THIRTEEN 6 page

“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.”

“Only the stopper can do that. Not the stopee.”

Stein’s mind whirled. If Goodpasture had stopped the check it would mean that Schwimmer had spoken to him, prevailed his negative view upon him. But on the positive side it would mean that Goodpasture was intact. “I need to know who stopped the payment, Ben, and the exact time.”

“I can’t access that information.”

“Golly, Ben I’d hate to tell your manager that you’ve been diverting bank funds to the race track.”

“I’ve done no such thing!”

“And I’m sure after the long internal investigation they’ll come to that same conclusion and you’ll get your job back,” Stein said with straight‑faced cheer.

Ben looked to see where the branch manager was. “This machine is very temperamental,” he whispered. “If you ask for the wrong information it gets very protective.” He zapped his mouse around the pad. Screens of numbers appeared. Then there was a loud electronic pop and a blip and all the figures swam away. “You see?”

“All right. Just…” Stein gestured impatiently, which meant fix this. Get these numbers back.

Ben shook his head indicating a more serious realm of difficulty. “I need my manager to reboot.”

Stein realized what a mistake it had been last night brandishing Goodpasture’s check at Alton Schwimmer. Was he ever going to learn anything? He left Ben at the bank, went outside and found a pay phone that worked and called the hotel, where three hours earlier he had delivered his surly passenger. But despite giving the desk clerk and then her supervisor four possible alternate spellings, they could find nobody registered there under the name of Dr. Alton Schwimmer.

NINE

In the pictorial dictionary of rock and roll there’s a drawing to illustrate the word ROADIE: open vest, shaggy blond Buffalo Bill hair, droopy moustache, shoulders slumped from hauling amps, personality of an onion soaked in tobacco juice and Drano. The real‑life model for that illustration was Stein’s long time pal and co‑conspirator, Winston Frenneau. High in the mountains in Katmandu in the early seventies and high in a mescaline haze, Winston had allowed some girl to stick a pair of earring studs into his lobes. It turned out they were loaded with mercury. When he got back to civilization the bottom half of both of his ears had to be amputated below the pinna.

Stein had hung out with him for the full month that his head was wrapped in bloody bandages. And since the name Winston sounded so much like Vincent, and he had lost both his ears, Stein thought that pluralizing the name Van Gogh and calling him Winston Van Goze was pretty damn witty. Most of life’s ironies are horribly cruel, but on rare occasions sweet fruit grows out of bad soil and Winston’s story was one of them. After the operation on his ears, once the gauze and dressings were removed, those little stubs on the side of his head could differentiate variations of pitch on a guitar string to a hundredth of a VPS. Where he had not given that much of a shit about music before, he turned his gift into an avocation and then a most lucrative way of life. Every serious acoustic player wanted one man to tune his strings and that man was Winston Frenneau.

McKarus’s Folk Emporium was the last surviving acoustic club from back in the day. The Long Timers called it “McFolks.” Martini bars and chic clothing stores were lately popping up on all sides as another neighborhood gentrified. With rents going into the stratosphere, McKarus’s future was tenuous.

It was just past noon when Stein got there. The box office hadn’t opened yet. Posters were up advertising the group that was coming in tonight, The Ravens Family Four. These were five generations of Appalachian fiddle players, ranging from Grandpa Cyrus, who was somewhere between ninety‑four and the age of rocks, down to three‑year‑old Baby Raven, who (as the story goes) pulled her daddy’s guitar down off the kitchen table at the age of eleven months and hammer‑picked “Shady Grove” in E‑flat.

Stein knocked a few times and hallooed but got no answer. He tried the front door, which to his pleasant surprise was unlocked. It was dark inside. The vestibule contained the box office and a display of tapes and CD’s. Its musty walls were covered with posters for shows, some dating back twenty years. Unoccupied. Stein continued down the narrow corridor that led to the stage. The interior walls were lined with hundreds of guitars, mandolins and banjos; an acoustic cathedral. Once his eyes acclimated to the dark, he saw Winston sitting on the stage, his back to the door, his hair down to his shoulders, stringing Baby Raven’s fiddle.

