“Okay,” I said.
“Liska said, ‘Three P.M. exactly.’”
“Will you kiss me good-bye?”
“What’s he going to do, put you on Death Row?”
I laughed. “Let’s leave Liska out of this, for a moment.”
She laughed, too. She leaned across the front seat and quickly kissed my lips. She smelled of faint perspiration and shampoo rinse. She tasted like the sweetness and lemon of her iced tea.
Her eyes caught mine, and they smiled.
8
“ I t’s not as bad as it smells.”
I allowed Duffy Lee Hall his moment of nonsense.
I stood thirty feet from the burned building, but my hair and clothing had already absorbed the stench of charred wood and plastic. The weight of the firefighters’ water had caved in the pharmacy roof. Long pink strands of attic insulation, tangled in electrical wiring, hung against warped drywall. Support beams had settled at odd angles. Ash layered exposed surfaces. No question, the building would be bulldozed.
If Hall had meant to compare the extent of ruin to his personal odor, I’d buy into the idea. The sweat of emotion and exertion had drenched his blue denim work shirt. He’d been packing sooty boxes out of the ashes, wrapping them in garbage bags, hoping they wouldn’t ruin the interior of his vintage Volvo station wagon. He’d wasted his money with the plastic bags. I could swim off South Beach or shower for an hour. The Volvo would never lose the residual stink.
Hall had insisted that he needed no help. “No reason for both of us to ruin our clothes. This is my second carload. It ought to cover it.” He leaned into the Volvo to organize the boxes. His belly, a testament to the nation’s microbreweries, restricted his movement. He gave up and backed away. His round wire-rimmed glasses slid down his nose. “The darkroom used to
be a walk-in refrigerator.” He wagged his arm at the north wall of the gutted pharmacy. “The lunch counter used to be over here. They built new coolers when they moved the serving area to the United Street side. They couldn’t afford to rip down the old walk-in, so I got a perfect space. No light leaks, no temperature shifts. I mean … before this. Anyway, the steel walls and thick insulation saved my equipment.”
“Open for business somewhere else?”
A dejected exhale: “With a full house of jack-jawed customers …”
“ … who will understand the circumstances.”
He slid out of the car, headed back into the rubble for more. “But not their missing film. Be glad you didn’t leave yours last night.”
“You can’t wash the film, try to salvage it?”
“Nothing to wash. It’s gone. Somebody took it all.”
“Took your clients’ film … ?”
“ … and finished prints.”
“And burned it down, too?”
Duffy Lee slid a box of developing trays into the car. He barely nodded.
Theft and vandalism. A crime and an overkill cover-up. The deed and the distraction. It had gone down that way at Jesse Spence’s apartment.
Coincidence bites again. It clicked almost immediately. The phone bug in the Ziploc. Strike two had hit Duffy Lee Hall’s darkroom.
Someone had wanted my film and knew from eavesdropping Spence’s phone line that I’d deliver the film to Hall before six the night before. They didn’t need the film I’d shot at Spence’s. Those pictures were documents, not evidence. They held no clues and, unless Jesse had performed a miracle of cleaning and restoration, that film could be re-shot easily. That left only one possibility. Someone had wanted my Conch Train pictures. And
not the detail shots of Omar “Joe Blow” Boudreau, either, because I could easily reproduce those, inside a different kind of walk-in fridge. They’d wanted my shots of the Front Street crime-scene onlookers.
I didn’t have the balls to admit to Duffy Lee Hall that his livelihood had been destroyed because someone wanted film I’d failed to drop off. I left him to his chore, rode two blocks down Simonton to a pay phone, and called
“Liska said, ‘Three P.M. exactly.’”
“Will you kiss me good-bye?”
“What’s he going to do, put you on Death Row?”
I laughed. “Let’s leave Liska out of this, for a moment.”
She laughed, too. She leaned across the front seat and quickly kissed my lips. She smelled of faint perspiration and shampoo rinse. She tasted like the sweetness and lemon of her iced tea.
Her eyes caught mine, and they smiled.
8
“ I t’s not as bad as it smells.”
I allowed Duffy Lee Hall his moment of nonsense.
I stood thirty feet from the burned building, but my hair and clothing had already absorbed the stench of charred wood and plastic. The weight of the firefighters’ water had caved in the pharmacy roof. Long pink strands of attic insulation, tangled in electrical wiring, hung against warped drywall. Support beams had settled at odd angles. Ash layered exposed surfaces. No question, the building would be bulldozed.
If Hall had meant to compare the extent of ruin to his personal odor, I’d buy into the idea. The sweat of emotion and exertion had drenched his blue denim work shirt. He’d been packing sooty boxes out of the ashes, wrapping them in garbage bags, hoping they wouldn’t ruin the interior of his vintage Volvo station wagon. He’d wasted his money with the plastic bags. I could swim off South Beach or shower for an hour. The Volvo would never lose the residual stink.
Hall had insisted that he needed no help. “No reason for both of us to ruin our clothes. This is my second carload. It ought to cover it.” He leaned into the Volvo to organize the boxes. His belly, a testament to the nation’s microbreweries, restricted his movement. He gave up and backed away. His round wire-rimmed glasses slid down his nose. “The darkroom used to
be a walk-in refrigerator.” He wagged his arm at the north wall of the gutted pharmacy. “The lunch counter used to be over here. They built new coolers when they moved the serving area to the United Street side. They couldn’t afford to rip down the old walk-in, so I got a perfect space. No light leaks, no temperature shifts. I mean … before this. Anyway, the steel walls and thick insulation saved my equipment.”
“Open for business somewhere else?”
A dejected exhale: “With a full house of jack-jawed customers …”
“ … who will understand the circumstances.”
He slid out of the car, headed back into the rubble for more. “But not their missing film. Be glad you didn’t leave yours last night.”
“You can’t wash the film, try to salvage it?”
“Nothing to wash. It’s gone. Somebody took it all.”
“Took your clients’ film … ?”
“ … and finished prints.”
“And burned it down, too?”
Duffy Lee slid a box of developing trays into the car. He barely nodded.
Theft and vandalism. A crime and an overkill cover-up. The deed and the distraction. It had gone down that way at Jesse Spence’s apartment.
Coincidence bites again. It clicked almost immediately. The phone bug in the Ziploc. Strike two had hit Duffy Lee Hall’s darkroom.
Someone had wanted my film and knew from eavesdropping Spence’s phone line that I’d deliver the film to Hall before six the night before. They didn’t need the film I’d shot at Spence’s. Those pictures were documents, not evidence. They held no clues and, unless Jesse had performed a miracle of cleaning and restoration, that film could be re-shot easily. That left only one possibility. Someone had wanted my Conch Train pictures. And
not the detail shots of Omar “Joe Blow” Boudreau, either, because I could easily reproduce those, inside a different kind of walk-in fridge. They’d wanted my shots of the Front Street crime-scene onlookers.
I didn’t have the balls to admit to Duffy Lee Hall that his livelihood had been destroyed because someone wanted film I’d failed to drop off. I left him to his chore, rode two blocks down Simonton to a pay phone, and called
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