The Face

were antiques that appreciated in value far faster than the blue-chip stocks of the country’s finest companies.
        Club chairs in comfortable seating arrangements alternated with mazes of mahogany shelves that held over thirty-six thousand volumes. Some of the books were shelved on a second level served by a six-foot-wide catwalk that could be reached by an open staircase with an elaborate gilded-iron railing.
        If you didn’t look up at the ceiling to help you define the true size of the enormous chamber, you might succumb to the illusion that it went on forever. Maybe it did. Anything seemed possible here.
        The center of the ceiling featured a stained-glass dome thirty-two [18] feet in diameter. The deep colors of the glass-crimson, emerald, burnt yellow, sapphire-so completely filtered natural light even on a bright day that the books were at no risk of sustaining sun damage.
        Ethan’s Uncle Joe-who’d served as a surrogate dad when Ethan’s real father had been too drunk to handle the job-had been a truck driver for a regional bakery. He’d delivered breads and pastries to supermarkets and restaurants, six days a week, eight hours a day. Most of the time, Joe had held down a second job as a night janitor, three days a week.
        In his best five years put together, Uncle Joe hadn’t made enough to equal the cost of this stained-glass dome.
        When he’d first begun to earn a policeman’s pay, Ethan had felt rich. Compared to Joe, he had been raking in big dough.
        His total income from sixteen years with the LAPD wouldn’t have paid the cost of this one room.
        “Should’ve been a movie star,” he said as he entered the library to return Lord Jim to the shelf from which he’d gotten it.
        Every volume in the collection had been arranged in alphabetical order, by author. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions. A significant number were rare, and valuable.
        The Face had read none of them.
        More than two-thirds of the collection had come with the house. At her employer’s instructions, once each month, Mrs. McBee purchased the most talked-about and critically acclaimed current novels and volumes of nonfiction, which were at once catalogued and added to the library.
        These new books were acquired for the sole purpose of display. They impressed houseguests, dinner guests, and other visitors with the breadth of Channing Manheim’s intellectual interests.
        When asked for his opinion of any book, the Face elicited the visitor’s judgment first, then agreed with it in such a charming fashion that he seemed both erudite and every bit a kindred spirit.
        As Ethan slid Lord Jim onto a shelf between two other Conrad titles, a small reedy voice behind him said, “Is there magic in it?”
        [19] Turning, he discovered ten-year-old Aelfric Manheim all but swallowed alive by one of the larger armchairs.
        According to Laura Moonves, Aelfric (pronounced elf-rick ) was an Old English word meaning “elf-ruled” or “ruled by elves,” which had first been used to describe wise and clever actions, but had in time come to refer to those who acted wisely and cleverly.
        Aelfric.
        The boy’s mother-Fredericka “Freddie” Nielander-a supermodel who had married and divorced the Face all in one year, had read at least three books in her life. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact she had read them repeatedly.
        She had been prepared to name the boy Frodo. Fortunately, or not, one month before Freddie’s due date, her best girlfriend, an actress, had discovered the name Aelfric in the script for a cheesy fantasy film in which she had agreed to play a three-breasted Amazon alchemist.
        If Freddie’s friend had landed a supporting role in The Silence of the Lambs, Aelfric would probably now be Hannibal Manheim.
        The boy preferred to be called Fric, and no one but his mother insisted on using his full name. Fortunately, or not, she wasn’t around much to torture him with it.
        Reliable scuttlebutt had it that Freddie had not seen Fric in over seventeen months. Even the career of an aging supermodel could be demanding.
        “Is there magic in what?” Ethan asked.
        “That book you just put away.”
        “Magic of a sort, but probably not the kind of magic you mean.”
        “This one has a shitload of magic in it,” Fric said, displaying a paperback