Untold Story (17 page)

“Let’s go,” said Grabber. “We’ll take your car.” Best get the car shifted, because there was one person (maybe) who’d know just what she was looking at if she walked by.

“There’s a bar over in Gains that you’ll like,” said Grabber, going around to the passenger side.

He didn’t know any bar in Gains but they’d find something. Then he’d find out what was going on. He had an idea already, put it together pretty much the instant he saw the car.

Tinny had called him again. “What’s up, Grabber? What’s holding you? I’m telling you, man, I’ve got more work than I can handle. You know what’s going on around here?”

He reeled off a list. An actress back in rehab, a pop princess shaving her hair, the heiress to a hotel chain booked for driving while under the influence and about to be sent to jail.

“This year, listen to me, man, 2007 is going down in history. It’s the year of girls going wild. You coming down to get a piece of the action, or what?”

Grabber said he was on his way.

“That’s what you said last time.” Tinny paused. “What are you doing? What’s got you by the balls in—where’d you say?—Kensington?”

Grabber had spun him a line, but Tinny smelled something. That’s why Grabber had found this rat boy staking out the B and B.

The kid was wasting his time. Grabber, most likely, was wasting his time. Over the last few days he’d thought about nothing but Lydia. He’d followed her home from work. He’d followed her when she went into town on Wednesday at lunchtime, and down the street where she bought sandwiches, and then to the clothing store. What did he have so far? Same height, same build, same swing in her step. When she was leaving the kennels, she called out to the old gray-haired lady, and her voice was not the way he remembered it. Not so different, but not the exact same way. Her laugh, though, sent a shiver down his spine. Sometimes you had to think with your spine in this job.

They were in Gains now and he had to look out for a bar. “Take a right,” he said. “I think it’s down here.”

There was that guy who was obsessed with Jackie Onassis. She had an injunction taken out against him, and he wasn’t allowed within fifty feet of her. He kept on taking her photo. Every day he’d turn up at her apartment building. He ended up back in court. He still couldn’t stop. The guy was nuts. But Grabber knew how he felt.

“There it is,” he said. “You park. I’ll line up the beers.”

The kid jangled into the bar and pulled up a stool. The way he walked, loose-limbed, like his bones didn’t join together, got on Grabber’s nerves.

“What d’you want to know?” said Grabber.

The kid grinned. “Like, I don’t know. Wanted to meet you. Hear the stories—how you got some of those, like, really famous pictures.”

It was bullshit. No wonder Tinny wanted him in LA. This kid couldn’t grease his own arse with an entire pack of butter.

“Yeah,” said Grabowski. “Which ones?”

“You got the ones of her pregnant in a bikini, right?”

“Listen, Bozo,” said Grabber.

“It’s Hud, actually.”

“Listen, Hud, I didn’t take those shots. That wasn’t me.” It riled him, but this kid didn’t have a clue. He’d grown up in an age when actresses posed naked with swollen bellies on the covers of magazines. He couldn’t imagine the stink those pictures had caused. Grabber had been on the island. He could have taken the shots but he hadn’t. He did have some principles.

“Right,” said the kid. He scratched uneasily at his nipple ring.

“Let’s cut the crap. Tinny sent you, didn’t he?”

Rat boy chewed it over. “Yeah,” he said. “Tinny says you wouldn’t be here unless there was something going down. You got a scoop on something, is what he says.”

Grabowski took a pull on his bottle. “And he told you about those pictures. Did you even know who she was?”

Hud shrugged. “Just about.”

“Well, Tinny’s memory is obviously cracked. But stick around. LA’s got nothing on Kensington.”

“Really?” said the kid, leaning forward. He had long dark eyelashes like a cow’s. His tongue showed when he talked. Grabber resisted the urge to tweak that nipple ring right off.

“Yeah, really. Might look like Hicksville but I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

“We can work as a team,” said the kid.

