Stein Stung Page 7

  Stein wove slowly through the deserted streets of downtown in search of The Old Basque Inn, or a person he could ask. His was the only car on Main Street. It felt post-apocalyptic, after a neutron bomb had annihilated all human life but left the buildings. There was a patron or two in the Eight Ball Tavern just across the street from His Outstretched Hands, which Stein at first thought was a massage parlor, but turned out to be an evangelical ministry. Capillio’s Video Shop was shuttered and for lease. Lois’s Beauty was open but empty. Fantasia Tapes and Videos was gone. There was a handwritten sign taped to the front window of Vornado’s Floor Covering that read GONE TO THE DOCTOR. BACK TOMORROW. Stein wondered how long that sign had been hanging there.

  Making a right turn on Seventh, Torvaald’s Numismatics was advertising metal detectors—“The Hobby That Pays for Itself.” The Valentine’s Day sale at DINNETTS AND THINGS was not drawing a crowd. Nor were they lining up to get into Carla’s Fashions, “Where Women Can Dress Their Best for Way Less.” He came to the end of town without finding the restaurant and made a last desperation right turn onto a street that did not look at all promising, and there it was: The Old Basque Restaurant and Tavern. He parked around the corner. Three adolescent skateboarders took turns thrashing the four-inch curb in front of the post office. None of them made it.

  There were three steps up to the entryway to the restaurant. Two plaques hung over the lintel. One told of the restaurant’s history as a safe haven for migrants and refugees fleeing European tyranny. The other was too faded to read. Stein paid his registration fee at the door and went inside. He expected the Beekeeper Association Convention to be comprised of three or four snoozing patrons, but no! Activity at the bar was buzzing. Men with white hair and minor injuries, men with bulk, men who worked out of doors, men who knew each other’s business. They were unpracticed at false civility, uncomfortable with public gatherings. Their faces archived many weather reports predicting harsh wind and sun. They were outdoor guys. Guys who had or still worked on telephone lines or road gangs. There was talk of wintering locales for their bees. Of pesticides and pollen patties. Stein felt like he was in a foreign country catching occasional cognates but not enough of them to grok their meaning.

  Dinner was already being splayed out in the next room. Sixty or seventy people sat at long wooden tables on wide chairs in a rathskeller-style room with low ceilings. They long-armed for bowls of potato salad and baked beans and heavily dressed iceberg lettuce plopped down by harried waitresses calling out storm warnings. The men were not young. The few who were young looked older. The wives were hardworking pioneer women who might have thought differently forty years ago if they knew that beekeeping would become their husbands’ lives. With doughty, ironic cheer they had become absolute necessities: bookkeepers, honey extractors, sales and purchasing agents, social secretaries, cooks, Jills of all trades.

  Stein scanned the crowd for a familiar face. He spied Renn Moody sitting across the table from a lean, rawboned young man wearing a cowboy hat. The plaintive look etched into the contours of his face made him look like a man perpetually struggling to clamber over a wall too high for him. He was seeking solace from Renn, or advice. He had been kicked down the list from March to April by the company that sent out new queens. He’d have to wait an extra month before supering his colonies. Supering. Stein had heard that word before, too. He cast a net back into his recent memory. Karma had been “supering” his hives. What the hell did that mean, again?

  Renn placated the younger fellow’s fears. May queens, he said, were always better than those bred and shipped earlier in spring. The egg-laying patterns of early queens were messed up, he said. They lay two and three eggs per comb and they set too much drone brood. Whatever that all meant. The extraordinary thing Stein noticed was that Renn’s pupil actually listened to him. Not to ridicule or demean, as the modern generation did to their elders, but to acquire knowledge he valued. Renn enjoyed the hell out of his role of teacher and elder statesman.

