by Rex Burns
“O.K., baby, let’s break it!” Bennett snapped off the glaring lamps and rewound the film. In the sudden darkness, the model seemed to shrink. “Honey, you really got to unlax. You’re not helping me at all, and I can’t do it all by my lonesome. You’re supposed to be a model, baby, not a dummy. You can do it, O.K.?”
“I’m sorry, Phil. I’m really trying! But you didn’t give me even one minute to catch my breath—I came rushing in and had to rush right through make-up!”
“It’s not my fault you were late, honey.”
“I told you what happened!”
“All right, all right. Don’t blow what cool you got. Get into the negligee and we’ll try some skin shots. All you have to do is sit there and breathe deep, O.K.?”
She strode to the dressing room and slammed the thin door. Bennett spread a light-colored quilt on the platform and propped a wide sheet of white paper in a frame as a backdrop. His lips moved, but through the whining clatter of another song, Wager heard no words.
By the time Bennett had the lights rearranged, the girl was back wearing a short pink negligee. It wasn’t until she stepped into the glare of the lights that the shadows beneath the cloth told Wager she wore nothing else.
“I want you to relax, now, honey. Just listen to old Phil and move with him, O.K.?”
“I’ll try.”
“Do better than just try, honey. Do the deed. Hey, I got it—just a minute.” He went to the workbench; at one end sat a small refrigerator. “You want some wine?” he called to Wager.
“Sure.” He liked full, red wine. But the stuff Bennett poured was white and almost tasteless. Still, it was cold and, in the room’s dry heat, good. “Do you give all the models a drink?”
“It depends. It helps them relax. And cools them off so they don’t sweat and run their make-up.”
He sounded like a dog-trainer. “Did Crowell drink wine?”
“Yeah. She liked a shot or two before we got started. Hey, honey, you didn’t eat breakfast, did you?”
“No!”
“Then you want to lose some weight, baby. You’re getting a pot.”
What looked like a pot to Bennett looked downright skinny to Wager.
“O.K.—lights, camera, action—drink up, honey, and we’ll start with some mood shots.”
He placed the kneeling model so she sat on her heels, arms and back straight, face turned over her shoulder to the lights, smooth curve of naked buttock peeking beneath the garment’s hem. The dark tip on one breast rose tautly under the negligee. “All right, honey, let me see what’s on your mind; show it, baby, with the eyes; good, good, a little more with the eyes, now the lips. Sweeten those lips, honey, get them out just a little—lick, baby, lick the lips. O.K., baby, a deep breath and lots of boob, hold it… .”
The dance started again; Bennett changed lenses and moved closer, then away, clicking and talking, sometimes singing his instructions to whatever tune blasted from the radio. Wager watched the model through two more changes of clothes—a flaring pants suit with a long scarf that trailed like smoke as the girl spun; a denim outfit that Bennett said looked almost as good as a sack of potatoes. Finally, “O.K., honey, that’s it—you done good.”
She let out a deep breath and smiled again at Wager, then went to the little dressing room.
Bennett turned out the scorching floodlights and lowered the radio’s blare. “Want some more of that?” He pointed to the empty wineglass.
Wager shook his head. “How many sessions do you have in a day?”
“Today, three. I’ve done as many as six. But, man, there’s nothing left when it’s over. I mean, people think models do all the work, you know? Maybe they do for dudes like Tanaka; but with me, I get good pictures because I sweat.”
The girl came back wearing the denim clothes of her last costume. “When can I see them, Phil?”
“Week after next, honey.”
“That’s too far off!”
“Baby, I’m buried! I got forty rolls ahead of yours, and a lot of that’s finish work.”
She tugged at the collar of his open shirt. “Couldn’t you just slip mine in? Please?”
He winked at Wager. “They all love me. O.K.—for you, I’ll see what I can do. Give Alice a call next week. And burn that denim outfit, honey—it just ain’t you.”
