The Face

in the immediate future.
        Ethan checked his watch. 2:34. Tick, tick, tick.

CHAPTER 66
        
        MICK SACHATONE, THE ANARCHIST multimillionaire, didn’t live in a glitzy neighborhood of multimillionaires because he never wanted to have to explain the origins of his wealth to the tax authorities. When you make it in cash, you live without flash.
        He laundered enough income to justify a spacious four-bedroom, two-story house of no architectural distinction in a clean and pleasant upper-middle-class neighborhood in Sherman Oaks.
        Only a handful of Mick’s most trusted customers of long standing knew his address. Mostly he transacted business on public beaches and in public parks, coffee shops, and churches.
        Without stopping at the garage in Santa Monica to change from his Robin Goodfellow costume into his regular-guy clothes and yellow slicker, Corky went directly from Jack Trotter’s funky digs in Malibu to Sherman Oaks. Thanks to Queeg von Hindenburg, collector of broken porcelains, Corky’s schedule was screwed up. He had much yet to do on this most important but fast-vanishing day of his life.
        He parked in the driveway and ran a few quick steps through the rain to the cover of the front porch.
        Mick’s voice came from an intercom speaker beside the bell push, [436] “Be right there,” and Mick Sachatone himself came to the door with unusual alacrity. Sometimes, you had to wait here on the porch two or three minutes, or longer, between when Mick spoke to you via the intercom and when he greeted you in person, so routinely preoccupied was he with work or with other interests.
        As usual when at home, Mick was barefoot and dressed in pajamas. Today the jammies were red, decorated with images of the cartoon character Bart Simpson. Mick bought some peejays off the rack but had others custom tailored.
        Even before Mick had achieved puberty, he had been enchanted by the story of Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy . Hef had discovered a way to grow up, be a success, and yet remain a big child, indulging any whim or desire to whatever degree he wished, making of his life one long party, living more days than not in pajamas.
        Mick, who worked mostly at home, owned more than 150 pairs of peejays. He slept in the nude but sported pajamas during the day.
        He considered himself an acolyte of Hef. A mini-Hef. Mick was forty-two going on thirteen.
        “Hey, Cork, super-hip threads,” Mick declared when he opened the door and saw Corky dressed as Robin Goodfellow.
        This might have sounded like mockery to a stranger; but Mick’s friends knew that he had long ago stopped picking up new slang in an effort to be more in the Hef groove.
        “Sorry I’m late,” Corky said, stepping inside.
        “No sweat, my man. I’d run this pad clockless if I could.”
        The living room contained as little furniture as necessary. The plush sofa, plump armchairs, footstools, coffee table, end tables, and lamps had been bought as a set at a warehouse outlet. The quality was good; but everything had been chosen for comfort, not for looks.
        Mick had no pretensions. In spite of his wealth, he remained a man of simple if sometimes obsessive needs.
        The primary decor statement in Casa Sachatone had nothing to do with furniture or art. Except for a suite of work rooms that Mick had [437] added to the original structure, all but two walls in the house were lined with shelves on which were stored a collection of thousands of pornographic videotapes and DVDs. Shelves had even been added to the stairwell and hallway walls.
        Mick preferred videotapes to DVDs because the cassettes came in boxes with wide, colorful spines that blazed with obscene titles and sometimes with hard-core photographs. The effect was of one continuous erotic mosaic that flowed from end to end and top to bottom of the residence, achieving almost psychedelic impact.
        Only the work wing, this living room, and the master bedroom contained any furniture. Other chambers, including the dining room, were not merely lined with videocassettes but were filled with aisles of shelves, as in a library.
        Mick ate all his meals either at his computer or in bed: lots of microwave dinners, as well as home-delivery pizza and Chinese.
        Of the two walls not fitted with floor-to-ceiling shelves, one was here in the living room. This space had been