"He came up with a way out. Plastic surgery. And which eminent plastic surgeon do you think he picked?"
Mapes knew this was coming, he must have seen it coming a mile off, but he still winced a little. I was more interested in watching some other faces, only a few of which turned to look at the good doctor.
"The physician he chose," I went on, "was a board-certified plastic surgeon with an excellent professional reputation. He did the usual run of nose jobs and facelifts and liposuction and tummy tucks, putting caviar on the table by making the well-to-do a little easier to look at. He also did a good deal of reconstructive surgery on burn victims and accident survivors and children born with facial birth defects. A lot of his work with kids was what lawyers would callpro bono. I don't know if doctors would call it that or something else, but whatever you call it he didn't get paid for it."
I glanced over at Marty, who appeared surprised. Nobody, I'd have to tell him, can be a shitheel a hundred percent of the time. It's too exhausting.
"Somewhere along the way," I said, "this doctor became first acquainted and then involved with what we might call the criminal element. Maybe he found criminals fascinating. Many of us do. Or maybe he just saw a way to turn an extra dollar, a dollar to be paid in cash, and one he could thus forget to report when he filed his tax return."
The two government men tried to keep straight faces, but they weren't very good at it. I had their attention now, and it showed.
"He did some favors. Took out bullets and cleaned the wounds without making a report, the way the law says you have to. Maybe he wrote out a few death certificates, putting down cardiac arrest as the cause of death. Well, it always is. If somebody cuts your throat or puts a bullet in the back of your head, you die when your heart stops beating. So he wasn't exactly lying…
"Still, he was heroically overqualified for that sort of work, and it was only a question of time before someone made better use of his abilities. He became the man to see if you wanted to change your face to one the law wouldn't recognize. The people who needed his services would pay big money, and they'd pay it in cash, and wouldn't try to deduct it from their own taxes, either. And there was no hospital cutting into the pie, because he had to do the work in the privacy of his own office. That was generally safe enough with facial surgery, and if anything went wrong, well, he could just fill out the death certificate appropriately. But why should anything go wrong? Nothing ever did, and it wasn't long before he'd paid off the mortgage on the big house in Riverdale and had a nice cash cushion in the bargain."
That got some heads to turn. Whoever hadn't already figured it out now knew that their host for the afternoon was the very doctor I was talking about.
So why not call him by name?
"One day," I said, "Dr. Crandall R. Mapes had a visitor, referred by one of his associates in the world of organized crime. The man wore a blond wig and explained the steps he'd already taken to alter his appearance. But he still had the same face underneath it all, and he wanted a new one.
"Dr. Mapes agreed to take him as a patient, and the two settled on a price. Mapes took pictures, as he always did for every client, a group of shots showing the subject's face from various angles. He studied the photographs at length, devised a plan, and, on the appointed day, performed the first of a series of surgeries upon the face of Valentine Kukarov."
"You're slandering me in my own home," Mapes said, "in front of a roomful of witnesses."
"They say it ain't bragging if it's true," I told him, "and the same thing holds for slander."
"You can't prove any of this." He got to his feet. "Allegations, nothing but allegations. I'm damned if I'm going to listen to allegations." I don't know if he was going for the front door or the dining room, but his body language was sayingSee ya later, Allegator.
He didn't get very far. Before he could take the first step, the two feds rose to their feet, while the two trios of cops and goons at the room's two exits all but linked arms to block his flight. That gave him pause, and then Michael Quattrone said, "Sit down, Mapes," and he sat.
"The operations," I said, "were a success. Dr. Mapes gave Kukarov a new nose and refigured his jawline. He shaved his cheekbones to make him look less Slavic, and took ten to fifteen years off his appearance by lifting what had begun to droop, tightening the loose skin on the neck, and doing a little work around and under the eyes. He got rid of a scar at the side of Kukarov's mouth. Nobody knew about it back in Latvia, he'd grown the beard to hide it, but it was a distinguishing mark in the American version of Kukarov, and Mapes got rid of it for him. He pitched the blond hairpiece, reworked the hairline with a combination of surgery and electrolysis, improved the eyebrows permanently with some more electrolysis, and taught his patient to dye his hair and eyebrows a light brown that was becoming enough while less attention-getting than what he'd had. Besides"-I glanced pointedly at Mapes, who glow-ered back from beneath his rug-"sooner or later someone recognizes even the best wig for what it is, and starts wondering what you'd look like without it."
"So he fixed him up good," Ray said. "Then what?"
"Then he took some more photographs," I said, "and collected the balance of his fee, and sent the Black Scourge of Riga on his way."
"Excuse me," said Grisek, the man from the Latvian embassy. "Kukarov allowed him to retain these photographs?"
"Certainly not. He'd always been cautious to the point of paranoia on the subject of photos, and now that he had a new face he certainly didn't want pictures of it floating around."
"Ah."
"Mapes insisted on taking the photos," I said, "because he needed them for reference while the work was in progress. The surgeries took months, and he took more shots along the way to chart his progress. And he snapped a last batch upon completion as well, so that he and his patient could view them side by side, Before and After, and see just how substantive a change Mapes had worked in Kukarov's appearance."
"That's standard," Mapes said. "Everyone in the field does it."
"That's what you told Kukarov. And he let you do it because you assured him that, when your work was over, all copies of the photos would be destroyed."
"The man insisted."
"As other men had insisted before him. And you agreed, as you had agreed before. But you didn't keep your word, did you? You held on to four photos, mug shots, really. Before and after, full-face and profile. Just as you kept of all your patients, legitimate and criminal."
He winced a little at the last word, then rallied to tell me what a valuable, even essential, reference library the photos constituted.
"Pardon my Latvian," I said, "but that's a load of crap. You kept the pictures to feed your ego. You knew you shouldn't have the pictures, so you didn't keep them with the rest. Instead you Scotch-taped them to the pages of a book and stuck it on the shelf in your office. Maybe you got a kick out of it, having it right out in plain sight, where anybody could pick it up and page through it. But of course nobody did.Principles of Organic Chemistry, Volume Two. Sounds like a real page-turner, doesn't it?"
"They were readily available for reference," he said, "yet secreted so that no one would find them. You said it yourself, Rothenberg." I didn't correct him. The man was hopeless. "Even if you were searching the place, you'd never pick up that book. And no one would stumble on it by accident."
"Suppose they'd read Volume One, and didn't want to miss the sequel? Never mind. Let's say the photos were safe there. But you didn't just drool over them in private. Every once in a while you couldn't resist pulling the book down and showing off. Every now and then you just had to impress some sweet young thing by showing her the dangerous men whose faces you'd rearranged."