{"id":6374,"date":"2026-01-05T23:47:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/the-face-koontz-dean\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T23:47:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:47:20","slug":"the-face-koontz-dean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/the-face-koontz-dean\/","title":{"rendered":"The Face – Koontz, Dean"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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The Face Dean R. Koontz<\/p>\n

ALSO BY DEAN KOONTZ<\/p>\n

By the Light of the Moon One Door Away From Heaven From the Corner of His Eye False Memory Seize the Night Fear Nothing Mr. Murder Dragon Tears Hideaway Cold Fire The Bad Place Midnight Lightning Watchers Strangers Twilight Eyes Darkfall Phantoms Whispers The Mask The Vision The Face of Fear Night Chills Shattered The Voice of the Night The Servants of Twilight The House of Thunder The Key to Midnight The Eyes of Darkness Shadowfires Winter Moon The Door to December Dark Rivers of the Heart Icebound Strange Highways Intensity Sole Survivor Ticktock The Funhouse Demon Seed<\/p>\n

The civilized human spirit . . . cannot get rid of a feeling of the uncanny. \u2014Doctor Faustus, THOMAS MANN<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 1 AFTER THE APPLE HAD BEEN CUT IN HALF, the halves had been sewn together with coarse black thread. Ten bold stitches were uniformly spaced. Each knot had been tied with a surgeon\u2019s precision. The variety of apple, a red delicious, might have significance. Considering that these messages had been delivered in the form of objects and images, never in words, every detail might refine the sender\u2019s meaning, as adjectives and punctuation refined prose. More likely, however, this apple had been selected because it wasn\u2019t ripe. Softer flesh would have crumbled even if the needle had been used with care and if each stitch had been gently cinched. Awaiting further examination, the apple stood on the desk in Ethan Truman\u2019s study. The black box in which the apple had been packed also stood on the desk, bristling with shredded black tissue paper. The box had already yielded what clues it contained: none. Here in the west wing of the mansion, Ethan\u2019s ground-floor apartment was comprised of this study, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Tall French windows provided a clear view of nothing real. The previous occupant would have called the study a living room and would have furnished the space accordingly. Ethan did too little living to devote an entire room to it. With a digital camera, he had photographed the black box before opening it. He had also taken shots of the red delicious from three angles. He assumed that the apple had been sliced open in order to allow for the insertion of an object into the core. He was reluctant to snip the stitches and to take a look at what might lie within. Years as a homicide detective had hardened him in some respects. In other ways, too much experience of extreme violence had made him vulnerable. He was only thirty-seven, but his police career was over. His instincts remained sharp, however, and his darkest expectations were undiminished. A sough of wind insisted at the French panes. A soft tapping of blown rain. The languid storm gave him excuse enough to leave the apple waiting and to step to the nearest window. Frames, jambs, rails, muntins\u2014every feature of every window in the great house had been crafted in bronze. Exposure to the elements promoted a handsome mottled-green patina on exterior surfaces. Inside, diligent maintenance kept the bronze a dark ruby-brown. The glass in each pane was beveled at every edge. Even in the humblest of service rooms\u2014the scullery, the ground-floor laundry\u2014beveling had been specified. Although the residence had been built for a film mogul during the last years of the Great Depression, no evidence of a construction budget could be seen anywhere from the entrance foyer to the farthest corner of the last back hall. When steel sagged, when clothes grew moth-eaten on haberdashery racks, when cars rusted on showroom floors for want of customers, the film industry nevertheless flourished. In bad times as in good, the only two absolute necessities were food and illusions. From the tall study windows, the view appeared to be a painting of the kind employed in motion-picture matte shots: an exquisitely rendered dimensional scene that, through the deceiving eye of the camera, could serve convincingly as a landscape on an alien planet or as a place on this world perfected as reality never allowed. Greener than Eden\u2019s fields, acres of lawn rolled away from the house, without one weed or blade of blight. The majestic crowns of immense California live oaks and the drooping boughs of melancholy deodar cedars, each a classic specimen, were silvered and diamonded by the December drizzle. Through skeins of rain as fine as angel hair, Ethan could see, in the distance, the final curve of the driveway. The gray-green quartzite cobblestones, polished to a sterling standard by the rain, led to the ornamental bronze gate in the estate wall. During the night, the unwanted visitor had approached the gate on foot. Perhaps suspecting that this barrier had been retrofitted with modern security equipment and that the weight of a climber would trigger an alarm in a monitoring station, he\u2019d slung the package over the high scrolled crest of the gate, onto the driveway. The box containing the apple had been cushioned by bubble wrap and then sealed in a white plastic bag to protect it further from foul weather. A red gift bow, stapled to the bag, ensured that the contents would not be mistaken for garbage. Dave Ladman, one of two guards on the graveyard shift, retrieved the delivery at 3:56 A.M. Handling the bag with care, he had carried it to the security office in the groundskeeper\u2019s building at the back of the estate. Dave and his shift partner, Tom Mack, x-rayed the package with a fluoroscope. They were looking for wires and other metal components of an explosive device or a spring-loaded killing machine. These days, some bombs could be constructed with no metal parts. Consequently, following fluoroscopy, Dave and Tom employed a trace-scent analyzer capable of recognizing thirty-two explosive compounds from as few as three signature molecules per cubic centimeter of air. When the package proved clean, the guards unwrapped it, Upon discovering the black gift box, they had left a message on Ethan\u2019s voice mail and had set the delivery aside for his attention. At 8:35 this morning, one of the two guards on the early shift, Benny Nguyen, had brought the box to Ethan\u2019s apartment in the main house. Benny also arrived with a videocassette containing pertinent segments of tape from perimeter cameras that captured the delivery. In addition, he offered a traditional Vietnamese clay cooking pot full of his mother\u2019s com tay cam, a chicken-and-rice dish of which Ethan was fond. \u201cMom\u2019s been reading candle drippings again,\u201d Benny said. \u201cShe lit a candle in your name, read it, says you need to be fortified.\u201d \u201cFor what? The most strenuous thing I do these days is get up in the morning.\u201d \u201cShe didn\u2019t say for what. But not just for Christmas shopping. She had that temple-dragon look when she talked about it.\u201d \u201cThe one that makes pit bulls bare their bellies?\u201d \u201cThat one. She said you need to eat well, say prayers without fail each morning and night, and avoid drinking strong spirits.\u201d \u201cOne problem. Drinking strong spirits is how I pray.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll just tell Mom you poured your whiskey down the drain, and when I left, you were on your knees thanking God for making chickens so she could cook com tay cam.\u201d \u201cNever knew your mom to take no for an answer,\u201d Ethan said. Benny smiled. \u201cShe won\u2019t take yes for an answer, either. She doesn\u2019t expect an answer at all. Only dutiful obedience.\u201d Now, an hour later, Ethan stood at a window, gazing at the thin rain, like threads of seed pearls, accessorizing the hills of Bel Air. Watching weather clarified his thinking. Sometimes only nature felt real, while all human monuments and actions seemed to be the settings and the plots of dreams. From his uniform days through his plainclothes career, friends on the force had said that he did too much thinking. Some of them were dead. The apple had come in the sixth black box received in ten days. The contents of the previous five had been disturbing. Courses in criminal psychology, combined with years of street experience, made Ethan hard to impress in matters regarding the human capacity for evil. Yet these gifts provoked his deep concern. In recent years, influenced by the operatically flamboyant villains in films, every common gangbanger and every would-be serial killer, starring in his own mind movie, could not simply do his dirty work and move along. Most seemed to be obsessed with developing a dramatic persona, colorful crime-scene signatures, and ingenious taunts either to torment their victims beforehand or, after a murder, to scoff at the claimed competence of law-enforcement agencies. Their sources of inspiration, however, were all hackneyed. They succeeded only in making fearsome acts of cruelty seem as tiresome as the antics of an unfunny clown. The sender of the black boxes succeeded where others failed. For one thing, his wordless threats were inventive. When his intentions were at last known and the threats could be better understood in light of whatever actions he took, they might also prove to be clever. Even fiendishly so. In addition, he conferred on himself no silly or clumsy name to delight the tabloid press when eventually they became aware of his game. He signed no name at all, which indicated self-assurance and no desperate desire for celebrity. For another thing, his target was the biggest movie star in the world, perhaps the most guarded man in the nation after the President of the United States. Yet instead of stalking in secret, he revealed his intentions in wordless riddles full of menace, ensuring that his quarry would be made even more difficult to reach than usual. Having turned the apple over and over in his mind, examining the details of its packaging and presentation, Ethan fetched a pair of cuticle scissors from the bathroom. At last he returned to the desk. He pulled the chair from the knee space. He sat, pushed aside the empty gift box, and placed the repaired apple at the center of the blotter. The first five black boxes, each a different size, and their contents had been examined for fingerprints. He had dusted three of the deliveries himself, without success. Because the black boxes came without a word of explanation, the authorities would not consider them to be death threats. As long as the sender\u2019s intention remained open to debate, this failed to be a matter for the police. Deliveries 4 and 5 had been trusted to an old friend in the print lab of the Scientific Investigation Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, who processed them off the record. They were placed in a glass tank and subjected to a cloud of cyanoacrylate fumes, which readily condensed as a resin on the oils that formed latent prints. In fluorescent light, no friction-ridge patterns of white resin had been visible. Likewise, in a darkened lab, with a cone-shaded halogen lamp focused at oblique angles, the boxes and their contents continued to appear clean. Black magnetic powder, applied with a Magna-Brush, had revealed nothing. Even bathed in a methanol solution of rhodamine 6G, scanned in a dark lab with the eerie beam from a water-cooled argon ion laser generator, the objects had revealed no telltale luminous whorls. The nameless stalker was too careful to leave such evidence. Nevertheless, Ethan handled this sixth delivery with the care he\u2019d exhibited while examining the five previous items. Surely no prints existed to be spoiled, but he might want to check later. With the cuticle scissors, he snipped seven stitches, leaving the final three to serve as hinges. The sender must have treated the apple with lemon juice or with another common culinary preservative to ensure a proper presentation. The meat was mostly white, with only minor browning near the peel. The core remained. The seed pocket had been scooped clean of pits, however, to provide a setting for the inserted item. Ethan had expected a worm: earthworm, corn earworm, cutworm, leech, caterpillar, trematode, one type of worm or another. Instead, nestled in the apple flesh, he found an eye. For an ugly instant, he thought the eye might be real. Then he saw that it was only a plastic orb with convincing details. Not an orb, actually, but a hemisphere. The back of the eye proved to be flat, with a button loop. Somewhere a half-blinded doll still smiled. When the stalker looked at the doll, perhaps he saw the famous object of his obsession likewise mutilated. Ethan was nearly as disturbed by this discovery as he might have been if he\u2019d found a real eye in the red delicious. Under the eye, in the hollowed-out seed pocket, was a tightly folded slip of paper, slightly damp with absorbed juice. When he unfolded it, he saw typing, the first direct message in the six packages: THE EYE IN THE APPLE? THE WATCHFUL WORM? THE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN? DO WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION? Ethan was confused, all right. Whatever it meant, this threat\u2014the eye in the apple\u2014struck him as particularly vicious. Here the sender had made an angry if enigmatic statement, the symbolism of which must be correctly interpreted, and urgently.