THIRTEEN 2 page

“You’d see I’m a man of my word.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

It was deliciously tempting. He again tried to return the check. Again Goodpasture refused.

“When I’m old I’ll be able to tell my grandkids that Harry Stein is walking around with an uncashed check of mine.”

“I’m sure they’ll be impressed. You better take this, too.” Stein handed the bud back to him through the driver’s side window, still in its plastic seal.

“You didn’t open it?”

The next motion happened more quickly than the eye could register. Goodpasture tore open the plastic seal and brought the bud up under Stein’s nose. “Tell me what you smell,” he exhorted. “Tell me its life story.”

It was reflex. Stein inhaled deeply and the genetic secrets of Goodpasture’s orchid manifested to him. “Humboldt Super Skunk on the maternal side. Crossed with Shiva Shanti. Grown in a hydroponic mixture of nitrates and organic phosphorus.”

“I grew them from heirloom seeds of your Heavenly Hillary,” Goodpasture exulted. “Then cloned them. These are your grandchildren!” He pushed the bud back into Stein’s hand and hit the accelerator.

Stein ran a few steps after him in pursuit. “What am I going to do with this?”

“You’ll think of something,” Goodpasture sang back. As if they had been friends for years. As if he knew they were already partners. “Happy Birthday.”

FOUR

Naturally, Morty Greene lived way the hell on the other side of town, in Silverlake. There must be a rule that wherever you are in Los Angeles you’re always as far away as possible from the next place you have to be.

He resented freeways and had a low opinion of people who used them. It was like wearing a suit or following a recipe. It existed before you existed. You did nothing but blindly follow a predetermined path. He liked to imagine he was letting the winds take him. He drove east on Pico, past the still unreclaimed buildings that were burned out during the ‘93 riots, their orange and black steel torsos looking like a junkie’s bad teeth. He turned north on La Cienega, underneath the freeway overpass that came down in the ‘94 earthquake, then east again through Koreatown where another huge sinkhole had caved in under a street where they were trying to dig a tunnel for a subway.

Only in Los Angeles would it seem like a good idea to send electrically powered trains carrying thousands of people through tunnels spanning earthquake faults that were marbled with pockets of flammable methane. It’s Pompeii, Stein thought. Years from now, school kids will gawk at the site where the “City of Angels” once had been and they’ll ask their teachers, Why did they stay? Didn’t they have enough warning? Were they just stupid?

Stopped at a light on Beverly, a black and white LAPD cruiser pulled up alongside him. Stein took a casual glance at the typical pairing of rookie and vet. The kid looked about twelve. Crewcut, square jaw. Avaricious chin. His partner was thirty years older and had grown out of all those youthful vices. A whiff from his right side made him suddenly hyper aware of the bag containing Goodpasture’s orchid that sat out in plain view on the seat alongside him. His heartbeat accelerated. Very subtly and looking everywhere but at the cops, Stein shifted position and brushed the bag off the seat onto the floor. He knew that rolling up his window or too obviously avoiding eye contact with them would register as a red flag and arouse suspicion. Cop wisdom was that the only people who tried to hide something were people with something to hide. So he ventured a normal citizen’s half‑nod over his left shoulder to acknowledge them. By this time, the light had changed and they drove away without giving him a glance. Following the flood of relief was the outrage that they had perceived him as so undangerous. Didn’t they know who he used to be? He had the urge to buzz up alongside them wave the bag of weed, say, “Look what you missed!” and then disappear into thin air before they could catch him.

He followed Beverly to Temple then hooked onto Silverlake Boulevard. He liked this Silverlake. It was one of the few little enclaves where people still lived un‑self‑conscious off‑camera lives. Mexican car repair shops coexisted alongside Italian family restaurants and neo‑grunge gay and lesbian bookstores. Tucked into the hills near downtown, it was well past the invisible line of demarcation, east of which no women of Brentwood dared venture, so there was some hope of its staying uncorrupted.

