The Face

general population.”
        Fric dared to look hopeful. “You think so?”
        “Yeah. I mean, you aren’t one of those Hollywood kids who wants to go into the family business.”
        “I’d rather eat worms.”
        “You don’t take bit parts in your dad’s movies. You don’t sing or dance. You don’t do imitations, do you?”
        “No.”
        “Do you juggle or keep a dozen plates spinning at the top of a dozen bamboo poles all at the same time?”
        “Not all at the same time, no,” said Fric.
        “Magic tricks?”
        “No.”
        “Ventriloquism?”
        [605] “Not me.”
        “See, I’m bored with you already. You know what I think’s got them all excited about this story, that’s really the focus of it?”
        “What? “Fric asked.
        “The blimp.”
        “The blimp,” Fric agreed, “is totally cool.”
        “No offense, but a kid your age, with your lack of experience… I’m sorry, but you just can’t compete with a blimp in Bel Air.”
        Out at the north end of the property, the gates began to open.
        “Here comes the gang,” Fric said as the first black limousine glided in from the street. “You think he’ll stop out there and give the reporters face time?”
        “I’ve asked him not to,” Ethan said. “We don’t have anywhere near enough manpower to police a media mob like that, and they don’t like being policed.”
        “He’ll stop,” Fric predicted. “Bet you a million bucks to a pile of cow flop. What limousine is he in?”
        “Number five out of seven.”
        The second limo cruised through the gate.
        “He’ll have a new girlfriend,” Fric worried.
        “You’ll do fine with her.”
        “Maybe.”
        “You’ve got the perfect ice breaker.”
        “What’s that?”
        “The blimp.”
        Fric brightened. “Yeah.”
        The third limousine appeared.
        “Just remember what we agreed. We’re not going to tell anyone about… the stranger parts of it all.”
        “I sure won’t,” Fric said. “I don’t want to be booby-hatched.”
        The fourth limousine entered, but the fifth paused outside the gates. From this distance, without binoculars, Ethan could not see [606] that Channing Manheim had in fact gotten out of the limo to meet the cameras and charm the press, but he was nevertheless morally certain that he owed Fric a pile of cow flop.
        “Doesn’t seem like Christmas Eve,” Fric said quietly.
        “It will,” Ethan promised.

        Christmas morning, in his study, Ethan listened yet again to all fifty-six messages that had been recorded on Line 24.
        Before Manheim and Ming du Lac had returned to Palazzo Rospo, Ethan had loaded the enhanced recordings onto a CD. Then he erased them from the computer in the white room and removed them from the phone logs. Only he would ever know that they had been received.
        These messages were his, and his alone, one heart speaking to another across eternity.
        In some of them, Hannah solved every element of the maniac’s riddles. In others, she only repeated Ethan’s name, sometimes with yearning, sometimes with gentle affection.
        He played Call 31 more times than he could remember. In that one, she reminded him that she loved him, and when he listened to her, five years seemed no time at all, and even cancer had no power, or the grave.
        He was opening a box of cookies left by Mrs. McBee when his phone rang.

        Fric always set the alarm clock early on Christmas morning, not because he was eager to discover what had been left under the tree for him but because he wanted to open the stupid gifts and be done with it.
        He knew what the fancy wrappings concealed: everything on the list that he had been required to give to Mrs. McBee on the fifth of December. He had never been denied the things for which he’d asked, [607] and each time that he asked for less, he had been required to amend his list until it was at least as long as the list from the previous year. Downstairs, under the drawing-room tree would be a shitload of fabulous stuff, and no surprises.
        On this Christmas morning, however, he woke to a sight that he had never seen before. While he had slept, someone had crept into his room and left a gift on his nightstand, beside the clock.
        A small box wrapped in white with a white bow.
        The card was bigger than the box.