  Dick Jupe came up to one of the middle tables and tapped a beer bottle against a stanchion. When there was enough quiet he introduced himself as the president of the organization and called the meeting to order. Order here was a relative concept. There was no mike or podium. No Roberts Rules. The president didn’t wear a suit. He was just one of the men who’d gotten boondoggled into saying he’d do it for a year, which was the way George Washington envisioned the American presidency. The folks in the room were people who shopped in his hardware store and met him for coffee every week, so it was slightly awkward shushing them down. The women handled that job and the room became quiet except for the clanking of dishes in the kitchen.

  Jupe stood up on a bench so people in the back could see him. There was important business to be done. First, there was a report on the newest government regulations around trucking. The topic was roundly booed. They were Libertarians all, when it came to Washington. Finally he introduced their special guest. “A friend to beekeepers, who has been traveling all over the state talking to local groups like this one, Captain Anthony Caravaggio of the California Highway Patrol.”

  Stein’s nemesis from earlier that day edged his bulk into the center spot. He was out of uniform now. The amount of shirt material necessary to gird his waist could have made two mattresses. “Guys,” he began, “you’re a vital force to the agriculture of this state. I only wish Washington understood that better. All kinds of changes have been made to existing regulations. You’re not going to like all of them.”

  “Are we going to like any of them?” somebody hectored.

  “Probably not.”

  Caravaggio outlined the complex minutiae around trucking regulations and allowable hours per month of road use and maximum load weight, new strapping requirements, which, he parenthetically mentioned, would have saved the life of the driver whose truck had tipped over not far from here.

  All this information had to be written in logbooks. People groused that the government was making them bookkeepers instead of beekeepers.

  Dick thanked Caravaggio, asked for and got a round of appreciative applause for him, and plowed ahead to the next topic, which was honey. Last year was a pretty decent year, he acknowledged. There was a lot of moisture into late spring and production was up across the board. This year figured to be off just a little but not too bad. The good news was pollination fees. Eight frame boxes were going for a hundred and fifty dollars.

  The expression on his face became more solemn as he came to the topic of colony collapse. “We all know that something’s going on out there. Some of us have been hit and some of us not. Healthy bees are disappearing. Just dying. Hives are being abandoned. Not from disease. A lot of us here, we’ve had twenty, thirty percent depletion. Our friend Jack Dellingham from up there in Worshington, who came down and talked to us last year, he lost eighty percent of his bees. These were healthy bees.”

  Stein felt a current pass through the room. Murmurs of assent and concern followed. People who were not used to speaking aloud in public places testified of their own losses. Others, long in the habit of interruption, did so without reprimand. There was a lot of anger under the skin of these principled, mainly Mormon and Seventh Day Adventist, 4H club, law-abiding anarchists. No one had been untouched by the blight. One man in overalls at the back table had the worst story. He had twelve hundred healthy hives one day. The next morning he came out and not a single bee was to be found. His hives were empty. There was plenty of honey, so it had not been bears or predators, or mud wasps. There were no dead bees around the hive. The boxes were still there, so the bees had not been pilfered. They had just flat out vanished. Listening to their tales, Stein thought of the ride through the deserted streets of Las Viejas and realized that colony collapse affected more than just bees.

  The tenor of the room became more abrasive. Everyone had a theory around what was causing the problem. People blamed the nosema virus carried by the varroa mite. People blamed the Australians on whose bees the vi
rus entered the country. People blamed the government for not keeping the Australian bees out. They blamed the government for cutting sweetheart deals with the Russians, letting their beekeepers come in and ruin things, and with the Chinese, letting their inferior honey undercut prices.

  They blamed the pesticide manufacturers—fifty-three different toxic chemicals had been found in dead bees. They blamed the growers for removing all the natural sources of nutrition, which weakened the bees’ systems and rendered them susceptible to the pesticides and varroa mites. They blamed Sacramento for screwing the farmer, for diverting their water to LA. That brought on a whole new chorus of anger. Water needed to stay here. City people needed to understand how food got put on a table. Somebody blamed the Africanized bees for taking over European hives.

