The Face

Trotter believed that post-office employees would be the vanguard of the repression. They were, in his estimation, not the mere bureaucrats they appeared to be, but highly trained shock troops masquerading as innocent letter carriers.
        He had prepared a series of bolt-holes, each more remote than the one before it. He hoped to escape civilization by degrees when the bloodbath began.
        No doubt he would have fled after Corky’s first visit had he not believed that Corky, as Robin Goodfellow, knew the location of every one of his bolt-holes and would descend on him in his hideaway with a company of cutthroat mailmen who would show no mercy.
        Toward the east end of the property, away from the house, stood an ancient unpainted barn and a prefab steel building of more recent construction. Corky knew only some of what Trotter was up to in those structures, but he pretended to have full knowledge.
        In the fierce heat of summer, the real threat to Trotter would be fire, not a wicked government cabal. The steep slopes behind his property, as well as half the narrow valley both up-canyon and down-canyon, bristled with wild brush that, by late August, would be as ready for burning as Brittina Dowd’s house had proved to be with the application of a little gasoline.
        Now, of course, the steep slopes were so supersaturated with rain [420] that the risk was a mud slide. In this terrain, a canyon wall could descend in a tidal wave of muck with such suddenness that even a wild-eyed paranoid with every nerve fully cocked might not be able to outrun it. If he broke into a sprint at first rumble, Trotter could still wind up buried alive, but alive only briefly, sharing his grave with an ark’s worth of crushed and smothered wildlife.
        Corky loved southern California.
        Not yet crushed and smothered, Trotter waited for his visitor on the veranda. If at all possible, he hoped to keep Corky out of the house.
        On one of his previous visits, deeply into his role as a rogue government agent who used the United States Constitution as toilet paper, Corky had misbehaved. He had shown no respect for Trotter’s property rights. He had been a brute.
        On this twenty-second day of December, Corky didn’t find himself to be mellowed out by holiday good will. He was a punk-mean elf.
        Although he parked ten steps from the veranda, he didn’t hurry through the downpour because Robin Goodfellow, too cool for jackboots but wearing them in spirit, was not a man who noticed the weather when he was in a foul mood.
        He climbed the three steps to the veranda, drew the Glock from his shoulder holster, and pressed the muzzle to Trotter’s forehead.
        “Repeat what you told me on the phone.”
        “Damn,” Trotter said nervously. “You know it’s true.”
        “It’s bullshit,” Corky said.
        Trotter’s hair was as orange as that of the Cheshire Cat who had toyed with Alice in Wonderland. He had the pinned-wide, protuberant eyes of the Mad Hatter. His nose twitched nervously, reminiscent of the White Rabbit. His bloated face and his huge mustache recalled the famous Walrus, and he was in general as brillig, slithy, and mimsy as numerous of Lewis Carroll’s characters rolled into one.
        “For God’s sake, Goodfellow,” Trotter all but blubbered, “the storm, [421] the storm! We can’t do the job in this. It’s impossible in weather like this.”
        Still pressing the Glock to Trotter’s forehead, Corky said, “The storm will break by six o’clock. The wind will die completely. We’ll have ideal conditions.”
        “Yeah, they’re saying it might break, but what do they know? Do any of their predictions ever turn out right?”
        “I’m not relying on the TV weathermen, you cretin. I’m relying on supersecret Defense Department satellites that not only study the planet’s weather patterns but control them with microwave energy pulses. We will make the storm end when we need it to end.”
        This crackpot assertion played well with the paranoid Trotter, whose pinned-wide eyes stretched even wider. “Weather control,” he whispered shakily. “Hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, droughts-an untraceable weapon as terrible as nuclear bombs.”
        In reality, Corky was counting on nothing more than chaos to be his ally, to bring the storm to an end when he needed calm skies.
        Chaos never failed him.
        “Rain or no rain,