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 2 BEYOND THE BEVELED GLASS, THE IRON-BLACK clouds that had masked the sky now hid themselves behind gray veils of trailing mist. The wind went elsewhere with its lamentations, and the sodden trees stood as still and solemn as witnesses to a funeral cortege. The gray day drifted into the eye of the storm, and from each of his three study windows, Ethan observed the mourning weather while meditating on the meaning of the apple in the context of the five bizarre items that had preceded it. Nature peered back at him through a milky cataract and, in sympathy with his inner vision, remained clouded. He supposed the shiny apple might represent fame and wealth, the enviable life of his employer. Then the doll\u2019s eye might be a worm of sorts, a symbol of a particular corruption at the core of fame, and therefore an accusation, indictment, and condemnation of the Face. For twelve years, the actor had been the biggest box-office draw in the world. Since his first hit, the celebrity-mad media referred to him as the Face. This flattering sobriquet supposedly had arisen simultaneously from the pens of numerous entertainment reporters in a shared swoon of admiration for his charismatic good looks. In truth, no doubt a clever and perpetually sleepless publicist had called in favors and paid out cold cash to engineer this spontaneous acclamation and then to sustain it for more than a decade. In a black-and-white Hollywood so distant in time and quality that contemporary moviegoers had only a little more knowledge of it than they had of the Spanish-American War, a fine actress named Greta Garbo had in her day been known as the Face. That flattery had been the work of a studio flack, but Garbo had proved to be more than mere flackery. For ten months, Ethan had been chief of security for Channing Manheim, the Face of the new millennium. As yet he hadn\u2019t glimpsed even the suggestion of Garboesque depths. The face of the Face seemed to be nearly all there was of Channing. Ethan didn\u2019t despise the actor. The Face was affable, as relaxed as might be a genuine demigod living with the sureness that life and youth were for him eternal. The star\u2019s indifference to any circumstances other than his own arose neither from self-absorption nor from a willful lack of compassion. Intellectual limitations denied him an awareness that other people had more than a single script page of backstory, and that their character arcs were too complex to be portrayed in ninety-eight minutes. His occasional cruelties were never conscious. If he hadn\u2019t been who he was, however, and if he hadn\u2019t been so striking in appearance, nothing that Channing said or did would have left an impression. In a Hollywood deli that named sandwiches after stars, Clark Gable might have been roast beef and Liederkranz on rye with horseradish; Cary Grant might have been peppered chicken breast with Swiss cheese on whole wheat with mustard; and Channing Manheim would have been watercress on lightly buttered toast. Ethan didn\u2019t actively dislike his employer, and he didn\u2019t need to like him in order to want to protect him and keep him alive. If the eye in the apple was a symbol of corruption, it might represent the star\u2019s ego inside the beautiful fruit. Perhaps the doll\u2019s eye didn\u2019t stand for corruption, but for the downside of fame. A celebrity of Channing\u2019s magnitude enjoyed little privacy and was always under scrutiny. The eye in the apple might be symbolic of the stalker\u2019s eye\u2014always watching, judging. Crap. Cheap analysis. For all his somber brooding, in weather conducive to contemplation and to dark speculation, Ethan\u2019s every observation seemed obvious and useless. He ruminated on the apple-damp words: THE EYE IN THE APPLE? THE WATCHFUL WORM? THE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN? DO WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION? Stumped, he was grateful when the phone rang at a few minutes past ten o\u2019clock, drawing him away from the windows and to the desk. Laura Moonves, an old friend from the LAPD, had been tracking down a license-plate number for him. She worked out of the Detective Support Division. Only once before in the past year had he presumed upon their friendship in this way. \u201cGot your pervert,\u201d Laura said. \u201cSuspected pervert,\u201d he corrected. \u201cThe three-year-old Honda is registered to Rolf Herman Reynerd in West Hollywood.\u201d She spelled each name and gave him an address. \u201cWhat kind of parents Rolf a kid?\u201d Laura knew all about names. \u201cIt\u2019s not so bad. Nicely masculine, in fact. In Old German, it means \u2018famous wolf.\u2019 Ethan, of course, means \u2018permanent, assured.\u2019 \u201d Two years ago, they\u2019d dated. For Laura, Ethan had been anything but permanent, assured. She\u2019d have liked permanence, some assurance. He had been too wounded to provide what she wanted. Or too stupid. \u201cLooked him up for a rap sheet,\u201d Laura said, \u201cbut he\u2019s clean. DMV says \u2018hair brown, eyes blue.\u2019 Says \u2018sex male.\u2019 I like sex male. I don\u2019t get enough sex male. Height six-one, weight one-eighty. DOB\u2014June sixth, nineteen seventy-two, which makes him thirty-one.\u201d Ethan had it all on a notepad. \u201cThanks, Laura. I owe you one.\u201d \u201cSo then tell me\u2014how big\u2019s his charlie?\u201d \u201cIsn\u2019t that in the DMV file?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t mean Rolf\u2019s charlie. I mean Manheim\u2019s. Does it hang to his ankles or just to his knees?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve never seen his charlie, but he doesn\u2019t seem to have any trouble walking.\u201d \u201cCookie, maybe you can introduce us sometime.\u201d Ethan had never known why she called him Cookie. \u201cThe man would bore your ass off, Laura, and that\u2019s the truth.\u201d \u201cPretty as he is, I wouldn\u2019t need conversation. I\u2019d just shove a rag in his mouth, tape his lips shut, and off we\u2019d go to paradise.\u201d \u201cBasically it\u2019s my job to keep people like you away from him.\u201d \u201cTruman derives from two Old English words,\u201d she said. \u201cIt means \u2018steadfast, loyal, trustworthy, constant.\u2019 \u201d \u201cYou can\u2019t get a date with the Face by making me feel guilty. Besides, when wasn\u2019t I loyal and trustworthy?\u201d \u201cCookie, two out of four doesn\u2019t mean you deserve your name.\u201d \u201cYou were too good for me anyway, Laura. You\u2019ve got more to give than a shlump like me can appreciate.\u201d \u201cI\u2019d like to see your old Ten Card,\u201d she said, referring to his record of service on the force. \u201cMust be more brown stars for ass kissing on that baby than any hundred other cards in the history of the job.\u201d \u201cIf you\u2019re done dissing me, I\u2019ve been wondering. … Rolf. Famous wolf. Does that make sense? What\u2019s a wolf have to do to get famous?\u201d \u201cKill a lot of sheep, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Ethan said good-bye to Laura, a thin rain had begun to fall again. Without the ardor of a wind, the droplets barely kissed the study windows. Using the remote control, he switched on the TV and then the VCR. The tape was already loaded. He\u2019d watched it six times before. Exterior security cameras throughout the estate numbered eighty-six. Every house door and window and all the approaches across the grounds were monitored. Only the north wall of the estate abutted public property. This long rampart, including the gate, was under surveillance by cameras mounted in the trees on the land directly across the street, a parcel also owned by Channing Manheim. Anyone reconnoitering the front-wall security, the operation of the gate, and the protocols of visitor identification would detect no cameras on the public side or in the estate trees that overhung the wall. They would assume that surveillance could be conducted solely from within the property. Meanwhile, they would be watched by the cameras on the farther side of the narrow Bel Air byway, barely two lanes wide, which lacked sidewalks and streetlamps. A zoom shot would provide a clear ID to help ensure a conviction if the subject proceeded from reconnoitering to any act of criminal intent. The cameras operated 24\/7. From the security office in the groundskeeper\u2019s building and from several points in the house, any videoc\u00e0m in the system could be accessed if you knew the command. Several televisions in the house and a bank of six in the security office could receive the video feed from any camera. One TV could display as many as four views simultaneously in quarter-screen format. Therefore, the security team was able to study images from as many as twenty-four cameras at any one time. Mostly, the guards drank coffee and bullshitted each other. If an alarm was triggered, however, they could have an immediate, close look at whatever corner of the estate had been violated. Camera by camera, they would be able to track an intruder as he moved from one field of view into another. From the security-office keyboard, a guard could direct the video feed from any of the eighty-six sources to a VCR. The system included twelve VCRs capable of simultaneously recording forty-eight feeds in quarter-screen format. Even if a guard were not paying attention, motion detectors associated with each camera would instigate automatic recording of that field of vision when any living thing larger than a dog passed through its area of responsibility. At 3:32 A.M. the previous night, motion detectors related to Camera 01, which ceaselessly panned the western end of the north perimeter, picked up a three-year-old Honda. Instead of passing by as the infrequent other traffic had done throughout the night, the car pulled off the pavement and parked a hundred yards short of the entrance gate. The previous five black boxes had come by Federal Express with fake return addresses. Here Ethan had been presented with the first opportunity to identify the sender. Now, less than seven hours later, he stood in his study and watched the Honda in full-screen format. The narrow shoulder of the road prevented the driver from parking the car entirely out of the eastbound lane. In daylight, the exclusive streets of Bel Air didn\u2019t carry a heavy load of traffic. At that late hour, they were hardly traveled. Nevertheless concerned about safety, the driver of the Honda didn\u2019t kill his headlights when he parked. He left the engine running and switched on his emergency blinkers. The camera, featuring advanced night-vision technology, provided a high-resolution picture in spite of the darkness and foul weather. For a moment, Camera 01 continued panning away from the Honda\u2014then halted its programmed sweep and returned to the car. Dave Ladman had been on a routine foot patrol of the estate grounds at that time. Tom Mack, manning the security office, had recognized the presence of a suspicious vehicle and had overridden 01\u2019s automatic function. Rain had been falling heavily. Ceaseless barrages of raindrops shattered against the blacktop with force, creating such a froth and dancing spray that the street appeared to be aboil. The driver\u2019s door opened, and Camera 01 zoomed in for a close-up as a tall, solidly built man got out of the car. He wore a black waterproof windbreaker. His face was hidden in the shadow of a hood. Unless Rolf Reynerd had loaned his car to a friend, this was the famous wolf. He fit the physical profile on Reynerd\u2019s license. He closed the driver\u2019s door, opened the rear door, and took a large white ball from the backseat. This appeared to be the garbage bag containing the gift of the sutured apple. Reynerd closed the door and started toward the front of the car, toward the driveway gate a hundred yards away. Abruptly he halted and turned to peer along the dark rain-swept lane, poised for flight. Perhaps he thought that he\u2019d heard an approaching engine above the rushing rustle of the rain racing down through the trees. The security tape provided no sound. At that lonely hour, if another vehicle had arrived on the scene, chances were good that it would have been a cruiser belonging to the Bel Air Patrol, the private-security force that assisted in the policing of this extremely wealthy community. When neither a cruiser nor a less-official vehicle appeared, the hooded man regained his confidence. He hurried eastward to the gate. Camera 02 followed him as he stepped beyond the panning arc of Camera 01. As he neared the gate, Camera 03 watched him from across the street, zooming in for an intimate appraisal. Immediately upon arrival at the entrance gate, Reynerd threw the white bag toward the top of that bronze barrier. Failing to clear the highest scrollwork, the package bounced back at him. On his second attempt, he succeeded. When he turned away from the gate, his hood slipped half off, and Camera 03 captured a clear image of his face in the glow of the flanking gate lamps. He had the chiseled features needed to be a successful waiter in the trendiest of L.A. restaurants, where both the service staff and the customers enjoyed the fantasy that any guy or gal ferrying plates of overpriced swordfish from kitchen to table during the Tuesday dinner shift might be offered, on Wednesday, a coveted role in Tom Cruise\u2019s next hundred-fifty-million-dollar picture. Turning from the gate, having delivered the apple, Rolf Reynerd was grinning. Perhaps if Ethan hadn\u2019t known the meaning of the man\u2019s first name, the grin wouldn\u2019t have seemed wolfish. Then he might have been reminded instead of a crocodile or a hyena. In any case, this was not the merry expression of a prankster. Captured on videotape, this curve of lips and bared teeth suggested a lunatic glee that required a full moon and medication. Splashing through black puddles filigreed with silver by the headlights, Reynerd returned to the car. As the Honda pulled off the shoulder and onto the eastbound lane once more, Camera 01 executed a swivel and zoom, then Camera 02. Both delivered readable shots of the rear license plate. Dwindling into the night, the car conjured briefly lingering ghosts from its tailpipe. Then the narrow street lay deserted, in wet gloom except for the lamps at the Manheim gate. Black rain, as if from a dissolving night sky, poured down, poured down, driving the darkness of the universe into the universally coveted Bel Air real estate.<\/p>\n

