I slid back the chair and looked under the table. The smell of mold was a lot funkier down there, and the knees of my jeans were soon wet from the shallow puddles.
Aiming the flashlight with one hand, I tried hard to pry off the paneling with the other. I couldn't get my fingers under the edge.
In this cramped, unlit space, the slightest maneuvering was awkward. I put the flashlight down and, steadying myself with one hand, reached into my back pocket for my keys.
I should have just backed out from under the table. As I strained to extricate my keys, a mouse scampered over the back of my hand on the floor. I couldn't even move without falling on my face.
I managed to pull out the keys and was finally able to pry up the splintered edge enough to get a fingerhold. With a good tug the panel popped off. It exposed a musty space between the footings of the cement foundation.
I reached into the darkness and my fingers landed on something soft and damp. I pulled my hand away fast. Maybe it was a dead rat, or a squirrel. It grossed me the hell out.
I aimed the flashlight and could just make out something white. Sucking in a breath, I stuck my hand into the space again.
This time the sodden object didn't feel like a decaying carcass. It felt more like a soggy cardboard box. I grabbed hold of a corner and carefully pulled it out.
I carried my treasure with both hands and made my way in the dark to where I knew the table was. It was a Kodak paper box like those against the wall. Slowly lifting off the lid – it was so damp, I was afraid it might fall apart – I put on my flashlight and saw that it was packed to bursting with developed prints.
On top was a contact sheet crowded with a grid of tiny, seemingly identical images about the size of two postage stamps.
Running my flashlight over them, I saw that in each frame a naked couple was doing it doggie-style. As the flashlight swept across, my eyes seemed to animate the images until they were rocking against each other like actors in a flickering silent movie.
I didn't know the red-haired woman on her knees, but I had no trouble recognizing the man behind her on his.
It was my brother.
Chapter 72
I WALKED UP the steep basement stairs like a scared teenager leaving a drugstore with a copy of Penthouse. The pornographic family album was tucked under my arm. Isabel was waiting at the top of the stairs.
"You all right?" she leaned down and asked. "You look like hell, Jack."
"It's the chemicals. All I need is a little fresh air." Then I added nonchalantly, "I found some old pictures Sammy took of Peter. I was hoping I could go through them a little more leisurely at home. They stirred up a lot of feelings."
"Of course, Jack. Keep whatever you like. You don't have to return any of it. But I am going to hold you to your promise of introducing me to Pauline."
Even before I got out the front door, I was jumping out of my skin. I felt hopped-up and weirded-out. But mostly, I was scared.
I thought about the break-in last summer at our house. I figured that whoever had caught up with Sammy was looking for the pictures. And they were prepared to torture and kill to get them. I carefully put the pictures into the bag strapped to the bike's fuel tank. Isabel watched me from the kitchen window.
I raced the quarter mile into town and called Pauline from the first pay phone I saw. "Pauline, don't go back to the apartment," I said. "Go to your sister's. Anywhere. Just don't go there!"
After I hung up, I parked the bike behind the Shagwong and walked the two blocks to the Memory Motel.
I got a room in the back, double-locked the doors, and pulled the shades. If the guys who killed Sammy had spotted me, I might not have much time.
I began emptying the soggy box, one damp print at a time. At the top of the stack were more contact sheets like the one I had looked at in the basement.
I peeled off at least twenty before I got to the first eight-by-ten print.
It showed Peter sitting on the edge of a bed, grimacing unself-consciously into the lens. A fortyish woman straddled him like a jockey.
I began laying out all the prints, one at a time, until every piece of furniture, every square inch of musty broadloom, and every cracked bathroom tile were covered with Sammy and Peter's brilliant career. The glossy prints, still redolent of the development chemicals, captured twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, and one fivesome. There was straight sex and gay sex and bi sex.
Sammy's work was not amateurish. The lighting was good, the focus sharp, and the camera angles explicit. Sammy had a good eye, and my brother was a talented model. After a while I just couldn't look at any more pictures. I called Pauline on her cell phone. I told her what I'd found and where I was.
At midnight she arrived, and after a long hug, I showed her Sammy and Peter's greatest hits. For a couple of hours, we drank coffee and studied the pictures. When the shock of the content wore off, we realized we had evidence. We really had something here. Like curators preparing an exhibit, we took notes, made lists, and estimated dates.
Then we rearranged them chronologically. We started with Peter looking no older than fifteen and ended with shots that couldn't have been taken more than a few weeks before he died.
In those last few shots, he sat in a hot tub with a gray-haired man and a beautiful blond woman who was topless.
Barry and Dana Neubauer.
I guess she really was Daddy's little girl. Believe it or not, it wasn't the photo of Dana and her father that did it to me, though. It was Peter at fourteen and fifteen. He was a sophomore in high school when it started.
That night the rules changed forever. I called Fenton first, then Hank and Marci. Finally, I called Mack.
In twenty minutes we were all crowded into the same seedy motel room. Before the sun came up, we'd not only vowed to avenge the death of my brother, we had an idea how we might be able to do it.
Part Five. THE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT
Chapter 73
FOR THE AVERAGE single-digit Hamptons millionaire, the start of another summer in paradise is marked by gridlock on Ninety-sixth Street, then a slow crawl on Route 27 and an hour's wait for a twenty-five-dollar pizza at Sam's. For those who fly over the traffic in private planes and helicopters, it starts with the party at the Neubauers' Beach House.
According to friends of Marci's and Hank's who were part of the vast army of suppliers, Barry Neubauer had written his party planner a blank check. With a week to go, she had already dropped a million dollars. Among other niceties, that buys you David Bouley to stir the sauce, Yo-Yo Ma to scrape his Stradivarius, and the inimitable Johan Johan to cut the flowers and fluff up the bouquets. And there's still enough left for champagne served in chilled, ten-ounce crystal stem glasses; a dozen different kinds of oysters; the deejay of the moment, Samantha Ronson; and a wooden dance floor constructed on the back lawn.
Pauline and I had spent a little cash, too. To find out who was coming this year, Pauline got back in touch with her old hacker pal. He reinvited himself into the party planner's hard drive and plucked out the guest list.
Placing last year's list and this year's side by side offered a peek into the interaction of celebrities and socialites. Among the anonymous rich who made up the bulk of the guests, virtually everyone was invited back. But among the boldface celebs, the turnover was 100 percent. Last year's hip-hop emcee had been replaced by this year's Oscar winners. Last year's fashion designer was supplanted by a more current fashionista. Even if you were an artiste whose stock had managed to soar for another twelve months, you still weren't coming back. Invite the riffraff two years in a row and they might start to feel as if they actually belonged. They don't. To the seriously wealthy, celebrities are only a notch above the help.