He squints up. The light is blurry but evolving, about to spill. Two minutes, three max, before the rays slice over the ridge.
Blaine fumbles with the Nikon, checking settings. His heart is thudding. The air is salty and brisk, warm in the sun and cold in the shadows. Gulls circle with thin cries. He crouches and takes three fast setup shots, bracketing the exposure.
He checks the tiny images on the monitor, imagining them enlarged and cropped. It’s an interesting angle, with restless water for a backdrop, wobbly splashes of red and blue bleeding off boats and cranes, the dying man angling into the foreground and tapering away to an out-of-focus thigh. Even if he’s overestimated the end result, even if the visuals stink, the concept remains dynamite, and Photoshop will do the rest.
Sun rakes across the water. It touches the dying man’s hand. It spreads its gold down the arm clad in leather, seeking the face. Safe now, prepped, another minute to wait, Blaine calls 911. He gives directions. The operator wants to keep him on the line, but that precious moment has arrived, and Blaine needs both hands. He’s done his duty. He interrupts the questioning, promises he’ll wait right here, and closes the call.
Then squats, camera supported on knee, molding his body into a tripod. He’s got the man’s face in the viewfinder. He shifts closer till he’s framed those eyes, waits till they’re soaked in amber, brilliant and pure.
“What are you seeing?” he whispers. Snick.
The sunlight spreads and dulls, a stone-cold stillness comes over the man, and from a distance the shrill rise and fall of sirens approach, one, two, three, like a chorus of angels coming to take him away.
What a morning. Minutes after the call, the police and paramedics noisily arrive in fleets of strobing light. Shunted to the sidelines, Blaine catches a few more action shots before he’s told to cut it out. A uniform tells him to hang tight — Detective Dixon will talk with him shortly.
Dixon turns out to be a bulky woman with messy brown curls, tired eyes, and mannish clothes that look hastily chosen, like she’s been flipped out of bed without warning. She leads the way down the road, into the chilly interior of the Canfisco building, the only nearby shelter from the threat of pending rain.
Inside, fishery staff are being questioned in various locations. Dixon and Blaine go upstairs to escape the noisy machinery of the fish plant, into a large lunchroom. The swing doors wheeze shut behind them. In one corner, a woman who might be a janitor is being questioned, struggling with her English. Dixon and Blaine take a table at the far side of the room.
The detective unbuttons her coat, then flips through a small notebook. She searches her pockets, finds a phone, and a pen, places both on the table in front of her, then tucks the phone away again. Finally says, “So.” She looks at Blaine with distant interest. She studies her notes again, appears to hold her breath, exhales, and out it comes in a blurt of indifference: “Your name is Blaine Burrows and you’re an artist and you live on Union Street, is that correct?”
Blaine agrees it’s correct.
Dixon says, “What kind of artist are you?”
He doesn’t like the way she flattens the noun. “Visual.”
Dixon seems to doodle in her notebook. Seems to be etching triangles, over and over, triangles within triangles, and doesn’t ask for elaboration.
Blaine says, “Digital photography, collage, cyber-manipulation. Cold kind of art, my dad called it. His name was Stan Burrows, maybe you’ve heard of him?”
Dixon shakes her head.
“One of yesterday’s celebs. Big in the photographic world, mostly landscapes. The old silver halide dynasty, black-and-white, chemical trays, red lights. Amazing how far we’ve come, hey? Too bad Stan didn’t live to see that my cold art is being published too. This fall. The collection is called City. That’s all. City. Lot of structure, not a lot of people shots, ’cause that’s been done to death. But they’re in there, like puzzle pieces, just part of the chain-link, right? Or the asphalt, or the puddles. Except for on the cover I’ve got an old guy. I met him on Alexander. He was sitting on the curb, mad as a hatter. Fabulous cover, ’cause it’s man as city, right? Bang, centered, all face, like this.” He crops his own face with his hands to show the detective his focus. “Pale-blue irises, shiny like moonstone, shocking against dark dust and wrinkles. Symmetric wrinkles, like a network of streets and alleys. Super super high-res with just a small glitch over one pupil. Titled the shot Pixelize. Play on words, right? Pixel... eyes.”
Dixon says nothing. Blaine watches her, but his mind is elsewhere, moving between the book launch and the shot he’s going to load tonight, highlights and shadows tweaked. His heart still hammers like he’s won the lotto. He’ll call it Threshold, back of the book, the visual he’s been looking for, the perfect exclamation point to end his five-year collection of urban blowdown. Threshold. A lead-in to Book II?
Dixon says, “So what brought you to this particular parking lot?”
“Chance,” Blaine says. “Was out at dawn, taking shots. Up on the overpass, scanning the harbor and tracks. Viewfinder caught what I thought was a body. An arm, anyway. Zoomed in, went, Oh my god. Drove right over and checked. Called 911.”
He smiles at her, wanting her to smile back. Even women of her age are taken by him, and flush pink when he turns it on. He’s a good-looking guy, and he knows it. But cold shoulders make him nervous, and he doesn’t like being nervous.
“What time did you first spot the guy with your zoom?”
Blaine blinks. He places his hand on his camera, as if to shield it from flying debris. “Just about sunrise. Sorry, I never thought to check.”
“Sure. Well, let’s do it this way. Your call came in at 5:54. That help?”
Blaine shifts in his chair. So he hadn’t called 911 as soon as he might have, and it hits him, the proof is time-stamped on the chip. But a minute here or there wouldn’t change the end result. The only difference was that he had seized the chance to immortalize a nobody. If anything, he should be thanked.
He says, “Took awhile to drive over, then to find him. I guess five, six minutes from the time I spotted him to making the call.”
Dixon makes a note. And then, oddly, she seems to drift. Big woman, yet light as a bubble. She’s watching him, but seems abstracted. Her face is more interesting than Blaine had first thought. He imagines her on the cover of Book II. Stark, artificial light coming in from the side. Maybe even backlit to shadow. The Soul of Authority.
But back to his immediate problem, he decides to protect himself with a little white lie: “The guy was dead when I got here.”
Her brows hitch without interest, like she doesn’t get it and doesn’t really want to. She’s jaded beyond care. She sits here, half-asleep on the job, thick as mud. He mentally throws a frame around her jowls and brows, cutting out the extraneous, keeping to the theme of face as metaphor. He’s nailing down the brand. He’ll run it by his editor when he’s done here today. Meanwhile, get on this lady’s good side, ask if she’ll sit for him.
She says, “You see anybody at or around the scene? From the overpass, say, or as you were driving in?”
“No ma’am. I only wish.” He slouches, hooking bicep over chairback, showing off his hard-earned muscles.
She almost smiles, finally thawing. He’s got her.
He says, “Detective, I know I’m being nosy, but any idea what his story is? Drug deal gone wrong?”