Before leaving his quarters in the west wing, Ethan called the housekeeper, Mrs. McBee, to report that he\u2019d be out most of the day. More efficient than any machine, more dependable than the laws of physics, as trustworthy as any archangel, Mrs. McBee would within minutes dispatch one of the six maids under her command to Ethan\u2019s apartment. Seven days a week, a maid collected the trash and provided fresh towels. Twice weekly, his rooms were dusted, vacuumed, and left immaculate. Windows were washed twice a month. There were advantages to living in a mansion attended by a staff of twenty-five. As the chief of security overseeing both the Face\u2019s personal protection and the safeguarding of the estate, Ethan enjoyed many benefits, including free meals prepared by either Mr. Hachette, the household chef, or by Mr. Baptiste, the household cook. Mr. Baptiste lacked his boss\u2019s training in the finest culinary schools; but no one with taste buds ever complained about any dish he put on the table. Meals could be taken in the large and comfortably furnished dayroom, where the staff not only ate but also did their household planning, spent their coffee breaks, and strategized all arrangements for the elaborate parties often held when the Face was in residence. Chef or cook would also prepare a plate of sandwiches or any other requested treat that Ethan might want to take back to his quarters. Of course, he could prepare meals in his apartment kitchen if he preferred. Mrs. McBee kept his fridge and pantry stocked according to shopping lists he presented to her, at no expense to him. Except for Monday and Thursday, when one of the maids changed the bedclothes\u2014Mr. Manheim\u2019s linens were cycled daily when he was in residence\u2014Ethan had to make his own bed each morning. Life was hard. Now, after shrugging into a soft leather jacket, Ethan stepped out of his apartment into the ground-floor hallway of the west wing. He left his door unlocked as he would have done if he\u2019d owned the entire house. He took with him a file that he\u2019d made on the black-box case, an umbrella, and a leather-bound copy of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. He had finished reading the novel the previous evening and intended to return it to the library. More than twelve feet wide, paved with limestone tiles featured through most of the main floor of the house, this hall was graced by softly colored contemporary Persian carpets. High-quality French antiques\u2014all from the Empire period, and including the late-Empire style called Biedermeier\u2014furnished the long space: chairs, chests, a desk, a sideboard. Even with furniture to both sides, Ethan could have driven a car through the hall without grazing a single antique. He might have enjoyed driving a car through the hall if he would not have had to explain himself to Mrs. McBee afterward. During the invigorating hike to the library, he encountered two uniformed maids and a porter with whom he exchanged greetings. Because he occupied what Mrs. McBee defined as an executive position on the staff, he referred to these fellow workers by their first names, but they called him Mr. Truman. Prior to each new employee\u2019s first day on the job, Mrs. McBee provided a ring-bound notebook titled Standards and Practices, which she herself had composed and assembled. Woe be to the benighted soul who did not memorize its contents and perform always according to its directions. The library floor was walnut, stained a dark warm reddish-brown. Here the Persian carpets were antiques that appreciated in value far faster than the blue-chip stocks of the country\u2019s finest companies. Club chairs in comfortable seating arrangements alternated with mazes of mahogany shelves that held over thirty-six thousand volumes. Some of the books were shelved on a second level served by a six-foot-wide catwalk that could be reached by an open staircase with an elaborate gilded-iron railing. If you didn\u2019t look up at the ceiling to help you define the true size of the enormous chamber, you might succumb to the illusion that it went on forever. Maybe it did. Anything seemed possible here. The center of the ceiling featured a stained-glass dome thirty-two feet in diameter. The deep colors of the glass\u2014crimson, emerald, burnt yellow, sapphire\u2014so completely filtered natural light even on a bright day that the books were at no risk of sustaining sun damage. Ethan\u2019s Uncle Joe\u2014who\u2019d served as a surrogate dad when Ethan\u2019s real father had been too drunk to handle the job\u2014had been a truck driver for a regional bakery. He\u2019d delivered breads and pastries to supermarkets and restaurants, six days a week, eight hours a day. Most of the time, Joe had held down a second job as a night janitor, three days a week. In his best five years put together, Uncle Joe hadn\u2019t made enough to equal the cost of this stained-glass dome. When he\u2019d first begun to earn a policeman\u2019s pay, Ethan had felt rich. Compared to Joe, he had been raking in big dough. His total income from sixteen years with the LAPD wouldn\u2019t have paid the cost of this one room. \u201cShould\u2019ve been a movie star,\u201d he said as he entered the library to return Lord Jim to the shelf from which he\u2019d gotten it. Every volume in the collection had been arranged in alphabetical order, by author. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions. A significant number were rare, and valuable. The Face had read none of them. More than two-thirds of the collection had come with the house. At her employer\u2019s instructions, once each month, Mrs. McBee purchased the most talked-about and critically acclaimed current novels and volumes of nonfiction, which were at once catalogued and added to the library. These new books were acquired for the sole purpose of display. They impressed houseguests, dinner guests, and other visitors with the breadth of Channing Manheim\u2019s intellectual interests. When asked for his opinion of any book, the Face elicited the visitor\u2019s judgment first, then agreed with it in such a charming fashion that he seemed both erudite and every bit a kindred spirit. As Ethan slid Lord Jim onto a shelf between two other Conrad titles, a small reedy voice behind him said, \u201cIs there magic in it?\u201d Turning, he discovered ten-year-old Aelfric Manheim all but swallowed alive by one of the larger armchairs. According to Laura Moonves, Aelfric (pronounced elf-rick) was an Old English word meaning \u201celf-ruled\u201d or \u201cruled by elves,\u201d which had first been used to describe wise and clever actions, but had in time come to refer to those who acted wisely and cleverly. Aelfric. The boy\u2019s mother\u2014Fredericka \u201cFreddie\u201d Nielander\u2014a supermodel who had married and divorced the Face all in one year, had read at least three books in her life. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact she had read them repeatedly. She had been prepared to name the boy Frodo. Fortunately, or not, one month before Freddie\u2019s due date, her best girlfriend, an actress, had discovered the name Aelfric in the script for a cheesy fantasy film in which she had agreed to play a three-breasted Amazon alchemist. If Freddie\u2019s friend had landed a supporting role in The Silence of the Lambs, Aelfric would probably now be Hannibal Manheim. The boy preferred to be called Fric, and no one but his mother insisted on using his full name. Fortunately, or not, she wasn\u2019t around much to torture him with it. Reliable scuttlebutt had it that Freddie had not seen Fric in over seventeen months. Even the career of an aging supermodel could be demanding. \u201cIs there magic in what?\u201d Ethan asked. \u201cThat book you just put away.\u201d \u201cMagic of a sort, but probably not the kind of magic you mean.\u201d \u201cThis one has a shitload of magic in it,\u201d Fric said, displaying a paperback with dragons and wizards on the cover. \u201cIs that advisable language for a wise and clever person?\u201d Ethan asked. \u201cHeck, all my old man\u2019s friends in the biz talk worse stuff than shitload. So does my old man.\u201d \u201cNot when he knows you\u2019re around.\u201d Fric cocked his head. \u201cAre you calling my dad a hypocrite?\u201d \u201cIf I ever call your dad such a thing, I\u2019ll cut my tongue out.\u201d \u201cThe evil wizard in this book would use it in a potion. One of his most difficult tasks is to find the tongue of an honest man.\u201d \u201cWhat makes you think I\u2019m honest?\u201d \u201cGet real. You\u2019ve got a triple shitload of honesty.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019re you going to do if Mrs. McBee hears you using words like that?\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s somewhere else.\u201d \u201cOh, she is?\u201d Ethan asked, suggesting that he knew something regarding Mrs. McBee\u2019s current whereabouts that would make the boy wish he\u2019d been more discreet. Unable to repress a guilty expression, Fric sat up straight and surveyed the library. The boy was small for his age, and thin. At times, glimpsed from a distance as he walked along one of the vast halls or across a room scaled for kings and their entourages, he seemed almost wispy. \u201cI think she has secret passages,\u201d Fric whispered. \u201cYou know, pathways in the walls.\u201d \u201cMrs. McBee?\u201d The boy nodded. \u201cWe\u2019ve lived here six years, but she\u2019s been here forever.\u201d Mrs. McBee and Mr. McBee\u2014both in their middle fifties\u2014had been employed by the previous owner of the property and had stayed on at the request of the Face. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to picture Mrs. McBee skulking about in the walls,\u201d said Ethan. \u201cShe\u2019s not exactly a dastardly sort.\u201d \u201cBut if she was dastardly,\u201d Fric said hopefully, \u201cthings would be more interesting around here.\u201d Unlike his father\u2019s golden locks, which with a shake of the head always fell perfectly into place, Fric\u2019s brown mop achieved perpetual disarray. Here was hair that foiled brushes and broke good combs. Fric might grow into his looks and prove equal to his pedigree, but currently he appeared to be an average ten-year-old boy. \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you in class?\u201d Ethan wondered. \u201cYou an atheist or something? Don\u2019t you know it\u2019s the week before Christmas? Even home-schooled Hollywood brats get a break.\u201d A cadre of tutors visited five days a week. The private school that Fric attended for a while had not proved to be a suitable environment for him. With the famous Channing Manheim for a father, with the famous and notorious Freddie Nielander for a mother, Fric became an object of envy and ridicule even among the children of other celebrities. Being the skinny son of a buffed star adored for heroic roles also made him a figure of fun to crueler kids. The severity of his asthma further argued for schooling at home, in a controlled environment. \u201cHave any idea what you\u2019ll get Christmas morning?\u201d Ethan asked. \u201cYeah. I had to submit my list to Mrs. McBee by December fifth. I told her not to bother wrapping the stuff, but she will. She always does. She says it\u2019s not Christmas morning without some mystery.\u201d \u201cI\u2019d have to agree with that.\u201d The boy shrugged, and slumped in his chair again. Although the Face was currently on location for a film, he would return from Florida the day before Christmas. \u201cIt\u2019ll be good to have your dad home for the holidays. You guys have any special plans once he gets back?\u201d The boy shrugged again, attempting to convey lack of knowledge or indifference, but instead\u2014and unwittingly\u2014revealing a misery that made Ethan feel uncharacteristically helpless. Fric had inherited luminous green eyes to match his mother\u2019s. In the singular depths of those eyes, enough could be read about the boy\u2019s loneliness to fill a library shelf or two. \u201cWell,\u201d Ethan said, \u201cmaybe Christmas morning this year you\u2019ll have a couple surprises.\u201d Sitting forward in his chair, eager for the sense of mystery that he had so recently dismissed as unimportant, Fric said, \u201cWhat\u2014you heard something?\u201d \u201cIf I heard something, which I\u2019m not saying I did or didn\u2019t, I couldn\u2019t tell you what I heard, assuming I heard anything at all, and still keep the surprise a surprise, by which I don\u2019t mean to imply that there is a surprise or that there isn\u2019t one.\u201d The boy stared in silence for a moment. \u201cNow you don\u2019t sound cop honest, you sound like the head of a studio.\u201d \u201cYou know what heads of studios sound like, huh?\u201d \u201cThey come around here sometimes,\u201d the boy said in a tone of worldly wisdom. \u201cI recognize their rap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ethan parked across the street from the apartment house in West Hollywood, switched off the windshield wipers, but left the engine running to power the heater. He sat in the Ford Expedition awhile, watching the place, deciding upon the best approach to Rolf Reynerd. The Expedition was one of a collection of vehicles available for both job-related and personal use by the eight live-in members of the twenty-five-person estate staff. Among other wheels, a Mercedes ML500 SUV had been in the lower garage, but that might have drawn too much attention during a stakeout if the day required surveillance work. The three-story apartment house appeared to be in good but not excellent repair. The cream-colored stucco wasn\u2019t pocked or cracked, but the place looked to be at least a year overdue for painting. One of the address numbers above the front door hung askew. Camellia bushes laden with heavy red blooms, a variety of ferns, and phoenix palms with enormous crowns provided the lushness of high-end landscaping; but everything had needed a trim months ago. The shaggy grass suggested that it was mown not weekly but twice a month. The landlord shaved his costs, but the building nevertheless looked like a nice place to live. No one rented here on a welfare check. Reynerd must have a job, but the fact that he\u2019d been delivering death threats at three-thirty in the morning suggested that he didn\u2019t have to get up early to go to work. He might be home now. When Ethan tracked down his suspect\u2019s place of employment and began to make inquiries about him with fellow workers and neighbors, Reynerd almost certainly would be alerted by someone. Thereafter, he would grow too wary to be approached directly. Ethan preferred to start with the man himself and work outward from that initial contact. He closed his eyes, tipped his head back against the headrest, and brooded about how to proceed. The engine roar of an approaching car grew so loud that Ethan opened his eyes, half expecting to hear a sudden siren and to see a police chase in progress. Traveling far too fast for a residential street, a cherry-red Ferrari Testarossa exploded past, as though the driver were in fact hoping to run down a darting child or an old lady slowed by orthopedic shoes and a cane. A tire-thrown plume spewed up from the puddled street, drenching the Expedition. The glass in the driver\u2019s door briefly clouded with ripples of dirty water. Across the street, the apartment house appeared to shimmer as if it were a place in a dream. Some aspect of that transient distortion seemed to trigger a vague memory of a long-forgotten nightmare, and the sight of the building in this warped condition caused the hairs to rise inexplicably on the back of Ethan\u2019s neck. Then the last gouts of the plume drained off the window. Falling rain quickly cleared the murky residue from the glass. The apartment house was nothing more than what it had been when he\u2019d first seen it: a nice place to live. After judging that the rain was falling only hard enough to make an umbrella more trouble than it was worth, he got out of the SUV and dashed across the street. In southern California during the late autumn and early winter, Mother Nature suffered unpredictable mood swings. From one year to the next, and even from day to day in the same year, the week before Christmas could vary from balmy to bone-chilling. This air was cool, the rain colder than the air, and the sky as dead gray as it might have been in any truly wintry clime much farther north. The main door of the building featured no buzz-through security lock. The neighborhood remained safe enough that apartment lobbies did not absolutely require fortification. Dripping, he entered a small space, less a lobby than a foyer, with a Mexican-tile floor. An elevator and a set of stairs served the upper stories. The foyer air curdled with the lingering meaty scent of Canadian bacon, cooked hours ago, and the musty smell of stale pot smoke. Weed had a singular aroma. Someone had stood here this morning, finishing a joint, before stepping out to meet the dreary day. From the bank of mailboxes, Ethan counted four apartments on the ground floor, six on the second, and six on the third. Reynerd lived in the middle of the building, in 2B. Only the last names of the current tenants were printed on the mailboxes. Ethan needed