The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal)

by Walpow, Nathan

  “Is he a German?”

  “Is Cedar Rapids in Germany?”

  “Not last time I looked.”

  “Then no. And that’s the last of it.”

  “Why don’t we send an e-mail of our own?” I said. “We could tell everyone what we’re up to and see if anybody has any ideas.”

  “But what if the killer’s lurking out there? He might come after us.”

  “I hope you’re not serious.”

  “Half.”

  “I’ll leave it up to you, Gi. If you’re afraid don’t do it. Are you coming to B rendas funeral?”

  “If I finish with my twelve-thirty in time. You’re sure its okay?”

  “I don’t think they sell tickets. Come if you want. There’ll be lots of suspects there.”

  She said she would try, and we hung up. I still couldn’t think of anything to do, so I dug out Sundays paper and riffled through the Calendar section. The first show of the new Jackie Chan was at eleven. Off I went. But when I got to the theater, I was overcome with guilt. Gina and I always went to Jackie Chans together. I took in the new hit comedy instead. Some Jim Carrey thing. The other six people thought it was pretty funny.

  I STROLLED DOWNHILL ALONG A CURVED PATH LINED WITH rhododendrons and tree ferns, all maintained with tender loving care. Terrestrial orchids and exotic ground covers carpeted the surface below. The walkway opened up into a picturesque clearing. Topiary animals cavorted off to my left; on the right a terraced garden of azaleas and miniature bamboo worked its way back up the hill. Birds twittered, and dappled sunlight danced on the ground. I’d been at Final Haven two minutes and already I wanted to be buried there too.

  A stone building with the near end open stood in the center of the clearing. Abstract paintings and exotic sculptures lay within. Wooden pews faced a simple altar, in front of which a plain wood casket rested.

  I sidled off behind an acacia and situated myself where I could see who was coming or going. Coming, more likely; the only one going was Brenda. Rowena Small got there soon after I did and grabbed a seat in the front row. Five minutes later Eugene Rand showed up, wearing a black suit jacket and old chinos and the worst-tied tie I’d ever seen. He looked right at me but didn’t or wouldn’t recognize me and took a spot halfway back on the right.

  Detective Hector Casillas appeared, chatting with Lyle Tillis. Casillas had his suit from Monday back on. Lyle wore no jacket, and the end of his tie hung three inches above his belt. Magda followed three steps behind him, in a simple blue dress.

  More people filtered in. Some I vaguely recognized as colleagues of Brenda’s. A short cute chubby blond woman. A few more cactus folks, like Austin and his wife, Vicki.

  Frank Baiter, Brendan lawyer, arrived, accompanied by a tall woman in a simple black dress garnished with a pearl necklace. She was willowy, with well-defined cheekbones and dark brown, shoulder-length hair, and even if she hadn’t been with Baiter, I would have guessed she was Brenda’s sister, Amanda. Her eyes gave her away. The same odd green as Brenda’s, tending toward yellow. The same oval shape. The same long lashes.

  Baiter had her by the elbow and led her to the front row. Rowena immediately popped up and offered condolences.

  Brenda’s friend Toussaint Razafindratsira appeared. He was born in Madagascar but had come to the U.S. for graduate school and stayed. His dark face was a unique mix that Brenda’d told me represented both African and Indonesian lineage. He carried a staff with a stylized lemur carved into its head and was wrapped head to toe in a length of colorful cloth—a lamba, the traditional Malagasy garment. Brenda’d worn them when she was feeling particularly Madagascan.

  He took a position behind the dark wood podium and asked everyone to be seated. As the mourners filtered in I found a spot in the next-to-last row on the left side, on the outside aisle, where I could watch most of the crowd.

  When the rustling stopped, Razafindratsira spoke. “Brenda came to Madagascar many times. She grew to understand our people and tried to protect our natural heritage.” His accent had been dimmed by his years in the States but still came through as a peculiar lilt, an unusual separation of syllables. “She has requested to be buried in the traditional manner of the Mahafaly, the people of the thorn forest in the south of our island.” He paused and his eyes swept the crowd. “We who come from Madagascar believe death is but a milestone in the journey each person travels. So do not grieve for Brenda. She has simply moved on.”

