That was a long talk for us at the time.
CHAPTER 5
THERE WERE AT LEAST SIXTEEN police cars parked around the entrance gate of the new school yard. As I approached the external parking lot a uniformed cop stepped out and put up his hand to stop me.
“You’ll have to turn around,” the young white cop told me.
“What happened here?”
“You’ll have to turn around now.” There was no give in his voice.
“I’m the head custodian at the school, officer,” I said. “Mr. Rawlins.”
“You have keys to the buildings in the garden?”
“Yes I do.”
“Then pull around here. Go up to the garden gate and ask for Sergeant Sanchez.”
I turned to Raymond and said, “You better head over to the main office.”
“Huh?” Mouse seemed unaware of the police activity around us.
“Go on and get ready to start your shift.” I didn’t want Raymond to be anywhere around the cops if a serious crime had been committed. Ex-convicts make the best suspects.
“Okay, man,” Raymond said. He got out of the car and made his way slowly across the asphalt yard. Mouse might have changed, but he certainly wasn’t what anybody would call normal. I don’t think you would have gotten a rise out of him if the Russians dropped the bomb on New York City.
I drove a little way up the block and parked in front of the school’s garden gate.
Two uniforms stopped me there. I identified myself and asked for the sergeant. They pointed out a man standing between two large lemon bushes at the front of the glass-walled garden classroom. He was a tall, weedy man wearing a cheap gray suit with no tie. Mexican definitely, dark Mexican. He was talking to Jorge. I could tell by the way Jorge held his head that they were speaking in Spanish.
When I approached, Sanchez gave me a hard look.
“This is Mr. Rawlins, sergeant,” Jorge said. And to me, “Sergeant Sanchez.”
“What’s goin’ on?” I asked.
There was a start of recognition in the policeman’s eyes; recognition that was quickly replaced by suspicion. Sanchez twisted his head toward a stand of bamboo that Wayne Ito, the gardener, kept toward the back of the gardening plots. I followed him and Jorge as they pushed through the long stalks.
On the other side of the bamboo wall stood Hiram Newgate and the gardening teacher, Mr. Glenn. There were also eight cops—in and out of uniform. Laid out on the ground in front of them was the handsomest corpse I’d ever seen. A tall man in brown tweed with curly dark hair that had been oiled. His shoes were fine-crafted snakeskin and his hands were held up over his head in a feminine pose. I didn’t think he was a white man; his skin was dark olive and his nose was wider than most Caucasians’. I wasn’t claiming him for a Negro either. His racial roots could have been from at least four continents, or a thousand islands around the world.
His left temple was concave and deeply discolored. His eyes were rolled up to the top of his head but, too late, they had seen truth.
“Who is he?” I asked, turning to Sergeant Sanchez. I found him studying me.
“Is the gate here usually locked?” he asked without a trace of an accent. There was an education in his diction; a hard-earned learning that came from the late-night interrogations of used and battered textbooks.
“Always,” I said. “Unless there’s an afternoon class going on.”
“Nobody saw him come in.” The sergeant seemed to be challenging me. “He didn’t sleep here.”
There wasn’t anything for me to say.
“Do you recognize him, Mr. Rawlins? Have you ever seen him around here?” Sanchez was taking me in. Maybe he could smell the residue of the street on me.
He’d gag if he ever got a whiff of Mouse.
“Does he look like somebody who’d be here?” Newgate demanded. “He’s obviously a thief or a crook who was killed and dropped here. Listen, sergeant, we’re going to have to try and keep the children away from here. I have to go organize the teachers. So I hope you don’t mind if I leave.”
“You can go,” Sanchez said. “But I’ll need Mr. Rawlins and Mr. Glenn. I’ll need you men to help us look around here. You might see something out of the ordinary that we’d miss.”
“I’ll get Simona,” Jorge said.
“Where is Simona?” I wanted to know.
“We took her in the classroom, Mr. Rawlins. It was me and her found the body. She took it kinda bad, you know.”
“Okay.” Sergeant Sanchez stuck out his bottom lip and nodded. He was very sure of himself. I’ve always been afraid of self-confident cops.
“I’d like to see her too,” I said.
“Make it fast, Mr. Rawlins. I want to get this investigation going.”
THE GARDEN COURSE at Sojourner Truth consisted of Mr. Glenn’s afternoon lectures on seeds and zygotes and then going out to
