The Face

believed him, but had wished him luck. They had never spoken again.
        Later, he heard through third parties that Dunny had gotten out of the life, that old friends and associates never saw him anymore, that he had become something of a hermit, bookish and withdrawn.
        With those rumors, Ethan had taken enough salt to work up a thirst for truth. He remained certain that eventually he would learn Duncan Whistler had fallen back into old habits-or had never truly forsaken them.
        Later still, he heard that Dunny had returned to the Church, attended Mass each week, and carried himself with a humility that had never before characterized him.
        Whether this was true or not, the fact remained that Dunny had held fast to the fortune that he amassed through fraud, theft, and dealing drugs. Living in luxury paid for with such dirty money, any genuinely reformed man might have been racked with guilt until at last he put his riches to a cleansing use.
        [93] More than the photograph of Hannah had been taken from the study. An atmosphere of bookish innocence was gone, as well.
        A double score of hardcover volumes were stacked on the floor, in a corner. They had been removed from two shelves of the wall-to-wall bookcase.
        One of the shelves, which had seemed to be fixed like all the others, had been removed. A section of the bookcase backing, which also had appeared fixed, had been slid aside, revealing a wall safe.
        The twelve-inch diameter door of the safe stood open. Ethan felt inside. The spacious box proved empty.
        He hadn’t known that the study contained a safe. Logic suggested that no one but Dunny-and the installer-would have been aware of its existence.
        Brain-damaged man dresses himself. Finds his way home. Remembers the combination to his safe.
        Or… dead man comes home. In a mood to party, he picks up some spending money.
        Dunny dead made nearly as much sense as Dunny with severe brain damage.

CHAPTER 13
        
        FRIC IN A FRACAS: TWO TRAINS CLACKETY-clacking and whistling at key crossroads, Nazis in the villages, American troops fighting their way down from the hills, dead soldiers everywhere, and villainous SS officers in black uniforms herding Jews into the boxcars of a third train stopped at a station, more SS bastards shooting Catholics and burying their bodies in a mass grave here by a pine woods.
        Few people knew that the Nazis had killed not only Jews but also millions of Christians. Most of the higher-echelon Nazis had adhered to a strange and informal pagan creed, worshiping land and race and myths of ancient Saxony, worshiping blood and power.
        Few people knew, but Fric knew. He liked knowing things that other people didn’t. Odd bits of history. Secrets. The mysteries of alchemy. Scientific curiosities.
        Like how to power an electric clock with a potato. You needed a copper peg, a zinc nail, and some wire. A potato-powered clock looked stupid, but it worked.
        Like the truncated pyramid on the back of the one-dollar bill. It represents the unfinished Temple of Solomon. The eye floating above the pyramid is symbolic of the Grand Architect of the Universe.
        [95] Like who built the first elevator. Using alternatively human, animal, and water power, Roman architect Vitruvius constructed the first elevators circa 50 B.C.
        Fric knew.
        A lot of the weird, stuff he knew didn’t have much application in daily life, didn’t alter the fact that he was short for his age, and thin for his age, or that he had a geeky neck and the huge unreal green eyes that magazine writers slobbered about when describing his mother but that made him look like a cross between a hoot owl and an alien. He liked knowing these weird things anyway, even if they did not lift him out of the mire of Fricdom.
        Having exotic knowledge rare in other people made Fric feel like a wizard. Or at least like a wizard’s apprentice.
        Aside from Mr. Jurgens, who came to the estate two days every month to clean and maintain the large collection of contemporary and antique electric trains, only Fric knew everything about the train room and its operation.
        The trains belonged to that world-renowned movie star, Channing Manheim, who also happened to be his father. In the private world of Fric, the movie star had long been known as Ghost Dad because he was usually only here in