Sometimes trouble finds you. Other times you find a half-eaten loaf of bread wedged between the branches of a cactus, and you just know that’s gonna be trouble. When that happens, you have a choice: pretend you didn’t see anything, or Philip Marlowe the fuck up and solve the Bread Cactus mystery.
The cactus in question was on our property, so there weren’t any jurisdictional issues. That was a relief, because the last thing I wanted was a pissing match with another amateur detective. But that’s where the good news stopped. This was an election year, after all, which meant that if I didn’t clear the Bread Cactus case ASAP, the pencil-dicks downtown would be all over my ass. So I quit gawking and radioed for backup.
“Is that a half-eaten loaf of bread in our cactus?” Christina asked.
“You don’t miss much, babe.”
“What’s it doing there?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
My plan: Roust the usual suspects and beat the shit out of them until they told me what they knew. But Christina said we needed to do this one by the book.
“Remember what happened last time?” she asked. “You figured out who ate the last slice of pizza, but the DA had to drop the charges because you beat the pepperoni out of the suspect. Also, you were suspended without pay for three months, and you couldn’t afford any pizza at all.”
“Fucking pencil-dicks downtown,” I seethed. “This town is fucked eight ways from Sunday.”
“Settle down, Serpico. Let’s take some pictures of the scene, and we’ll go from there, OK?”
After we took pictures, I asked Christina if she had an theories.
“I think a giant hawk picked up the bread, maybe at Whole Foods or that Israeli bakery that has terrible parking.”
“Hawks eat bread?”
“No. The hawk was like, what am I even doing with this bread? Yuck. I’m gonna stick it in this cactus.”
“But why? Which is good? Who benefits?”
“The hawk. Duh.”
“How?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No.”
Christina sighed.
“It’s bait.”
“For who?”
“For anyone dumb enough to take that bread. As soon as they do, the hawk swoops in and eats their ass.”
“Ass-eating hawks? I didn’t know birds were so kinky.”
“No, I mean the hawk eats them, like for breakfast or dinner, depending on what time of day it is.”
“Oh…”
I didn’t buy Christina’s theory, and I told her so. It seemed ridiculous. Also, why put the bread in a cactus, which is difficult to access, when you could just drop the bread on the lawn, swoop in, eat some ass, and fly away?
“I think our suspect is a human,” I said.
“Boring.”
“Maybe so, but I’m making a list of suspects.”
First on my list was our gardener Raphael. I liked him for the Bread Cactus job for a few reasons. For one thing, the cactus in question was a few feet away from our green garbage bin. That told me Raphael had opportunity. Also, there’s a small chance our gardener is an assassinso he basically had a record in my book.
“Bread? No, no … I don’t know anything about bread.”
I studied Raphael’s eyes as he spoke. In my unprofessional experience the eyes always give it away. The trouble was, Raphael was wearing sunglasses. He was playing hardball. I’d have to try another way.
“Look, I just need some information, OK?”
I held up a crisp $100 bill. Raphael snatched it out of my hand. Now, we were getting somewhere. Or so I thought.
“Raphael, I give you the money, you give me the information. That’s how this works.”
“I thought you were paying me for last month.”
Shit. I had forgotten to pay him for last month.
“Just give me something I can use.”
“OK, the cactus …”
I leaned in, eager for a lead that could break the case wide open.
“… the cactus does not eat bread, Michael.”
The cactus doesn’t eat bread!? No shit. That information was about as useful as a solar-powered flashlight.
Next on my list was our pool man, Carlos. He didn’t have a record, as far as I knew, but like Raphael he had opportunity, because he discards leaves and other crap that lands in our pool into the green bin.
“Someone is sending you a message,” Carlos said.
“But it isn’t you?” I asked.
“No, I text you for messages.”
“Any idea what the message is?”
Carlos looked up at the sky, made the sign of the cross, then looked back at me and shook his head.
“Some mysteries are better left unsolved. Forget about it, Michael, it’s … the Valley.”
The way he said that spooked me. Sure, I’m easily spooked, but why had Carlos crossed himself before giving me his version of the famous line from Chinatown?
I was in too deep, and I knew it. Also, I was out of leads. The bread had appeared on a Sunday, so that ruled out our mail carrier. And since we hadn’t received any packages that day the UPS/FedEx/Amazon theory was also toast. I was desperate, so I did what desperate people often do these days, I turned to social media.
My first social media stop was Nextdoor, the internet clearinghouse for security camera footage of package thieves, aka porch pirates; trespassing wild animals, i.e., four-legged content creators; racism; listings for household items that are so shitty they can’t be sold at garage sales; gardening advice; and miscellaneous nonsense. Unfortunately, my post kept getting taken down. Evidently, the moderator in our area was gluten-free, online and off.
Reddit was no help either. My posts in the subreddits for bread, unsolved mysteries, and the San Fernando Valley, weren’t removed, but they were mocked. In retrospect, that was entirely predictable, since Reddit’s motto is: If you can’t be helpful, be an asshole.
Speaking of assholes, I thought about turning to Elon Musk’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s social networks, but then I smoked some meth, smashed my face with a hammer, and came to my senses. Like Mulder and Scully, I believed the truth was out there, but I knew it wasn’t on those fact-free platforms.
I was officially stumped. Which happens. Last time I checked, my clearance rate was around 14% — far higher than the LAPD’s rate for solving similar cases. Although to be fair, the LAPD also handles major crimes, whereas my beat is minor mysteries.
Who put the bread in the cactus, and why?
I had no fucking idea.
But I knew one last way to get an answer, even if it was of questionable provenance. So I typed up my notes, and uploaded them to Claude. Then I told Claude it was the best detective in history — more determined than Harry Bosch, more fucked up on mind-bending drugs than Doc Sportello, and more of a menace to society than Frank Drebin.
Claude spat out an answer, which I’ll summarize, because it was way too long:
Who did it?
Me.
How did Claude know that?
A neighbor’s security camera footage caught me in the act.
What was my motive?
To teach myself a lesson that I’m capable of doing things I do not understand.
Unfortunately, none of this was true. Claude was hallucinating, possibly because I’d told it to channel Doc Sportello, but more likely, because that’s what AI chat bots do. The thing is, I wanted it to be true. I wanted answers. I needed closure. That’s appeal of mystery fiction. In the end, a mystery story is supposed to restore order to a fictional version of the world, because we the real world is a fucking mess.
Or maybe, as The Dude said, my thinking about this case had become very uptight. One possibility was that the bread put itself in the cactus. Another possibility was that the cactus uprooted itself, called an Uber to take it to the bakery, and gave the Uber driver half the loaf as a tip. In other words, it was possible this whole thing was a wild sheep chase, like a Haruki Murakami novel, only shorter and with better jokes.
Or, maybe this story was just a futile attempt to find meaning where there was none. That’s probably it, to be honest. But I can live with that. As Albert Einstein said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
I got you.
My novels don’t end well for some of the characters, but they do end, and they do provide closure. And some laughs. And something to ponder. And maybe even the feels.
Not Safe for Work is available at Amazon and all the other book places. Murder and Other Distractions is available here.
Yes! But you don’t have to take my word for it.
Again, I got you.
Ride/ Share will make you smile, and according to science, people who smile live better lives. Pick up a copy here.
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Who put the bread in the cactus and why? Explain.
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Are you the type to ignore life’s little mysteries, or do you Philip Marlowe the fuck up? Dish.
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Do hawks eat ass? Wrong answers strongly encouraged.
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Your keys are missing. Do you hire Harry Bosch, Doc Sportello, or Frank Drebin to find them? Choose wisely.
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Why is it always an election year?