more information than these stick-on labels provided. An open communal receptacle, recessed in the wall, had been provided for magazines and other publications on those occasions when the volume of other mail didn\u2019t permit the postman to put all items in the boxes. Two magazines lay in the tray. Both were for George Keesner in Apartment 2E. Ethan rapped a knuckle against the aluminum doors on several of the mailboxes for the apartments in which he had no interest. The hollow sound suggested they were empty. Most likely the daily mail had not yet been delivered. When he rapped on Keesner\u2019s box, it sounded as though it was packed full of mail. Evidently the man had been away from home for at least a couple days. Ethan climbed the stairs to the second floor. One long hall, three doors on each side. At 2E, he rang the bell and waited. Reynerd\u2019s unit, 2B, lay directly across from 2E. When no one answered the bell at Keesner\u2019s apartment, Ethan rang it again, twice. After a pause, he knocked loudly. Each door had been fitted with a fisheye lens to allow the resident to examine a caller before deciding whether or not to admit him. Perhaps from across the hall, Reynerd was watching the back of Ethan\u2019s head right now. Receiving no response to his knock, Ethan turned away from Keesner\u2019s door and made a show of frustration. He wiped his rain-wet face with one hand. He pushed that hand through his damp hair. He shook his head. He looked up and down the hall. When Ethan rang the bell at 2B, the apple man answered almost at once, without the protection of a security chain. Although an unmistakable match for the image captured by the security camera, he proved to be more handsome than he\u2019d been in the rain the previous night. He resembled Ben Affleck, the actor. In addition to the Affleck aspect, however, he had a welcome-to-the-Bates-Motel edge to him that any fan of Anthony Perkins would have recognized. The tightness at the corners of his mouth, the rapid pulse visible in his right temple, and especially the hard shine in his eyes suggested that he might be on methamphetamine, not fully amped but clipping along at high altitude. \u201cSir,\u201d Ethan said even as the door was still opening, \u201cI\u2019m sorry to bother you, but I\u2019m sort of desperate to get in touch with George Keesner over there in 2E. Do you know George?\u201d Reynerd shook his head. He had a bull\u2019s neck. Lots of time spent on weight machines at the gym. \u201cI know him to say hello in the hall,\u201d Reynerd said, \u201cand how\u2019s the weather. That\u2019s all.\u201d If that was true, Ethan felt secure enough to say, \u201cI\u2019m his brother. Name\u2019s Ricky Keesner.\u201d That scam ought to work as long as Keesner was somewhere between twenty and fifty years old. \u201cOur Uncle Harry\u2019s on his deathbed in the ICU,\u201d Ethan lied. \u201cNot going to hold on much longer. Since yesterday morning, I been calling George at every number I\u2019ve got for him. He doesn\u2019t get back to me. Doesn\u2019t answer the door now.\u201d \u201cI think he\u2019s away,\u201d said Reynerd. \u201cAway? He didn\u2019t say anything about it to me. You know where he might\u2019ve gone?\u201d Reynerd shook his head. \u201cHe was going out with a little suitcase the night before last, as I was coming in.\u201d \u201cHe tell you when he\u2019d be back?\u201d \u201cWe just said how it looked like rain coming, and then he went out,\u201d Reynerd replied. \u201cMan, he\u2019s so close to Uncle Harry\u2014we both are\u2014he\u2019s going to be upset he didn\u2019t get a chance to say good-bye. Maybe I could leave him a note, so he sees it first thing he gets back.\u201d Reynerd just stared at Ethan. An artery began throbbing in his neck. His speed-cycled brain was racing, but although meth ensured frenetically fast thinking, it didn\u2019t assist clear thinking. \u201cThe thing is,\u201d Ethan said, \u201cI don\u2019t have any paper. Or a pen, for that matter.\u201d \u201cOh. Sure, I got those,\u201d said Reynerd. \u201cI really hate to bother you\u2014\u201d \u201cNo bother,\u201d Reynerd assured him, turning away from the open door, going off to find a notepad, a pen. Left at the threshold, Ethan chafed to get into the apartment. He wanted a better look at Reynerd\u2019s nest than he could obtain from the doorway. Just as Ethan decided to risk being rude and to enter without an invitation, Reynerd halted, turned, and said, \u201cCome on in. Sit down.\u201d Now that the invitation had been extended, Ethan could afford to inject a little authenticity into this charade by demurring. \u201cThanks, but I just came in from the rain\u2014\u201d \u201cCan\u2019t hurt this furniture,\u201d Reynerd assured him. Leaving the door open behind himself, Ethan went inside. The living room and dining area comprised one large space. The kitchen was open to this front room, but separated from it by a bar with two stools. Reynerd proceeded into the kitchen, to a counter under a wall phone, while Ethan perched on the edge of an armchair in the living room. The apartment was sparsely furnished. One sofa, one armchair, a coffee table, and a television set. The dining area contained a small table and two chairs. On the television, the MGM lion roared. The sound was low, the roar soft. On the walls were several framed photographs: large sixteen-by-twenty-inch, black-and-white art prints. Birds were the subject of every photo. Reynerd returned with a notepad and a pencil. \u201cThis do?\u201d \u201cPerfect,\u201d Ethan said, accepting the items. Reynerd had a dispenser of Scotch tape, as well. \u201cTo fix the note on George\u2019s door.\u201d He put the tape on the coffee table. \u201cThanks,\u201d Ethan said. \u201cI like the photographs.\u201d \u201cBirds are all about being free,\u201d Reynerd said. \u201cI guess they are, aren\u2019t they? The freedom of flight. You take the photos?\u201d \u201cNo. I just collect.\u201d In one of the prints, a flock of pigeons erupted in a swirl of feathered frenzy from a cobblestone plaza in front of a backdrop of old European buildings. In another, geese flew in formation across a somber sky. Indicating the black-and-white movie on the TV, Reynerd said, \u201cI was just getting some snacks for the show. You mind . . . ?\u201d \u201cHuh? Oh, sure, I\u2019m sorry, forget about me. I\u2019ll jot this down and be gone.\u201d In one of the pictures, the birds had flown directly at the photographer. The shot presented a close-up montage of overlapping wings, crying beaks, and beady black eyes. \u201cPotato chips are gonna kill me one day,\u201d Reynerd said as he returned to the kitchen. \u201cWith me it\u2019s ice cream. More of it in my arteries than blood.\u201d Ethan printed DEAR GEORGE in block letters, then paused as if in thought, and looked around the room. From the kitchen, Reynerd continued: \u201cThey say you can\u2019t ever eat just one potato chip, but I can\u2019t ever eat just one bag.\u201d Two crows perched on an iron fence. A strop of sunlight laid a sharp edge on their beaks. White carpet as pristine as winter snow lay wall to wall. The furniture had been upholstered in a black fabric. From a distance, the Formica surface of the dinette table appeared to be black. Everything in the apartment was black-and-white. Ethan printed UNCLE HARRY IS DYING and then paused again, as if a simple message taxed his powers of composition. The movie music, though soft, had a melodramatic flair. A crime picture from the thirties or forties. Reynerd continued to rummage in kitchen cabinets. Here, two doves appeared to clash in midflight. There, an owl stared wide-eyed, as if shocked by what it saw. Outside, wind had returned to the day. A dice-rattle of rain drew Ethan\u2019s attention to the window. From the kitchen came the distinctive rustle of a foil potato-chip bag. PLEASE CALL ME, Ethan printed. Returning to the living room, Reynerd said, \u201cIf you\u2019ve got to eat chips, these are the worst because they\u2019re higher in oil.\u201d Ethan looked up and saw a bag of Hawaiian-style chips. Reynerd had inserted his right hand into the open bag. The way that the bag gloved the apple man\u2019s hand struck Ethan as wrong. The guy might have been reaching in for some chips, of course; but an oddness of attitude, a tenseness in him, suggested otherwise. Stopping beside the sofa, not six feet away, Reynerd said, \u201cYou work for the Face, don\u2019t you?\u201d At a disadvantage in the armchair, Ethan pretended confusion. \u201cFor who?\u201d When the hand came out of the bag, it held a gun. A licensed private investigator and certified bodyguard, Ethan had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Except in the company of Channing Manheim, when he armed himself as a matter of routine, he seldom bothered to strap on his piece. Reynerd\u2019s weapon was a 9-mm pistol. This morning, disturbed by the eye in the apple and by the wolfish grin that this man had revealed on the security tape, Ethan had put on his shoulder holster. He hadn\u2019t expected to need a gun, not really, and in fact he\u2019d felt a little silly for packing it without greater provocation. Now he thanked God that he was armed. \u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d he said, trying to look equally bewildered and afraid. \u201cI\u2019ve seen your picture,\u201d Reynerd told him. Ethan glanced toward the open door, the hallway beyond. \u201cI don\u2019t care who sees or hears,\u201d Reynerd told him. \u201cIt\u2019s all over anyhow, isn\u2019t it?\u201d \u201cListen, if my brother George did something to piss you off,\u201d Ethan said, trying to buy a little time. Reynerd wasn\u2019t selling. Even as Ethan dropped the notepad and reached for the 9-mm Glock under his jacket, the apple man shot him point-blank in the gut. For a moment, Ethan felt no pain, but only for a moment. He rocked back in the chair and gaped at the gush of blood. Then agony. He heard the first shot, but he didn\u2019t hear the second. The slug hammered him dead-center in the chest. Everything in the black-and-white apartment went black. Ethan knew the birds still gathered on the walls, watching him die. He could feel the tension of their wings frozen in flight. He heard a dicelike rattle again. Not rain against the window this time. His breath rattling in a broken throat. No Christmas.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 3 ETHAN OPENED HIS EYES. Traveling far too fast for a residential street, a cherry-red Ferrari Testarossa exploded past, casting up a plume of dirty water from the puddled pavement. Through the side window of the Expedition, the apartment house blurred and tweaked into strange geometry, like a place in a nightmare. As if he\u2019d sustained an electrical shock, he twitched violently, and inhaled with the desperation of a drowning man. The air tasted sweet, fresh and sweet and clean. He exhaled explosively. No gut wound. No chest wound. His hair wasn\u2019t wet with rain. His heart knocked, knocked like a lunatic fist on the padded door of a padded room. Never in his life had Ethan Truman experienced a dream of such clarity, such intensity, nor any nightmare so crisply detailed as the experience in Reynerd\u2019s apartment. He consulted his wristwatch. If he\u2019d been asleep, he had been dreaming for no more than a minute. He couldn\u2019t have explored the convolutions of such an elaborate dream in a mere minute. Impossible. Rain washed the last of the murky residue off the glass. Beyond the dripping fronds of the phoenix palms, the apartment house waited, no longer distorted, but now forever strange. When he\u2019d leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes, the better to formulate his approach to Rolf Reynerd, Ethan had not been in the least sleepy. Or even tired. He was certain that he had not taken a one-minute nap. He had not taken a five-second nap, for that matter. If the first Ferrari had been a figment of a dream, the second sports car suggested that reality now followed precisely in the path of the nightmare. Although his explosive breathing had quieted, his heart clumped with undiminished speed, galloping after reason, which set an even faster pace, steadily receding beyond reach. Intuition told him to leave now, to find a Starbucks and have a large cup of coffee. Order a blend strong enough to dissolve the swizzle stick. Given time and distance from the event, he would discover the key that unlocked the mystery and allowed understanding. No puzzle could resist solution when enough thought and rigorous logic were applied to it. Even though years of police work had taught him to trust his intuition as a baby trusts its mother, he switched off the engine and got out of the Expedition. No argument: Intuition was an essential survival tool. Honesty with himself, however, was more important than heeding intuition. In a spirit of honesty, he had to admit that he wanted to drive away not to find a place and time for quiet reflection, not to engage in Sherlockian deduction, but because fear had him in a pincer grip. Fear must never be allowed to win. Surrender to it once, and you were finished as a cop. Of course he wasn\u2019t a cop anymore. He had left the force more than a year ago. The work that had given his life meaning while Hannah was alive had meant steadily less to him in the years after her death. He had ceased to believe that he could make a difference in the world. He had wanted to withdraw, to turn his back on the ugly reality of the human condition so evident in the daily work of a homicide detective. Channing Manheim\u2019s world was as far as he could get from reality and still earn a living. Although he didn\u2019t carry a badge, although he might not be a cop in any official sense, he remained a cop in essence. We are what we are, no matter what we might wish to be, or pretend to be. Hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket, shoulders hunched as if the rain were a burden, he dashed across the street to the apartment house. Dripping, he entered the foyer. Mexican-tile floor. Elevator. Stairs. As it should be. As it had been. Stale with the greasy scent of cooked breakfast meat and pot smoke, the air felt thick, seemed to cloy like mucus in his throat. Two magazines lay in the tray. On each mailing label was the name George Keesner. Ethan climbed the stairs. His legs felt weak, and his hands trembled. At the landing, he paused to take a few deep breaths, to knit the raveled fabric of his nerve. The apartment house lay quiet. No voices muffled by the walls, no music for a melancholy Monday. He imagined that he heard the faint tick and scrape of crow claws on an iron fence, the flap and rustle of pigeons taking flight, the tick-tick-tick of insistently pecking beaks, in truth, he knew that these were only the many voices of the rain. Although he could feel the weight of the pistol in his shoulder holster, he reached under his coat and placed his right hand on the weapon to be certain that he had brought it. With one fingertip, he traced the checking on the grip. He withdrew his hand from under his jacket, leaving the pistol in the holster. Having collected hair by hair along the back of his head, rain reached a trickling finger down the nape of his neck, teasing a shudder from him. When Ethan reached the second-floor hallway, he barely glanced at Apartment 2E, where George Keesner would fail to respond to either the bell or a knock, and he went directly to the door of 2B, where he lost his nerve, but only briefly. The apple man answered the bell almost at once. Tall, strong, self-confident, he didn\u2019t bother engaging the security chain. He didn\u2019t seem to be in the least surprised to see Ethan again or alive, as if their first encounter had never happened. \u201cIs Jim here?