The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal)

by Walpow, Nathan

  Leonard and Dad like to refer to Catherine as “our little shiksa,” even though she’s taller than either of them. When they say this they exchange glances and get this creepy carnal look in their eyes. Or at least Dad does; Leonard doesn’t get much of any kind of look in his eyes anymore. They insist everything is platonic, and at their age I tend to believe them. But who knows? Sometimes I think Dad gets more nookie than I do.

  I would have sworn he couldn’t see me when I came through the back door, but the second I did he said, “That you, Joseph?”

  “Sure is, Dad.”

  “Come here. Help me with my posies.” Anything short of a rosebush is a posy to him.

  He was kneeling on the foam-rubber knee protector I’d bought him, planting a patch of impatiens, a plant he loves and deposits in every available cranny. I went over, got down on my knees, and troweled out a hole. He dropped in a pink-flowered specimen and carefully tamped the soil around it. “Good job, son.” He stood slowly, pulled out a checkered handkerchief, and wiped his face. “Nice day.”

  Dad has all the requisite wrinkles, but they don’t make him look old, merely a little less young. He’s got most of his hair, though it’s all gone gray. His blue eyes are as piercing as ever. He’s gotten skinny though, almost too much so, and sometimes I worry about that.

  The handkerchief barely made a dent in the perspiration coating his head and sticking his Farmer’s Market T-shirt to his spindly chest. “You should take it easy, Dad,” I said.

  “Eh,” He flapped a hand to dismiss the thought. “So I keel over here in the posies. So you and Leonard can bury me, and the rabbi can do a barucha?”

  We sat at the teak table and chair set Gina had gotten them for nearly nothing in some freight-claim fiasco. Catherine brought out a tray with iced tea and some Hydrox cookies. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked,” she said.

  “These are fine,” I said, and thanked her, and she went inside.

  Dad pulled off his garden gloves. He took one of the cookies, twisted the halves apart, and scraped the good stuff with his teeth, which he still had all of. “So,” he said. “What brings my son Joseph to see me on a Friday afternoon?”

  “I was wondering if you remembered what our original name was.”

  He knew I was full of crap, but he answered anyway. “Patchkivatchki. Something like that.”

  Each time I asked he came up with a different name, with only the initial P in common. Once it was Poltergeist.

  “How did they get Portugal out of Patchkivatchki?”

  “How do I know? Was I there? You didn’t schlep all the way up here to ask about Ellis Island.”

  “Uh…”

  “Come on, boy, spit it out.”

  “I need your special expertise, Dad.”

  “What kind of special expertise does an old man like me have? I tend my posies, I read my science fiction, I go to shul on Saturday.”

  “You know what I mean, Dad.”

  “So say it. Don’t beat around the posies.”

  I sighed. “Okay, then,” I said. “I need to talk to you about murder.”

  14

  UNTIL I WAS TEN I THOUGHT MY FATHER WORKED AT AN office. Because I was at school all day, I never realized how irregular his schedule was. And during summer vacations, when they sent me off to Camp Los-Tres-Arboles, I was having too much fun to care. Later I found out that was exactly why they sent me to sleep-away camp—so I wouldn’t start asking questions about Dad’s weird schedule.

  As my eleventh summer began, I fell victim to a hepatitis outbreak that they traced to a sewage backup in the school cafeteria. Five days after school ended and four before camp was to begin, I got terribly sick. Dr. Greene figured out what was wrong right away and put me in the hospital. Dad came each day and spent the whole afternoon with me. When I went home he stayed with me a couple more days until I got my appetite back. Only then would he trust Mom with me.

  Over the next couple of weeks, I started to notice how weird his hours were. Some mornings he would be up and out before the crack of dawn; others he wouldn’t leave until noon. He’d work evenings on occasion, even stay out all night. I’d already known this last part, but other kids’ dads worked nights sometimes, and it didn’t really seem strange until I put it together with his daytime schedule.

  Then there were his business associates. They dropped by once in a while, and they’d always bring me presents. But they scared me. They had sharp faces and sharp outfits. Whenever one would come by, he and my father would go off into the den and close the door, and a night or two later Dad would stay out all night.

  After five or six weeks at home, I was feeling fine, just waiting for my bilirubin to come down to par so I could go outside. I was crazed, and I was crazing my mother too. I’d done about a hundred jigsaw puzzles and knew all the characters on The Guiding Light.

  Finally, I asked her. “Mom, who does Dad work for?”

  “He’s a businessman, honey.”

  “But who does he work for?”

  She looked at me with those warm brown eyes. “He’s an independent businessman, Joey.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means he works for different people. He’s kind of a consultant. Do you know what a consultant is?”

  She was a smart lady, my mother. She got me off the subject. But the next week they had a Highway Patrol festival on Channel 6. Two episodes a night instead of one. Somewhere among all the 10-4’s I figured it out.

  “Dad’s a crook, isn’t he, Mom?” I said one morning over Sugar Smacks.

  By the horrified look in her eyes, I knew I’d struck gold.

  “He is, isn’t he, Mom? Does he have a gun?”

  “No.”

  “No, he isn’t a crook, or no, he doesn’t have a gun?”

