“Delicious,” I said when he put down his spoon. “Where
can you get them?”
“Generally two places. At Hispanic markets they’re
comparatively cheap but the fruit is small and irregular. If you go to a
gourmet grocer you’ll pay fifteen dollars for two good-sized ones wrapped in
fancy tissue paper.”
“So they’re being grown commercially?”
“In Latin America and Spain. On a more limited basis
here in the U.S., mostly up near Carpenteria. The climate there’s too cool for
true tropicals but it’s even more temperate than what we get down here.”
“No frosts?”
“Not yet.”
“Fifteen dollars,” I thought out loud.
“Yes. It never caught on as a popular fruit—too many
seeds, too gelatinous, people don’t like to carry spoons with them. No one’s
found a way to machine-pollinate so it’s highly labor-intensive. Nevertheless,
it’s a delicacy with a loyal following and demand exceeds supply. But for the
Fates, Garland would have been wealthy.”
My hands were sticky from handling fruit. I washed
them in the kitchen sink. When I returned to the table the dog was curled at
Maimon’s feet, eyes closed, crooning low-pitched canine satisfaction as the
grower stroked its fur.
A peaceful scene but it made me restless. I’d lingered
too long in Maimon’s Eden when there were things that needed to be done.
“I want to take a look at the Swopes’ place. Is it one
of those farms we passed on the way up?”
“No. They live—lived further up the road. Those weren’t
really farms, just old home tracts too small to be commercially viable. Some of
the people who work in town like to live up here. They get a little more space and
the chance to earn spare change growing seasonal cash crops—pumpkins for
Halloween, winter melons for the Asian trade.”
I remembered Houten’s sudden anger when he talked of
farming and asked if the sheriff had ever worked the land.
“Not recently,” he said hesitantly. “Ray used to have
a plot nearby. Grew conifers that he sold to Christmas tree brokers.”
“Used to?”
“He sold the place to a young couple after he lost his
daughter. Moved into a rooming house a block from city hall.”
The possibility that the sheriff had lied to
discourage me from snooping around hadn’t left my mind. I found myself wanting
to know more about the man who was the law in La Vista.
“He told me about his wife dying of cancer. What
happened to the daughter?”
Maimon raised his eyebrows and stopped stroking the
Lab. The dog stirred and growled until the stimulation resumed.
“Suicide. Four or five years ago. She hung herself
from an old oak on the property.”
He recalled it matter of factly, as if the girl’s death
hadn’t been surprising. I commented on it.
“It was a tragedy,” he said, “but not one of those
cases where one’s initial reaction is stunned disbelief. Marla’d always seemed
a troubled child to me. Plain, overweight, excessively timid, no friends. Always
had her nose buried in a book. Fairy tales, the times I noticed. I never saw
her smile.”
“How old was she when she died?”
“Around fifteen.”
Had she lived she’d be the same age as Nona Swope. The
two girls had lived nearby. I asked Maimon if there’d been any contact between
them.
“I doubt it. As little girls they sometimes played
together. But not after they got older. Maria kept to herself and Nona ran with
the wild crowd. You couldn’t find two girls more dissimilar.”
Maimon stopped stroking the dog. He rose, cleared the
table, and began washing dishes.
“Losing Maria changed Ray,” he said, turning off the
water and picking up a dish towel. “And the town along with him. Before her
death he’d been a hell-raiser. Liked to drink, arm-wrestle, tell off-color
jokes. When they cut her body down from that tree he turned inward. Wouldn’t
accept solace from anyone. At first people thought it was grief, that he’d come
out of it. But he never did.” He wiped a bowl past the gleaming point. “Seems
to me La Vista’s been a little more somber since then. Almost as if everyone’s
waiting for Ray to give them permission to smile.”
He’d just described mass anhedonia—the rejection of
pleasure. I wondered if therein lay the key to Houten’s tolerance of the
ostensibly self-denying Touch.