\u201d Ethan asked. \u201cYou\u2019ve got the wrong apartment,\u201d Reynerd said. \u201cJim Briscoe? Really? I\u2019m sure this was his place.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve been here more than six months.\u201d Beyond Reynerd lay a black-and-white room. \u201cSix months? Has it been that long since I was here?\u201d Ethan sounded false to himself, but he pressed forward. \u201cYeah, I guess that\u2019s what it\u2019s been, six or seven.\u201d On the wall opposite the door, an owl stared with immense eyes, in expectation of a gunshot. Ethan said, \u201cHey, did Jim leave a forwarding address?\u201d \u201cI never met the previous tenant.\u201d The hard shine in Reynerd\u2019s eyes, the quick throbbing in his temple, the tightness at the corners of his mouth this time warned Ethan off. \u201cSorry to have bothered you,\u201d he said. When he heard Reynerd\u2019s television at low volume, the soft roar of the MGM lion, he hesitated no longer and headed directly for the stairs. He realized that he was retreating with suspicious haste, and he tried not to run. Halfway down the stairs, at the landing, Ethan trusted instinct, turned, looked up, and saw Rolf Reynerd at the head of the stairs, silently watching him. The apple man had in his hand neither a gun nor a bag of potato chips. Without another word, Ethan descended the last flight to the foyer. Opening the outer door, he glanced back, but Reynerd had not followed him to the lower floor. Lazy no more, rain chased rain along the street, and cold wind blustered in the palms. Behind the steering wheel of the Expedition again, Ethan started the engine, locked the doors, switched on the heater. A strong double coffee at Starbucks no longer seemed adequate. He didn\u2019t know where to go. Premonition. Precognition. Psychic vision. Clairvoyance. The Twilight Zone Dictionary turned its own pages in the library of his mind, but no possibility that it presented to him seemed to explain his experience. According to the calendar, winter would not officially arrive for another day, but it entered early in his bones. He contained a coldness unknown in southern California. He raised his hands to look at them, never having known them to shake like this. His fingers were pale, each nail as entirely white as the crescent at its base. Neither the paleness nor the tremors troubled Ethan half as much as what he saw beneath the fingernails of his right hand. A dark substance, reddish-black. He stared at this material for a long time, reluctant to take steps to determine if it was real or hallucinated. Finally he used the thumbnail of his left hand to scrape out a small portion of the matter that was trapped under the nail of his right thumb. The stuff proved slightly moist, gummy. Hesitantly, he brought the smear to his nose. He sniffed it once, twice, and though the scent was faint, he didn\u2019t need to smell it again. Ethan had blood under all five nails of his right hand. With a certainty seldom given to any man who understood the world to be a most uncertain place, he knew that this would prove to be his own blood.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 4 PALOMAR LABORATORIES IN NORTH Hollywood occupied a sprawling single-story concrete-slab building with such small and widely spaced windows and with such a low and slightly pitched sheet-metal roof that it resembled a bunker in the storm. The medical-lab division of Palomar analyzed blood samples, Pap smears, biopsies, and other organic materials. In their industrial division, they performed chemical analyses of every variety for both private-sector and government clients. Each year, fans of the Face sent over a quarter of a million pieces of mail to him, mostly in care of his studio, which forwarded weekly batches of this correspondence to the publicity firm that responded to it in the star\u2019s name. Among those letters were gifts, including more than a few homemade foods: cookies, cakes, fudge. Fewer than one in a thousand fans might be sufficiently deranged to send poisoned brownies, but Ethan nevertheless operated on the better-safe-than-sorry principle: All foodstuffs must be disposed of without sampling by anyone. Occasionally, when a homemade treat from a fan arrived with a particularly suspicious letter, the edible goodie would not be at once destroyed but would be passed along to Ethan for a closer look. If he suspected contamination, he brought the item here to Palomar to be analyzed. When a total stranger could work up sufficient hatred to attempt to poison the Face, Ethan wanted to know that the bastard existed. He subsequently cooperated with authorities in the poisoner\u2019s hometown to bring whatever criminal charges might be sustained in court. Now, proceeding first to the public reception lounge, he signed a form authorizing them to draw his blood. Lacking a doctor\u2019s order for tests, he paid cash for the analyses he required. He requested a basic DNA profile. \u201cAnd I want to know if any drugs are present in my body.\u201d \u201cWhat drugs are you taking?\u201d the receptionist asked. \u201cNothing but aspirin. But I want you to test for every possible substance, in case I\u2019ve been drugged without my knowledge.\u201d Perhaps in North Hollywood they were accustomed to encounters with full-blown paranoids. The receptionist didn\u2019t roll her eyes, raise an eyebrow, or in any other way appear to be surprised to hear him suggest that he might be the victim of a wicked conspiracy. The medical technician who drew his sample was a petite and lovely Vietnamese woman with an angel\u2019s touch. He never felt the needle pierce the vein. In another reception lounge provided for the delivery of samples unrelated to standard medical tests, he filled out a second form and paid another fee. This receptionist did give him an odd look when he explained what he wanted to have analyzed. At a lab table, under harsh fluorescent lights, a technician who resembled Britney Spears used a thin but blunt steel blade to scrape the blood from under the fingernails of his right hand, onto a square of acid-free white paper. Ethan hadn\u2019t trimmed his nails in over a week, so she retrieved a significant number of shavings, some of which still appeared to be gummy. His hand trembled throughout the process. She probably thought her beauty made him nervous. The material from under his fingernails would first be tested to determine if it was indeed blood. Thereafter it would be conveyed to the medical-lab division to be typed and to have the DNA profile compared to the blood sample that the Vietnamese technician had drawn. Full toxicological results wouldn\u2019t be ready until Wednesday afternoon. Ethan didn\u2019t understand how he could have his own blood under his fingernails when he had not, after all, been shot in the gut and the chest. Yet as migrating geese know south from north without the aid of a compass, he knew this blood was his.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 5 IN THE PALOMAR PARKING LOT, AS THE RAIN and the wind painted a procession of colorless spirit shapes on the windshield of the Expedition, Ethan placed a call to Hazard Yancy\u2019s cell phone. Hazard had been born Lester, but he loathed his given name. He didn\u2019t like Les any better. He thought the shortened version sounded like an insult. \u201cI\u2019m not less of anything than you are,\u201d he\u2019d once said to Ethan, but affably. Indeed, at six feet four and 240 pounds, with a shaved head that appeared to be as big as a basketball and a neck only slightly narrower than the span of his ears, Hazard Yancy was nobody\u2019s idea of a poster child for minimalism. \u201cFact is, I\u2019m more of a lot of things than some people. Like more determined, more fun, more colorful, more likely to make stupid choices in women, more likely to be shot in the ass. My folks should have named me More Yancy. I could\u2019ve lived with that.\u201d When he had been a teenager and a young man, his friends had called him Brick, a reference to the fact that he was built like a brick wall. Nobody in Robbery\/Homicide had called him Brick in twenty years. On the force, he was known as Hazard because working a case in tandem with him could be as hazardous as driving a dynamite truck. Gumshoe duty in Robbery\/Homicide might be more dangerous than a career as a greengrocer, but detectives were less likely to die on the job than were night clerks in convenience stores. If you wanted the thrill of being shot at on a regular basis, the Gang Activities Section, the Narcotics Division, and certainly the Strategic Weapons and Tactics teams were better bets than cleaning up after murderers. Even just staying in uniform promised more violence than hitting the streets in a suit. Hazard\u2019s career was an exception to the rule. People shot at him with regularity. He professed surprise not at the frequency with which bullets were directed at him, but at the fact that the shooters were people who didn\u2019t know him personally. \u201cBeing a friend of mine,\u201d he once said, \u201cyou\u2019d think it would be the other way around, wouldn\u2019t you?\u201d Hazard\u2019s uncanny attraction for high-velocity projectiles wasn\u2019t a consequence of either recklessness or poor investigative technique. He was a careful, first-rate detective. In Ethan\u2019s experience, the universe didn\u2019t always operate like the clockwork mechanism of cause and effect that the scientists so confidently described. Anomalies abounded. Deviations from the common rule, strange conditions, incongruities. You could make yourself a little crazy, even certifiable, if you insisted that life always proceed according to some this-because-that system of logic. Occasionally you had to accept the inexplicable. Hazard didn\u2019t choose his cases. Like other detectives, he fielded what fate threw at him. For reasons known only to the secret master of the universe, he caught more investigations involving perps who were trigger-happy wackos than he caught cases in which genteel elderly women served poisoned tea to their gentlemen friends. Fortunately, most shots fired at him missed. He\u2019d been hit just twice: both minor wounds. Two of his partners had sustained injuries more serious than Hazard\u2019s, but neither had died or been crippled. Ethan had worked cases with Hazard during four years of his time on the force. That period constituted the most satisfying police work he\u2019d ever done. Now, when Yancy answered his cell phone on the third ring, Ethan said, \u201cYou still sleeping with an inflatable woman?\u201d \u201cYou applying for the position?\u201d \u201cHey, Hazard, you busy right now?\u201d \u201cGot my foot on a snot-wad\u2019s neck.\u201d \u201cLiterally?\u201d Ethan asked. \u201cFiguratively. Was it literally, I\u2019d be stomping his windpipe, and you\u2019d have been forwarded to voice mail.\u201d \u201cIf you\u2019re about to make a collar\u2014\u201d \u201cI\u2019m waiting for a comeback from the lab. Won\u2019t get it until tomorrow morning.\u201d \u201cHow about you and I have lunch, and Channing Manheim pays?\u201d \u201cAs long as that doesn\u2019t oblige me to watch any of his shitcan movies.\u201d \u201cEveryone\u2019s a critic.\u201d Ethan named a famous west-side restaurant where the Face had a standing reservation. \u201cThey have real food or just interior decoration on a plate?\u201d Hazard asked. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be fancy carved zucchini cups full of vegetable mousseline, baby asparagus, and patterns drawn with sauces,\u201d Ethan admitted. \u201cWould you rather go Armenian?\u201d \u201cDo I have a tongue? Armenian at one o\u2019clock?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll be the guy looks like an ex-cop trying to pass for smart.\u201d When he pressed END, terminating the call, Ethan was surprised that he had managed to sound entirely normal. His hands no longer trembled, but cold greasy fear still crawled restlessly through every turning of his guts. In the rearview mirror, his eyes weren\u2019t entirely familiar to him. Ethan engaged the windshield wipers. He drove out of the Palomar Laboratories parking lot. In the witches\u2019 cauldron of the sky, late-morning light brewed into a thick gloom more suitable to a winter dusk. Most drivers had switched on their headlights. Bright phantom serpents wriggled across the wet black pavement. With an hour and fifteen minutes to kill before lunch, Ethan decided to pay a visit to the living dead.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 6 OUR LADY OF ANGELS HOSPITAL WAS A TALL white structure with ziggurat-style step-backs in its higher floors, crowned with a series of diminishing plinths that supported a final column. Aglow in the storm, a dome light capped the high column and was itself surmounted by a radio mast with a winking red aircraft-warning beacon. The hospital seemed to signal mercy to sick souls across the Angelean hills and into the densely populated flatlands. Its tapered shape suggested a rocket ship that might carry to Heaven those whose lives could not be saved either by medicine or by prayer. Ethan first stopped in the men\u2019s lavatory off the ground-floor lobby, where he washed his hands vigorously at one of the sinks. The lab technician had not scraped every trace of blood from under his fingernails. The liquid soap in the dispenser proved to have a strong orange fragrance. The lavatory smelled like a citrus orchard by the time that he finished. Much hot water and much rubbing left his skin a boiled red. He could see no slightest stain remaining. Nevertheless Ethan felt that his hands were still unclean. He was troubled by the disturbing notion that as long as even a few molecules of that stigmatic residue of his foretold death clung to his hands, the Reaper would track him down by smell and cancel the reprieve that had been granted to him. Studying his reflection in the mirror, he half expected to see through his body, as through a sheer curtain, but he was solid. Sensing in himself the potential for obsession, concerned that he might wash his hands without surcease, until they were scrubbed raw, he quickly dried them on paper towels and left the men\u2019s room. He shared an elevator with a solemn young couple holding hands for mutual strength. \u201cShe\u2019ll be all right,\u201d the man murmured, and the woman nodded, eyes bright with repressed tears. When Ethan got off at the seventh floor, the young couple rode farther up to higher misery. Duncan \u201cDunny\u201d Whistler had been abed here on the seventh floor for three months. Between confinements to the intensive care unit\u2014also on this floor\u2014he was assigned to different rooms. During the five weeks since his most recent crisis, he\u2019d been in Room 742. A nun with a kind Irish face made eye contact with Ethan, smiled, and passed by with nary a swish of her voluminous habit. The order of sisters that operated Our Lady of Angels rejected the modern garb of many nuns, which resembled the uniforms of airline flight attendants. They favored instead the traditional floor-length habits with commodious sleeves, guimpes, and winged wimples. Their habits were radiant white, rather than white and black. When Ethan saw them gliding ethereally along these halls, seeming less to walk than to drift like spirits, he could almost believe that the hospital did not occupy only Los Angeles real estate, but bridged this world and the next. Dunny had existed in a limbo of sorts, between worlds, ever since four angry men shoved his head in a toilet bowl once too often and held him under too long. The paramedics had pumped the water out of his lungs, but the doctors hadn\u2019t been able to stir him from his coma. When Ethan arrived at Room 742, he found it in deep shadow. An old man rested in the bed nearest the door: unconscious, hooked to a ventilator that pumped air into him with a rhythmic wheeze. The bed nearest the window, where Dunny had spent the past five weeks, stood unoccupied. The sheets were crisp, fresh, luminous in the gloom. Drowned daylight projected vague gray images of ameboid rain tracks from the window glass onto the bed. The sheets appeared to be acrawl with transparent spiders. When he saw that the patient\u2019s chart was missing, Ethan figured that Dunny had been moved to another room or transferred to the ICU yet again. At the seventh-floor nurses\u2019 station, when he inquired as to where he might find Duncan Whistler, a young nurse asked him to wait for the shift supervisor, whom she paged. Ethan knew the supervisor, Nurse Jordan, from previous visits. A black woman with a drill sergeant\u2019s purposeful carriage and the soft smoky voice of a chanteuse, she arrived at the nurses\u2019 station with the news that Dunny had passed away that morning. