The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) (27 page)

The high point of my Monday morning greenhouse rounds was the discovery of seed pods on one of my pachy-podiums. There was a certain life-reaffirmingness to the event, which started the day off nicely.

The casting director for Burger World had requested the “casual dad” look, so I dressed myself in Dockers and a nice button-down. I thought about bringing my suit for Dicks memorial service. Somehow it didn’t seem necessary. Besides, if I took the time to change after my audition, I’d show up at the service even later.

It was a glorious day, unseasonably cool, with only a few frilly clouds infringing on the broad June sky. Traffic was light, and I got to the audition ten minutes early.

Something was up. A score of casual dads—way too many—milled about the magazine-strewn waiting room. All late-thirties to mid-forties, nearly all in button-down shirts and Dockers or Dockers surrogates. An equal number of teenage-daughter types worked on their makeup or read the trades.

I signed in and found out what was going on. There’d been a burglary and someone had made off with the cameras. Shortly after I arrived they dug up another and went to work on the backlog. I didn’t get out of there until eleven-fifteen. I took Sunset west, avoided traffic, and made it to the cemetery in half an hour.

Dicks resting place was on a hill with a view down to the ocean. It was peaceful, quiet, well-landscaped—all the things a proper burial ground should be. Very traditional, in contrast to where we had said good-bye to Brenda. By the time I got there, the service had ended and everyone was milling around the wall full of urns where Dicks remains would spend the next several centuries, unless the Big One came along and dumped him into the Pacific along with the rest of us. I paid my respects to Hope and said hello to Lyle and Magda, the only cactus people present. I milled as long as seemed necessary and headed back to the parking lot, where Detective Alberta Burns was leaning against
one of the department’s Chevrolets. I walked over. “Find out anything?”

She watched me for several seconds. “Nothing I can disclose at this time.”

“‘Disclose at this time’? Do you always have to talk like a cop?”

“I
am
a cop. Unlike some people I know. Which reminds me, you got anything you want to tell me?”

“Nothing I can disclose at this time,” I said with a grin.

She smiled too. “Okay, I get the point. Fact of the matter is, it doesn’t bother me your sticking your head in, like it does Casillas and some of the other older guys. I came out of South Bureau. South-Central, to you. There you need all the help you can get. A lot of the stuff we turn up comes from the citizenry. You want to poke your head in, that’s okay with me, long as you keep out of our way.”

“Hope McAfee said you hadn’t really turned anything up.”

Burns shook her head. “Everybody thinks we have a million hours to spend on every case. Because of that damned O.J. thing. But no one has the luxury of working full time on one case. Casillas and I have a half dozen more open homicides besides Cactus Girl and—”

“Very nice, Detective. Very sensitive. You got a name for Dick too?”

She nodded. “Jesus Boy.”

“I had no idea the LAPD was such a bunch of comedians.”

“Anything to make the job a little easier.” Again the head shake. “People just don’t understand. They see
Lethal Weapon
and think we have all day to run around chasing one set of crooks.”

She eyed a couple of people leaving the service. “Casillas is going to talk to Henry Farber again today because of what you said yesterday morning. Why the look? Casillas isn’t
going to ignore information from you just because he thinks you did it.”

“Do you think I did it?”

Her dark eyes searched my face, as if she were just then formulating her opinion. “I’m not convinced you didn’t,” she said, and got in her car and drove off.

I turned and surveyed the hillside below and the water beyond. Dicks eternal view. On clear days like this he’d be able to see Catalina.

Everyone drove back to Hope’s to stand around and offer vague emotional support. Lyle answered the door and told me Hope was in the kitchen. I found her there leaning against a counter, absently chewing on a celery stick, looking like she needed to sleep for a week. Her shoes lay beneath the pink Formica ice cream table. The charcoal jacket from her mourning outfit was draped over one of the matching chairs.

Magda sat in the other chair with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. She barely acknowledged me. She had big raccoon eyes and seemed in worse shape than Hope did. All the stolidity she’d been showing over the past several days, all the being there for Hope, had collapsed.

I gave Hope a quick hug. “How are you doing?” Clever repartee from Mr. Portugal.

