I don’t think Tee Jay did it.”
“Huh!” she said, wryly. “Looks like you’re the only one who does.”
“I’m not so sure. Most of his classmates don’t think he did it, either; although some of them said that he’d been acting kind of weird lately.”
“Acting kind of weird is the understatement of the century,” said Mrs Jones. “For the past three or four months, Tee Jay has been just impossible to live with. Staying out till all hours, giving me mouth. Hanging out with all kinds of low-life.”
“You mean he’s been behaving like any normal eighteen-year-old?”
“Maybe so. But I’m trying to keep this family together all on my own, working every hour that God sends me; and the last thing I need is rebellion and bad language and slamming of doors. I just don’t need it.”
She suddenly turned to Jim, and her eyes were crowded with tears. “And I don’t need my son in jail, accused of first-degree murder.”
“Mrs Jones—” Jim began, “if you don’t want to talk right now—” But then the garage music stopped and Tee Jay’s older brother Anthony appeared, wearing a Dodgers T-shirt and a baggy pair of Bermuda shorts. He was even taller and broader than Tee Jay, and he put a large, protective arm around his mother’s shoulders.
“Hi, Anthony,” said Jim. “I just came round to make sure that your mom was okay. You found yourself a job yet?”
“Start Monday, Mr Rook, working for Santa Monica ’Vette. The money ain’t great but I’ll be doing what I’m good at.”
“Hope you’re still reading … keeping your brain in shape.”
“Oh, sure thing. I just finished Native Son.”
“Have you been to see Tee Jay too?”
Anthony shook his head, and gave his mother a comforting squeeze. “Tee Jay and me haven’t been getting along too good lately. Tee Jay hasn’t been getting along too good with anybody, as a matter of fact. That’s why he left.”
Jim frowned. “You mean he doesn’t live here any more?”
“Uhn-hunh. Not for three months now.”
“So where does he live?”
“Down near Venice Boulevard. He’s staying with his uncle, Dad’s big brother. That was another reason we were arguing so much. His uncle’s been away for years and years, right, working in Nigeria and Sierra Leone and places like that; and all of a sudden he turns up and pays us a visit. Me and mom and the rest of the family really dislike him, you know, but for some reason Tee Jay takes a shine to him. He starts visiting him two or three times a week and that was when the trouble really starts. In the end the rows get so bad that Mom tells Tee Jay to pack his bag and get the hell out. So of course, where does he go? Straight to Uncle Umber.”
Jim thought for a moment, and then he said, “This Uncle Umber. Tell me about him. Why didn’t you and the rest of the family like him?”
“You ought to meet the guy, then you’d know. He’s, like, really heavy, if you know what I mean. He walks in through the door and he fills up the whole house. And he’s full of all this stuff about racial heritage and African tradition. Real mumbo-jumbo, you know; but if you try to disagree with him he gets totally aggressive, and treats you like you’re some kind of traitor to your race.”
Jim said, “I think I’d like to meet this Uncle Umber of yours.”
“Believe me, Mr Rook,” said Mrs Jones, “you wouldn’t. If I were you, I’d leave well enough alone.”
“All the same, do you have his address?”
Anthony tore the corner off a piece of kitchen-towel and wrote it down. “He’s a blowhard, okay? So don’t take him too serious.”
“Ly,” Jim corrected him. “It’s ‘seriously’.”
“Right, well, that too,” said Anthony.
Uncle Umber’s address near Venice Boulevard turned out to be one of four apartments over Dollars&Sense, a small cut-price supermarket in a scabby street lined with ten-year-old automobiles and overflowing trash cans. The upper part of the building was painted white, but at one time it must have been light green, because the paint was scaling off like skin-disease.
There was an intercom speaker and three doorbells, one without any identifying card, one saying Puchowski, and the other ‘U.M. Jones’. Jim pressed it and waited.
Nobody answered, so he pressed it again, and then again. At last a deep, crackly voice said, “Who is it?”
“Mr Jones? My name’s Rook, Jim Rook. I’m Tee Jay’s teacher. I wonder if I could have a word with you.”
“You’d better come on up, Mr Rook. I’ve been expecting you. It’s Apartment 1.”
The buzzer sounded and the door unlocked, but Jim hesitated. I’ve been expecting you? He didn’t like the sound of that. Maybe he should back off, and leave Mr U.M. Jones for Lieutenant Harris to interview.
The buzzer sounded again. “Are you coming on up, Mr Rook, or is there something that’s bothering you?”
