If Ethan had been a visitor lacking a personal gate-entry code, he would have pushed the intercom button on the post and would have announced himself to the guard in the security office at the back of the property. If the visitor was expected or was a family friend on the permanent-access list, the guard would open the gate from his command board.
As he waited for the massive bronze barrier to roll out of the way, Ethan was under surveillance by the camera on the security post. Entering the property, he would be scrutinized through a series of tree-mounted cameras angled in such a manner as to reveal anyone who might be lying on the floor of the SUV to avoid detection.
All videocams included night-vision technology that transformed the faintest moonlight into a revealing glow. A sophisticated bit of software filtered out most of the veiling and the distortion effects produced by falling rain, ensuring a clear real-time image on the security-office screens.
Had he been a repairman or deliveryman arriving in an enclosed van or truck, Ethan would have been asked to wait outside the gate until a security guard arrived. The guard would then look inside the vehicle to ensure that the driver was not, under duress, bringing any bad guys with him.
Palazzo Rospo was not a fortress either by modern definition or by the moat-and-drawbridge standards of medieval times. Neither was the estate a cupcake served on a plate to be easily plucked by any hungry thief.
Explosives could bring down the gate. The property wall could be scaled. But the grounds couldn’t easily be entered by stealth. Intruders would be identified and tracked almost at once by cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, and other devices.
The thirty-foot-wide bronze gate, more solid than open, weighed over eight thousand pounds. The motor that operated the chain drive was powerful, however, and the barrier rolled aside with apparent ease and with more speed than one might expect.
A five-acre plot qualified as a large piece of land in most residential communities. In this neighborhood, where an acre could bring upwards of ten million dollars, a five-acre property was the equivalent of an English country estate of baronial scale.
The long driveway looped around a reflection pond in front of the great house, which was not Baroque, like the bronze gate, but a limestone-clad, three-story Palladian structure with simple classic ornamentation, huge yet elegant in its proportions.
Just before reaching the pond, the driveway split, and Ethan took the branch that led around to the side of the house. When it split again, one artery led to the groundskeeper’s building and the security office, while the other led down a ramp to the underground garage.
The garage had two levels. In the upper, the Face stored thirty-two vehicles in his personal collection, ranging from a new Porsche to a series of Rolls-Royces from the 1930s, to a 1936 Mercedes-Benz 500K, to a 1931 Duesenberg Model J, to a 1933 Cadillac Sixteen.
The lower garage housed the fleet of workaday vehicles owned by the estate and provided parking for cars belonging to employees.
Like the upper garage, the lower featured a beige mattefinish ceramic-tile floor and walls of glossy tile in a matching color. Supporting columns were decorated with free-flowing mosaics in various shades of yellow.
Few high-end automobile sales facilities, catering to the very wealthy, were as beautifully appointed as this lower garage.
The pegboard for car keys hung on the wall outside the elevator, and Fric sat on the floor under the board, holding the same paperback fantasy novel that he’d been reading in the library this morning. He got to his feet as Ethan approached.
To a degree that surprised Ethan, the sight of the boy gladdened him. Nothing else had done so in this long, gray, dismal day.
He wasn’t entirely sure why the kid lifted his spirits. Maybe because you expected the son of the Face, raised in such wealth and with such indifference, to be spoiled rotten or to be dysfunctionally neurotic, or both; and because instead Fric was basically decent and shy, tried to cover his shyness with a seen-it-all air, but could not conceal a fundamental modesty as rare in his glamorous world as pity was rare among the scaly denizens of a crocodile swamp.
Indicating the paperback, Ethan said, “Has the evil wizard found the tongue of an honest man for his potion?”
“No luck yet. But he just sent his brutal assistant, Cragmore, to visit a lying politician and harvest his testicles.”
Ethan winced. “He is an evil wizard.”
“Well, it’s just a politician. Some of them come around here now and then, you know. After they leave, Mrs. McBee does an inventory of the valuable items in the rooms they visited.”
“So…what’re you doing down here? Planning to go for a drive?”
Fric shook his head. “There’s no point making a break for it until I’m sixteen. First I’ve got to get my driver’s license, have enough time to put together a stash of cash big enough to start over with, research the perfect small town to hide in, and design a series of really cool impenetrable disguises.”
Ethan smiled. “That’s the plan, huh?”
Failing to match Ethan’s smile, with bone-dry seriousness, Fric said, “That’s the plan.”
The boy pressed the button to call the elevator. The machinery hummed into motion, the noise only partly muffled by the shaft walls.
“I’ve been hiding out from the decorating crew,” Fric revealed. “They’re still putting up trees and stuff all over the house. This is your first Christmas here, so you don’t know, but they all wear these stupid Santa hats, and every time they see you, they shout, ‘Merry Christmas,’ grinning like lunatics, and they want to give you these sucky little candy canes. They don’t just decorate, they like make a performance out of it, which I guess most people want, otherwise they wouldn’t have a business, but it’s enough to turn you into an atheist.”
“Sounds like a memorable holiday tradition.”
