The Face (25 page)

CHAPTER 42

F
ANTASTICALLY YELLOW FROM HEAD TO FOOT, Corky Laputa accepted the shocking-pink plastic bag from Mr. Chung.

He was aware that he evoked smiles from other customers, and he supposed that in his yellow-and-pink flamboyance, he must be the most cheerful-looking anarchist in the world.

The bag bulged with containers of Chinese food, and Mr. Chung overflowed with good will. He effusively thanked Corky for his continuing patronage and wished him all the best that fortune had to offer.

After a typically busy day in the pursuit of social collapse, Corky seldom found himself in the mood to make dinner. He got takeout from Mr. Chung as often as three or four times a week.

In a better world, instead of resorting repeatedly to Chinese takeout, he would have preferred to dine frequently in upscale restaurants. If an establishment offered fine cuisine and excellent service, however, there were invariably enough customers to ruin the experience.

With but few exceptions, human beings were tedious, self-deluded bores. He could tolerate them individually or in classroom situations where he set the rules, but in crowds they were not conducive to the enjoyment of a good meal or to proper digestion.

He drove home through the rain with his pink bag, and he left it unopened on the kitchen table. Mouth-watering aromas flooded the room.

After changing into a comfortable Glen-plaid cashmere robe suitable to a drizzly December evening, Corky mixed a martini. Only a trace of vermouth, two olives.

In the sublime afterglow of a day well spent, he often liked to walk his spacious home and admire the richness of its Victorian architecture and ornamentation.

His parents, both from well-to-do families, had purchased the property shortly after their marriage. Had they not been the people they were, the beautiful house would have been alive with wonderful family memories and with a sense of tradition.

Consequently, his only fine family memory, the one that warmed him most, was associated with the living room, especially with the area around the fireplace, where he had separated his mother from his inheritance by the application of an iron poker.

He stood there for only a minute or two, basking in the fire, before going upstairs again. This time, martini in hand, he went to the back guest bedroom, to check on Stinky Cheese Man.

He didn’t even bother to lock the door these days. Old Stinky wasn’t going anywhere under his own power ever again.

The room would have been dark in daylight, for the two windows were boarded over. The wall switch by the door controlled the lamp on the nightstand.

The tinted bulb and the apricot silk shade provided an appealing glow. Even in this flattering light, Stinky appeared paler than pale, so gray that he seemed to be petrifying into stone.

His head, shoulders, and arms were exposed, but the rest of him remained covered by a sheet and blanket. Later, Corky would enjoy the entire show.

Stinky had once been a trim 200 pounds, in excellent condition. If he could have gotten on a scale now, he probably would have weighed less than 110.

All bone, skin, hair, and pressure sores, he was barely strong enough to lift his head an inch off his pillow, too weak by far to get out of bed and onto a scale, and the depth of his despair had weeks ago broken his will to resist.

Stinky was no longer semi-sedated. His sunken eyes met Corky’s, darkly shining with a desperate petition.

On the IV tree, the dangling twelve-hour bag of glucose and saline solution had drained completely. The slow drip of glucose, vitamins, and minerals that kept Stinky alive also infused a drug that ensured mental vagueness and reliable docility.

Corky put down his martini, and from a small refrigerator well stocked with full infusion bags, he plucked a replacement for the empty container. With practiced hands, he removed the collapsed bag and installed the plump one.

The current drip included no drug. Corky wanted his withered guest to have a clear head later.

After picking up his martini and taking a sip, he said, “I’ll rejoin you after dinner,” and he left the bedroom.

In the living room once more, Corky stopped by the fireplace to finish his drink and to remember Mama.

Unfortunately, the historic poker was not here to be polished, hefted, and admired. Years ago, on the night of the event, police had taken it away with many other items, intent on collecting evidence, and had never brought it back.

Corky had been too wise to request its return, leery that the police might suspect that it had sentimental value to him. All the fireplace tools had been purchased new following his mother’s death.

Reluctantly, he had replaced the carpet as well. If the homicide detectives had for any reason returned in the months following the murder, upon seeing the bloodstained carpet still in place, they might have at least raised an eyebrow.

In the kitchen, he heated the Chinese food in the microwave. Moo goo gai pan. Mu shu pork. Beef and red pepper. Rice, of course, and pickled cabbage.

He could not eat all this food himself. Ever since he’d begun methodically to starve Stinky Cheese Man in the guest room, however, Corky had been buying too much takeout.

Evidently, the spectacle of Stinky’s ghastly decline was not merely entertaining but subconsciously disturbing. It raised in Corky a deep-seated fear of being underfed.

In the interest of good mental health, therefore, he continued to purchase too much takeout and enjoyed the therapeutic pleasure of feeding the excess to the garbage disposal.

This evening, as had been the case more often than not in recent months, Corky ate at the dining-room table, on which were stacked the complete blueprints of Palazzo Rospo. These prints had been produced from a set of diskettes developed by the architectural firm that had overseen the six-million-dollar renovation of the mansion soon after Manheim had purchased the estate.

