The Darkest Evening Of The Year

Chapter 29

The client was waiting for them east of Lake Elsinor, out where the merciless desert had met its match in the relentless tract-house builders.

Bobby Onions drove them to the rendezvous in his cool Land Rover because no way in hell would he ride in Vernon Lesley’s Chevy, which Bobby called “wimp wheels, a losermobile.”

Vern refrained from mentioning that every time he needed an extra hand, Bobby was available for hire, which suggested that clients were not standing in line outside Onions Investigations.

Inexplicably, the freeway traffic was light. Whatever the reason, Vern knew the explanation wasn’t that the Rapture had occurred, that the saved had been taken straight to Heaven.

Mrs. Bonnaventura, who lived in the crappy apartment next to Vern’s crappy apartment, believed in the imminence of the Rapture. Housebound by emphysema, she kept two things close to her: a wheeled tank of oxygen, which she received through nasal cannula, and a small bag that she had packed for the miraculous ascent.

In the bag were a Bible, a change of underwear, photos of dead loved ones-family and friends-whom Mrs. Bonnaventura intended to track down without delay upon reaching Paradise, and breath mints.

She knew she wouldn’t need the oxygen tank in Heaven, where she would be restored to her youth, and she couldn’t explain to Vern why she packed the underwear or the breath mints. She’d said, “I just don’t want to take any chances, it would be so embarrassing.”

When she talked about meeting God, Mrs. Bonnaventura glowed. The prospect of a divine howdy-do delighted her.

Vern didn’t believe in the Rapture, and he was neutral on the existence of God. But one thing he knew for sure: If God existed, meeting Him after death would be so terrifying that you’d probably die a second time from sheer fright.

Even someone like Mrs. Bonnaventura, who had lived a mostly blameless life, when ushered into the awesome presence of the Creator of the infinite universe and also of the butterfly, would discover ten thousand fearsome new layers of meaning in the word humility.

Mrs. Bonnaventura said God was pure love, as if this quality of the Lord made meeting him a less weighty event, as if it would be like-but even nicer than-meeting Oprah Winfrey.

Vern figured that if God existed, a God of pure love, then for sure there had to be a Purgatory, because you would need a place of purification before you dared go upstairs for the Ultimate Hug. Even a sweet woman like Mrs. Bonnaventura, rapturing directly from this life to God’s presence, would detonate as violently as antimatter meeting matter, like in that old episode of Star Trek.

Interrupting Vern’s theological musings, piloting the Rover with one hand, rubbing the back of his neck with the other, Bobby Onions said, “So what’s the story with the bounce?”

“Bounce?”

“The woman.”

“What woman?” Vern wondered.

“What woman could it be?” Bobby said impatiently. “Redwing.”

“You said someone you’re investigating, you call a monkey.”

“That’s a man or a woman. Besides, I’m not investigating her anymore.”

“So why do you call her the bounce?”

“When a woman has the right stuff in the right places to bounce in the right way, she’s hot. A bounce is a sexy lady.”

“What do you call a sexy guy?” Vern asked.

“I don’t find guys sexy.” Bobby frowned. He put both hands on the wheel and sat up straighter. “You don’t find guys sexy, do you?”

“No. Hell, no. Don’t talk crazy.”

“So what is this Von Longwood business?” Bobby asked.

“What do you mean? He’s my avatar. In Second Life.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I told you. Don’t you listen?”

“You’re always talking about him.”

“And you’re never listening. He’s an avatar, like a cartoon version of me, just another identity. He’s me, I’m him.”

Scowling into the desert glare as they turned onto an exit ramp, Bobby said, “It sounds kinky to me.”

“It’s not kinky. Mostly it’s a role-playing game.”

“I heard about these two gay guys-one dressed up like a nurse, the other like a Nazi, then they’d go at each other.”

“Not that kind of role-playing. It’s cool. Go on-line, look up Second Life, educate yourself.”

“I don’t need the Internet. I’ve already got me a life, and it’s packed full. I don’t need a play life.”

Simmering, Vern said, “The next road, go left.”

Cottonwoods and clusters of wild oleander thrived along a dry streambed, but on the hills of rock and sand, nothing grew other than withered mesquite and sage and bunch-grass.

