The Face

made possible by modern cameras, surround-sound technology-all that stuff makes flat personalities bigger than life, provides them with a powerful illusion of substance and complexity.”
        “You, on the other hand-”
        “I, on the other hand, am wide and deep and so alive to begin with that the further enhancement of modern film technology puts me over the top, makes a caricature of me.”
        “That must be frustrating,” Hazard commiserated.
        “You can’t imagine. In black-and-white film, I would fill the screen without overwhelming the audience. Where are the Bogarts and Bacalls of our age, the Tracys and Hepburns, the Cary Grants and the Gary Coopers and the John Waynes?”
        “We don’t have them,” Hazard acknowledged.
        [143] “They couldn’t succeed today,” Reynerd assured him. “They would be too powerful for modern film, too deep, entirely too glamorous. What did you think of Moonshaker ?” Hazard frowned. “Of what?”
        “ Moonshaker . Channing Manheim’s latest hit. Two hundred million dollars at the box office.”
        Perhaps Reynerd was so obsessed with Manheim that sooner or later in any conversation, he would bring the subject around to the star.
        Wary nonetheless, Hazard said, “I don’t go to the movies.”
        “Everybody goes.”
        “Not really. Fewer than thirty million tickets have to be sold to generate two hundred million bucks. Maybe just ten percent of the country.”
        “All right, but other people see it on TV, on DVD.”
        “Maybe another thirty million. Pick any particular movie-at least eighty percent of the country never sees it. They have lives to live.”
        Reynerd seemed to boggle at the notion that movies were not the hub of the world. Although he didn’t reach for a gun in either of the chip-bag holsters, his displeasure with this turn in the conversation was evident.
        Hazard got back in the actor’s good graces by saying, “Now, in the black-and-white era you’re talking about, half the country went to the movies once a week. Stars were stars in those days. Everybody knew Clark Gable’s movies, Jimmy Stewart’s.”
        “Exactly,” Reynerd agreed. “Manheim would have faded away in the black-and-white era. He would have been too thin for the medium, too flat. He’d be forgotten now. Worse than forgotten-he’d be unknown .”
        The doorbell rang.
        Sounding puzzled and mildly annoyed, Reynerd said, “I’m not expecting anyone.”
        [144] “Me neither,” Hazard said dryly.
        Reynerd glanced at the windows, where the sodden gray twilight slowly expired beyond the glass.
        He shifted his attention to the television. Gable and Colbert remained frozen in flirtatious argument.
        At last Reynerd rose from the sofa, but then hesitated, looking down at the bags of potato chips.
        Watching this peculiar performance, Hazard wondered if the actor was approaching that amped-out condition in which a meth freak can slide precipitously from a peak of hyperacute awareness down into a haze of disorientation, into crushing exhaustion.
        When the bell rang again, Reynerd finally crossed the living room. “These geeks are always coming around selling Jesus,” he said irritably, wearily, and opened the door.
        From the armchair, Hazard couldn’t see who fired the shots. The hard boom, boom, boom of three rapid reports, however, told him that the killer was packing a high-caliber piece, maybe a.357, or bigger.
        Unless Seventh Day Adventists had adopted hard-sell techniques, Reynerd had been mistaken about the purpose of the caller.
        Hazard came up from the armchair on the second boom, reached for his bolstered pistol on the third.
        As mortal now as even Gable and Bogart had proved to be, Reynerd jolted backward, went down, casting a Technicolor splatter across the black-and-white apartment in which he had been so wide, so deep, so alive.
        Moving toward the actor, Hazard heard running footsteps in the public hall.
        Reynerd had taken three rounds point-blank in his broad chest, including one that must have punched significant scraps of his heart muscle through an exit wound in his back. He’d been mortuary material even as he fell.
        The death-blinded blue of the actor’s shock-widened eyes seemed [145] less cold than they had been in life. He looked as if he needed some Jesus now.
        Hazard