The Face

runaround at which all academic types excelled that he paused in the chase before frustration drove him to smash his department-issued phone to pieces against his own forehead.
        “All these university cheese-eaters hate cops.”
        “Until they need you,” Ethan said.
        “Yeah, then they love us.”
        “They never love you, but if they need you to save their ass, then they’ll tolerate you.”
        “You know that Shakespeare quote?” Hazard asked.
        “There’s more than one.”
        “About how to make the world a better place-”
        “Kill all the lawyers.”
        “Yeah, that one,” Hazard said. “Shakespeare didn’t stop to think who trains all the lawyers.”
        “University cheese-eaters.”
        “Yeah. You want to make a better world, go to the source.”
        The traffic remained relentless and tight. The Expedition kissed paint with a black Mercedes SUV, spared from a bruise to the factory finish by nothing more than the lubricating lip gloss of rain.
        With a start, Ethan thought that he saw Fric on the sidewalk, wandering alone among strangers. A closer look proved that the boy was younger than the Manheim heir, trailing behind his parents.
        [409] This had not been the first false Fric that he had seen and reacted to since leaving the hospital. His nerves had been rubbed raw by too much weird experience.
        “What about Blonde in the Pond?” Ethan asked. “Did you get your lab report this morning?”
        “Didn’t check. If I’ve got the true goods on my city councilman, it’ll just make me squirmy, having to leave him walking around full of himself, the way he is, like he’s the Lord by election, which is even more infuriating when you think how many ballot boxes his thugs stuffed for him. I’ll call the lab tomorrow, the day after, whenever it is we settle the situation we’re in.”
        “Sorry about this,” Ethan said.
        “If you’re sorry for that nose of yours, get it fixed. Anything else you’re sorry for, you shouldn’t be.”
        “Lunch and a few mamouls didn’t pay you for this much trouble.”
        “It wasn’t you turned my world upside down. Some guy gives me a set of dream bells out of a nightmare, then disappears into a mirror, I tend to get shook up without your help.”
        Hazard reached under his jacket with both hands, tugging on his cotton sweater, and Ethan said, “You bulked up since yesterday?”
        “Yeah. Had me a breakfast of Kevlar.”
        “Never knew you to wear protection.”
        “I’ve been thinking maybe I’ve dodged more bullets than any man has a right to. Doesn’t mean I’m not still fearless.”
        “Didn’t say you weren’t.”
        “I’m scared shitless, but I’m still fearless.”
        “That’s the right psychology.”
        “Survivor’s psychology,” Hazard said.
        “Anyway, what’s wrong with my nose?”
        “What isn’t?”
        The hard rain abruptly began to fall harder, and Ethan cranked the windshield-wiper speed to the highest setting.
        Hazard said, “Feels like the end of the world.”

CHAPTER 61
        
        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