Cactus Garden

by Ward, Robert

  “I believe you’re blushing, Jack.”

  “That’s not a blush,” she said. “That’s pleasure.”

  Then they were gently in each other’s arms. He kissed her twice and imagined what it would be like to simply lock the door and spend the next forty-eight hours in bed with her.

  But he had to break away.

  “You look like you’re in a hurry, Jackie.”

  “I am.”

  “This about that guy we talked about in the tunnel? … What was his name?”

  “Michaels. Yeah, he’s involved. Except for one minor detail. Michaels is dead. And he was never the mole.”

  “Dead? But who then?”

  “Whoever wanted to shut him up. And I’m also pretty sure the information will be at his hideaway up at Big Bear Lake. I was just stopping here to get some supplies and my car.”

  “Great,” Charlotte Rae said, smiling. “I’ll keep you company.”

  Jack looked at her and shook his head.

  “You’re not well enough.”

  “The hell I’m not. I got here didn’t I? Listen, I’ve got enough codeine in me to float to Big Bear. This is the first time since I met you that we can actually be on the same side, and I’m not about to blow it. So, let’s go, huh. We’re wasting time.”

  It was still dark when Jack negotiated the last twisting turn on Highway 18 and the two of them pulled into the mountain resort town of Big Bear.

  “Very rustic, but a little over the top with the bear theme, don’t you think?” Charlotte Rae said, as they drove down the main drag, Big Bear Boulevard.

  In spite of his aching head, Jack managed a laugh. What she said was true. They drove past endless small businesses, most of which were housed in fake rustic log cabins and nearly all of which sported the bear motif. They passed Boo Bears Den, the Teddy Bear Restaurant, the Leisure Bear Motel, the Grizzly Manor Cafe, the Sugar Bear Smorgasbord, and Bear Necessities Health Food.

  “Promise me one thing, Jack,” Charlotte Rae said.

  “What’s that?”

  “That we won’t die here. My whole life has been one big, tacky strip mall, but at least it wasn’t cute. I don’t want to die in a place that’s cute.”

  “I promise,” Jack said, putting his hand on hers.

  He pulled into a gas station, Big Otto’s Pooh Bear Exxon, got out, and talked to the station manager, who was wearing a green waistcoat, replete with arched feather, and kelly green lederhosen. The man squinted at Jack, then gave a gap-toothed smile at Charlotte Rae, who flashed him a little thigh as she climbed out of the Mustang.

  “Guten morgen,” he said.

  “Good morning to you, sir,” Jack said.

  “Name’s Otto. You here for our Thanksgiving festival?” the man said, as he stuck a gas hose into Jack’s car.

  “Not exactly,” Jack said. “We’re trying to find China Island.”

  “Out there in Boulder Bay,” the man said. “You passed it if you came in on eighteen. About a mile outside of town on your right. But you’ll need a boat to get out there … unless you can swim.”

  “You’re kidding,” Jack said. “There’s no ferry or bridge?”

  The man laughed.

  “ ‘Fraid not,” he said. “You a friend of the gentleman who lived there?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “My cousin. Just picking up some family heirlooms.”

  “Oh,” the man said. “I heard he passed on. Too bad.”

  “Very sad,” Jack said. “How did he get out there?”

  “Think he had a rowboat. But I don’t know if it’s still there or not. There’s been some looting,” the man said, putting the hose back. “That’ll be eight dollars and sixty-three cents.”

  Jack gave a quick look to Charlotte Rae.

  “Looting?” he said. “When?”

  “Other night. Sheriff got a report from neighbors that there was a light on in the place. Went out there, didn’t find nobody, but the place was turned every which way but loose.”

  “Damn,” Jack said.

  Somebody had already beaten them there. They had probably found whatever evidence Michaels had had and destroyed it.

  “Thanks,” Jack said, as the man handed him back the credit card.

  “Hell of a world,” the man said. “Don’t know who to trust these days.”

  Jack parked his car in a small turnoff at Boulder Bay and unfolded his map.