From twenty feet away, Stein rumbled in the stylized gravelly voice that they used to use with each other. “Van Goze.”

Winston didn’t look up from the fret he was filing and answered back, “I can hear you man. You don’t have to yell.” He turned around to face the interruption, affecting an aura of casual annoyance. “Shit, that couldn’t be who I think it is. I heard he was dead.”

“Reports of his demise have been exaggerated,” Stein said as he climbed up the three steps to the stage. Winston appraised his flaccid body. “Not by much, I can see. What the hell happened to you?”

“Fame. Fortune. The love and admiration of my fellow man.”

Winston took the long drag of his Marlboro and blew out a voluminous cloud that made its way across the room in shafts of brilliant stage light to engulf Stein.

“They let you smoke in here?”

“They let me do whatever the fuck I please.”

Winston tightened the string just so, touched it with his index finger and laid his ear across its sound plane.

“You think you could put the thing down and say hello?”

Winston adjusted the string, touched it again and held it to his ear. Stein got the message and wheeled around to leave. “Swell. Nice seeing you, too.”

“Don’t be a putz. Have a carrot juice.” Winston grabbed a half‑pint bottle out of the ice chest and lobbed it underhand across the twenty‑foot stage. Stein caught it in one hand. “Sounds like a slogan for the Carrot Advisory Board. Don’t Be A Putz. Have a Carrot Juice.”

Winston nodded without pleasure. “You got that slick ad‑man thing going pretty good.”

“Yeah that’s me. Mister Madison Avenue.” He twisted off the cap and took a swig of the juice. It was surprisingly cold and sweet. “This is great. Did you make it?”

“Why does everything you say sound like complete bullshit?”

“How about fuck you. Does that sound sincere?”

“Not bad.”

“Says the man who’s making the world safe for the Beverly Hillbillies.”

“It’s music. What are you doing?”

“Making a living. Just like you, Vincent.”

“Not even remotely just like me. And nobody I know calls me Vincent. Or Van Goze.” Winston put the guitar down, closed the ice chest, was about to say what had been on his mind for ten years but figured why bother, then said it anyway. “You sold the bus, Harry.”

“Only my ex‑wife calls me Harry.”

“How could you sell the fucking bus?”

“The bus? Are you talking about the 1969 VW‑”

“How many goddamn buses did you have?”

“Let me understand this. You’re pissed at me for an event that happened how long ago?”

“There’s no statute of limitations on suicide of the soul.”

“The bus was my soul?”

“The fact that you don’t understand is testament to its demise.”

“I drive my daughter to school. Ok? As if any of this is your business. It embarrassed her. So, I got rid of it.”

“It was an icon, man. You don’t sell an icon.”

“It leaked oil and poisoned the rose bushes.”

“You know who I fucked in that wagon?”

“Yeah. All my overflow.”

Winston crunched his empty juice bottle and tossed it into the can, laid his ear across the strings and played another note. “You meant something to people before you died. People bought into your shit. They like to think they can de‑pants the president.”

“Then people should.”

Winston plucked a string. It vibrated full and true and resonated with all the A‑strings of the instruments hanging on the walls. The room sang. “You hear that? A over middle C. Four‑forty every time. Once you have your note that’s your note.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“You changed your tuning, man. Now I don’t know who you are.

“You’re talking about strings, not people.”

“No difference.”

“I would have given you the goddamn wagon if I knew you wanted it.”

Winston still refused to make conciliatory eye contact. “I wouldn’t drive that weak piece of shit. You know that beast Arnold drives in the movies?”

“The Hum something?”

“Word is they’re coming out with them for civilians. That’s my ride.”

“Where do you hear this shit?”

“I hear things?”

“Speaking of hearing things.” Stein sensed there weren’t going to be many openings so he jumped in. “I came here for a reason.”

“You want something. Let me get over my shock?”

“Can we stop farting up each other’s assholes for a second?”

“You looking to score tickets for the Raven Family Five?”

“To score, yeah.” Stein tried to pluck the string just right. “But not tickets.”

