I lay in silence for a moment. Then I said, "You're quite droll, Mr. Romanovich."

"But I hope not grotesque."

"I'm still thinking about that." I pointed to the second SUV.

"You're driving that one. You'll find the keys tagged with the license number in a wall box over there."

"Has your meditation on the ceiling stains ameliorated your fear of the great unknown?"

"As much as could be expected, sir. Would you like to take a few minutes to meditate on them?"

"No thank you, Mr. Thomas. The great unknown does not trouble me." He went to get the keys.

When I rose to my feet, my legs were steadier than they had been recently.

Ozzie Boone, a four-hundred-pound best-selling mystery writer who is my friend and mentor in Pico Mundo, insists that I keep the tone light in these biographical manuscripts. He believes that pessimism is strictly for people who are over-educated and unimaginative. Ozzie counsels me that melancholy is a self-indulgent form of sorrow. By writing in an unrelievedly dark mode, he warns, the writer risks culturing darkness in his heart, becoming the very thing that he decries.

Considering the gruesome death of Brother Timothy, the awful discoveries yet to be revealed in this account, and the grievous losses forthcoming, I doubt that the tone of this narrative would be half as light as it is if Rodion Romanovich had not been part of it. I do not mean that he turned out to be a swell guy. I mean only that he had wit.

These days, all I ask of Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another. This is a big request to make of busy Fate, who has billions of lives to keep in constant turmoil. Most good people have a sense of humor. The problem is finding smile-inducing evil people, because the evil are mostly humorless, though in the movies they frequently get some of the best lines. With few exceptions, the morally bipolar are too preoccupied with justifying their contradictory behaviors to learn to laugh at themselves, and I've noticed they laugh at other people more than with them.

Burly, fur-hatted, and looking as solemn as a man should who prepares people for death, Rodion Romanovich returned with the keys to the second SUV.

"Mr. Thomas, any scientist will tell you that in nature many systems appear to be chaotic, but when you study them long enough and closely enough, strange order always underlies the appearance of chaos."

I said, "How about that."

"The winter storm into which we are going will seem chaotic-the shifting winds and the churning snow and the brightness that obscures more than it reveals-but if you could view it not at the level of a meteorological event, view it instead at the micro scale of fluid and particle and energy flux, you would see a warp and woof suggestive of a well-woven fabric."

"I left my micro-scale eyeglasses in my room."

"If you were to view it at the atomic level, the event might seem chaotic again, but proceeding into the subatomic, strange order appears once more, an even more intricate design than warp and woof. Always, beneath every apparent chaos, order waits to be revealed."

"You haven't seen my sock drawer."

"The two of us might seem to be in this place, at this time, only by coincidence, but both an honest scientist and a true man of faith will tell you there are no coincidences."

I shook my head. "They sure did make you do some pretty deep thinking at that mortician's school."

Neither a spot nor a wrinkle marred his clothes, and his rubber boots gleamed like patent leather.

Stoic, seamed, and solid, his face was a mask of perfect order.

He said, "Do not bother to ask for the name of the mortician's school, Mr. Thomas. I never attended one."

"This is the first time I've known anyone," I said, "who embalmed without a license."

His eyes revealed an order even more rigorous than that exemplified by his wardrobe and his face.

He said, "I obtained a license without the need for schooling. I had a natural-born talent for the trade."

"Some kids are born with perfect pitch, with a genius for math, and you were born knowing how to prepare people for death."

"That is exactly correct, Mr. Thomas."

"You must have come from interesting genetic stock."

"I suspect," he said, "that your family and mine were equally unconventional."

"I've never met my mother's sister, Aunt Cymry, but my father says she's a dangerous mutant they've locked away somewhere."

The Russian shrugged. "I would nevertheless wager heavily on the equivalency of our families. Should I lead the way or follow you?"

If he contained chaos on some level below wardrobe and face and eyes, it must be in his mind. I wondered what kind of strange order might underlie it.

"Sir, I've never driven in snow before. I'm not sure how I'll be able to tell, under all the drifts, exactly where the driveway runs between here and the abbey. I'd have to plow by intuition- though I usually do all right that way."

"With all due respect, Mr. Thomas, I believe that experience trumps intuition. Russia is a world of snow, and in fact I was born during a blizzard."

"During a blizzard, in a mortuary?"

"Actually, in a library."

"Was your mother a librarian?"

"No," he said. "She was an assassin."

"An assassin."

"That is correct."

"Do you mean assassin figuratively or literally, sir?"

"Both, Mr. Thomas. When driving behind me, please remain at a safe distance. Even with four-wheel drive and chains, there is some danger of sliding."

"I feel like I've been sliding all day. I'll be careful, sir."

"If you do start to slide, turn the wheel into the direction of the slide. Do not try to pull out of it. And use the brakes gently." He walked to the other SUV and opened the driver's door.

Before he climbed behind the wheel, I said, "Sir, lock your doors. And if you see anything unusual in the storm, don't get out of the truck to have a closer look at it. Keep driving."

"Unusual? Such as?"

"Oh, you know, anything unusual. Say like a snowman with three heads or someone who looks like she might be my Aunt Cymry"

Romanovich could peel an apple with his stare.

With a little good-luck wave, I got into my truck, and after a moment, he got into his.

After he drove around me to the foot of the ramp, I pulled in behind him.

He used his remote opener, and at the top of the incline, the big door began to roll up.

Beyond the garage lay a chaos of bleak light, shrieking wind, and a perpetual avalanche of falling snow.

CHAPTER 35

IN FRONT OF ME, RODION ROMANOVICH DROVE out of the garage into hammers of wind and shatters of snow, and I switched on my headlamps. The drowned daylight required them in this feathered rain.

Even as those beams brought sparkle to the dull white curtains of snow, Elvis materialized in the passenger seat as though I had switched him on, as well.

He was dressed in his navy-frogman scuba suit from Easy Come, Easy Go, possibly because he thought I needed a laugh.

The black neoprene hood fitted tightly to his head, covering his hair, his ears, and his forehead to the eyebrows. With his face thus isolated, the sensuous quality of his features was weirdly enhanced, but not to good effect. He looked not like a navy frogman but rather like a sweet little bow-lipped Kewpie doll that some pervert had dressed in a bondage costume.

"Oh, man, that movie," I said. "With that one, you gave new meaning to the word ridiculous."

He laughed soundlessly, pretended to shoot me with a spear gun, and phased from the scuba suit into the Arabian costume he had worn in Harum Scarum.