The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal)

I
HEARD FOOTSTEPS OUTSIDE. I COULD SEE SOMEONE’S
outline through the translucent fiberglass. I heard the clank of metal against metal. Then nothing but receding steps.

I smashed my shoulder into the door. The greenhouse shook, but the latch held. “Who’s out there?” I said. No one was. Not anymore.

I turned and surveyed the greenhouse. Wasps filled the airspace—yellow jackets, golden polistes, mud daubers. And somewhere off at the edge of my vision I caught a glimpse of something bigger, something that was black and orange and altogether too frightening to focus on.

Buzzing came from overhead. My right hand tickled. I looked down. A golden polistes rested atop my knuckle. I flailed my arms. As the wasp flew off I dove under the bench. Up above I could see the big black and orange thing, could hear the hum of its wings as it searched for a fat, tasty mammal to sting.

Suddenly, as if at a signal from the barely seen giant, half a dozen winged creatures surrounded me….

U
LTIMATELY, IT WAS THE WASP’S FAULT THAT I PLUNGED
Gina into the pool of insecticide. But maybe I shared the responsibility. I could have waited a couple of days, until it was time to go over to Brenda’s anyway to feed the canaries, to find out just which variety of
Euphorbia viguieri
I had. Gina would have been at work, helping people with too much disposable income decide which overpriced furniture to dispose of it on. The Cygon would have soaked into the ground, rendered relatively harmless.

I could have waited, but I didn’t.

The sequence of events culminating in Gina’s toxic bath began Memorial Day afternoon, around four-thirty, the end of the beginning of another sunshiny Los Angeles summer. An out-of-season deluge the night before had rendered the air smog-free and the ground swampy I was out back, nosing around my collection of cacti and other succulent plants, killing time until Gina arrived with the Jackie Chan videos essential to our planned evening of comedie mayhem and take-out Thai.

I cruised by the winter-growers on the bench outside the greenhouse. Old Sam Oliver kept telling me that, since
I lived on the relatively cool Westside, if I kept watering the pelargoniums and sarcocaulons—the so-called succulent geraniums—they’d stay green all year round. But they weren’t having any of it, dropping waves of leaves between the slats of the bench and onto the redwood bark below. As if to mock both Sam and me, the rain had accelerated the defoliation rate.

I entered the greenhouse and noticed my
Euphorbia viguieri
was loaded with spiderwebs. I had no problem with a living room that hadn’t been vacuumed in weeks, and my pickup truck resembled the aftermath of a hurricane, but anything in the greenhouse was a different story. I started at the crown of big oval leaves and worked my way down the two-foot stem, removing webs and sucked-dry insects from the profusion of gray spines that would make you think the plant was a cactus if you didn’t know better. When I got down to soil level, I realized the label was missing. A quick search failed to turn it up.

One might wonder why I couldn’t just make another, since I knew which species it was. But I didn’t remember the variety. There were four, all impossible to spell or pronounce, and for the life of me I couldn’t recall which one I had. I could look in Rauh’s Madagascar book, but experience had shown me no matter how many photos they put in the books, none of them would match my plant. No, this would require a trip to Brenda’s. My viguieri was originally a piece she’d accidentally knocked off her gigantic specimen; I just had to bring it over and match it up.

“Joe? You in there?” I poked my head out of the greenhouse. Gina stood just outside the back door with tapes in hand. She’d let herself into the house, just like she always did. She had on a sleeveless yellow blouse and denim shorts and sandals, and her hair was carelessly pinned up. She looked gorgeous—just like she always did—and, just like always,
I wouldn’t tell her so unless she needed to hear it, which was typically about once a month.

“What’d you get?” I asked.

“Crime Story
and
Rumble in the Bronx.”

“Crime Story?”
I shut the greenhouse door and headed for the house. “Didn’t we hate that one?”

“Yeah. The one with no comedy and all the gratuitous violence.”

“As opposed to the essential violence in the others. Remind me, why did we want to see it again?”

