The Face[脸]
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LIKE AN ARAB SHEIK IN YELLOW KAFFIYEH AND yellow cloak, brought here by the rubbing of a lamp and the magic of a genie, Corky Laputa was a bright whirl in the otherwise dismal house of the three-eyed freak.
Singing “Reunited” and then “Shake Your Groove Thing,” both Peaches and Herb hits, he searched these cluttered chambers, rating them on a crud scale—cruddy, cruddier, cruddiest—as he sought what might remain of the first twenty thousand dollars that he had given Hokehberry a few weeks ago.
The beefy one might have written Corky’s name in an address book, on an index card—even on a wall, considering how much these shabby walls resembled those of the grungiest public restroom. Corky didn’t care about that. He hadn’t given Hokenberry his real name, anyway.
Surely, with a memory about as reliable as that of a chuck steak, Hokenberry had scribbled Corky’s phone number on a piece of paper somewhere in the bungalow. Corky wasn’t worried about that, either. If eventually the police found it, the number would never lead them to him.
[367] Every month or six weeks, Corky bought a new Cell Phone. It came with a new number and a virgin account in a false name with a phony address. He used this for all his sensitive calls related to his work in the service of chaos.
These phones were provided by a computer hacker nonpareil and anarchist-multimillionaire named Mick Sachatone. Mick sold them for six hundred bucks a pop. He guaranteed their viability for thirty days.
Usually, the phone company didn’t realize that their system had been manipulated and didn’t identify the bad account for two months. Then they shut off service and sought the perpetrator. By that time, Corky had thrown the phone in a Dumpster and had obtained a new one.
His purpose wasn’t to save money but to guarantee his anonymity when engaged in activities that were against the law. Making a minor contribution to the eventual financial ruination of the phone company was a pleasant bonus.
Now Corky located Ned Hokenberry’s trove of cash in a bedroom one degree more civilized than the hibernation cave of a bear. The floor was littered with dirty socks, magazines, empty bags of fried bacon rinds, empty paper buckets from Kentucky Fried Chicken, and sucked-clean chicken bones. The money had been stuffed in an empty box of jerky under the bed.
Of the twenty thousand, only fourteen remained. The other six thousand evidently had been spent on fast food and pork-fat snacks.
Corky took the money and left the jerky box.
In the dinette alcove off the living room, Hokenberry was still dead and no less ugly than before.
During their three previous encounters, Corky had deduced that Hokenberry was estranged from his family. Unmarried, less than ideal dating material, and not the type to have a network of friends who dropped in unannounced, the former rock-tour beef would [368] probably not be found until the FBI came knocking, subsequent to young master Manheim’s kidnapping.
Nevertheless, to guard against the accidental discovery of the body by a nosy neighbor or some such, Corky took Hokenberry’s keys from a pegboard in the kitchen and locked the front door on his way out of the house. He dropped the keys into the overgrown shrubbery.
Like a growling hellhound loose in the halls of Heaven, thunder barked and grumbled through the low gray sky.
Corky’s heart leaped with delight.
He looked up into the falling rain, in search of lightning, and then remembered that it would have come before the thunder. If there had been lightning, the bolt had not penetrated the clouds or had struck far away in the sprawling city.
The thunder must be an omen.
Corky didn’t believe in any god or any devil. He did not believe in supernatural things of any shape or meaning. He believed only in the power of chaos.
Nonetheless, he chose to believe that the thunder should be taken as an omen, signifying that his trip this coming evening to Palazzo Rospo would unfold as planned and that he would return to his Home with the sedated boy.
The universe might be a dumb machine, clattering nowhere but moving fast, with no purpose other than its own eventual cataclysmic destruction. Yet even so, it might from time to time cast off a bolt or a broken gear from which a thoughtful person could foretell its next turn of direction. The thunder was such a broken gear, and based upon the timbre and duration of it, Corky confidently predicted the success of his scheme.
If the biggest movie star in the world, living behind fortified walls and an electronic moat, with full-time security and bodyguards, could not keep his family safe, if the only son of the Face could be [369] plucked from his Bel Air estate and spirited away, even though the actor had been explicitly warned by the delivery of six packages wrapped in black, then no family was safe anywhere. Neither the poor nor the rich. Neither the unknown nor the famous. Neither the godless nor the God-fearing.
That message would penetrate the public hour by hour, day by grueling day, as Channing Manheim’s long and excruciating ordeal unfolded.
Corky intended first to destroy the captive boy emotionally, then mentally, and last of all physically. He would videotape this process, which he expected to take weeks. He would edit the tape, make copies on equipment that he had acquired for this project, and periodically pepper selected publications and television-news operations with evidence of Aelfric’s brutalization.
Certain media would be loath to show any of the video or even still frames from it, but others would recognize the competitive advantage of acting without conscience or taste, and with noble words would justify a plunge into the grossly sensational. Thereafter, some of the squeamish would do likewise.
The boy’s terror-stricken face would haunt the nation, and yet another blow in a long series would be struck at the foundations of America’s order and stability. Millions of citizens would be robbed of their already shaky sense of security.
Two streets from Hokenberry’s bungalow, as Corky approached his BMW, a lance of lightning pierced the clouds, thunder cracked, and a boil in the heavens burst. Rain that had drizzled suddenly fell by the ton, weight enough to press half the huff out of the wind.
If thunder alone had been an omen of his triumph, more thunder preceded by lightning was confirmation that he’d properly interpreted that first rolling peal.
The sky blazed again, and growled. Fat leaf-snapping droplets of [370] cold rain roared through the trees and pounded, pounded the pavement.
For a sweet half-minute, Corky capered like Gene Kelly, singing “Shake Your Groove Thing,” not caring who might see him.
Then he got in the car and drove away from there, for he had much work to do on this most important day of his life to date.
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