Death of an Orchid Lover (27 page)

“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?”

“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.

I
STOPPED AT A
M
ARIE
C
ALLENDER’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, just 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.