The Face-Changers

38

Charles Langer went out to breakfast, as he often did. When he had still been Brian Vaughn he would not have dared show his face in a spot like the Santa Barbara Biltmore. Now Brian Vaughn’s face didn’t exist, and there was no disadvantage to showing Charles Langer’s. Since he had been in Santa Barbara he had seen four people who had known him when he was Brian Vaughn, and two of them had been at the Biltmore.

The first time, he had been eating lunch at an outdoor table on the patio. He had been staring past the tall cedar tree on the broad front lawn, beyond the shoreward rolling of blue, sluggish Pacific swells, at a squadron of tiny white sails just poised on the horizon so their hulls were invisible and their forward progress was almost impossible to detect. A shadow had unexpectedly fallen across the white linen in front of him, he had looked up, and standing over him was David Rollins.

Langer had become flustered. He had been warned that moments like this might happen someday, but someday had always seemed far away. But Rollins had not said “Brian!” or even “Don’t I know you?” He had said, “Excuse me, but is anyone using these chairs?”

Charles Langer had not dared use his voice. He had smiled and shaken his head. Rollins had taken two of the extra chairs to his table, said, “Thanks,” sat on one of the chairs, and picked up his menu. The other chair had been for Rona Pellham, apparently Mrs. Rollins now. Langer was sure that she would not fail to recognize him. As soon as she looked in his direction, he was going to have to say something false about not being who she thought he was, and bail out of Santa Barbara. But Rona had not appeared to even glance at him. It was a miracle. He had known her very well—actually made a serious attempt to Do the Deed with her once, with enough acquiescence so that he could knowledgeably judge the terrible things that time and gravity had done to the poor woman since then.

Nobody had recognized Brian Vaughn looking at them from behind Charles Langer’s face, and the chance meeting had been wonderful for Charles Langer. He was liberated, giddy with power and license. He reminded himself of Claude Rains in The Invisible Man, capering around and practically tweaking people’s noses with absolute impunity.

He had stuck to all of the precautions they had taught him during the long period since he had needed to leave Massachusetts. But after seeing Rollins, these safeguards had come to seem like the old civil defense drills of his childhood, when he had dutifully crouched under his desk to escape bombs that never fell. He was now convinced that the only necessary precaution had been taken for all time. He was a brand-new man with nothing much to worry him.

Langer finished his breakfast and walked on the beach for an hour. He liked walking away from Santa Barbara, below the big homes above the cliffs, toward the Montecito side. If he walked in the morning like this, he could often go for long stretches without seeing another human being.

He came back up the beach just ahead of the incoming tide, got into his Miata, and drove toward his house. He would spend a little time cleaning the place and then go to the library before he went off for his golf game. That way he would have something fresh to read this evening.

Many of the things he liked least about being the Invisible Man had gradually been mitigated. At first he had found it frustrating to live in a place where he could have golfed on almost any day of the year, except that he wasn’t able to join a club or even scare up a foursome. Now he simply went to the public course and told the starter he would fill in on any threesome who showed up. Most days it meant he would not have to wait as long as he would have with three partners. When Langer wanted to swim, he would pay for a day’s admission to the Coral Casino across the street from the Biltmore and share the best pool in town with a sparse gathering of ephemeral strangers who sat in cabanas, ordered a few drinks, and then moved on.

His search for something to fill the time after sunset had not been as satisfactory, but it was not painful. He now kept his days busy and active, lingered late over dinner at a pleasant restaurant, then spent the latter part of the evening reading the books he had borrowed from the public library.

Langer had spent only a few months in this place, and already the social prospects were showing small signs of improvement. Several times at the golf course he had run into men he had played with before, and when they had seen him alone as usual, they hadn’t waited for the starter to form the foursome but had invited him themselves. There were also two young female librarians who made it a practice to smile and joke with him when he came in, and he had actually had a real conversation with the prettier of the two a week ago. At first he had been a little wistful and regretful when she had seemed to like him, but then he had remembered that he wasn’t fifty-five anymore. To her he looked about her own age. Maybe next time he would find out more about her so he could concoct exactly the right invitation to make her go out with him.

As he drove up his street, he studied all of the cars parked at the curb, glanced at the windows of the houses nearby, and then stopped without taking the keys out of the ignition and looked again. The precautions they had taught him were all habits now, and each time he performed them he actually felt better. After all this time he would have noticed anything that was out of place.

He got out of his Miata, walked up the sidewalk, unlocked his door, and slipped inside, then stepped directly to the corner window to ascertain that his arrival had not triggered any movement outside.

