“Holy Grail,” Stein repeated without missing a beat. “Good name.”
“The vessel of truth,” Phibbs advertised. “In cannabis veritas.”
Stein lobbed them a softball to see if they were for real. “Tell me about its genealogy.”
“We’ve told the story so many times,” said, Yosemite Sam, with an air of world-weariness.
“It’s all in the brochure,” said Crewcut.
It took Stein four seconds to eliminate the possible-though-unlikely chance that Wylie and Phibbs had independently evolved, designed, cultivated, and hybridized a strain of cannabis identical to Goodpasture’s. Growers were like fishermen. They loved to tell their stories. These guys had their thumbs in a lot of places, but topsoil wasn’t one of them.
“Did you have any trouble getting it out from L.A.?” Stein casually asked.
“Why would you think it came from L.A.?” Yosemite Sam said.
Stein smiled enigmatically.
“What’s with all the questions?” steamed Phibbs. “Just smoke the shit and you’ll know everything you need to know.”
Wylie apologized for his partner. “He’s still annoyed at the two lesbians.”
Stein hinted that there might be some profitable enterprise in the near future. “Provided there was sufficient quality and quantity to justify the venture.”
“I doubt that would be an impediment,” Wylie assured him.
Stein stood to leave and carefully closed the silver box. “I trust you won’t object to my sharing this with my associates.”
“You mean you want to take it?” Phibbs blurted.
“We’d be delighted,” said Wylie, who had seen the badge and knew what it meant.
Early northern winter dusk had descended upon the city as Stein pedaled back to the Krasnapolsky. He left the bicycle with the doorman and stumbled gratefully into the warmth of the lobby, beating his sides with his arms like a distressed penguin. He took the elevator to his room and locked the door behind him. He had to be sure about this.
He took Goodpasture’s birthday bud out of its nest in his rucksack and placed it on the smooth, polished surface of the ebony coffee table. He then unclasped the silver box he had taken from Crewcut and Yosemite Sam and placed their bud alongside. Their color was identical, their shape and configuration as well. Their leaf structure and the veining of their resins reinforced the superficial evidence. He carefully clipped away from theirs the same amount he had sampled out of the original. He held the buds in either hand and then reversed them. They registered the same heft, the same density. Their aroma, a fingerprint as specific as the signature fragrance of any wine, was identical.
His mind began to churn again. Getting Wylie and Phibbs to return the stolen booty under the threat of exposure and complete loss of face was the easy part. Goodpasture would be happy. Schwimmer’s patients in the AIDS hospice would be happy. But how to connect them to Nicholette’s murder? That was the question. He called Goodpasture’s room but voicemail kicked in, so he left a cryptic message to the effect that, “On the matter of authorship of a certain property, I have acquired evidence which supports your contention. I’ll be in if you wish to discuss it.”
Stein was still half-frozen from the bike ride. He stripped down and turned the hot shower on full blast. Just before he stepped in he heard a boisterous knock. He wrapped himself in a towel and padded back into the living room and opened the door. Goodpasture stood alongside a woman in her early twenties. She was wearing black silk pants and an off-the-shoulder top that gave the imagination a terrific starting point.
“Harry, this is Alex. Alex, I want you to meet my hero and mentor, Harry Stein, who I’m hoping from the phone message I just heard is no longer cheesed at me.”
She glanced down toward the towel tied precariously around Stein’s waist. “It looks like we’re about to meet him at any moment,” she quipped.
Stein had inhaled a breath of her the moment the door opened. It was the scent he had been chasing all afternoon.
“Harry? You’re embarrassing her.” Stein realized he had been staring at the girl for several seconds.
“You didn’t happen to be skating today on the Prinengracht?” he asked.
Her eyes opened wide. “How would you know that?”
“I told you he was amazing,” Goodpasture beamed.
The scent of Nicholette was all over her. But there was more, some tenuous connection. Something in the way she moved her head? The natural ease with which her body compensated for the change in weight. A movement of light crossed the plane of her cheekbones and in that snap of the shutter he saw it. The proof sheet he had found at Nicholette’s. “Nikki and Alex.” Alexandra. Alex.
“You shot a layout with Nicholette Bradley for David Hart.”
Her eyes blinked. “How would you know that?”
“You’re the Espe New Millennium girl.”
“How do you know that?” She was freaking. “It’s supposed to be secret.”
“Is that your real hair?”
The girl flared. “Who sent you?”
“I did.” Goodpasture was delighted as a child with a new piece of Mylar at Stein’s display.
Stein was engulfed in Alex’s tantalizing fragrance. “You smell just like she did.” Alexandra did not draw back. She was not a woman intimidated by men, Stein touched her hair and sniffed her hand, recognizing what had arrested him. “Oh yes,” she said. “It’s haunting, isn’t it?”
“They gave you a few bottles in advance for doing the shoot?”
She nodded. That was what Stein had smelled on Nicholette. It was not her inherent scent, it was Paul Vane’s intoxicating creation, being marketed as Espe New Millennium shampoo. It disquieted him to understand that his strongest memory of Nicholette wasn’t Nicholette at all. It left him with nothing tangible of her to hold.
“I’m sorry about Nicholette. You were close friends?”
“She was like a big older step sister.”
“Don’t get all choked up about it.”
“What I reveal to the camera is for me to decide.”
“Am I the camera?”
“Aren’t you?
Goodpasture was not used to waiting in the background. “Harry. Your message said you found something.”
Stein’s mind zigged away from Wylie and Phibbs and zagged to the pair of beautiful people standing before him. Who knew what went on in the souls of the privileged? The lives of beautiful people were so different from the rest of the world. They were always the sought after, never knowing the pain of the supplicant. They held an instinctive proprietary right to everything they saw. No barriers for them between want and have. And if they wanted something Nicholette had? They had access, they had Nicholette’s trust. Maybe the missing weed was a smoke screen for the oldest story in the book-two women in love with the same man. Alex, the new young thing, ousting Nicholette, the old young thing, not only as the Espe girl, but also as Goodpasture’s number one gal pal? Steam billowed out from the open bathroom door. Stein used it as a distraction to get time alone. He had to hide these thoughts.
“Look,” he said, “I’m half naked here. The sight of it is probably destroying this poor girl’s sex drive for life. Let me take a quick shower and I’ll pop by to your room and we’ll talk.”
He escorted them to the door and once they were gone, enclosed himself inside the bathroom and held onto the sink while the horrendous scenario resumed its display in his mind. What if Nicholette did not surrender the New Millennium crown as easily as Paul Vane said she did? Maybe it had to be wrested from her grasp. Not to mention losing her friend-boy to her ambitious little younger figure-skating protege?