“Poo!” she said, and kissed him on the cheek; turning another of those very wide smiles on Wager, she was gone in a bustle of make-up kit and clothes bag and the faint aroma of perfume.
Bennett watched the door shut behind her and shook his head. “Hamburger.”
“What?”
“She’s like a pound of hamburger—all meat and a little cellophane and nothing else. And she wonders why she can’t get big assignments.”
“She looked real nice to me.”
“Real nice is all right for you, maybe. But for me it’s got to be great. If Tanaka was working with her, she wouldn’t even look like hamburger. She’d look like shit.” He opened the camera and licked a label to stick on the canister of film, then poured himself another glass of wine. “What did you want to ask me?”
That was a good question, and one Wager had tried to concentrate on as the model had turned and breathed deeply and smiled in front of the camera.
“I’m still working on the connection with the Botanic Gardens. I can’t see why somebody wanted to do that,” said Wager.
“Hey—that was sick. Whoever did that had to be flaky, right?”
“It makes good grounds for an insanity plea.”
“Yeah.” Bennett held up the film canister. “Let’s make this scene in the darkroom, man—time is money.”
Wager followed the photographer through the curtained light chamber; the single white bulb in the ceiling of the darkroom was on, but the flat black paint of walls and shelving absorbed its glow. On the far side of the room, Wager saw what he had not found in the studio itself: the fuse box.
“Stand still, man; it takes a while for your eyes to adjust.”
Before Wager could move, Bennett snapped off the overhead light. The sudden darkness was so total that Wager’s hands lifted by themselves to push against the solid black. Then he froze; if Bennett still had the knife he used on Crowell, it would be somewhere in this room where the photographer felt at home. Fumbling with one hand for the stability of the doorsill, Wager loosened the automatic holstered at his back. Movement—he heard Bennett moving around. Tennis shoes scraped on the gritty floor; a drawer slid. Wager eased his shoulders along the black wall and tried to listen over the muffled pulse of his own blood. Gradually his blinking eyes felt the red glow of the work light, and in a few seconds he saw Bennett move like a shadow across the dim pink canvas of a print dryer.
“Can you see yet, man? I don’t want you bumping into my equipment.”
“Me either.” Wager’s voice squawked and he pumped spittle down the dry walls of his throat. You learn from mistakes, his mind told him; and from another corner of that same mind came the answer: just don’t make one mistake too many. Wager felt his way around the wall to the far end of the workbench where Bennett’s shape tapped open rolls of film and clipped them into trays filled with developer. He watched the vague form agitate the pans, then carefully move from left to right, rinsing each strip and bathing it in a second solution, then hanging it to dry in a cupboard above the bench. The distance from Wager to the large sink near Bennett was at least six feet; a body could lie there.
“So what’s your thing about the Botanic Gardens, man?”
And the darkroom sink would catch the drippings. “Whoever put the head there used a key.”
“But there’s a lot of keys, right?”
“No. In fact, every one’s accounted for.”
Bennett worked in silence for a few moments. “You’re saying you know who used one that night?”
“Everybody who owns a key has a good alibi.”
“Oh.” He clipped another strip into the drying locker. “That kind of lea
ves you hanging, doesn’t it?”
“Unless there’s one more key nobody knows about. Say, a duplicate.”
“Is that what you think, man?” Tension raised the pitch of Bennett’s voice, and Wager wished he could see the man’s eyes.
“What other answer is there?”
“But you got to find that key to prove it, right?”
“I figure it was thrown away. But if I can link Crowell with somebody at the conservatory, I can get a search warrant. And science is wonderful, Bennett.”
“I’m not with you.”
“A search warrant lets the police lab people in. They can find anything—old blood, for instance. They got a luminol test that brings out bloodstains no matter how much a place has been scrubbed or how long ago.”
Through the red glow, the shape silently placed two more strips of film. “You’re telling me the killer doesn’t have a chance?” It was almost a whisper, like someone talking to hear his own voice just before he jumped.
