The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,102

never went anywhere without the blond wig.

“Add in the fact that more Latvians were finding their way into the country, either as immigrants or as embassy staff. It had been twenty years since the heyday of the Black Scourge of Riga, but that didn’t mean anybody was ready to forgive and forget. If someone who knew him when were to take a hard look at him and got to imagining him with dark hair and bushy eyebrows, well, that wouldn’t be so great. Where could he go, Australia? There were plenty of Latvians in Australia. And he was past fifty, and too old to start over somewhere new.

“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 call pro 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