“In those instances, Mr Rook, I believe that we’re looking for somebody else altogether.”
“But the scratches match, don’t they?”
“There’s some superficial similarity, but we haven’t finished our forensic tests yet.”
“Lieutenant,” Jim protested, “these incidents are all connected. That locker room was trashed by the same person who killed my cat and trashed my apartment, and the same person who killed my cat and trashed my apartment is the same person who murdered Martin Amato.”
“I have a problem with that,” said Lieutenant Harris.
“Problem? What problem?”
“At the time your cat was being killed and your apartment was being remodeled, Paul and Grey Cloud were having dinner at home with their father and five friends from their father’s TV show.”
Jim stared at him. “So what do you conclude from that?”
“I conclude that the two cases are not connected.”
“What if Paul and Grey Cloud didn’t do it? They could still be connected then.”
“Yes, Mr Rook,’ said Lieutenant Harris, with thinly-disguised impatience. “But they’re not, and we’re going to prove that they’re not, and once we’ve done that, Paul and Grey Cloud are going to get what’s coming to them.”
The door opened and David Littwin cautiously put his head around it. “OK to come in, Mr Rook? I thought I’d come in early to finish off my poem.”
“Sure, come in, David,” said Jim. “Lieutenant Harris was just leaving.”
“I may need to talk to you some more,” said Lieutenant Harris. He was obviously upset that Jim hadn’t clapped him on the back and acknowledged him as the greatest procedural detective since Maigret.
“Sure, any time,” Jim told him. Lieutenant Harris hesitated by the door for a moment, and then left. Jim went back to his marking.
Sherma Feldstein had written, ‘I think Treasure Island should be banned as the only physically-challenged person in the entire novel is presented as a villain. That is, Long John Silver, who only had one leg, not his own fault. This novel will further reinforce prejudice against the physically disadvantaged by presenting them as greedy and immoral and prepared to use their disabilities for nefarious gain.’
Jim gave her an extra point for good spelling and vocabulary, and for correctly using ‘nefarious’, but he simply didn’t know how to mark her for suggesting that Treasure Island had been written as a diatribe against the disabled.
He felt the same way about Lieutenant Harris. Maybe Lieutenant Harris was right, and Martin had been murdered by Paul and Grey Cloud. There was strong circumstantial evidence against them, after all. But it seemed to Jim that Lieutenant Harris was doing what Sherma Feldstein was doing – closing his eyes to everything except his own prejudice.
There had been no discrimination against Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In fact, he had dominated all the other characters – while Paul and Grey Cloud seemed to Jim to have a mission that white men might not fully understand, but which amounted to very much more than attacking anyone who tried to be too friendly with their sister.
When the class assembled, there were three absentees. Titus Greenspan III had another bad attack of asthma; Seymour Williams had gone to his great-aunt’s funeral at Forest Lawn; and Catherine White Bird had simply failed to show. It wasn’t hard to understand why.
Jim didn’t tell the class that Catherine’s brothers had been arrested. They would find out soon enough, and he was more interested in teaching them how to cope with their grief. Revenge could wait until later.
“You want to tell me how you got on with your poems?” he asked them. “Did you find them difficult? Did you find that they helped you to express how you feel?”
“I think it’s better to smash something when you’re feeling that bad,” said Ray. “You know – break a window, kick in a door. It gets rid of your frustration better.”
“So you felt frustrated by Martin’s death?”
“Frustrated? You’re kidding me, aren’t you? I felt like why, man? The guy was so young. Like he had his whole life in front of him, and he happens to walk into some whacko who kills him. I just wish I could of been there. I just wish I could of saved him. I just wish it was Saturday afternoon again and he was still alive.”
“So what did you do? Did you write a poem or did you smash something?”
“I did both. I went home and I wrecked my old Spanish guitar. I smashed it up against the wall until it was nothing more than matchwood and strings.”
“And did that make you feel any better?”
