The Face

would have sent him running from that house, to his Granny Rose or to a bar. You didn’t need to be so direct. And if you continue in this fashion, you will certainly fail your friend, Ethan, and in fact may yourself be the cause of his death and the death of the boy.”
        They stare at each other.
        Dunny is hesitant to ask if he will be allowed to remain on the case, for fear that he already knows the answer.
        After Typhon tastes his martini again, he says, “My, but you are a firecracker, Dunny. You’re headstrong, impetuous, frustrating-but you’re also a hoot. You tickle me. You do.”
        Uncertain how to interpret those statements, Dunny waits, still and silent.
        “I don’t mean to be rude,” Typhon says, “but my dinner guests will shortly be arriving. Your lean and hungry look-to quote the Bard-[484] and your rough edges might alarm them. They are a wary group, and skittish. One politician and two of his handlers.”
        Dunny dares to ask, “May I continue to protect Ethan?”
        “After your repeated breaches, I’d be justified in removing you now. There must be standards for guardian angels, don’t you think? Something more than good intentions. The position ought to require greater ethics than those of United States senators and cardsharps.”
        Typhon rises from his chair, and Dunny gets quickly to his feet, as well.
        “Nevertheless, dear boy, I’m inclined to cut you some slack this one last time.”
        Dunny accepts his mentor’s offered handshake. “Thank you, sir.”
        “But understand that you’re on a minute-by-minute reprieve. If you can’t operate within the terms of agreement, then your authority and powers will be at once revoked, and you will instantly be sent home for eternity.”
        “I’ll abide by our deal.”
        “And when you’re sent home, Ethan will be fending for himself.”
        “I’ll walk the line.”
        Putting one hand on Dunny’s shoulder, squeezing affectionately, like a father counseling a son, Typhon says, “Dear boy, you’ve walked a crooked line so long that keeping to a straight one isn’t easy. But now, minute by minute, you must watch your step.”
        By foot, Dunny leaves the restaurant and follows the wharf into mists reverberant with the low, hollow notes of boat horns. Traveling by fog, by the moonlight above the fog, and by the idea of Palazzo Rospo in Bel Air, he departs and makes his journey and arrives all at the same time.

CHAPTER 74
        
        TWO BULLETS IN THE BRAIN .
        
        Wearing his Kevlar chest protector and conscious of what an easy target his lionesque head would make, Hazard closed the car door and crossed the street.
        The house of the mother-killer seemed to attract the incoming fog, which moved not in a monolithic bank but in curious eddies and lithe plumes: one quick-footed vaporous slinkiness after another, tail following tail of Angora mist, as though here were a thousand cats drawn home by the scent of tuna fresh from the can.
        The aura of the house so entranced Hazard that he had crossed the street and followed the private walkway while remaining oblivious of the rain. Only when he reached the foot of the front-porch steps did he realize that he had approached with such deliberation that he had gotten wet to the skin.
        Ascending the porch steps, he felt something in his hand-and discovered the cell phone on which he had spoken to Dunny Whistler.
         I’m dead and alive, Dunny had said, and Hazard at the moment was of much that same sentiment.
        At the top of the steps, instead of proceeding straight to the door and ringing the bell, he paused, realizing that he had neglected to do a [486] standard bit of follow-up to Dunny’s call that he would have done had he received a menacing message from anyone else who should not have had his mobile number. He pressed *69.
        The call was answered on the second ring, but the person at the far end of the line said nothing.
        “Somebody there?” Hazard asked.
        A hard voice came back at him: “Oh, somebody here. Somebody here, sure enough, you hook nigger.”
        Gang talk: hook meaning phony, imitation.
        “I be here, got lit up by you, punched twice, and still taste pencil.”
         Pencil meaning lead, meaning bullets.
        Hazard had never heard this voice before, but he knew to whom it might belong. He could not