The Face

collapse.
        Soon, however, ghastly events at Channing Manheim’s estate would make big headlines worldwide. Authorities would commit extraordinary resources to discover the identity of the man who’d sent the taunting gifts in the black boxes.
        Logic would send them to private mortuaries and public morgues, in search of the source of the ten foreskins. If Roman had come under suspicion during that investigation, he would have tried to save his own hide by fingering Corky.
        Anarchists labored under no obligation of loyalty to one another, which was as it should be among champions of disorder.
        Indeed, Corky had other loose ends to tie up before the yuletide celebrations could begin.
        Considering that his hands were sheathed in latex gloves, which had been hidden from his victim in the roomy sleeves of his slicker, he could have left the ice pick in the vault without worrying that he might provide police with incriminating fingerprints. Instead, he returned it to its sheath and then to a pocket not only because it might serve him well again, but also because it now had sentimental value.
        [184] Leaving the morgue, he said a friendly good-bye to the night security men. They had a thankless job, protecting the dead from the living. He even paused long enough to share with them an obscene joke about an attorney and a chicken.
        He had no fear that eventually they would be able to provide the police with a useful description of his face. In his droopy hat and tent-like slicker, he was an eccentric and amusing figure about whom no one would remember more than his costume.
        Later, in a fireplace at home, while he enjoyed a brandy, he would burn all the ID that had established him as a pathologist from Indianapolis. He possessed numerous additional sets of documentation for other identities if and when he needed them.
        Now he returned to the night, the rain.
        And so the time had come to deal with Rolf Reynerd, who by his actions had shown himself to be every bit as unfit for life as he had proved to be unfit for soap-opera stardom.

CHAPTER 27
        
        IF AELFRIC MANHEIM’S MONDAY-EVENING dinner had been reported upon in Daily Variety, the colorful trade paper of the film industry, the headline might have been FRIC CLICKS WITH CHICK.
        On the grill, the plump breast had been basted with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, pepper, and a delicious mixture of exotic herbs known around Palazzo Rospo as the McBee McSecret. In addition to the chicken, he had been served pasta, not with tomato sauce, but with butter, basil, pine nuts, and Parmesan cheese.
        Mr. Hachette, the Cordon Bleu-trained chef who was a direct descendent of Jack the Ripper, didn’t work Sundays and Mondays, so that he might stalk and slash innocent women, toss rabid cats into baby carriages, and indulge in whatever other personal interests currently appealed to him.
        Mr. Baptiste, the happy cook, was off Mondays and Tuesdays; therefore, on Mondays the kitchen was, in show-biz lingo, dark. Mrs. McBee had prepared these delicacies herself.
        By the softly pulsing light of electric fixtures tricked up to look like antique oil lamps, Fric ate in the wine cellar, alone at the refectory table for eight in the cozy tasting room, which was separated [186] from the temperature-controlled portion of the cellar by a glass wall. Beyond the glass, in aisles of shelves, were fourteen thousand bottles of what his father sometimes identified as “Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, claret, port, Burgundy-and the blood of critics, which is a bitter vintage.”
        Ha, ha, ha.
        When Ghost Dad was home, they usually ate in the dining room, unless the dinner guests-the old man’s buddies, business associates, or various personal advisers from his spiritual counselor to his clairvoyance instructor-felt uncomfortable having a ten-year-old kid listening to their gossip and rolling his eyes at their trash talk.
        In Ghost Dad’s absence, which was most of the time, Fric could choose to have dinner not just in his private rooms, where he usually ate, but virtually anywhere on the estate.
        In good weather, he might dine outdoors by the swimming pool, grateful that in his father’s absence no hopelessly dense, tiresomely giggly, embarrassingly half-naked starlets were there to pester him with questions about his favorite subject in