2992 Linda Vista Place was a Mediterranean style two‑story apartment on a winding, hilly street. Stein parked facing uphill and turned his wheels out from the curb; then turned them the other way. He knew that one of them was right, and briefly pondered whether it was of greater virtue to be partially uninformed or completely. The building had an outdoor staircase. Morty Greene’s apartment was on the second floor and Stein was panting three steps up. Head down, he plunged onward and did not notice until he was nearly on top of her that a handsome black woman was sitting on the second landing observing his approach. A mop and a bucket rested on the step alongside her. Stein became suddenly aware of the footprints he had tracked on the staircase.

“I’m sorry. Did I just‑?”

“Nothing stays clean forever,” she said.

“True, but forever sometimes gets to last longer than a second.”

“Is there some way I can help you?”

“I’m looking for a Morty Greene. Is this where he lives, do you know?”

The woman looked at Stein without answering. He checked the address again. “Morty Greene? Do you know him?”

“Does anyone truly know another person?” She had a clear, strong voice, and Stein enjoyed being engaged in disputation. So many people these days just told you to fuck off. He amended his question.

“Do you know him well enough to tell me whether he’s at home?” Stein asked.

“Does he know you well enough? That’s the question.”

“You’re too good at this.” Stein resumed his ascent toward the second landing, mindful of where he stepped. The woman rose to her feet using her mop handle as a cane, effectively blocking his way

“He’s not up there,” she said.

Stein saw now that she was a good deal older than he had first thought. He was impressed with her loyalty, imagined she had worked for Morty Greene’s liberal Jewish mother through all of Morty’s schoolboy years and now had been passed down to him. “Are you protecting Mr. Greene or your clean floor?” Stein asked. If he sounded a bit impatient it was not with her so much as this whole Mattingly enterprise that he wanted to be done.

“I might be protecting you.” She led his eyes toward an immense pair of boots that leaned against a Ford flatbed pickup truck parked below them in the driveway.

“You’re not telling me somebody wears those things?”

“Takes a big man to fill big shoes.”

Stein got the picture and had to laugh. “If you knew me, you’d understand how absurd it is you would think I was the man.” He showed her the yellow Bill of Lading. “I just have to ask him if this is his signature. Believe me, there’s no suggestion of crime.”

She never took her level gaze from him. “When a white man comes to a black man’s home with a typed piece of paper, there’s always the suggestion of crime.”

Stein cocked his head at the new piece of information. “Did you say a black man’s home?”

She mirrored his gesture. “Did you not say you were looking for Morty Greene?”

“Morty Greene is a black man?”

“Oh, my!” Her demeanor relaxed and you could see how she’d be with her grandchildren. “I hope this is your first day out of detective school. Because you may want to choose an occupation where you have a greater natural aptitude.”

“Now wait a minute. The name Morty Greene. Does that not sound like a middle aged Jew?”

“Do you have a problem with the name I’ve given my son?”

“Morty Greene is your son?”

She looked at him the way only a black woman can look at a white man while wondering how they have managed to rule the world. “Why the hell else would I be cleaning his apartment?”

Stein turned around, walked down a step and turned back. “Can we start over, Mrs. Greene? My name is Harry Stein. Forgive the intrusion. Is your son at home?”

Her life expanded in front of her in one long exhalation. “Is my son in trouble, Mister Stein?”

“I really don’t think so, Mrs. Greene.

“You may call me Edna.”

He bowed slightly.

“Children make us strangers to our own lives,” she said.

“I know. I used to have one. Then she turned into a teenage girl.”

He sensed her accept him as a kindred spirit. “You want to find Morty, he’ll be at the Santa Anita race track. He’ll be down by the finish line. You can’t miss him.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, most people wouldn’t.”

He started down the stairs.

“Incidentally, the name I gave him wasn’t Morty. It was Duluth.”

He stopped and looked back up at her. “See now, Duluth I would have guessed was a black man.”

“Then I predict you’ll go far in your trade.”

Before he went he had to ask. “How do you get the nickname Morty from Duluth?”

“You don’t. It’s short for what everyone calls him.”

“Which is what?”

“The Mortician,” she said, with exactly the right mixture of irony, warning and resignation.

The horses were coming onto the track for the second race as Stein drove into the vast parking lot of the Santa Anita racetrack. He’d have to do this fast. Park. Find Morty. Verify his signature. Drive the twenty‑five miles back to the West Side to pick Angie up at school by three‑thirty.

