by Hal Ackerman
“Wats?”
He checked the kitchen, the hall. His heart sank out of its cavity.
“Watson?”
He slowly climbed the stairs. Angie’s bedroom door was ajar. Stein had never entered Angie’s room without permission even when she wasn’t with him. He knocked now out of habit before stepping across the rubicon uninvited. He felt like he was entering the royal chamber of the queen. This was not the room of a child. Sexy rock and roll posters were tacked and taped to the walls. Her shelves were cluttered with beauty products: lip gloss, eye-shades, skin exfoliants, hair tints, hair conditioners. Her bed frame was taken apart. The mattress stripped and turned half on its side. He remembered carrying all of it up these stairs, assembling the frame and headboard, a routine job for someone with minimal mechanical abilities, for him a sixteen-hour epic.
“Wats?”
He tiptoed into his own bedroom. He whistled softly and clapped his hands and called his dog’s name again. A whimper began to form itself in his throat at the prospect of finding his soulmate lying lifeless and small under a piece furniture. Then Penelope Kim’s wind chime voice sang out across the courtyard. “Stein. You’re back! Come see your dog dance the tarantella.”
Stein looked out the window to see Penelope standing on her front steps wearing a silk jacket zippered half way up and a halter-top underneath. Watson was alongside her, and when she hopped down the steps, so did Watson. Stein gaped like one of those people at a religious revival.
“What did you DO?” He lumbered down his own stairs into the living room and out the front door.
“I knew you’d be happy. My friend Lin Pei does canine acupressure. His energy was way too yin.”
Stein embraced Watson’s frail body and nuzzled his cold wet nose. “I owe you gigantically for this, and I’ll tell you everything about Amsterdam for Klein.”
“Klein?” Penelope giggled as if he had brought something up from the 1920’s.
“Your detective. Or did you change his name again?”
“Oh, I dropped the whole thing.”
“You dropped it?”
“Too linear.”
A pink-and-orange-haired Asian woman wearing a sarong and a brocade songket waddled out of the back room. She carried a cluster of smoldering blue sage in her right hand waving it before her priestess style.
“If you’re Lin Pei, thank you,” Stein gushed.
“Cool dog. Have many more years.”
“You know this?”
“Believe me, if she says it she knows it.” Penelope chimed in.
Lin Pei looked closely at Stein. He waited a beat for her to extend the polite prophecy of long life to him.
“Hmm,” she said.
“Hmmm?”
“Could go either way,” she said, as though she had seen the outcomes of both amusing possibilities.
It truly was a miracle that Watson’s arthritis was gone. They trotted across the courtyard to Stein’s apartment. Watson stopped to raise his leg to pee, then bounded to the top step in one Jordanesque elevation. Stein flipped on the TV. All of the local channels were carrying live feeds from the Mortuary of the Eternal Flame where Nicholette Bradley was going to be cremated, intercutting with clips of celebrity friends expressing their shock and grief and recounting beautiful memories of her.
It occurred to Stein that Hillary might not know Angie was safe. Angie most likely had not called her. Stein had punched in the first six digits of Hillary’s cell phone when he saw Paul Vane in an interview “RECORDED EARLIER” being interviewed on TV. Stein believed the pain behind his soulful eyes. He had truly loved Nicholette. The figure lurking behind him was David Hart. At least that was how it first registered to Stein because he expected it to be David Hart. But as he looked more closely Stein was bewildered to realize that it was not David Hart, it was Michael Esposito. How in the hell could that be? How could Paul Vane and the lover who had jilted him be in the same frame together?
In that moment of not trying, the sealed membrane of his Amsterdam vision popped open into his conscious mind. He remembered the two buds. And getting high. And the Doctrine of Depletion, which did not sound as profound in daylight. He remembered priests and monkeys and smoke and lather. And he remembered that Michael Esposito had killed Nicholette Bradley. And that he had done it with Paul Vane’s help. In the moment of stunning revelation, in the bittersweet thrill of having solved the mystery of Nicholette’s murder, came the ghastly realization that the pair of killers had lured Lila to have lunch with her today.