“I thought we’d give it another chance. Maybe we’re missing something. Maybe there’s some inscrutable Oriental way of viewing it we haven’t figured out yet. If we still hate it we can skip right to
Rumble”
A slight pause. “When was the last time you shaved?”

I rubbed my hand along my chin. It did feel a little furry. “Last Thursday, I think. For the Subaru audition. I planned on doing it again Wednesday, for the Olsen’s shoot. Why? Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”

“I wonder how you’d look with a beard.”

“Just like I did sixteen years ago. You hated it, remember? Among other things, you said it tickled your—”

“Of course I remember. But tickling me isn’t an issue anymore, and with the way your face has filled out I think you’d look good with one now.”

“I think I’d look like a rabbi with one now. Besides, people with beards don’t get commercials.”

We went inside and into the living room. Gina slid
Crime Story
into the VCR and moved toward the couch. “Don’t sit down yet,” I said.

She gave me a dirty look. She has this sixth sense about when I’m about to propose something stupid. “Why not?”

“We have to go over to Brenda’s first.”

“What for?”

“To check on the canaries.”

The look got dirtier. “She just left for Madagascar, what, a couple of hours ago?”

“Actually, I’m not sure her flights even taken off yet.”

“So why would the canaries need checking on?”

“Maybe she forgot to feed them before she left.”

“She loves those damned birds. We can assume they’ve been fed.” She pointedly sat down on the couch. “Therefore, there’s no reason to go over there now.” She cocked her head. “This has something to do with plants, doesn’t it?”

“No. I’m just worried the birds might be freaking out because she’s not there and—”

She jumped up and wagged a finger at me. “You want to wander around her greenhouse, don’t you? You want to prowl around in there without her breathing down your neck. She’s not gone an hour and—”

“It’s the canaries, I swear.”

“Your nose is growing.”

“Okay, it’s not the canaries.”

“It’s the plants, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But it’s not some prurient wandering mania. I have a very specific need.” I told her about the missing label.

“And this can’t wait a day or two?”

“If I don’t figure it out now, it’ll bug me constantly and I won’t fully enjoy Jackie. I’ll sit and sulk and make you miserable too.”

“I will never understand plant freaks.”

“No one else does either. Come on, she’s only ten minutes away; we’ll be back in half an hour.”

She gave in. She always does, like I always do when she wants to go for ice cream at one in the morning. We piled into my Datsun pickup and drove over to Brenda’s. We walked around back and carefully picked our way over the soggy ground toward the greenhouse.

This brings us to the wasp. It came out of nowhere and dive-bombed my head. I reacted like I usually do when a wasp shows up. I took a flying leap.

If one were to list the adjectives most often applied to me over the preceding ten years, since I gave up the theater world,
lazy
would probably rank number one.
Lacking direction
would be way up there. But one that I’d never heard, in all my forty-four years, was
well-coordinated
. Which helps explain why the space I took my flying leap into was the one Gina already occupied, why my feet slipped on the muddy turf, and why, when I grabbed for whatever was handy, it was Gina’s arm. Three death-defying seconds later she toppled backward and dropped hind-end-first into a big puddle reeking of Cygon.

She unleashed a stream of Spanish invective. I knew it was invective because Gina speaks the tongue of her forebears only when she’s cursing.

“Don’t let it get in your eyes,” I said, trying to help her up without getting the smelly liquid on myself.

“Goddamn it, Joe, that’s about the only orifice it isn’t in.” She managed to get to her feet. Her eyes swept down, surveying the damage. “My shorts are ruined.”

“I’ll buy you some new ones.”

She wrinkled her nose. “This stuff really stinks. What is it?”

“Cygon. Brenda must have done a drench right before she left.”

“Sounds deadly.”

“To mealybugs, scale, and the dreaded red spider mite.”

“How about humans?”

“It’s a systemic. It has to get inside you to do any damage.”

“Have I mentioned my orifices?”

“Good point. You’d better use Brenda’s shower. Come on.”

We hustled around to the front door. I had some trouble with the lock. Gina jabbed me in the small of the back. “I’m dying of insecticide here.”