Santa Anita was a beautiful place to lose money. Nestled in the valley a few miles east of Pasadena, it had for its backdrop the San Gabriel Mountains. This time of year the snow level was down to five thousand feet and an ermine mantle of white crested the shoulders of Mount Wilson and its lesser peaks. Flocks of seagulls circled the parking lot and settled on the roof of the 1930’s era grandstand. Stein found this curious. What were seagulls doing miles from the ocean. But as he watched the throng of players hurrying to get their bets down‑men with bellies waddling at heart attack pace, women carrying bridge chairs, Mexican families with chains of kids, UPS guys on lunch break‑he understood. They smelled fish.

A big, cheery voice with a Brooklyn accent boomed out as Stein approached the turnstile. “Mister Stein. Tell me that’s not you.” Stein didn’t have to look to know that voice. Woody Avariccio was the purveyor of the tout sheet called “Woody’s Winners.” Woody had the face of an artichoke, and when he smiled it was like an artichoke smiling.

“Long fuckin’ time no fuckin’ see, Mister Stein. You find some alternate source of income?”

“I wanted to leave some for the other guys. How are you, Elwood?”

“Every day in every way younger and wiser. You come out to celebrate your birthday?”

“How the hell do you remember my birthday?”

“Am I just another pretty face or do I know numbers?”

Three Japanese businessmen in identical business suits approached Woody’s stand. One of them handed Woody a hundred‑dollar bill for a sheet. Woody made change from a huge roll in his pocket. Then the second tourist did the same, and the third. Woody changed all three hundreds without flinching.

“People actually buy these things?”

Woody moved Stein half a step over where they could speak privately. “If you’ve come here to enhance your investment portfolio, I have some information I know you’ll find profitable.”

“Just for me and your five thousand closest friends?”

“Don’t hurt my feelings.” He jabbed his index finger at the program. “This one’s private. You wanna go home a happy man, you bet your hotdog money on the seven horse.”

Stein glanced down at the program. “Dario’s Dancer? Are you kidding? This guy hasn’t won since radio.”

“That’s why he’s 38‑1.”

“And will no doubt run like it.”

“So the uninformed might think.”

“I’m actually more looking for a biped, today. A two‑legger name of Morty Greene. Any help there?”

Woody’s expression turned serious. “Morty Greene is not your type of work, Mister Stein.”

“Really. And you say this because‑?”

“If that’s your level of questioning, it should indicate that you have not handicapped this event sufficiently. And you remember what we call people who chase sucker bets.”

“Is he here today, Wood?”

“Let me give you a two‑part exacta. One: bet the seven horse. Two: stay away from Morty Greene.”

Stein strode through the grandstand lobby toward the finish line where Edna Greene had suggested Morty would be sitting. He happened to glance up at the TV screen at the coincident moment that the horse being led to the gate was the seven horse, Dario’s Dancer. His odds had jumped up to 43‑1, the longest shot on the board. Stein didn’t believe in omens, exactly, although one thing was sure and that was that the universe worked in mysterious ways. Stein thought, not really seriously, about Goodpasture’s check in his shirt pocket. He tried to multiply twenty thousand by forty‑three‑to‑one odds but got lost in the zeros.

A year ago, in one of the very few interesting assignments he had gotten through Lassiter and Frank, they had been engaged by the Racing Association to crack a cyberspace betting scheme where a ring of Cal Tech math majors had hacked into the pari‑mutuel system and were printing out bogus winning tickets after the races had been run. Stein’s instinct was that they were not racing fans and were getting the results online. He concocted a plan of posting fake results on the web page they were using as reference. When they came in to cash what they thought were winning tickets the stewards were waiting for them. A grateful management established a line of credit for Stein.

An invisible umbilical cord seemed to be drawing him toward the Large Transaction window. The teller was a blonde in her forties whose nametag said “Brenda.” Stein smiled at her affably. “Just for curiosity’s sake, I once had a house account here. I wonder if it’s still open.”

“Of course, Mister Stein.”

“You know me?”

“I’m Wanda.” She said it like she expected him to remember.

“Why does your badge say Brenda?”

“Don’t ask.” A pleasant chime sounded. Brenda or Wanda touched his sleeve with a long false nail. “They’re at the post, Mister Stein. Did you wish to place a wager?”

