“Naw.”
“I noticed a sharp little Mini Cooper down in the driveway. What happened to your Ford?”
“I traded up.”
“You could wear that thing on your foot.”
“It’s surprisingly roomy.”
Edna Greene came in from the back bedroom. “That’s Roland’s car. He borrowed Duluth’s truck. How much trouble is my son in?
“Him? Nothing. He’ll do twenty years in state prison and then get on with his life. Me, I have to tell Mattingly he was right.”
She pulled her son’s collar down so he was at her eye level. “Du-luth Greene, did you have anything to do with moving those bottles?”
“No, Mama, I didn’t.”
She released him and turned to Stein as though she had proven the irrefutable existence of gravity. “He had nothing to do with moving any bottles, Mister Stein. He stepped aside with that woman. That was all. Can you trust that I’m telling you the truth?”
“What court of law could argue with the my mama says I’m innocent defense?”
“We’ll deal with court when we have to,” Edna Greene said. “Right now I want to know if you believe us.”
“Against my better instincts, I do.”
“Then you can call me Edna.”
Stein pushed a couple of bills into Morty’s hand. “I want you to stay in a motel for a couple of days ‘til I get this straightened out.”
Morty pushed the money back at him. “Hey man. I don’t need your damn twenty dollars. I hit the seven horse.”
Before Stein could insist, the LAPD patrol car pulled into the driveway. Moments later Stein watched dolefully as Morty was read his rights and taken down the steps in handcuffs. “I told them not to do this, Edna. I’m going to fix it. Don’t worry.”
“That’s Mrs. Greene to you.”
TEN
“Stein!”
Penelope Kim’s voice sang out his name in a parabola of delight. Stein had knocked on her door to see if she’d walk and feed Watson in case he didn’t get back from Palm Springs in time that night. There was something different about her: her long black hair was brushed to a sheen and the clear outline of her breasts delineated themselves beneath her silk blouse. There was a touch of color on her lips and a line that accentuated the depth of her eyes.
Stein apologized. “This appears to be an inopportune time.”
“Come in,” she chided. “You look so forlorn standing out there in the rain.”
“It’s not raining.”
“You make it look like it is. Come in.”
“I get the feeling you’re expecting someone.”
“I am. He’s here. It’s you.”
“What’s me?”
She pulled him inside. The room vibrated with the heady aroma of smoldering sage and the pure tones of koto and flute from her stereo.
“Penelope, I don’t want to get in the way of whatever ceremony you’re performing here. Can I ask you to do a favor for me?”
She smiled at him as though she were privy to all his past lives. “I know where you were last night,” she intoned. “I know why you missed your party.”
Last night seemed ages ago. Stein tried to remember where he had been and where he had said he had been.
“You weren’t counting shampoo bottles, my sweet mendacious mentor.” Penelope undulated the newspaper in front of him. Its front page carried lurid pictures of Nicholette Bradley’s murder scene. “Stein, you covered her body! You preserved her modesty. You’re like a knight of the Round Table.”
“What are you talking about?” It was a weak denial. He enjoyed the praise.
“I never would have thought of that for Klein. I’ve underestimated your depth.”
“Why would you think I was there?”
She engulfed him under a silken, feathery aura of affection. “You can’t hide from me, Stein. You know that I see the events outside the bands of visible light. You were there with her. I smell her on you!”
“Look, you’re in a weird kind of mood and I have to-”
She stood in his way. “You made love with her, didn’t you? You had sex with her right on the floor.”
“Somebody here has a rich fantasy life.”
“You held her in your arms. You pressed your fingers into the spaces between each vertebra.”
She pressed Stein’s fingers into her hand. “You’ve never come on to me. Do you know how incredibly sexy that is?” She tugged on the sleeves of his blue work shirt. “Lift your arms.”
He bowed obediently, not sure if he was about to be stroked or beheaded.
“What are we doing?” he whispered.
Her fingertips pressed so gently against his temples that he was not sure whether he was being touched or merely wishing to be touched. “This is called L’ang Pao Tong. It means ‘Caress of Butterfly Wings.’” Sensation shot through all of his nerve endings. She pinched his earlobes between her fingernails. He cried out in surprise. “There are no barriers between our thoughts, Klein. You had her right on the floor, didn’t you? Tell me what she looked like naked. Put me there with you alongside her.”
“Did you just call me Klein?”
She unwrapped the fabric tied round her waist, and her skirt was no more. She wore nothing underneath. Her legs were long and slender. She had a small tuft that looked like the brow over one modestly averted eye.
“Tell me how it felt to be inside her,” she breathed. “Was she soft like dandelions?” She laced her fingers behind Stein’s neck and brought him closer to her.
“You’re using me as your sexual surrogate.”
“And what would be the downside of that?”
“You want to use my body as a vehicle to have virtual sex through a character you invented with a woman you think I had intercourse with after she was dead.”
“Too intimate?”
“I wouldn’t know who I was making love to.”
“It’s never who we think it is anyway.”
Her soft, supple skin, her desire for him, the scent of the sage, his exhaustion all wove an erotic blanket that snuffed out the fire of reason. He brought her to him. He felt a jolt of electricity as her nipples pressed into the flesh of his chest. From across the courtyard Watson began barking like a hoarse, frail lunatic. Stein catapulted himself from the embrace and ran outside, tucking his shirt into his pants as he stumbled out of her apartment.
Which is what Lila saw from Stein’s front steps.
I T WAS HOT as a Gila in heat in the desert, but it was frigid in Lila’s Acura even without the air conditioning. She had stared straight ahead for seventy-seven miles without speaking, without needing to pee, without yielding to Stein’s repertoire of annoying pranks, which in the past had succeeded in extracting her from the periodic funks into which she was prone to fall.
Earlier that day, fearful that Stein might leave for the desert without her if she were late, Lila had gotten a quick trim and set but had foregone her manicure, had dressed with what for her was wild haste, had the gas tank filled, the oil level and air pressure checked, and arrived at Stein’s apartment fifteen minutes early. On the way over
