“Why did I become a cop? Certainly the law has no interest for me, and detection is extremely boring most of the time-you are never permitted to prosecute the real villains. Only now and then the criminal world turns up a prophet through whose eyes one may discern what happens next. What criminals do today, the respectable do tomorrow. Look how popular fraud has become on Wall Street. From that point of view, you could say I’m the luckiest cop on earth. I have in-depth knowledge of the minds of two of our greatest modern prophets, two spoiled girls who read the future better than any Internet entrepreneur and are probably billionaires as a consequence.”
He inhales. “Like so many vocational cops, I was propelled by the heroic impulse. Make the streets safe for… et cetera. Bang up the bad guys… et cetera. Make sure they never again… et cetera. How cute. Now I’m forty-five years old. At my age guilt and innocence get turned on their heads. No authentic hero ever reaches fifty. I was sure the Yips would have a commodity shop like this-I saw it underground somewhere-but was it a paranoid fantasy? Was it my illness talking?
“Now there is only one more detail I need to know, then I’m out of here. I’ve come here to die, Detective. They can have my liver, my kidneys, my face, my cock-small prices to pay for liberation from their brave new world. What’s your excuse for getting yourself carved up this day?” He glares at me with his lower lip trembling. “Did you ever read the Gospel of Judas?”
“No.”
“You should. It’s revolutionary. In it Jesus muscles Judas into arranging for his crucifixion sooner rather than later so he can escape the cloying human form and dissolve in a spiritual lake so pure not even angels have seen it. See, Judas was the only disciple who really understood him. I thought Christianity was strictly for children until I read that.”
There is a click. The lights go on. Now the vast underground chamber is washed in neon. Chan’s reaction is instant: he raises both arms. I follow his lead. Whoever made the click makes no further sound, so Chan and I are left to turn slowly around.
Close up, Manu is hard to look at. It is like seeing two different men in the same body: the perfect manly form of the tall, disciplined soldier holding a giant combat rifle, which is pointed at us; the maimed and frozen face.
The effect on Chan is electric. The expressions that come and go on his face bring vividness to the word bipolar. Now he has wrinkled his own features and is slowly lowering one of his hands. He points at Manu. “Translate,” he hisses at me. Then: “I love you.”
“He loves you,” I tell Manu in Thai. There is no reaction from that Halloween mask. Only the eyes move. They glow with the dark energy of an edge dweller.
“I’ve been looking for you all my life,” Chan says. “You are more of a pariah than I’ll ever be. You are weirder than me, you live in an extreme atmosphere. I envy you above all men. There is no darkness you have not penetrated with your fearless gaze, no illusion you have not torn apart with your incredible ugliness.”
I translate. Manu makes a gurgling sound in his throat. His eyes are sparkling, and I wonder if the gurgling is not a form of laughter.
“I understand you because I’ve aspired to be like you, but I don’t have your courage. If I looked like you, I wouldn’t have the strength to carry on. I would have done myself in right after the operation, when they gave you the mirror and came out with a whole lot of stupid excuses.” Manu jerks the gun upward, as if encouraging Chan to continue. “But in my small way I too live on the other side. I’m a crazy bipolar-ask this guy here-he had to rescue me from a public toilet when I was having one of my raving sessions. See, I’m not so different. You could say I’m worse-if they could look at my mind they’d find it even weirder, uglier, stranger, more inhuman even than your mug. I admire you. The integrity of your suffering and isolation is beyond anything I’ve ever come across. You are urban man in his most pure form. I would be honored to be executed by a real man instead of slowly ground down into another clapped-out cipher. Why not make me your slave, keep me here with you in your underground lair, oh King of Hades? Or kill me right now if you like.”
Manu shakes his head and turns his back. He moves like someone pottering around at home. We watch him go to the fridge where the faces are kept and lift the lid.
Chan does not take his eyes off that deformed figure. “You have to get into his mind,” he whispers. “He’s learned that without a face, he doesn’t exist. Therefore he is invisible. Now he is making himself visible to us.”
Manu has pulled out a face-it is To’s-and slapped it over his own with one hand. It remains there for a moment while he turns to look at us. The gray flesh does not resemble anything living, more a macabre mask with drooping mouth. He cocks his head coyly, as if asking if we like his new looks. Then he turns back to the fridge, pulls off To, and puts on the face of the older woman who was To’s secretary. He pirouettes and poses coquettishly.
“He’s using us as a mirror,” Chan explains. “Be polite.” Chan starts to clap, and nudges me. I also clap; the lonely sounds are quickly lost in the huge chamber. Manu takes off the dead face and stares at us. He seems perplexed. Chan has twisted his features into those of a groveling sycophant. Out of the corner of his mouth he whispers: “He is going to become fascinated with me. I’m going to prove to him that I love him. That’s your signal to run. Get the fuck out of here. This isn’t your moment. This case belongs to me. Translate what I say until I tell you to go.”
Chan drops to his knees. Manu’s gurgling is an attempt to communicate, but I cannot work it out. Something in the sounds resembles Thai words, but there is too much distortion to be sure. Now my mind has flipped to Om: I think of her making love to this monster, perhaps spending the night with him, seeing his face on the pillow, listening to the air passing through the hole that once was a nose. And now I understand what Manu is trying to say. “He wants you to kiss him,” I explain.
Chan stands, embraces Manu, kisses those busted lips, and sinks his tongue into that mutilated mouth. Manu is holding the gun by the barrel while the stock rests on the ground. This would be a good moment to rush him. “Don’t rush him,” Chan says out of the side of his mouth. “Get the fuck out. Run. He’s too far gone to care if you escape or not. I’m his next face. That’s all he knows right now.”
But there is no need to run. Manu seems pleased with Chan. He steps back from him and balances the gun against his stomach with one finger still on the trigger. With a single jerk of his head, he tells me to go. When I turn to find the stairs, though, he shakes his head and points to a door at the opposite end of the operating room. I have the feeling he is laughing at me.
29
At the far end of the room, I find a door that leads to a tunnel. It is brightly lit with sparkling white tiles and extrasmooth concrete. It is far longer than I expected. I must have run more than two hundred yards when I come to a door locked from the inside. It is wider than most doors. When I open the locks, I find I’m in a garage. After a moment of reorientation, I realize it is the garage belonging to the mansion. When I examine the door, I see that when shut it fits snugly into the wall and becomes invisible. I walk to the garage’s entrance and find a button on the wall. The door folds upward. Daylight. I climb up to the balcony, go to the great glass sliding doors. Inside, the miniature stream is still tinkling over the feng shui master’s lucky pebbles. When I attempt to take out my cell phone, I drop it three times. I sit on the floor and press an autodial number.