The Face (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

B
EYOND 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’s 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’t glimpsed even the suggestion of Garboesque depths. The face of the Face seemed to be nearly all there was of Channing.

Ethan didn’t 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’s 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’t been who he was, however, and if he hadn’t 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’t actively dislike his employer, and he didn’t 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’s ego inside the beautiful fruit.

Perhaps the doll’s eye didn’t stand for corruption, but for the downside of fame. A celebrity of Channing’s magnitude enjoyed little privacy and was always under scrutiny. The eye in the apple might be symbolic of the stalker’s eye—always watching, judging.

Crap. Cheap analysis. For all his somber brooding, in weather conducive to contemplation and to dark speculation, Ethan’s every observation seemed obvious and useless.

He ruminated on the apple-damp words: T
HE EYE IN THE APPLE?
T
HE WATCHFUL WORM?
T
HE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN?
D
O WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION?

Stumped, he was grateful when the phone rang at a few minutes past ten o’clock, 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.

“Got your pervert,” Laura said.

“Suspected pervert,” he corrected.

“The three-year-old Honda is registered to Rolf Herman Reynerd in West Hollywood.” She spelled each name and gave him an address.

“What kind of parents
Rolf
a kid?”

Laura knew all about names. “It’s not so bad. Nicely masculine, in fact. In Old German, it means ‘famous wolf.’ Ethan, of course, means ‘permanent, assured.’”

Two years ago, they’d dated. For Laura, Ethan had been anything but permanent, assured. She’d have liked permanence, some assurance. He had been too wounded to provide what she wanted. Or too stupid.

“Looked him up for a rap sheet,” Laura said, “but he’s clean. DMV says ‘hair brown, eyes blue.’ Says ‘sex male.’ I like sex male. I don’t get enough sex male. Height six-one, weight one-eighty. DOB—June sixth, nineteen seventy-two, which makes him thirty-one.”

Ethan had it all on a notepad. “Thanks, Laura. I owe you one.”

“So then tell me—how big’s his charlie?”

“Isn’t that in the DMV file?”

“I don’t mean Rolf’s charlie. I mean Manheim’s. Does it hang to his ankles or just to his knees?”

“I’ve never seen his charlie, but he doesn’t seem to have any trouble walking.”

“Cookie, maybe you can introduce us sometime.”

Ethan had never known why she called him Cookie. “The man would bore your ass off, Laura, and that’s the truth.”

“Pretty as he is, I wouldn’t need conversation. I’d just shove a rag in his mouth, tape his lips shut, and off we’d go to paradise.”

“Basically it’s my job to keep people like you away from him.”

“Truman derives from two Old English words,” she said. “It means ‘steadfast, loyal, trustworthy, constant.’”

“You can’t get a date with the Face by making me feel guilty. Besides, when wasn’t I loyal and trustworthy?”

“Cookie, two out of four doesn’t mean you deserve your name.”

“You were too good for me anyway, Laura. You’ve got more to give than a shlump like me can appreciate.”

“I’d like to see your old Ten Card,” she said, referring to his record of service on the force. “Must be more brown stars for ass kissing on that baby than any hundred other cards in the history of the job.”

“If you’re done dissing me, I’ve been wondering…. Rolf. Famous wolf. Does that make sense? What’s a wolf have to do to get famous?”

“Kill a lot of sheep, I guess.”

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’d 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’s building and from several points in the house, any videocam 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’t carry a heavy load of traffic. At that late hour, they were hardly traveled.

Nevertheless concerned about safety, the driver of the Honda didn’t 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—then 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’s 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’s 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’s license.

He closed the driver’s 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’d 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’s next hundred-fifty-million-dollar picture.

Turning from the gate, having delivered the apple, Rolf Reynerd was grinning.

Perhaps if Ethan hadn’t known the meaning of the man’s first name, the grin wouldn’t have seemed wolfish. Then he might have been reminded instead of a crocodile or a hyena.