The Face

please, dear boy. Have anything you wish.”
        As if conjured by a sorcerer, a waiter instantly appears. Dunny orders double oysters and a bottle of Pinot Grigio for himself. He has always been a man of large appetites.
        “You have always been a man of large appetites,” Typhon notes, and smiles impishly.
        “There’ll be an end to that soon enough,” Dunny says. “While there’s still a banquet in front of me, I intend to gorge.”
        “That’s the spirit!” Typhon declares. “You’re a man after my own heart, Dunny. By the way, that’s a handsome suit.”
        “You’ve got an excellent tailor yourself.”
        “It’s a bother having to do business,” says Typhon, “so let’s get it out of the way first thing.”
        Dunny says nothing, but steels himself for a reprimand.
        Typhon sips his wine, sighs with pleasure. “Am I to understand that you hired a hit man to remove Mr. Reynerd?”
        “Yes. I did. A guy called himself Hector X.”
        “A hit man,” Typhon repeats with audible astonishment.
        “He was a gangbanger I knew in the old days, a ranking cuzz with the Crips. We manufactured and distributed sherm together back then.”
        “Sherm?”
        “PCP, an animal tranquilizer. Had a Jim Jones production line going. Marijuana joints laced with cocaine and dipped in PCP.”
        “Do all your associates have such charming resumes?”
        Dunny shrugs. “He was who he was.”
        [215] “Yes, was . Both men are dead now.”
        “Here’s the way I see it. Hector had killed before, and Reynerd conspired to have his own mother murdered. I wasn’t corrupting an innocent or targeting one, either.”
        “I’m not concerned about corruption, Dunny. I’m concerned that you seem not to understand the limits of your authority.”
        “I know ringing in one killer to take out another is somewhat unconventional-”
        “Unconventional!” Typhon shakes his head. “No, lad, it’s utterly unacceptable .”
        Dunny’s oysters and wine arrive. The waiter uncorks the Pinot Grigio, pours a taste, and Dunny approves.
        Relying on the pleasant boozy rumble of the glamorous crowd to screen their sensitive conversation, Typhon returns to business. “Dunny, you must conduct yourself with discretion. All right, you’ve been a rogue much of your life, that’s true, but you gave that up in recent years, didn’t you?”
        “Tried. Mostly succeeded. Listen, Mr. Typhon, I didn’t pull the trigger on Reynerd myself. I worked by indirection, like we agreed.”
        “Hiring a hit man is not indirection.”
        Dunny swallows an oyster. “Then I misunderstood.”
        “I doubt that,” Typhon says. “I believe you knowingly stretched your authority to see if it would snap.”
        Pretending gluttonous fascination with the oysters, Dunny dares not ask the obvious question.
        The most powerful studio chief in the film industry enters the farther end of the room with all the poise and self-assurance of a Caesar. He travels in the company of an entourage of young male and female employees who are as sleek and cool as vampires yet, on closer inspection, appear simultaneously as nervous as Chihuahuas.
        At once spotting Typhon, this king of Hollywood waves with a measured but revealing eagerness.
        Typhon returns the greeting with a markedly more restrained wave, [216] thus instantly establishing himself as the higher of the two on the pecking order, to the Caesar’s controlled but still visible embarrassment.
        Typhon now asks the question that Dunny has been reluctant to voice: “In hiring Hector X, did you stretch your authority past the snapping point?” Then he answers it: “Yes. But I’m inclined to give you one more chance.”
        Dunny swallows another oyster, which slides down his throat more easily than the one before it.
        “Many of the men and women in this bar,” says Typhon, “daily negotiate contracts with the intention of breaching them. The people with whom they negotiate fully expect to be victimized or to breach certain terms themselves. Eventually angry accusations are exchanged, attorneys are brandished, legal actions are served if not filed, and amidst bitter charges and vehement countercharges, a settlement is arranged out of court. After all this, and sometimes even during it, the same parties are engaged in negotiating other contracts with each other,