THIRTEEN 1 page

Hal Ackerman

Stein,stoned

Stein – 1

Hal Ackerman

Stein,stoned

ONE

The bud of Sinsemilla was long and green and graceful as a Russian ballerina. Its crystallized resins sparkled like perfect dewdrops and reflected the outdoorsy good looks of Brian Goodpasture as he held the bud to the sunlight and inhaled its minty perfume. He had cloned the sproutlings from choice stock, cradled them in creches of peat moss and potting soil, nursed them in a hydroponic solution of nutrients he had formulated to promote a short growing cycle, robust flowers, and his signature joyful Goodpasture high. Discerning buyers had been clamoring for weeks to purchase his new crop of “orchids” sight unseen; such was the reputation of the brilliant young horticulturist. But this harvest was not for sale.

He snipped off a tiny quarter‑moon‑shaped wedge and gently crushed it onto the wire mesh inside the bowl of the stone pipe his mother had passed down to him, given to her one starry night in a meadow outside of Woodstock by the replacement drummer for a band that had once opened for Country Joe and the Fish.

This would be the first pipeful of the new batch that Goodpasture would smoke. He lit a match and let it flare a few moments to burn off the phosphorus and sulfur, then placed the pipe to his lips and toked long and slow. The oxygenated smoke passed cleanly through the wire screen, along the smooth stone walls of the pipe, down Goodpasture’s trachea and into his lungs. Instantly a feeling of well being infused his senses. He noticed the banana trees dancing in the wind, their jagged leaf tips catching the points of sunlight that leaped from leaf to leaf like balls of mercury. Yes, this crop will do very well, he thought. He visualized the faces of the patients at Dr. Alton Schwimmer’s hospice when he arrived there on Christmas Day with his special ‘boughs of holly’ with which they would deck their halls. It was absurdly sad to him that nature’s benevolent palliative should be deemed illegal. They loved Goodpasture up there. They called him Robin Hoodpasture.

He brought his shears and sealing apparatus up to the drying shed on the tiered hillside behind his Topanga Canyon home. The house had been built in the 1920s for a local oil baron, who had commandeered telephone poles and railroad ties and had them pounded into the bedrock as foundations. The back shed had been used to store his extensive collection of pornography. Later it was converted to a studio and atelier for its long‑time second owner, the water colorist, Ruth Ashton‑Hayes, before evolving into its present incarnation. Goodpasture spun the tumbler of the combination lock and punched in the eight‑digit security code. He waited for the electronic response and punched in a four‑digit reply. He rolled up the corrugated‑steel safety cage and braced himself for the deluge of redolence that would envelop him from the two hundred plants he had hung upside down on the rafters to dry.

The thieves had left the room spotless. Not a leaf remained. Not a bud, not a stem, not a mote of resin. Nothing.

TWO

The phone rang too early for it to be good news. Stein pulled himself out of a blurry sleep onto one elbow and waited with dread to hear his ex‑wife’s voice on the answering machine with an urgent message about some appointment she had forgotten to tell Stein about that would require his rearranging his schedule to accommodate her. Their joint custody arrangements were already as gerrymandered as a crooked political district. Angie, their fifteen‑year‑old daughter, stayed with Stein half the week and alternate weekends, then with Hillary the rest of the time unless something unexpected came up, which it almost always did. All these years divorced and he was still her first call in any crisis. It drove him nuts.

But it was not Hillary calling. It was worse in a different way. It was Mrs. Higgit from the warehouse. Her voice cut through him like a fish knife. There was a serious problem, she was saying. The inventory count of shampoo bottles that Mister Stein had just completed was short by a thousand cases from the amount the computer said should be on hand. Mister Mattingly was extremely upset and wishes Mister Stein‑on to call back promptly. Mrs. Higgit put extra syllables into words to emphasize their importance. She pronounced Stein as if it rhymed with lion.

Stein sat perfectly still lest his breathing betray his presence. He had spent the last fourteen days in an airless warehouse hand‑counting a quarter‑million empty octagonal plastic designer shampoo bottles. His skin reeked of polypropylene. It leeched out of his hair, permeated his sheets. He smelled like he had been stored in Tupperware. So, no. He was not going to call back promptly.

