Hal Ackerman: Stein,stoned

Stopped at a light on Beverly, a black and white LAPD cruiser pulled up alongside him. Stein took a casual glance at the typical pairing of rookie and vet. The kid looked about twelve. Crewcut, square jaw. Avaricious chin. His partner was thirty years older and had grown out of all those youthful vices. A whiff from his right side made him suddenly hyper aware of the bag containing Goodpasture’s orchid that sat out in plain view on the seat alongside him. His heartbeat accelerated. Very subtly and looking everywhere but at the cops, Stein shifted position and brushed the bag off the seat onto the floor. He knew that rolling up his window or too obviously avoiding eye contact with them would register as a red flag and arouse suspicion. Cop wisdom was that the only people who tried to hide something were people with something to hide. So he ventured a normal citizen’s half-nod over his left shoulder to acknowledge them. By this time, the light had changed and they drove away without giving him a glance. Following the flood of relief was the outrage that they had perceived him as so undangerous. Didn’t they know who he used to be? He had the urge to buzz up alongside them wave the bag of weed, say, “Look what you missed!” and then disappear into thin air before they could catch him.

He followed Beverly to Temple then hooked onto Silverlake Boulevard. He liked this Silverlake. It was one of the few little enclaves where people still lived un-self-conscious off-camera lives. Mexican car repair shops coexisted alongside Italian family restaurants and neo-grunge gay and lesbian bookstores. Tucked into the hills near downtown, it was well past the invisible line of demarcation, east of which no women of Brentwood dared venture, so there was some hope of its staying uncorrupted.

2992 Linda Vista Place was a Mediterranean style two-story apartment on a winding, hilly street. Stein parked facing uphill and turned his wheels out from the curb; then turned them the other way. He knew that one of them was right, and briefly pondered whether it was of greater virtue to be partially uninformed or completely. The building had an outdoor staircase. Morty Greene’s apartment was on the second floor and Stein was panting three steps up. Head down, he plunged onward and did not notice until he was nearly on top of her that a handsome black woman was sitting on the second landing observing his approach. A mop and a bucket rested on the step alongside her. Stein became suddenly aware of the footprints he had tracked on the staircase.

“I’m sorry. Did I just-?”

“Nothing stays clean forever,” she said.

“True, but forever sometimes gets to last longer than a second.”

“Is there some way I can help you?”

“I’m looking for a Morty Greene. Is this where he lives, do you know?”

The woman looked at Stein without answering. He checked the address again. “Morty Greene? Do you know him?”

“Does anyone truly know another person?” She had a clear, strong voice, and Stein enjoyed being engaged in disputation. So many people these days just told you to fuck off. He amended his question.

“Do you know him well enough to tell me whether he’s at home?” Stein asked.

“Does he know you well enough? That’s the question.”

“You’re too good at this.” Stein resumed his ascent toward the second landing, mindful of where he stepped. The woman rose to her feet using her mop handle as a cane, effectively blocking his way

“He’s not up there,” she said.

Stein saw now that she was a good deal older than he had first thought. He was impressed with her loyalty, imagined she had worked for Morty Greene’s liberal Jewish mother through all of Morty’s schoolboy years and now had been passed down to him. “Are you protecting Mr. Greene or your clean floor?” Stein asked. If he sounded a bit impatient it was not with her so much as this whole Mattingly enterprise that he wanted to be done.

“I might be protecting you.” She led his eyes toward an immense pair of boots that leaned against a Ford flatbed pickup truck parked below them in the driveway.

“You’re not telling me somebody wears those things?”

“Takes a big man to fill big shoes.”

Stein got the picture and had to laugh. “If you knew me, you’d understand how absurd it is you would think I was the man.” He showed her the yellow Bill of Lading. “I just have to ask him if this is his signature. Believe me, there’s no suggestion of crime.”

She never took her level gaze from him. “When a white man comes to a black man’s home with a typed piece of paper, there’s always the suggestion of crime.”

Stein cocked his head at the new piece of information. “Did you say a black man’s home?”

She mirrored his gesture. “Did you not say you were looking for Morty Greene?”

“Morty Greene is a black man?”

“Oh, my!” Her demeanor relaxed and you could see how she’d be with her grandchildren. “I hope this is your first day out of detective school. Because you may want to choose an occupation where you have a greater natural aptitude.”

“Now wait a minute. The name Morty Greene. Does that not sound like a middle aged Jew?”

“Do you have a problem with the name I’ve given my son?”

“Morty Greene is your son?”

She looked at him the way only a black woman can look at a white man while wondering how they have managed to rule the world. “Why the hell else would I be cleaning his apartment?”

Stein turned around, walked down a step and turned back. “Can we start over, Mrs. Greene? My name is Harry Stein. Forgive the intrusion. Is your son at home?”

Her life expanded in front of her in one long exhalation. “Is my son in trouble, Mister Stein?”

“I really don’t think so, Mrs. Greene.

“You may call me Edna.”

He bowed slightly.

“Children make us strangers to our own lives,” she said.

“I know. I used to have one. Then she turned into a teenage girl.”

He sensed her accept him as a kindred spirit. “You want to find Morty, he’ll be at the Santa Anita race track. He’ll be down by the finish line. You can’t miss him.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, most people wouldn’t.”

He started down the stairs.

“Incidentally, the name I gave him wasn’t Morty. It was Duluth.”

He stopped and looked back up at her. “See now, Duluth I would have guessed was a black man.”

“Then I predict you’ll go far in your trade.”

Before he went he had to ask. “How do you get the nickname Morty from Duluth?”

“You don’t. It’s short for what everyone calls him.”

“Which is what?”

“The Mortician,” she said, with exactly the right mixture of irony, warning and resignation.

The horses were coming onto the track for the second race as Stein drove into the vast parking lot of the Santa Anita racetrack. He’d have to do this fast. Park. Find Morty. Verify his signature. Drive the twenty-five miles back to the West Side to pick Angie up at school by three-thirty.

Santa Anita was a beautiful place to lose money. Nestled in the valley a few miles east of Pasadena, it had for its backdrop the San Gabriel Mountains. This time of year the snow level was down to five thousand feet and an ermine mantle of white crested the shoulders of Mount Wilson and its lesser peaks. Flocks of seagulls circled the parking lot and settled on the roof of the 1930’s era grandstand. Stein found this curious. What were seagulls doing miles from the ocean. But as he watched the throng of players hurrying to get their bets down-men with bellies waddling at heart attack pace, women carrying bridge chairs, Mexican families with chains of kids, UPS guys on lunch break-he understood. They smelled fish.