He counted to ten, then stepped back, turned, and gasped. He felt the hair on his scalp bristle. A woman was sitting motionless on the couch, and at first his mind didn’t know what to do with her: ghost-burglar-accuser? Was his eye assembling shadows into a human shape?

“I’m sorry to startle you,” she said.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, then realized he had said it wrong. He sounded scared and ridiculous. He had not missed the soft, melodious sound of her voice, and there was a little catch in it that was mildly erotic and appealing. He couldn’t see her very well because his glasses hadn’t adjusted to the dim light on that side of the room. The outline of her was long, lean, and feminine like a cat. There was nothing to be afraid of.

“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I had just sat down to rest. They called me in the middle of the night, so I had to take a redeye flight to get here.”

“Why?”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry again.” She stood up and took a couple of steps where the light from the window reached her. He appraised the long black hair and the grace of her movements. “It seems that Santa Barbara is about to get too hot for you. I’m here to help you get out before the temperature takes its upturn.” She walked into the bedroom, where he had no choice but to follow. “I’ve already packed almost everything, and given the place a quick scrub for prints. Don’t touch any smooth surfaces in the house without wiping them off afterwards.”

He saw his suitcase on the bed and walked toward it. He looked at it for a moment, then opened it and stared down at his clothes, his shoes. He could see she had even found the milk carton in the refrigerator, because the money and his next identity were tucked into the pocket.

“Come on,” she coaxed from the doorway. “Don’t worry about what I’ve got. Worry about what I might have missed.”

He turned and stared at her. “Who’s coming?”

She was ready for the question. “There’s a man named Jardine in Los Angeles. He’s a bounty hunter who’s been asking a lot of questions about Brian Vaughn for months. Apparently last night he started asking questions about Charles Langer.”

“What does that mean?”

She held her hands palms upward, then let them fall. “It means he probably asked the wrong person. But the fact that they called me in means that the problem isn’t solved.”

Brian Vaughn sat on the bed. “Do you know a lot about me?”

She sighed in frustration. “I know enough so I’ll be mixing my own drinks on this trip, thank you. Beyond that, I don’t care. I just came to get you out of here.”

His voice carried quiet conviction. “I’m innocent. I didn’t give her the overdose, or drive her anywhere in my car. When I left her, she was in her apartment in New York.”

“Fine,” said Jane. She was on her guard. Something was happening.

“It matters.”

Jane looked at him apologetically. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said. “But I’m sure you must know that my helping you isn’t contingent on my judgment of whether you did it or not. If you could prove that, what would you need us for? We’re in a business. You pay, we take care of you. Now, my best professional advice is to get up, get into the car, and let me take you someplace safe.”

“Where?”

Jane had hoped this would not come up until he was in the car. “I’m supposed to get you back to Chicago. From there they’ll start you over again in a new place. Do you care?”

“Not really,” he said. “I guess it was idle curiosity. I’m not going.”

Jane’s muscles tightened. Chicago was where Christine had seen his boxes. He had spent months there getting his face changed, so she had guessed he would consider it home base. It was also the only place where she could turn him over to policemen who would know where he fit in the Dahlman case, but she was sure that was not what had made him refuse. It was something else. “I’m not particular. If you have another place in mind where you’ll be safe for now, I’ll drive you there and explain it later. But let’s get going before we have to fight our way out.”

“You go,” he said. “Thank you for coming to my rescue, but I’m going to stay here. Since I’ve been here I’ve met several people who once knew me well, and they don’t now. I’ll probably be fine.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

He shrugged. “Then I’ll be dead, I suppose.”

She leaned against the wall and folded her arms. “Suddenly, after all this effort, that doesn’t matter to you?”

His face flashed an expression that began as a smile and ended as a frown. “I made a bad deal. I’ve done what I could to live with it, and begun making a comfortable life here. I’m through being ordered from place to place, and told how to look and act.”

“If you want to disappear, that’s how it’s done.” She shrugged. “You must have known that when you decided to run.”

He looked at her again, his face less troubled. “When I told you I was innocent, I wasn’t sure why I was saying it. I thought it might be a simple reflex, trying to defend myself from what you had said. But it was for me. You see, time moved too quickly for me. One night I was in New York, having just left a young lady at her apartment and gone to my hotel. The next morning my lawyer was on the phone telling me that I was about to be arrested. After that all I had time to think about was playing my part in this elaborate hoax. But since I got here, I’ve had time.”

“Time for what?”

