“I can make a note of it, Miss Dean.”
“I’ve been through too many mills this time.”
“Not necessarily”
“But you said respect.”
“Once in a while you stop posing for me and remembering lines from old movies, and then I could respect the person that shows through.”
“It could be strange to have a friend like you. I have no female friends, really. And just two male friends, fine old guys, both in their early sixties. I love them dearly. Males in your bracket are either studs or competitors, sweetie, or they want to find an angle to get rich off me.”
“We might end up friends, Lee. I better go along. I am going to take these pictures along.” As I picked them up from the desk she hopped up out of the chair and came running over and grabbed at the envelope. I did not let her pull it out of my hand. I said, “Either you trust me all the way, or I get off right now, Lee. I need them for information and leverage.”
After looking at me with a long and searching intensity, she let go. “I never thought I’d let anybody even see those. Tray, will you be terribly careful?”
“Yes.”
“I can send Dana over with the expense money tomorrow. Will that be all right?”
“Fine.”
“Please be careful with those pictures. If they get out, my career is dead right now. And… as you must damn well know, it is the only thing I have left.”
Tears balanced on her lower lids, and one broke loose and tracked her cheek. It did not look real. A makeup man had darted onto the set and put them there with an eyedropper. Pure glycerine. Maybe they weren’t real. She would have learned to cry almost at will, and cry in a way that would leave her as lovely as before.
“You be careful, Lee. I don’t like the sound of that note. Sexually disturbed people try to be the sword of the Lord, going around slaying the sinful. See that you get pretty good protection this week in Miami.”
She walked me to the door. She caught at my arm, gave me a quick kiss, as soft and trusting as a child’s, then went down the corridor with me, found Dana Holtzer in a small room, typing, and turned me over to her. Dana got up and took me down the stairs and out to the waiting limousine. I saw the quick and wary way she glanced at the envelope I was carrying, and caught a flavor of total disapproval.
The driver’s name was Martin. She told him to take me back, or to wherever I wanted to go. It was after five. I had him stop where I could phone. I phoned Gabe Marchman in Lauderdale and told him I had a problem. He said it was convenient to bring it right over.
On one of those hunches that may save your life, though you can never prove it one way or another, I had Martin drop me off downtown. I went into one end of a big drugstore and out the other and into a cab.
Gabe Marchman was a great combat photographer. You have seen his name on those classic Korea things. A land mine smashed his legs all to hell. While convalescing in Hawaii, he met and married a very rich and very beautiful little Chinese-Hawaiian girl named Doris. Gabe looks like a sawed-off Abraham Lincoln. He is still on crutches. They have six kids.
With his mobility gone, he has gotten into another aspect of photography. He has one of the most completely equipped private labs in the South, taking up a wing almost as big as the main house. He does experimental work, and problem assignments for large fees. He is a sour little man, adored by all who get to know him.
Doris, blooming large again with child, sent me on through to the lab. Gabe grunted at me. I said I wanted to know as much as possible about some pictures I had with me. We were in his print room. He turned on more intense lights. He levered himself onto a stool and spread the dozen pictures out in a row on top of the work table.
From his lack of reaction, they could have been pictures of puppies or flower gardens. “Whadaya know about ‘em?” he said. “Just technically.”
“They were taken a year and a half ago in California on 35mm film. The person involved estimates that the only place from which they could be taken was about a hundred yards away, but that is just an estimate. The person involved saw another set of prints over a year ago, and they were just like these as far as subject matter, but these seem to be fuzzier and grayer.”
He grunted and got out a large magnifying glass and began to go over them very carefully, one by one.
I said, “I forgot something. My client saw and destroyed the negatives. The negatives included more than in a lot of these pictures.”
He continued his careful examination. Finally he swiveled around. “Okay, we accept the hundred-yard distance. I would say it was probably Plus-X using a very fine telephoto lens, one thousand millimeter. Maybe the f/6.3 Nikkor, a reflector type with two mirrors. It’s only about so long and weighs three or four pounds. It was used with a tripod or some other kind of solid rest. With 35mm a lens that size gives you about a twenty-power magnification, so at a hundred yards it would give the same as a normal lens fifteen feet from the subject. These three are the only ones where he printed the full frame. Now, if he printed about half the frame, it would be like being seven or eight feet away from the subject. And this is the average for most of these. Just this extreme close-up was done from maybe a quarter or less of the negative, showing the woman at a viewing distance of about three feet, with less definition. There’s good depth of field and all motion is frozen, so a hundred yards away I’ll buy. Okay so far?”
“Yes.”
“Assuming the same guy who took the pictures made the original prints, he’s a good workman. Excellent exposure, good edge to edge definition, and when he masked the negatives and did his printing, he had good quality control. You can tell that he did some burning in and dodging, and he couldn’t help using a pretty good sense of composition. I would say he took a hell of a lot of shots, maybe several hundred, and came up with the best ones. Very sharp, very clear, and he made high-gloss prints. I’d say definitely a pro, if that’s any help to you. Now then, some clown got hold of a set of the prints. See this little flare here on this one and this one. That’s where his lighting kicked back off the gloss. He made a set of copy negatives and a new set of prints. This is crappy paper, and he butchered his developing and butchered his printing solutions and times, but there was enough quality in the prints he copied so that all in all it comes through not too bad. The guy who did the originals would be incapable of doing such cruddy work the second time around, even if he was operating in a motel closet. But, having the copy negatives, he can make any number of these poor prints. Your client destroying the original negatives means nothing now. It is unmistakably her in every one of these. I would guess she’s the one you’re working for.”
“Yes. Now I wonder if you can do something with these.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“From these can you make another set of negatives, and a set of prints that are a little different than these?”
“McGee, if you start out with crud, you end up with crud. I can’t get back to the original print quality. I can print for more contrast and clean up these whites a little, but a close focus on fuzz gives you fuzz.”
After an original reluctance, he began to get interested. He used a copy camera, a larger negative size, a copy film with a fine grain. By the time he had developed the negatives, Doris began to howl for a little cooperation, so he hung them up to dry and we went in for drinks. The nursemaid had taken over the bedtime routines. The older ones trudged in to say their well-mannered goodnights.
Doris cooked and served an old Chinese-Hawaiian specialty-broiled steaks, baked potatoes and tossed green salad. The three of us, in front of the big fireplace with a very small fire, revamped the State Department, simplified all tax legislation, tore down half of Florida and rebuilt it in a more sane and pleasing fashion.