Garden of Evil by Graham Masterton Page B

when an elderly man in yellow-and-blue Bermuda shorts came down the steps from the house and tapped with his knuckle on his passenger-side window.
    Jim took three or four deep breaths and then let the window down. The elderly man looked like a Thanksgiving turkey in sunglasses, with a red shriveled neck.
    â€˜Help you?’ he asked.
    â€˜No . . . no I’m good, thanks.’
    â€˜I’ll be wanting to pull out of here in a couple of minutes.’
    â€˜Oh, really?’
    â€˜Well . . . you’re kind of blocking me in here, aren’t you?’
    Jim took another deep breath. ‘I’m having a brief think, OK? I don’t recall anybody receiving a traffic citation for having a brief think. In fact more people ought to do more of it, what do
you
think?’
    â€˜I think I have to take my wife to the orthodontist and you’re blocking my driveway.’
    â€˜I hear you. And when I’m good and ready, I’ll go.’
    The elderly man took a step back and looked at Jim’s car. ‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I, in this old junker? You live just up the road a ways, in Briar Cliff Apartments.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜So, if you want yourself a brief think, my friend, why don’t you take your old junker up to your own driveway and have your brief think there?’
    Jim stared at him. He couldn’t remember when he had ever felt such contempt for anybody in his life. When he spoke, his voice was shaking with anger.
    â€˜How old are you, granpa?’ he asked him.
    â€˜Eighty-one, not that it’s any of your concern.’
    â€˜Eighty-one? Then for your information you have just exceeded the average life expectancy in Los Angeles County by seven months. I wouldn’t take your wife to the orthodontist, old man. I’d visit your mortician and start making arrangements for Forest Lawn.’
    â€˜That’s it!’ the elderly man told him. ‘I’m calling the cops on you! Nobody speaks to me like that, right in my own driveway! I used to be vice-president of Orange-Freeze!’
    â€˜Don’t panic,’ Jim told him. ‘I’m going. You were just what I needed to remind me of something important.’
    â€˜Oh, yes? And what’s that?’
    â€˜For some people, old man, death can’t
ever
come too soon.’
    With that, he swerved out of the elderly man’s driveway and made his way two hundred yards further up the hill, to his own apartment block. He parked with a squeal of tires, and sat in his car for a further few minutes, with the engine and the air conditioning running. When he eventually climbed out he was still breathing hard, and the back of his shirt was clammy with sweat.
    What the hell is the matter with you, Jim
?
You never shout at people for no
reason. Mr Reasonable, that’s you
. Yet he was still so angry with that elderly man down the road that he could have walked back and punched him in the face, and broken his beak for him. Well, he looked like a fucking turkey.
    He was climbing the steps to the first-story landing when the front door of Apartment 1 opened and Nadine stuck her head out, almost as if she had been waiting for him. She was wearing a droopy brown kaftan and smoking a cigarette in a very long holder.
    â€˜You’re back early,’ she told him.
    Jim stopped in front of her, and shifted his eyes from side to side without actually looking at her directly, like a blind man. ‘Oh yes. And?’
    Nadine’s forehead furrowed. ‘And – you’re back early, that’s all. I was just wondering why. You know, neighborly nosiness. That’s all.’
    â€˜If you must know there’s been another homicide, pretty much identical to the first one. Some young man killed and whitewashed but nailed to a tree, this time, instead of a ceiling. He was surrounded by white Persian cats, eight of them, the same as before. You’ll hear all about it on the