In addition to receiving new electrical, plumbing, heating, air-conditioning, and audio-video systems, the enormous house had been computerized and fitted with a state-of-the-art security package designed for continual, easy upgrading. According to one source on whom Corky was relying, that package had indeed been upgraded at least once in the past two years.

As if the night were a living thing, and moody, it rose out of its sodden lethargy and worked up a peevish wind, hissing at the windows, clawing at the house walls with prosthetic hands that it fashioned from tree limbs, and by the shaking of its great black coat, rattled barrages of rain against the glass.

In his warm dining room, wrapped in Glen-plaid cashmere, with a Chinese feast before him, with worthwhile and exciting work to occupy his mind, Corky Laputa had seldom felt so cozy or more glad to be alive.

CHAPTER 43

T
HE MCBEE REPORT WAS DETAILED AND BUSINESSLIKE, as usual, yet also friendly, presented in calligraphy that made it a minor work of art and lent to it the aura of a historical document. Sitting at the desk in his study, Ethan could hear in his mind the musical lilt and the faint Scottish brogue of the housekeeper’s voice.

After an initial greeting to the effect that she hoped Ethan had enjoyed a productive day and that the Christmas spirit buoyed him as much as it did her, Mrs. McBee reminded him that she and Mr. McBee would be off to Santa Barbara early in the morning. They were spending two days with their son and his family, and were scheduled to return at 9:00
A.M.
on the twenty-fourth.

She further reminded him that Santa Barbara lay but an hour to the north and that she remained on call in the event that her counsel was needed. She supplied her cellphone number, which Ethan already knew, and her son’s phone number. In addition, she provided her son’s street address and the information that less than three blocks from his house was a large, lovely park.

The park features many stately old California live oaks and other trees of size, she wrote, but within its boundaries are also at least two generous meadows, either of which will accommodate a helicopter in the event there should arise a household emergency of such dire proportions that I must be ferried home in the style of a battlefield surgeon.

Ethan would not have believed that anyone could make him laugh out loud at the end of this distressing day. With her dry sense of humor, Mrs. McBee had done so.

She reminded him that in her and Mr. McBee’s absence, Ethan would serve
in loco parentis,
with full responsibility for and authority over Fric.

During the day, if Ethan needed to be away from the estate, Mr. Hachette, the chef, would be next in the succession of command. The porters and maids could attend to the boy as needed.

After five o’clock, the day maids and the porters would be gone. Following dinner, Mr. Hachette would depart, as well.

Because the other live-in staff members were off on an advance Christmas holiday, Mrs. McBee advised Ethan that he must be certain to return before Mr. Hachette went home for the day. Otherwise Fric would be alone in the house, with no adults nearer than the two guards in the security office at the back of the estate.

Next, in her memo, the housekeeper addressed the issue central to Christmas morning. Early this day, after speaking with the boy in the library, before driving to West Hollywood to investigate Rolf Reynerd, Ethan had raised with Mrs. McBee the matter of Fric’s Christmas gifts.

Any kid would have thrilled to the idea that he could submit a list of wanted items as extensive as he wished and that he would receive on Christmas morning everything he requested, precisely those items, nothing less, but nothing more. Yet it seemed to Ethan that this robbed Christmas morning of its delicious suspense and even of some of its magic. As this would be his first Christmas at Palazzo Rospo, he had approached Mrs. McBee in her office off the kitchen to inquire as to the protocol of leaving an unexpected gift under the tree, for Fric.

“God bless you, Mr. Truman,” she had said, “but it’s a bad idea. Not quite as bad as shooting yourself in the foot to observe the effect of the bullet, but nearly so.”

“Why?” he had wondered.

“Every member of the staff receives a generous Christmas bonus, plus a small item from Neiman Marcus or Cartier, of a more personal nature—”

“Yes, I read that in your
Standards and Practices,
” Ethan had said.

“And staff members are thoughtfully forbidden to exchange gifts among themselves because there are so many of us that shopping would take too much time and would impose a financial burden—”

“That’s in
Standards and Practices
as well.”

“I am flattered that you have it so well memorized. Then you’ll also know that the staff is kindly forbidden from presenting gifts to members of the family, primarily because the family is fortunate enough to have everything it could want, but also because Mr. Manheim considers our hard work and our discretion in discussing his private life with outsiders to be gifts for which he is grateful every day.”

“But the way the boy has to prepare a list and knows everything on it will be there Christmas morning—it seems so
mechanized
.”

“A major celebrity’s career and life are often one and the same, Mr. Truman. And in an industry as large and complex as Mr. Manheim, the only alternative to mechanization is chaos.”

“I suppose so. But it’s cold. And sad.”

Speaking more softly and with some affection, Mrs. McBee had taken him into her confidence: “It
is
sad. The boy is a lamb. But the best that all of us can do is be especially sensitive to him, give him counsel and encouragement when he asks for it or when he seems to need it but won’t ask. An actual unexpected Christmas gift might be well received by Fric, but I’m afraid his father wouldn’t approve.”

“I sense you mean he wouldn’t approve for some reason other than those in
Standards and Practices
.”

