The Face

to storms in southern California. This peal, in place of bomb blast, suggested a turbulent day ahead.
        Beta waves, as jagged as lightning, struck repeatedly across the computer screen.
        Comatose, Dunny had experienced a terrifying encounter that had occurred neither in this world nor in the land of dreams, but in some realm mysterious. He had engaged in a conversation without spoken words, as if he’d breathed in a ghost that had traveled to his lungs and thence into his arteries, by blood from heart to brain, there to haunt him in the shadowy rooms of his mind for fifty-six minutes.

CHAPTER 53
        
        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