The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) (21 page)

Austin came up behind me. He had another home-rolled job in his mouth. I said, “She just gave this to you?”

“Sure did. She said she wanted to see how it would grow in the ground. And ’cause I’m the best in-ground grower we got, she gave it to me.”

“How big was it then?”

“Oh, it was a little guy.” He held his palms about a foot apart. “Maybe like this.”

“Were there more?”

“I don’t know, Joe. This was years ago.” He grinned. “And remember, people say I’ve destroyed a lot of my brain cells.”

I fingered the leaves. “Could I get a piece of this?”

“Sure could. As a matter of fact, I’ve got one already cut. Part of it was growing the wrong way, would have run into that big mound of mammillaria over there. Just haven’t got around to sticking it back in the ground, but I didn’t really know where I was going to put it anyway.”

We descended the hill and walked around to his potting area. He reached down to a low shelf and pulled out a chunk of milii, about two feet long, with a couple of branches of a foot apiece.

I pumped Austin for more info on the plant, but he didn’t have any. “You’re not Succuman, are you?” I asked, and he asked me what the fuck I was talking about. I never-minded him, thanked him profusely, turned down his invitation to smoke a joint, and headed back to the city.

I was almost to the Coast Highway when I remembered the books. Screw them, I thought. I’ve got something much better. If I needed the books I’d come back over the weekend, and maybe that time I’d take Austin up on the joint.

I pulled over at Gladstone’s 4 Fish and ordered a sandwich. While they were building it I found the pay phone and called Gina.

“Are you rested?” I asked.

“No.”

“Me neither. I found the striped milii.” I related what had happened at Austin’s.

“Now that we have it, so what?” she said.

“I guess we try to figure out where Brenda got it. What have you been up to?”

“Looked in the archives a little. Nothing there. I went to Barnes and Noble and bought a computer book.”

“You didn’t.”

“I’d barely cracked the cover when my mother called. She wants me to come over and pick out which of her jewelry I want. The Virgin told her she’s about to die.”

Again?

“Yeah, but its been a whole, what, two months? So I’ve got to go over sometime this afternoon and convince her she’s not about to kick off. Where are you off to next?”

“I have to run up to Sam’s and check on his plants.”

“Why don’t I go too? I want to see this vaunted plant. And I can put off Mom a little longer.”

We agreed to meet in the Gelson’s lot in the Palisades. I went outside and made my way east on Sunset. Several minutes later I remembered my sandwich. First the books, now my lunch. Alzheimer’s was setting in early.

I came around a curve and zoomed past Final Haven. I had some time to kill before Gina would reach Gelson’s, so I hung a U-turn and a couple of minutes later drifted down the garden path. A half dozen people were visiting one or another of the weird grave sites, but Brenda was alone. I sat on the grass in front of her tomb and we chatted. It was a nice conversation, though I did most of the talking.

I pulled into the Gelson’s lot in time to see Gina exiting the market, peeling the wrapper off a Häagen-Dazs bar. She had on gray shorts and a light blue tank top with no bra, and why was I noticing a little detail like that all of a sudden?

I showed her the plant from Austin’s and drove us up to Sams. “You know,” I said when we’d exited the truck, “last time I came to someone’s house when they were out of town—”

“Shut up.”

I did, but I’d managed to scare myself, and Gina too. We approached the cabin. I peered into the window, alert for feet sticking out from behind furniture. There weren’t any.

We glanced at the greenhouse and back at each other. “I’m not letting you out of my sight,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Every time I do you find another dead body.”

We advanced on the greenhouse. I opened the door and poked my head in. “Sam?” No reply. “Sam?” Again, louder. He didn’t answer. And one wouldn’t expect him to, considering he was in Tucson.

Unless he was lying dead with a euphorbia violating some part of his anatomy. I remembered what he’d said Tuesday.
“Improbably next.”

We slipped in and walked up and down the aisles. I came around a corner and looked down under a bench. “You’d better see this,” I said.

She came up behind me. “Is it?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s another striped
Euphorbia milii.”

This one resided in a gallon plastic pot. It was smaller than the first, with thinner stems and fewer leaves.

“Did everyone but me have one of these?” I asked no one
in particular. I pulled it out and inspected it, then ran back to the truck, got my piece, compared the two, put Sams back.

I checked what I was supposed to check, and we left. When we got back to Gelson’s, Gina sighed and said she’d better get over to her mothers. “And you?” she asked.

“Me?” I said. “I thought I’d go dig up Henry Farber.”

Back in the seventies Marina del Rey was the singles capital of the Westside, if not the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area. Every weekend hundreds of hormone-crazed pilgrims would flock to places like T.G.I. Fridays to engage in inane conversation and elicit casual sex. As the years went by, the singles grew old or got married or contracted an STD, and their meeting places shuttered or became copy centers and record stores. But the real marina, home to sun-browned men and women in deck shoes occupying boats with funny names, went on as always.