Wager shifted direction. “Why did Miss Crowell want to be a model so much?”
“Shit! Why does any broad want to be a model? Fame, money, travel, and free soap coupons.” Wager studied the silhouette hunched in the redness; it seemed to grip the edge of the bench and stare at the trays of chemical solutions. When it spoke again, the voice was calmer and the jive talk gone. “Most of them don’t want to be models—not real ones. They do a couple of shows a month and tell themselves they could have been on top if they really wanted to. It’s a goddamned ego trip for them.” The figure swayed back and forth at the edge of the workbench. “Very few think it’s the only thing in the world. Tommie thought that.”
“But she really wasn’t that good, was she?”
“Bullshit! I don’t care what that fucking Tanaka or anybody else says, she had it! With the right person—with me—she was as good as the best!”
Wager pulled the creased photograph out of his pocket and pressed it flat on the workbench. “Here’s one you took of her. She doesn’t look much different from any other model.”
Bennett squinted at the photograph. “Wait a minute—I can’t see a goddam thing.” He closed the drying locker and pulled a dark curtain across it, then flipped on the overhead light.
Sudden glare jabbed at Wager’s eyes and he blinked away the moisture. But he was glad for the light.
“Yeah. I remember this one. It was one of the first sets we did. And you’re right—there’s not much to look at, is there?”
“That’s what Tanaka said. He told me it wasn’t your fault. He said Crowell just wasn’t photogenic.”
“That son of a bitch doesn’t know photogenic from toilet paper! I’ve got some—” He stopped suddenly.
Wager could see Bennett’s pale eyes now, and their pupils were as wide and dark as two holes in the earth. “Let’s see those other pictures, Bennett.”
CHAPTER 18
HE HELD HIMSELF poised for whatever Bennett might do. The photographer still gazed at Wager; his mind was working again—Wager could see that in the pale eyes—but what it was saying to the man, he couldn’t tell. Bennett slowly turned toward a column of filing cabinets with stacked flat, wide drawers halfway up the wall. “In here,” he said hoarsely.
Wager stepped quickly to the hand that reached for a drawer. “I’ll do it. You stand right there.”
A pile of large color prints lay on the shallow metal tray. The top one was of Rebecca Crowell’s face. It was different from any of her that Wager had seen before; the girl’s eyes and mouth were less posed, more living: even in the photograph he could almost hear her speak, and the expression called an answering warmth from the heart. Surrounding the face, a green halo of palm fronds, tendrils, broad succulent leaves formed a lush setting that faded into the tangled shadows of a lightless jungle. Both men knew where the pictures had been taken.
“Suppose you tell me about these, Bennett.” Wager’s voice seemed suddenly to slice some kind of leash; the photographer lunged at the light switch and the room fell black as Wager, dropping to hands and knees, tumbled to the right. His last glimpse of Bennett showed the man reaching for something bulky on a shelf near the door. Holding his breath and himself motionless on the cold concrete, Wager listened for a gasp, for a footstep, a scrape—anything. But only silence. Bennett was at home in the darkroom and he was in no hurry. Wager eased to a crouching position that he hoped faced the killer and tried silently to slip his hand beneath his coat to the pistol waiting there.
Then he heard something: a murmur. “What’d you say, Bennett?”
“You want to hurt me.”
“No.” It came from just over there, near the door, near the light switch. His eyes watered slightly as they strained to see through the dull red of the blackout light. Perhaps that shadow, the low bulky one… . “Bennett?”
He was hit from the side by something heavy and metal, the blow splitting through the red in a flash of yellow and knocking him flat against the gritty floor. A numbness lay against skull and shoulder, and in his ears was that high-pitched buzz that comes with being hit hard. Rolling over frantically, he dug at the holster with his left hand but the pistol was gone, fallen from his numb fingers. A shadow moved at the edge of vision and he kicked a heel into the swirling red and felt the solid jar of contact, heard a wheezing grunt from somewhere under the looming tower of the enlarger as Bennett swore and dropped the metal thing he had used as a weapon. A second later, fingers jabbed at Wager’s face, ripping down his ear and slicing toward his eyes. Wager twisted back and away, rolling out of the grip and clubbing wildly at the figure blotting the red light, missing, twisting to pull his useless arm away from the grunting swarm of darkness leaping at him.