He creaked out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweats. The framed picture of him with John and Yoko taken twenty‑five years ago today‑on his twenty‑fifth birthday‑hung on the wall above his dresser. Half his life had passed since then, and nineteen years to the day since John had been killed, December 8, 1980. Stein’s beard in the photograph was longer than his hair was now. He felt the ghost of his amputated ponytail. He padded down the hallway to Angie’s room and knocked.

“Are you up?” He tried to make the prospect sound pleasant.

Her monosyllabic answer splattered against the inside of her door like a thrown object. “NO.”

“And good morning to you, too,” he bowed, and continued down the stairs to make her breakfast.

Stein’s ancient arthritic terrier, Watson, had peed on the tile floor again, so on Stein’s first step into the kitchen his leg skated out from under him and he had to grab onto the counter to keep from wish‑boning. His flailing arm knocked over the container of milk that Angie had left out despite Stein’s reminding her a dozen times the previous night to put it away, and her assurance that she would. A stream of white lava flowed along the counter toward the rack of washed dishes. Stein lunged from his knees and just managed to swoop the dish rack up before the advancing white liquid tongue lapped over its edge. He knelt there in full extension, holding up the dish rack like an offering from a supplicant at the altar of Chaos. He wondered who those people were whose mornings began with freshly squeezed orange juice, pressed shirts and a crisply folded newspaper.

Watson was asleep alongside the heater vent in the living room. Stein unwound his leash from the front door handle. The sound awakened in him a deep Pavlovian response, and he tried gamely to scramble to his feet. His lame hind legs splayed out behind him like someone trying to use chopsticks for the first time. Stein gently lifted Watson’s bony, urine‑stinking rear end and wheel barrowed him down the front steps into the semi‑circular courtyard of their cozy little fourplex in the Fairfax District. It was a dank and cool morning for Los Angeles. Two joggers in their sixties clomped through the mist discussing their portfolios. One was in diversified mutual funds and wore hundred dollar Reeboks. The other had a headband and rental property. Stein had ten extra pounds around his middle and no investments. Watson could no longer lift his leg and had to squat like a girl.

The phone was ringing again as Stein eased Watson up the stairs and back inside. This time it was the voice of Mattingly himself on the machine. Stein could see the squeezed throat and pinched lips that produced the panic in Mattingly’s voice. He was sure the missing bottles had been hijacked and that a knock‑off version of his Espe “New Millennium” shampoo was going to hit the streets before the release of the real thing. He implored Stein to please please please please please call in as soon as he could.

People like Mattingly sapped Stein’s soul. Wasn’t it obvious that a discrepancy as neat as a thousand cases was not going to be the result of a ‘hijack’ but rather a transposed decimal point in one of a hundred tedious mathematical operations? Stein had enough trouble explaining the world to his daughter; he wasn’t going to waste time on strangers. Especially strangers who made fifty times what he made.

Angie’s platform shoes clomped across her bedroom floor above his head, and Stein realized he hadn’t started her breakfast yet. He poured a teaspoon of olive oil into a cast‑iron frying pan and diced an onion to brown. Then he cut up the leftover baked potato from last night’s dinner into little squares and threw them in with the onions to make home fries. Getting into a good rhythm, he heated the griddle and whisked the egg white into a bowl of pancake batter then added his secret ingredient, vanilla extract, and ladled the first batch onto the skillet.

“Hey, Dad.”

Angie tromped into the kitchen and splayed her books out across the table. Her hair was reddish‑orange today. Stein became agitated when he saw her doing homework. “You told me you finished everything last night before I let you watch TV.”

“I forgot we had a history paper.”

“You forgot?”

“Comparing Woodstock and Woodstock II.”

“Your school legitimizes Woodstock II? Woodstock II was a completely bogus event staged by people who were too busy making money to be at the real Woodstock.”

“Chill, Dad. It’s only school.”

“It’s not only school. Philosophically, there can’t be anything ‘II.’ Every moment is its own discrete event. Would you call ten minutes from now NOW II?”

“What about Home Alone II? Or Shrek II?”

“That’s just my point.”

“What about World War II?”