Mrs. McBee had brooded for a long moment, as though consulting in memory a version of
Standards and Practices
much longer than the one in the ring-bound notebook that she presented to every employee.

At last she’d said, “Mr. Manheim isn’t a bad man, or heartless, just overwhelmed by his life…and perhaps too in love with the flash of it. On some level, he recognizes what he’s failed to give Fric, and he surely wishes that things were different between them, but he doesn’t know how to fix it and still do everything he needs to do to keep being who he is. So he pushes it out of mind. If you were to put a gift under the tree for Fric, Mr. Manheim’s guilt would surface, and he’d be hurt by what your gesture implied. Although he’s a fair man with employees, I wouldn’t be able to predict what he might do.”

“Sometimes, when I think about that lonely little kid, I want to shake a little sense into his old man even if—”

Mrs. McBee had raised a warning hand. “Even among ourselves, we don’t gossip about those who buy our bread, Mr. Truman. That would be ungrateful and indecent. What I’ve said here has been by way of friendly advice, because I believe you’re a valuable member of the staff and a good example to our Fric, who is more observant of you than you probably realize.”

Now, in her memo, Mrs. McBee addressed the gift issue once more. She’d had the day to reconsider her advice:
As to the delicate issue of an unexpected gift, I find that I want to qualify what I told you earlier. A small and very special item, something more magical than expensive, if left not under the tree but elsewhere, and anonymously, would thrill the recipient in the way that you and I recall being thrilled on the Christmas mornings of our youth. I suspect that he would intuitively understand the wisdom of discretion in the matter, and would all but surely keep the existence of the gift to himself if only for the sheer deliciousness of having such a secret. But the item must be truly special, and caution is advised. Indeed, when you have read the last of this, please shred and eat.

Ethan laughed again.

Simultaneous with his laugh, an indicator light fluttered on the telephone: Line 24. He watched as, on the third ring, the answering machine picked up, whereafter the light burned steadily.

He could not go into the computer and edit the program to allow him to receive Line 24 here in his apartment. Only the first twenty-three lines were accessible to his manipulation. Other than Manheim, only Ming du Lac had access to the sacred twenty-fourth. A request to change that situation would have made Ming as angry as a spiritual guru ever got, which was in fact as furious as a rattlesnake teased with a sharp stick, minus all the hissing.

Even if he’d had access to Line 24, Ethan wouldn’t have been able to monitor any call once the answering machine picked it up, because the recorder established an exclusive connection that as a matter of mechanics precluded eavesdropping.

He had never previously been a fraction as interested in Line 24 as he was this evening, and his interest made him uneasy. If he were ever to puzzle his way through what had happened to him on this momentous day, he would need to keep superstition at bay and think logically.

Nevertheless, when he stopped staring at the light on Line 24, he found himself gazing at the three silvery bells on his desk. And could not easily look away.

The last item in Mrs. McBee’s memo regarded the magazine that she had enclosed, the latest issue of
Vanity Fair
.

She wrote:
This publication arrived in the mail on Saturday, with several others and was, as usual, put on the proper table in the library. This morning, shortly after the young master had left the library, I discovered the magazine open to the page I’ve marked. This discovery had much to do with my reconsideration of the advice I’d given you regarding the matter of Christmas gifts.

Between the second and third pages of an article about Fric’s mother, Fredericka Nielander, Mrs. McBee had placed a yellow Post-it. With a pen, she had marked a section of the text.

Ethan read the piece from the beginning. Near the top of the second page, he found a reference to Aelfric. Freddie had told the interviewer that she and her son were “as thick as thieves,” and that wherever in the world her glamorous work might take her, they stayed in touch “with long gossipy chats, like two school chums, sharing dreams and more secrets than two spies aligned against the world.”

In fact, their entire telephone relationship was so secret that even Fric didn’t know about it.

Freddie described Fric as “an exuberant, self-assured boy, very athletic like his father, wonderful with horses, a superb rider.”

Horses?

Ethan would have bet a year’s pay that if Fric ever had dealings with horses, they had been the kind that never left droppings and ran always to calliope music.

By manufacturing this false Fric, Freddie seemed to suggest that the real qualities of her son either did not impress her or possibly even embarrassed her.

Fric was smart enough and sensitive enough to draw that very conclusion.

The thought of the boy reading this hurtful drivel moved Ethan not to toss the magazine in the trash basket beside his desk, but to throw it angrily toward the fireplace, with the intention of burning it later.

Freddie would probably argue that in an interview with
Vanity Fair,
she needed to calculate each statement to enhance her image. How super could a supermodel be, if from her loins had sprung any but a supernaturally super son?

Burning those pages of the magazine that featured photographs of Freddie would be
especially
satisfying. Make-believe voodoo.

Line 24 was still engaged.

He looked at the computer, where the telephone log continued to be displayed. This call, too, appeared to be from a number screened by Caller ID blocking.

Because the connection had not been broken, the time continued to change in the column headed L
ENGTH OF
C
ALL
. Already it was over four minutes.

That was a long message to leave on an answering machine if the caller was either a salesman or someone who’d unknowingly reached a wrong number. Curious.

The indicator light blinked off.