“How am I doing? Lousy, Joe, that’s how I’m doing. It’s as if till today he could have come walking through the front door, saying it had all been a mistake, that was someone else stuck to the tree, he was in the garage working on his Buick all along. But when I went back to the cemetery and realized he’d been there all night—”

“Ssh,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” I retreated to the living room, where Lyle and a bunch of strangers were
reminiscing about Dick. I had no patience for the anecdotes and escaped back to the kitchen. “I’m going,” I told Hope. “Anything I can do?”

“I don’t suppose I could get you to take me to the beach again.” When I hesitated she said, “No. You have a life to lead.” She placed a tiny kiss on my cheek. “Find the bastard,” she said. She sat down at the ice cream table, and I went out.

I was out of dead ends. It was time to find a live one. I sat in the truck and concocted a plan. I would go back to UCLA to try to find Henry Farber again. Then I’d proceed to the Loews, where I would hope to track down Willy Schoeppe before he took off for Germany.

I thought I’d check in with Gina first. I found a pay phone and called her cell number.

“Where the hell have you been?” she asked.

“Dick’s memorial. You weren’t there.”

“I never said I was going. Doesn’t matter. Wait’ll you see what I found out.”

“What?”

“It’s about our friend Willy Schoeppe.”

“What about him?”

“He’s not.”

“He’s not what?”

“He’s not Willy Schoeppe. He’s an impostor.”

T
HE PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER IS A BLOCK-LONG GLASS BE
-hemoth at the west end of West Hollywood. The part facing Melrose Avenue is surfaced in blue glass, and everyone calls it the Blue Whale. There’s a newer, green section in the back, which some dreamer once suggested be called the Emerald City, but it didn’t catch on and the whole structure goes by the original nickname.

The PDC’s filled with interior-design showrooms, selling everything from modular office furniture to oriental rugs. On any given weekday there’s a fair chance you can find Gina there, and that’s where she told me to meet her. She was preparing to visit some showrooms with a new client. “Some sub-sub-adjunct to a city councilwoman,” she called her. With visions of decorating the houses of the entire Los Angeles municipal hierarchy dancing before her eyes, she insisted she couldn’t put the client off and that the only way she’d show me what she had to show me was if I met her in the lobby before the client arrived.

I reached the PDC just as a brunette in a Jaguar backed out of one of the diagonal spaces out front. I parked on her nickel and trotted into the building. Gina was sitting at the
west end, by the escalators. I walked up and she handed me a sheet of paper. “I was checking some more of the archives, and they mentioned this web page.”

I scanned it. I examined it more closely. I squinted at it. “I’m not sure this tells us anything,” I said.

Her eyes opened wide. “What do you mean? That’s not the man who came to your house.”

The picture showed several participants at a meeting of the International Organization for Succulent Plant Study several years back. According to the caption, Brenda and Willy Schoeppe were among those depicted. But the lighting was poor and the printing grainy. I could convince myself the woman really was Brenda, but the angle on the man was bad, and I couldn’t tell if it was the guy calling himself Schoeppe or not. He had a beard, but beards come and go, and Iris had told me Schoeppe had one at some point.

“I don’t think its conclusive,” I said.

“I’m telling you, that’s not him.”

“The printings awfully blurry, and—”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t go dissing my printer. Portugal, you can be so obstinate. Look, I saw the actual web page, and it’s a lot clearer, and I tell you it’s a different guy.”

I gestured at her computer. “Why don’t you call up the web page now so I can see?”

“Do you see a phone jack around here? You can be such an idiot.”

Before Gina could get her hands around my throat, a short Asian woman in a blue pantsuit came up. “Shit,” Gina muttered. She introduced me, told her client she’d be with her in a minute, and led me off behind the escalator. “Trust me, Joe. It’s not him.”

“Okay, if you say so. Put it in your spreadsheet.”

“Don’t patronize me, okay?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

“I’ve got to go with my client.” She stormed off. By the time she reached the woman, she’d plastered her sincere interior-designer smile back on. They glided off, discussing fabric samples and edge details.

I glanced down at the picture in my hand. It could have been a different guy. It could have been the same one. I folded it and slid it into my pocket and walked out to the truck.

It couldn’t do any harm to switch my schedule and go see Schoeppe first. Matter of fact, it made better sense. Henry Farber wasn’t going anywhere. Schoeppe was.

But I decided not to. It was as if, by putting Schoeppe off, I could discount Gina’s theory. I’d show her. I’d stick with Farber.

On the way to UCLA I got an idea. When I reached the campus I made a quick stop and had a brief conversation. Then I looked up Farber.