Bennett hit at him again, the red bulb sparkling on the cluster of tripod legs that whistled slightly as they whipped toward him. Wager kicked once more, able to see the man’s outline now, able to make out arms and legs and crotch, able to aim his heel and drive his whole weight behind the shaft of his leg.
Bennett’s shriek covered the splintering bottles knocked tumbling from a cabinet and Wager grasped in the dark beneath the workbench for the writhing man, pulling him across the glass and concrete into the faint red glow, grabbing his hair to smack his head solidly against the floor and then straddle the bucking, twisting chest of the photographer.
“You’re hurting me! You want to kill me!”
“You’re goddamned right I do!” Wager smacked the skull once more. “And I sure as shit will if you don’t lay still!”
Wager used his car radio to send the 10-95—subject in custody. It crossed his mind to go past Denver General Hospital and have the bloody-headed photographer checked over; but the son of a bitch didn’t hurt any more than he did, and only now could Wager move his right arm enough to shift gears. In the rear seat, handcuffs looped beneath the back of his fashionably wide leather belt, Bennett grunted and sat doubled, pressing his sore testicles between clamped legs. At the end of the sidewalk, the secretary, Alice, held both fists over her mouth and stared silently at them with eyes enormous behind her thick lenses.
Wager pulled into traffic and gave the grunting man his rights as he steered with one hand and squinted through the throb of his skull. The numbness was wearing off to leave an aching pulse at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and a tingling that was almost painful down the outside of his hand. “You hear what I just said, Bennett?” He gingerly twisted the rear-view mirror so it showed the photographer’s pale face and blood-matted cap of black hair.
“Yes.”
“Now you tell me about Rebecca Crowell.”
“… Yes.”
They reached the police building a little before noon; homicide’s day shift was on the street, and Wager and Bennett had the office to themselves. He marched the stiff-legged photographer to a desk just out of sight of the busy corridor and unlocked the cuffs. “You sit here and don’t try no more shit on me.” He pulled a legal tablet out of a drawer and pushed it and a ball
-point pen at Bennett. “You write what I tell you.” He dictated the first couple of sentences. “You understand that?”
The grunting had stopped and now the voice was just weary. “Yes.”
“Good. Now you write down everything you told me on the way over here.”
Detectives from the other divisions of the bureau, following the whisper that somehow spreads whenever a homicide suspect confesses, stuck their heads in to glance at Bennett and raise their eyebrows at Wager.
“That’s him?” one muttered.
“Yes.”
“Looks like you dropped the hammer on him.”
“He didn’t feel like coming in.”
The detective’s eyes followed something along Wager’s cheek. “You better get that looked at—it’s deep.”
The whisper finally reached Doyle. He stood silently in the doorway and looked at the man who slowly wrote on the pad of lined yellow paper. “I want to talk to you, Wager. In the hall.” The bulldog’s jaw shoved toward him. “What the hell did you do to that prisoner?”
“He resisted arrest.”
“You got any witnesses?”
“Only the scars.” Wager pointed to his cheek. “And one damned bad headache, Chief Doyle.”
The bulldog shook his head. “It still stinks. Did you call for a doctor to look at him?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll do it.” Doyle went to his own office.
Wager drew a cup of water from the cooler and took one to Bennett, who now sat without writing. “You finished already?”
“Yes.” The man’s narrow shoulders sloped even more and he looked at the cut on Wager’s face. “You know—I don’t even remember fighting with you. It was just like Tommie… . I don’t really remember.” The pale eyes were wide with innocence.