Winston lit up another smoke. “I wouldn’t know what that means coming from you.”

“Same as it means coming from anybody.”

“Nah. Everybody knows a certain ex has got your nuts in a sack.”

“Not everybody seems quite as delighted about it as you are.”

“Trust me, they are. Activities deleterious to the well being of the child? How do you let that shit happen to you?” He did a pantomime of a testicle sac being snipped off.

“Listen to me.”

“Ears, man.” He shielded his stubs.

“Sorry.” Stein modulated his tone.

Winston slapped his attache case down on the stage and unzipped the inner compartment. Seven sandwich baggies were pinned to the inside wall, each housing a distinct variety of bud. “You want to look at some shit? Here is the basic winter catalogue. Humboldt Sense. Maui Wowie. Jack Herer. Some sweet hydro‑ponic from that dope fiend capital of the world, Minneapolis.”

Stein smiled at the buds.

“Enjoying your vicarious window shopping?”

“That shit’s fine for the tourists and civilians. If I wanted to buy off the rack I’d go to Macy’s. I’m looking for something special.”

“Something special, he says.”

“I hear there’s Goodpasture Orchids around.”

Winston gushed out a pillar of Marlboro smoke. “Right. Maybe I can get you a date with Cameron Diaz, too.”

Stein unfurled the plastic placenta in which Goodpasture’s little embryo was ensconced, and with great care, broke off a small tip of the bud. Unmistakable perfume flooded the room and Winston knew instantly what he was looking at.

“Are you shitting me?”

Stein enjoyed the change in tone from derision to respect. “Would I bother a busy man like yourself, who doesn’t have time in five years to call his best bud, with anything but the best bud?” He tamped the fine grains into the bowl of Winston’s pipe with meticulous care.

Winston was like a boy leaning toward the bowl where his mother was mixing chocolate pudding “I’ve never smoked genuine orchid.” Pipe now in hand, Winston closed his eyes, folded down and lit a match one‑handed, and took a long, luxurious lungful. “Oh man! This is the shit! I take back nearly half of the bad stuff I ever said about you.” Van Goze offered the pipe to Stein, who held up both hands in the international gesture of no thanks. “Good. More for me.” Winston vacuumed up another bellowsworth. “You know what’s beautiful about this shit? You can think clearly and be fucked up at the same time.”

“There may be a person or persons advertising to have quantities of this for sale. I’d appreciate a heads up.”

“Rather than telling them you’re looking.”

“You got the idea.”

“You’re working?”

“Just keep an eye open, will you?”

They made a feeble attempt at an embrace that neither of them was into. Winston conceded an inch. “Look. I’ve been out in the fucking Ozarks for a month with these crazy crackers. But if you’re really interested in Great Smokies you should reach out to my ex‑old lady. She’s working with her new husband, Maw‑Reece, in his antique shop.”

“Right. She’s with the antique dude. I heard that.”

Van Goze took a long last dredging hit on the pipe and sucked the smoke down to Australia. Stein narrated to an invisible TV camera. “Don’t try this at home, kids. This man is a professional.” Van Goze laughed so hard he coughed up chunks of the Outback.

“You’re still a putz.”

Stein was nearly out the door when Winston called after him, “It’s too bad you didn’t turn out like your kid. She’s a trip.”

Stein’s face reappeared. “What the hell do you know about my kid?”

“I was at your surprise party, man.”

“The Best of Times ” antique store was packed to a critical mass with chairs, desks, tables, cabinets, armoires: each of them in turn crammed with hats, bowls, glasses, mirrors, jewelry, scarves, cameos. The air was left from a previous century. Stein called a hello, but his voice was absorbed two inches in front of him by material goods. He slithered through the maze, pinching his love handles on an old metal stove, banging his forehead into the edge of a Monopoly board held together by a petrified rubber band. He followed the sound of a power tool into a back open courtyard. Somebody who looked like a Maurice‑short, bald, wiry‑was sanding down a cherry wood night table that its former owner had slathered in white enamel.

“Howdy,” Stein ventured.

Maurice turned around and took the sawdust mask off his face. “Help you?”

