Hal Ackerman: Stein,stoned

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.”