“I’m coming.”
He pushed open the door and found himself in a gloomy, airless hallway with a single fluorescent tube dangling from the ceiling by its wires. He climbed the concrete steps until he reached the first landing. Then he went up to the black-painted door marked ‘1’ and knocked.
The door was opened almost instantly – and there, to Jim’s horror, stood the tall dark man from college, hatless now and dressed in a long black kaftan. He was grinning at Jim with a gleeful ferocity, baring his teeth.
“It’s you,” Jim whispered. He wished to God he had a crucifix or a vial of holy water or whatever it was that kept supernatural creatures at bay.
“Yes, Mr Rook, it’s me. But don’t look so shaken. I’m only Tee Jay’s uncle, after all.”
“Oh, no. You’re a hell of a lot more than that. I don’t know what you are or who you are, but don’t try to tell me that you’re ‘only Tee Jay’s uncle’. You murdered Elvin Clay.”
Uncle Umber gave a light, dismissive shrug. “So what do you propose to do about it? Call the police? Make a citizen’s arrest?”
“There’s no point in that if nobody else can see you. You said so yourself.”
Uncle Umber’s brow furrowed. For the first time, Jim noticed that he had a pattern of cicatrices on his forehead, tiny self-inflicted scars in an arrow-pattern that met between his eyes. “Nobody else can see me? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play games,” Jim told him. “Nobody can see you but me, and even I can’t feel you. But you murdered Elvin Clay and by God I’m going to find some way to make you pay for it.”
Without a word, Uncle Umber stepped out of his apartment and swept past Jim to the opposite door, Apartment 2. Jim felt his silky kaftan sliding against him, and he could smell him, too: that distinctive incense aroma that had been left in the college corridor the first time that Jim had encountered him. He stood back while Uncle Umber knocked at the apartment door; and then knocked again.
The door opened and an elderly man in a grey short-sleeved shirt appeared, with a checkered napkin tucked into the collar. His face was grey and his hair was grey and even though it was thinning it stuck up at the back like a cockatoo’s crest.
“What is it?” he demanded, querulously. “I’m trying to eat my supper here.”
“Zygmunt,” said Uncle Umber, with all the showy patience of a stage magician, “can you see me?”
The elderly man stared at him as if he were mad. “What the hell do you mean, Umber? Of course I can see you. I just don’t happen to want to see you, that’s all. I’m trying to eat my supper.”
“Zygmunt,” said Uncle Umber, “
before you go … can you tell this gentleman where I was yesterday morning round about eleven o’clock a.m.?”
“You was in your apartment, wasn’t you?” said the elderly man. “I saw you going in round about quarter after ten and I saw you coming out again just before two.”
“You’re sure of that?” asked Uncle Umber.
“Of course I’m sure. You couldn’t have left without closing the street door, and when I hear that street door shut, I always look out to see what’s what.”
“There,” said Uncle Umber, in triumph. “I don’t appear to be the man that you say I am, do I? Other people can see me; and I couldn’t have possibly killed Elvin, because I was here; and I have a witness to prove it. Even if I had managed to leave without Zygmunt hearing me go, I could never have reached West Grove College in time to do the dirty deed – now, could I?”
He came up to Jim and stood right over him; and this time Jim could actually feel his aura, vibrant and dark. His eyes were yellowish, with bloodshot rims, like the yolks of fertilised eggs. He laid his hands on Jim’s shoulders and gripped him hard. It hurt, but Jim did his best not to wince.
“You said you could see me but you couldn’t feel me?” Uncle Umber growled. “How does this feel?”
Jim said, “You don’t frighten me, Mr Jones. I know what I saw and I know what I felt. Or rather, what I didn’t feel.”
“So call the police,” Uncle Umber suggested, lifting his hands away from Jim’s shoulders and holding them up wrist-to-wrist as if he were waiting for handcuffs.
“I came here because of Tee Jay,” said Jim. “Not because of you. All right, you can prove to the police that you didn’t do it. But what about Tee Jay? No matter what else you are – if you’re his uncle, how can you let him take the rap for a crime that you committed?”
“He won’t,” said Uncle Umber. “The police don’t have any witnesses. They don’t have any forensic evidence. They don’t have anything but circumstantial evidence – except, of course, your story that you saw me leaving the boiler-house, and they won’t believe that for a moment. Plus, one more thing.”
Rook & Tooth and Claw Page 7