Ten minutes after I called, two officers arrived and took the Tillises into custody. The paramedics were next. They checked Rand over and said he probably had a concussion and just to be on the safe side they ought to take him to the hospital. They loaded him on a gurney. One tucked him in while the other went to check Lyle’s head.
Burns showed up. Casillas too. Burns told the paramedics to hold on a minute, asked Rand a couple of questions, and said he could go, that she’d catch up with him at the hospital.
He was rather pleased about all the attention he was getting. “This is the most excitement I’ve ever had,” he told me as they wheeled him into the ambulance. “I’m certainly glad I sent you that e-mail. Although at the time I didn’t know it was you.”
“You’re Succuman?”
“Yes. I’m rather proud of that ID.”
“As well you should be. But why’d you deny you’d ever seen a striped milii when I came to see you? The day you attacked me.”
“I thought you might be the killer.”
“So you told some total stranger on the Internet, who you hadn’t an inkling the identity of, to go looking for this big clue.”
“I liked the tone of the request. Clever and to the point.”
“Gina wrote it.”
He nodded. “I liked that it came from a woman. Design-woman, you know? No one who could ever, you know, have relations with Brenda.”
Best not to show him the light. “How’d you know the plant had something to do with the murders?”
“I didn’t, for sure. But it seemed so important to Brenda, I just had a hunch.”
After the paramedics drove Rand off, Gina and I answered some questions for the two detectives. Burns said we’d have to come down the next day and make a statement. We said okay and turned to go, but I stopped and walked back up to Casillas. He was wiping his forehead with a tissue. “You owe me an apology,” I said.
“For what?”
“For dragging me down to the station not once, but twice, and generally treating me like a criminal.”
“That’s what I get paid for. So I was wrong. Big deal.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He turned his back on me and went to talk to one of the officers.
“Maybe I can apologize for him.” It was Burns, in a snug black T-shirt and jeans, looking a lot more attractive than she usually did in her cop suits.
I shook my head. “Not necessary. He’s probably right.”
“He’s a hell of a cop.”
“As are you, Detective Burns.”
We eyed each other for a second or three. “We’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, and gathered up Gina. We rode home in silence and pulled into my driveway in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
We sat on the couch, spooning rocky road from a container of Dreyer’s I found in the back of the freezer. An empty bottle of witch hazel sat on the table before us, its contents spent on my sting and spine punctures. We talked about Brenda, and my father, and Eugene Rand, and everybody else we’d encountered since stumbling upon Brenda’s body. Everyone except Carlos and Amanda. Somehow we skipped around them.
My eyes kept slipping closed. Gina’s as well. I said, “It’s bedtime,” and Gina nodded sleepily.
We stood up and she began removing cushions from the couch. I put a hand on her arm, turned her around to face me. “Gi?”
“Yes?”
“How would you feel about sleeping together?”
Her eyes searched my face. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”
I shook my head. “I mean just sleeping. In the same bed.”
“Oh. Didn’t I suggest that just the other day?”
“It was a good suggestion.”
I let her use the bathroom first. When she was done I went in. I brushed my teeth and stripped to my Jockeys. Put my T-shirt back on. Took it off again and came out. When I looked at the bed, I cleared my throat.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“You’re on my side.”
She grinned. “It’s my side too.”
“At your house it’s your side. At my house it’s mine. When we do this at your house, you can sleep on that side.”
“When we do it at my house? Is this going to become a habit?”
“I don’t know. It might. Let’s see how it works out tonight.”
She laughed and shoved over. I turned off the light and slid in beside her. We lay there, a foot or two apart. I reached out and took her hand in my own. I listened to her breathing, slow and regular. “Gi?”
“Hmm?”
“Tonight, when Lyle threw Rand at me, and you got the drop on him with the gun. I couldn’t really tell what was going on, and for a second it looked like Lyle was going to do something really awful to you.” I squeezed her fingertips. “That was one of the worst moments of my life. The thought of losing you—”
She reached over and placed a finger on my lips. “Lets not talk about it, okay? We’re safe now. Go to sleep, baby.”
We moved a bit closer and slipped off into dreamland.
The first thing I saw when I awoke was Gina’s face. After all that fuss we’d both ended up on my side of the bed. The two of us were entangled there, wrapped up like a couple of kittens.
She had a bit of sleep stuff in the corner of one eye. Her breath eased in, out, in, out; her lips were ever so slightly parted. Her black hair fell effortlessly over the side of her face. I wrapped a bit around my fingers, moved it aside.
She woke up. I watched the split second of disorientation, then she smiled as she realized where she was. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to move my head just a few inches, lay my lips upon hers. I’m pretty sure I know what would have happened.
And after that, what? Things were safe the way they were. So instead of traveling those few inches, I disengaged myself. I rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom. If she’d asked me to come back, I would have. But she didn’t.
