Death of an Orchid Lover (30 page)

There was another possibility: a second cat-feeding neighbor. But that was a can of worms I didn’t even want to consider.

I hadn’t seen Mrs. Vela in two or three months. She’d had Gina while still in her teens, and, with a new shorter hairdo and the loss of ten pounds … “You look like Gina’s sister,

Mrs. V. Not her mother.”

“You are so nice, Joey,” she told me. “You are a wonderful boy. You will make someone a good husband someday.” She directed a pointed look at Gina. “Someone with a brain in her head.”

“Ma,” Gina said. “Can we go through just one evening without someone suggesting how perfect Joe and I are for each other?”

Mrs. Vela shrugged. “Fine. But when you’re old and alone like I am, don’t go crying to me.”

We piled into Gina’s Volvo and headed over to Dad’s. Mrs. Vela joined Catherine and Elaine in the kitchen. Elaine was carting around two-year-old Miles. His teenage sister, Lauren, was in the living room, playing gin with my father. She informed me that Dad already owed her eleven thousand dollars. I couldn’t help staring. When I wasn’t looking, she’d turned into a beautiful young woman.

I stuck my head into the backyard to say hi to Leonard
and Wayne, Elaine’s husband. They were arguing about Israel. “You’re Chinese,” I heard Leonard say. “What do you know about the Middle East?”

After an hour we sat down to eat. I’d managed to keep the conversation away from Albert and Laura, but halfway through the soup Catherine asked me what was going on with the investigation. Immediately, everyone bombarded me with questions. It was clear they’d all been saving them up. I told them as little as I could get away with.

Then they all went off on dead people they’d seen. Catherine shared how one of her childhood friends got run over by a steamroller. Mrs. “Vela told of some guy who’d been shot by the police in the East L.A. neighborhood she grew up in, inserting the phrase leaking blood like a stuck pig” several times. “Leonard recounted the epic saga of shooting some Jap” during World War II. “He looked over at Wayne and said, Sorry, to which Wayne said his ancestry was Chinese, not Japanese, and Leonard said, Same thing.”

Only Dad was silent during this activity. He didn’t want to discuss any dead bodies he’d seen.

Almost midnight. Leonard had gone to bed. Catherine and Mrs. Vela had driven off in search of swing music. Elaine and her family had gone back to their home in El Segundo.

I was in my father’s bedroom. He’d asked me to come in while he got ready for bed. While he took care of his bathroom activities, I wandered around, looking at all the pictures of my mother and of me and of Elaine’s kids, the closest to grandchildren Dad was ever going to get.

The room was a mess, with clothes and papers scattered
everywhere. I absently began straightening up. I was experiencing the role reversal psychologists talk about, where I was the parent and my father had slipped into the child’s position. I hadn’t been prepared for it to include picking up his room.

I hung some things in the closet and sat on a chair with a row of tacks up each arm. Its leather was cracked but incredibly soft. I remembered it sitting in my parents’ bedroom, right about where the canaries now lived.

The toilet flushed. Dad came out of the bathroom. He had on a white T-shirt and boxers, and carried his pants and shirt in his hand. He gave the closet a cursory look and dropped his clothes on a huge stack of issues of
Modern Maturity.

“How many times have I told you to keep your room neat?” I said.

“You never told me that.”

“It was a joke. Because when I was a kid—never mind.”

He shook his head, as if wondering why God had given him such a lunatic for a son. He turned off the overhead light, leaving the room lit by the lamp on his nightstand. It had a wood base, carved into the shape of a Chinese man with a huge vase on his shoulder. Or maybe he was Japanese. Same thing, if Leonard was to be believed. The lamp had been beside Dad’s bed since I was old enough to know what a lamp was. Its mate, a woman hoisting some gardening implement, had graced my mother’s nightstand. Now it stood on mine.

Dad plumped up a couple of pillows, climbed under the covers, sat up against the headboard. He reached over to his nightstand and picked up something by Isaac Bashevis Singer. He read a line or two, seemingly oblivious of my
presence, then looked up and patted the bed beside him. “Come, sit.”

I sat.

“So tell me about your new girlfriend.” I felt like a teenager. Susie’s okay, Dad, but we just go out in big groups. Of course, I’d never had that kind of conversation with my father when I was a teenager, because he was in prison. “She’s nice.”

