by Hal Ackerman
“That’s not going to happen.”
“There are the two reasons I don’t want you involved. One: Because it can happen. And two: Because you are too stubborn or blind to see that it will.”
First light was just starting to show in the eastern sky as Stein drove slowly homeward through the residential streets of Bel Air. The Japanese gardeners were already out tending the immaculate lawns upon which their owners’ feet would never tread. They were like perfect narcissistic gym bodies-great to look at but keep off the grass. Stein’s eyes burned. He realized he hadn’t slept yet since he turned fifty and that condition was not going to be remedied soon. Today was a changeover day when Angie was scheduled to go to Hillary’s. That gave him three days, three uninterrupted, non-custodial days, to find Nicholette’s killer.
He drove with purpose into the parking lot of The Bank of Henry Kneuer. He would have liked the moment to be more theatrical; to be observed with the appropriate pomp to mark the circumstance. But it was barely seven o’clock and the doors would not open for another hour.
He unfolded Goodpasture’s check, endorsed the back “for deposit”, and executed his signature in a manner congruent with the occasion. He placed the check into an envelope and sealed it, inserted his ATM card into the slot and entered his PIN number, which was the month and date of Angie’s birth. The steel security flap opened. Stein slipped the corner of the envelope into the slot.
Powerful rollers seized it from his hand. He held to it for a moment, considered what it meant if he let go. The choice he was making. The risk and its consequence He released the pressure between his thumb and forefinger. The envelope rolled down into the slot. The steel trap door slammed shut. Stein the hippie was dead. Long live Stein the warrior.
He was back on the bus.
All the cars on Stein’s street were still peacefully asleep, wrapped up to their windshields in baby blankets of dew. Only Stein’s Camry was overwrought. Its unrested hood was hot to the touch, its windows streaked with worry and grime. Stein parked across the street and tiptoed up the pathway through the courtyard to his front door. The joggers weren’t even up yet. Only the bougainvillea looked wide-awake. In the early morning light, the blossoms radiated like the eyes of visionaries hatching psychotic schemes.
He opened his front door and slid inside. At first glance he barely noticed the crepe paper streamers left strewn about the living room. Watson struggled to his feet and slalomed through the debris. His one-syllable exclamation, like the yip of the first prairie dog, aroused the next one in line. That was Lila. She rose up from the couch in a state of total disorientation.
“Stein?”
Her voice roused another female who had been asleep on the futon wrapped in Stein’s American flag blanket.
“Harry?”
“Hillary?”
“Daddy?”
“Angie?”
In her pajamas, encamped on the staircase. All three females arose and descended upon Stein, cawing at him with variations of the same question: Namely “Where have you been?” Salient details began to register in Stein’s brain. The ceilings and walls were festooned with decorations. There were hats with the number 50 glued to them. His desk was covered with a paper Happy Birthday tablecloth.
“Was there a party?” he asked
“Daaaad.” Angie bent the word into three long syllables of dismay. “It was a surprise party. For you! Where were you! Everyone you ever knew was here!”
“Yes, the entire ‘Who’s Not Who’ of Hollywood,” Hillary sniped.
“Mom.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of anyone missing his own party.”
“Mom.”
Stein was touched that his daughter defended him. “If I knew about a party of course I would have been here.” His voice playing an emotional duet, to mollify Hillary’s disdain and reweave the cocoon of intimacy around Angie.
“Yes, well, it being a surprise party, there was the element of surprise.”
“Mom.”
Angie threw open the rectangular cardboard box sitting in the center of the dining room table to reveal a birthday cake with fifty candles arranged around a now deteriorated portrait in icing of John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, Dylan, Janis Joplin and Stein. “Happy birthday.”
Stein’s heart slid down his chest wall. “I’m really sorry, baby. I thought everyone had forgotten and I felt so sorry for myself that I stayed at the warehouse counting their stupid shampoo bottles all night.”