By the time I finished showering, she was dressed. We went back up to her place so she could clean up and change and took separate vehicles to see Burns and Casillas. We didn’t talk about that morning for a long time.
I adopted Brenda’s birds. She’d entrusted them to my care while she was gone, and now that she was gone forever I felt it appropriate to take them under my wing. I built a big floor-to-ceiling enclosure for them in my parents’ bedroom, where they get plenty of air and light and seed and everything else canaries like. I threw Muck and Mire in with the Marx Brothers contingent, and they all get along famously.
I called Iris Bunche. We met for iced tea at Jimmy’s on the UCLA campus and convinced ourselves that something was going on, so we went out on a real date. Then several more, but after a few weeks the relationship was called off due to mutual lack of interest.
In early July I got a letter from Amanda Belinski, thanking me for bringing her sister’s murderer to justice. On a muggy Sunday evening a month later, I picked up the phone and gave her a call. Her machine answered. I didn’t leave a message.
The Joe Portugal Guide
to Botanical Nomenclature
EVERYONE’S ALWAYS ASKING ME THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN a succulent and a cactus. It’s pretty simple. A succulent is any plant with leaves, stems, or roots containing water-storing tissue. A cactus is a member of a particular family of stem succulents, Cactaceae, defined by flower characteristics and the presence of areoles, special spots on the stem from which spines, flowers, and new branches grow. (More about plant families a bit later.)
Nearly all cacti are succulent, but not all succulents are cacti. When you hear someone talking about “cacti and succulents,” its kind of like saying “pizza and food.” It really should be “cacti and other succulents,” but if you start insisting on stuff like that, people think you’re a pain in the neck.
I’ve been using “cacti” as the plural of “cactus,” which is the most common usage. But you’ll also hear people refer to their collections as
“my cactus,” or even “my cactuses,” and nobody harangues them about it.
Cacti are native to the New World, with a couple of dubious exceptions found in Madagascar and Sri Lanka. The other succulents occur all over the world but are especially prevalent in Africa.
Okay. On to plant families. All plants in each family have certain characteristics in common, sometimes things like the structure of the flower and fruit, sometimes esoteric stuff understood only by botanists. Lets consider Rosaceae, the rose family. Besides roses it includes many common fruits, ranging from apples to strawberries. To a botanist all these plants are cousins.
Families are broken up into genera, one of which is a genus. The plants in each of these have more in common with each other than with others in their family. Back to Rosaceae: within it, apples are in the genus Mains and strawberries in Fragaria. But all the stone fruits, like peaches and plums and almonds, are in Prunus. Why? Similarities in their seeds, among other things.
Next we come to the species. The word is both singular and plural, although occasionally you’ll hear somebody talking about a “specie.” Try not to make fun of them. A species is one particular type of plant, like a white oak or a golden barrel cactus or a daffodil. The scientific name for a species consists of two words, the genus and the specific name. So the peach is Prunus persica, and the plum is P. salicina or P. domestica, depending on whether it’s Japanese or European. (When it’s clear which genus you’re dealing with, you can reduce its name to the initial letter, as I did here.)
Just one more level, I promise: the variety. It’s a further subdivision of a species. For example, the nectarine, Prunus persica nucipersica, is, to a botanist, a variety of the peach.
Family names (which always end in -aceae) are capitalized. So are genus names, when they refer to the genus as a whole or are part of the scientific name. Genera and scientific names are printed in italics. Thus, “I collect the genus Euphorbia. My favorite is Euphorbia milii” But when a genus or species name is used because a plant lacks a common name, it’s neither capitalized nor italicized. “I have a lot of euphorbias. The miliis are my favorites.”
Now on to the plants mentioned in The Cactus Club Killings, alphabetized for your convenience:
Aeonium lindleyi is a leaf succulent native to the Canary Islands. It forms small green rosettes and is a remedy for contact with euphorbia sap.
Agave is a genus of leaf succulents, mostly from Mexico. Its where tequila comes from. A lot of people see the spines on its leaves and call it a cactus. It’s not.
Alluaudia is covered under Didieriaceae.
Boweia volubilis, known as the “climbing onion,” isn’t really a succulent, but its weird behavior appeals to collectors. It’s a member of the lily family and sends out long leafless stems from onionlike bulbs.
Cephalocereus senilis, from Mexico, is one of several plants known as the “old man cactus,” due to its blanket of long white hair.
Ceropegia is a genus in the milkweed family, mostly from the Old World, which indulges in all sorts of weird growth forms. Its flowers resemble miniature parachutes.
Cyphostemma comes from Africa and is a member of the grape family. It forms a fat caudex—a water-storing central stem—and has peeling bark and red fruits similar to grapes. But don’t eat them.