  He strode over to her coffin and began to speak in what I took for his native language. He stood over it for several minutes, gesturing with his staff at irregular intervals. I got caught up in the whole thing until I remembered I was supposed to be watching the crowd. I casually turned my head to the right. Somebody was watching right back.

  His Mediterranean face was tanned and creased and his salt-and-pepper hair precisely cut. He wore sunglasses and a well-cut dark gray suit, a light gray shirt, and burgundy tie. He seemed tall, and a little overweight, until I realized the extra poundage was well-disguised muscle.

  He removed his shades. Our eyes locked. His were pale blue. He smiled, a kind of tensing of the upper lip that left the lower one in place. Something glinted gold in his mouth. I turned away.

  Razafindratsira seemed to be winding down. His eyes scanned the crowd as he told us some more about death and the Malagasy.

  I snuck a peek over to the right. Sunglasses Guy was gone. I turned all the way around. He wasn’t anywhere in sight. Instead of him, I saw Gina hustling down the path. She wore the navy suit she saves for well-heeled clients. Her hair dropped in blue-black sheets to her shoulders, save for an errant tress by her left temple. I ran my hand through my hair in the appropriate area. She got the point and smoothed down her own and slid into the spot behind me. “What did I miss?” she whispered.

  “Not much. Did you see a big guy with sunglasses on your way in?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm. There was this guy sitting on the other side who didn’t look like he belonged. He was watching me. Maybe he’s a cop.”

  Across the aisle, Eugene Rand cast a dirty look and put his finger to his lips. I shut up. Several minutes later Razafindratsira stood beside Brenda’s casket, with one hand atop it. “We will now move on to the interment ceremony.”

  Everyone adjourned to the grave site, further down the hill in a wide meadow studded with a variety of burial structures: a weird pile of rocks, an upside-down stone cross, a wicker tepee. A garland of vegetables rested atop a giant wooden spool. Music flowed from hidden speakers. I picked out accordion, flute, and clarinet.

  Brenda’s tomb was a white-painted structure about four by eight feet, and three high. On each side a geometrical border in blues and purples ran round an assortment of painted scenes. In one, a light-faced woman and several dark-faced men knelt before a stylized plant. Four wooden poles, about eight feel tall, stood at the corners, each topped by a carving symbolizing an aspect of Brenda’s life. One showed her with a plant in her hand. Another had her with a strange tube to her eye. I finally realized it represented a microscope. The third carving included two small figures by a larger one; I guessed it symbolized her teaching. The last had her holding something resembling an overgrown penis. The Malagasy believed in telling it like it is.

  When I looked more closely I discovered the tomb was merely a wooden simulation. Its roof leaned against a pile of dirt a few feet away, and inside the walls coffin-lowering apparatus topped a normal grave.

  Four beefy attendants carried the coffin down the hill, maneuvered it between the walls, and sent it slowly into the ground. Toussaint Razafindratsira gestured for silence. “We have a saying in Madagascar,” he intoned. “A house is only for a lifetime; a tomb is for eternity. Thus it will be for Brenda.” Some prayers were said, and that was that.

  Everyone milled around aimlessly. Razafindratsira came up to me and we shook hands. “It was a fine service,” I said.

  “It did go rather well,” he said. “It is di
fficult, though, to compress our ceremonies into the time frame Americans are comfortable with. Major elements must be dispensed with entirely. Keeping the body in state until the flesh is decomposed, for instance. Wanton sexual activity as well.” He sighed. “Ah, well. Such is life in America.” He moved on.

  I went back up the hill to the chapel and walked over to Amanda to pay my respects. She stood where the coffin had been, looking perplexed. I held out a hand and introduced myself. “I’d known Brenda several years,” I said as we shook. “I’m feeling quite a sense of loss.” Okay, so I’m not good with death. “Of course, not anywhere near as much as you must be feeling.”

