The Face

between the vehicles, like a pinball between warring flippers.
        Here came the crushing truck, the shrill blast of air brakes.
        With a sharp stuttering bark of tires against wet blacktop, the Cruiser spun into the far lanes where it belonged.
        Parting the rain where the Cruiser had just whipped through it, the truck shook and shuddered to a stop.
        When the driver of the Cruiser regained control, he raced away, at a lower but still reckless speed.
        The agitated trucker blew his horn. Then he continued on the route that he’d been following before the near miss, toward whatever destination unhindered fate had planned for him.
        [176] In the wake of the truck, the gap in traffic had closed.
        The signal light changed at the intersection. In two directions, traffic came to a halt, but in two others, it began to move again.
        Drenching the night: the delicious aroma of baking bread.
        Golden lamplight spending doubloons upon the pavement.
        The rush and rustle of the rain.
        Perhaps the signal light changed twice again or even three times before Ethan became aware of an aching in his left hand. The cramping pain had begun to spread into the muscles of his forearm.
        Tangled through the fiercely clenched fingers of his fist was the string of three small silvery bells clipped from the ambulance tinsel and given to him by a compassionate paramedic.

CHAPTER 26
        
        AS IF THEY WERE THE DEGENERATE ELITE OF ancient Rome, reclining in midbacchanal, their togas scandalously disarranged, the nameless dead revealed here a smooth and creamy shoulder, here the pale curve of a breast, here a blue-veined thigh, here a hand with the fingers curled in a subtle obscene gesture, here a delicate foot and slender ankle, and here half a profile in which one open eye stared with milky lust.
        The least-superstitious witness to this grotesque display might be inclined to suspect that in the absence of a living observer, these unidentified vagrants and teenage runaways would visit bunk to bunk. In the most lonely hours after midnight, might not the restless dead pair up in a cold and hideous parody of passion?
        If Corky Laputa had believed in a moral code or even if he had believed that good taste required certain universal rules of social conduct, he might have passed his two-minute wait by rearranging these carelessly draped shrouds, insisting upon modesty even among the deceased.
        Instead, he enjoyed the scene because in this chamber was the ultimate fruit of anarchy. Besides, with considerable excitement, “he [178] anticipated the arrival of the usually unflappable Roman Castevet, who would be fully flapped on this occasion.
        Almost two minutes to the tick, the lever-action door handle clicked, creaked, and eased down. The door cracked open, but only an inch.
        As though he expected to discover that Corky awaited him with a camera crew and a pack of muckraking reporters, Roman peered through the gap, his one revealed eye as wide as that of a startled owl.
        “Come in, come, come,” Corky encouraged. “You’re among friends here, even though it is your intention eventually to dissect some of them.”
        Opening the door only wide enough to accommodate his thin frame, Roman slipped into the cadaver vault, pausing to peer back worriedly at the hallway before closing himself in with Corky and the twenty naughty members of the toga party.
        “What the hell are you wearing?” asked the nervous pathologist.
        Corky turned in place, flaring the skirt of his yellow slicker. “Fashionable rain gear. Do you like the hat?”
        “How did you slip by security in that ludicrous outfit? How did you slip by security at all?”
        “No slipping necessary. I presented my credentials.”
        “What credentials? You teach empty-calorie modern fiction to a bunch of self-important sluts and brain-dead, snot-nosed wonder-boys.”
        Like many in the sciences, Roman Castevet held a dim view of the liberal-arts departments in contemporary universities and of those students who sought, first, truth through literature and, second, a delayed entry into the job market.
        Taking no offense, in fact approving of Roman’s nasty antisocial vitriol, Corky explained: “The pleasant fellows at your security desk think I’m a visiting pathologist from Indianapolis, here to discuss with