The Flower Lover

Garcia did some checking. He recognized the name of course. Who in Seattle didn’t? Colt Industries has the same cachet as Boeing or Microsoft. Big money; really big money. Colt Industries has its fingers in pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, transportation, real estate, and God knows what else. The Colt Foundation donates mega-sums to the theatre, symphony, education, and sports. Colt, himself, made the headlines recently when he was dumped as CEO and then got kicked off every board he sat on, including the ones that didn’t pay.

"How do I know you’re not some crank?" Garcia had asked.

"Meet me. Bring a photo if you need it."

A photo wouldn’t be needed. Everybody knows what Colt looks like. Some faces are like that.

It was raining that morning, something it does a lot of in Seattle, especially in November, but not as much as outsiders think. He parked in the asphalt lot between two pot holes, either of which could have swallowed a VW bug. Garcia’s feet crunched on gravel as he walked up the path to the glass house, a miniature Kew Gardens.

A cardboard "Welcome" sign was masking taped to the front door of the greenhouse. Like the walls, the door was made of thick 18" square glass embedded with lead into a metal frame. Even in the muted Seattle light Garcia could see the purple and blue hues that old glass picks up after 100 years. He turned left, passed through another door, and entered a different world.

Inside the orchid room, Garcia got the same claustrophobic feeling he always experienced in small damp places. Add some athlete’s foot and it could double as a locker room. The tropical plants were creepy. He never liked orchids. They’re too purple or pink, too bizarre in shape, and their texture puts them straight out of a wax museum. The damn things grew close together, thick and sticky like Rio Grande mud. The large shrubby plants were potted in humongous clay containers with slender variations on the orchid theme being stuck into 1 quart-sized pots. Their blossoms leaned over the aisles forming a broken canopy. Epiphytic varieties dangled from little moss-filled wicker baskets suspended from the ceiling. Outside it was Seattle but in here it was Southeast Asia, Brazil, and Borneo.

Garcia tried to pierce the curtain of Madame Trousseau’s wax museum. Somewhere in here should be Charles Colt, currently promoted within social circles as occupying the king’s roost next to the other birds in the looney bin. But Colt sounded lucid enough on the phone yesterday and, Garcia reasoned, there might be a story in this somewhere. A guy with a suitcase full of money and influence doesn’t get booted out of his own corporation so ingloriously unless he’s done something really bad.