  The one black man in the room stood up. “Yeah, I was waiting for someone to say that,” he said. He had a military bearing.

  Jupe smoothed it over before anyone’s neck got pulled out of joint. He informed the group that their dues had been put to hiring a lobbyist who would help the government understand the beekeepers’ concern. Anybody wanting to contribute more could sign up for a 2 percent levy on the honey they sold. He asked if there was any other business. Before chaos and disorganization descended, Stein stood up.

  He said that a friend of his had some of his colonies stolen and that he was hoping to get them back, or at least get his equipment back, and that if anyone had any information or had any of their stuff pilfered, he’d be happy to buy them a beer. He tried to sound as affable and unthreatening as any outsider prying into peoples’ private lives could sound. A male voice from somewhere in the room yelled out, “I wish someone would steal my bees. Put me out of my misery.” A female voice right alongside him yelled out, “Put me out of his misery too.” That got lots of laughs from the women.

  ***

  The bar filled quickly. Stein tried to make himself conspicuous to anybody wanting to find him. He was ignored and vaguely invisible. He thought he saw a woman in the periphery make surreptitious eye contact with him but she retracted into the crowd before he could be sure.

  The only two guys in the room who were wearing suits had found each other. One kept talking about “management techniques” and “vectors of service-oriented revenue” that were overtaking the

  “production-oriented” sector of his business. The other had just come from seeing his in-laws in Spokane.

  The heavy hand of Anthony Caravaggio dropped onto Stein’s shoulder. “Well, look who’s here. My favorite airline pilot. Harry Stein. Of 237 Sycamore Alley, West Hollywood, California. Born December 8, 1950. Height five-foot nine, weight one-seventy. But I’d say closer to one-ninety.”

  Not to be outdone, Stein answered coolly, “You have an excellent memory, Captain Anthony Caravaggio, badge number 38336, driving California Issue Highway Patrol Vehicle number 797.”

  “Impressive,” Caravaggio said. “Too bad you weren’t even close with my badge number.”

  “That’s because you don’t know my transposition code.”

  Caravaggio pressed Stein very subtly away from the nucleus of the crowd. “Why don’t we go outside for a cup of coffee?”

  “A little late for caffeine, but thanks.”

  “You wouldn’t mind telling me again, a little bit more specifically this time, why you’re here?”

  “I just don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

  “Really? You don’t?” Caravaggio pressed closer.

  “I’m just going to this meeting. It’s no crime.”

  “You’d be surprised what’s a crime and what isn’t.”

  Stein put his drink down so he could express his childlike innocence with two open hands. “I’m just looking for stories.”

  “No one’s going to be telling you any stories. People around here like to settle disputes among themselves. We don’t go whining to the media.”

  “I’m not media. I’m just some guy.”

  Caravaggio nodded to a cluster of four men at the end of the bar. “See the Chamber of Commerce over there? They run fifteen hundred hives each.” He weather-vaned Stein a few degrees east. “Renn Moody over there? Three thousand. Your friend, Moonblossom, how many? Ten?”

  He slung his yoke of an arm around Stein’s shoulders and guided him outside; for all the world to see, a couple of old drinking buddies. “It’s a beautiful night for a drive to LA,” Caravaggio said. “If you leave right now and drive at a reasonable rate of speed, you should be tucked in your own bed by two, three at the latest.”

  “Are you running me out of town?”

  “Nothing of the sort. I’m simply a source of information. By the way, did you check all the signs around the corner where you parked? I’d hate to see you get booted.”

  “Maybe I better double-check.” Stein walked unhurriedly down the three steps from the restaurant doorway to the sidewalk. He paused there for a moment and turned right.

  “You parked in the other direction.”

  Stein guessed that Caravaggio was watching him but didn’t want to obviously check. Throwing an arm up in gratitude, never looking back, Stein spun around and headed in the proper direction. Just before he reached the corner, a bandy-winged arm darted out from behind a nonworking street light and plucked at Stein’s sleeve.