Two films ran side‑by‑side on the inner eyelids of Stein’s mental Cineplex. In WHAT IF IT WINS? bales of thousand dollar bills fall on him from above. He buys a real house, Angie grows up problem‑free, the sixties return, and Stein, at long last, finds true love. In WHAT IF IT LOSES? Stein watches in shame and horror as a team of burly moving men load Angie’s furniture out of his apartment and she turns to him with a look that will define him for the rest of his life that says, “ I always hoped Mom was wrong about you.”

He snapped back into sanity. “No bet. I just came by to say hello.”

“I still have the same phone number.”

An instant later, the buzzer sounded locking down the betting windows and releasing the starting gate. Twelve superbly conditioned thoroughbred athletes exploded from the gate in a perfect line. Actually, eleven exploded forward. The twelfth stumbled badly and was only saved from a terrible spill by a heads‑up move by its jockey. But he was left eight lengths behind the rest of the field before he had run a step. It was the seven horse. Dario’s Dancer. Stein thanked the universe for bestowing the wisdom upon him to resist temptation. He resumed his search for Morty Greene.

As the horses strung out along the back stretch, people all around him were standing on benches, exhorting their horses in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese. Unburdened by a stake in the outcome, Stein passed through these magnetic fields as unaffected as a neutron sailing through the Van Allen Radiation belt. His radar was locked in on the large, rectangular object the size of a drive‑in movie screen that he intuitively knew was Morty Greene’s back.

The pitch and timbre of the track announcer’s voice rose chromatically at each furlong. As the leaders came out of the far turn into the stretch, he was hitting C‑sharp. “Missed The Boat is holding on gamely. Then comes Couldawouldashoulda. Smart Move is third. But from the back of the pack here comes Dario’s Dancer. Charging like an express train. They’re stride for stride in the last eighty yards. Missed The Boat. Dario’s Dancer. Missed The Boat, Dario’s Dancer. At the wire… it’s too close to call.”

Oblivious to the excitement of the photo finish, Stein tapped the back shoulder of the drive‑in movie screen in front of him and asked pleasantly if he might be Morty Greene. The gentleman whose shoulder had been tapped rose slowly but continuously from his seat. He was sharply dressed in a tan sports jacket and slacks, hand‑painted silk tie, and shoes that wouldn’t have left much unused alligator. As he turned around, Stein could see Edna Greene’s strength clearly displayed in his eyes. Her other qualities of wisdom and understanding, if present in her son, were far better concealed. Stein greeted him with his charming non‑combative smile. He felt a cell memory of the old rhythm returning. It was good to be back in the game.

“How’re you doing? My name is Harry Stein.”

“I know who you are,” Morty Greene said.

“You do?” Then he noted the cell phone on the seat alongside. “Ah. She told you I was coming.” His voice sounded rueful.

“Of course she told me. She’s my mother. You Jewish boys expect everyone’s mother to love you the best.”

“Anyway, then you know why I’m here.” Stein unfolded the yellow copy of the shipping invoice that Mattingly had provided. Another voice interposed before Stein could ask his first question.

“What are you pushing paper at my man? Are you out of your fucking mind?” The source of the second voice stood up. But not very far; He came to the middle of Morty Greene’s chest. Standing next to each other they looked like a bar graph depicting the US/Japanese trade deficit. The shorter man had on a blue sports jacket over a tight‑fitting silk shirt. His skin was black and smooth, and he had a large bubbling yellow scar on his left cheek that looked like a tomato grub crawling toward his eye.

“This will take all of one second. I just need you to look at this signature and tell me if it’s yours. One word, yes/no, and I’m gone.”

Morty’s full attention was at the giant screen tote board, where the finish of the race was being replayed, and the words PHOTO FINISH flashing repeatedly. “Nope,” Morty said.

“No, it’s not your signature?” Stein’s heart began to race. Had his name been forged? Was there really something going on with these shampoo bottles?

“No, I’m not doing company business on my day off.”

“This isn’t corporate. It’s just you and me.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear my man over the crowd noise.” The smaller man pressed up very close to Stein’s ear. He did so by pulling on Stein’s arm with such sudden and considerable force that the rest of Stein’s body followed in close proximity. “My friend said no.”