“Are you Maurice?”

Maurice nodded that he was.

“Winston’s old lady here?” Stein caught himself and apologized. “Sorry, I guess you probably think of her as Maurice’s old lady.”

“I think of her as Vanessa,” said Maurice. “And if she’s not inside, she’s probably down at the community center changing the world for the better. Do you know where that is?”

Stein indicated that he didn’t.

“You’re lucky.”

Maurice made a little map, directing him to walk a few blocks east then walk a block or two south.

“I notice you keep using the verb ‘walk’ instead of ‘drive.’ Is that just a figure of speech?”

“Not if you’re married to Vanessa.”

The DeLongpre Community Center was a large, rambling one‑story house built in the 1920s. A plethora of signs on the bulletin boards would have you think this was international headquarters for the Abolishment of Domestic Violence, Saving the Whales, Saving the Ozone Layer, Free Choice, Free Condoms, Free Spaying and Neutering of Pets and a few other causes whose notices were thumb tacked over by newer ones. The person who met Stein at the door had unruly manes of black hair and beard that left only a small bit of unplanted acreage on his face. He looked like a short, squat version of Allen Ginsberg, and was one of the throng of seven people assembled for this afternoon’s lecture and book signing by the famed anti‑automobile activist, Brianna Chisolm.

Stein understood why Maurice had told him to walk. A hierarchy of purity existed. People greeted each other not with hellos but by inquiring how they got here. A female in dark framed glasses and overalls who had come here on three buses from Pasadena was dissed for being “too internally combustive” by a geek who had pedaled his Schwinn from El Monte. The winners were brothers originally from Siberia who had pogo‑sticked from Santa Monica the previous night for the talk on herbal colon cleansing and had just stayed on.

Winston’s now Maurice’s ex‑old lady, Vanessa, was a striking woman, over six‑feet tall with a great shock of wild, electric gray hair. Her eyes were gigantic and a little sad, which made you sad too, because her melancholy was so beyond hiding. When she greeted her old friend Stein her voice still had a bit of the aristocratic British accent she picked up while living in Tanzania. “Look who’s here. The man who misses his own surprise party.”

“Is that how I’m going to be known in history now? My identifying phrase?”

“You don’t look nearly as rotten as everyone says,” she smiled.

“Hillary being everyone?”

“Have you come to hear Brianna’s lecture?”

“Maybe not exactly. More to see you.”

“I know,” she smiled. “Winston called.”

Word came that Brianna had just called from her car phone to say she was stuck in airport traffic and she’d be late. Stein waited to hear a burst of irony that she was driving here in a stretch limo to give a talk on. But zealots are short on perspective. “You see?” squat Alan Ginsberg said with a ferocious shudder of his raid forest head. “Too damn many cars.”

She guided him through the assembly room and out the French doors to the community garden. It was beautifully planned and well tended. Healthy vines of winter squash crawled like infantry across the hillocks. There were clusters of late corn, pole beans and delicate tendrils of Chinese snow peas climbing wire trellises.

“Did Winston tell you why I wanted to see you?”

“He told me you might be carrying something.”

“He said I was carrying?”

“Don’t be coy. I’ve never tasted real Goodpasture.”

“God, you people are like the Russian mafia. Graft. Bribe.” He nipped off a little taste for her. “Tell me. Don’t you think it’s at all ironic that you sustain a low end community center by selling high end weed?”

“Life is a carousel old chum.” She took an approving whiff of the bud.

“Did he tell you what else?

She started to say something, held back.

“What?”

“Are you really back in the world?”

“You read about that model up in Topanga?”

“Tragic.

“I owe her a favor.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

She appraised his response. Decided he was on the ups. “There are these two guys. I don’t like them much. One called Wylie, one called Phibbs. Do you know them?”

Stein gestured that he didn’t.

“One is like a lawyer‑rock promoter‑wannabe mogul. Wears cartoon character t‑shirts. His friend looks like a marine or a CIA pilot. Buzzcut. Lethal empty expression. I occasionally deal with them if I need generic run‑of‑the‑mill smoke.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Let a girl finish. You know how you get a sense when people are showing off for you? A week or so ago these guys were talking about bringing home some end‑of the‑world weed from Amsterdam.”