“It’s better than the paid carolers on Christmas Eve. They dress like characters out of Dickens, and between songs they talk to you about Queen Victoria and Mr. Scrooge and whether you’re going to have goose and suet pudding for Christmas dinner, and they call you ‘m’lord’ and ‘young master,’ and you’ve got to be there because Ghost…because my father thinks it’s all so cool. After about half an hour, you’re sure you’re either going to shit or go blind, and there’s another half-hour to get through. But then it’s okay, because after the carolers is the magician who does this act with dwarfs dressed up like Santa’s elves, and he’s radically hilarious.”
Aelfric seemed to be concealing a nervous and urgent concern that he unintentionally expressed in a flood of words set loose with a quality akin to babble. He wasn’t a tight-lipped boy by nature, but neither was he a nonstop talker.
The elevator arrived and the doors opened.
Ethan followed the boy into the wood-paneled cab.
After pushing the button for the ground floor, Fric said, “In your experience, are phone perverts really dangerous or are they just all talk?”
“Phone perverts?”
To this point, the boy had made eye contact. Now he watched the light on the floor-indicator board and didn’t even glance at Ethan. “Guys that call up and breathe at you. Do they mainly get their kicks from just that, or do they sometimes actually come around and want to grope you and stuff?”
“Has someone called you, Fric?”
“Yeah. This freak.” The boy made heavy, ragged panting sounds, as if Ethan might be able to identify the pervert from the unique signature of his breathing patterns.
“When did this start?”
“Just today. First when I was in the train room. Then he called again when I was in the wine cellar, eating dinner.”
“He called on your private line?”
“Yeah.”
On the board, the indicator light blinked from the lower garage to the higher garage. The elevator moved slowly upward.
“What did this guy say to you?”
Fric hesitated, shuffling his feet slightly on
the inlaid-marble floor. Then: “He just breathed. And made some…some almost like animal sounds.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah. Animal sounds, but I don’t know what they were supposed to be, ’cause he wasn’t like talented at it or anything.”
“You’re sure he didn’t say something to you? Didn’t even use your name?”
Remaining focused on the indicator board, Fric said, “Just that stupid breathing. I star sixty-nined him, figuring maybe the pervert still lives with his mother, see, and she’d answer, and I could tell her what her precious sicko son was up to, but then I just got him breathing at me.”
They arrived at the ground floor. The doors opened.
Ethan stepped into the hall, but Fric remained in the elevator.
Blocking the doors with one arm, Ethan said, “Calling him back—that wasn’t a good idea, Fric. When someone’s trying to harass you, what gives them a kick is knowing they got under your skin. The best thing to do is hang up as soon as you realize who it is, and if the phone rings again right away, don’t answer it.”
Looking at his wristwatch, adjusting the time with the stem, busying himself, Fric said, “I thought you’d have a way to find out who he is.”
“I’ll give it a try. And Fric?”
The boy continued to fiddle with the watch. “Yeah?”
“It’s important that you tell me everything about this.”
“Sure.”
“You are telling me everything, aren’t you?”
Holding the watch to one ear, as if listening for ticking, Fric said, “Sure. It was this breather.”
The boy was withholding information, but putting pressure on him at this time would only ensure that he would guard his secret all the more fiercely.
Recalling how he himself had responded to Hazard’s interrogation in the church, Ethan relented. “If it’s all right with you, when your line rings tonight or anytime tomorrow while I’m here, I’d like to answer it myself.”
“Okay.”
“Your line doesn’t ring in my apartment, but I’ll just go into the house computer and change that.”
“When?”
“Right now. I’ll pick it up on the first few rings, but if a call comes in tomorrow when I’m not here, then just let it go to your voice mail.”
The boy made eye contact at last. “Okay. You know what my ring sounds like?”
Ethan smiled. “I’ll recognize it.”
With a look of consternation, Fric said, “Yeah, it’s dorky.”
“And you think the first nine notes of ‘Dragnet’ makes me feel like I’m getting an important call?”
Fric smiled.
“If you need to call me anytime, day or night,” Ethan said, “on one of my house lines or my cell phone, don’t hesitate, Fric. I don’t sleep all that much anyway. You understand?”
The boy nodded. “Thanks, Mr. Truman.”
Ethan stepped backward into the hallway once more.
Self-conscious, Fric chewed solemnly on his lower lip as he pushed a control-panel button, probably for the third floor where he had his rooms.
Because of the boy’s diminutive stature, the elevator, as big as any in a high-rise building, seemed to be even larger than usual.
Although short and slender for his age, Fric possessed a quiet determination and a courage, apparent in his posture and in his daily attitude, that were surprising for his years and bigger than his small body. The boy’s strange and lonely childhood had already begun to steel him for adversity.
In spite of his wealth and wit and growing wisdom, adversity would come to him sooner or later. He was a human being, after all, and therefore heir to his share of misery and misfortune.
The elevator doors slid shut.
As Fric disappeared from view and as machinery purred, Ethan looked at the indicator board above the door. He watched until he saw the light change from the ground floor to the second, listened as the lift mechanism continued to grind.