Ray shrugged, and said, “Yeah. It made me feel better.”
“How about your poem? Do you want to read it to us?”
Ray fastidiously picked the gum out of the side of his mouth and stuck it under his desk. He picked up a well-folded sheet of paper and cleared his throat. Usually, the rest of the class would have barracked him, but today they were silent. They knew he wasn’t very articulate but they knew how he felt.
“This is called, like, Smashed-Up Guitar:
‘I smashed up my guitar today
So that I would never have to play
Any more songs for you
I don’t want to play the chords
Or even sing the words
You wouldn’t hear me even if I wanted you to
You’re just like my guitar
Smashed-up, that’s what you are
Your only song is gone and we’re all missing you.’”
“That’s good, Ray,” said Jim. “That’s probably the best piece of work you’ve produced this term. You’ve made a really vivid analogy about your guitar being broken and silent and Martin being broken and silent, too.”
Ray suddenly flushed scarlet – the first time that Jim had ever seen him embarrassed. He retrieved his gum and bent over his desk with his face covered by his hands.
“Anybody else?” asked Jim.
John Ng hesitantly put up his hand. “I’ve only written something very short,” he said. “It’s not exactly a haiku but I guess it’s kind of like it.”
“Go on, then.”
“‘The grass
Misses your tread
The sand
Misses your running shadow
But the wind
Welcomes you.’”
“Do you want to explain that a little?” asked Jim.
“Well … I’m just trying to say that when you leave the earth, there’s another life waiting for you. Not a life that you can see, just like you can’t see the wind, but just as exciting.”
“So you believe in a life after death?”
“Of course, Mr Rook. The same as you do.”
Russell said, “Mr Rook, sir? Do you want to hear mine? It’s pretty long. Sixty-two verses. I call it The Ballad of Martin Amato.”
There was a quiet groan from Mark Foley. The last ballad that Russell had written was a blow-by-blow account of the plot of Waterworld, and it had gone on almost as long as the movie itself. But Jim said, “OK, Russell, let’s hear it.” He didn’t think it would do the class any harm to have a little light relief.
“‘This ballad is just starting
It’s the story of a boy called Martin
Of the crop he was the cream
And he was captain of the football team.
Martin was tall with a ready smile
He was so tall that he stood out a mile
As you know his surname was Amato
Which was why he was often kidded and called Tomato.’”
Russell went on and on, and the monotony of his rhyming wasn’t helped by his halting delivery. Jim found himself looking out of the window and thinking about Mrs Vaizey and the warnings that she had given him through Valerie Neagle. God, it was Tuesday morning already and he was supposed to be killed on Thursday – and he still didn’t have any idea of who his ‘2 Friends’ might be or where he was supposed to be travelling. It gave him a terrible nagging feeling of frustra
ted dread. Don’t talk to me about frustration, Ray. Don’t talk to me about smashing things up.
Russell was still droning on when there was a knock at the classroom door and Dr Ehrlichman’s secretary came in. “Mr Rook? I’m sorry to interrupt your tutorial, but there’s a visitor for you.”
“Okay, thanks, Sylvia. Listen up, everybody. Let Russell finish reading his ballad and then I want you to read the poem on page 32 of Gasoline by Gregory Corso.”
He left the class and walked along the corridor in the wake of Sylvia’s overpowering perfume. When he reached the principal’s office he found to his surprise that Henry Black Eagle was standing there, waiting for him. Henry Black Eagle’s face was as serious as an axe-hacked oak.
“I don’t like to disturb you, Mr Rook. But I have to ask you a very great favour.”
“Well, you can ask,” said Jim, cautiously.
“Can we talk in private?” asked Henry Black Eagle, looking over Jim’s shoulder at Sylvia, who was pretending to check Dr Ehrlichman’s diary while keeping one dangly earring cocked to hear what they were saying.
Jim said, “Sure … why don’t we take a walk?” and led him out through the hallway to the front entrance. They walked out past the tennis-courts, under a hazy sun. Their conversation was punctuated by the plick-plack of students playing mixed doubles.
