The Orchid Hunter

by Sandra K. Moore

  Hank looked at his hands as he said, “They’re still workin’ on the cure. The head guy at the lab, Dr. Thompson, he said the drug had been tested on mice okay. The San Antone fellas just need a little more time.”

  I got mad all over again. “It doesn’t sound like they have time. What’s this outfit called?”

  “Cradion Pharmaceutical.”

  “And they’re hooked up to Scooter’s regular doctors how?” I demanded.

  “They offered the trial drug and assigned Dr. Thompson to his case. His G.P. just oversees his checkups.”

  “Did his insurance pick up the cost?”

  “Not much of it. The Slapdash is mortgaged up to its neck.”

  I bit my lip. Damned old fool and his damned fool ideas. “He should’ve paid a hit man. It would’ve been cheaper and faster.”

  “Ever’body did their level best, Jessie. Sometimes it just don’t work out.”

  “I should have tried harder.”

  “We all could have.”

  “No. I mean I should have gone to court, got him declared incompetent, and then put him in decent care when he was first diagnosed. I should have been here to make sure the doctors were going to help him, not hurt him.”

  Hank stared at me, mouth tightening with what might have been anger. “He’d never forgive you for doing that to him. You got no call to be trying to run his life when he’s still kickin’ around like a mean old hoss.” His bearded chin stuck out a little as he said, “He wouldn’t have tried to tell you what to do.”

  I waited for Hank to finish. Behind him, the band’s guitar player slipped the strap over his head and twanged a string, prompting a pretty brunette in tight jeans and boots to drag her man onto the scraped-up dance floor. A group of cowboys in the corner laughed over a hand of cards.

  When Hank ran out of things to say, I stood. “See you around.” I headed for the door.

  “Jessie,” he warned.

  “It’s okay. I won’t bother anybody.” I threw a few bucks on the bar for Marian on my way out.

  On the porch, cool wind brushed my cheeks. Only then did I feel the sticky wetness of tears. The man I knew as a father was dying because he was too stubborn to do anything else. A homeopath had given him false hope and some bogus pharmaceutical company had made him a guinea pig and thanked him for it by killing him.

  But I was the one who hadn’t been here. I hadn’t done what needed to be done.

  If anybody had put the first nail in Scooter’s coffin, it was me.

  Chapter 2

  Hammarbya paludosa. The Bog Orchid. Officially extinct in Britain, the last wild one had been stolen in December of 2001 from a secret site in the Yorkshire Dales and sold on the black market, probably for around ten grand.

  Normally when you think of orchids, you think of the gorgeous, vibrantly colored petals of Phalaenopsis, or the pure seduction of Paphiopedilum, commonly known as lady’s slipper. Orchids are the most blatantly sexual flowers of any on earth, rampant in their attractions, decadent in their enticements.

  The Bog Orchid is a runt. It’s a dull stunted foxglove of an orchid—long spikes studded with greenish, waxy-looking leaves that are actually flowers. Ugly thing.

  Kew Gardens never succeeded in reproducing it despite their best efforts. There may be a few in Northern Ireland, but no one’s saying if or where.

  Most orchid collectors have a couple of rare orchids like this one to trot out at flowering parties and green their guests with envy. The idea is to have lots of different orchids to show one’s taste, one’s style, one’s sensibilities.

  Linus Geraint Newark von Brutten III has over fifty Bog Orchids.

  I knew because in the thirty minutes I’d been kept waiting in Building 6, I’d counted them: fifty-seven ugly plants, fifty-seven ugly flowering spikes, 942 ugly flowers.

  Tardiness is the privilege of the billionaire who feeds me. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind. It kept us honest; we always knew where we stood. But von Brutten had pulled me away from Scooter, and I was ready to get this show on the road. In the time I’d not been counting, I’d been mulling over how to tell him I wasn’t going on a fishing expedition for him, at least not while Scooter was still around.

  “Dr. Robards.”

  I turned. A bow-tied, black-jacketed butler stood in the greenhouse’s doorway. His high forehead sprouted a light humidity sheen. The Bog Orchid does need, after all, a bog.

  “Hullo, Sims,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  He bowed. “Mr. von Brutten requests your presence in the morning room.”