“As long as it goes no further,” said Grabber. “Don’t even tell Tinny. We don’t want word getting out.”

“I swear.”

“Know the place I’m staying?”

“The bed-and-breakfast?”

“You’re smart. Madonna is in the next room.”

The kid twitched. But it wasn’t enough to get him going. Madonna, he’d have snapped her plenty of times.

Grabowski looked down the bar as if to check he wasn’t being overheard. “She’s there, and guess who she’s banging.”

“Who?”

“Swear on your mother’s life.”

“I swear. You’re not going to regret this, I promise you.”

“We’re a team now,” said Grabowski. “You’re not going to let me down.”

“Damn it, we’re a goddamn team.”

“I’m trusting you,” said Grabowski, putting his lips up close to the kid’s ear. “She’s banging Hugh Hefner.” He let that sink in. “Hugh Hefner, Santa Claus, and the seven fucking dwarves, in the Kensington bed-and-breakfast. Don’t tell anyone.”

There was a long pause while rat boy decided how to take being treated like the jerk that he was. Then he laughed. “Shit,” he said. “I told Tinny. I told Tinny this was dumb. I drove all this fucking way. I got straight in the car and fucking drove. Only stopped when I had to piss.”

Grabowski decided he was being too hard on the lad. He was only Tinny’s foot soldier, after all.

They had another beer and then another one, and Grabowski, in spite of himself, found that he was glad of the company. He’d spent too long on his own. Maybe that was why he was chasing ghosts all over town.

They talked cameras and lenses. The kid wanted to know what he used. Canon, always, for everything from 35 to 500 millimeters, Canon power drives, Quantum Turbo battery, Nikon flashgun. The kid said he used a PalmPilot sometimes. The targets never even knew they’d been snapped. He thought he’d invented photographic subterfuge.

Well, if he wanted to hear about legends, Grabowski could tell him a few.

“You heard of Jacques Lange? No, never mind. He wanted to get a shot of Princess Caroline of Monaco taking her exams when she was a schoolgirl. He got into the classroom somehow. And he had a Minox hidden in his packet of cigarettes. Creativity,” said Grabowski. “There were no PalmPilots in those days.”

“That’s awesome,” said the kid. “I never even heard of a Minox.”

“You ever hear the story about how I got friendly with your boss?” said Grabber. He sounded like an old-timer, and he knew it, but he guessed that’s what he was. “I’ll tell you. It was Necker Island. You know where that is? British Virgin Islands. Right. It’s privately owned so all the press were staying on other islands nearby and going out on boats to try and get shots. Yes, it was her. Bang on, you’re smarter than you look. She did a ten-minute photo call and then we were all supposed to leave her alone. There was an American television and photo crew. They were the flashiest guys in town and they hired a submarine for sixteen thousand dollars a day. Thought they’d got us all beat. When they got down by Necker they told the captain to put up the periscope. The captain just looks at them. There’s no periscope. It’s a submarine for watching fish, not an effing U-boat. Me and Tinny, we laughed ourselves stupid in the bar over that.”

“Tinny wants you in LA, man. Said if it turned out you just had your head up your ass, try and bring you back with me.”

“I’ll tell Tinny you tried your best.”

“So what you really doing here?” said the kid.

He told the same story he’d given Mrs. Jackson. He was working on a Robert Frank–type project—exhibition and book, small towns in the United States and England. Photographs and text by John Grabowski. She was going to clock all the camera equipment at some point, so he’d found a way to work it into his résumé.

The kid had never heard of Robert Frank. Probably he had never heard of Brassaï or Cartier-Bresson. There was no room for art in this business anymore. Grabber had sold plenty of out-of-focus shots in his time and was glad of the money, but he’d come up the old way. He could compose a frame.

Grabowski sighed and ordered another round. “If you take people’s photos without their permission, what does that make you?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Paparazzi.”

“Maybe,” said Grabowski, “but remember, the people in those Robert Frank pictures didn’t agree to be in them either. They didn’t sign model release forms.”