“What about telling the truth when I ask you about school work?”

“Something’s burning.”

Stein whirled around into the kitchen as the pancakes became galvanized into hockey pucks. “Have your juice, I’ll make another batch.” A car horn tooted outside. Angie swept her books up into her backpack and clambered to the door. “Bye Watsie,” she said, in that sweet voice that Stein remembered was once, long ago, also for him.

“Angie. You can’t go to school without breakfast.”

She glanced back at him, standing in the doorway with a spatula and a worried look. “You’re becoming your mother,” she said. Her friends honked again.

“Who’s driving?”

“That underage kid who lost his license for driving drunk.”

“Angie!”

“Pick me up at three‑thirty.”

She bounded down the four steps into the courtyard and disappeared through the invisible curtain into her life. Stein didn’t want to be disappointed that she had forgotten his birthday. He wanted to be forgiving and tolerant and to blame Hillary for not reminding her. One of the collateral damages of divorce is the loss of the person who explains your shortcomings in a wawas long and green and gracefuly your children can love. When he saw the envelope sticking partway out of his mail slot he got all gooey inside. Aw. She had remembered after all. Just when you think they’ve let you down, they come through. He opened the envelope without tearing the flap, preserving every part of the gift as an icon. The card was a reproduction of the cover of Stein’s famed underground book on cannabis cultivation from the seventies, Smoke This Book. That made him frown. He had tried to hide that chapter of his life from her. Taped inside the fold of the card was a professionally heat‑sealed plastic bag. And inside the bag was a long, graceful, sea‑green bud of sinsemilla. The card was unsigned. Ok, so this was not from Angie.

He did not find the joke amusing. Anyone who knew him knew of the Joint Custody agreement that Hillary had rigorously enforced enjoining Stein from engaging in any “actions deleterious to the well being of the child.” Under the threat of losing Angie, Stein had traded in his VW Bus for a Camry, given up old friends, old habits, a pony tail, had taken on an excruciatingly mind‑numbing job with a re‑insurance company, and had not smoked dope in seven years. It irked him that whoever thought this was so cute should have known better. When the phone rang yet again Stein was too preoccupied and forgot not to answer. “Thank God I caught you,” Mattingly gushed.

THREE

Culver City was depressing even on days you weren’t changing decades. Railroad tracks sprang up out of nowhere and disappeared under chain link fences that concealed small factories and warehouses, whose alphanumeric names gave no hint of what they made or did. It reminded Stin of the surly east coast towns you’d have to drive through with your parents on the way to the beach, populated by sullen teenagers who looked like they could beat up your father. Stein leaned his arm out the window. He didn’t like air conditioning. He had changed out of his faded New York Giants sweats into the uniform he wore every day, Levis and a blue work shirt. Stein used his card key to open the steel gate allowing him to enter the inner parking lot of Espe Warehouse #23, the five‑story structure he had hoped never again to see.

Technically, Stein did not have a boss. Technically he was an independent contractor retained by the product liability firm of Lassiter amp; Frank, overseen by its CEO, a contemporary incarnation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell. Mrs. Millicent Pope‑Lassiter. Therein, through an intricate contortion of leasebacks and loan outs, Stein’s services were dealt to a succession of their clients, of which Espe Cosmetics was the most recent. Sadly, counting a warehouse full of shampoo bottles was not the worst he’d endured. In the wake of the 1994 earthquake, he had been assigned to catalogue the missing limbs of a display yard full of Plaster of Paris statues of Napoleon. He had hand‑tested the comparative tensile strengths of ten different brands of dental floss. He had verified the symmetry of a shipment of staples. But he drew the line at doing the same thing twice. He had hurried but not rushed to get this job done before midnight last night. He wanted the business of the first fifty years done. He didn’t want anything hanging over.

The atmosphere inside the warehouse was thin with already‑breathed air. It made Stein light‑headed. From the ground floor looking up it was a gigantic beehive. The walls were honeycombed with hundreds of thousands of compartments, each holding one octagonal shaped bottle that would soon be filled with 12.6 ounces of Espe “New Millennium” Shampoo, the most highly publicized, gigantically hyped liquid since Classic Coke.

