The Face

killer himself had been gunned down. His body lay on the lawn in front of Rolf’s apartment house.
        Two pairs of binoculars circulated among the onlookers. Corky borrowed one pair to study Rolf’s apparent executioner.
        In the darkness and the rain, even with magnification, he was unable to discern any identifying details of the corpse sprawled on the grass.
        Crime-scene investigators, busy with scientific instruments and cameras, crouched alongside the cadaver. In black raincoats draped like folded wings, they had the posture and the intensity of crows pecking at carrion.
        In every version of the story viewed with credibility among the gossips, the killer himself had been killed by a police officer. The cop had been passing by in the street at the right moment, by sheer happenstance, or he had lived in Rolf’s building, or he’d come there to visit his girlfriend or his mother.
        Whatever had occurred here this evening, Corky was reasonably confident that it would not compromise his plans or cause the police to turn a gimlet eye on him. He had kept his association with Reynerd secret from everyone he knew.
        He believed that Reynerd had been likewise discreet. They had committed crimes together and had conspired to commit others. Neither of them had anything to gain-and much to lose-by revealing their relationship to anyone.
        Stupid in uncounted ways, Rolf had not been entirely reckless. To impress a woman or his witless friends, he might wish to reveal that he’d had his mother killed by proxy or that he was partner to a murderous conspiracy involving the biggest movie star in the world, but he would never go that far. He would just invent a colorful lie.
        Although Ethan Truman, incognito, had visited earlier this very [202] day, the possibility that Reynerd’s death was connected in any way to Channing Manheim and the six gifts in black boxes remained unlikely.
        Being an apostle of anarchy, Corky understood that chaos ruled the world and that in the rough and disorderly jumble-tumble of daily events, meaningless coincidences like this frequently occurred. Such apparent synchronisms encouraged lesser men than he to see patterns, design, and meaning in life.
        He had wagered his future and, in fact, his existence, on the belief that life was meaningless. He owned a lot of stock in chaos, and at this late date, he wasn’t going to second-guess his investment by selling chaos short.
        Reynerd had fancied himself not only a potential movie star of historic proportions, but also something of a bad boy, and bad boys made enemies. For one thing, more in search of thrills than profits, he had dealt drugs to a refined list of entertainment-industry clients, mostly cocaine and meth and Ecstasy.
        More likely than not, tougher men than pretty-boy Reynerd had decided that he was poaching in their fields. With a bullet in the head, he’d been discouraged from further competition.
        Corky had needed Reynerd dead.
        Chaos had obliged.
        No more, no less.
        Time to move on.
        Time, in fact, for dinner. Aside from a candy bar in the car and a double latte at the mall, he had eaten nothing since breakfast.
        On good days filled with worthwhile endeavors, his work provided nourishment enough, and he often skipped lunch. Now, after busy hours of useful enterprise, he was famished.
        Nevertheless, he tarried long enough to serve chaos. The six children were a temptation that he could not resist.
        All were six to eight years old. Some were better dressed for the [203] rain and the cold than others were, but all remained unflaggingly exuberant, dancing-playing-chasing in the nasty night, as though they were storm petrels born to wet wind and turbulent skies.
        Focused on the hubbub of cops and ambulances, the adults stood oblivious of their offspring. The kids were wise enough to understand that as long as they played on the lawn behind their elders and kept their chatter below a certain volume, they could prolong their night adventure indefinitely.
        In this paranoid age, a stranger dared not offer candy to any child. Even the most gullible among them would shriek for the cops at the offer of a lollipop.
        Corky had no lollipops, but he traveled with a bag of luscious, chewy caramels.
        He waited until the kids’ attention turned elsewhere, whereupon he extracted