The Face

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, “Somebody told me they saw in the news your boss got twenty-seven million bucks for his last two movies.”

“Twenty-seven million each. He’s the first to break through the twenty-five-million ceiling.”

“Up from poverty,” Hazard said.

“Plus he’s got a piece of the back end.”

“That kind of money, he can get a piece of anybody’s back end he wants.”

“It’s an industry phrase. Means if the picture is a big hit, he gets a share of the profits, sometimes even a percentage of gross.”

“How much might that amount to?”

“According to Daily Variety, he’s had worldwide hits so big he sometimes walks away with fifty million, thereabouts.”

“You read the show-biz press now?” Hazard asked.

“Helps me stay aware of how big a target he’s making himself.”

“You got your work cut out for you, all right. How many movies does the man do a year?”

“Never fewer than two. Sometimes three.”

“I was planning to chow down so much on his dime, Mr. Channing Manheim himself would notice, and you’d get fired for abusing your credit-card privileges.”

“Even you can’t eat a hundred thousand bucks’ worth of kibby.”

Hazard shook his head. “Chan the Man. Maybe I’m not hip anymore, but I don’t see him being fifty million cool.”

“He 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 non-acting income ‘additional revenue streams.’”

“People just pissing money on him, huh?”

“He’ll never need to shop for bargains.”

When the waitress came to the table, Ethan ordered Moroccan salmon with couscous, and iced tea.

Taking Hazard’s order, she wore the point off her pencil: lebne with string cheese and extra cucumbers, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, lahmajoon flatbread, seafood tagine. … “Plus give me two of those little bottles of Orangina.”

“Only person I ever saw eat that much,” Ethan said, “was this bulimic ballerina. She went to the john to puke after every course.”

“I’m just sampling, and I never wear a tutu.” Hazard cut his last kibby in two. “So how big an asshole is Chan the Man?”

The masking roar of other lunchtime conversations provided Ethan and Hazard with privacy nearly equal to that on a remote Mojave hill.

“It’s impossible to hate him,” Ethan said.

“That’s your best compliment?”

“It’s just that in person he doesn’t have the impact he does on the screen. He doesn’t stir your emotions one way or the other.”

Hazard forked half a kibby into his mouth and made a small sound of pleasure. “So he’s all image, no substance.”

“That’s not quite it. He’s so … bland. Generous to employees. Not arrogant. But there’s this … this weightlessness about him. He’s sort of careless how he treats people, even his own son, but it’s a benign indifference. He’s not an actively bad guy.”

“That money, that much adoration, you expect a monster.”

“With him, you don’t get it. You get …”

Ethan paused to think. In the months he’d 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, “He’s 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’t think he cares what anyone thinks of him or that he’s famous. He’s self-absorbed, all right, totally self-absorbed, but it’s like this … this Zen state of self-absorption.”

“Zen state?”

“Yeah. 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’s sincere. If he’s always contemplating the universe, then he’s also confident the universe is contemplating him, that their fascination is mutual.”

Having finished the last of his kibby, Hazard said, “Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Bogart—were they all airheads, and nobody knew it, or in those days were movie stars real men with their feet on the ground?”

“Some real people are still in the business. I met Jodie Foster, Sandra Bullock. They seem real.”

“They seem like they could kick ass, too,” 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: “Nice. Nice. That’s nice. Real nice. Oh, very nice.”

The memory of being shot in the gut spoiled Ethan’s appetite. As he picked at his Moroccan salmon and couscous, he delayed bringing up the issue of Rolf Reynerd. “So you said you’ve got one foot on some snot-wad’s neck. What’s the case?”

“Twenty-two-year-old blond cutie strangled, dumped in a sewage-treatment slough. We call it Blonde in the Pond.”

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’t 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—and sometimes they expressed a strange, melancholy affection.

“Strangled,” Ethan said, referring to Blonde in the Pond. “Which suggests passion, a good chance it was someone romantically involved with her.”

“Ah. So you haven’t gone entirely soft in your expensive leather jackets and your Gucci loafers.”

“I’m 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.”