In his mind’s eye, Ethan saw the elevator doors open on the third floor, revealing an empty cab, Fric having vanished forever between floors.
Such peculiar dark imaginings were not common to him. On any day but this one, he would have wondered where such a disturbing twist of thought had come from, and he would have at once smoothed it out of his mind as easily as pressing a wrinkle from a shirt.
This was the day it was, however, so utterly unlike any other that Ethan felt inclined to take seriously even the most unlikely presentiments and possibilities.
The back staircase wrapped the elevator shaft. He was tempted to race up four flights. The elevator rose so slowly that he might beat it to the third floor.
When the doors slid open, revealing Fric unharmed, the boy would be startled to be greeted with such alarm. Breathing hard from his frantic ascent, Ethan wouldn’t be able to conceal his concern from Fric—nor would he be able to explain it.
The moment passed.
His clenched throat relaxed. He swallowed, breathed.
The indicator light blinked from the second to the third floor. The elevator motor fell silent.
Surely Fric had arrived safely at the top of the house. He had not been consumed and digested by demonically possessed machinery.
As best he could, Ethan smoothed that bizarre idea from his mind as he went to his apartment in the west wing.
CHAPTER 38
HURRYING THE LENGTH OF THE LONG NORTH hall, Fric more than once looked worriedly over his shoulder, for he had always half believed that ghosts lurked in the lonelier corners of the great house. On this night, he was all but certain of their presence.
As he passed a gilded mirror set above an old-as-dirt console, he thought he glimpsed two figures in the age-discolored glass: he himself, but also someone taller, darker, hurrying just behind him.
In a tapestry that probably dated from before the last ice age, threatening-looking horsemen on dark steeds seemed to turn their heads to watch him pass. Peripherally, he thought he saw the horses—eyes wild, nostrils flared—begin to gallop through that fabric field and forest, as if intent on bolting out of their woven world and into the third-floor hallway.
Considering his current state of mind, Fric was not suited for work in a graveyard, a mortuary, a morgue, or in a cryogenics facility where gaggles of dead people were frozen in expectation that one day they could be thawed and returned to life.
In a movie, Ghost Dad had played Sherlock Holmes, who had turned out to be the first man ever to have his body scientifically frozen upon death. Holmes was revived in the year 2225, where a utopian society needed his help to solve the first murder in a hundred years.
Deleting either the evil robots or the evil aliens, or the evil mummies, would have made it a better movie. Sometimes a film could be too imaginative.
At this moment, however, Fric had no difficulty believing that Palazzo Rospo might be seething with ghosts, robots, aliens, mummies, and some unnameable thing worse than all the others, especially here on the third floor, where he was alone. Not safely alone, perhaps, but alone in the sense that he was the only living human presence.
His father’s bedroom and the suite of rooms related to it were on this level, in the west wing and along part of the north corridor. With Ghost Dad in residence, Fric had company in this high retreat, but most nights he dwelt alone here on the third floor.
Like now.
At the junction of the north and the east hallways, he stood as still as a corpsicle in a cryogenic vat, listening to the house.
Fric more imagined than heard the patter of rain. The roof was slate, well insulated, and far above even this high hallway.
The faint and inconstant sough of winter wind was but a memory from another time, for this was largely a windless night.
In addition to Fric’s suite, along the east hall were other chambers. Seldom-used guest bedrooms. A walk-in linen closet. An electric-utilities room crammed with equipment mysterious to Fric but reminiscent of Franken
stein’s laboratory. There was a small sitting room, richly furnished and well maintained, in which no one ever sat.
At the end of the hall lay the door to a set of back stairs that went down five stories, all the way to the lower garage. Another set of stairs, at the end of the west hall, also descended to the bottom of Palazzo Rospo. Neither was as wide or as grand, of course, as the main staircase, which featured a crystal chandelier at each landing.
The actress Cassandra Limone—born name, Sandy Leaky—who had lived with Fric’s father for five months, staying in the house even when he was absent, had churned up and down every staircase fifteen times a day, as part of her workout regimen. A well-equipped gym on the second floor offered a StairMaster among numerous machines, but Cassandra said the “authentic” stairs were less boring than the make-believe stairs and had a more natural effect on leg and butt muscles.
Slathered in sweat, grunting, squinting, grimacing, cursing like the possessed girl in The Exorcist, screeching at Fric if he happened onto the stairs when she was using them, climbing Cassandra would not have been recognizable to the editors at People magazine. They had twice selected her as one of the most beautiful people in the world.
Apparently, however, all the effort had been worthwhile. Ghost Dad had more than once told Cassandra that she was a deadly weapon because her calf muscles could crack a man’s skull, her thigh muscles could break any heart, and her butt could drive a man crazy.
Ha, ha, ha. Instead of testing your sense of humor, some jokes tested your gag reflex.
One day near the end of her stay, Cassandra had fallen down the back west stairs and broken an ankle.
Genuinely funny.
Now Fric followed the east hall not to his suite, but to the last room on the right before the stairs.