“You’re such a loser,” she wailed.
Stein hated that Angie so easily believed he would be so pathetic, though not as much as he hated lying to her. Hillary gaveled matters to a close, telling Angie to gather up her things, that they were going.
“I guess I’ll go, too,” Lila said, acknowledging that no one had noticed or cared that she was there. Stein walked her to the door and whispered in her ear, “thanks for having my back.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“You didn’t tell them I wasn’t at the warehouse.”
Angie clomped upstairs to her room and returned, weighed down by two backpacks and her book bag. Stein tried to find a clear place to hug her. “We’ll do something special for my birthday when you come back.”
“Whatever.”
She stooped to nuzzle Watson’s face against hers. “Bye, Watsie.”
His heart always ached when she left. His little refugee. But today he could not indulge his sentimentality. He wondered if she wouldn’t be happier living at one residence, and if the joint custody deal was more to assuage his guilt than for her benefit.
It was amazing how quickly after his daughter’s departure that a profound silence settled into the apartment. As if Angie were its soul and Stein were merely some organ kept nominally alive while the body was in coma. Plopped down on the futon, he idly stroked Watson’s head as his mind began to shrink itself around the problem of Nicholette’s murder.
His mind slogged earthbound at the snail’s pace speed of sound instead of soaring at the speed of light. What did he have? He knew that Nicholette was dead and her place had been ransacked. He knew that Goodpasture was missing, or apparently missing, and that Nicholette had had some inkling hours before her death that Goodpasture was in danger. Stein knew, or believed he knew, that someone had stolen a crop of Goodpasture’s orchids that had been grown for the terminally ill patients at Dr. Schwimmer’s hospice. Was there anything else he knew? Or was this little rabbit turd size pellet of information all that he had? Where would he start? What was his plan? Did he even have a plan? Or was it just another promise that he would fail to keep?
He had to take a first step in some direction. What was that going to be? In the days of Watergate, Deep Throat had advised Woodward and Bernstein to “follow the money.” Stein had no money to follow but he did have the trail of smoke. Goodpasture’s “orchids” were apparently so good that people were killing people to get their hands on them. Weed that tasty had to be going for a tasty price. He had to find out who in town was paying top dollar. In the old days he would have known everybody. Even better-they would have had to know him. But these days were not those days. He had been out of circulation so long he didn’t know who the buyers were any more.
But he did know the one person who would know. Yes. He grabbed the newspaper and opened to the entertainment section, a sudden move that startled Watson. He settled the old boy down and thumbed through the ads for clubs and concerts and saw that The Ravens Family Four and Friends were playing tonight at McKarus’s Folk City. Stein knew that was where he would find mister Vincent Van Goze. And wouldn’t that be a tender Hallmark moment for him and Stein to reconnect? Two road dogs who had not spoken for years. Simon and Garfunkel. John and Paul. Stein and Van Goze.
He flicked the TV on to see if the media had gotten the story yet about Nicholette Bradley’s murder. And good God, had they! TV news reporters were becoming worse whores than the people they covered. Sticking microphones
in peoples’ faces. Asking their inane questions. And police were learning from the military how to manage news. They had telegenic spin-doctors delivering carefully prepared statements. “The authorities were processing information,” others were “sifting through clues, formulating directions of investigation.”
In other words, Stein concluded, they didn’t know jack shit about who did it or why.
This thought was confirmed when they showed the head of the operation, Chief Jack Bayliss, who ran the Malibu sub-station assuring the public that a suspect would soon be apprehended. He and Stein had an adversarial history that spanned two decades. Somehow, many of Stein’s legendary escapades had come at his expense. Stein flicked the TV off. His eyes burned and his Inner Negotiator cajoled him for just one quick cycle of REM. But he knew if he gave in to weakness the day would be lost. He jumped in for a quick shower, threw the same Levis on and a different blue work shirt and dragged his ass outside. He’d find an open diner and grab some coffee until the banks opened. He’d need to cash out a thousand bucks of his recent deposit for seed money. Then find Vincent. He hoped. Then who knew?