“No, this would be local.”

“Sorry. She took another whiff of the bud “I look forward to this.”

“So how’s it like living in the antique world?”

“All men are merely weak surrogates for him, Stein.” She made him almost think she really meant it.

A TV was playing as Stein made his way back through the house to the exit. The “Supermodel Slaying” was all over the news. Local reporters were buttonholing anyone who might have known or worked with Nicholette Bradley, shoving mikes in their faces, asking their imbecilic questions. “How does it make you feel…?” The one person in the whole circus who looked like he truly loved and missed the girl was a hairdresser who said he had known her for years and, according to the crawl, had done her hair for all the Espe ads. He was gay and bald and had eyes that even in grief danced like hummingbirds. His name flashed on the screen. Paul Vane. Stein had heard that name before. It took just a few moments for it to roll into the right pachinko hole in Stein’s brain to start the bells ringing.

Paul Vane.

The former lover/mentor of Michael Esposito. The man accused of stealing the Espe bottles. The man Mrs. Pope Lassiter wanted him to talk to. Stein could not imagine what a soulful, compassionate person like Vane had in common with a furtive little tramp like Miss Espe, Michael Esposito. Maybe the thirty‑year age difference had something to do with it. Groucho’s line about a man being as old as the woman he feels, transcended gender preference.

With Goodpasture gone AWOL, Paul Vane was Stein’s only direct link to Nicholette Bradley. He had reason now to drive out to Palm Springs and it had nothing to do with shampoo. It registered somewhere on the spectrum of his hard drive how curious it was that Nicholette was a focal point in both of his current preoccupations. He called his answering machine from the phone booth outside the center. He winced when the mechanized voice informed him he had eight messages. He skipped past the five from Mrs. Higgit without listening. There was a message from Ben at the bank that was so cryptic he had to play it twice to understand. Ben had traced the Stop Payment to a name that sounded so phony he was sure it was bogus. One Alton Schwimmer. The confirmation of Stein’s suspicion made him growl and wish he had left the doctor to fend for himself last night instead of driving him back to his hotel.

The last message was from a woman with a perky voice that Stein did not recognize, telling a rambling tale about a dress that she had sent to the dry cleaners. It was the longest, wackiest wrong number in telephonic history, but she finally circled back to the point of her story, which was that she and Stein had met two months ago in the produce section looking at a vegetable that was half cauliflower and half broccoli, and that Stein had called her Broccolflower and given her his phone number, but she had stuck the napkin in the bra strap of the lining of the dress that she had just now gotten back from the dry cleaners which was why she hadn’t called him until now, but if he remembered her and if he had not met the woman of his dreams yet, she hoped he would call her back.

Stein absolutely remembered her. Redhead. Flaky as filo dough. Just as she began to give her phone number, there was a horrible squeak, and the tape went dead. Stein gasped, “Oh no!” But a moment later her voice came back laughing. “Can you believe I can actually make the sound of a tape disintegrating? One of the joys of having eight huge protective brothers. Just kidding about the huge protective part. And the eight. Anyway, call me. I thought you were cute.”

He called her back immediately.

“Broccolflower. It’s Stein.”

“Yes?” Her voice contained no glow of recognition.

“Stein.

“Yes. Hello?”

“You just left a message for me?” He waited for the exultant, oh of course, but there was nothing. “Broccolflower?”

“I don’t think this is going to work,” she said, and hung up.

When he called Millicent Pope‑Lassiter to say that he would go to Palm Springs after all, it pissed him off that she was not at all surprised. She had apparently brushed off Stein’s entire act of rebellion as a non‑event. The trip, she thought, would be an excellent second prong in the attack, in conjunction with the warrant that had been issued for the arrest of the inside man at the warehouse. She rummaged through her papers for the name, “A Mister Duluth Greene.” Stein roared from someplace deep in his digestive tract and was still volcanic when he called Mattingly’s office and Mrs. Higgit put him through.