  Off to the side I could see Gina, out of Amandas line of sight. She clapped her hand to her temple and shook her head.

  “Yes,” Amanda said. “Brenda mentioned you in her letters. I understand you discovered her body.”

  I nodded. Why did she have to bring that up?

  “Did she look like she was in any pain?”

  “No.”

  “Did she look like she died quickly?”

  “Yes. I’m sure she never knew what hit her.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  Amanda nodded. “I’m going to be in town for a few days. I’d like the opportunity to speak with you. Brenda and I had grown so far apart. I’d like to speak to someone who knew her these last few years.”

  “That would be good,” I said.

  “I have a room at the Loews in Santa Monica. Do you know it?”

  “Yes. It’s quite pleasant.” Ever so civilized, that Portugal.

  “I need to be alone for a while. You understand. Perhaps you could stop by Saturday night.”

  “I think I could fit that in.”

  “Say seven-thirty?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Room 621.” She turned and walked prettily back down to the tomb.

  As I watched her recede, a vision blossomed full-blown in my head. Amanda and I would assuage each other’s pain by making love all night long. She would cry in my arms, and I in hers. I would kiss away her tears.

  Ridiculous. Brenda not in the ground ten minutes, and already I was planning her sisters seduction.

  But the vision, insensitive to my guilt, persisted. Amanda would light a cigarette. “For Brenda,” she would say, and we would share it. In the morning I would leave, never to see her again.

  “You’re having one of your sex fantasies,” Gina said.

  I whipped my head around. She stood a few feet behind me, grinning like a maniac. “How could you tell?”

  “Your nostrils were flaring and you licked your lips.”

  “I did not.”

  “Did. You gonna go?”

  “Of course. She could be valuable to our investigation.”

  “Valuable to your sex life, you mean. But, hey, why not? She is kind of cute, in a Midwestern corn-fed sort of way. Nice eyes. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  We left the mourners behind, made our way up past the natural wonders on the hill, found our vehicles. “Now what?” Gina asked.

  “I’m supposed to go see Dick McAfee. Want to come?”

  She followed me to Dicks place. He and Hope lived on Warren Avenue in the nice part of Mar Vista, near Santa Monica Airport. Huge evergreens overhung the street; their invasive roots buckled the asphalt. It was a nice block, a family block. Kids rode bikes. Couples walked dogs. A gardener trimmed the eugenias at the house next door.

  I’d taken off my jacket and tie when we left the funeral, but the suit pants and dress shirt were still too confining. I reached into the truck bed and grabbed the gym bag with my everyday clothes. I could change in Dick’s bathroom.

  We walked up the driveway and onto the front porch. Dick had festooned it with pots of big barrel cacti. A foot-wide ferocactus was in bloom, though its purple flowers were closing up for their evening’s rest. A gigantic Boweia volubilis—a climbing onion—sent its shoots twirling around a pillar all the way to the roof.

  I rang the bell. The strains of “La Cucaracha” resonated inside. After a decent interval I rang again. This time it was the first few notes of “Lara’s Theme.”

  “Ring it a few more times,” Gina said. “See if you can get the macarena.”

  “Maybe he’s in the back.” I pressed my face up against a window, shaded my brow with my hand. A dining room. Nothing out of the ordinary. “Yeah, let’s go try the back.”

  We clomped off the porch, followed the driveway along the house, went through a big wooden gate. A giant sycamore dominated the backyard, its branches spreading from one property line to the other. The spiny brown fruits—we called then “itchy balls” when I was a kid—littered the ground.

  Dick didn’t have a greenhouse, though shade cloth protected several tables full of plants. An eight-foot wood fence ringed the yard. In the back, sugar-snap peas clung to green mesh. Passionflower vines covered one side; on the other he’d planted a pereskia, a primitive leafed cactus resembling a climbing rose more than a denizen of the desert. He must have kept it trimmed; it formed a nice neat hedge. Unchecked, I knew from painful experience, pereskia would cover the side of a house in no time.

  “Dick?”