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry, Mr. Truman, but I called both numbers you gave us and left voice-mail messages.\u201d \u201cWhen would this have been?\u201d he asked. \u201cHe passed away at ten-twenty this morning. I phoned you about fifteen or twenty minutes later.\u201d At approximately ten-forty, Ethan had been at Rolf Reynerd\u2019s apartment door, trembling with the memory of his foreseen death, pretending to be looking for the nonexistent Jim Briscoe. He\u2019d left his cell phone in the Expedition. \u201cI know you weren\u2019t that close to Mr. Whistler,\u201d said Nurse Jordan, \u201cbut it\u2019s still something of a shock, I\u2019m sure. Sorry you had to learn this way\u2014the empty bed.\u201d \u201cWas the body taken down to the hospital garden room?\u201d Ethan asked. Nurse Jordan regarded him with new respect. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize you were a police officer, Mr. Truman.\u201d Garden room was cop lingo for morgue. All those corpses waiting to be planted. \u201cRobbery\/Homicide,\u201d he replied, not bothering to explain that he had left the force, or why. \u201cMy husband\u2019s worn out enough uniforms to retire in March. I\u2019m workin\u2019 overtime so I don\u2019t go crazy.\u201d Ethan understood. Cops often went through long law-enforcement careers without worrying much about the dust-to-dust-ashes-to-ashes business, only to tighten with tension so much in the last months before retirement that they needed to eat Metamucil by the pound to stop retaining. The worry could be even worse for spouses. \u201cThe doctor signed a certification of death,\u201d Nurse Jordan said, \u201cand Mr. Whistler went down to cold holding pending mortuary pickup. Oh . . . actually, it won\u2019t be a mortuary, will it?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a murder now,\u201d Ethan said. \u201cThe medical examiner\u2019s office will want him for an autopsy.\u201d \u201cThen they\u2019ll have been called. We\u2019ve got a foolproof system.\u201d Checking her watch, she said, \u201cBut they probably haven\u2019t had time to take custody of the body yet, if that\u2019s what you\u2019re wondering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ethan rode the elevator all the way down to the dead. The garden room was in the third and lowest level of the basement, adjacent to the ambulance garage. Descending, he was serenaded by an orchestrated version of an old Sheryl Crow tune with all the sex squeezed out of it and with a perkiness squeezed in, retaining only the skin of the melody to wrap a different and less tasty variety of sausage. In this fallen world, even the most insignificant things, like pop tunes, were inevitably corrupted. He and Dunny, both thirty-seven now, had been each other\u2019s best friends from the age of five until they were twenty. Raised in the same worn-down neighborhood of crumbling stucco bungalows, each had been an only child, and they\u2019d been as close as brothers. Shared deprivation had bonded them, as had the emotional and the physical pain of living under the thumb of alcoholic fathers with fiery tempers. And a fierce desire to prove that even the sons of drunks, of poverty, could be someone, someday. Seventeen years of estrangement, during which they had rarely spoken, dulled Ethan\u2019s sense of loss. Yet even with everything else that weighed on his mind right now, he was drawn into a melancholy consideration of what might have been. Dunny Whistler cut the bond between them with his choice of a life outside the law even as Ethan had been training to enforce it. Poverty and the chaos of living under the rule of a selfish drunk had given birth in Ethan to a respect for self-discipline, for order, and for the rewards of a life lived in service to others. The same experiences had made Dunny yearn for buckets of money and for power sufficient to ensure that no one would ever again dare to tell him what to do or ever again make him live by rules other than his own. In retrospect, their responses to the same stresses had been diverging since their early teens. Maybe friendship had too long blinded Ethan to the growing differences between them. One had chosen to seek respect through accomplishment. The other wanted that respect which comes with being feared. Furthermore, they had been in love with the same woman, which might have split up even blood brothers. Hannah had come into their lives when they were all seven years old. First she had been one of the guys, the only kid they admitted to their previously two-boy games. The three had been inseparable. Then Hannah gradually became both friend and surrogate sister, and the boys swore to protect her. Ethan could never mark the day when she ceased to be just a friend, just a sister, and became for both him and Dunny . . . beloved. Dunny desperately wanted Hannah, but lost her. Ethan didn\u2019t merely want Hannah; he cherished her, won her heart, married her. For twelve years, he and Dunny had not spoken, not until the night that Hannah died in this same hospital. Leaving the ruination of Sheryl Crow in the elevator, Ethan followed a wide and brightly lighted corridor with white painted-concrete walls. In place of ersatz music, the only sound was the faint but authentic buzz of the fluorescent tubes overhead. Double doors with square portholes opened onto the reception area of the garden room. At a battered desk sat a fortyish, acne-scarred man in hospital greens. A desk plaque identified him as VIN TOLEDANO. He looked up from a paperback novel that featured a grotesque corpse on the cover. Ethan asked how he was doing, and the attendant said he was alive so he must be doing all right, and Ethan said, \u201cLittle over an hour ago, you received a Duncan Whistler from the seventh floor.\u201d \u201cGot him on ice,\u201d Toledano confirmed. \u201cCan\u2019t release him to a mortuary. Coroner gets him first \u2019cause it\u2019s a homicide.\u201d Only one chair was provided for visitors. Transactions involving perishable cadavers were generally conducted expeditiously, with no need of waiting-room comfort and dog-eared old magazines. \u201cI\u2019m not with a mortuary,\u201d said Ethan. \u201cI was a friend of the deceased. I wasn\u2019t here when he died.\u201d \u201cSorry, but I can\u2019t let you see the body right now.\u201d Sitting in the visitors\u2019 chair, Ethan said, \u201cYeah, I know.\u201d To prevent defense attorneys from challenging autopsy results in court, an official chain of custody for the cadaver had to be maintained, ensuring that no outsider could tamper with it. \u201cThere\u2019s no family left to ID him, and I\u2019m the executor of the estate,\u201d Ethan explained. \u201cSo if they\u2019re going to want me to confirm identity, I\u2019d rather do it here than later at the city morgue.\u201d Putting aside his paperback, Toledano said, \u201cThis guy I grew up with, last year he gets himself thrown out of a car at like ninety miles an hour. It\u2019s hard losing a good friend young.\u201d Ethan couldn\u2019t pretend to grieve, but he was grateful for any conversation that took his mind off Rolf Reynerd. \u201cWe hadn\u2019t been close in a long time. Didn\u2019t talk for twelve years, then only three times in the past five.\u201d \u201cBut he made you executor?\u201d \u201cGo figure. I didn\u2019t know about that till Dunny was here two days in the ICU. Got a call from his lawyer, tells me not only I\u2019m the executor if Dunny dies, but meanwhile I have power of attorney to handle his affairs and make medical decisions on his behalf.\u201d \u201cMust\u2019ve still been something special there between you.\u201d Ethan shook his head. \u201cNothing.\u201d \u201cMust\u2019ve been something,\u201d Vin Toledano insisted. \u201cChildhood friendships, they\u2019re deeper than you know. You don\u2019t see each other forever, then you meet, and it\u2019s like no time passed.\u201d \u201cWasn\u2019t that way with us.\u201d But Ethan knew that the something special between him and Dunny had been Hannah and their love for her. To change the subject, he said, \u201cSo how does your friend come to be pushed out of a car doing ninety?\u201d \u201cHe was a great guy, but he always thought more with his little head than his big one.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s not an exclusive club.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s in a bar, sees three hotties, no guys with them, so he moves in. All three come on to him, say let\u2019s go back to our place, and he figures he\u2019s so Brad Pitt they want to three-on-one him.\u201d \u201cBut it\u2019s a robbery setup,\u201d Ethan guessed. \u201cWorse. He leaves his car, rides in theirs. Two girls get him hot in the backseat, half undress him\u2014then push him out for fun.\u201d \u201cSo the hotties were hopped on something.\u201d \u201cMaybe so, maybe not,\u201d said Toledano. \u201cTurns out they\u2019d done it twice before. This time they got caught.\u201d Ethan said, \u201cI came across this old movie on TV the other night. Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello. One of those beach-party flicks. Women sure were different back then.\u201d \u201cSo was everybody. Nobody\u2019s got better or nicer since the mid-sixties. Wish I\u2019d been born thirty years sooner. So how\u2019d yours die?\u201d \u201cFour guys thought he\u2019d cheated them out of some money, so they thumped him a little, taped his wrists behind his back, and submerged his head in a toilet long enough to cause brain damage.\u201d \u201cMan, that\u2019s ugly.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not Agatha Christie,\u201d Ethan agreed. \u201cBut you\u2019re dealing with all this, it proves there must\u2019ve been something left between you and your buddy. Nobody has to be executor of an estate, they don\u2019t want to be.\u201d Two meat haulers from the medical examiner\u2019s office pushed open the double doors and entered the garden-room reception area. The first guy was tall, in his fifties, and obviously proud about having kept all his hair. He wore it in a pompadour elaborate enough that it should have been finished with bows. Ethan knew Pomp\u2019s partner. Jose Ramirez was a stocky Mexican-American with myopic eyes and with the sweet dreamy smile of a koala bear. Jose lived for his wife and four children. While Pomp dealt with the paperwork supplied by the attendant, Ethan asked Jose to see the latest wallet photographs of Maria and the kids. Once formalities were completed, Toledano led them through an inner door, into the garden room. Instead of a vinyl-tile floor as in the reception area, this chamber featured white ceramic tile with only sixteenth-inch grout joints: an easy surface to sterilize in the event that it became contaminated with bodily fluids. Although continually cycled through sophisticated filters, the cold air carried a faint but unpleasant scent. Most people didn\u2019t die smelling of shampoo, soap, and cologne. Four standard stainless-steel morgue drawers might have held bodies, but two cadavers on gurneys made an immediate impression. Both were draped with sheets. A third gurney stood empty, trailing a tangled shroud, and to this one Toledano proceeded with a stupefied expression. \u201cThis was him. Right here.\u201d Frowning with confusion, Toledano peeled the sheets back from the heads of the other two cadavers. Neither was Dunny Whistler. One at a time, he pulled open the four stainless-steel drawers. They were empty. Because the hospital sent the vast majority of its patients home rather than to funeral services, this garden room was small by the standards of the city morgue. All possible hiding places had already been explored.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 7 IN THIS WINDOWLESS CHAMBER THREE STORIES underground, the four living and the two dead were for a moment so silent that Ethan imagined he could hear rain falling in the streets far above. Then the meat hauler with the pompadour said, \u201cYou mean you released Whistler to the wrong people?\u201d The attendant, Toledano, shook his head adamantly. \u201cNo way. Never did in fourteen years, not startin\u2019 today.\u201d A wide door allowed bodies on gurneys to be conveyed directly from the garden room into the ambulance garage. Two deadbolts should have secured it. Both were disengaged. \u201cI left them locked,\u201d Toledano insisted. \u201cThey\u2019re always locked, always, \u2019cept when I\u2019m overseeing a dispatch, and then I\u2019m always here, right here, watching.\u201d \u201cWho\u2019d want to steal a stiff?\u201d Pomp asked. \u201cEven some perv wanted to steal one, he couldn\u2019t,\u201d Vin Toledano said, pulling open the door to the garage to reveal that it lacked keyholes on the outside. \u201cTwo blind locks. No keys ever made for it. Can\u2019t unlock this door unless you\u2019re already here in this room, then you use the thumb-turns.