Maimon finished drying and wiped his hands.
I got up.
“Thank you,” I said, “for your time, the tour, and the
fruit. You’ve created great beauty here.” I held out my hand.
He took it and smiled.
“Someone else created it. I’ve simply displayed it. It’s
been a pleasure talking to you, Doctor. You’re a good listener. Will you be
going to Garland’s place now?”
“Yes. Just to look around. Can you direct me?”
“Proceed along the road the way we came. You’ll pass
half a mile of avocado. Owned by a consortium of La Jolla doctors as a tax
shelter. Then a covered bridge over a dry bed. Once off the bridge drive
another quarter mile. The Swope place is to the left.”
I thanked him again. He walked me to the door.
“I passed by the place a couple of days ago,” he said.
“There was a padlock on the gate.”
“I’m a pretty good climber.”
“I don’t doubt it. But remember what I told you about
Garland’s being antisocial. There are coils of barbed wire on top of the fence.”
“Any suggestions?”
He pretended to look at the dog, and said with forced
nonchalance: “There’s a toolshed next to my back porch. Odds and ends. Rummage
around, see if you find anything helpful.”
He walked away from me and I exited the house.
The “odds and ends” were a collection of high quality
hand tools, oiled and wrapped. I selected a heavy-duty bolt cutter and a
crowbar and carried them to the Seville. I put them on the floor of the car
along with a flashlight retrieved from the glove compartment, started up the
engine, and rolled forward.
I looked back at the brightly lit nursery. The taste
of the cherimoya lingered on my tongue. As I drove off the property the lights
went out.
I’D RECEIVED impressions of the Swopes from multiple
sources but had yet to form a coherent image of the shattered family.
Everyone had thought Garland unusual—emotionally
inappropriate, secretive, hostile to outsiders. But for a hermit he’d been
surprisingly outgoing—Beverly and Raoul had both described him as opinionated
and talkative to the point of boorishness, anything but socially reticent.
Emma had emerged as her husband’s cringing
subordinate, almost a nonentity, except in Augie Valcroix’s view. The Canadian
doctor had described her as a strong woman and hadn’t rejected the possibility
that she’d instigated the disappearance.
On the subject of Nona there seemed to be the most
agreement. She was wild, hypersexual, and angry. And had been that way for a
long time.
And then there was Woody, a sweet little boy. Any way
you looked at it, an innocent victim. Was I deluding myself into believing he
might still be alive? Engaging in the same kind of denial that had turned a
brilliant physician into a public nuisance?
I had an intuitive distrust of Matthias and the Touch
but no evidence to back it up. Valcroix had visited them and I wondered if it
had been only a single visit as claimed. Several times I’d watched him space
out in a manner reminiscent of the meditation practiced by the Touch. Now he
was dead. What was the connection, if any?
Something else stuck in my mind. Matthias had said the
cult purchased seeds from Garland Swope once or twice. But according to Ezra
Maimon, Garland had nothing to sell. All there was behind his gates was an old
house and acres of dust. A minor point? Perhaps. But why the need to fabricate?
Lots of questions, none of them leading anywhere.
It was like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces had been
improperly tooled. No matter how hard I worked, the end product was maddening
off-kilter.
I passed through the covered bridge and slowed down.
The entrance to the Swope property was fronted by a sunken dirt driveway
leading to rusty iron gates. The gates weren’t high—seven feet at most—but they
wore a coiffure of barbed wire that stretched another yard, and were bound, as
Maimon had said, by padlock and chain.
I drove a hundred feet before finding space to pull
over. Nosing the Seville as close as possible to a stand of eucalyptus, I
parked, took the tools and flashlight, and backtracked on foot.
The lock was brand new. Probably affixed by Houten.
The chain was plastic-coated steel. It resisted the bolt cutters for a moment
then split like overcooked sausage. I opened the gate, slipped through, closed
it, and rearranged the severed links to conceal the surgery.