A white limo of astonishing length was idling alongside Stein’s parked Camry making it impossible for him to pull out. He recognized the driver-Millicent Pope-Lassiter’s always impeccably dressed Chinese secretary.
“Andrew? Is that you?”
“Yes sir, that’s right.”
Stein wondered why Andrew didn’t find the coincidence as amusing as he did. “Are you picking somebody up here?”
Yes sir I am.
“Did you know that I lived on this street too?”
“Yes sir, I did.”
Stein rummaged for his keys. “You’ll have to undock that boat.”
“No need for you to find your keys, Mister Stein. I’ll drive.”
It took Stein a few moments to register the obvious. “Are you here to pick me up?”
Andrew affirmed that he was.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Sir, I know six different ways to kill a man.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No sir, I don’t. Mrs. Pope-Lassiter instructed me to say that.”
“What does she want?”
“To be obeyed.”
After giving Andrew assurances that he would not try any slick tricks and would drive obediently to the corporate offices in Century City, and after Andrew assured Stein that the limo had twice the horsepower and maneuverability of Stein’s Camry and that he would take any perceived detour from the agreed route as an attempted escape, he allowed Stein to drive there under his own power.
“Ten minutes is all I’m giving her,” Stein declared.
“My business is getting you there.”
With Andrew in the Class II nuclear destroyer staying a car length behind him, Stein drove west on Little Santa Monica Boulevard and turned into the underground parking lot of one of the Century City office towers. Andrew conducted Stein through the ground floor atrium to the private elevator that rose to the penthouse suite occupied by the product liability firm of Lassiter and Frank. Stein was leery about going to the upper offices of these local skyscrapers. The main occupation of the construction industry in Los Angeles was building facades for movie sets, where an erection only had to look like it could stand.
“Ah,” Millicent Pope-Lassiter said upon seeing Stein. But it was not a sound of welcome. She bore an expression, which if displayed across a kinder face, would certainly have resulted in a smile. “Take a chair,” she suggested. Her voice was an instrument strung more for power than inflection. Stein remained standing. His rebellion.
“Oh Harry. Must we go through this charade of conscience every time? Is that part of the Cost of Doing Business with you? Please do sit down.”
He sat. She thanked him with another smile-like substance, then began a conversation which had a single destination. “Every client of Lassiter and Frank has the right to expect the highest level of professionalism from members of this firm. Do you not agree?”
“Is this about shampoo?”
She made the slightest gesture to Andrew, who placed a folder into her hand, which she proffered toward Stein. “Do you know what these are?”
He recognized the documents immediately. “Yes,” he said, his voice dripping with dry weary irony, “I’ve seen the extortion notes. And yes, I think the entire military might of the NATO should be deployed to defend this company’s inherent right to sell fourteen cents worth of sudsy water for twenty-five dollars. So if you will kindly validate my parking, I will be on my way.” He rose from the chair he had recently occupied and wheeled around to the door.
“That’s an impressive exit, Harry, but that door leads to my sauna. Follow me.”
Stein grudgingly allowed himself to be escorted to another wing of Millicent Pope-Lassiter’s office. On the far wall was a billboard-sized presentation of the Espe New Millennium shampoo package. The box was ingeniously constructed in the shape of a woman’s body, transparent in the center to reveal the translucent viscous product flowing through her abdomen. Her eyes met your eyes full on. They changed color from blue to green to gray as the light changed. The flap of the box was so realistically photographed and reproduced that upon opening it you surely felt like you were putting your fingers through her hair. Her face looked vaguely familiar to Stein but he couldn’t place it.
“You are looking at the most highly promoted and eagerly awaited product in marketing history,” Mrs. Pope-Lassiter pronounced. “I am not at liberty to reveal the advertising budget, but it exceeds the GNP of several Third World nations.”
