“You’ve got two doors in front of you,” I said. “Behind one is a pot of gold. Behind the other, a permanent bed at the Gray Bar Motel. Anybody as smart as you is going to either get very rich or spend the rest of his life dodging the law. Pick one.”
Fortunately, he chose right. He was now earning over $150,000 a year as a security consultant-way more than me, by the way-making sure bank systems were hack-proof against guys like him. He was also able to make my life as a detective much easier.
When Sherlock Holmes plied his trade, he and Watson often ventured out into the “thick, choking” London fog, as Conan Doyle described the dank atmosphere caused by the soft, bituminous coal burned during that time. I was filled with longing as I devoured those dog-eared paperbacks night after night, in my room at the monastery in Dharamshala, tracing their patient footwork through the cobbled London streets. Even the smoky miasma they inhaled seemed romantic. I prayed for the chance to rattle around an acrid city myself one day, collecting evidence.
Okay, so cruising in a black-and-white during 78-degree sunny winter days isn’t exactly the same thing, but that’s the point; nothing ever stays the same. Much has altered since Sherlock’s time, and the biggest transformation is in how we do our detective work.
Exit cobblestones. Enter the Internet.
Sherlock might well have scorned such an instantaneous tool, dismissed it as lazy, but smart detectives nowadays, even the ones who work for the LAPD, make sure they’re on good terms with at least one computer jockey. In my case, whenever I needed my e-mail fixed, or Internet access installed, or a little discreet hacking of my own done, I had Mike on my speed dial.
I guess you could say he was my own private Dr. Watson.
“Earth to Ten. Earth to Ten. Come in, please.”
I left Sherlock’s world and reentered the technical challenges of my own.
I said, “So what you’re saying is, that fat, expensive data line I just installed is useless unless I upgrade.”
“Maybe not. Toss me your text buggy.”
“My …?”
“Your cell phone, boss.”
I handed it over.
He looked at it in disbelief. Handed it back.
“Pleistocene-era, my man. And fugly to boot.”
As I opened my mouth to protest, I heard the unmistakable choppy stutter of an old Volkswagen wheezing up the gravel hill that leads to my driveway.
Two visitors in one day. Unheard of.
Mike and I moved to the kitchen window. A rusted Volkswagen Beetle-the original model, the one you could fix at home, blindfolded-surged into my driveway, coughed once, and died. After a moment, the door creaked open and long, California-girl legs unfolded a lean body from the driver’s seat. She rolled her shoulders a few times, and stretched. As she turned to look at the house, her face was illuminated in the afternoon light. She was older than I’d first thought, already in her 40s. Her thick blond hair, threaded here and there with silver, was plaited into a long braid down her back. Her face and arms were tanned-the tawny color of sage honey.
“Time warp. What a trip. She’s straight off of Yasgur’s Farm,” Mike said.
“Who’s Yasgur?”
Mike shot me one of his “Are you joking?” looks.
“Yasgur’s Farm. Woodstock? 1969? Peace, love, and acid? Boss, you have some serious gaps in your cultural literacy.”
Woodstock I had heard of. Missing that event was one of Valerie’s deepest regrets, or so she’d often informed me after several glasses of wine. It sat at the top of a long list of resentments she’d held against her estranged parents until the day she died.
This lady did appear to have a strong vintage-hippie thing going on. Her yellow and brown paisley dress was long, loose, and flowing. She had a crocheted shawl around her shoulders, and her handbag was of Indian cotton embroidered with tiny mirrors that winked in the late afternoon sun.
“Man,” Mike said. “That lady’s so outdated she’s back in.”
She spotted us watching from the window, and waved.
“I’m going to let you handle this one,” Mike said. “I’ll keep examining the entrails here.” He went back to work on my computer.
I stepped outside and waved back. She walked right over and offered her hand. I caught a faint whiff of stale incense.
“My name’s Barbara Maxey,” she said, her voice pleasant. Her palm was rough and dry, like she did a lot of outside work.
“Tenzing, Tenzing Norbu.”
“You’re a long way from Tibet.”
That was interesting. Most people I met had no idea that Tenzing was a common Tibetan name.
She gestured toward the house. “I’m guessing Zimmy Backus doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Not for a couple of years,” I said.
“Is he …?” Her face creased with anxiety.
“No, no, he’s fine, as far as I know.”
She looked relieved.
“I used to be married to Zimmy,” she said, “but I was part of the living-out-of-a-van era. B.S., we called it back then. Before Success.”
“No kidding, you were married to Zimmy?”
“Wife number one. The one before the Japanese wife. I never lived up here.” She took in the view, and a wisp of regret passed over her features. “It’s beautiful. A beautiful place to be.”
I waited. After a moment, she half smiled at me. I was oddly touched.
“They still together?” she asked.
I told her about the bass player, and she winced at the indignity of it.
“Zimmy and I hooked up as drug buddies first, before we made it official. We never had much of a marriage. We went through a major mountain of cocaine before we split up. Four years of haze and hell is what it was, and I was the one keeping the engine stoked with coke.”
I’d only known this woman for 30 seconds and we were already deep into her marital and pharmacological history. Usually that kind of instant confession turns me off, but there was something endearing about Barbara’s candor, an underlying sadness that kept her confession from seeming in any way self-serving, a ploy to arouse sympathy. I found myself wanting to protect her.
I told her I’d bought the house from Zimmy, and gave her a quick synopsis of Zimmy’s life since.
“Pear farm?” She shook her head. “That must be some different version of Zimmy than the one I knew.”
“I think rehab really worked for him.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “I had to join a cult to get clean. And then the cult ended up being worse than the dope. I mean, it only took six weeks to get off coke, but ten years to escape that freaking place.”
“How long have you been out?”
She gave me a wide, full smile, and I saw the stunning young woman she must have been before drugs and disappointment had their way with her.
“Since yesterday.”
How bizarre was that? Today was my first real day of freedom, and hers, too. I was intrigued. Why had the universe arranged for us to meet on such a hopeful day for both of us? It seemed auspicious, and my heart perked up at the possibilities.
Barbara gestured at my house. “That’s why I came here. This house is the only place I thought I might find somebody I know. I have nowhere else to go. The group I was in, they didn’t allow any communication with anybody from our past. No phones, no letters, nothing.”
Nowhere to go. That feeling, I understood.
“What about your family?”
She shrugged. “No family. Just me.”
I understood that, too.
“Where did you get the car?” I asked.
She ducked her head. “Stole it,” she said. “It belonged to them.”
“The cult?”
She nodded sheepishly. “But I figured I had something coming to me, with all the crap I put up with from them.”
She scuffed at the dirt. She was wearing old work boots under her dress, an oddly attractive combination of masculine and feminine. It occurred to me she might like to come inside. Have a cup of tea.