And that Lila had said she was taking Angie.
Holy Kryptonite.
SEVENTEEN
Stein never wanted to hear anyone’s voice as much as he wanted to hear Lila answer her phone. It rang two, three, four times before her recorded OGM meticulously described the possible contingencies (not home or on another call) followed by a detailed litany of information describing how to wait for a beep and leave a message and what would happen next, as if nobody had ever done this before.
Finally the beep came and Stein yelled loudly into the phone so that his voice would resonate through her home and that if she and Angie had not yet left he could head them off. But no one picked up. There was no screech of electronic feedback that came when someone tried to talk with the recording still going. He would have welcomed the sound like the sweetest chorale. But the waiting was in vain. He had to move. “Call me if you hear this. I’m going to look for you at the restaurant.”
He dashed out of the house, with the revitalized Watson at his heels. He opened the driver’s side door and Watson vaulted in, skittered across the seats and found his rickety equilibrium. It was just like the old days. Zooming down the highway with Watson’s face stuck outside the window Except that Watson’s fur was gray and the VW bus was history and he wished he had listened to Angie and gotten a cell phone.
He sped through a red light at the corner of La Brea, and cut wildly between cars driving west on Beverly. He would have been frightened of himself if he had seen the expression on his face. It was not until he reached the intersection at La Cienega, where he had to decide whether to go straight or take the left turn arrow, that rational thought penetrated into the control center of his brain. He had no idea where The Ivy was.
He pulled over into a pod mall and looked for a public phone. He called 411 and got the bad news that there were two The Ivys; one in town, one at the beach. He got no help at all from the hostess who answered the phone at the city location. He could picture her perfectly from her voice. Tall, classy looking. Mid maybe late twenties. Suntan. Something slightly wolfen in her gray predatory eyes. She would neither confirm nor deny that a reservation had been made under the name Michael Esposito. Privacy issues, she explained, to protect their high-profile clientele from unwanted attention. “What about protecting a murderer,” Stein blurted, “Does that fit into your privacy issues?” He heard the word whacko either directed to him or about him and then the connection ended.
He took a deep Buddhist breath before calling The Ivy at the beach. Smooth as an oil slick, Stein gave his name and apologized that he was running late for his lunch with Michael Esposito, and could she please page him, or if he had not yet arrived, to deliver the message as soon as he did. Apparently Stein had not been the first person to try that ploy, for it was easily deflected. He did at least manage to get the restaurants’ addresses.
He hit the joint in town first. He expected something large and mirrored like the Krasnapolsky. He was surprised at the white picket fence and the open patio and country cottage look of the place. The eight-dollar valet parking was more what he expected. He gave the valet five to hold it and said he be back in a second. Leaving Watson to guard the car, he sailed past the maitre d’ into the dining room. He ignored an anxious progression of, “Sir, excuse me sir, can I help you?” and scanned the hoi polloi of Hollywood elite, lunching on their thirty dollar spaghetti bowls, forty dollar salads and fifty dollar glasses of port wine.
There was no sign of Angie or Lila, and he was confident he’d made enough of a scene that they would have noticed him if they were there. He strode back through the gauntlet of the maitre d’s disapproving eyes, his expression announcing very clearly that Stein would never be seated on his watch. Stein reached into his pocket and pulled out the first bill his fingers found. A Goodpasture hundred. Nice. He had forgotten Goodpasture had wadded him with cash. He was also amused at the change of expression the host’s face underwent when he saw the money in Stein’s hand coming closer. So it gave him even more pleasure when he slipped the Ben Franklin right past his greedy face and instead pressed it into the parking dude’s hand. There wouldn’t be a lot more pleasure coming his way for a while.
