False Negative (Hard Case Crime) (22 page)

“It’s not Shakespearean. The egg farm where Etta was killed—”

“Where she was found. We don’t know where she died.”

“
That
egg farm,” Pixley said. “Hub Chase was born there.”

“How do you know?”

“
The Sporting News
named him to their pre-season all-star rookie team with a nice write-up. A three-hundred hitter in two seasons of triple-A ball with good power and speed on the base-paths. Six-foot, two hundred pounds, throws right, bats left, hometown Poultrina, New Jersey.”

“You remind me of myself,” Jordan said, “when I was ten.”

He hadn’t meant it the way it came out. But then what did he mean? Pixley never showed an angry side. Jordan wasn’t even sure he’d recognize the signs. But on the greatest day of the photographer’s life this wasn’t the best moment.

“I’m a big baseball fan,” Pixley said, “always have been.”

“Does the
Sporting News
know where to find him?”

“He’s at spring training with the A’s in West Palm Beach. They break camp next week.”

“I—uh-huh.” Someone off the street in a beat-up leather jacket was homing in on Mollie. “You’ll set up a shoot in the meantime with my friend?”

“That has to wait, too. My best equipment is locked in my studio.”

“She’ll be disappointed.”

“I know a thing or two about beautiful women,” Pixley said. “They don’t carry a grudge in front of the camera.”

“I told her you’d have her looking stunning.” The man in the leather jacket had his own opinions about Pixley’s work. Mollie was nodding agreeably while he expounded on them. “Gotta get back to her,” Jordan said. “Call me before you leave town.”

“I’ll give her the full treatment,” Pixley said after him. “She won’t be able to complain about a thing.”

The cheese and wine were gone with most of the crowd when a girl dressed all in black walked in. She was nineteen or twenty with a serious expression, and an expensive camera around her neck, an Exakta Varex with a Pentaprism viewfinder favored by pros who could afford one.

A lap around the gallery ended at a portrait of stoop laborers bringing in the melon harvest at a Vineland truck farm. She put her nose close, then stepped back with her fingers squared in front of her eyes. Pixley made her for a rich kid, the arty type hungry for Bohemian life in the Village. An NYU coed, if he
wasn’t mistaken, with a major in the social sciences. There wasn’t much he couldn’t tell about some women from a single look.

Mrs. Coopersmith, the gallery owner, came by to answer her questions. “Seventy-five dollars, yes, and signed by the photographer. That’s him over there by the window. We close in ten minutes.”

“Mr. Pixley,” the girl said to him. “I’m Gail Aubrey, a big fan of your work.”

She brushed a tendril curl behind her ear. A pretty girl on the wrong side of the camera.

“My first fan,” Pixley said. “I’ll always remember the name. You never forget your first.”

Gail Aubrey’s cheeks, which were peaches and cream, went heavy on the peaches. If he had her in his viewfinder (a primitive contraption next to her Pentaprism), he’d shoot her with Kodachrome. Pixley hated the garishness of color. But Gail Aubrey’s lovely complexion would be squandered in shades of gray.

“Your subjects look into the camera without knowing it’s there,” she said. “How do you consistently achieve that effect?”

“You misunderstand my intent. They know it’s there. They’re playing to it.”

Gail nodded uneasily. Something else Pixley knew instantly about most women: Which of their insecurities to exploit first.

“It’s the photographer they’re not cognizant of. That’s the secret. They forget all about me till I have what I want from them. What excellent equipment you have.”

She patted the Exakta against her breast. “Greenwich Village is chockablock with interesting faces. I can’t walk to the store without shooting off a roll of film. Walker Evans is my favorite photographer. What’s your opinion of him?”

Evans’ sharecroppers, the smudged aristocracy of Southern poverty, depressed him. Shooting a coroner’s slab for
Real Detective
was more uplifting.

“We’re all in his debt. Walker is looking over my shoulder every time I set up a picture.”

“That’s how I feel, too,” Gail said.

Such a good-looking girl. He pictured her in sharp resolution on black sand, creamy skin against volcanic ash. A beach far from the yellow grit of the Jersey Shore. Black sand and black sheets.

