The Cactus Club Killings (Joe Portugal) by Nathan Walpow Page A

one of my own.

 
    I PULLED INTO A MINI-MART ON FOOTHILL BOULEVARD AND parked next to a Toyota pickup with tires as tall as I was. A young bleached blonde sat in the passenger seat, screaming at several brats who boomeranged around the cab. “I’ll break your heads,” she said, over and over.
    I didn’t have any change and went through several minutes of long-distance-carrier bingo before getting Gina’s phone to ring. “Hello?”
    “Hi, it’s me. I’m coming over.”
    “You can’t.”
    “Whaddaya mean I can’t?”
    “I have a date with Carlos.”
    “Is he the volleyball player who likes Hockney or the flower arranger with the great ass?”
    “Great ass.”
    “Cancel.”
    “I can’t. He’s taking me to this new coffeehouse. There’s a poetry reading.”
    “You hate poetry.”
    “Hike coffee.”
    “Fine. Cancel Carlos and I’ll come over and make you coffee.”
    “I thought I might get lucky tonight.”
    “No way. Carlos is gay.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “I know a fag when I see one.”
    A pause. “I can’t believe you said that.”
    “Cancel Carlos and I’ll come over and tell you
why
I said it. Here’s a hint: It has to do with one of my detecting excursions today.”
    “You had detecting excursions?”
    “Yeah, didn’t you?”
    “Uh…”
    “You didn’t? You were the one so hot to get us into all this, and you didn’t have one single solitary excursion?”
    “I had clients.”
    “I’m coming over. Ditch Carlos.”
    “Don’t be surprised if I’m not here when you get here.”
    “Fine. You eat yet?”
    “No.”
    “I’ll pick up some Mexican.”
    It took me a while to find my way out of the hinterlands. It was nearing nine when I reached Ten Forty Havenhurst, the West Hollywood condo where Gina lives. She buzzed me in and I went up.
    “Where’s my tostada?” she said as she opened her front door.
    “Right here. Where’s Carlos?”
    She carried the food into the kitchen. “At the poetry reading, I suppose.”
    “I hope he didn’t take it too hard.”
    “No.”
    “I would have understood if you went with him. Especially ‘cause you might have gotten lucky.”
    “Bottom line is, I didn’t want to. Carlos is cute, but he has the intelligence of a bowling ball. I’m getting too old for recreational sex.”
    A couple of minutes later we were shoving food in our faces at Gina’s birds-eye maple dining table. It was typical of the impeccable way she’d done the place up. The living-dining room was all earth tones, with an opulent leather sofa as the centerpiece and several expensive-looking tapestries on the wall. The fixtures in the kitchen were straight out
of House and Garden;
those in the bathroom shone like spun gold. Her bedroom was done up in blues, with hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-yard drapes that shimmered like a mirage when they caught the light and a down comforter that could have done duty at Buckingham Palace. The carpet throughout was so pristine it made you ashamed to walk on it.
    All that expensive stuff—most of which she’d gotten at huge discounts, she was quick to point out—could have made the place seem cold, but Gina’d interspersed enough weird Gina stuff to overcome that. Schlocky tourist gewgaws from Olvera Street. A cello, propped up in the corner of the living room, that she hadn’t played since college. The goofy plaster-of-Paris bust of Simón Bolívar her mother had made at the senior center.
    I filled her in on my adventures. When I got to Eugene Rand she said, “Sounds like he had a thing for Brenda.”
    “Definitely.”
    “Think he’d ever do anything about it?”
    “You mean like ask her out? Make a pass at her out among the cacti? Ask her if she’d like him to pollinate her ovules?” I thought it over. “I don’t know. What if he did?”
    “Is he attractive?”
    “He’s not a good-looking man.”
    “Brenda liked her lovers attractive. So she would haveturned him down. And then his disappointment, his