The Face (55 page)

CHAPTER 96

E
THAN AND FRIC STOOD SIDE BY SIDE AT A window in the second-floor drawing room, which was known as the green room for reasons obvious to all but the color-blind.

Ming du Lac believed that no great house of this size could be a place of spiritual harmony without one room furnished and decorated entirely in shades of green. Their feng-shui consultant agreed with this green decree, perhaps because his own philosophy included such a notion, but more likely because he knew better than to cross Ming.

All the shades of green that had been applied herein to walls, upholstery, carpet, and wood finishes were seen by Ming in dreams. You had to wonder what he’d been eating before bed.

Mrs. McBee called this room “the horrid moss pit,” though not within Ming’s hearing.

Beyond the window, the sprawling estate presented better shades of green, and above it all hung a glorious blue sky rinsed clean of even the memory of rain.

From where they stood, they could see the front gate, and the mob of media in the public street beyond. Sunlight flared off cars, news vans, and larger network-television trucks with satellite-uplink dishes on their roofs.

“Gonna be a circus,” Fric said.

“Gonna be a carnival,” Ethan agreed.

“Gonna be a freak show.”

“Gonna be a zoo.”

“Gonna be Halloween on Christmas Eve,” Fric said, “if you look at how they’ll use us on the TV news.”

“Then don’t look,” Ethan suggested. “To hell with the TV news. Anyway, it’ll all blow over soon enough.”

“Fat chance,” said Fric. “It’ll go on for weeks, big story about the little prince of Hollywood and the nut case who almost got me.”

“So you see yourself as the little prince of Hollywood?”

Fric grimaced with disgust. “That’s what
they’ll
call me. I can hear it now. I won’t be able to go out in public until I’m fifty, and even then they’ll pinch my cheeks and tell me how
worried
they were about me.”

“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “I think you’re overestimating how interesting you are to the general population.”

Fric dared to look hopeful. “You think so?”

“Yeah. I mean, you aren’t one of those Hollywood kids who wants to go into the family business.”

“I’d rather eat worms.”

“You don’t take bit parts in your dad’s movies. You don’t sing or dance. You don’t do imitations, do you?”

“No.”

“Do you juggle or keep a dozen plates spinning at the top of a dozen bamboo poles all at the same time?”

“Not all at the same time, no,” said Fric.

“Magic tricks?”

“No.”

“Ventriloquism?”

“Not me.”

“See, I’m bored with you already. You know what I think’s got them all excited about this story, that’s really the focus of it?”

“What?” Fric asked.

“The blimp.”

“The blimp,” Fric agreed, “is totally cool.”

“No offense, but a kid your age, with your lack of experience…I’m sorry, but you just can’t compete with a blimp in Bel Air.”

Out at the north end of the property, the gates began to open.

“Here comes the gang,” Fric said as the first black limousine glided in from the street. “You think he’ll stop out there and give the reporters face time?”

“I’ve asked him not to,” Ethan said. “We don’t have anywhere near enough manpower to police a media mob like that, and they don’t like being policed.”

“He’ll stop,” Fric predicted. “Bet you a million bucks to a pile of cow flop. What limousine is he in?”

“Number five out of seven.”

The second limo cruised through the gate.

“He’ll have a new girlfriend,” Fric worried.

“You’ll do fine with her.”

“Maybe.”

“You’ve got the perfect ice breaker.”

“What’s that?”

“The blimp.”

Fric brightened. “Yeah.”

The third limousine appeared.

“Just remember what we agreed. We’re not going to tell anyone about…the stranger parts of it all.”

“I sure won’t,” Fric said. “I don’t want to be booby-hatched.”

The fourth limousine entered, but the fifth paused outside the gates. From this distance, without binoculars, Ethan could not see that Channing Manheim had in fact gotten out of the limo to meet the cameras and charm the press, but he was nevertheless morally certain that he owed Fric a pile of cow flop.

“Doesn’t seem like Christmas Eve,” Fric said quietly.

“It will,” Ethan promised.

Christmas morning, in his study, Ethan listened yet again to all fifty-six messages that had been recorded on Line 24.

