The Face

but halted after two steps. “Maybe later we can tell ghost stories.”
        Frowning as if Fric had suggested that they blow up the west wing, maybe even turning just a little pale, Mr. Truman said, “Ghost stories? Why would you say that?”
        “Well, ummm, because that’s, you know, what people do, like, at sleepovers. At least that’s what I’ve heard.” Stupid . But he couldn’t stop talking. “They sit on the floor, ummm, by candlelight, you know, and they tell real scary stories, and then they, ummm, like sometimes they make s’mores,” Stupid, stupid . “Or you can make, ummm, popcorn instead, and you can tell secrets.” Stupid, stupid, stupid.
        Mr. Truman’s frown phased into a smile. “Are you telling me that after all we ate for dinner, you could chow down on s’mores, too?”
        “Not right now, sir, no, but maybe in an hour.”
        “And you have some deep dark secrets to reveal, do you?”
        “Ummm, I’ve got some stuff, yeah, some experiences I’ve had.”
        “Experiences. Do they involve big greasy extraterrestrials?”
        [501] “No, sir. Nothing that simple.”
        “Then when I take these dishes to the kitchen, I’ll pick up the ingredients for a pile of s’mores. You’ve got me curious.”
        Relieved in one sense, needing relief in a different sense, Fric went to the library to deal another blow to the dying palm tree.

CHAPTER 78
        
        IN HIS DEPARTMENT SEDAN, HAZARD FELT AS adrift as any sailor’s ghost on an abandoned and rotting ship, chained to his floating haunt by nothing more than the stubborn habit of living. Disoriented, with no purpose that made sense.
        In the rain and mist, the streets seemed like the shipping lanes of a strange spook-ridden sea, and it was easy to imagine-and almost possible to believe-that many of the seemingly diaphanous vehicles gliding past him in the veiled night were piloted by spirits that had given up the flesh but not the city.
        He had phoned in the license number on the Land Rover and had learned that it was registered to Kurtz Ivory International, whatever that might be. According to DMV records, the only vehicle registered to Vladimir Laputa was a 2002 BMW, not an Acura like the one that had been salted in the parking garage.
        Having obtained that information, Hazard didn’t know what he could do next. He didn’t like being at a loss for action.
        Every time he tried to puzzle out his next move, however, into his memory came the image of Dunny Whistler sorcerously transformed from flesh into a cascade of water, in an instant becoming one with [503] the puddle in which he had stood, performing a splashless vanishment.
        In the wake of that sight, in the cold continuing echo of the conversation with the dead Hector X, logical reasoning failed Hazard. He found his thoughts spiraling again and again through the same disturbing chambers, down into a nautilus shell of dread.
        Although he had missed lunch, he wasn’t hungry. Although he had no appetite, he stopped at a drive-in fast-food palace for a king’s plate of cheeseburgers and French fries.
        The king’s plate proved to be a bag, of course, and the chalice of coffee was a Styrofoam cup full of a bitter swill that had been brewed with tree bark. Probably hemlock.
        He remained too agitated to sit in the restaurant parking lot to have dinner. He drove while he ate.
        He needed to keep moving. Like a shark, he felt that he would die if ever he stopped.
        Eventually he returned to the tony neighborhood in which the professor lived. He parked across the street from the house.
        Sitting there, he heard in his mind the warning voice of Dunny- Two bullets in the brain -and he knew beyond doubt that he would have suffered precisely that end if he had rung Laputa’s doorbell.
        For now the hyena, as Rachel Dalton had called him, was out on an Acura adventure. Without its resident demon, the house was just a house, not a killing ground.
        Hazard phoned Robbery/Homicide and obtained Sam Kesselman’s home telephone number.
        In possession of the number, he considered what he was about to do. He knew that with this move he might be handing his enemies all the weapons they would need to destroy him.
        His Granny Rose had once told him that woven throughout the very fabric of the world is an invisible web of evil, and that across this vast