  Tears brimmed from her eyes. “Finish your cereal.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  I went back to my room and plopped onto my bed with my hands behind my head and a big grin on. My own father, an outlaw. I wondered what kind. He couldn’t be a killer, because killers were bad. He had to be a robber. He’d steal from the rich and give the money to the poor. Wow. Wait until the kids heard about this.

  That night I was in my room mangling a plastic model of the U.S.S. Forrestal when my father came in. He closed the door behind him and sat on the edge of my bed. His eyes toured the room like he’d never seen it before. Eventually, they came to rest on me. “Your mother told me you had some questions,” he said.

  This was it. He was going to fill me in on all the details of his criminal empire.

  But it was not to be. Dad deftly circumvented every crime-oriented query I directed at him. He neatly filled the conversation with lots of a-man’s-gotta-do-what-a-man’s-gotta-dos and your-father-loves-you-very-muches. When he was done I was more convinced than ever he was a crook, and just as unclear as ever about the specifics.

  “I don’t like to talk about those days,” my father said.

  “I know, Dad. But I’m in a bit of a fix.”

  “Yes.” He nibbled a bit of Hydrox, cast the rest aside, picked up another, and toothed out the filling. “I read about it in the paper,” he said proudly, as if it were a big deal that at his age he still read the newspaper.

  “You know, I’ve never really heard the real story about what got you … got you…”

  “Put away? You’ve heard that story a thousand times. It’s old news. Better we should talk about—”

  “Not the real story. Just what Elaine told me. Dad, I’m forty-four years old. I’m old enough to be a grandfather. Isn’t it time you leveled with me?”

  He wiped his head again, sipped his iced tea, picked at his teeth with a finger. “They used to call me Harold the Horse, you know.”

  “I know. Quit stalling.”

  He looked me over, slowly got up, went inside, came back out with a fat cigar. He removed the ring. For a second I thought he was going to give it to me, like when I was a kid. I wanted
him to do that. But he placed it carefully on the table. “There are only two reasons why people kill other people,” he said. “Love and money.”

  Good. That covered both the routes I was following with the Brenda thing. Old—or wannabe—boyfriends, and plant smugglers. “What about power?”

  He made a dismissive gesture with the cigar. “Power is nothing. What can you do with power? You can get money, that’s what.”

  “Which was it with you?”

  He made a big show of lighting the cigar with a worn Zippo he pulled from his pocket. He drew in some smoke, blew it out, watched it dissipate in the quiet afternoon air.

  “Dad? Which was it? Love or money.”

  He rubbed the side of his nose. He had a discolored spot on his cheek. I thought of Sam and his skin cancer.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not involved with any of that anymore.”

  “You’re involved enough to have found a gun for Gina when she needed one.”

  He gave me a look like he’d just discovered his only child wasn’t an idiot, following it with the slightest of nods. “Who asked those guys to horn in on our hijacking?” He downed his tea, set the glass down, and leaned forward. “It was the worst feeling I ever had in my life.”

  “Killing that guy.”

  He nodded. “We’d stop the trucks and the drivers would get scared and everything would be real simple. Who knew on that night some other guys would pick the same shipment?” He puffed out his lower lip like he did when he was thinking, or angry. “They were just a couple of two-bit schmucks like us, trying to make a buck the easy way. But when they showed up it got crazy. They were new to the game, thought they’d do better pretending to be cops making a traffic stop. It was a big mess. When it was over a guy was dead. Your father shot him.”

  “Do you remember what it felt like?”

  He took a big pull on the cigar and dumped some ash on the lawn. “Like someone took out my stomach and put in a balloon. He was a young kid, maybe twenty-five.” He looked up at the sky and shaded his eyes. “I don’t remember pulling the trigger. That part is a big blank. But when it was over I had the gun in my hand, and there were real policemen.”

  “Are you sure you did it?”

  “What? What kind of a stupid question is that? Of course I did it.”

  “I mean, maybe one of your partners did it and put the gun in your hand.”

  “It was my gun. I used to keep it up on the top shelf of the hall closet.”

  “Where you kept my Christmas presents?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Those were Chanukah presents.”

  “Back then you called them Christmas presents. You’re sure you don’t remember pulling the trigger?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because you’re my father, and I’m getting a little concerned you may have been framed. Since someone seems to be trying to frame me, this is a good thing for me to know about.”

  “Framed, shmamed.”

  “Come on, Dad, take this seriously. I’m, trying to find out a little about the emotions that go with taking someone’s life. So I can look for them in my suspects.”

  “Suspects, you have. Why don’t you tell me about these suspects?”

  I sat there in the hot sun and did as he asked. After a while he put the cigar out, saving the rest for later. We were still there as the sun went behind a pepper tree, affording us some welcome shadow. When it came out again, its harshness gone for the day, it found us still engaged in conversation, the longest one I’d had with my father since he’d gotten out of the slammer.

  We’d reached the amazing-appearing plant ties when Catherine came out the back door. “You going to stay for dinner, Joe?”

  “Catherine will be lighting the Shabbat candles,” my father said.