“Plus maybe he had knowledge of the treatment plant, knew an easy way to get the body in there. Is that a cashmere sweater?”

“Cotton. So your perp works at the plant?”

Hazard shook his head. “He’s a member of the city council.”

At once losing his appetite altogether, Ethan put down his fork. “A politician? Why don’t you just find a cliff and jump?”

Shoving a stuffed grape leaf in his maw, Hazard managed to grin while he chewed, without once opening his mouth. After swallowing, he said, “I’ve already got a cliff, and I’m pushing him off.”

“Anybody winds up broken on the rocks, it’ll be you.”

“You’ve just taken the cliff metaphor one step too far,” 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 ’40s 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’d 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.

“If you were still doing real work like me,” Hazard said, “you’d handle this no different than I’m handling it.”

“Yeah. But I sure wouldn’t sit there grinning about it.”

Indicating Ethan’s sweater, Hazard said, “Cotton—like Rodeo Drive cotton?”

“Cotton like Macy’s on-sale cotton.”

“How much you pay for a pair of socks these days?”

Ethan said, “Ten thousand dollars.”

He’d 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.

“Take a look at these.” He opened a nine-by-twelve manila envelope, withdrew the contents, and passed them across the table.

As Hazard reviewed what he’d been given, Ethan told him about the five black boxes delivered by Federal Express and the sixth thrown over the gate.

“They came by Federal Express, so you know who sent them.”

“No. 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.”

“How much mail does Channing get a week?”

“Maybe five thousand pieces. But almost all of it is sent to the studio where it’s known he has offices. A publicity firm reviews it and responds. His home address isn’t a secret, but it’s not widely known, either.”

In the envelope were high-resolution computer printouts of six digital photographs taken in Ethan’s 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.

“Ladybugs?” Hazard asked.

“The entomological name is Hippodamia convergens, of the family Coccinellidae. Not that I think it matters, but I looked it up.”

Hazard’s shrewd expression spoke clearly enough without words, but he said, “You’re stumped worse than a quadruple amputee.”

“This guy thinks I’m Batman, he’s the Riddler.”

“Why twenty-two bugs? Is the number significant?”

“I don’t know.”

“They alive when you received them?” Hazard asked.

“All dead. Whether they were alive when he sent them, I don’t know, but they looked like they’d been dead for a while. The shells were intact, but the more delicate bug parts were withered, crumbly.”

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.

“Ten dead snails,” Ethan said. “Well, actually, two were alive but feeble when I opened the box.”

“That’s a fragrance Chanel won’t be bottling.”

Hazard paused to fork up some seafood tagine.

The third photo was of a small, clear-glass, screwtop jar. The label had been removed, but the lid indicated that the container had once held pickle relish.

Because the photograph wasn’t clear enough to reveal the murky contents of the jar, Ethan said, “Floating in formaldehyde were these ten pieces of translucent tissue with a pale pinkish tint. Tubelike structures. Hard to describe. Like tiny exotic jellyfish.”

“You took ’em to a lab?”

“Yeah. When they gave me the analysis, they also gave me a weird look. What I had in the jar were foreskins.”

Hazard’s jaws locked in midchew, as if the seafood tagine had hardened like a dental mold.

“Ten foreskins from grown men, not infants,” Ethan amplified.

After chewing mechanically, not with his former relish, and after swallowing with a grimace, Hazard said, “Ouch. How many grown men get themselves circumcised?”

“They’re not standing in line for it,” Ethan agreed.

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’t 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’s 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’s 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’s farms.

The blue crystals withered crops through a twelvemonth growing cycle. An enemy unable to feed itself cannot fight.

One of Corky’s 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 serape 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’t 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’s 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’s 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’t 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—and therefore to the rise of a better world.

For the same reason that he didn’t damage the landscaping at every house, he didn’t kill every dog. Let neighbor suspect neighbor.

He wasn’t 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 “Singin’ in the Rain,” of course, which might be trite, but which amused him.

He did not dance.

Not that he couldn’t 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’s 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’RE 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—and, by extension, all Jews—was 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—inventive, diligent— would 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’d 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.