A white limo of astonishing length was idling alongside Stein’s parked Camry making it impossible for him to pull out. He recognized the driver-Millicent Pope-Lassiter’s always impeccably dressed Chinese secretary.
“Andrew? Is that you?”
“Yes sir, that’s right.”
Stein wondered why Andrew didn’t find the coincidence as amusing as he did. “Are you picking somebody up here?”
Yes sir I am.
“Did you know that I lived on this street too?”
“Yes sir, I did.”
Stein rummaged for his keys. “You’ll have to undock that boat.”
“No need for you to find your keys, Mister Stein. I’ll drive.”
It took Stein a few moments to register the obvious. “Are you here to pick me up?”
Andrew affirmed that he was.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Sir, I know six different ways to kill a man.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No sir, I don’t. Mrs. Pope-Lassiter instructed me to say that.”
“What does she want?”
“To be obeyed.”
After giving Andrew assurances that he would not try any slick tricks and would drive obediently to the corporate offices in Century City, and after Andrew assured Stein that the limo had twice the horsepower and maneuverability of Stein’s Camry and that he would take any perceived detour from the agreed route as an attempted escape, he allowed Stein to drive there under his own power.
“Ten minutes is all I’m giving her,” Stein declared.
“My business is getting you there.”
With Andrew in the Class II nuclear destroyer staying a car length behind him, Stein drove west on Little Santa Monica Boulevard and turned into the underground parking lot of one of the Century City office towers. Andrew conducted Stein through the ground floor atrium to the private elevator that rose to the penthouse suite occupied by the product liability firm of Lassiter and Frank. Stein was leery about going to the upper offices of these local skyscrapers. The main occupation of the construction industry in Los Angeles was building facades for movie sets, where an erection only had to look like it could stand.
“Ah,” Millicent Pope-Lassiter said upon seeing Stein. But it was not a sound of welcome. She bore an expression, which if displayed across a kinder face, would certainly have resulted in a smile. “Take a chair,” she suggested. Her voice was an instrument strung more for power than inflection. Stein remained standing. His rebellion.
“Oh Harry. Must we go through this charade of conscience every time? Is that part of the Cost of Doing Business with you? Please do sit down.”
He sat. She thanked him with another smile-like substance, then began a conversation which had a single destination. “Every client of Lassiter and Frank has the right to expect the highest level of professionalism from members of this firm. Do you not agree?”
“Is this about shampoo?”
She made the slightest gesture to Andrew, who placed a folder into her hand, which she proffered toward Stein. “Do you know what these are?”
He recognized the documents immediately. “Yes,” he said, his voice dripping with dry weary irony, “I’ve seen the extortion notes. And yes, I think the entire military might of the NATO should be deployed to defend this company’s inherent right to sell fourteen cents worth of sudsy water for twenty-five dollars. So if you will kindly validate my parking, I will be on my way.” He rose from the chair he had recently occupied and wheeled around to the door.
“That’s an impressive exit, Harry, but that door leads to my sauna. Follow me.”
Stein grudgingly allowed himself to be escorted to another wing of Millicent Pope-Lassiter’s office. On the far wall was a billboard-sized presentation of the Espe New Millennium shampoo package. The box was ingeniously constructed in the shape of a woman’s body, transparent in the center to reveal the translucent viscous product flowing through her abdomen. Her eyes met your eyes full on. They changed color from blue to green to gray as the light changed. The flap of the box was so realistically photographed and reproduced that upon opening it you surely felt like you were putting your fingers through her hair. Her face looked vaguely familiar to Stein but he couldn’t place it.
“You are looking at the most highly promoted and eagerly awaited product in marketing history,” Mrs. Pope-Lassiter pronounced. “I am not at liberty to reveal the advertising budget, but it exceeds the GNP of several Third World nations.”
“Milly. When I met you your hair was down to your ass, you had auctioned off your father’s Bentley and you could make grown men whimper watching you eat an ice cream cone. What happened to you?”
“I grew out of it, Harry. It’s called being an adult. You should try it.”
“You make it look so attractive.”
“You have some talents. Don’t waste them.” She placed the Espe package in his direct line of focus. “At this critical time with the product launch scheduled in two days, the integrity of the product must be unimpeachable. To that end, Espe Cosmetics has taken out a twenty-million-dollar policy with us, insuring against knock-offs and counterfeits.”
“Twenty million dollars?”
“Are you starting to get a sense of the scope involved?”
Stein shook his head wearily.
“Yes, we are all impressed with your metaphysical ennui. I’m sorry the world didn’t turn out the way you expected, Harry. Still and all, I wish you to drive this afternoon to Paul Vane’s hair salon in Palm Springs and to determine whether he is counterfeiting Espe shampoo. Although their divorce decree stipulates that Paul Vane grants the rights to the formula to his former lover, Michael Esposito, there is reason to believe that he may be experiencing some seller’s remorse. Paul Vane is thirty years older than his protege. Perhaps his original strategy was to lure the young man back through a show of largesse. Having failed that, his generosity may have soured. I cannot profess to know all the hidden currents in the sea of love.”
She nodded to Andrew, who presented to Stein a slip of paper. “Andrew has made reservations for you at the Mirador. And I think that concludes our business.”
“You’re right,” Stein said. “Our business is concluded. But not the way you imagine.” The receipt for his deposit of Goodpasture’s twenty thousand dollar check gave resolve to his moral stand. At this late moment in life he was experiencing a stunning epiphany: He had always thought that living a socially conscious life was the thing that set you free from the need for money. But no. He understood now that what set you free from needing money was having money. And he had money. He continued on down the elevator, his spirit rising in the inverse direction to his descent, so that when he reached the street he was euphoric.
He drove directly to the Fairfax district, into the parking lot of the Bank of Henry Kneuer. Bank of Hank, as its customers called it, was possibly the last single branch bank in Los Angeles. They had only gone to computers a year ago. As Stein entered, Ben Taga-sunta, a round-faced, second generation Japangeleno, always well dressed and overly cordial in the way that some gay people are when they neuter their sex for the business world, was at his desk helping an elderly Jewish couple transfer funds out of their CD account into an annuity. Mister Goldstein was ninety-five and stood straight as an arrow. He wore a perfectly pressed suit, white shirt and tie. His wife wore thick glasses and a bereaved expression that came of trying unsuccessfully for seventy-five years to get him to shush.
“With all the letters in the world, they have to make two things a CD,” he was grumbling. “One of them couldn’t be something else?”