  Well, hell. That’d be a twenty-minute walk. “Then why did he send me here when I arrived?”

  “I am afraid I cannot say, Dr. Robards, but I am sorry for the inconvenience.”

  I wondered if all butlers were taught to speak without either expression or gesticulation. Sims might be being truthful about what he didn’t know, or he might not, and I’d never know. Couldn’t help but like the guy. “Lead on,” I said.

  Von Brutten’s estate, fancifully called Parsifal, was a sprawling thousand-acre ranch fetched up against a low ridge about an hour outside Spokane, Washington. The ranch had two lakes and a great view of the Columbia River. I’d been in about half of von Brutten’s greenhouses, Buildings 1 through 9. The other half he kept to himself. It rankled, not being trusted. But if I’d been robbed blind for my plants as often as he had, I might be a little picky about my buddies, too. The only reason I knew those greenhouses were there was because I’d seen the satellite photos. Sometimes it helps to date the right people.

  When it came down to it, as much as I hated to admit it, I owed Daley for getting me this job. My first year out of grad school, I managed to track down Cattleya turneris in Costa Rica, a rare blue orchid the year blue was all the rage in collecting circles. Plucked it right out from under Daley’s nose, in fact. I got the call from von Brutten within a day of arriving back in the States: he wanted to hire me as Daley’s replacement. “Daley,” von Brutten had breathed over the phone line, “has not lived up to expectations.” I’d been collecting for von Brutten ever since.

  The morning room faced east, and light cast down through the glass roof for only a couple of hours. I liked this room because it opened onto a little shade garden surrounding an irregularly shaped man-made pond. Von Brutten’s orders must have been to make the garden look like a jungle, with its bowing palms and water-loving bromeliads. It didn’t. This garden looked like a place you’d want to rest in, maybe take a nap.

  The word jungle is from the Sanskrit jangala, meaning “impenetrable.” The jungle smothers you with noise and odors and fear. Its trees tower, woody vines dangle, insects bite, birds screech, monkeys howl, jaguars stalk, and the whole time heat rises through the air like somebody threw water on a griddle. You don’t penetrate the jungle. It penetrates you.

  “Dr. Robards,” Sims announced, his deep voice echoing under all the glass.

  Were he true to the stereotype, von Brutten would have been huddled over a Dendrobium, clutching a watering can and muttering diabolically to himself about humidity. Instead, he relaxed his small, elegantly suited frame into a Lucien Rollin chair and smiled a frosty smile over his silk jabot.

  “Dr. Robards,” he breathed. “Please, sit and enjoy a little something.” He snapped his fingers. Food and juice appeared, carried by silent bow-tied wait staff.

  “Just tea for me, thanks.”

  A French press of tea sat at my elbow. Poof. Just like that. Maybe money was the secret of Houdini.

  “Did you enjoy your flight?”

  “I always enjoy the Lear, thanks,” I said. “Very nice.”

  While we traded meaningless social niceties, I studied him. His pale, even features seemed vaguely threatening in repose, but I’d gotten used to that. He resembled the guy who’d share his last smoke with you before smiling benignly and dropping you headfirst into a shark tank. Small eyes, aquiline nose, a thin-lipped mouth, a closely trimmed goatee. In some circles he m
ight be considered genteelly attractive. I didn’t move in those circles. As far as I knew, there was no Mrs. von Brutten, nor was there a boy-toy wandering around. Von Brutten appeared to be either extremely celibate or extremely circumspect.

  Or maybe he just got his rocks off pollinating nearly extinct orchid species.

  After he asked me a polite question about my limo ride from Spokane to Parsifal, I realized he was desperately excited about something.

  The more excited he was, the less likely he was to act that way. But I needed him to hurry up so I could get back to Scooter. The trick was to hustle him up without appearing to want to.

  “Your jet’s much nicer than the crate I took out of Micronesia,” I said casually. I wished I smoked, so I could blow a stream negligently into the air while glancing away.

  “A successful trip.” His hand strayed in the general direction of Building 3, where the siblings to Scooter’s Phalaenopsis were being studied in a high-tech laboratory.