“I get that it’s his day off. I could authorize the company’s paying him right now for an hour’s overtime.”

A roar went up from the crowd as the result of the photo was posted up on the board.

“There’s my overtime,” Morty said. He pounded his fist into his open palm. The gesture carried the weight of a falling oak. “Damn if that artichoke‑face muthafucker didn’t have it. Five hundred. Right on his nose!”

Stein looked with disbelief at the tote board. “A friend of mine told me to bet that horse.” Stein lamented.

“You should listen to the good advice of your friends,” the short man observed. He and Morty high and low fived at their good fortune.

“Morty! You just hit a fifty‑to‑one shot. Are you really not going to tell me whether you signed this?”

“Forty‑five to‑one. And yeah. I’m not gonna tell you if I signed it.”

The overhead sun drove Stein’s shadow straight down into the yielding asphalt as he made the long walk back through the parking lot to his car. He berated himself at every step. He had blundered up to Morty Greene without a strategy, without giving himself a way to win. Woody was right. There was a word for people like him. The word was. He had gained nothing, learned nothing, accomplished nothing. It was right that he should have to go back to counting shampoo bottles. That was his level. A man at the top of his game would have gotten what he came here to get.

He leaned for a moment against the polished green hood of a Mercedes Benz. He was startled by the sudden appearance of a man right in front of him, and instinctively catalogued his opponent’s weaknesses: What he saw was a man in middle age, looking paunchy and soft, glib but without the bite to back up the bark, speckles of gray in his hair, soft conciliatory body, a man who could be taken. This all registered in a moment, before he realized that he was looking at his own reflection. A mechanized voice ordered him to take three steps back, which he did, and walked rapidly away.

Stein had forgotten where he had parked his car and scoured Aisle D for twenty minutes before he found it in Aisle E. He opened his door and was practically driven to his knees by the rush of aroma that cascaded out. Goodpasture’s bud must have come out of its plastic bag when Stein had swept it under the seat, and the sun beating down on the roof for the last hour had turned the car into an oven. Passersby in the next row craned their heads in search of the source. A young boy asked his parents in a loud voice what that smell was. They pretended not to know, but his fifteen‑year‑old brother looked back at Stein and flashed him the peace sign.

It would mean an extra hour and twenty extra miles, but he had to go home first to air out the car and his clothing. He could not go to Angie’s school with the car smelling like this. He could just picture himself getting yanked out of the seat by Sergeant Henley, the 300‑pound parking enforcement officer who stood guard at the gate of The Academy, and being dragged by the scruff of the neck to the principal’s office.

Weeks later, when he would relate this story and people asked him why didn’t he just throw the bud away, he had no better answer than to say he couldn’t. It was too beautiful.

Penelope Kim, Stein’s tall, slender, twenty‑year‑old Korean bisexual neighbor, was in the courtyard wearing her blue Spandex yoga togs, bent into her downward‑facing dog when Stein arrived home and tried to hurry past her to his apartment.

“Stein!” She called through her legs. “I’ve been looking for you. I have to pick your brain.”

She sprang from her pose and bounded at his heels like a Doberman puppy. Penelope had been an Olympic diving champion at fifteen, and a Paris high‑fashion model at sixteen, where under the name “Cambodia” she had posed nude for the famous calendar featuring old and new farm equipment. She had climbed K‑2 and had her fortune told by the Dalai Lama. She had been declared clinically dead on two separate occasions, slept with the male and female costars of three major motion pictures and their sequels; and since all that was merely her life, the exotic protagonist of the screenplay she was writing was a middle‑aged Jewish insurance investigator, who in her script she called Klein.

“So did you write your five pages today?” Stein asked her.

“No, today’s been a thinking day.”

“You write and think on different days?”

“They’re separate functions. I can’t explain it. I need to find out more about what you did at the factory,” Penelope said as she followed Stein into his apartment.

“It’s a warehouse.”

“I changed it to a factory. It’s more visual. I can’t explain it.” Watson was asleep in a shaft of sunlight on the living‑room rug. He raised an eyelid, grumbled, and went back to sleep. “Maybe I’ll give Klein an old dog. Make the audience worry that he’ll die.”