Stein took the elevator up to the third floor where the executive offices were housed. “Thank God you’re here,” Mattingly gushed. “I have such a headache I’m giving birth to my brains.” He herded Stein into his office and sat him in the good chair alongside his Lucite kidney slab desk. A cluster of uniformly sharpened pencils stood at attention inside a silver cup alongside his telephone. If there were any justice, Mattingly should look wasted and decrepit for all his fretting. But his skin was smooth and his sandy brown hair was combed into a high school pompadour. He looked easily fifteen years younger than Stein, though they had to be roughly the same age. Their daughters were classmates at The Academy, the annoyingly smug private school that Hillary had insisted upon Angie attending.

Mattingly had struck gold as the result of two blind acts of luck. The first was the arrest and conviction of his erstwhile employer, Mister Rudy Esposito, founder of the Esposito Home Cleaning and Laundering Service. Mattingly had been so naive, he believed that when he had made the rounds “picking up laundry” he had actually been picking up laundry. When Esposito fell prey to a rare form of pancreatic cancer, ironically induced by the vats of cleaning solvents that were kept on the premises for show, Mattingly, who was the only unindicted employee, was left in charge of a factory that produced no goods and a distribution system with neither outlets nor customers. In this rare moment of karmic equilibrium his abilities were perfectly matched to their responsibilities

The second chime tolled for him in the person of a flamboyant, twenty‑three‑year‑old hairdresser named Michael Esposito. Michael was the distant cousin of the self same Rudy Esposito. He had quit his most recent job as a stylist at Pavane, the trendy Palm Springs beauty salon, after a nasty breakup with his older lover‑mentor, Paul Vane, who was also the shop’s proprietor. Michael Esposito had brought with him the secret formula for the hair and skin products that had made Pavane famous, and which Paul Vane, either out of generosity or desperation, had conferred upon him as his divorce settlement.

Esposito offered Mattingly an equal partnership in the product he would develop in exchange for use of the dormant facility in which he would manufacture, store and distribute it. Mattingly nearly had turned the offer down, but his pretty blonde wife knew Paul Vane’s name from some of her friends whose husbands were on the fringes of show business, and prevailed upon her husband to accept. The new company was born under the single‑word name by which Michael Esposito now called himself: “ESPE.”

Within two years, the Espe flagship product, “New Radiance” shampoo had grabbed a gigantic thirty percent share of the market. At first Mattingly had been properly embarrassed at his vast unearned success, but when he was declared a marketing genius by Business Week and when Entrepreneurs Today called him a visionary, he traded in his Ford for something beige and German, he moved his family out of Sherman Oaks into Brentwood, and he became a person who, when eighty dollars worth of empty plastic shampoo bottles were missing, felt that a profound injustice had been done him.

No dramatic gesture would make Stein happier than to walk directly to a corner of the room, lift up a blanket concealing the “missing” thousand cases, and leave without ever changing pace or speaking a word. Instead, he did the second best thing. In a grandiose flourish that only can come when spending someone else’s money, Stein authorized full replacement value for a thousand cases of missing bottles, he added in shipping and handling and bookkeeping expenses, thus bringing the total to a whopping three hundred dollars, then threw in a sarcastic wear and tear bonus for Mattingly’s injured psyche, and tore off a check on the Lassiter and Frank account for fifteen hundred dollars.

“Okay? Are we happy now?” he said, and spread the check before him. “Is there harmony in nature?” He made for the door.

Mattingly sulked. “I need the bottles back.”

“Tell me you’re not serious.”

“They’re valuable.”

“Health is valuable. A sense of humor is valuable.”

“They have the Espe logo on them.”

“They’re empty!”

“You’re missing the point.”

“You can’t make a point by rubbing two bad ideas together.”

“People can fill them with anything and sell it as Espe.”

“It’s shampoo! It’s soapy water. Who gives a flying fuck?”

A thin, oboey voice emerged out of the shadows. “It’s not just shampoo. It’s a commitment to planetary responsibility.”

Stein turned to see a young man in his twenties with a slight, almost furtive, build emerge from the shadows. He cocked his hip and gave Stein the long once‑over through his smoky dark eyes. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “That I’m just an opportunistic little whore who fucked Paul Vane and took his formulas.”