“Lieutenant Harris told me that your sons had been arrested,” said Jim.
Henry Black Eagle nodded. “The police came this morning, just after six o’clock. I’ve already talked to a lawyer here in Los Angeles, but I sent to the DNA for a Navajo lawyer, too.”
“I gather that two hitch-hikers saw Paul and Grey Cloud on the beach just about the same time that Martin Amato was murdered.”
“That’s true,” said Black Eagle.
“You mean they were there?”
“Yes, they were. But not to kill the Amato boy, believe me.”
“Even though they’d already threatened him? I mean, I was a witness to that. They specifically told Martin that he wouldn’t live to see another dawn.”
“I know. But you misunderstood. They never had any intention of causing the Amato boy any harm.”
“They had blood on them, that’s what Lieutenant Harris told me.”
“I know. But I can swear to you that they didn’t commit any crime.”
“So what were they doing down on the beach?”
Henry Black Eagle stopped. “They were protecting their sister, as they always do.”
“Protecting her from what? From the animal that killed Martin?”
“Yes, in a way.”
“So what is it, this animal? And why is it trying to hurt her?”
“This is the reason that I’ve come to you for help,” said Henry Black Eagle. “Apart from the fact that Catherine thinks that you’re a very inspirational teacher, she tells me that you have a gift. Her classmates told her that you can see things that other people can’t… spiritual things.”
“Well, that’s partly true. I sometimes have – I don’t know, visions and spiritual intuitions. But what does that have to do with this animal?”
“This animal, Mr Rook, is not a real animal. It comes from the spirit world. It is like a curse, of a kind.”
“A curse,” said Jim, trying not to look too unimpressed. “Do you want to tell me more?”
“I think you should talk to Paul and Grey Cloud. They are both much more involved in Navajo spiritualism than me. But you can see my problem, can’t you? How can I prove that my sons didn’t kill this Martin Amato boy when he was killed by something that you can’t see, even if you could be persuaded to believe in it?”
“So what do you think I can do about it?”
“Talk to Paul and Grey Cloud, please. At least hear what they have to say. Even if you don’t do it for their sake, or for my sake, at least do it for Catherine’s sake. She knows that her brothers didn’t murder Martin, and she doesn’t want to see them go to prison for it. She also wants the beast to be sent back to the spirit world, so that it won’t hurt anybody else.”
“I’m going to have to think about this, Mr Black Eagle. I had a very, very bad horoscope this week, concerning beasts. Apart from that, my dead grandfather came to my apartment two days ago and sat and talked to me, as close as you are now. He warned me to watch for something old and cold and bristling, and that sounds like a beast to me.”
“Please, Mr Rook. If there were any other way – if there were any other person who could help us, I wouldn’t ask. But you’re the only one who can see the beast. Nobody else would stand a chance.”
Jim stopped and pressed two fingers to his forehead, the way he always did when he was thinking something over. Then he said, “OK … I’ll go talk to Paul and Grey Cloud – see what they have to say. But I can’t make you any guarantees. Not until I know what this is all about.”
“Let me give you something,” said Henry Black Eagle. He reached into the pocket of his fringed buckskin coat and took out a thin silver whistle on a frayed cord made of twisted hair. “Here … it belongs to Grey Cloud, but he wouldn’t have been allowed to give it to you down at the police station.”
Jim took the whistle and turned it from side to side. “What is this? What does it do?”
“It works like a dog-whistle, way beyond the range of human hearing.”
Jim blew it; and Henry Black Eagle was right, it was silent. But there was a man walking a Labrador bitch only fifty or sixty feet away, and the bitch took absolutely no notice, even when Jim blew it again. “So what kind of dogs does this call?” he wanted to know.
“Please … you’ll understand more when you talk to Paul and Grey Cloud.”