She was a junior at NYU, an anthropology major, and anthropology bored her. What she wanted to do was to take pictures. He asked to see her camera, and fired off three shots before she could get herself together. A quick finger on the trigger was indispensible. He told her it was the first thing she had to learn.

“I can’t wait to see how they come out,” she said.

“They’re not art, just something to remember you by besides your name.” He gave her his address on a matchbook. “Send me the one you think is second best.”

“Oh, they’ll be art,” she said. “I know your time is valuable, but I’d love to hear what you think of my recent pictures. I live nearby, right off Washington Square.”

“How can I say no? My hotel is on the way.”

She brought him to a fifth-floor walkup. The kitchen had been converted into a darkroom. Her photos were what he expected. A naïve eye for Bowery bums and the Italian pushcart vendors on Bleecker Street portrayed them excruciatingly as exotics.

“Be brutal,” she said.

“I can’t. You’re definitely on the right track. I’m going to keep one or two to show Mrs. Coopersmith.”

“You’re a dear.”

“May I take your picture again?” he said. “Something more revealing of you?”

“I study photography at night at the Artists’ League. My instructor says a camera is a knife that cuts through our subjects’ defenses.”

“I couldn’t put it better myself,” Pixley said. “If you’ll change into something less prim, we can cut through some of yours.”

“I’m in your hands.”

“I’ll go easy,” he said, with a smile. “My knife is dull.”

Any other man she’d met twenty minutes ago trying to talk her out of her clothes Pixley knew she wouldn’t be so eager to please. What did she have to fear from a harmless pixie? Something else he could predict about women was a quick yes when he asked them to undress in the interest of art. It was nothing to brag about. He wanted them thinking hard before they answered, to have second thoughts.

The bedroom door remained open while Gail pulled her sweater over her head. Pixley watched her try on a filmy blouse, then take it off, unhook her brassiere, and slip into the blouse again with nothing underneath. She grinned when she saw him peeking. A peasant skirt completed the outfit.

“Is this what you had in mind?”

“Even better,” he said.

“How do you want me?”

“I’ll leave it up to you.”

She sat on the couch with her legs crossed under her while he fiddled with the flash attachment. When he continued to ignore her, she ran her fingers through her hair, and let the stiffness out of her spine. The flashbulb went off immediately.

“I wasn’t ready,” she said.

“That’s the point.”

“What should we try now?”

“It’s still up to you.”

She moistened her lips, parted them slightly, slitted her eyes. “How’s this?”

“Ridiculous,” he said, and got the picture he wanted when she went into a pout.

“You don’t miss a beat, do you?”

He popped out the burned flashbulb, replaced it, and advanced the film. “What? I didn’t hear.”

She repeated herself leaning into the camera, exaggerating the words. “I said you don’t—”

He pressed the shutter again. “You don’t have to shout,” he said. “I can’t afford to miss anything, because it won’t be there again. What else have you got for me?”

She tossed her head, spread her arms across the back of the couch, showing off her breasts inside the thin blouse. In the glare of flashbulbs Gail Aubrey wasn’t the proper young lady he’d encountered strolling through his show. He opened her top button, got the picture, and was hiking her skirt around her hips when she caught his wrist. “Uh-uh.”

“If you don’t like the shot, I’ll destroy it.”

“I said no.”

“You’re being childish, Gail. Your instructor would be the first to say so.”

“He didn’t tell us to make our subjects do things that make them feel cheap.”

“So much for cutting through defenses.”

“That’s enough.”

He pressed the shutter.

Gail covered herself, though it hardly seemed necessary. He was less than a man, pathetic once you got past the fey charm. Many big names in photography were misanthropic, she saw it in their work. Pix Pixley’s art was humanitarian, but she couldn’t say that about him as a person. She was buttoning up when he shoved her onto the couch. Had she ever misjudged anyone so badly? He was a maniac who would do anything for a picture.

“I want you out of here,” she said, “or I’m calling the police.”

He dropped beside her, bent his arm across her face, and
pushed her onto her back. His other hand slid under her skirt. She heard stitches pop, and saw her panties in shreds on the floor.