“Until then I didn’t have time to question what I was being told. The simple statement that Amanda had been murdered—I never examined it. Amanda might very well have come back to the hotel, borrowed my car herself, and accidentally taken an overdose. Maybe it was suicide. Any number of things might have happened. I accepted the assumption that it was murder, and the assumption that being innocent would be irrelevant. But once I had made the first move to run, it was too late. I could only go forward. For a long time I told myself I had done the only prudent thing. Now that I’ve had time to think, I believe it was a mistake. I was too trusting of expert opinions.”

Jane shook her head. “You picked a very bad time to start doing your own thinking.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m just telling you this as one human being to another, so you’ll accept it and go on to something else. I’m no longer a client.” He nodded with finality. “You can tell them that. I’m finished. I’m not paying another dime.”

Jane looked at him thoughtfully. He seemed to be exactly what she had hoped he would be: a victim, who had run out of fear, not guilt. Maybe she had arrived at the right time, after he had already begun to understand the way the business worked. He had been the one to bring up money. Could she get him to understand what he had to do to get out of this mess? Christine Manon had been easy to nudge in the right direction, because she had seen enough to be scared. Vaughn didn’t seem to be scared: he seemed defiant. She had to try. She shrugged and said, “You were too trusting. You’re right.”

He looked puzzled. That wasn’t what he had expected her to say. She had to be careful now, and take him through the logical steps. She asked, “How much have you paid to stay hidden this long?”

He gave a mirthless little snort. “A fortune. I suppose we must be up over a million by now, wouldn’t you say? If I went to Chicago with you, that alone would cost me another hundred thousand or more, and that much to get settled the next time. It never seems to end.”

“No,” Jane agreed. “And it won’t. Do you think that they’ll let you simply say, ‘Thanks, but I’m as safe as I want to be’?”

“They won’t?”

“They killed people to get you where you are.”

He gaped, frowned, then said, “They did? Who?”

She let the amazement she felt show on her face. “Where have you been?”

“Here,” he said. “Right here. Why did they kill anyone?”

“There’s quite a list,” said Jane, “each person for a different reason. But unless you know better, the first one was Amanda.”

“How could that be for me?”

“I didn’t mean it was for your convenience or safety. It was for you—in order to get control of you, to take over your life. After that they killed other people—four of them at the surgical clinic because they knew your new face and could connect it with the old one. That was to protect you, because you were theirs. They need to keep you unencumbered and willing to keep paying until your money is gone.”

His face went through a series of fleeting expressions: skepticism, anger, fear. “You’re saying that if I don’t go to Chicago with you, they’ll kill me too, aren’t you?”

She was silent.

He pressed her. “But suppose I did go? At some point they’ll get every cent I have, every cent I can get. What happens then?”

“I don’t know,” said Jane. “I met a woman client who ran out, and one of them implied to her that she could work off future fees as a prostitute. Maybe it was just a mean thing men say to scare women. Maybe it wasn’t. I would guess that they would weigh the likelihood that you could keep bringing in money against the likelihood that you would be caught and talk to the police.”

His eyes narrowed as though he were in pain. “It’s amazing, when I look back on it. I thought about the way she died, and of course it had occurred to me that it was an intentional setup. But I thought it had to be someone who hated her—after all, I wasn’t the one who was killed. It could be some enemy of hers I knew nothing about. Then I thought it could be someone who hated me, or wanted her and was jealous. But it wasn’t. It was someone who wanted money and knew that if I were made desperate and miserable enough, I could pay and pay.” He stood up. “I’m through.”

Jane said, “Sitting tight and refusing to budge isn’t likely to be your best strategy.”

“I understood your threat,” he said. “You didn’t help me because I was in trouble. You caused the trouble so I would pay you to keep solving it. And now I have no choice but to keep paying.”

Jane took a deep breath and let it out. Now was the time. “That’s the idea, but I think you have a choice.”

“I do,” he agreed. “You can tell them that I’m going to make sure that if anything happens, the police know everything I know.”

“I wouldn’t advise waiting until something happens.”

“Whose side are you on?”

Jane said, “I have my own side. And I’m going to make you an offer. If you want me to, I will risk my life to save yours. I can’t make anything that has already happened go away. I can keep you alive long enough so you can tell your story to cops who will know what you’re talking about, and who might think it answers questions that are on their minds. I can also produce two people who suddenly developed problems just as unlikely as yours and were both offered solutions. That’s the best offer you’re ever going to get, and it won’t come again.”

“If that’s what you wanted to do, why haven’t you already done it?”