Stein regarded him with polite disregard. “Perhaps if I knew you better.”

“This is Michael Esposito,” Mattingly clarified. “Espe himself. The inventor of New Millennium shampoo.”

“Ah, the boy‑genius,” said Stein, with irony whose teeth left no impression. “First of all, the new millennium doesn’t start until next year. 2001. The first year was not called Zero.” He was weary trying to convince people and let it drop.

Paul Vane’s protege was a back‑alley boy who still had some bends in his soul, the kind who never would be happy with anything honestly come by. “You think because he was older than me and established that I had nothing to do with developing the formulas,” Espe pouted. “That’s what everyone thinks. But you’re wrong. I was his inspiration. He made them to attract me. Now he regrets giving it all to me in our divorce and wants some of it back. He wants me back. That’s why he stole the bottles.”

Stein called Mattingly by his first name as though they were friends, a condition Mattingly desperately desired. “John” he said. “I’ll go to two thousand but you’re way out on a limb.”

“I’m sorry. I have to have the bottles.”

“You’re really going to make me look for them?” He restrained himself from putting into words what his tone clearly implied‑You anal compulsive little fuck. When I find those bottles, and I will, I’m going to shove every one of them up your ass. “Go get me your paperwork,” he said meaning it as a punishment.

Mattingly smiled at the word paperwork, and Stein had the instant feeling of dread that he had said the wrong word to the wrong person. Mattingly had hard‑copy documentation of every step of each bottle’s life cycle; from bulk plastic to molding to labeling to embossing; from factory to warehouse. He had purchase orders, bills of lading, quality control numbers, computer codes all in sequence. He recalculated his own totals and checked them against Mattingly’s.

Still, the missing bottles could not be accounted for.

Additionally, Mattingly had assembled the foremen and shipping managers whose signatures had appeared on each color‑coded copy and had them verify that they had indeed received or sent every order that bore their name. All were present with the exception of a loading‑dock foreman named Morty Greene. Today was Morty’s day off, but a call had gone out for him to report. Mattingly gave Stein a slip of paper with Morty Greene’s address and phone number and Stein staggered out of the warehouse looking like the sole survivor of a horrendous mining explosion.

In the parking lot, hot chalky sun assaulted Stein’s senses. A well‑dressed man in his early thirties was standing alongside Stein’s Camry. He had a swimmer’s build and his even white teeth sparkled with a sincere greeting. “Do I have the good fortune of speaking with Harry Stein?”

“I don’t know about the pleasure part, but I am Harry Stein.” His mental picture of Morty Greene had been more in the squat, Jewish accountant mold. Mattingly’s minions had apparently reached him. “How did you know I was here?”

“I followed you,” the tanned smile brazenly admitted. “After the birthday gift I left at your door I hoped you’d be glad to see me.”

“What are you talking about? You’re not Morty Greene?”

The young man reached out a suntanned, blond‑haired arm, at the end of which was a robust, respectful, genuinely pleased handshake. “My name is Brian Goodpasture. Could you spare me twenty minutes of your life?” He placed a check into Stein’s hands in the amount twenty thousand dollars and nodded toward the vintage Mercedes convertible that was parked alongside Stein’s Camry.

“A thousand a minute. Yeah, that’s about my usual rate.”

Early acoustic Dylan blasted out of Goodpasture’s quadraphonic speakers as they motored through pre‑Christmas Beverly Hills. The interior upholstery was creamy leather. The seat back adapted to Stein’s contour, and a subtle mechanism massaged his acupressure points. “Nice wheels,” Stein said.

“Of course it’s not a ‘69 green‑and‑white Volkswagen bus with tinted windows and a special air‑conditioning system that filtered cannabis smoke clean in seconds, and a steering wheel made from the neck of a guitar busted on stage by Pete Townsend.”