“I told you not to do that. Didn’t I specifically tell you not to do that? Do you people fucking listen? I’m going out to Palm Springs in an hour. You call the dogs off Morty Greene until you get further notice. Do you understand that?”

His blood pressure was ripping at his eyeballs. He needed Lila’s sane, calming influence to take the ride out there with him. Plus she’d love getting her hair done by Paul Vane. He heard the water lapping in the backyard pool of her Beverly Hills home when she picked up her cell phone. He pictured her basking on the chair float listening to her Italian lesson on earphones.

“Do you feel like going to Palm Springs?” he asked.

He heard her sit up and adjust the halter‑top of her bikini. “But Stein, you hate Palm Springs.”

“That’s why I need you to go with me. Something good to compensate for something I hate.”

“My God, that was almost sweet. When were you thinking of going?”

“Fairly soon.”

“You mean sometime in the next month?”

“More in the nowish area.”

“You mean this week?”

“A little more nowishly.”

“You don’t mean today?”

“In an hour?”

“Stein! Is the last minute the only minute you ever function in?

He could hear her clambering out of the raft and patting herself dry with her fluffy white bath towel that sat on the redwood lounge chair. “I just have that charity cocktail thing at the Beverly Wilshire tonight but I can blow it off.”

“Isn’t that where you get to meet the governor’s wife?”

“Since when do you care about those things?”

“I don’t. But you live for them.”

“We’ll take my car. You must be the last man in America not to have air conditioning. I have a hair and nail appointment. Give me an hour‑and‑a‑half.”

“Lila, it’s just a ride to Palm Springs. Don’t get all‑” But she had already clicked off.

Ninety minutes would give him time to ride out and warn Morty Greene. He didn’t know why he was so sure Morty had nothing to do with the missing bottles. No doubt some wishful longing that important parental qualities found their way into their children’s DNA. Morty’s red pickup truck was not in the driveway. In its place was a zippy new Mini Cooper convertible.

Stein rang the doorbell to Morty’s apartment and practically burst through the door when Morty opened it.

“Man, you must have a death wish,” Morty said. “You bust in here like John Wayne? You’re not even Wayne Newton.”

“There may be an arrest warrant out for you.”

Edna Greene quietly entered from the room beyond. Her hair was up in a bun and she was wearing a red Jamaican robe. She looked at Stein with grave severity. “No suggestion of crime, you said?”

“I’m sorry. This isn’t my doing.”

“You’re going to be sorry in motion.” Morty moved threateningly to Stein.

“Duluth!”

“Why did you quit your job?” Stein demanded.

“How is that your business?”

“You practicing for what you’re going to tell the SWAT team?”

“Do you remember the seven horse?” He rubbed his fingers together. “Would you go back to a loading dock?”

“That’s a fair point. So once again I present you with this document.” Stein offered the bill of lading in Morty’s proximity. He glared down at it and breathed fire.

“Duluth, this man did not get you in trouble. Tell him what he wants to know about that piece of paper.”

Stein was suddenly apprehensive that once again all his instincts had been wrong. “Is there something I should know about this piece of paper?”

Morty surrendered. “Hell, I guess you already know. I suppose you talked to Delores Brown.”

“Why would you think I did that?” Stein asked.

“I’m being straight with you, man. Don’t treat me like a boy.”

“Let’s talk about you and Delores, then.”

Edna Greene retreated to the back room and Morty nodded for Stein to take a seat. “You ever work on a loading dock? I’m guessing probably not.”

“Is this going to be one of those long stories with poignant sociological implications?”

“The job sucks, all right?”

“That I can relate to.”

“So they make me a supervisor. For an extra buck‑thirty an hour I keep records on everything that comes in and goes out and bring all the records down to Accounting.”

“I’m on a bit of a time crunch.”

“In accounting there is a particular fox they just hired who wears pants so tight you can see her smile.”

“Downtown Delores Brown?”

“So we have this little rap going and one afternoon she sashays up to the dock. She says she locked her keys inside her car, and did anyone know how to, you know, open a door with‑”