  “According to this, it’s on the other side of that boulder.”

  “Great,” Charlotte Rae said. “You realize this is the first healthy thing we’ve done together since our picnic in Tahoe.”

  “Don’t remind me of that,” Jack said.

  She laughed and put her head on his shoulder.

  “Such a bad sport,” she said. But there was sweetness in her tone.

  They left the car and walked down a short sandy road to the lake’s edge.

  “God, it is beautiful here,” she said.

  The morning sun fell on perfect blue water, which was dotted with impressively huge boulders, survivors of the Ice Age. Jack looked just south of the harbor and saw the little island. Otto had been right. The island was cut off by fifty yards of water from the shoreline. Michaels’s getaway home was a rundown but charming redwood cabin of mock Mandarin design. It looked like a Hollywood version of a hooch one might see in 1920s Shanghai. It even had oversized Chinese characters on the front door.

  “Charming,” Charlotte Rae said. “It makes me nostalgic.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, that’s the Mann’s Chinese Theater school of architecture, which reminds me of that romantic day you risked your life to save mine.”

  “You just like it because it reminds you of how clever you were to set me up.”

  “That could be part of it,” she admitted. “So how do we get over there?” She pointed to the left of the island. The rowboat was already on the island.

  “Looks like I’m going to get wet. You’ve got to stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of your bandages.”

  “Really? What about your bandages? Besides, I bet the water never gets over your head. And you’re gonna need me over there.” Jack laughed.

  “Now that I’m getting to know the real you,” he said, “it occurs to me that you’re impossible.”

  “That’s true,” she said happily. And stepped into the water.

  “Jesus, that is cold and wet. You’re right, wading won’t work. Help me take off my Levi’s.”

  “I will not,” Jack said. “People could come by and see us.”

  She laughed and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Well, I’m not getting my clothes freezing wet,” she said. “I could catch my death of cold. And I’d advise you to take off your gun. You’ll want to keep your powder dry, won’t you cowboy?”

  She winked at him as he sighed and helped her take off her Levi’s. Jack took off his jacket, then unstrapped his shoulder holster.

  He looked at her, smiling, and half-naked on the rocks.

  “Last one in’s got to star in Buddy’s next movie,” she said. Then, holding her clothes above her head with her good arm, she walked, trembling, into the water.

  Jack smiled and jumped in behind her. The water was freezing cold and cut straight through to the bone, but at least it woke him up.

  A few minutes later, their teeth chattering, they reached the island, then walked up the pebbly beach to Michaels’s house.

  “This is romantic,” Charlotte Rae said, reaching for the low branch of a big maple tree. “We dry off with leaves. And do a sun dance to appease the gods.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, rubbing the leaves over his shoulder and reaching for his clothes. “But the gods didn’t do that.”

  He pointed up at the front door, which was ajar, its lock broken.

  Throwing on his clothes over his still wet body, Jack took out the .38, pushed the door open, and stared at a jumble of rustic, cozy furniture, now overturned, the
guts ripped out of the oversized pillows.

  “Ugly. Very Buddy,” Charlotte Rae said, as she came in behind him.

  They moved into the living room warily, saw smashed picture frames, crushed crockery, hardcover books with their spines broken, their pages ripped out. There was an expensive rolltop desk in the corner that had been smashed to bits.

  Michaels’s little fantasy world … crushed, totally destroyed.

  They moved into the kitchen. More of the same. Every pot and pan was on the floor; the stove had been hastily, clumsily disassembled.

  “Let’s try upstairs.”

  They went up the pine steps. In an attic workroom they found Michaels’s study. Jack felt a sudden depression. The place had obviously been warm and homey. The Navajo throw rugs that had been on the walls as decorative tapestries were now tossed in a heap on the floor. There were family pictures, now torn from their frames and balled up at his feet. Jack reached down, picked up a picture, and was shocked to see a happier, younger Michaels, a smiling adolescent surrounded by two beaming parents. The three of them were standing in front of the cabin, and a robust Michaels held up an impressive string of bass. He gazed up at the big man behind him, in the glasses and hunting jacket, with a mixture of awe and love.