He was all over her now. A finger crooked inside her blouse, and buttons scattered across the room. What was happening would almost be comical if it was happening to someone else. An elf was tearing off her clothes, and she was helpless to stop him. In this crazy part of the city you had to choose your friends carefully. A girl wasn’t safe even with a fairy.

He twisted onto his side, and zipped open his fly. Gail looked away into the face of a demented little boy. If she lived to be a hundred she wouldn’t be able to make sense of him. This wasn’t the time to try. She pulled his hair, slapped his ears. A knee slicing between hers made space for the other, pried her legs wide, opened her, announced her vulnerability before he forced himself inside wriggling and grunting, his heart hammering against her dead one, tearing her apart. She dug her nails into the sweaty back of his neck. She felt herself blacking out, and prayed that she would while she concentrated her hate on him, cursed the rotten chain of events that had brought them together going back to the day she was born.

“You vile piece of shit,” she said when he was done with her.

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“How could you...?”

“You said it yourself, Gail. I never miss a beat.”

She’d be lucky not to end up pregnant or diseased, but would always have sorrow. What more could he do to her? “I’ll see to it you’re put away forever,” she said.

“Who’ll believe I’m capable—that the terrible thing you’re accusing me of ever crossed my mind? They’ll say you’re delusional.” His voice was up an octave, and had taken on a lisp. “I’ll tell them they’ve got you wrong—you’re a blackmailer.”

She clutched the blouse around her shoulders.

“If you go to the police, pictures telling a different story will be sent to the newspapers, to your parents, and to the administrators of your school.”

She felt tears welling, but wouldn’t let them come. They were a part of herself she was able to keep him from having.

“I hope you die,” she said.

Jordan hopped the rail, jogged down the third base line past empty box seats. It was a gray afternoon threatening rain, and the weather was keeping the fans at home.

In the visitors’ dugout a few teammates looked around the old ballpark as groundskeepers spread a heavy tarpaulin over the infield. The last game of the exhibition season had brought them to Brooklyn. For many it was their first visit to Ebbets Field. At the end of the bench a player in a satin windbreaker was studying a comic book. A pink bubble exploded on his lips, and he scraped the gum back inside his mouth and blew another as Jordan sat down next to him.

“Hub? Adam Jordan with the
Atlantic City Press.
I’m putting together a story on American League rookies with a strong shot at sticking in the majors. As the A’s top prospect, what’s it been like for you breaking camp with the big ballclub?”

“After three years kicking around the bushes? Figure it out yourself.”

“I didn’t come all the way to Brooklyn to answer my own questions.”

“It’s like this,” Hub Chase said. “Everything’s first class in the bigs. The meal money, the hotels, the twat can’t be beat. Even on a second division team going nowhere.”

“What you’re saying,” Jordan said, “is you’re looking forward to a great season, and bringing the fans out to Shibe Park so the A’s can stay in Philadelphia where they belong.”

“You don’t need me.” Hub turned the page. “Lemme read.”

“After the year you had in Newark, my readers want to know why the Yankees let you go.”

“Why do they think?” Hub spit out his gum. He was a big man with powerful arms and shoulders, wide across the chest. A pink wad landed in the coaches’ box alongside third base. “On account of that lying cunt at the Park Sheraton that said I roughed her up.”

He reached under the bench for a first baseman’s mitt. Jordan recognized a real scoop. If the A’s planned to use Hub at first, it was something to pass on to a sports desk. Hub slipped the glove on his left hand, pounded it with his fist.

“What’s your side?”

“I ain’t allowed to talk about it. The lawyers warned me if I open my yap I’ll be sent down to Class D ball.”

“Are the Yanks paying her off to make her go way like they always did for the Babe?”

Hub ground a baseball into the pocket. “Like I said, figure it out for yourself.”

“You’ll be getting in some work at first base?”

“Can’t talk about that either. Manager’s orders. Anything else I can help you with?”

“I’m thinking about calling you the Hard-Luck Kid,” Jordan said. “How does that sound?”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’ve got legal troubles, and then you’re traded right after your wife is killed. That’s got to be rough.”

“Couldn’t’ve come at a better time,” Hub said. “She was my
ex
-wife. I don’t got to pay alimony no more.”

“Can I quote you?”