Death of an Orchid Lover Read online

  “So? Oh, sorry.” She walked into the hallway, closing the door partway behind her. I stepped out of the shower and began drying off. “Can we talk about the Albert and Laura business?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “Because I had a thought. Didn’t Sam tell you that Albert was into conservation?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you told me Yoichi acted kind of flaky when you started mentioning habitat destruction and that kind of stuff.”

  “So you’re thinking—”

  “Maybe Yoichi’s into something not quite kosher. Maybe some of his plants came from somewhere they shouldn’t have.”

  “He has an alibi.”

  “Oh, right. Some orchid club’s Saturday night extravaganza.”

  “But, still, why don’t you give Sam a call? See if Albert ever mentioned anything about Yoichi to him.” I gave her the number.

  I finished drying, wrapped the towel around my waist, lathered up my face. Muffled conversation came from the bedroom. Sharon kept swimming into my mind. I kept pushing her back.

  From outside the bathroom, Gina said, “Are you decent?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The door swung open. “Sam definitely heard Yoichi’s name from Albert. But he can’t remember in what context. I asked if it was Yoichi being pissed off about having his plant marked down. Sam couldn’t remember for sure. He said it was months ago that Albert mentioned Yoichi to him. Then I asked if it had something to do with conservation. He wasn’t sure of that, either.”

  We kicked it around while I finished shaving. I went into the bedroom and put on shorts and a T-shirt. No sense wearing good clothes under a dog suit. I slipped on my watch, picked up my wallet and keys. “Okay,” I told Gina. “Here’s what I want you to do while I’m at the shoot. I want you to call Sam back.”

  “And what do I say?”

  “We need to find someone.”

  “Who?”

  I told her. She said it was a good plan. I went off to shoot my commercial.

  The animal miscegenation scheme had been scotched by the higher-ups, and Diane remained a dog. Regardless of my show of bravado in the shower, I still very much wanted to patch things up with Sharon, and during one of the breaks I slipped over to a phone and tried to reach her at work. They said she wasn’t there. I was sure she’d told everyone there to blow me off.

  We were done about two-thirty. I corralled Diane out in the hallway. She was still in costume, with her dog head under her arm, like a football player with her helmet on the sidelines.

  “Ready for your opening tonight?” I said.

  “I am, but I don’t know if the play is. The preview was a fiasco. They missed a bunch of lighting cues and the lead had a big blowout with the director during intermission.” She shook her head. Actors. “You still coming Sunday?”

  “Sure am. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  “We went our separate ways. I wasn’t quite sure what I would do with my comps on Sunday. If I ever got Sharon to talk to me again, I could ask her. If not, there was Gina. There was always Gina.

  I checked my machine, in case Elaine had another audition for me. Instead, there was a message from Alberta Burns. I called her back. Did you get anything out of Casillas?”

  “We certainly are pushy, aren’t we?”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. Evidently Helen Gartner has a bit of a past.”

  “Oh?”

  “She did a little time.”

  “What for?”

  “She was a con artist. Pigeon drop, dead man’s curse, that kind of thing. Almost twenty years ago, when she lived in Denver.”

  “She wouldn’t admit it when I saw her yesterday.”

  “You went up to her house and bothered her about this?”

  “Her store, actually. You’re sure that’s what Casillas was after her about?”

  “Yes. And to answer your other question, no, it wasn’t suicide.”

  “You sure?”

  “Will you stop asking me if I’m sure?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Whoever did it did a fair job of making it look that way, but it’s damned difficult, if not impossible, to fake a suicide.”

  “So—”

  “Enough.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s enough. Don’t ask me any more questions.” “How come you answered these?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing. Maybe it’s because I like you. Hard to figure out why, isn’t it?” She hung up.

  I phoned the tire shop. Helen answered. I didn’t want her to know I was checking if she was there. I said, “Otto?” in a fair approximation of a Teutonic voice. She said, “Sorry, no Otto here,” and I said I was sorry and hung up.

  “I drove to Reseda and rounded her up and said, I know about Denver.”

  She got up, closed the office door, sat back down. “I suppose it was bound to come out.”

  “Tell me about it. Tell me about when you were a crook.”

  “Do you really want to know all the details? I was much younger then. I thought the easy way to make a dollar was the best way.” She looked down at her hands, inspected a finger. “Detective Casillas found out about that and thought it worth questioning me when Albert was killed.”

  “Did he accuse you of having something to do with Albert’s death?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “And you convinced him otherwise.” “Probably not.”

  “Did you have something to do with Albert’s death?”

  “Of course not. I was with Laura.”

  “Who is conveniently dead, and therefore unable to confirm that anymore.”

  “You’re suggesting I killed Laura?” “Maybe.” “Why would I kill my own alibi?”

  “Because it was phony, and you thought she was going to crack and tell the police the truth.”

  “Do I really look that diabolical?”

  She didn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.“I suppose you’re still denying you had any sort of business arrangement with Albert.”

  “I suppose I am. Who told you that, anyway?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think I have the right to know.”

  “You admit something was going on, I’ll tell you who told me.”