He headed out toward the ocean and Ivy by the Sea. All along the way, workers on cherry pickers were putting new billboards in place, whose content was scrupulously covered except for the message “COMING SOON. ESPE NEW MILLENNIUM SHAMPOO.” It oppressed Stein’s heart to imagine Paul Vane as an accomplice to violence upon anyone, much less upon Nicholette Bradley, much less Lila. Much less Angie. What could Esposito possibly want with her? It didn’t hold together. The pieces of the mosaic still shifted when Stein tried to make a complete picture.
As he headed west he realized he was approaching the Espe warehouse. Somewhere in Lila’s excited rant she had mentioned that she was being brought there for pictures. He made an impulsive quick series of right turns and circled down around the rectum of Culver City to the artery that led to the gate. He stuck his card out the window at the electric eye. There was the sound of a faint electronic burp but the gate did not nod and rise. He tried again and got the same result. His access code must have been disabled, he thought. Of all times for a system to run efficiently.
A sixteen-wheeler chugged in behind Stein and air-horned him. Stein made a series of vague gestures meant to communicate something about his card and the gate. The driver jerked his thumb in a return gesture that left no ambiguity. Stein held his hands over his ears to muffle the throbbing diesel, and yelled up to the driver. “I need to follow you in.” He waited a moment until he had gotten what he thought was a nod of assent or at least recognition, then got back into his car and backed off the road into the weedy, rutted debris strewn apron that bordered the entry.
The truck’s gears ground, the air brakes hissed, the barrier gate rose and the leviathan truck squeezed through the narrow opening with inches to spare on either side. Stein was impressed with the driver’s skill. He revved his tinny sounding engine and attempted to ride in after him. The robotic arm came moments after the caboose of the truck had cleared, and Stein was shut out again. He tooted his horn to get the driver’s attention, but it made no noticeable impression. He had never realized how similar his horn sounded to a detesticled kazoo.
He abandoned his car and marched past the gate following the truck as it lumbered up to the shipping dock. It found its place in a mandala of other trucks that were already parked, their tail gates open wide, filling their holds with an endless supply of cartons being disgorged from the warehouse. They resembled maggots suckling at a termite queen. Stein was intercepted halfway across the yard by a woman wearing a hardhat and carrying a clipboard stuffed with shipping records. She informed him he had to vacate the premises.
“I’m not trespassing. I used to work here.”
Her long, white lab coat was splayed open to reveal a tank top and jeans when she waved her arms at him in the international gesture that meant go no further. He tried to show her his non-functioning card.
“I’m not looking at anything. And I wish you’d do the same.”
He had to smile to himself. Morty had described her well. The avodado breasts, the twin eggplant buttocks. Her voice as creamy as sweet ranch dressing. “You’re Delores.”
“Yes?” She regarded him warily.
“I need to see the boss. Is Mister Esposito in?”
“I wouldn’t know any of that. I work supply.”
“It’s very important. Could you please open the gate so I can drive around to the executive side?”
“How do you know my name?”
“A friend of mine did a favor for you.”
“Is that right.”
“Yes, Delores, that’s right.” He felt himself getting stronger. “And neither he nor I have any interest in implicating you in certain disappearances. That’s all been put to rest.”
She took him a step aside into the shadows. “Are you talking about who I think?”
“I don’t have time to dance.” He raised his hand a foot above his head to Morty Greene’s height.
“Shit. You the police?”
“Much worse.”
She became fiercely defensive. “I just brought him around the side like someone told me a coupla times. But I’m not down for killing shit!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know how you people work. You think everyone he ever talked to had something to do with it.”
“With what? Had something to do with what?”
“You telling me you don’t know?”
“Look at this fifty year old Jewish face. Does it look like it knows anything?”
She gave him a slow steady scan and agreed with his assessment. “It looks like Morty Greene comes by his name ‘The Mortician’ legitimately. He got taken in for killing that girl.”
“Killing what girl?”
Delores nodded toward the warehouse where at that moment a thirty-by-fifty foot billboard was being carried out proclaiming the arrival of Espe New Millennium shampoo. “That one,” she said.
The billboard had not yet been covered. The girl on the bottle and the package was not Alex, as it had been in the prototype. No.