\u201d The attendant\u2019s voice had been quickly worn thin by worry. Ethan figured that Toledano saw his job going down the drain as surely as blood was drawn by gravity down the gutters of an inclined autopsy table. Jose Ramirez said, \u201cMaybe he wasn\u2019t dead, you know, so he walked out himself.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s deader than dead,\u201d Toledano said. \u201cTotal damn dead.\u201d With a slump-shouldered shrug and a koala smile, Jose said, \u201cMistakes happen.\u201d \u201cNot in this hospital, they don\u2019t,\u201d the attendant insisted. \u201cNot since once fifteen years ago, when this old lady was in cold holding almost an hour, certified dead, and then she sits up and screams.\u201d \u201cHey, I remember hearing about that,\u201d said Pomp. \u201cSome nun had herself a heart attack over it.\u201d \u201cWho had the heart attack was the guy in this job before me, and it was the nun chewin\u2019 him out that gave it to him.\u201d Stooping, Ethan extracted a white plastic bag from under the gurney that had held Dunny\u2019s body. The bag featured drawstrings, to one of which had been tied a tag that bore the name DUNCAN EUGENE WHISTLER, his date of birth, and his social-security number. With a wheeze of panic in his voice, Toledano said, \u201cThat held the clothes he was wearing when he was admitted to the hospital.\u201d Now the bag proved empty. Ethan put it on top of the gurney. \u201cEver since the old lady woke up fifteen years ago, you double-check the doctors?\u201d \u201cTriple-check, quadruple-check,\u201d Toledano declared. \u201cFirst thing a deader comes in here, I stethoscope him, listen for heart and lung action. Use the diaphragm side to hear high-pitched sounds, bell side for low-pitched.\u201d He nodded continually, as though while he talked he were mentally reviewing a checklist of steps he\u2019d taken on receipt of Dunny\u2019s body. \u201cDo a mirror test for breath. Then establish internal body temp, take it again a half-hour later, then a half-hour after that, to see is it dropping like it should if what you\u2019ve got is really a deader.\u201d Pomp found this amusing. \u201cInternal temperature? You mean you spend your time shovin\u2019 thermometers up dead people\u2019s butts?\u201d Unamused, Jose said, \u201cHave some respect,\u201d and crossed himself. Ethan\u2019s palms were damp. He blotted them on his shirt. \u201cWell, if nobody could get in here to take him, and if he was dead\u2014where is he now?\u201d \u201cProbably one of the sisters jerking your chain,\u201d Pomp told the morgue attendant. \u201cThose nuns are jokers.\u201d Cold air, snow-white ceramic tile, stainless-steel drawer fronts glistening like ice: None of it accounted for the depth of Ethan\u2019s chill. He suspected that the subtle scent of death had saturated his clothing. Places like this had never in the past disturbed him. He was disturbed now. In the space labeled NEXT OF KIN OR RESPONSIBLE PARTY, the hospital paperwork listed Ethan\u2019s name and telephone numbers; nevertheless, he gave the harried attendant a card with the same information. Ascending in the elevator, he half listened to one of Barenaked Ladies\u2019 best songs reduced to nap music. He went all the way up to the seventh floor, where Dunny had died. When the elevator doors opened, he realized that he had needed to go only as high as the garage on the first subterranean level, where he\u2019d parked the Expedition, just two floors above the garden room. After pressing the button for the main garage level, he rode up to the fifteenth floor before the cab started down again. People got on the elevator, got off, but Ethan hardly noticed them. His racing mind took him elsewhere. The incident at Reynerd\u2019s apartment. Dead Dunny\u2019s disappearance. Badgeless, Ethan nonetheless retained a cop\u2019s intuition. He understood that two such extraordinary events, occurring in the same morning, could not be coincidental. The power of intuition alone, however, wasn\u2019t sufficient to suggest the nature of the link between these uncanny occurrences. He might as well try to perform brain surgery by intuition. Logic didn\u2019t offer immediate answers, either. In this case, even Sherlock Holmes might have despaired at the odds of discovering the truth through deductive reasoning. In the garage, an arriving car traveled the rows in search of a parking space, turned a corner onto a down ramp, and another car came up out of the concrete abyss, behind headlights, like a deep-salvage submersible ascending from an ocean trench, and drove toward the exit, but Ethan alone was on foot. Mottled by years of sooty exhaust fumes that formed enigmatic and taunting Rorschach blots, the low gray ceiling appeared to press lower, lower, as he walked farther into the garage. Like the hull of a submarine, the walls seemed barely able to hold back a devastating weight of sea, a crushing pressure. Step by step, Ethan expected to discover that he wasn\u2019t after all alone on foot. Beyond each SUV, behind every concrete column, an old friend might wait, his condition mysterious and his purpose unknowable. Ethan reached the Expedition without incident. No one waited for him in the vehicle. Behind the steering wheel, even before he started the engine, he locked the doors.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 8 THE ARMENIAN RESTAURANT ON PICO Boulevard had the atmosphere of a Jewish delicatessen, a menu featuring food so delicious that it would inspire a condemned man to smile through his last meal, and more plainclothes cops and film-industry types together in one place than you would find anywhere outside of the courtroom devoted to the trial of the latest spouse-murdering celebrity. When Ethan arrived, Hazard Yancy waited in a booth by a window. Even seated, he loomed so large that he would have been well advised to audition for the title role in The Incredible Hulk if Hollywood ever made a black version. Hazard had already been served a double order of the kibby appetizer with cucumbers, tomatoes, and pickled turnip on the side. As Ethan sat across the table from the big detective, Hazard said, \u201cSomebody told me they saw in the news your boss got twenty-seven million bucks for his last two movies.\u201d \u201cTwenty-seven million each. He\u2019s the first to break through the twenty-five-million ceiling.\u201d \u201cUp from poverty,\u201d Hazard said. \u201cPlus he\u2019s got a piece of the back end.\u201d \u201cThat kind of money, he can get a piece of anybody\u2019s back end he wants.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s an industry phrase. Means if the picture is a big hit, he gets a share of the profits, sometimes even a percentage of gross.\u201d \u201cHow much might that amount to?\u201d \u201cAccording to Daily Variety, he\u2019s had worldwide hits so big he sometimes walks away with fifty million, thereabouts.\u201d \u201cYou read the show-biz press now?\u201d Hazard asked. \u201cHelps me stay aware of how big a target he\u2019s making himself.\u201d \u201cYou got your work cut out for you, all right. How many movies does the man do a year?\u201d \u201cNever fewer than two. Sometimes three.\u201d \u201cI was planning to chow down so much on his dime, Mr. Charming Manheim himself would notice, and you\u2019d get fired for abusing your credit-card privileges.\u201d \u201cEven you can\u2019t eat a hundred thousand bucks\u2019 worth of kibby.\u201d Hazard shook his head. \u201cChan the Man. Maybe I\u2019m not hip anymore, but I don\u2019t see him being fifty million cool.\u201d \u201cHe also owns a TV-production company with three shows currently on major networks, four on cable. He pulls in a few million a year from Japan, doing TV commercials for their top-selling beer. He has a line of sports clothes. Lots more. His agents call the nonacting income \u2018additional revenue streams.\u2019 \u201d \u201cPeople just pissing money on him, huh?\u201d \u201cHe\u2019ll never need to shop for bargains.\u201d When the waitress came to the table, Ethan ordered Moroccan salmon with couscous, and iced tea. Taking Hazard\u2019s order, she wore the point off her pencil: lebne with string cheese and extra cucumbers, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, lahmajoon flatbread, seafood tagine. … \u201cPlus give me two of those little bottles of Orangina.\u201d \u201cOnly person I ever saw eat that much,\u201d Ethan said, \u201cwas this bulimic ballerina. She went to the John to puke after every course.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m just sampling, and I never wear a tutu.\u201d Hazard cut his last kibby in two. \u201cSo how big an asshole, is Chan the Man?\u201d The masking roar of other lunchtime conversations provided Ethan and Hazard with privacy nearly equal to that on a remote Mojave hill. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to hate him,\u201d Ethan said. \u201cThat\u2019s your best compliment?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s just that in person he doesn\u2019t have the impact he does on the screen. He doesn\u2019t stir your emotions one way or the other.\u201d Hazard forked half a kibby into his mouth and made a small sound of pleasure. \u201cSo he\u2019s all image, no substance.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s not quite it. He\u2019s so . . . bland. Generous to employees. Not arrogant. But there\u2019s this . . . this weightlessness about him. He\u2019s sort of careless how he treats people, even his own son, but it\u2019s a benign indifference. He\u2019s not an actively bad guy.\u201d \u201cThat money, that much adoration, you expect a monster.\u201d \u201cWith him, you don\u2019t get it. You get . . . \u201d Ethan paused to think. In the months he\u2019d worked for Manheim, he had not spoken this much or this frankly about the man to anyone. He and Hazard had been shot at together, and each had trusted his life to the other. He could speak his mind and know that nothing he said would be repeated. With such a confidential sounding board, he wanted to describe the Face not only as honestly as possible but as perceptively. In explaining Manheim to Hazard, he also might be able more fully to explain the actor to himself. After the waitress brought iced tea and the Oranginas, Ethan at last said, \u201cHe\u2019s self-absorbed but not in the usual movie-star way, not in any way that makes him appear egotistical. He cares about the money, I guess, but I don\u2019t think he cares what anyone thinks of him or that he\u2019s famous. He\u2019s self-absorbed, all right, totally self-absorbed, but it\u2019s like this … this Zen state of self-absorption.\u201d \u201cZen state?\u201d \u201cYeah. Like life is about him and nature, him and the cosmos, not him and other people. He always seems to be half in a meditative state, not entirely here with you, like some con-man yogi pretending to be otherworldly, except he\u2019s sincere. If he\u2019s always contemplating the universe, then he\u2019s also confident the universe is contemplating him, that their fascination is mutual.\u201d Having finished the last of his kibby, Hazard said, \u201cSpencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Bogart\u2014were they all airheads, and nobody knew it, or in those days were movie stars real men with their feet on the ground?\u201d \u201cSome real people are still in the business. I met Jodie Foster, Sandra Bullock. They seem real.\u201d \u201cThey seem like they could kick ass, too,\u201d Hazard said. Two waitresses were required to bring all the food to the table. Hazard grinned and nodded as each dish was placed before him: \u201cNice. Nice. That\u2019s nice. Real nice. Oh, very nice.\u201d The memory of being shot in the gut spoiled Ethan\u2019s appetite. As he picked at his Moroccan salmon and couscous, he delayed bringing up the issue of Rolf Reynerd. \u201cSo you said you\u2019ve got one foot on some snot-wad\u2019s neck. What\u2019s the case?\u201d \u201cTwenty-two-year-old blond cutie strangled, dumped in a sewage-treatment slough. We call it Blonde in the Pond.\u201d Any cop who works homicides is changed forever by his job. The victims haunt him with the quiet insistence of spirochetes spinning poison in the blood. Humor is your best and often only defense against the horror. Early in the investigation, every killing is given a droll name, which is thereafter used within the Homicide Division. Your ranking officer would never ask, Are you making progress on the Ermitrude Pottlesby murder? It would always be, Anything new with Blonde in the Pond? When Ethan and Hazard worked the brutal murders of two lesbians of Middle Eastern descent, the case had been called Lezzes in Fezzes. Another young woman, tied to a kitchen table, had choked to death on steel-wool pads and Pine-Sol-soaked sponges that her killer had forced into her mouth and down her throat; her case was Scrub Lady. Outsiders would probably be offended to hear the unofficial case names. Civilians didn\u2019t realize that detectives often dreamed about the dead for whom they sought justice, or that a detective could occasionally become so attached to a victim that the loss felt personal. No disrespect was ever intended by these case names\u2014and sometimes they expressed a strange, melancholy affection. \u201cStrangled,\u201d Ethan said, referring to Blonde in the Pond. \u201cWhich suggests passion, a good chance it was someone romantically involved with her.\u201d \u201cAh. So you haven\u2019t gone entirely soft in your expensive leather jackets and your Gucci loafers.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m wearing Rockports, not loafers. Dumping her in a sewage slough probably means he caught her screwing around, so he considers her filthy, a worthless piece of crap.\u201d \u201cPlus maybe he had knowledge of the treatment plant, knew an easy way to get the body in there. Is that a cashmere sweater?\u201d \u201cCotton. So your perp works at the plant?\u201d Hazard shook his head. \u201cHe\u2019s a member of the city council.\u201d At once losing his appetite altogether, Ethan put down his fork. \u201cA politician? Why don\u2019t you just find a cliff and jump?\u201d Shoving a stuffed grape leaf in his maw, Hazard managed to grin while he chewed, without once opening his mouth. After swallowing, he said, \u201cI\u2019ve already got a cliff, and I\u2019m pushing him off.\u201d \u201cAnybody winds up broken on the rocks, it\u2019ll be you.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve just taken the cliff metaphor one step too far,\u201d said Hazard, spooning hummus into a pita wedge. After a half-century of squeaky-clean public officials and honest administration, California itself had lately become a deep sewage slough not seen since the 1930s and \u201940s when Raymond Chandler had written about its dark side. Here in the early years of the new millennium, on a state level and in too many local jurisdictions, corruption had attained a degree of rot seldom seen outside a banana republic, though in this case a banana republic without bananas and with pretensions to glamour. A significant percentage of the politicians here operated like thugs. If the thugs saw you going after one of their own, they would assume you\u2019d come after them next, and they would use their power to ruin you one way or another. In another gangster-ridden era, in a crusade against corruption, Eliot Ness had led a force of law-enforcement agents so beyond reach by bribery and so undeterred by bullets that they became known as the Untouchables. In contemporary California, even Ness and his exemplary crew would be destroyed not by bribes or bullets, but by bureaucracy wielded as ruthlessly as an ax and by slander eagerly converted to libel by a feeding-frenzy media with a sentimental affection for the thugs, both the elected and unelected varieties, upon whom they daily reported. \u201cIf you were still doing real work like me,\u201d Hazard said, \u201cyou\u2019d handle this no different than I\u2019m handling it.