Jim said, “All right. But I’m not making you any promises. And I’m scared of dogs. So if this whistle calls anything more aggressive than a chihuahua, you can forget it.”
“You make jokes in the face of death.”
“No, I don’t. Death is just about the biggest joke of all. The only trouble is, it never makes me laugh.”
He arrived at police headquarters just before noon. His car let off a deafening backfire, and two policemen who were climbing out of their patrol car instinctively ducked. “Sorry,” he said, with a wave of his hand.
“You want to get that muffler fixed before somebody shoots back,” one of the officers warned him.
“Sorry,” he repeated, and went up the steps to the front desk.
Lieutenant Harris was on the way out. He looked hot and unhappy. “Mr Rook – I really appreciate all of the assistance you’ve been trying to give us, but I don’t think that you’re going to be doing anything at all constructive by talking to those Navajo boys.”
“I don’t think they did it,” said Jim.
“Oh. That’s supposed to be constructive, is it? They made a death threat against Martin Amato in front of independent witnesses. They were seen by more independent witnesses at or near the crime scene at the time the crime was committed. They have blood on their clothes which I have learned within the past fifteen minutes is the same group as Martin Amato’s, type O. And apart from that, they’re uncooperative, aggressive, and their lawyer’s just arrived and he looks like Sitting Bull.”
“Sitting Bull was a Sioux.”
“Whatever.”
Jim said, “I still want to talk to them. Come on, lieutenant, the family trust me. I might be able to throw some light on what really happened.”
Lieutenant Harris wiped perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. “OK … but don’t take longer than ten minutes – that’s if they agree to talk to you. And when you’re through, don’t say one single word to the Press. You got that? Not even ‘no comment’. I’m not having this case prejudiced by the media, no way.”
“You can trust me, lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Harris was about to push his way out through the revolving doors when he stopped. “By the way, we checked the clawmarks in your apartment and measured them up against the clawmarks in t
he locker room. They were similar, but they didn’t exactly match.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the damage in the locker-room was inflicted with a similar-type claw or instrument as the damage in your apartment, but there was quite a difference in measurement.”
“Measurement? Like what?”
“Whatever trashed your apartment had a claw span of well over eleven inches. The widest claw span we found in the locker room was just over six.”
“What about the clawmarks on Martin Amato?”
“They were different again. Eight, maybe nine inches at a stretch.”
“So what conclusion do you draw from that?”
“None, so far. I’m just telling you.”
“Maybe you should be looking for three different animals. Or one animal that can grow dramatically in the space of a single weekend.”
Lieutenant Harris stared at him long and hard, one eye squinched up in an unconscious impersonation of Columbo. He didn’t attempt to disguise the contempt in his voice. “Mr Rook, if you can find me any living creature whose claws grow five inches in a matter of three days, then please let me know, because I can get in touch with Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Meanwhile, if you really have to talk to those two Native Americans, why don’t you see if you can’t persuade them to confess that they did murder Martin Amato, and tell you how they did it. It would save the taxpayer money. It would save them money. We could go fishing instead of sitting in court. Anyhow – I have to go. Sergeant! Take Mr Rook through to see our Native American guests. Ten minutes max.”
The big-bellied sergeant came forward with a long loop of keys hanging from his belt. “This way, sir,” he said, with deep condescension, his moustache cropped like a brand-new nailbrush. He led Jim through a swing door, past the squadroom, and through to an interview room at the back of the building. There was a plain table scarred with cigarette burns and four plain wooden chairs. The window was covered with wire mesh.
“Just take a seat, sir,” said the sergeant. “We’ll bring your friends up momentarily.”
Jim stood by the window and waited. Outside he could see the rear end of a squad car and the corner of a brick wall, and a narrow rectangle of intensely blue sky. He wondered what it would be like to be locked up for the rest of your life. Better to be dead. But he didn’t want to think about being dead, either – not with death breathing so coldly and quickly down his neck.
Rook & Tooth and Claw Page 29