He drove with purpose into the parking lot of The Bank of Henry Kneuer. He would have liked the moment to be more theatrical; to be observed with the appropriate pomp to mark the circumstance. But it was barely seven o’clock and the doors would not open for another hour.
He unfolded Goodpasture’s check, endorsed the back “for deposit”, and executed his signature in a manner congruent with the occasion. He placed the check into an envelope and sealed it, inserted his ATM card into the slot and entered his PIN number, which was the month and date of Angie’s birth. The steel security flap opened. Stein slipped the corner of the envelope into the slot.
Powerful rollers seized it from his hand. He held to it for a moment, considered what it meant if he let go. The choice he was making. The risk and its consequence He released the pressure between his thumb and forefinger. The envelope rolled down into the slot. The steel trap door slammed shut. Stein the hippie was dead. Long live Stein the warrior.
He was back on the bus.
All the cars on Stein’s street were still peacefully asleep, wrapped up to their windshields in baby blankets of dew. Only Stein’s Camry was overwrought. Its unrested hood was hot to the touch, its windows streaked with worry and grime. Stein parked across the street and tiptoed up the pathway through the courtyard to his front door. The joggers weren’t even up yet. Only the bougainvillea looked wide-awake. In the early morning light, the blossoms radiated like the eyes of visionaries hatching psychotic schemes.
He opened his front door and slid inside. At first glance he barely noticed the crepe paper streamers left strewn about the living room. Watson struggled to his feet and slalomed through the debris. His one-syllable exclamation, like the yip of the first prairie dog, aroused the next one in line. That was Lila. She rose up from the couch in a state of total disorientation.
“Stein?”
Her voice roused another female who had been asleep on the futon wrapped in Stein’s American flag blanket.
“Harry?”
“Hillary?”
“Daddy?”
“Angie?”
In her pajamas, encamped on the staircase. All three females arose and descended upon Stein, cawing at him with variations of the same question: Namely “Where have you been?” Salient details began to register in Stein’s brain. The ceilings and walls were festooned with decorations. There were hats with the number 50 glued to them. His desk was covered with a paper Happy Birthday tablecloth.
“Was there a party?” he asked
“Daaaad.” Angie bent the word into three long syllables of dismay. “It was a surprise party. For you! Where were you! Everyone you ever knew was here!”
“Yes, the entire ‘Who’s Not Who’ of Hollywood,” Hillary sniped.
“Mom.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of anyone missing his own party.”
“Mom.”
Stein was touched that his daughter defended him. “If I knew about a party of course I would have been here.” His voice playing an emotional duet, to mollify Hillary’s disdain and reweave the cocoon of intimacy around Angie.
“Yes, well, it being a surprise party, there was the element of surprise.”
“Mom.”
Angie threw open the rectangular cardboard box sitting in the center of the dining room table to reveal a birthday cake with fifty candles arranged around a now deteriorated portrait in icing of John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, Dylan, Janis Joplin and Stein. “Happy birthday.”
Stein’s heart slid down his chest wall. “I’m really sorry, baby. I thought everyone had forgotten and I felt so sorry for myself that I stayed at the warehouse counting their stupid shampoo bottles all night.”
“You’re such a loser,” she wailed.
Stein hated that Angie so easily believed he would be so pathetic, though not as much as he hated lying to her. Hillary gaveled matters to a close, telling Angie to gather up her things, that they were going.
“I guess I’ll go, too,” Lila said, acknowledging that no one had noticed or cared that she was there. Stein walked her to the door and whispered in her ear, “thanks for having my back.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“You didn’t tell them I wasn’t at the warehouse.”
Angie clomped upstairs to her room and returned, weighed down by two backpacks and her book bag. Stein tried to find a clear place to hug her. “We’ll do something special for my birthday when you come back.”
“Whatever.”
She stooped to nuzzle Watson’s face against hers. “Bye, Watsie.”
His heart always ached when she left. His little refugee. But today he could not indulge his sentimentality. He wondered if she wouldn’t be happier living at one residence, and if the joint custody deal was more to assuage his guilt than for her benefit.
It was amazing how quickly after his daughter’s departure that a profound silence settled into the apartment. As if Angie were its soul and Stein were merely some organ kept nominally alive while the body was in coma. Plopped down on the futon, he idly stroked Watson’s head as his mind began to shrink itself around the problem of Nicholette’s murder.
His mind slogged earthbound at the snail’s pace speed of sound instead of soaring at the speed of light. What did he have? He knew that Nicholette was dead and her place had been ransacked. He knew that Goodpasture was missing, or apparently missing, and that Nicholette had had some inkling hours before her death that Goodpasture was in danger. Stein knew, or believed he knew, that someone had stolen a crop of Goodpasture’s orchids that had been grown for the terminally ill patients at Dr. Schwimmer’s hospice. Was there anything else he knew? Or was this little rabbit turd size pellet of information all that he had? Where would he start? What was his plan? Did he even have a plan? Or was it just another promise that he would fail to keep?
He had to take a first step in some direction. What was that going to be? In the days of Watergate, Deep Throat had advised Woodward and Bernstein to “follow the money.” Stein had no money to follow but he did have the trail of smoke. Goodpasture’s “orchids” were apparently so good that people were killing people to get their hands on them. Weed that tasty had to be going for a tasty price. He had to find out who in town was paying top dollar. In the old days he would have known everybody. Even better-they would have had to know him. But these days were not those days. He had been out of circulation so long he didn’t know who the buyers were any more.
But he did know the one person who would know. Yes. He grabbed the newspaper and opened to the entertainment section, a sudden move that startled Watson. He settled the old boy down and thumbed through the ads for clubs and concerts and saw that The Ravens Family Four and Friends were playing tonight at McKarus’s Folk City. Stein knew that was where he would find mister Vincent Van Goze. And wouldn’t that be a tender Hallmark moment for him and Stein to reconnect? Two road dogs who had not spoken for years. Simon and Garfunkel. John and Paul. Stein and Van Goze.
He flicked the TV on to see if the media had gotten the story yet about Nicholette Bradley’s murder. And good God, had they! TV news reporters were becoming worse whores than the people they covered. Sticking microphones in peoples’ faces. Asking their inane questions. And police were learning from the military how to manage news. They had telegenic spin-doctors delivering carefully prepared statements. “The authorities were processing information,” others were “sifting through clues, formulating directions of investigation.”
In other words, Stein concluded, they didn’t know jack shit about who did it or why.
This thought was confirmed when they showed the head of the operation, Chief Jack Bayliss, who ran the Malibu sub-station assuring the public that a suspect would soon be apprehended. He and Stein had an adversarial history that spanned two decades. Somehow, many of Stein’s legendary escapades had come at his expense. Stein flicked the TV off. His eyes burned and his Inner Negotiator cajoled him for just one quick cycle of REM. But he knew if he gave in to weakness the day would be lost. He jumped in for a quick shower, threw the same Levis on and a different blue work shirt and dragged his ass outside. He’d find an open diner and grab some coffee until the banks opened. He’d need to cash out a thousand bucks of his recent deposit for seed money. Then find Vincent. He hoped. Then who knew?