Stein regarded the young man warily. Flattery was flattering, but he was uncomfortable with people knowing more about him than he did about them. And Goodpasture was, apparently, a Stein archivist. He fondly recounted the tales of Stein’s legendary youthful antics; the cannabis “Victory Gardens” he had planted on the grounds of LA police stations, the “Pot‑in‑every‑Chicken” dinners he had perpetrated on the state legislature, and of course the time he had saved the asses of two icons of British rock and roll by taking the kilo of Afghanistani hash that someone had planted in their guitar cases and molding it into a pair of skis that he carried under the noses of the alerted Swiss customs agents at Zermatt.

Stein had to hand it to the kid. He had done his homework. “It wasn’t actually the Liverpool Lads,” Stein confessed. “But it tells better that way.” A display of Santa’s sleigh pulled by eight flying smog deer hung over Wilshire Boulevard, tethered on either side to palm trees. Russian hookers pressed their noses against the windows of Cartier and Armani showrooms. “Beverly Hills Christmas dreams,” Goodpasture said.

Stein glanced at the time. “Was there a particular place we were going?”

“I thought anywhere away from the warehouse would be a step up.”

“True that.”

“It just so blows my mind to be driving with you. I feel like Dylan when he met Woody Guthrie.”

“Guthrie was on his deathbed.”

“Well, except for that part.”

“And he told Dylan to go to hell.”

“I hope except for that part too.”

They pulled into the elongated parking ramp that lay parallel to Santa Monica Boulevard and waited for a woman in a Lexus to finish a phone call, a manicure and a cafe latte before vacating the parking place. The eye makeup she could do while driving. Goodpasture shut the engine off and swiveled in his seat to face Stein squarely.

“I lost something valuable. All the people I talk to say you’re the man to help get it back.”

“People?”

“People who know these things.”

“Things?”

“Things agricultural.”

“Ah.”

Stein felt a nostalgic glow for those elliptical conversations you had when you were worried about being bugged by the FBI. “You must have old information,” Stein said. “I don’t know those people anymore.”

“They still know you.”

“If they did, they’d know better than to ask.”

Goodpasture went on discreetly. “I’m aware of your family responsibilities. There’d be absolutely no danger involved. You would not be abrogating any preexisting covenants.”

“What do you know about my preexisting covenants?” Stein felt like his low sperm count had been posted on a billboard.

“No actions deleterious to the well being of the child.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“A lot of my clients are attorneys,” Goodpasture confessed. “One of them negotiated your divorce.”

“My lawyer or hers?”

“You didn’t have one.”

Stein was getting ready to pop this kid. Except that he was so damn engaging. “I’m good people, Harry. Sorry. I know you don’t like to be called Harry. But I don’t know you well enough to call you Stein, and Mister Stein sounds so, you know. Dr. Alton Schwimmer will vouch for me.”

Stein took a step back and surveyed the kid intently. Invoking the name of the legendary Alton Schwimmer carried gravitas. Stein had never met the medical vigilante, but you had to admire anyone who had the balls to bring a little dignity to the dying.

“The crop I grew was earmarked for his hospice,” Goodpasture went on. The people who stole it intend to exploit it for commercial purposes. That’s wrong. Don’t you agree?”

Stein gave a cautious, non‑verbal yes

“I’m pretty sure I know where to find it. When I do, all I’d want is for you to authenticate that it comes from the same crop as the orchid I gave you.”

“I see. Kind of like an art expert.”

“Exactly! With your reputation your word would be law.” He wrung Stein’s hand. “They all thought you had gotten too old, lost the spark. I told them they were wrong.” He clenched his fist and quoted Stein’s motto that was the ethos of the sixties. “Give ’till it feels good.”

He had gauged Stein’s response incorrectly.

“You make this hard for me. If I had a son who was a dope dealer I’d want him to be exactly like you. But I have to say no.”

Goodpasture persisted with restraint. “Once again, you have my complete assurance that this will be purely an insulated, isolated occurrence.”

Stein nodded toward the digital clock on the dash. “You said twenty minutes. Are you a man of your word?”

Goodpasture accepted disappointment with grace. They drove back to the warehouse in not unpleasant silence, and arrived on the stroke of the twentieth minute. Stein handed back the check as he got out of the car. Goodpasture refused to take it. “The deal was your time, not your agreement.”

Stein appreciated the gesture. He liked the kid. “It would be interesting to see what happened if I tried to cash it.”