  “Catherine will be doing no such thing,” she said, holding back a smile. “You want someone to light candles Friday night, Harold Portugal, you get yourself a Jewish lady. You want me to light candles, you come to Mass with me Sunday.”

  They both looked at me expectantly. It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do. “Sure,” I said. “I’d love to stay for dinner.”

  Three and a half hours later, Dad walked me out to the truck. I stepped out into the street and checked both sides for red Malibus. Dad asked what I was doing.

  “Somebody’s following me.”

  “Somebody’s following you?”

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Who would be following you?”

  “I think it’s a cop.”

  “What makes you think it’s a cop?”

  “He looks like one.”

  “Describe this cop.”

  “He’s big and Italian-looking. Nice suit for a cop. Oh, and he wears sunglasses all the time.”

  He pushed out his lower lip. “I wear sunglasses, Joseph. They shade my old eyes. Even Leonard, who can barely see his penis, wears sunglasses, and he is not a cop.”

  I got into the truck and rolled the window down. “Dad, I’m a little scared that someone might really be killing off the officers of my club. Do you think I should carry a gun? For protection?”

  “You? A gun? What would you do with a gun?”

  “You gave Gina a gun.”

  “Her? She would know what to do with a gun.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You ought to get that spot on your cheek looked at.”

  “It’s an age spot. You’ll have them, too, when you get to be my age. You want to go to shul with me tomorrow morning?”

  “I can’t. I have things to do.”

  “Soon, then.”

  “Soon, Dad. I promise.”

  I caught the tail end of the news on Channel 6. There was a little item about Brenda and Dick. They ran a graphic behind the anchorman, CACTUS KILLINGS, it said, with a silhouetted saguaro and a smoking gun. Thank God they didn’t spell cactus with a K.

  According to the report, the police said they had no suspects. “But,” the toupeed anchorman said, “Channel 6 has exclusively learned that detectives have interviewed this man.” They ran four or five seconds of film from a Rice Krispies commercial. The guy in it was me. “Now, let us emphasize,” the anchor went on, “this man, actor Joe Portugal, the discoverer of both bodies, it not a suspect. However, he has been interviewed.”

  The phone rang. “You’re on the news,” said my father.

  “I know, Dad.”

  “You looked thin.”

  “That commercial was three years ago. You just saw me an hour ago. Did I look thin then?”

  I got him off and the phone rang again. This time it was Elaine. After she hung up a few more people called. The last was Rowena Small. “I knew you were a suspect,” she said.

  After the ringing stopped, Nightline came on, and I fell asleep on the couch. These two events can be counted on to go together.

  Another ring of the phone woke me. I snatched it up. “Yes, I know I was on the news, and no, I’m not a suspect.”

  “You were on the news?” said Gina.

  “Oh, hi. Yeah, I was. What time is it?”

  “Midnight.”

  “Why are you calling me at midnight?”

  “Its this archive stuff I downloaded,” she said. “I’ve been looking it over. I think I found something.”

  15

  GINA OPENED HER FRONT DOOR FOR ME AT A QUARTER TO one Saturday morning, wearing her glasses and a Frankie Goes To Hollywood T-shirt that reached her knees. She held a quart of Dreyer’s strawberry in one hand, a spoon in the other. She led me into the dining room, where her computer and printer were set up. A small stack of letter-size paper sat between the two. More sheets littered the area.

  “I guess your date with Carlos didn’t go very well,” I said.

  “Medium.” She led me to the table, made me sit, and handed me the top sheet off the pile. “Look at this.” It was an e-mail from someone whose ID wa
s madagasprof@ucla.edu.

  “Brenda?”

  “Uh-huh. Look at the signature.”

  It said she was with the UCLA Department of Botany and that if we don’t save the wild species they won’t save us. The message itself was a response to someone who had asked some arcane question about the differences between two varieties of Euphorbia viguieri. Ironic, given how this whole thing had started, but certainly of no help to Gina and me.

  “So?” I said.

  “Just setting the stage.” She handed me another e-mail, dated the previous December. In it Brenda was taking the plant smugglers to task, referring to them as rapists of the landscape and mechanics of destruction and various other inflammatory epithets. She ended by saying that anybody who violated CITES should be strung up naked and have all the hairs in their body picked out one by one, until every inch of their skin is defoliated, and see how they like it

  I looked up. “Very Brenda.”

  Gina held out a third sheet. “Now check this out.”

  This one was from someone whose moniker was Adolfwax. I smiled. “A German.”

  “Yes. Read.”

  The first couple of paragraphs agreed with some of Brenda’s points, politely disagreed with others. Moderately interesting, but nothing to get excited about. Until the end. One should be careful if one makes threats one cannot carry out. To suggest the plucking of another’s hair, no matter how mercenary he who is plucked, is an idea that can only backfire on the source.

  “I like that,” I said. “He who is plucked. But this is probably some wienie with too much time on his hands. I don’t think what you see here represents a threat to Brenda, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Its not. But keep going.” She pushed the rest of the stack over.

  The next one was from Brenda. Very simple. Are you trying to scare me?

  Adolfwax: Not at all. I’m only pointing out that this list is monitored by persons not as civilized as you or I.