  A voiced hissed, “My husband had some bees stolen.”

  It was the elusive woman from inside.

  “Does he want to talk to me?”

  “Billy Bob!” She stage-whispered into the dark alley behind her. Her husband appeared. He was the young man Stein had watched conversing with Renn Moody. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Stein said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your pilferage. Your bees being stolen.”

  “Oh. Right. Funny way to put it.”

  “Do I call you Billy? Or Bob? Or Billy Bob?”

  He had to laugh. “She does that. My name is Hollister Greenway. The wife is Ruth Ann.”

  “I better take my own car and follow you.”

  Ruth Ann took the keys from Hollister and slid in behind the wheel of the Ford Bronco. “Billy Bob’s medication don’t like him to drive at night,” she said.

  “I don’t take medication,” Hollister clarified. “And she doesn’t talk like that. She just likes to drive trucks.”

  ***

  Stein tooted his horn and waved a conspicuous farewell to Caravaggio as he drove past the entrance to the restaurant. He drove down Seventh Street, obeying every traffic law possible. At the corner of G he made rendezvous with the idling 1977 Ford Bronco and followed the fleeting taillights back through town. It felt even more desolate than it had earlier. The Bronco busted a red and swung around a corner. Stein waited dutifully for the light to change. When he made the turn he found himself looking into utter blackness. His own thin beams illuminated the two-lane blacktop that went right or left right in front of him, but there were no red tail lights in either direction. A tremor of paranoia swept through him. Images of ambush, hijack, vigilantes, Mississippi Burning.

  Suddenly a pair of Solaris Xenon ultra-brights exploded out of the utter darkness right at his windshield punctuated by the blast of a horn. Stein recoiled and threw his arms up in front of his face as the vehicle blasted at him, head on. At the last instant the Bronco veered off and skidded to a stop. Hollister leaned from out the

  passenger-side window. “Don’t mind Ruth Ann.”

  The little woman set out along the two-lane at a nice, straight-faced rate of speed that Stein could easily follow. He had no sense of where they were, and after a few miles paranoia kicked in again. He was relieved when he saw an oasis of light in the distance. As they got closer Stein recognized that they were heading for the deserted condo development he had seen earlier.

  He followed the truck onto a gravel side road under the banners that hung still in the windless nighttime air. The Bronco parked in the spot designated TENANTS ONLY. Ruth Ann’s hand reached out the driver’s-side window a
nd directed Stein to the spot right behind her, reserved for VISITORS. She hopped down from the cab and strode like a long-legged woman up the walkway to the first unit and let them inside.

  “You live here?” Stein asked, trying to make the prospect sound admirable.

  “Hollister can be a little impetuous with his financials,” she said. “But where there’s love, any house becomes a home.” She hostessed Stein inside.

  The lights had all been left blazing and Stein figured that utilities must be included with the purchase price. The furniture looked straight out of DINNETTS AND THINGS. Stein took a seat on one of the polyester easy chairs that matched the plaid pullout sofa. Ruth Ann moved two of the formal place settings off the laminated dining table placed under a chandelier of hanging glass globettes.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” She opened the kitchen fridge, displaying a bounteous array of foodstuffs. “We’ve got fake milk, fake apple juice, fake diet Coke …”

  “We don’t really live here,” Hollister subtitled. “This is the model home. Ruth Ann works as the booking agent. Our place is on the other side of the hill just past the Paulsen Reservoir.”

  Stein’s interest in the theatrics was diminishing. “I’ve got to get back to LA tonight. You say you had some bees stolen …?”

  Their story itself was unspectacular. Two years prior, a coworker of Hollister’s at the Sunkist plant named Boyd Weber, whom everyone called Spider, got a promotion to Southeast Regional Area supervisor and was transferred to Baton Rouge. Hollister said he’d take care of Spider’s bees while he was gone—he had no experience, but it looked easy enough. The bees did all the work. All you had to do was gather the honey.