“Because I didn’t have the one piece of evidence that turns a couple of suspects’ wild claims into one story that makes perfect sense.” When she looked at him, her gaze was so intense that he wanted to turn away. “I didn’t have you.”

Jane watched him walk past her into the living room. He stood and looked down at the piano, then walked to the pile of books on the antique table near the door. His eyes rose to the gold-rimmed mirror on the wall above them. He said, “This is probably the part that I hate them for most.”

“What is?”

“My face.”

“I got the impression that it was an improvement.”

He kept his eyes on the reflection before him. “It is. I look twenty-five years younger than I looked before. My imperfections are gone. But I look like a different person.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

He sighed. “It sounded like a wonderful idea. I didn’t really understand what it meant. People say that by the age of forty you wear the face you’ve earned. The scars and wrinkles and marks are supposed to be the punishment, and maybe the warning to other people. But the alternative isn’t exactly a fresh start. It’s being fifty-five, looking in the mirror, and seeing a young face that has nothing in it you recognize. You have to study that face, and try to be what he seems to be. If you don’t change, conform to the mask’s contours, then you’ll be discovered. It was a brilliant thing for them to do to me. I can’t walk into a police station and tell my story, because my own face proves I’m a liar. Because I let them do this, they’re safe.” He turned to look at her and smiled, and the smile was winning, confident, and utterly false. In a few seconds, he let the muscles go slack. “I can’t do what you ask.”

Jane urged him. “I think you have very little choice.”

He shook his head. “I can’t tell the police I’m an innocent victim, a person who was duped. I’m a man who escaped from the authorities before they started looking, and then changed my face. How could they believe me?”

“They won’t if you’re alone—if the only story they hear is yours. But I have other stories, other victims.”

“Who?”

“One is Richard Dahlman.”

“Dahlman … the surgeon?”

“After he finished your surgery, all of the people who worked with him and saw your face were killed. Then they did to Dahlman exactly what they did to you. They made him scared, then offered him a way out that made him look guilty.”

“A man like him? It’s …”

“Unbelievable? Alone, neither of you gets anywhere. But together, you’re pretty convincing. His story that the reason his friends all died off was that they helped him perform plastic surgery on a mysterious fugitive looks a bit better if the fugitive shows up. Your story of getting framed for a murder and talked into running looks a bit better if you know they did the same to him.”

“I would be taking an incredible risk.”

“It’s a chance. If you wait until he’s gone, you’ve got nothing. A man who volunteers to tell the police a story sounds better than one who tells it after they catch him.” She paused. “And if you’re killed, your side of the story never gets told.”

He sat down on the edge of the couch and stared into the fireplace. Jane sensed that it was time to let him alone to think, so she moved back into the bedroom and waited. After a long time, she heard movement in the other room, and he appeared in the doorway.

“Before I walk into any police station, I’m going to need something better than a similarity to other people who make more convincing victims,” he said. “I’m going to need proof.”

“What sort of proof?”

He took a deep breath, and she could hear a shivering in it, as though he were afraid even to say it. “Tape recordings. I can get them to come here. If I say the right things, maybe I can get them to admit out loud that I didn’t know anything about any murders—Amanda or the people at the clinic.”

Jane frowned, then paced. “I’ll be honest with you. I don’t like the idea.”

“I can do it.”

“They have no reason to trust a person they’ve harmed. If they hear a wrong tone in your voice, a question they don’t think you ought to be asking, you’re going to die—not later, after they’ve had time to mull it over—right then, right there.”

He said, “I know that. If they killed other people, then I’m no different. You want me to take a risk. All right, I will. But it has to be this one.”

“It’s much bigger.”

“If I can get through five minutes of the right kind of conversation, I win everything. They go to jail, I go free, and I can be myself again. Five minutes of acting. Not five years of telling the same story over and over to hostile cops and judges and juries, and every minute of it being just as vulnerable as I am now. No, more vulnerable, because everyone in the country will have seen this new face.” He gave her a pleading look. “If I turn myself in now, I’ll never get another chance.”

Jane stared past his clear, honest thirty-year-old face and into his eyes. “I hate the idea,” she said.

“I’m not asking your advice,” he said. “I’m going to do this, regardless of what you think.”

Jane held her gaze on his eyes. He was perfectly serious. He was going to try to clear himself, and there was very little she could do to stop him. She couldn’t hope to drag him all the way to Chicago at gunpoint, and even if she could, he wasn’t going to be of much use to Dahlman unless he told his story. “If you have to do it, I’ll try to show you how to do it right.”