The Face[脸]
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AFTER RECEIVING A FRANTIC TELEPHONE CALL from Captain Queeg von Hindenburg, Corky Laputa had to undertake an unexpected journey to the farther reaches of Malibu.
The man in Malibu currently called himself Jack Trotter. Trotter owned property, carried a valid driver’s license, and paid as few taxes as possible under the name Felix Greene. Greene, alias Trotter, had once used the names Lewis Motherwell, Jason Barnes, Bobby Domino, and others.
When Jack-Felix-Lewis-Jason-Bobby had been born forty-four years ago, his proud parents had named him Norbert James Creezel. They had no doubt loved him and, being simple Iowa farm folk, could never have imagined that Norbert would grow up to be a wigged-out piece of work like Captain Queeg von Hindenburg.
Corky called him Captain Queeg because the guy exhibited the paranoia and megalomania to be found in the character of the same name in Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. Von Hindenburg suited him in part because—like the German zeppelin that had taken thirty-six to their deaths in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937—he was a gasbag and, if left to his own devices, he would one day crash and burn spectacularly.
[411] On his way to Malibu, Corky stopped at a garage that he rented in Santa Monica. This was one of forty double-stall units accessed by an alleyway in an industrial area.
He held the lease on the garage under the name Moriarity and paid the monthly bill in cash.
A black Land Rover occupied the first stall. Corky owned this vehicle under the name Kurtz Ivory International, a nonexistent but well-documented corporation.
He parked the BMW beside the Land Rover, got out, put down the garage door, and switched on the lights.
Redolent of the crisp limy scent of cold concrete, the sweet-and-sour fragrance of old motor-oil stains, and the faint but still lingering astringency of insecticide from a termite fumigation that had been conducted a month ago, this drab space was, to Corky, the essence of magic and adventure. Here, like troubled Bruce Wayne in the Batcave, Corky became a dark knight, though with an agenda that might appeal more to the Joker than to Bruce in cape and tights.
In the war between Heaven and Earth, armies of rain marched across the corrugated-steel roof, raising such a battle roar that he could not have clearly heard himself singing if he’d chosen to break into “Shake Your Groove Thing.”
After switching on an electric space heater, he took off his rain hat and yellow slicker. He hung them on a wall peg.
On the left side of the garage, toward the back, four tall metal lockers were bolted to the wall. Corky opened the first of these.
Two zippered vinyl wardrobe bags hung from a rod. On a shelf above the bags, a large Tupperware container held socks, neckties, a few items of men’s inexpensive jewelry, a wristwatch, and other personal effects of a false identity. On the floor was a selection of shoes.
After pulling off his rain boots and a double layer of socks, after stripping to his underwear, Corky dressed in gray cords, a black turtleneck, black socks, and black Rockports.
The elaborate combination workbench and tool-storage cabinet at [412] the back of the double garage featured a spacious secret drawer that Corky himself had designed. This drawer contained a selection of handguns and packets of false identification in six names.
Over the turtleneck, he strapped on a shoulder holster. He stuffed the holster with a 9-nim Glock.
He swapped his wallet for one that was filled with everything that he needed to hit the road as a different man: driver’s license, social-security card, a couple of credit cards in his new name, and photographs of a wife and family that were entirely invented. The wallet was even preloaded with five hundred dollars in cash.
The packet also included a birth certificate, a passport, and a leather ID fold containing fake FBI credentials. For the task at hand, he required none of those items.
He did, however, take with him a second slim leather fold that contained fake but convincing credentials identifying him as an operative of the National Security Agency. This was who Queeg von Hindenburg believed him to be.
The NSA identification would reduce the average civilian to a swoon of cooperation, but wouldn’t withstand determined verification by any authority. Corky would never dare flash it at a cop.
Because it was real, the driver’s license in this false name could endure close scrutiny by any police officer who might stop Corky. In addition, it credited him with a spotless driving record.
Years ago, the state of California had lost control of many of its bureaucracies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles. Certain corrupted DMV employees sold tens of thousands of valid driver’s licenses every year to men like Mick Sachatone, the multimillionaire anarchist who also regularly supplied Corky with disposable Cell Phones in fake account names.
Mick—and other middlemen like him—made substantial money by obtaining driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, for convicted felons who had served their time and who earnestly hoped to begin [413] fresh criminal lives uninhibited by their arrest records, for chaos activists like Corky, and for many others.
Sufficiently IDed, with the Glock in a holster under his left arm, Corky shrugged into a stylish black leather coat tailored to conceal the bulge of the weapon. He tucked two spare magazines of ammunition into the coat pockets.
He closed the locker, closed and locked the secret drawer in the workbench, and switched off the space heater.
Behind the wheel of the Land Rover, he clicked the remote to roll up the garage door. He backed into the rain-swept alley.
He had arrived in Santa Monica as Corky Laputa. He was leaving as Robin Goodfellow, agent of the NSA.
After waiting to be sure that the garage door went all the way down, he pressed a second button on the remote, engaging an electric lock that doubly secured the premises.
The CD player in the Land Rover was loaded with the symphonies and operas of Richard Wagner, which was his preferred music when he was being Robin Goodfellow. He fired up G?tterd?mmerung and set out through the storm for Malibu, to have a serious face-to-face talk with the man who this evening would get him onto the Manheim estate undetected.
Corky loved his life.
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