“How much you pay for your fabulous flying car?” Bobby asked, punctuating the question with a smirk.

Although he knew he was being mocked, Vern could not resist saying with some pride, “A hundred fifty thousand Linden dollars.”

“What’s a Linden dollar?”

“That’s the money you buy to spend in Second Life. Linden Labs, they started Second Life.”

“How much is that in real money?”

“Six hundred bucks.”

“You paid six hundred bucks for a cartoon car? No wonder you drive a losermobile in your real life.”

Vern almost said My second life is my real life, but he knew a Philistine like Bobby would never understand.

Instead, he said, “So which is the real you-Bobby Onions or Barney Smallburg?”

The starboard wheels stuttered on the graveled shoulder of the road, but then found the pavement again.

“You sonofabitch,” said Barney-Bobby. “You investigated me.”

“Anybody I’m gonna hire to back me up on a job-I find out who he is first. You changed your name two years before you got your PI license. I’ve known it since the first case you worked with me.”

“In a paramilitary profession,” said Barney-Bobby, “image is important.”

“Maybe you’re right. Barney Smallburg doesn’t sound like a guy with gonads.”

“Compared to Vernon Lesley, it sounds totally kick-ass.”

“You’ll be making a right turn in about half a mile.”

Runty cactuses clawed out a life on a sand-and-shale hillside, their spiky shadows creeping eastward as the westering sun sought the distant sea.

“Tell you what,” said Barney-Bobby. “You never tell anyone I changed my name, I’ll stop riding you about Von Longwood.”

“Fair enough.”

“You’re of the old school, I’m of the new,” Bobby said, “but I’ve got a lot of respect for you, Vern.”

That was bullshit, but Vern didn’t care. What people thought of him in his first life was of no concern to him anymore. He had his refuge now, and his wings.

“So what’s the story with the bounce?” Bobby asked.

“She had her own other life before the current one. She’s hiding under the name Redwing.”

“Hiding from who?”

“I don’t know. But they found her. And they hired me to search for every proof she kept of that life and take it from her.”

“What proof?”

“Documents, snapshots.”

“Why take it from her?”

“You ask too many questions,” Vern said.

“You, me, every good procto has to have curiosity.”

Procto. Vern decided not to ask for a definition. He said, “All I care is, it’s a good payday.”

As Vern had instructed, Bobby turned right on a badly fissured blacktop road so long neglected that weeds sprouted from the cracks in the pavement.

“Are you ironed?” Bobby Onions asked. “You don’t look ironed.”

Squinting down at his shirt and pants, Vern said, “I always buy this wrinkleproof polyester-blend crap. I just let the wrinkles hang out. What the hell do you care anyway?”

Bobby sighed. “‘Are you ironed’ means are you carrying iron, are you packing a gun?”

“You aren’t living in a movie, Bobby. When did you ever hear of a PI getting shot by a client in real life?”

“It could always happen.”

“To the best of your knowledge, has it ever happened?”

“All it takes is once to get yourself dead.” Bobby patted the left side of his sport coat. “I’m packing a real door-buster.”

“I didn’t want to ask,” Vern said, “’cause I thought maybe you had a huge tumor or something.”

“Bullshit. It doesn’t show. It’s in a custom holster, and I had the tailor do some work on the jacket.”

The road topped a rise. A great flat plain opened before them.

In the foreground, still a quarter of a mile distant, stood a series of Quonset huts of different sizes, a few quite large, their ribbed-steel curves so abraded by sand and by time that the sun could not tease a true shine from them, only a soft gray luster.

“What’s this place?” Bobby asked, letting up on the accelerator.

“Something military from a long time ago. Abandoned now. Weapons bunkers off to the left there. Offices, maintenance buildings. This land’s so flat and hard, there’s a natural runway, they didn’t have to pave it.”

Beyond the buildings stood a twin-engine Cessna.

The dry weeds in the fractured roadway whispered against the undercarriage as the Land Rover lost speed, ticked…ticked…ticked like the rubber pointer on a slowing wheel of fortune.

A man stepped out of the open door of one of the Quonset huts.

“That’ll be him,” said Vernon Lesley.