The Espe New Millennium girl was Nicholette.
Bradley. He took a moment to wonder how every thing he was sure of was wrong. And for how long that had been true.
EIGHTEEN
Stein careened into the Malibu substation and parked in the restricted spot right behind Chief Bayliss’s Cutlass Sierra. He left the windows cracked open for Watson and hurried inside. Every police station Stein had ever been inside of-and during his activist days he had been inside quite a few-reeked of the same musty stench of arrogance and petty abuse of power that dispirits everything it touches.
It wasn’t the tear gas and truncheons that cops used to break up anti-war demonstrations that turned Stein into an activist. It wasn’t for any bleeding heart liberal outrage at their excessive violence against violent criminals. They had a dangerous job. Some of them snap. Ok, so do timing belts on Mercedes. It happens. What ultimately galvanized Stein against them was their attitude toward ordinary citizens. How they made people feel like criminals. How they made inefficiency the rule, taking the greatest number of steps possible to perform the simplest request. As if before they could make a phone call for you they had to first invent electricity.
The desk sergeant was typing a report on a stolen car. After each keystroke that he thumped in with a heavy index finger, he picked up the Driver’s License, changed glasses, found the next number, changed glasses, typed it, changed glasses and fumbled to pick up the license for the next letter. All the time ignoring Stein, who stood eighteen inches from him and made several futile efforts to impose himself in the sergeant’s line of sight. The name under the ON DUTY sign said Sgt. O’Bladovich.
“Sergeant O’Bladovich. I need to see Chief Bayliss.”
“O’Bladovich got transferred downtown.”
He continued his ritual, typing another letter, undoing it and correcting it. That was it. Stein strode past his post, barged through the door clearly indicated FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY into a vestibule outside the private office of Stein’s longtime foil and adversary, Deputy Interim Precinct Commander Jack Bayliss.
Bayliss’ career in law enforcement began as a seventh grade gym teacher. He had a tight, compact body, piercing gray eyes and a well-earned reputation for the liberal use of l
anyard on ass cheek. When Bayliss’s uncle, a local hack politician and part owner of a roofing business, got himself elected to the local Civilian Police Review Board, he fast-tracked his ambitious nephew out of the gym and into the penal system. In the wake of the corruption scandal in the mid-90s that involved too many high ranking cops and too many hookers in hot tubs up in Arcadian Fields, Bayliss’s appointment to the job of assistant chief was LA politics at its purist. His uncle, by then sitting on the city council, made him a compromise choice over two men and a woman who were far more qualified than he, which is to say qualified at all.
There was a three-seat wooden bench outside the chief’s private office. Morty Greene was sitting on that bench, his left wrist in a metal cuff.
“Oh Jesus,” Stein sighed. “What the hell is going on?”
“Well look who’s here,” said Edna Greene. She was sitting beside her boy almost entirely eclipsed at first by his frame. “Mister no suggestion of wrongdoing.” Stein felt the sting of her rebuke for trusting him.
“Edna, I’m here to fix this.”
“It’s Mrs. Greene to you.”
Stein pushed open the door to Bayliss’s private office and marched in.
“Coach. What the fuck?”
Bayliss glared up at his long-time adversary. Over the years, by design or coincidence, Bayliss had been the victim of Stein’s most celebrated pranks. His original “Victory Garden” had been grown behind the parking lot of Bayliss’s first precinct; the “Pot in every Chicken” happening was staged at his promotion dinner.
“You don’t ‘what the fuck’ me, Howard. I ‘what the fuck’ you!”
The door was ajar and Edna clapped her hands in ironic appreciation of the performance. “Look at the two white boys arguing with each other. Oh, yes. I’m convinced.”
Bayliss kicked the door shut. “Don’t call me Coach. I will have you in a cell ‘till you’re ninety.” Bayliss was short and cold as the month of February. He prided himself on remembering the full first name of everyone he had ever arrested. Stein wisely withheld correcting him until he had gotten what he had come for.