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Did you…have fun…in Micronesia?”

  I shrugged carelessly. “I ran into Mrs. Thurston-Fitzhugh’s errand boy.”

  “And you took care of him.”

  “He came away empty-handed, as usual.”

  A smile fled across von Brutten’s silvery eyes.

  I waited. You can’t push someone like von Brutten too hard. And he was enjoying my news too much for me to rush him. Mrs. Thurston-Fitzhugh had consistently beaten him to the punch until I came along, and von Brutten had made sure I knew he was pleased with my performance. My ability to outwit and outcollect the handful of professional field collectors in the world meant von Brutten stayed top dog in the insulated and obsessive world of ultra-high-dollar orchid collecting. We had a gentleman’s agreement: he paid me generously and I didn’t work for anyone else.

  The ten or so other professionals tended to freelance, sometimes for private collectors like von Brutten and sometimes for legitimate botanical institutions. Not that the institutions would admit to being party to breaking the CITES Treaty. The only other monogamous employer-hunter relationship I knew of was Mrs. Constance Thurston-Fitzhugh and Lawrence Daley.

  I sipped my excellent tea, poured for me by someone I hadn’t noticed.

  An irregular chuffing noise started up from von Brutten’s direction. I glanced over to see him holding an embroidered handkerchief to his mouth. His eyes wrinkled at the corners. Was he choking? I nearly got up to administer the Heimlich, but the chuffing stopped and he removed the hanky from his mouth.

  Laughing. He’d been laughing at my dumping Daley. I felt bizarrely honored.

  “Hmm,” he said, then surprised the hell out of me by saying, “Tell me about your great-uncle.”

  “He’s not your business,” I replied.

  “He’s ailing, is he not?” Von Brutten’s left hand twisted a gold ring around his right hand’s index finger. “Victim of a pharmaceutical experiment?”

  “That’s not—”

  “It’s a shame that someone who raised you after your parents died—car accident, wasn’t it?—should now be facing imminent death as well as the loss of everything he owns.”

  I stood up, tossed the linen napkin onto the table. “Thanks for the Earl Grey. I’m glad you liked your flowers.” I walked toward the door.

  “I know what it’s like to lose all of one’s family,” he called.

  He could go screw himself. I kept walking.

  “My sources tell me Cradion has a record of concealing its failures no matter the cost.” And when I didn’t stop, he added, “I can repair the damage they did to your uncle.”

  I spun. There was no point in shouting How do you know about Cradion? How do you know about Scooter? because of course this was Linus Geraint Newark von Brutten III. I kept my mouth shut and glared at him instead.

  He inclined his head toward me. A conciliatory gesture. “But I need your help to do so.”

  “Surprise me.”

  “Bring me back the Death Orchid and I’ll see your great-uncle has the best chance at living out his full span of years.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s everything it’s rumored to be.” He spread his hands as he said, “It’s the elixir of life.”

  He was out of his mind. As nuts as Lawrence Daley and his nutty high-society employer. As nuts as any nutty botanist, taxonomist, or nursery owner who longed for glory in the insulated, isolated, nutty world of rare orchid collecting.

  Before I could open my mouth, von Brutten said, “I have proof the orchid exists.”

  He snapped his fingers. Sims glided in with a thick padded envelope, laid it on the table, bowed and vanished.

  “Please.” Von Brutten’s long fingers gestured to the envelope. “See for yourself.”

  I didn’t budge. “What about Cradion? What proof do you have of their wrongdoing?”

  “Let me handle Cradion.”

  Fair enough. My agenda was pretty narrow. “What will you do for my uncle?”

  “I have controlling interest in Lexicran Pharmaceuticals, which directly competes with Cradion. I can…encourage…a particular kind of research.”

  “You’re way behind. Cradion’s already in phase two trials. The drug’ll be on the market in no time.”

  “My company has been developing a similar treatment for Parkinson’s.”

  “Maybe so, but my great-uncle’s problems are a little bigger than that now.”

  “A Parkinson’s cure is not the only endeavor my company pursues. Heart medications, like the one that may restore your guardian’s damaged tissues, are also of interest to us. The Death Orchid is the difference between our drug getting FDA approval in two years and Cradion killing off more old people.”