The kid dabbled in the bowl of peanuts and rained a few into his mouth. “People are snotty sometimes,” he said, chewing, “when I tell them what I do. Then I say, hey, I got a photo of that actress making out on a beach, and they say, oh, let’s have a look.”

“Of course they do,” said Grabowski. “By the way, what did you say to my landlady? Did you say you were looking for me?”

The kid narrowed his eyes, offended, apparently. “Wasn’t born yesterday. I didn’t go in. I don’t go in unless I know what I’m going to find and I’m ready for it.”

“Good lad,” said Grabowski. It was after five o’clock and the bar was starting to fill up with construction workers. You could see where the hard hats had left a red band across their foreheads.

He had to work out what to do about this Lydia. Was there a move he could make without scaring her off ? That’s if he wasn’t entirely deluded. At least the photographer who’d stalked Jackie Onassis hadn’t been obsessed with a ghost. But there was no way Grabowski could leave. If he didn’t pursue it, he would always be haunted by the opportunity he might have missed. A pair of blue eyes, a ring of green around the right pupil, a familiar walk, a laugh that set him tingling. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to stop him walking away.

“I’m not intrusive,” said Hud. His cow tongue explored his bottom lip. “I’m not one of those guys. I never rammed anyone with my car. I never broke into anyone’s house. I’m just doing my job. Live and let live, you know.”

It was evening and Grabowski didn’t know what to do with himself. He ran his fingers around the rosary, sitting on the edge of the bed. He paced the room. What he needed was a way of deciding. Was it worth pursuing or was it too ridiculous to contemplate?

It was possible. Anything was possible. But how could he prove it? What could he do to find out? If he was right and he started asking too many questions around town she’d take off as soon as she heard.

Patience, he told himself. Think of it as a stakeout. It may be the longest of your life, but if it pays off . . . He almost felt sick with excitement. Maybe Cathy would have him back.

He was running ahead of himself now.

He couldn’t ask questions around town just yet, but he could start asking questions back home. He made a call.

“Nick,” he said, “I know it’s late but I’ve got something I need you to do.”

Nick worked in police records and, unofficially, for Grabowski. He was good at turning things up, knew where to look and how. Of all the people that Grabowski had on his “payroll”—doormen, waiters, nannies, PRs, drivers—Nick was the most useful.

“It’ll cost you,” said Nick, his standard response. He sounded wide awake. Although Grabowski had, over the years, called him at all hours of day and night he had never once caught him asleep.

“Lydia Snaresbrook,” he said. “Mid-to-late forties. Find out anything you can.”

“That’s it?” said Nick. “Just a name, no DOB, nothing else? What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. It’s a pretty unusual name. Find out how many people we could be talking about first.”

“So I check out the General Registry Office, all the Lydia Snaresbrooks born between, say, 1955 and 1965. What do I do then?”

“I don’t know,” said Grabowski. “Just call me as soon as it’s done.”

Chapter Fifteen

20 February 1998

A good mother, yes, she was. She is. (More and more I find myself tempted to write of her in the past tense.) As strange as it sounds, it was one of her reasons for leaving. It bears its peculiarities and complications.

She believed she would be “bumped off,” as she quaintly put it, thus depriving her sons of a mother in any case. That wouldn’t have been sufficient. She’d have been willing to live with that risk if that had been best for them.

But she had a growing conviction that her presence was destabilizing to her boys, had convinced herself that the circus that surrounded her would be increasingly detrimental to them. And, of course, she was determined that once the dust had settled, she would be able to see them again.

21 February 1998

I lay down for a few minutes yesterday thinking I would come back to the diary, but I fell asleep and when I woke up I remained in something of a daze until it was time for bed.

I was still there when Gloria came this morning and she rang on the bell three times (she’d forgotten her key) because I didn’t want to answer until I had my dressing gown, which proved a little difficult to locate, and a struggle to get on.