I drove down streets named after south-sea islands. Mindanao and Bali and Palawan Ways. Eventually I gave up trying to figure out where Farber’s slip was and looked for someone to ask. When I found her she was sixty years old, had skin like a steer, and towed a mastiff with a head the size of Ohio. I tried not to stare at her facial fissures as she directed me to the third row of boats. I parked and walked over.

The ever-present gulls wheeled over Henry Farber’s boat, the
Zinger II
It was a nice boat, I guessed, with brass trimmings and antennae and things. As I approached, a dark-haired woman, around thirty-five, popped out of the cabin. Tall, with the irresistible combination of black hair and blue eyes. She had on a Dodgers cap, a well-filled electric blue bikini top, and short white shorts. Picture the classic blond
California girl, give her dark hair, and you’ve got the picture. “Hi,” she said. “You must be Dutch. You’re early.” Her voice was deep for a woman. Bacall-ish.

I resisted the urge for a geographic comeback. “No, I’m Joe.”

“I thought you must be Dutch, because I know all Henry’s friends except Dutch.”

“I’m not one of Henry’s friends. Giving a party?”

“Eight or
ten
people. Basketball playoffs.”

“I’m afraid I’m more of a hockey fan. Is he here?”

“No. But I expect him any minute. He went to the market. We ran out of toilet paper.”

“I didn’t know you used toilet paper on a boat. I thought there was a big hole in the bottom.”

She smiled. I smiled. We stood there smiling until I said, “Are you Henry’s girlfriend?”

“Uh-huh. Maria. And who are you?”

“I’m Joe.”

“You said that. But who
are
you?”

“Does the name Brenda Belinski mean anything to you?”

She hopped onto the dock. She was barefoot, but even so she was as tall as I was. “That’s that girl Henry used to see who was killed.”

Used to see. How interesting. “Right. I’m a friend of hers. I’m just trying to track down old acquaintances, see if I can get any idea who might have wanted her dead.” I tried a winning smile. “How long have you known Henry?”

“A year and a half. Do you want to come aboard? I can give you a daiquiri. Or some iced tea, if you like.”

“Tea would be good.” I followed her aboard and sat down in a white plastic chair up against a railing in the back of the boat.

“Lemon? Sugar? Equal?”

“Straight.” She bent over to drop a napkin in my lap,
bringing me closer to a glimpse of a female nipple than I’d been in well over a year. She handed me a pink plastic glass. I took a sip. Instant, but not bad. “You live here too?”

A nice smile. “No. I like the creature comforts too much to be a live-aboard. I generally come up from Long Beach on Friday night or Saturday morning and leave Sunday night.”

“Is it serious?”

“Is what—oh, you mean Henry and me. I don’t—you certainly ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m a curious kind of guy.”

“I see.” Maybe she saw, but she sure wasn’t going to tell me if it was serious. “Henry should be here any minute.”

“We’ve established that.” We smiled awkwardly at each other. I considered asking her if she knew he was seeing Brenda again. But I’d already been a prick once that week, and it nearly got me bopped with a euphorbia. No. I’d wait until Henry showed up, get him alone, ask him stuff. Why screw up her life? “If I remember correctly, when I met Henry he had the boat docked in Long Beach.”

“That was
Zinger I,”
she said. “He sold it and bought this when he got the position at UCLA and moved up here.”

“This one bigger?”

“Actually, a little smaller.”

“Sometimes smaller is better.”

“So I’ve heard. Here comes Henry now.”

The years had not been overly kind to Henry Farber. I remembered him as thin, with nice features, not a bad-looking guy to have tirading around your living room accusing you of stealing his girlfriend. He was still slim but had developed a belly that jutted out almost comically above the waistband of his shorts. He’d lost enough of his hair to be noticeable. Tufts of graying chest fur sprouted around his orange tank top.

I stood and stepped away from my chair, trying to appear
calm, casually sipping my tea. He climbed onto the boat, casting a quizzical expression through the wire-framed glasses that had replaced his former horn-rims. He carried two sets of grocery bags, paper inside plastic, with a six-pack of Charmin under his arm. He dumped the provisions, keeping his eye on me, appearing to know me but not from where. “And who would this be?” he asked anyone who would answer.

“This is Joe—what
is your
last name, Joe?”

“Its Portugal. Hi, Henry.”

His mouth froze. His eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed. His fists balled. “You.”

“Right, and I’m hoping we can let bygones be bygones. I’m hoping—”

But Henry Farber never found out what else I was hoping. Because with three great leaps he ran over to me, and he pushed me, hard, and before I could do a damned thing about it, my iced tea and I plunged over the railing and into the not-particularly-clean waters of Marina del Rey.