The Face

clean-up station with four sinks and four dishwashers, three islands, prep tables, and a shitload of restaurant-quality equipment.
        A Beverly Hills caterer and forty of his employees could work here with Mr. Hachette and the household staff, with little sense of being crowded. At a party, they prepared, plated, and served three hundred sit-down dinners, on a timely basis, from this space. Fric had seen it happen many times, and it never failed to dazzle him.
        If two or even three ordinary people had set out to search the kitchen for him, Fric’s chances of eluding them would have been good. Mrs. McBee was in no way ordinary.
        Holding his breath, he thought that he could hear her sniffing the air. Fee-fie-fo-fum.
        He was glad that he had not turned on the kitchen lights, though she was certain to smell the fresh water that remained in the central sink.
        Footsteps.
        Fric almost bolted to his feet, almost announced his presence, which seemed a wiser course of action than waiting here to be found lurking like a sleazeball criminal, stripped to the waist and clearly up to no good.
        Then he realized the footsteps were moving away from him.
        He heard the butler’s-pantry door swing shut.
        [340] The footsteps faded into silence.
        Stunned and strangely dismayed to discover that Mrs. McBee was fallible, Fric breathed again.
        After a while, he crept to the hall door, which he cracked open. He stood listening.
        When he heard the distant hum of the service elevator, he knew that Mrs. McBee and Mr. McBee were descending to the lower garage. Soon they would be off to Santa Barbara.
        He waited a few minutes before he ventured from the kitchen to the laundry room in the nearby west wing, which also contained the McBees’ apartment.
        Whereas the kitchen was gigantic, the laundry was only huge.
        He liked the smell of this place. Detergent, bleach, starch, the lingering scent of hot cotton under a steam iron…
        Fric would happily have worn the same jeans and shirt a second day. But he worried that Mr. Truman might notice, and inquire.
        Mrs. McBee would have noticed in an instant. She would have insisted on knowing the reason for this slovenliness.
        Mr. Truman couldn’t help but be slower on the uptake than Mrs. McBee. Still, he was an ex-cop, so he wouldn’t long overlook day-old, dirty, rumpled clothes.
        The possibility might be slim that something evil and supremely slimy was waiting for Fric in his suite, but he didn’t intend to find out anytime soon. He would not return there to change clothes.
        Monday had been a scheduled wash day. Mrs. Carstairs, one of the day maids and in fact the laundress, processed laundry one day and returned it promptly to family members and to staff the following morning.
        Fric found his pressed blue jeans, pants, and shirts hanging from a cart similar to those with which hotel bellmen move suit bags and luggage. His folded underwear and socks were arranged under the hanging items, on the bed of the cart.
        Red-faced, feeling like a pervert for sure, he stripped naked right there in the laundry. He changed into fresh underwear, jeans, and a [341] blue-and-green checkered flannel shirt with a straight-cut tail that allowed it to be worn out, Hawaiian style.
        He transferred his wallet and the folded photograph from his old jeans before dropping the soiled garments into the collection basket under the laundry chiite that served the second and third floors.
        Emboldened by having successfully toileted, bathed, and changed clothes under these desperate wartime conditions, Fric returned to the kitchen.
        He entered cautiously, expecting to find Mrs. McBee waiting for him: Ah, laddie, did y a truly think I was such a fool as to be that easily deceived!
        She had not returned.
        From the appliance pantry, he fetched a small stainless-steel cart with two shelves. He traveled the kitchen, loading the cart with items that he would need in his deep and special secret place.
        He considered including a six-pack of Coke among his provisions, but warm cola didn’t taste good. Instead, he selected a four-pack of Stewart’s Diet Orange ’N Cream soda, which was fabulous even at room temperature, and six twelve-ounce bottles of water.
        After he put a few apples and a bag of pretzels on the cart, he