Didieriaceae is a small family of plants with marginally succulent stems that inhabit the thorn forest of Madagascar. It includes the genera Alluaudia and Didieria.
Dracaena draco, known as the dragon tree, is native to the Canary Islands. It grows to twenty feet high and wide and has dagger-shape leaves. Not really a succulent, but spectacular.
Dudleya is a genus of leaf succulents from Mexico and the west coast of the U.S. Its leaves are usually pale green.
Epiphyllum refers to two groups of plants. The first is a genus of jungle cacti with flat, leaflike stems. Their white flowers appear in the evening and last only one night. The name is also used for the thousands of hybrids of this genus with other cactus genera, with spectacular flowers in every color but blue.
Euphorbia contains thousands of species, some succulent and some not, ranging from tiny garden spurges to huge trees. Its growth forms vary wildly, but all euphorbias share a very simple flower type, known as a cyathium. The white (occasionally yellow) sap that seeps from wounded euphorbias is always an irritant and in some species is quite caustic. In the tale related here, we encounter: Euphorbia abdelkuri, a strange gray stem succulent from the island of Socotra; E. ammak, a strongly spined African species; E. antisyphilitica, a spindly stemmed plant from Mexico, named for its supposed medicinal properties; E. flanaganii, one of the medusa-head species from Africa, with a spherical central stem sprouting dozens of thin green arms; E. francoisii, a dwarf from Madagascar, with leaves in shades of green, pink, and silver; E. grandicornis, another African species, this one with long, vicious spines; E. milii, the “crown of thorns,” with semisucculent stems and blood-red flowers, native to Madagascar; E. obesa, aptly described by its common name “baseball plant,” yet another African species; E. pachypodioides, a spindle-shaped Madagascan plant topped by a crown of oval leaves; E. pulcherrima, originally from Mexico, the poinsettia; E. restricta, a small South African species with lots of spiny arms; E. tirucalli, from Africa, misleadingly known as the “pencil cactus,” with particularly nasty sap; and E. viguieri, a spiny Madagascan species with red or orange flowers.
Ferocactus is a genus of strongly spined barrel cacti from Mexico and the southwest U.S.
Fockea is an African genus in the milkweed family, characterized by a fat, water-storing caudex from which vinelike stems grow.
Hoya is popularly known as the “wax plant.” Members of this Asian genus in the milkweed family are often grown as house plants because of their weird leaf forms and clusters of fragrant flowers.
Mammillaria is the second-biggest cactus genus. Its two-hundred-plus species range from the U.S. to Venezuela but are highly concentrated in Mexico. It’s known as the “nipple cactus” because its areoles are perched on conelike tubercles instead of along ribs as in most cacti.
Pachypodium is a popular genus in the oleander family. Species include P. brevicaule, which resembles a well-aged cow pie in habitat; P. decaryi, with a stem shaped like a football; and P. horombense, whose caudex can reach the size of a watermelon. These are all native to Madagascar; other pachypodiums come from South Africa.
Pelargonium, the genus that includes the garden geranium, also contains African species with succulent stems or tuberous roots. They’re winter growers and die in warm weather.
Pereskia is the exception to the rule that all cacti are succulent. They’re leafy, woody plants that can form trees or gigantic vines. What makes them cacti? Flower characteristics and areoles.
Portulacaceae is the purslane family. It includes one of the few annual succulents, Portulaca grandiflora, known as “rose moss” or “moss rose,” depending on which book you read. It’s related to neither moss nor roses. You wouldn’t guess it to look at its members, but botanically this is the family closest to the cacti.
Pseudolithos is a rare genus in the milkweed family. They’re stem succulents from Africa.
Rhipsalis are jungle cacti with pencillike or flattened, barely succulent stems. Their small white flowers give rise to berrylike fruits, often white; thus the common name “mistletoe cactus.”
Sansevieria is a genus of borderline leaf succulents, including the “mother-in-law’s tongue” often found in homes and shopping malls. It’s been placed in various families by different authorities. Sansevierias come from Africa.
Sarcocaulon is similar to the succulent pelargoniums, but its species have spines and somewhat different flowers. They, too, are winter growers.
Selenicereus macdonaldiae comes from Central America. It’s a vining cactus whose white flowers last one night and are the largest among all the cacti, giving rise to the common name “queen of the night.”
Stapelianthus neronis is
an exceedingly rare Madagascan stem succulent in the milkweed family.
Of course, it’s difficult to visualize a plant from a couple of lines of description. If you’d like to see photos of some of the types mentioned in this book, and you’ve been seduced by the Internet, point your web browser to http://walpow.com, a site belonging to one of the other guys in the Culver City Cactus Club. Gina designed it, by the way. Part of her recent alarming streak of computer geekdom.
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Nathan Walpow
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) Page 24