“Nice? All you can say is nice?”

“I don’t want to spoil it. I don’t want everyone to get all excited about her, because then if it doesn’t work out you’ll all feel sorry for me, and that’ll make things worse.”

He put down Isaac Bashevis Singer and took my hand in his. I want you to be happy. “To be married.” He left the
and give me grandchildren
unspoken.

“Someday, Dad.”

“I worry about you and women, Joseph.” Uh-oh. Secret code phrase. “I thought we put this to bed a long time ago.” “I worry.”

“Dad, I’m not gay.”

“No one said you were.”

“You were thinking it.”

“Get married, I’ll stop thinking it.”

“Is this what you dragged me in here for?”

“No.” He let go my hand, picked up his Singer again, leafed through as if unsure of his place, put it down. “You’re in danger. I can feel it.”

“I’m not in danger, Dad.”

“You don’t understand.” A long sigh. People who kill will kill again. “You are like nothing to them.”

“I’ll be careful. That’s all I can do.”

“You could stop your playing detective.”

“I can’t. I gave Laura my word.”

Another sigh. “That’s what I thought you’d say.” He shook his head. “Don’t give me any heartache. Okay?”

“Okay, Dad.” I got up to go. When I reached the door I turned, but he was already buried in his book. I found Gina and we went out into the night.

W
E’D DRIVEN A BLOCK OR TWO WHEN
G
INA’S CELL PHONE
rang. We both reached to pick up her purse. “Keep your hands on the wheel, Gi,” I said.

The phone shrilled again. I grabbed the purse. I had to dig around under her gun to get to the phone. “I pressed the button. Hello?”

“Joe?”

“Hermann?” Great. Now I was on a first name basis with a plant smuggler.

Yes. “I have the information you want.”

“And?”

Your suspicions are correct. “Mr. Nakatani is indeed involved in my profession.”

“Gina was making a who?” face. I mouthed Schoeppe’s name and motioned for her to keep her eyes on the road.

“How so?” I asked Schoeppe. Make that Hermann.

“He serves as a conduit to the United States for one of the orchid men.”

“Is there a name?”

There is, but I cannot provide it. I can, however, tell you
that he is from the Czech Republic and he does most of his work in Madagascar. “Will there be anything else?”

“No.”

“I had to call in favors to find out this information. I hope you are properly appreciative.”

“I am,” I said. “I owe you one.”

“As you promised, you will not use this information against him. It would put me in very bad stead with my colleagues.”

“Only if it turns out to be a motive for murder.”

“That seems appropriate. And now, I must go. The rates, you know. Be careful. There are many bad people about.”

We said our goodbyes and I slid the phone back in Gina’s purse. My hand brushed up against the gun again. I couldn’t suppress a shiver.

I noticed something else in there too. A little square cardboard box. I frowned and closed the snap.

“So?” Gina said.

I filled in the side of the conversation she hadn’t heard.

“So he’s a smuggler,” she said. “That doesn’t mean he killed anybody.”

“But Albert was involved in plant conservation. So there’s a motive right there. And you found out Yoichi’s alibi for last Saturday was lousy. So there you are.”

“Where I are?”

“He’s a bad guy. We should go down there and tell him what we know.”

She pulled the car to the curb and switched off the ignition. “Why don’t we tell the cops what we know?”

“Because I promised Schoeppe that if Yoichi wasn’t mixed up in the murders, I wouldn’t expose him. So we have to do it ourselves.”

“What if he’s not there?”

Then we’ll sneak around his place in the dark. “Remember how much fun we had at Brenda’s last year?”

Yeah, but we had a key then. “And you still nearly got busted and I had to hide in the bathroom with Brenda’s ghost.” She shook her head. I’ll go down there, but only if he’s there. “No breaking and entering.”

Fine. “I got the phone back out, found Yoichi’s number in my wallet, dialed.”

“Hello?” He sounded wide-awake.

“Is Otto there?” My German accent had improved. Must have been the exposure to Schoeppe.

“You have the wrong number.”

“I’m very sorry.” I hung up. “He’s there.”

“So I gathered.” She started the car again and pulled into the flow of traffic.