Death of an Orchid Lover by Nathan Walpow Page A

became a matter of life and death.
    “You think you know about murderers,” he said.
    Uh-oh. Here it was. I’d broached the subject back when the Brenda business happened, and by unsaid agreement we’d sealed it back up after the crime was solved. “Do you really want to talk about this?”
    “I can tell you’re not going to give up this cockamamy thing you have about playing policeman. So I need to remind you about murder again. It is not a game.”
    “Don’t go there,” I said. But he did.

    I first figured out my father was a criminal when I was ten, after a week of two-a-day
Highway Patrol
episodes. He was involved in truck hijackings, among other things. He was a smalltimer, never making that one big score, not even pulling in enough to keep the family going. But my mother had a part-time job at the May Company, and we got by.
    One day in 1966 things went awry. Another gang of bumblers picked the same truck on the same night. There was a scene that, from what I’ve pried out of Dad and Elaine, would have been comical if it weren’t so tragic. When it was over, one of the other band of hijackers lay dead, and my father had the murder weapon in his hand.
    He spent thirteen years in prison. When he got out, I was twice as old as when he went in. He came back to our house for a while, before moving up to Fairfax, “where the Jewsare.” As far as I could tell, he’d stayed on the straight and narrow.

    “Murderers are dangerous people, Joseph.”
    “I know that.”
    “Even the ones who are honest all their lives, and then they kill someone, they’re dangerous. Like that—”
    “I remember.”
    “So you think you’ll just ask your questions, and if one of the people you ask them of is the murderer, they’ll just say, oh, he’s just poking around, he’s harmless, I’ll just let him go on his way.”
    “What else am I going to do?”
    “Let the police handle it. Trouble is their business.”
    It was tempting. Laura would understand if I backed away. She was overwhelmed when she asked me to take a look into things. Not reasoning properly. She didn’t really expect me to uncover anything, at the orchid society meeting that night or anywhere else.
    And I’d make my father happy, wouldn’t I? So there was no reason not to drop the whole thing, was there?
    “I can’t give it up,” I said. “It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something, that I’m doing something useful instead of sitting on my ass collecting residuals and playing with my cacti.”
    He watched my face silently for a good thirty seconds. “I knew you would say that,” he said at last.
    I said nothing.
    “Do you want a gun?”
    “No. What would I do with a gun?”
    “You might need a gun. In case by some chance you trip over the actual killer.”
    “I don’t want a gun. And if I need a gun, Gina still has hers, and she knows how to use it, which I don’t.”
    He stuck out his lower lip. He put it back in place. “You want to help me plant some posies? And after, you can stay for dinner.”
    “Posies, yes. Dinner, only if it’s early.”
    “Dinner can be early. But tell me why it has to be early.”
    “I’ve got to go to Pacific Palisades to an orchid—”
    “Stop. I don’t want to hear about it.”
    “You just told me to tell you—”
    “Joseph, you’re old enough now, you should know when to lie to your father.” He walked toward the house. Just before we got inside, he stopped and turned. “You’ll—”
    “Yes, Dad,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

10

    T HE P ALISADES O RCHID S OCIETY MET AT A M ETHODIST church, leading me to wonder if all their events were held at houses of worship. This one was in the middle of a neighborhood of houses that probably went for a million or more. It resembled one of the missions, with a big tower and white adobe walls and thick wood beams all over the place. It seemed more Catholic than Methodist. Not that I knew much about Methodists.
    The meeting was in a