  “There’s nothing to admit.” Again she checked out her finger. “What are you going to do with what you’ve found out?”

  “Nothing, if you’ll come clean with me.” I was getting good with those cop movie clichés.

  “I am coming clean. I would tell you if I knew anything about Albert.”

  This was getting me nowhere. I let her dismiss me and went outside. There I found David, kneeling by the jacked-up front end of a big Ford pickup. He was tightening a lug nut with an air wrench. His boring shirt was soaked with sweat under the arms and along the center of his back. Judging from his expression, something wasn’t going right. He put down the tool, picked up a torque wrench, tried it too. No go. He began kneading his earlobe with his fingers.

  I’d seen that ear thing before. At the orchid society meeting. When Sharon was telling me about the Stalin surrogate and his homophobia. I hadn’t known who David was then, so it didn’t make an impression. Now it did.

  I approached and stood over him. “David.”

  He looked up, shaded his eyes. “Yes, sir, may I—oh, it’s you.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Me. With a question.”

  He climbed to his feet. “All right,” he said. “Ask your question. And then get out of here and let me get some work done.”

  I let him stand there sweating. Then I said, “Why do you hate the Japanese?”

  He took a second too long to answer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t sell Bridgestones, though you say you carry everything. I didn’t see any Yokohamas, either. You got all bent out of shape when I mentioned Yoichi Nakatani.”

  “So?”

&n
bsp; “And everyone at the orchid society knows you like to downgrade Japanese members’ plants.”

  His hand tightened on the wrench. “Come with me.”

  I followed him around the building, into the vacant lot next door. A winding path led through five or six piles of tires, each ten or fifteen feet high. There was a lot of rubber on that lot.

  David stopped. Some of the hair he normally kept combed straight back had fallen down over his expansive forehead. It was an improvement.

  I cut short the tonsorial critique when I realized he still had the torque wrench. He held the handle in one hand and kept flexing the other around the attached socket, a big one, three inches or so long, an inch in diameter, heavy steel. The sun reflected off its chrome finish.

  “The Japs killed my father,” he said.

  It sounded bogus, like he’d said his father was spirited off by Dottie Lennox’s Communists or something. But when I looked at his face, I knew it was true. “In the war?”

  “Of course in the war. What kind of a stupid question is that?”

  “Sorry.”

  “He was captured. He was in a prison camp. He died.”

  “They killed him?”

  “He broke a leg. They let it get infected. He died.”

  “David, that was war. Lots of things like that happened, on both sides. You can’t blame a whole nationality for your father’s death. We’ve been at peace with Japan for over fifty years.”

  “They didn’t follow the Geneva Convention.”

  “You mean the so-called rules of war? The term’s an oxymoron. You think countries are going to follow a bunch of rules made up in peacetime when they’re trying to beat the crap out of each other?”

  “They should have fixed up his leg. They just let him die. Frigging Japs.”

  He was slapping the wrench into his palm. This had me a little concerned. It wasn’t as good a weapon as, say, a crescent wrench would have been—the socket messed up the balance a little—but I had little doubt that, if wielded correctly, it could brain me nicely.

  “How do you know this?” I said.

  “One of his buddies got out. He told me. He said when my father screamed in pain they just laughed at him.”

  “Maybe he didn’t remember correctly. Maybe—”

  I shut up because his face was suddenly six inches from mine. His tone was reasonable. Too reasonable. Very quietly, he said, “You defending them?”

  “No. Not at all. I’m sure very bad things happened during the war, on both sides. Hell, look at what we did to all those thousands of loyal Japanese-Americans, herding them into internment camps.”

  His eyes bored into mine. “You comparing throwing a bunch of Japs in a camp to them killing my father?”

  I stole a glance back toward the street. Because of the way the path wound through the piles of tires, I couldn’t see it. My father’s admonitions about being careful swam into my head. And Burns’s. I took a step back.

  He was smiling. “No one can see us here,” he said, waving the torque wrench in front of my face. “I’m sure none of your Jap friends would see if something happened to you.”

  “David, be reasonable.” I glanced around for something to defend myself with. My only option was stacking tires around my body and playing Michelin Man. “Adding another killing to the score won’t help you any.”

  Suddenly the wrench was over his head. Before it could come back down, I rushed him. I wasn’t very good at it. The first step I took, I stumbled. My shoulder, which I’d had aimed toward his upper chest, sunk into his stomach. He fell backward, flat on his back, and I joined him on the ground. The wrench went flying, landing inside a tire that had fallen from one of the piles. We both scrambled after it on hands and knees. He got there first. I caught up and smashed my fist down on his hand just as he grabbed the wrench. He managed to hold on to it, but the socket snapped off the handle. One of us jostled the pile. Tires rained down upon us. Concrete scraped my knee.

  “He muttered, Frigging Jap-lover,” made his way to a standing position, raised the handle. I snatched up the socket, lurched to my feet, and backed away, eyeing him warily, with my arm drawn back, ready to hurl the socket if he came any closer. He looked at me, up at the wrench handle, back at me.

