The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) (10 page)

I did my dance. To the wasp’s credit, it didn’t sting me. Nor did it go anywhere.

My yells attracted one of the ding-a-lings next door. “What’s going on back there?” said a female voice with a Southern accent. “Sounds like someone’s dying.”

I muttered, “Not yet,” and fled out of the greenhouse into the yard, where the wasp figured out it wasn’t wanted and buzzed off. I stood with my hands on my knees, catching my breath. I looked up to see a woman with a colossal shock of red hair grinning at me over the fence. She must have been standing on a milk crate. I managed a weak smile back and escaped into the house.

I braved the rush hour on the northbound 405 and arrived at Lyle’s just after six. He lived way up in Sunland by the Foothill Freeway, on a lot that didn’t look big from the street but went way back. This gave him room for several greenhouses, lots of outdoor benches, and his mule.

The mule’s name was Merlin. He and I didn’t get along,
which was odd, since I usually have a good relationship with animals. Take Brenda’s canaries, for instance. But the first time Merlin ever saw me he tried to bite my behind, and things had gone downhill ever since.

The minute I emerged from the truck he began braying. This brought Magda out of the house. “Quiet down, you big old bag,” she told Merlin. “Joe is your friend.” She grabbed his mane and dragged him around toward the back. “Lyle is inside. Please go in.”

I went through the screen door into the sunken living room. Native American artwork hung from every wall, occupied every table, overflowed from the mantel. If one were into that kind of stuff, one would be overwhelmed. I wasn’t, so I wasn’t. I idly fingered a construction of twigs and feathers dangling on the wall between two masks. “Chumash,” said Lyle.

I stifled the urge to say, “Bless you,” and turned to say hello. He stood up on the riser to the hallway wearing only shorts and sandals, A thick mat of gray and black hair covered his chest and stomach. Lyle was almost ten years older than me, and in far better shape. His stomach muscles still had some definition.

He sometimes wore a full beard, but now he was cleanshaven, although his stubble was obvious from clear across the room. His hair was black, thick, and pulled back into one of those two-inch ponytails that look good on only the rarest of men, of which he wasn’t one.

He bounded over and pumped my hand with one of his massive ones. “Picked it up near Ojai a couple of years ago,” he said. “Old Indian guy in a cabin. Lived off the land.” He fingered the trinket lovingly, patted it twice before stepping away. “Want a beer? How about a joint?” He laughed, a big, hearty, hairy-chested guy’s laugh.

“A beer would be good,” I said. Lyle offered me dope
every time I came up. One time on a trip to Baja he’d gotten drunk and admitted he’d never smoked the stuff.

We went into the kitchen. Lyle pulled two bottles labeled Kóbányai Korona from the fridge and gave me one. Magda came in and stirred something fragrant in the big pot on the stove. She took a taste with a wooden spoon. “Have some soup, Joe,” she said.

I said that sounded good and sat down at the sturdy wooden table. Magda dished us out a couple of bowls. The soup was a flawless amalgam of beef and vegetables and essence of Hungary. It went perfectly with the beer.

When we were done Lyle led me outside and into one of the glasshouses. The sun was on its way down, but it was still hot inside. The greenhouse effect, you know.

Flat after flat of cacti and other succulents lined the benches. Everything from the rarest new finds to common species like the crown of thorns that were fodder for McAfee’s and several other local nurseries. As I not-so-casually zeroed in on the euphorbias, Lyle followed behind, briskly straightening out any pot that had gone askew. I pointed at a half dozen abdelkuri’s, babies three inches high and half an inch in diameter. “Anyone bought any of these lately?”

“Sold a couple at the South Coast show a few weeks ago. These are the first I’ve grown. Seed’s been real hard to get. It sounded from the paper like the one that killed Brenda was much bigger than this. Someone had that sucker a while. I hope they catch the guy.”

“Or the woman.”

He stopped short in front of a flat of aloes. You could see the wheels turning. “You think it could have been a woman? I never thought of that. I just assumed it was one of her old boyfriends.” He looked over at me. “Not you, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But everyone knows she had a lot of boyfriends.”

“Maybe she had girlfriends too.”

His nose curled up. “A girl like Brenda? No. I know a dyke when I see one.”

I’d have to share that comment with Gina. She could put it in her spreadsheet.

Lyle picked up a plant with little spiny arms growing from a big fat central stem. “Like the caudex on this one?” The fancy term for a big fat central stem.

“Sure. That’s a nice one; which is it?”

“Euphorbia restricta.”
He waggled die plant at me. “Got to watch it with these. You grow them from cuttings, they don’t get a caudex. All my caudex euphorbias are grown from seed.”

“Nothing field-collected?”

He threw me a look like I’d suggested he engaged in carnal relations with Merlin. “Of course not. I wouldn’t sell that shit. Goddamned habitats being ripped to shreds.” He thrust the
Euphorbia restricta
into my hand. “Here, take this.”

“Uh.”

“For free. As a gift. Like those catalogs my wife’s always getting. They’ll give you a bra or something to get you to come back as a customer.”

“I haven’t been gone as a customer.”

“Whatever. Come on, take the plant.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Fuck a duck, Joe, will you take the goddamned plant?”

It seemed prudent. “Okay,” I said. “And thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, instantly calmer.

A minute later I ran across some nice
Euphorbia francoisii
, the colorfully leafed Madagascar dwarf Sam had mentioned, and that prompted me to get back to business. “Several people
think Brenda’s killing had something to do with plant smugglers.”

