The Face

here.”
        Before Ethan could speak, dead Dunny was not Dunny anymore, but doves again, exploding in a glory of radiant wings, knifing straight at the enormous Christmas tree. They fled not into the needled boughs but into the silvery and scarlet shine of the ornaments, no longer birds but only the shadows of birds, darkening across the glimmering curves, then gone.

        By a fistful of his shirt, semiparalytic Fric was dragged across the garage floor, facing away from his captor, watching the elevator alcove recede into the distance.
        Moloch had snared car keys from the pegboard, where every set hung under a label citing the make, model, and year. The kidnapper seemed to know his way around as well as if he had lived in Palazzo Rospo.
        Also receding from Fric was his medicinal inhaler, his precious asthma drug. The device had come unclipped from his belt. He tried to grab the inhaler when first it rattled loose, but his limbs were jelly.
        Moloch might be insane or just evil. But Fric couldn’t imagine what the Iranian secret police had against him.
        [579] In his ten years, he had known fear. In fact it had been nearly a constant. The fear familiar to him for so long, however, had been of the quiet variety, a nagging rather than threatening force, more like the persistent pecking of small birds than like the rending ferocity of a pterodactyl. Worry that his father’s absences would grow ever longer, until they stretched into years, like those of his mother. A gnawing concern that he would forever be the geek that he was now, that he would never figure out what to do with life or with himself, that he would grow old and still be more than anything else the son of Channing Manheim, the Face. During every second of the journey between the conservatory and the garage, however, a great dark terror thrashed its leathery wings in the cage of his heart, swooped through the hollows of body and soul, shivered flesh and blood, and bone.
        For his getaway, Moloch could have chosen from the collection any of the older classic cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead he selected a more recent model, a favorite of Fric’s: the cherry-red 1951 Buick Super 8, with chromed fins and fender wings.
        He heaved Fric into the front passenger’s seat, slammed the door, hurried around the Buick, and got in behind the wheel. The engine started at once because every vehicle in the collection was maintained in perfect condition.
        Guardian angels apparently could not be relied on in a pinch. Mysterious Caller had never seemed much like an angel, anyway: too spooky looking, his style too ominous, and such sorrow in his eyes.
        As Moloch backed out of the parking stall, Fric wondered what had happened to Mr. Truman. He must be dead. When he focused on the thought of Mr. Truman dead, Fric discovered that the semiparalytic inhalant didn’t prevent him from crying.

        Entering the upper garage by way of the stairs, Ethan heard the growl of an engine, smelled exhaust fumes.
        [580] The Buick was poised for flight at the foot of the exit ramp, where the garage door had almost finished rolling up and out of its way.
        A man behind the wheel. One man. No accomplices in the backseat. No gunmen elsewhere in the garage.
        The passenger’s side of the car was nearest to Ethan as he ran toward it. Against the side window at the front, Fric’s tousled head was tipped against the glass. He couldn’t see the boy’s face, but the head seemed to loll, as if Fric were unconscious.
        Ethan almost reached the Buick before the rising door provided clearance. Then the car jumped toward the door and the ramp beyond at such acceleration that a man on foot couldn’t catch it.
        Stepping from a run into an isosceles shooting stance, squarely facing the target, right leg quartering back for balance, left knee flexed, both hands on the weapon, Ethan risked three quick shots, aiming low in fear of hitting Fric with a ricochet, targeting the rear tire on the passenger’s side.
        The fender skirt shielded almost half the wheel, giving him a narrow window in which to place the shot. One round pocked metal, one went wide, but one popped the tire.
        The car sagged back and to one side. Kept going. Still too fast to be chased down. The slap-slap-slap of loose rubber marked its ascent along the lower half of the ramp.
        The quartzite