  “Is that him?” Charlotte Rae said, staring over Jack’s shoulder. “Was him,” Jack said.

  Jack looked around at the devastation in the room, the battered PC on Michaels’s work desk.

  “Doesn’t look promising, does it?” Charlotte Rae said.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “You look around this room, what do you see?”

  “Well, it’s not decorated by Martha Stewart,” Charlotte Rae said.

  “You see frustration,” Jack said. “I don’t think they trashed this place just to get kicks. They wasted it because they were pissed off, angry.”

  She smiled.

  “You don’t think they found what they were looking for.”

  “Maybe not. Which doesn’t mean we’re going to. But we aren’t going to leave here until we’ve given it a serious shot. All right?”

  “I’ll take downstairs,” she said. “By the way, what am I looking for?”

  “I don’t know. Probably a floppy disc that will fit right into this computer. Maybe a tape recording, maybe even a video tape.”

  “Got it.”

  She leaned over and kissed him.

  “I love it when you get professional, Jack.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jack said.

  She laughed. “You’re still smarting that I won the first round? Well, if it makes your punctured male ego feel any better, I think you won in the end.”

  “Oh, yeah? How’s that?”

  “I fell in love with you, dope. Just in case you haven’t noticed.” Jack smiled and kissed her. “I noticed,” he said.

  She smiled at him again, then headed downstairs.

  An hour and a half later, Jack slumped in front of the computer, frustrated and furious. Neither he nor Charlotte Rae had found even one scrap of information in the cabin. Nothing. Jack snapped a pencil in half and cursed silently.

  “We’ll have to start over again,” she said.

  “I know,” Jack said. “I just have this bad feeling that whatever is going to happen is going to happen soon. Where the hell can it be?”

  He looked around the room. There seemed to be nothing left to search. He’d ripped all the remaining stuffing from pillows and mattresses, looked inside old bottles, smashed open shaving cream cans, taken the television apart in Michaels’s bedroom, looked inside every paperback book in the bookcase, and ripped open all the CDs. He’d gone over all of Charlotte Rae’s area as well. She’d done a thorough job and come up with exactly nothing.

  Now he sat in Michaels’s old rocker and felt the pains starting again, in the ribs and in his jaw.

  Nothing. Nothing here at all.

  “Goddamn it,” Jack said. “I see it now. Morales talked about himself as Zapata the great liberator and rotting us from within. That means there has to be a mole and there had to be a greater plan. But without Michaels’s file … we’ll never figure it out.”

  Jack took a deep breath, fighting off pain and exhaustion. His neck and temples were pounding now. He put his head back, rotating it slightly, trying to loosen up his tight, throbbing muscles—and looked at a smoke detector on the study ceiling.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Look at that.”

  Charlotte Rae looked at the ceiling.

  “The smoke detector. So?”

  “Did we open it?”

  “No, I guess we didn’t. But he wouldn’t put it in there. Would he?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Jack pulled a chair from across the room, climbed up on it, and undid the spring locks that held the detector together. “Well?” she said, holding on to his legs to steady him. He sighed heavily.

  “Goddamn it. I was sure that was it. Nothing.” He started to get down, then looked across the room, at the open closet door. “Jesus,” he said. “What?”

  “You see anything funny there. In the closet?” She looked hard.

  “No, just … God. Another smoke detector.”

  “Yeah…. Now, that’s a very odd feature. A smoke detector for the study and another special one for the closet.”

  He hopped down and dragged the chair across the room, got back up, and popped open the detector. A three-and-a-half-inch floppy disc fell out into his hands.

  Jack and Charlotte Rae sat close together at Michaels’s desk. The computer was battered, as if someone had slammed something down on it in frustration, but the screen and hard drive were still intact. He slipped the disc in, switched on the hard drive, and after four lightninglike flashes, the directory came up on the screen.

  There it was before him.

  Operation Cactus.