“Milly. When I met you your hair was down to your ass, you had auctioned off your father’s Bentley and you could make grown men whimper watching you eat an ice cream cone. What happened to you?”
“I grew out of it, Harry. It’s called being an adult. You should try it.”
“You make it look so attractive.”
“You have some talents. Don’t waste them.” She placed the Espe package in his direct line of focus. “At this critical time with the product launch scheduled in two days, the integrity of the product must be unimpeachable. To that end, Espe Cosmetics has taken out a twenty-million-dollar policy with us, insuring against knock-offs and counterfeits.”
“Twenty million dollars?”
“Are you starting to get a sense of the scope involved?”
Stein shook his head wearily.
“Yes, we are all impressed with your metaphysical ennui. I’m sorry the world didn’t turn out the way you expected, Harry. Still and all, I wish you to drive this afternoon to Paul Vane’s hair salon in Palm Springs and to determine whether he is counterfeiting Espe shampoo. Although their divorce decree stipulates that Paul Vane grants the rights to the formula to his former lover, Michael Esposito, there is reason to believe that he may be experiencing some seller’s remorse. Paul Vane is thirty years older than his protege. Perhaps his original strategy was to lure the young man back through a show of largesse. Having failed that, his generosity may have soured. I cannot profess to know all the hidden currents in the sea of love.”
She nodded to Andrew, who presented to Stein a slip of paper. “Andrew has made reservations for you at the Mirador. And I think that concludes our business.”
“You’re right,” Stein said. “Our business is concluded. But not the way you imagine.” The receipt for his deposit of Goodpasture’s twenty thousand dollar check gave resolve to his moral stand. At this late moment in life he was experiencing a stunning epiphany: He had always thought that living a socially conscious life was the thing that set you free from the need for money. But no. He understood now that what set you free from needing money was having money. And he had money. He continued on down the elevator, his spirit rising in the inverse direction to his descent, so that when he reached the street he was euphoric.
He drove directly to the Fairfax district, into the parking lot of the Bank of Henry Kneuer. Bank of Han
k, as its customers called it, was possibly the last single branch bank in Los Angeles. They had only gone to computers a year ago. As Stein entered, Ben Taga-sunta, a round-faced, second generation Japangeleno, always well dressed and overly cordial in the way that some gay people are when they neuter their sex for the business world, was at his desk helping an elderly Jewish couple transfer funds out of their CD account into an annuity. Mister Goldstein was ninety-five and stood straight as an arrow. He wore a perfectly pressed suit, white shirt and tie. His wife wore thick glasses and a bereaved expression that came of trying unsuccessfully for seventy-five years to get him to shush.
“With all the letters in the world, they have to make two things a CD,” he was grumbling. “One of them couldn’t be something else?”
“Leave him alone already,” his wife said. “The man has to work.”
“What? I’m not work?”
“Believe me, you’re work.”
Ben escorted them to the door, repeating meticulous instructions about what papers they needed to bring in to be signed, as Stein came in.
“Nice to see you, Mister Stein. What can I do for you today?” Stein slid the deposit slip at him. “Need to cash some out.”
“Did somebody hit the Pick Six?”
“I wish it were that legitimate.” A few months earlier Stein and Ben had discovered their mutual affinity for the ponies and since then their small talk had been about big payoffs and what horses had done what. Ben returned to his cubby. His manicured fingers tapped with astonishing speed across the keyboard. “You’ve got to excuse me. It’s crazy today. They’ve got me all meshugah.”
“That’s cute. You’re learning Yiddish.”
“ Meshugah is a Japanese word. It means crazy.”
“I stand corrected.”
“Hmm,” Ben said. It was not a good Hmm. “There seems to be a Stop Payment on this check.”
“No.”
Ben made his face do what Mary Tyler Moore’s did when she was really, really sorry.
“Ben, I need it to be unstopped.”