Before Manheim and Ming du Lac had returned to Palazzo Rospo, Ethan had loaded the enhanced recordings onto a CD. Then he erased them from the computer in the white room and removed them from the phone logs. Only he would ever know that they had been received.

These messages were his, and his alone, one heart speaking to another across eternity.

In some of them, Hannah solved every element of the maniac’s riddles. In others, she only repeated Ethan’s name, sometimes with yearning, sometimes with gentle affection.

He played Call 31 more times than he could remember. In that one, she reminded him that she loved him, and when he listened to her, five years seemed no time at all, and even cancer had no power, or the grave.

He was opening a box of cookies left by Mrs. McBee when his phone rang.

Fric always set the alarm clock early on Christmas morning, not because he was eager to discover what had been left under the tree for him but because he wanted to open the stupid gifts and be done with it.

He
knew
what the fancy wrappings concealed: everything on the list that he had been required to give to Mrs. McBee on the fifth of December. He had never been denied the things for which he’d asked, and each time that he asked for less, he had been required to amend his list until it was at least as long as the list from the previous year. Downstairs, under the drawing-room tree would be a shitload of fabulous stuff, and no surprises.

On this Christmas morning, however, he woke to a sight that he had never seen before. While he had slept, someone had crept into his room and left a gift on his nightstand, beside the clock.

A small box wrapped in white with a white bow.

The card was bigger than the box. No one had signed it, but the sender had written these words:
This be magic. If there be no blink, you will have great adventures. If there be no tear shed, you will have a long and happy life. If there be no sleeping of it, you will grow up to be the man you want to be.

This was such an amazing note, so mysterious and so rich in possibilities, that Fric read it several times, puzzling over its meaning.

He hesitated to open the white box, for he did not believe that anything it contained could equal the promise of this note.

When at last he peeled away the glossy paper, lifted the lid, and folded aside the tissue paper, he found that—
oh!
—the contents were the equal of the note.

On a new gold chain hung a glass pendant, a sphere, and in the sphere floated an eye! He had seen nothing like this in his life and knew that he never would again. A souvenir from the lost continent of Atlantis, perhaps, the jewelry of a sorcerer, or the protective amulet worn by knights of the Round Table fighting for justice under the protection of Merlin.

If there be no blink, you will have great adventures.

No blink, no blink ever, for this eye had no lid.

If there be no tear shed, you will have a long and happy life.

No tear, no tear from now until time immemorial, for this eye could not cry.

If there be no sleeping of it, you will grow up to be the man you want to be.

No sleep, no shortest nap, for this eye was always open wide with magical meaning, and needed no rest.

Fric examined the pendant by sunlight, by lamplight, by the glow of a penlight in his otherwise dark closet.

He studied the orb under a powerful magnifying glass and then by indirection through an arrangement of mirrors.

He put it in the shirt pocket of his pajamas and knew that it was not blinded.

He held it in his closed right hand and felt its wise gaze on the pads of his cupped fingers, and knew that if he kept his heart pure and dedicated his mind to the defense of what is good, just as knights were supposed to do, then one day this eye would show him the future if he wished to see it and would guide him in the path of Camelot.

After Fric had thought of a thousand things that he might say and had rejected nine hundred ninety-nine of them, he returned the pendant to the box and, while meeting its patch-eyed-pirate gaze, placed his phone call.

He grinned, hearing in his mind the first nine notes of the
Dragnet
theme song.

When the call was answered, Fric said, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Truman.”

“Merry Christmas, Fric.”

With only those words, they hung up by mutual unspoken consent, for at this moment in time, no more needed to be said.

NOTE

In Chapter 32, Mr. Typhon counsels Dunny Whistler that he should take inspiration from Saint Duncan, for whom he was named. No Saint Duncan has ever been canonized. We can only speculate on Mr. Typhon’s motives for this seemingly minor deception.

—DK

This book is dedicated to three exceptional men—and to their wives, who have worked so very hard to sculpt them from such rough clay. From the ground up: To Leason and Marlene Pomeroy, to Mike and Edie Martin, and to Jose and Rachel Perez. After The Project, I will not be able to get up in the morning, spend a moment at home during the day, or go to bed at night without thinking of you. I guess I’ll just have to live with that.