The driveway was gravel and responded to my footsteps
with breakfast cereal sounds. The flashlight revealed a two-story frame house,
at first glance not unlike Maimon’s. But this structure seemed to sag on its
foundation, the wood splintered and peeling. The roof was tar paper and bald in
several places, the windows framed by warped casements. I placed my foot on the
first porch step and felt the wood give under my weight. Dry rot.
An owl hooted. I heard the rasping friction of wings,
raised my beam to catch the big bird in flight. Then a broad swoop, the
scurrying panic of prey, a thin squeak, and silence once again.
The front door was locked. I considered various means
of snapping the lock and stopped midthought, feeling furtive and vaguely criminal.
Looking up at the ravaged mass of the decrepit house, I remembered the fate of
its inhabitants. Inflicting further damage seemed a heedless act of vandalism.
I decided to try the back door.
I stumbled on a loose board, caught my balance, and
walked around the side of the house. I hadn’t taken a dozen steps when I heard
the sound. An incessant dripping, rhythmic and oddly melodic.
There was a junction box in the same place as the one
at Maimon’s. It was rusted shut and I had to use the crowbar to pry it open. I
tried several switches and got no response. The fourth brought on the lights.
There was a single greenhouse. I entered it.
Long heavy wooden tables ran the length of the glass
building. The bulbs I’d switched on were dim and bluish, casting a milky glaze
over the creations that rested on the heavy planks. At the peak of the ceiling
were winches and pulleys designed to open the roof.
The source of the dripping sound became evident: a
reptilian system of overhead irrigation operated by old-fashioned dialed timers
and suspended from the crossbeam.
Maimon had been wrong about there being nothing but
dust behind the Swopes’ gates. The greenhouse contained a plethora of growing
things. Not flowers. Not trees.
Things.
I’d thought of the Sephardic grower’s nursery as an
Eden. What I saw now was a vision from Hell.
Exquisite care had been taken to create a jungle of
botanic monstrosities.
There were hundreds of roses that would never fill a
bouquet. Their blossoms were shriveled, stunted, colored a deathly gray. Each
flower was ragged-edged, irregular, and covered with a layer of what looked
like moist fur. Others boasted three inch thorns that turned stem and stalk
into deadly weapons. I didn’t stoop to smell the flowers but the stench reached
me anyway, pungently warm, aggressively rancid.
Next to the roses was a collection of carnivorous
plants. Venus’s-flytraps, pitcher plants, others I couldn’t identify. All were
larger and more robust than any I’d seen. Green maws hung open. Sap oozed from
tendrils. On the table was a rusty kitchen knife and a slab of beef cut into
tiny pieces. Each cube teemed with maggots, many of them dead. One of the
flesh-craving plants had managed to lower its mouth to the table and snare some
of the white worms with it’s deadly-sweet exudate. Nearby were more goodies for
the carnivores—a coffee can heaped to the brim with dried beetles and flies.
The heap shuddered. Out crawled a live insect, a wasp-like creature with a
pincer mouth and swollen abdomen. It stared at me and buzzed off. I followed
its trajectory. When it had flown out the door, I ran over and slammed it shut.
The glass panes vibrated.
And all the while the steady drip-drip from the pipes
overhead, keeping everything nice and healthy…
Weak-kneed with nausea I walked on. There was a
collection of bonsai oleanders, leaves ground to powder and stored in
canisters. The granulate had apparently been tested on field mice for poison
content. All that remained of the rodents were teeth and bones enshrouded in
flesh tanned by rigor mortis. They’d been left to their terminal agonies, paws
begging stiffly. The droppings had been used to fertilize trays of toadstools.
Each tray was labeled:
Amanita muscaria. Boletus miniato-olivaceus. Helvetia
esculenta.
The plants in the next section were fresh and pretty
but equally deadly: hemlock. Foxglove. Black henbane. Deadly nightshade. An
ivylike beauty identified quaintly as poisonwood.