  I didn’t really have much confidence in my aim. But he didn’t have to know that. “Drop the wrench,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I said drop it.” I drew the socket back behind my head. “Or I’ll throw this thing at you.”

  He took in my ridiculous posture, took one more look at the handle, carefully placed it on the ground. There. “You happy?”

  “More or less.” I glanced at the socket poised near my ear. I wasn’t ready to let go of it yet, but I brought it down to my side. My knee stung. I took a quick look. Blood dripped down my calf.

  David took in the dozen or so tires that had slipped off the pile. He began to round them up. “You really think I killed Albert?”

  “I didn’t, until just now.”

  “I didn’t do it. I was at the hockey game that night. I told you that. The cops have already interviewed all my buddies.”

  “Then why the big display?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes things touch me off.”

  “You ever hit Helen?”

  The look he gave me made me glad he wasn’t holding the wrench anymore. “No. I’ve never laid a hand on her. And I never will.”

  I gave him a few more seconds to calm down. Then I said, “Ever had any run-ins with Yoichi Nakatani?”

  “The people who run the judging know enough not to let me judge a Jap’s plants. Look, are you done yet?”

  I didn’t want to be. I was sure there was more there, some big secret or two that I wasn’t picking up on. But I knew I wasn’t going to uncover any more secrets that afternoon. “I guess so.”

  “Good. Because I’ve got a business to run.” He picked up the wrench, slapped his palm with it, turned, walked away. After a while I followed. I was back in the truck before I realized I still had the socket in my hand. I thought to give it back, said screw it, stuck it in my pocket. They could get a new one from the Snap-on truck next time it came by. Maybe there’d be a new calendar too.

  22

  I STOPPED AT A MARIE CALLENDER’S, CLEANED UP MY KNEE IN the rest room, had a piece of cherry pie. It didn’t make me feel any better. I found the pay phone, called my father, told him where I was. “I could pick up a pie for dessert tomorrow if you want.”

  That’s a good boy, Joseph, but we don’t need. Catherine’s making three desserts. Just bring yourself. “And, since you don’t want to bring the girl, bring Gina.”

  “She’s already coming. I’ll see you, Dad.”

  “Wait.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I should be asking you, what’s the matter.”

  “Why should anything be the matter?”

  “I’ve known you forty-five years,” he said. “I should know when something’s the matter. It’s the girl, isn’t it.”

  “Well …”

  “I know when my son’s having trouble with a girl. What is it this time?”

  This time. “Like every time I got involved with a girl,” there was some kind of trouble. Gina slept on my couch last night, and she answered the door in her underwear when Sharon came over to see the greenhouse, and Sharon ran

  “off.”

  “You like this Sharon.”

  “I told you I do.”

  “Is she Jewish?”

  “I don’t think so. Does it matter?”

  “It would be nice it she was Jewish.”

  “Mom wasn’t Jewish.”

  “Shiksa or not, you should go after this girl.”

  “I don’t know where she is. I tried at work, where she ought to be, but they told me she wasn’t there.”

  “You think she is.”

  “I think there’s a good chance she is.” “Then go there.”

  “What, ju
st burst in like a lovesick puppy and say, Where is she?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  I took a moment to consider it. Other than possible embarrassment, nothing was wrong was that. And what was a little embarrassment to a man who was about to appear on millions of television screens as a toilet-cleaning dog? “You’re right. That’s what I ought to do.”

  “Then do it. You make up with this girl. You want, you bring her tomorrow night.”

  “You just told me to bring Gina. Anyway, Sharon’s busy tomorrow.”

  “Too bad. You could have brought both. Gina could be for me.”

  Racks of electrical appliances jammed every dim corner of Kasparian’s. Big racks, small ones, metal racks, wooden ones, all loaded with TVs and VCRs, toasters and toaster ovens and Mixmasters, some bright and shiny, some layered with dust.

  An array of used vacuums with manila price tags guarded the floor to my right. Belts and switches and who-knew-whats dangled from cords suspended from the ceiling, each attached to a paper clip jammed right into the plaster. How they stayed there was an electrical repairman’s secret.

  Two guys wielding soldering irons sat at a workbench. One had an indeterminate ethnic look. He could have been Hispanic and he could have been Middle Eastern. He was short and round and had a paper breathing mask pushed up onto the top of his head. The other, a black man about a hundred and fifty years old, wore a T-shirt from a Robert Cray tour.

  Maybe, I thought, I could buy a belt for my vacuum. It would make them think I was there for a legitimate reason, let me win them over before I asked where Sharon was.

  But I didn’t know the model number. I wasn’t even sure I remembered the brand.

  “Yes?” Sitting at a service desk adorned with an incongruous orchid was a guy with a big nose and big eyebrows and a Steven Seagal ponytail.

  “I’m looking for Sharon,” I said. “She’s not here.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “Beats me. You think I got time to keep track of the bookkeeper? Hey guys, you seen Sharon lately?”

  The short one made a vague gesture with his soldering iron. “Nope.”

  The other one caught my eye. “You’re the guy that called.”

  “Yes.”