\u201d \u201cYeah. But I sure wouldn\u2019t sit there grinning about it.\u201d Indicating Ethan\u2019s sweater, Hazard said, \u201cCotton\u2014like Rodeo Drive cotton?\u201d \u201cCotton like Macy\u2019s on-sale cotton.\u201d \u201cHow much you pay for a pair of socks these days?\u201d Ethan said, \u201cTen thousand dollars.\u201d He\u2019d been hesitant to bring up the Rolf Reynerd situation. Now he figured he could do nothing better for Hazard than distract him from this suicidal mission to nail a city councilman for murder. \u201cTake a look at these.\u201d He opened a nine-by-twelve manila envelope, withdrew the contents, and passed them across the table. As Hazard reviewed what he\u2019d been given, Ethan told him about the five black boxes delivered by Federal Express and the sixth thrown over the gate. \u201cThey came by Federal Express, so you know who sent them.\u201d \u201cNo. The return addresses were fake. They were dropped off at different mom-and-pop mailbox shops that collect for FedEx and UPS. The sender paid cash.\u201d \u201cHow much mail does Channing get a week?\u201d \u201cMaybe five thousand pieces. But almost all of it is sent to the studio where it\u2019s known he has offices. A publicity firm reviews it and responds. His home address isn\u2019t a secret, but it\u2019s not widely known, either.\u201d In the envelope were high-resolution computer printouts of six digital photographs taken in Ethan\u2019s study, the first of which showed a small jar standing on a white cloth. Beside the jar lay the lid. Spread across the cloth were what had been the contents of the jar: twenty-two beetles with black-spotted orange shells. \u201cLadybugs?\u201d Hazard asked. \u201cThe entomological name is Hippodamia convergens, of the family Coccinellidae. Not that I think it matters, but I looked it up.\u201d Hazard\u2019s shrewd expression spoke clearly enough without words, but he said, \u201cYou\u2019re stumped worse than a quadruple amputee.\u201d \u201cThis guy thinks I\u2019m Batman, he\u2019s the Riddler.\u201d \u201cWhy twenty-two bugs? Is the number significant?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d \u201cThey alive when you received them?\u201d Hazard asked. \u201cAll dead. Whether they were alive when he sent them, I don\u2019t know, but they looked like they\u2019d been dead for a while. The shells were intact, but the more delicate bug parts were withered, crumbly.\u201d In the second photo, a collection of different, spirally coiled, light brown shells were canted at angles in a gray pile of sludge that had been emptied from a black box onto a sheet of waxed paper. \u201cTen dead snails,\u201d Ethan said. \u201cWell, actually, two were alive but feeble when I opened the box.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s a fragrance Chanel won\u2019t be bottling.\u201d Hazard paused to fork up some seafood tagine. The third photo was of a small, clear-glass, screw-top jar. The label had been removed, but the lid indicated that the container had once held pickle relish. Because the photograph wasn\u2019t clear enough to reveal the murky contents of the jar, Ethan said, \u201cFloating in formaldehyde were these ten pieces of translucent tissue with a pale pinkish tint. Tubelike structures. Hard to describe. Like tiny exotic jellyfish.\u201d \u201cYou took \u2019em to a lab?\u201d \u201cYeah. When they gave me the analysis, they also gave me a weird look. What I had in the jar were foreskins.\u201d Hazard\u2019s jaws locked in midchew, as if the seafood tagine had hardened like a dental mold. \u201cTen foreskins from grown men, not infants,\u201d Ethan amplified. After chewing mechanically, not with his former relish, and after swallowing with a grimace, Hazard said, \u201cOuch. How many grown men get themselves circumcised?\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re not standing in line for it,\u201d Ethan agreed.<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 9 CORKY LAPUTA THRIVED IN THE RAIN. He wore a long shiny yellow slicker and a droopy yellow rain hat. He was as bright as a dandelion. The slicker had many inside pockets, deep and weatherproof. In his tall black rubber boots, two layers of socks kept his feet pleasantly warm. He yearned for thunder. He ached for lightning. Storms in southern California, usually lacking crash and flash, were too quiet for his taste. He liked the wind, however. Hissing, hooting, a champion of disorder, it lent a sting to the rain and promised chaos. Ficus and pine trees shivered, shuddered. Palm fronds clicked and clattered. Stripped leaves whirled in ragged green conjurations, short-lived demons that blew down into gutters. Eventually, clogging drain grills, the leaves would be the cause of flooded streets, stalled cars, delayed ambulances, and many small but welcome miseries. Here in the blustery, dripping midday, Corky walked a charming residential neighborhood in Studio City. Sowing disorder. He didn\u2019t live here. He never would. This was a working-class neighborhood, managerial-class at best. Intellectual stimulation in such a place would be hard to find. He had driven here to take a walk. Emergency-yellow, blazing canary, he nevertheless passed along these streets with complete anonymity, drawing as little notice as might a ghost whose substance was but a twist of ectoplasmic mist. He had yet to encounter anyone on foot. Few cars traveled the quiet streets. The weather kept most people snug indoors. The glorious rotten weather was Corky\u2019s fine conspirator. At this hour, of course, most residents of these houses were away at work. Toiling, toiling, with stupid purpose. Because this was a holiday week, children had not gone to school. Today: Monday. Christmas: Friday. Deck the halls. Some children would be in the company of siblings. A lesser number would be under the protection of a nonworking mother. Others were home alone. In this instance, however, children were not Corky\u2019s avenue of expression. Here, they were safe from the yellow ghost passing among them. Anyway, Corky was forty-two. Kids these days were too savvy to open their doors to strange men. Welcome disorder and lovely decadence had deeply infected the world in recent years. Now the lambs of all ages were growing wary. He contented himself with lesser outrages, just happy to be out in the storm and doing a little damage. In one of his capacious inner pockets, he carried a plastic bag of glittering blue crystals. A wickedly powerful chemical defoliant. The Chinese military had developed it. Prior to a war, their agents would sow this stuff in their enemy\u2019s farms. The blue crystals withered crops through a twelve-month growing cycle. An enemy unable to feed itself cannot fight. One of Corky\u2019s colleagues at the university had accepted a grant to study the crystals for the Department of Defense. They felt an urgent need to find a way to protect against the chemical in advance of its use. In his lab, the colleague had a fifty-pound drum of the stuff. Corky had stolen one pound. He wore thin protective latex gloves, which he could easily hide in the great winglike sleeves of his slicker. The slicker was as much a scrape as a coat. The sleeves were so voluminous that he could withdraw his arms from them, search his interior pockets, and slip into the sleeves again with fistfuls of one poison or another. He scattered blue crystals over primrose and liriope, over star jasmine and bougainvillea. Azaleas and ferns. Carpet roses, lantana. The rain swiftly dissolved the crystals. The chemical seeped into the roots. In a week, the plants would yellow, drop leaves. In two weeks, they would collapse in a muck of reeking rot. Large trees would not be affected by the quantities that Corky could scatter. Lawns, flowers, shrubs, vines, and smaller trees would succumb, however, in satisfying numbers. He didn\u2019t sow death in the landscaping of every house. One out of three, in no apparent pattern. If an entire block of homes were blighted, neighbors might be drawn closer by the shared catastrophe. If some were untouched, they would become the envy of the afflicted. And might arouse suspicion. Corky\u2019s mission was not merely to cause destruction. Any fool could wreck things. He intended also to spread dissension, distrust, discord, and despair. Occasionally a dog barked or growled from the shelter of a porch where it was tethered or from within a doghouse behind a board fence or a stone wall. Corky liked dogs. They were man\u2019s best friend, though why they would want to fill that role remained a mystery, considering the vile nature of humanity. Now and then, when he heard a dog, he fished tasty biscuits from an inner pocket. He tossed them onto porches, over fences. In the interest of societal deconstruction, he could put aside his love of dogs and do what must be done. Sacrifices must be made. You can\u2019t make an omelet without breaking eggs, and all that. The dog biscuits were treated with cyanide. The animals would die far faster than the plants. Few things would spread despair so effectively as the untimely death of a beloved pet. Corky was sad. Sad for the luckless dogs. He was happy, too. Happy that in a thousand little ways he daily contributed to the fall of a corrupt order\u2014and therefore to the rise of a better world. For the same reason that he didn\u2019t damage the landscaping at every house, he didn\u2019t kill every dog. Let neighbor suspect neighbor. He wasn\u2019t concerned that he would be caught in these poisonings. Entropy, the most powerful force in the universe, was his ally and his protecting god. Besides, the at-home parents would be watching sleazy daytime talk shows on which daughters revealed to their mothers that they were whores, on which wives revealed to their husbands that they were having affairs with their brothers-in-law. With school out, the kids would be busy learning homicidal skills from video games. Better yet, the pubescent boys would be surfing the Net for pornography, sharing it with innocent younger brothers, and scheming to rape the little girl next door. Because he approved of those activities, Corky went about his work as discreetly as possible, so as not to distract these people from their self-destruction. Corky Laputa was not merely a dreary poisoner. He was a man of many talents and weapons. From time to time, as he plodded along the puddled walkways, under the drizzling trees, he indulged in melody. He sang \u201cSingin\u2019 in the Rain,\u201d of course, which might be trite, but which amused him. He did not dance. Not that he couldn\u2019t dance. Although not as limber and as right with rhythm as Gene Kelly, he could dazzle on any dance floor. Capering along a street in a yellow slicker as roomy as any nun\u2019s habit was, however, not wise behavior for an anarchist who preferred anonymity. The streetside mailbox in front of each house always sported a number. Some boxes featured family names, as well. Sometimes a name appeared to be Jewish. Stein. Levy. Glickman. At each of these boxes, Corky paused briefly. He inserted one of the letter-size white envelopes that he carried by the score in another slicker pocket. On each envelope, a black swastika. In each, two sheets of folded paper certain to instill fear and stoke anger. On the first page, in bold block letters, were printed the words DEATH TO ALL DIRTY JEWS. The photo on the second page showed bodies stacked ten deep in the furnace yard of a Nazi concentration camp. Under it in red block letters blazed the message YOU\u2019RE NEXT. Corky had no prejudice against the Jewish people. He held all races, religions, and ethnic groups in equal contempt. At other special venues, he had distributed DEATH TO ALL DIRTY CATHOLICS notices, DEATH TO ALL BLACKS, and IMPRISON ALL GUN OWNERS. For decades, politicians had been controlling the people by dividing them into groups and turning them against one another. All a good anarchist could do was try to intensify the existing hatreds and pour gasoline on the fires that the politicians had built. Currently, hatred of Israel\u2014and, by extension, all Jews\u2014was the fashionable intellectual position among the most glamorous of media figures, including many nonreligious Jews. Corky was simply giving the people what they wanted. Azalea to lantana to jasmine vine, dog to dog to mailbox, he journeyed through the rain-swept day. Seeding chaos. Determined conspirators might be able to blow up skyscrapers and cause breathtaking destruction. Their work was helpful. Ten thousand Corky Laputas\u2014inventive, diligent\u2014would in their quiet persistent way do more, however, to undermine the foundations of this society than all the suicide pilots and bombers combined. For every thousand gunmen, Corky thought, I\u2019d rather have one hate-filled teacher subtly propagandizing in a schoolroom, one day-care worker with an unslakable thirst for cruelty, one atheist priest hiding in cassock and alb and chasuble. By a circuitous route, he came within sight of the BMW where he had parked it an hour and a half earlier. Right on schedule. Spending too much time in a single neighborhood could be risky. The wise anarchist keeps moving because entropy favors the rambler, and motion foils the law. The dirty-milk clouds had churned lower during his stroll, coagulating into sooty curds. In the storm gloom, in the wet shade of the oak tree, his silver sedan waited as dark as iron. Trailers of bougainvillea lashed the air, casting off scarlet petals, raking thorny nails against the stucco wall of a house, making sgraffito sounds: scratch-scratch, screek-screek. Wind threw sheets, lashed whips, spun funnels of rain. Rain hissed, sizzled, chuckled, splashed. Corky\u2019s phone rang. He was still half a block from his car. He would miss the call if he waited to answer it in the BMW. He slipped his right arm out of its sleeve, under his slicker, and un-clipped the phone from his belt. Arm in sleeve again, phone to ear, toddling along as buttercup-yellow and as smile-evoking as any character in any TV program for children, Corky Laputa was in such a good mood that he answered the call by saying, \u201cBrighten the corner where you are.\u201d The caller was Rolf Reynerd. As thick as Corky was yellow, Rolf thought he\u2019d gotten a wrong number. \u201cIt\u2019s me,\u201d Corky said quickly, before Reynerd could hang up. By the time he reached the BMW, he wished he had never answered the phone. Reynerd had done something stupid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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