“Klein or the dog?”

She giggled. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She grabbed a ballpoint off his desk and scribbled shorthand notes across the taut pliable skin of her forearm. “Stein, this place looks like a garage sale. Your feng shui is all for shit. I’m going to get my friend Fiona to do a complete energy rebalancing for you.” Stein looked distractedly from the hand‑grouted coffee table to the overstuffed sofa to the fifties pole lamp. “I hate it when you ignore me,” Penelope pouted. “I’m too much of a narcissist to take the rejection.”

“I’m looking for a place to hide this.” He displayed the contents of the plastic wrapping that he had resealed.

“Stein, that’s marijuana!”

“I’m aware of that. And now, so is everyone else in the zip code.” He explored and rejected several hiding places‑under the base of the pole lamp, in the pinball machine, his file cabinet‑ while giving her an offhand synopsis of the morning’s activities.

She looked at him with reverence. “Stein, you pretend to live this boring normal life, but you’re out making dope deals, betting horses. Reality so kicks fiction’s ass.”

“Ah!”

He strode triumphantly to the hall closet and tucked the packet in among the helter‑skelter shelves of blankets and bed linens.

“No good,” said Penelope. “Not enough ventilation. It’ll stink up the house.”

“It won’t stink up the house.”

“I vote for the file cabinet.”

“It’s not a referendum.” Her chin and her eyes dropped. “I’m sorry. Penelope, I didn’t mean to snap at you.” As a penance he admitted, “I can’t hide it in my file cabinet. She snoops there.”

The phone rang. Stein let the machine pick up.

“I can’t believe you still use a landline. Even Klein has a pager.”

“You’d give Van Gogh a spray can.”

Mattingly’s voice came over the machine in a panic. Morty Greene had called in and quit his job. This was enough proof for Mattingly that the bottles had been stolen and he was going to swear out a warrant for Morty’s arrest. Stein grabbed the receiver, shouting “Do not!” He didn’t know why he would so adamantly defend Morty Greene. It probably had something to do with Edna and that whatever Mattingly thought was right, Stein wanted to be wrong.

Mattingly whispered into the phone. “Something new has come up.”

“Do not swear out any warrants. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

Penelope had unzipped her legging and was curled into the shape of Infinity writing rapidly down the inside of her left calf. “Stein you are so amazing. You flushed him out! How are you going to bust him?”

“Flushed who out? What are you talking about?”

“Morty Greene?”

“You sure you don’t want to change his name to something more visual?”

“Don’t condescend to me. I’m vulnerable.”

“Then don’t jump from one random thought to another and think it’s logic.”

She watched him resume his search for a proper hiding place.

“Do you know if the bottles have the Espe New Millennium logo embossed on them?” Penelope asked.

“What difference could that possibly make?”

“I know people who were paying three dollars apiece for the old New Radiance bottles. New Millennium’s would be worth a fortune.”

“Ah!” Stein dropped so abruptly to his knees that Penelope might have thought her insight had given him a stroke. He grasped the bottom shelf of the wall unit that housed his stereo equipment‑his turntable, cassette tapes, and two hundred albums. “Give me a hand with this.”

“I can’t believe you still have vinyl,” she giggled. “The last living owner of a turntable.”

She grasped the sides of the unit, bent her body like a willow, and tugged mightily. The unit creaked toward her, away from the wall. Stein slithered into the space, reached down through the twistings of speaker wire and puffs of Jurassic dust motes. His hand found the mesh door of the unused air‑conditioning duct. He opened the gate and reached in. His fingers rooted blindly in the space. He touched something cold and smooth and leaped back, pulling his hand out.

“What!” Penelope screamed.

“It felt like a termite queen.”

“You can’t have termites in a metal air duct. Let me in there.”

She changed places with him, pulled her long black hair back and pushed her lithe, slender body into the narrow space.

“It’s like up and behind,” Stein guided her.

“I have it. It’s not a termite queen.”

Penelope withdrew a crumpled cellophane bag. Inside that was another sandwich bag, and inside that a ball of silver foil, and inside that a green, seedy, nickel bag of high‑school weed.

“Then I think we can presume your daughter knows about this hiding place,” Penelope smiled.