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.