himself, the eyes gazing intently out at one, as in a photograph for which the subject has stared directly into the camera lens. But this is no photo, and must have been produced by a police artist, working in concert with a witness.
But what witness? Surely not the doorman in the building on Jane Street. The man had barely opened his eyes, let alone had the wit to use them. And the other doorman, the one who’d been on duty when he left, had scarcely spared him a glance. It was his job to vet persons on their way in, not those headed out.
Then who?
Oh, of course. The woman in the shop. Elaine Scudder, dealer in art and antiques. The wife of the detective. The friend of the late Monica.
Yes, he will definitely skin her. Start with her hands and feet, then work his way to the good parts.
But first there is the problem of the drawing. He can’t move about effectively, can’t do what he has to do, if any passerby is apt to glance at him and sound the alarm. How can he give his full attention to the hunt if he’s at the same time cast in the role of quarry?
He has a copy of the sketch before him, torn from this morning’s Daily News. How the eyes blaze! He’s only beginning to realize what a sense of 214
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strength and purpose emanates from them. Surely this ocular intensity is a continuing development, an ongoing part of his evolution. Aren’t the eyes said to be the windows of the soul? The soul is a myth, surely, but substitute spirit or essence for it and you got the idea. His eyes reflect the person he is, and as he has grown in power, the look in his eyes has evolved accordingly.
He studies his reflection in the bathroom mirror, where the late Joseph Bohan must have viewed himself on those infrequent occasions when he remembered to shave. Yes, his eyes really do burn like the eyes in the drawing.
This pleases him.
He’s also pleased to note the prominence of the mustache in the drawing. It is a dominant feature, it draws the eye, and a casual viewer will remember the mustache and forget the face’s other features.
And he doesn’t have the mustache anymore.
That’s a help, but he’s not sure it’s enough. With eight million people out there in the city, it’s not unlikely that one of them will look beyond the portcullis of the mustache and see the face plain.
His task, then, is to alter his appearance so that he looks less like the drawing. And hasn’t he a long history of reinventing himself? Isn’t his life an unending process of reinvention?
It would be easy, he thinks, simply to shave his head. He did this once years ago, with no purpose beyond experimentation, and was pleased if not greatly surprised to discover that he has a nicely shaped head, with none of those bumps or craters best left covered.
Shaving one’s head brings about an instantaneous radical transforma-tion, but nevertheless he knows it’s a bad idea. A man with a shaved head has a commanding presence. The bald pate draws the eye. And the viewer can hardly help but wonder what the shaven head would look like without the razor’s intervention.
No, the object is to avoid drawing glances. One wants to look different from one’s picture, but still to blend in with one’s fellows. One seeks not to stand out from the crowd but to fade into it, to be perfectly ordinary, invisible in one’s mundanity.
He’s been to the drugstore, and now he lines up his purchases on the bathroom shelf. He strips to the waist and gets to work.
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First, the hairline. He’s been blessed with a full head of hair, and it’s every bit as full in the drawing as in reality. Eyes that would be drawn to a shaved head won’t look twice at a receding hairline. He uses the little scissors first, clearing a path for the razor, which he then wields with the precision of a plastic surgeon, carefully delineating a new hairline. It begins an inch and a half higher on his forehead, and the recession is more pronounced on the temples. The result, when he’s finished, is a textbook case of male-pattern baldness, lacking only a nascent bald spot at the crown. A bald spot, alas, is not something one can convincingly create on one’s own.
Keep it simple, he tells himself.
Nice phrase, that. Keep it simple, easy does it, first things first. He’s been associating with a great gathering of simpletons lately, people he won’t be seeing anymore, but he does like some of their catchphrases, and when he dropped one or two of his own into their midst they generally seemed to like them as well.
You get what you get, he said on one occasion, and watched their little puppet heads bob up and down in agreement.
He keeps it simple, and is done with his hairline. Next the eyebrows, and for this operation he will need the little scissors and the pair of tweezers.
His own eyebrows are by no means bushy, but are nevertheless somewhat prominent. Trimming and plucking reduces their prominence, and it’s remarkable how the change alters the whole appearance of his eyes.
Looking out from beneath thinner, wispier brows, his gaze is somehow gentler, less unsettling.
Next, hair dye. His own medium-brown hair has the advantage of near invisibility; it might draw a glance in Asia or Scandinavia, but in America it is utterly ordinary. That’s a good argument for leaving it alone, but after due reflection he follows the instructions on the package and renders it a shade or two darker. He knows not to dye it black—
black hair, even when it’s natural, somehow always looks dyed—and the color he’s selected is very nearly as pedestrian as his own, yet undeniably different.
He leaves his eyebrows undyed, so that they’ll appear even less distinct.
His new hairline has exposed skin heretofore untouched by the sun, 216