  “He’s not here,” Gina said. “You’ve been stood up. Come on, let’s go get some ice cream.”

  “He’s got to be here. Dick is the most responsible man I. know. Maybe he’s in the garage.”

  “Fine. Go look in the garage. When you don’t find him we’ll go to Baskin-Robbins.”

  The side door to the garage was ajar. I poked my head in and flicked on the light. He had an old Buick in there—early fifties was my guess—that he was restoring. Scraps of fabric and pots of glue were scattered about. I walked in and took a quick look at the dash. I’ve always had a fascination with dashboards. “Neat,” I said.

  I turned around. Gina stood in the doorway, wearing an expression I’d seen only once before. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said.

  We stared at each other for a good ten seconds before I said, “Where?”

  “Behind the big tree.”

  She stepped aside as I walked out of the garage and followed me as I went across the lawn and around the sycamore. When she caught up with me, she slipped her hand in mine and held on as if she’d never let go. The two of us stood gaping at the spectacle draped on the back side of the tree.

  A wooden cross had been nailed to the trunk. Dick McAfee was tied to the cross-member by lengths of cord around his upper arms. His head dropped to one side and his eyes were closed. His naked feet dangled six inches above the ground.

  His arms were spread wide, and somebody had driven spines through his hands. Three inches long, wickedly sharp, from Euphorbia grandicornis was my guess. And, adding insult to injury, whoever had pulled off this heinous stunt had taken a branch of Euphorbia milii, and twisted it into a ring, and tied the ends together with a thin green plant tie. They’d placed the ring on Dick’s head, pushing it down so it would stay in place. The spines had opened dozens of tiny cuts that were the least of Dick’s troubles.

  Euphorbia mili. Common name: crown of thorns. Supposedly the plant Jesus wore on his head when he, like my cactus cohort Dick McAfee, had been crucified.

  10

  TWO HOURS LATER GINA AND I WERE STANDING WITH DE-tective Alberta Burns on the McAfee front sidewalk. She and Casillas had come and done their cop stuff, while Gina and I hung out with a gaggle of uniformed officers. Someone had found Hope at the homeless shelter she volunteered at on Thursdays and brought her back home. A knot of onlookers had gathered; most still hung on. All those kids with bikes and couples with dogs.

  Speaking of dogs, the local news hounds had already sniffed the situation out. Two of their vans were parked a few houses away. Across the street the blonde from Channel 6 rehearsed a stand-up.

  “He was already dead when they strung him up,” Burns was saying. “There was a blow to the head.”

  “Blunt-force trauma,” I said.

&nb
sp; My impressive command of police lingo surprised her, I think. “The thorns through the hands were a nice touch,” she said. “Don’t you think?” Spines.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Botanically, they’re spines, not thorns.”

  “I see. By the way, where were you when he was killed?”

  “When would that have been?”

  “Late morning, according to the coroner investigator.”

  “We spoke on the phone around ten. He said he was going to the nursery in half an hour. Whoever it was must have come right after I talked to him. Christ.”

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Portugal?”

  “If I’d rushed over after we talked, I might have saved him.”

  “How would you know there would be something to save him from?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Were you somewhere we could verify between, say, ten and noon?”

  “I went to the movies at eleven. Somebody there should remember me. I was the one who wasn’t laughing.”

  “We’ll check it out. What about you, Ms. Vela?”

  “I was with a client from eleven until two-thirty.”

  She nodded. “We’ll need a name and number.”

  We answered some more questions. When she told us we could go, I hustled Gina off toward our vehicles. I’d gotten her into hers and had the Datsun’s door open when Casillas materialized. “What’s in the bag?”

  I’d been clinging to the gym bag like a life preserver since I first walked around the sycamore. It dangled from my fingers, all sporty and blue with a white Dodgers logo. “Clothes,” I said.

  “That all?”

  “A hanger. To hang my suit up.”

  “One always wants to hang one’s suit up, doesn’t one?”

  I tossed the bag on the ground. “Just open it, okay? Just be done with your harassment so I can go home.”