Virtual Light

“Wait a second. What are we talking about here? We’re talking about freelance armed-response?”

“Guy’s a skip-tracer. You know what that is?”

“Finds people when they try to get out from under debt, blow off the rent, like that?”

“Or take off with your kid in a custody case, whatever. But, you know, those kinds of skips, they can mostly be handled through the net, these days. Just keep plugging their stats into DatAmerica, eventually you go

“So what a skip-tracer mostly does—” Rydell suggested, remembering one particular episode of Cops in Trouble he’d seen with his father.

“Is keep you from having to go to the cops.”

“Or to a licensed private detective agency.”

“You got it.” Hernandez was watching him.

Rydell walked past him, into the living room, hearing the German shower-sandals come squishing after him across the kitchen’s dull tile floor. Someone had been smoking tobacco in there the night before. He could smell it. It was in violation of the lease. The landlord would give them hell about it. The landlord was a Serb immigrant who drove a fifteen-year-old BMW, wore these weird furry Tyrolean hats, and insisted on being called Wally. Because Wally knew that Rydell worked for IntenSecure, he’d wanted to show him the flashlight he kept clipped under the dash in his BMW. It was about a foot long and had a button that triggered a big shot of capsicum gas. He’d asked Rydell if Rydell thought it was ‘enough.’

Rydell had lied. Had told him that people who did, for instance, a whole lot of dancer, they actually liked a blast or two of good capsicum. Like it cleared their sinuses. Got their juices flowing. They got off on it.

Now Rydell looked down and saw for the first time that the living room carpet in the house in Mar Vista was exactly the same stuff he’d crawled across in Turvey’s girlfriend’s apartment in Knoxville. Maybe a little cleaner, but the same stuff. He’d never noticed that before.

“Listen, Rydell, you don’t want to take this, fine. My day off, I drive over here, you appreciate that? You get tweaked by some hackers, you fall for it, you push the response too hard, I can understand. But it happened, man, it’s on your file, and this is the best I can do. But listen up. You do right by the company, maybe that gets back to Singapore.”

“Hernandez…”

“My day off…”

“Man, I don’t know anything about finding people—”

“You can drive. All they want. Just drive. You drive the tracer, see? He’s got his leg hassled, he can’t drive. And this is, like, delicate, this thing. Requires some smarts. I told them I thought you could do it, man. I did that. I told them.”

Monica’s copy of People was on the couch, open to a story about Gudrun Weaver, this actress in her forties who’d just found the Lord, courtesy of the Reverend Wayne Fallon, in time to get her picture in People. There was a full-page picture of her on a couch in her living room, gazing raptly at a bank of monitors, each one showing the same old movie.

Rydell saw himself on the futon from Futon Mouth, staring up at those big stick-on flowers and bumper-stickers. “Is it legal?”

Hernandez slapped his powder-blue thigh. It sounded like a pistol shot. “Legal? We are talking IntenSecure Corporation here. We are talking major shit. I am trying to help you, man. You think I would ask you to do something fucking illegal?”

“But what’s the deal, Hernandez? I just go up there and drive?”

“Fucking ‘A’! Drive! Mr. Warbaby say drive, you drive.”

“Who?”

“Warbaby. This Lucius Warbaby.”

Rydell picked up Monica’s copy of People and found a picture of Gudrun Weaver and the Reverend Wayne Fallon. Gudrun Weaver looked like an actress in her forties. Fallon looked like a possum with hair-implants and a ten-thousand-dollar tuxedo.

“This Warbaby, Berry, he’s right on top of this shit. He’s a fucking star, man. Otherwise why they hire him? You do this, you learn shit. You still young, man. You can learn shit.”

Rydell tossed the People back onto the couch. “Who they trying to find?”

“Hotel theft. Somebody took something. We got the security there. Singapore, man, they’re in some kind of serious twist about it. All I know.”

Rydell stood in the warm shade of the carport, gazing down into the shimmering depths of the animated waterfall on the hood of Hernandez’s daughter’s Sneaker, mist rising through green boughs of rain forest. He’d once seen a Harley done up so that everything that wasn’t triple-chromed was crawling, fast forward, with life-sized bugs. Scorpions, centipedes, you name it.

“See” Hernandez said, “see there, where it blurs? That’s supposed to be some kind of fucking sloth, man. Some lemur, you know? Factory warranty.”

“When do they want me to go?”

“I give you this number.” Hernandez handed Rydell a torn scrap of yellow paper. “Call them.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey” Hernandez said, “I like to see you do okay. I do. I like that.” He touched the Sneaker’s hood. “Look at this shit. Factory fucking warranty.”

Chevette dreamed she was riding Folsom, a stiff sidewind threatening to push her into oncoming. Took a left on Sixth, caught that wind at her back, ran a red at Howard and Mission, a stale green at Market, bopped the brakes and bu

Coming down in a hard lean, she headed up Nob on Taylor.

“Make it this time” she said.

Legs pumping, the wind a strong hand in the small of her back, sky clear and beckoning at the top of the hill, she thumbed her chain up onto some huge-ass custom ring, too big for her derailleur, too big to fit any frame at all, and felt the shining teeth catch, her hammering slowing to a steady spin—but then she was losing it.

She stood up and started pounding, screaming, lactic acid slamming through her veins. She was at the crest, lifting off– Colored light slanted into Ski

Two of the smaller sections of glass had fallen out; the gaps were stuffed with pieces of rag, throwing shadows on the tattered yellow wall of National Geographics. Ski

8. Morning after

She snaked her arm out into the November chill and snagged a sweater off the seat of a paint-caked wooden stool. She pulled the sweater into her bag and twisted into it, tugging it down over her knees. It hung to her knees when she stood up, the neckband so stretched that she had to keep pushing it back up on her shoulder. Ski

She rubbed her eyes, went to the ladder bolted to the wall and climbed the five rungs, undoing the catch on the roof-hatch without bothering to look at it. She came up here most mornings now, started her day with the water and then the city. Unless it was raining, or too foggy, and then it was her turn to pump the ancient Coleman, its red-painted tank like a toy submarine. Ski

She climbed out of the square hole and sat on its edge, dangling her bare legs down into the room. Sun struggling to burn off the silvery gray. On hot days it heated the tar on the roof’s flat rectangle and you could smell it.