  The first directory was called Wingate, and there, spelled out, was Wingate’s profile, his gambling debts, his connection with Morales, and his relationship to Charlotte Rae.

  “Oh, how nice. I rate a whole file. I can’t wait to see what he wrote about me.”

  “Later,” Jack said.

  The second file was on Morales, and there were endless documentations of Morales’s criminal empire. It made for fascinating reading: the drug cartel leader’s endless holdings in Germany, Switzerland’s sweetheart numbered bank accounts, his recent foray into homegrown heroin. Interesting, but nothing Jack didn’t already know.

  But the third file was something else again. It was called The Zapata File.

  Jack punched it up and felt his heart racing. The file documented the death of every man who had had anything to do with Jose Benvenides’s death. There was also a hospital report, apparently stolen from the Santa Maria Hospital in Colombia. Morales’s cancer was of the colon and was in temporary remission. The prognosis was that under the best circumstances he might live three to four years more.

  Under the hospital report were notes taken by Michaels.

  “Given the fact that Morales is under sentence of death, he will try anything, he will be bold. He wants personal revenge, on who? On Walker, if my guess is right, and perhaps on the whole DEA. But more than revenge, he wants to secure the future, he wants his organization to be his own measure of immortality. He wants CONTROL. He wants his enemies eliminated or destroyed from within. The options are terrorism and intelligence … a man inside the Agency. This makes sense. In the past year, three of our most promising investigations have gone bad. It’s as though the enemy knew we were coming. I’m convinced there is a mole within the DEA. But who is it? Probably not Walker, but you can’t rule it out. He’s young, brash, wild, but also cunning. He might be bored. Is it possible he could be approached with an offer? Seems unlikely. Then, could the contamination be at the highest level? Brandau, Valle, or Zampas himself? One of them is Morales’s man. One of them must be compromised. One of them must be Zapata.

  “Question, how does all of this connect with my discovery, that B
uddy Wingate met recently with Dr. Hans Becker in Mexico City? Must make connection …”

  The file ended, and Jack was left breathless.

  “Hans Becker? Jesus.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “I’m not sure. Let me try something.”

  Jack escaped from the file, turned on Michaels’s modem, and then punched his own private code into the DEA Information mainframe. Seconds later a glossary appeared on his window and Jack hit the letters N,A,D,D,I,S—the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Information System.

  The screen scrolled, and Jack was now within the DEA’s private information system. He wrote in the words Dr. Hans Becker-info and photo.

  They waited tensely until the information came up. In front of Jack and Charlotte Rae was a picture of a young German male in his twenties with long hair and intense blue eyes. Jack hit the resolution button on Michaels’s computer, and the picture appeared in greater close-up. Then Jack split the window and watched a scroll of Becker’s biography.

  “Here it is,” Jack said. “Becker was born in forty-eight, birth name Joseph Kroeger. Wealthy parents, Kroeger attended the Sorbonne. This was the late sixties. Dr. K. was an activist but a proponent of democratic reforms. Then his girlfriend, one Olga Kimmel, was beaten senseless by a cop in a peaceful antigovernment protest. Olga Kimmel was beautiful and smart before that beating, afterward she was a vegetable. She lived three years as a brain-stem case before someone mysteriously pulled the plug on her. Most people suspected it was Kroeger himself, though no one could ever prove it. Shortly after her funeral Kroeger disappeared.

  “Now, look here,” Jack said, pointing at the screen. “About a year later the Bader-Meinhoff Gang began a series of bank robberies and kidnappings. Dr. Joseph K. was spotted along with them. It was said that, using his knowledge of chemistry, he had become an expert in explosives. He was now a full-fledged revolutionary, as dedicated to destruction as he had formerly been to healing.”

  “Interesting, but I don’t see what this has to do with …”

  “Wait,” Jack said. “Later information had him linked to the Red Brigade. Now he’s changed his name to Hans Becker. But here … the story ends.”

  Jack read on:

  “Becker died along with two other suspected terrorists, August eighteenth, 1985, in an explosion on the West Bank. B.N.R.”