“I met one of ’em once.”

“You did? Where?”

“South Africa. On that trip last year.”

“What’d he do, just walk up and say, I’m a plant smuggler’?”

This invoked a robust laugh. “I was in a bar in Johannesburg with a couple of the local succulent guys.” I could see him there, drinking hearty brews with the hearty South Africans. “This guy in a bush jacket walks in and says hi to the locals. He has an accent, but I can’t figure out what kind on account of everyone there talks funny anyway. He joins us at the table. They’re all blabbing away, and all of a sudden they start arguing. Turns out the guy’s on his way to Namibia to dig stuff up. My two friends are trying to convince him not to, and he tells us about how the market in Europe is dying to have these plants, and so it doesn’t matter if they’re all dug up. So they go back and forth for a while, and nobody convinces anybody of anything, and as far as I know the guy went off that day and dug up everything he wanted to.”

“Did you catch his name?”

He scratched his hairy chest. “It was a German name. One of those
Sh
names.”

“Schoeppe?”

He cocked his head at me. “Yeah, that was it. How’d you know?”

“You’re sure it was Willy Schoeppe?”

His brow furrowed. “No. Not Willy It was something else. Hans or…Hermann. That was it. Hermann Schoeppe.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“How common a name do you think Schoeppe is?” “Don’t have a clue. Hey. It’s getting dark, and we have two more greenhouses to look at.”

Forty-five minutes later I drove off with my wallet lighter by the forty dollars I’d spent on the box of plants on the seat beside me. As I pulled away I threw a look back at the house. Merlin was again out by the front fence, regarding me with a baleful eye. I regarded him right back with one of my own.

I
PULLED INTO A MINI-MART ON FOOTHILL BOULEVARD AND
parked next to a Toyota pickup with tires as tall as I was. A young bleached blonde sat in the passenger seat, screaming at several brats who boomeranged around the cab. “I’ll break your heads,” she said, over and over.

I didn’t have any change and went through several minutes of long-distance-carrier bingo before getting Gina’s phone to ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me. I’m coming over.”

“You can’t.”

“Whaddaya mean I can’t?”

“I have a date with Carlos.”

“Is he the volleyball player who likes Hockney or the flower arranger with the great ass?”

“Great ass.”

“Cancel.”

“I can’t. He’s taking me to this new coffeehouse. There’s a poetry reading.”

“You hate poetry.”

“Hike coffee.”

“Fine. Cancel Carlos and I’ll come over and make you coffee.”

“I thought I might get lucky tonight.”

“No way. Carlos is gay.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I know a fag when I see one.”

A pause. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“Cancel Carlos and I’ll come over and tell you
why
I said it. Here’s a hint: It has to do with one of my detecting excursions today.”

“You had detecting excursions?”

“Yeah, didn’t you?”

“Uh…”

“You didn’t? You were the one so hot to get us into all this, and you didn’t have one single solitary excursion?”

“I had clients.”

“I’m coming over. Ditch Carlos.”

“Don’t be surprised if I’m not here when you get here.”

“Fine. You eat yet?”

“No.”

“I’ll pick up some Mexican.”

It took me a while to find my way out of the hinterlands. It was nearing nine when I reached Ten Forty Havenhurst, the West Hollywood condo where Gina lives. She buzzed me in and I went up.

“Where’s my tostada?” she said as she opened her front door.

“Right here. Where’s Carlos?”

She carried the food into the kitchen. “At the poetry reading, I suppose.”

“I hope he didn’t take it too hard.”

“No.”

“I would have understood if you went with him. Especially ‘cause you might have gotten lucky.”

“Bottom line is, I didn’t want to. Carlos is cute, but he has the intelligence of a bowling ball. I’m getting too old for recreational sex.”

A couple of minutes later we were shoving food in our faces at Gina’s birds-eye maple dining table. It was typical of the impeccable way she’d done the place up. The living-dining room was all earth tones, with an opulent leather sofa as the centerpiece and several expensive-looking tapestries on the wall. The fixtures in the kitchen were straight out
of House and Garden;
those in the bathroom shone like spun gold. Her bedroom was done up in blues, with hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-yard drapes that shimmered like a mirage when they caught the light and a down comforter that could have done duty at Buckingham Palace. The carpet throughout was so pristine it made you ashamed to walk on it.

All that expensive stuff—most of which she’d gotten at huge discounts, she was quick to point out—could have made the place seem cold, but Gina’d interspersed enough weird Gina stuff to overcome that. Schlocky tourist gewgaws from Olvera Street. A cello, propped up in the corner of the living room, that she hadn’t played since college. The goofy plaster-of-Paris bust of Simón Bolívar her mother had made at the senior center.

I filled her in on my adventures. When I got to Eugene Rand she said, “Sounds like he had a thing for Brenda.”

“Definitely.”

“Think he’d ever do anything about it?”

“You mean like ask her out? Make a pass at her out among the cacti? Ask her if she’d like him to pollinate her ovules?” I thought it over. “I don’t know. What if he did?”

“Is he attractive?”

“He’s not a good-looking man.”

“Brenda liked her lovers attractive. So she would have
turned him down. And then his disappointment, his resentment would have festered, grown unchecked, until one day he waited in her bathroom and plunged a plant down her throat.”

“Haifa plant,” I said. “Which he later hid the rest of at my place.”