  “You just want to see Cradion go down the tubes so your company won’t have any competition. You don’t care about its ethics. Or the Parkinson’s patients.”

  Von Brutten’s silver eyes flashed with what might have been humor. “Of course I don’t. I care about the bottom line. So do you. You only want your guardian to survive. You don’t care about the patients who might die because Cradion can pull the wool over the FDA’s eyes.”

  “That’s pretty harsh,” I began, but he kept going.

  “Stop pretending we’re not the same, Dr. Robards. If you were perfectly honest with yourself, you might find you don’t even care that much about your great-uncle because you’re too busy hating Cradion.”

  “Bullshit!” I reached for the doorknob.

  He raised his voice. “I can take Cradion down with your help. And save the old man.”

  The door handle’s coldness penetrated my palm. I was too much of a pragmatist to obsess over ethics or consequences, but I resented his assumption that my hatred of Cradion overshadowed my love for Scooter. Being successful had made von Brutten arrogant. And offensive. On the other hand, experience had taught me he was also a man of his word, twisted as it was.

  He turned my pragmatism against me to get what he wanted: the Death Orchid. And he’d use my bottom line—Scooter’s life—to get it.

  Damn.

  I let go of the doorknob. “Show me,” I said.

  “The Death Orchid is real. I’m told it contains the compounds necessary to create a lifesaving heart medication.”

  “Terence Harrison published a paper that refuted claims the Death Orchid exists.”

  He inclined his head. “He did so at my request.”

  “You mean he lied?”

  “I mean he massaged the data so we could continue our work with the plant unmolested by competitors. But that’s old news, Dr. Robards. My researcher ran out of specimens for testing and I need you to bring me another.” His lips quirked. “Or two.”

  He opened the envelope and slid its contents onto the table as I walked over to see what he had. It wasn’t much. A blood-streaked, ripped-out page of a spiral notebook. A brass key.

  I raised one eyebrow at him.

  “Harrison
’s last work,” he replied.

  “Harrison’s been on sabbatical for a year.”

  “I know. He was working for me.”

  “What?” My brain struggled. “Harrison isn’t the kind of guy to give up his precious scientific detachment to squander his talents in a commercial effort.”

  Von Brutten beamed a pitying look my direction. “If you only knew how many idealistic academics I have on my payroll. Harrison was your mentor, wasn’t he?”

  I nodded. “Plant Biology, specializing in taxonomy and biochemistry. And he works for you now?”

  “He did, yes.”

  “Did?”

  “May still do. I’m not sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s missing.”

  A chill shot through my gut. The mild-mannered and anal-retentive Dr. Harrison was physically no match for one of Scooter’s nursing home girlfriends, much less a hired thug. The shock subsided a little in time for anger to take over. Harrison was harmless. They didn’t have to get rough, whoever they were.

  I turned the notebook page over, studying the brown stain’s irregular edges sprawled on top of scribbled black ink. The writing beneath was illegible, partly because of the blood and partly because of Harrison’s trademark chicken scratch and the torturous, self-invented shorthand he’d used. Shorthand I’d spent long hours deciphering, keying his lab observations into the best taxonomy and morphology database in the country.

  My mind flashed on Harrison’s characteristic fastidiousness, his fondness for bow ties and cheap cologne, his weirdly pale green eyes. Dedicated to the cause. He wouldn’t work for von Brutten unless he had to, no matter what von Brutten had said. I’d sat through too many ad hoc lectures about ethics and the purity of intellectual scientific pursuit to believe otherwise.

  But there was that day I’d come back to his office early from lunch and settled down in my cubicle to catch up on some tedious cataloging. Over the high wall that separated my desk from Harrison’s, I heard the door snick shut and him pace quickly to his desk. We worked in silence for a few minutes until I popped up from behind my cube to ask a question. His desk faced mine. Behind it, he stared intently at his computer screen, like a kid lost in a video game. When I spoke, his eyes snapped to mine and his face flushed. Caught. I couldn’t understand what he said to me then, he was stuttering so badly. It’d taken most of the day for his hands to stop shaking and his face to resume its normal pallor.