“There’s a draft from the skylight,” he said, fingering the stretched neck when he saw us staring at him. He didn’t bother to explain the satiny footwear and I didn’t ask. Ben suddenly caught sight of his reflection in a mirror angled to show activity in the stairwell, and he gave it his attention, running nervous fingers through his uncombed hair, adjusting the neck on his shirt.
I watched silently when they carried Bill away, wishing I could cry—if only for the expiation tears might bring. I’d loved him. Loved Bill. Okay, I admitted it. I certainly loved Bill, and this was exactly what I’d always expected would happen should I ever love again. Daisy’s death had taught me that.
Saad looked at me critically once Bill was carried past us on the way to the stairs. “You took his picture, didn’t you? First,” Saad said.
His voice was flat, his eyes black marbles in the darkish stairwell.
I nodded. “How could you tell?”
“I saw beige marks on the sheet you threw over him. Foundation, my ex-wife called it.” He shook his head. I was too tired to try to explain the picture was only for me—that I’d never use it in the show. I hoped it was true. It seemed true.
After Bill was taken away, I was barred from the apartment while further police work went on. This took several days. The cops removed the bolts, pieces of plaster, my photographs, and bags full of other things (some inexplicable), hoping to find evidence I’d meant Bill harm. Links to the activity on Belle Isle made matters worse. I half-expected to see the treadmill itself coming down the stairs, tagged as the murder weapon.
Within a day, the cops came up with the theory that Bill was giving me a hard time over the use of the photos in a show, so I killed him.
“Ted Ernst told us he’d insisted on the receipt of a signed contract from Mr. Fontenel, disavowing future claims to any profits earned through your work. He said you’d delayed on this to the point where he considering canceling the show.”
Ted had apparently been dragged from his gallery and questioned for over an hour, doing me no favors with statements like this one.
“Look, it was insulting to ask Bill to sign a contract. We had a personal relationship beyond the business one. He’d never have asked for a share in any profits. But to placate Ted, I would’ve asked Bill eventually, and I knew he’d sign it. Bill understood how things worked. It was his idea to have the families sign contracts before we took the photos.”
“So none of this bothered Bill? He was onboard from day one?”
I nodded, but wondered if that was ever true. Had I used his feelings for me to get what I wanted. Something he didn’t really want. He’d said as much time after time.
None of it made me look good; only good for pinning a murder on. I could feel the officer’s eyes boring in, wondering what kind of woman did any of these things: hanging mirrors over beds, photographing dead men, involving herself with Detroit gangs, seducing a bipolar kid.
But in the end, it was too ludicrous to believe I’d murdered Bill to ensure the show would take place. No one saw the procurement of a dozen photographs as a reasonable motive, my artistic pursuits worth taking a life, their value a commodity. There was no real reason to believe it hadn’t been an accident. No reason to believe I’d anything but sorrow in my heart. As a method of murder, the use of a falling mirror was too unpredictable, too crazy. No jury would buy it.
“It’s pretty damned hard to understand how you could run for your camera after that mirror came down on him,” Diogenes said. “I understand the creative impulse, but your actions in this instance elude me.” He shook his head. He was with me at Bunny’s apartment as I got ready to return home. “I can’t believe it was to get the last photo for your show. Tell me it wasn’t.”
The two of us had come back from Bill’s funeral where the majority of the mourners had flashed me cold looks, knowing me from my photo in the newspaper. But I’d gone anyway, gripping Di’s arm hard enough to leave a bruise. Thankfully, it was a closed coffin. I didn’t think I could manage looking at Bill’s face again. As I tried to ignore the chill that swept across the room on our entrance, I kept one thought in my head: Bill knew I’d never meant him any harm and I’d loved him as best I could. How could I not be here? How could I not face these people down? I looked across the room and spotted Athena Grace.
There was a look about her that made me think we might have been friends in other circumstances: Athena had no pretensions; she took her work seriously; she liked Bill.
“I didn’t have a single photograph of Bill,” I reluctantly told Di. “There, I said it. In all our months together, I never took a picture of him. I tried once or twice, but he hated to have his picture taken. It was my last chance to get one.”
The words fell from my lips and I knew in my heart they were true. I took his picture because, like the parents of Rodney—what was his name?—all those months ago, I wanted a record. I needed it. How else could I remember him? Believe he was truly gone? I wanted to make him mine and taking his picture would do that. It was hard to explain it—even to myself.
Di gave this a minute’s thought. “Is that picture of Bill something you’d want to stick in your wallet?”
“Of course not. Now, I understand how those families felt now. You’re honoring—or acknowledging—the last time you’ll see them. I remember what I photograph and I wanted to remember him. Maybe it was selfish or ghoulish, I don’t know. It felt right—necessary.”
“So you won’t use him in the show?”
I hesitated. “He’s the best-looking man of the bunch. He’s the one who made it possible. I want him to be part of it.”
“Oh, Vi.” Diogenes shook his head. “It’s gonna be seen as exploitative.”
“There may not be a show. I’ll think about it if and when it’s set.”
“I don’t always get you, Vi.”
I shrugged. “That’s okay. Neither do I.” I looked up. “Di, there’s something else. Remember my disappearing father…”
“Images are more real than anyone could have supposed.”
Susan Sontag
An issue of Detroit’s weekly alternative newspaper came out a week later with a story about Bill’s death, but more pointedly, a story about me. Unlike the death notice in the daily papers, which changed the mirror to a ceiling light for propriety’s sake, this paper told the real story. The headline read, “Shutterfly Proves Ready for Her Close-up.”
I was hurrying into the drycleaner’s when I spotted the issue in the yellow newspaper machine outside the store. They’d managed to come up with a photo of Derek’s obliterated site on Belle Isle and a picture of me. Both of us were plastered across the front page. Luckily Bill’s aversion to photographs had kept his face off the front page. There were only mine to use and the paper didn’t have them.
The reporter dug up my involvement in several of the recent murders, found out about my photography project, and was now depicting me as Detroit’s own angel of death, anxious to take pictures at any cost, out for success in a pathological way. For a minute, I thought the reporter knew about my deathbed photos of Bill too. But that was still a secret—at least to this reporter. The eleven photos that sat in the darkroom were described, but not shown. I guessed the paper couldn’t afford a copyright suit.
“For the love of God,” Di said via cell, an hour later. “When are you going to return to the anonymity of your recent past? Remember when we were Di and Vi, a couple of pals making good in the city? Now it’s something scary every minute. You opened a vault and the demons escaped.”
I thought all the way back to the beginning, the day when Bill and I had been doing that crossword puzzle and the clue of Pandora’s Box had been on it. Was I Pandora?
“I guess I’d better call Ted. He’s probably seen it by now. Why do the arty types flock to that weekly?”
But Ted turned out to be out of town, courting an artist in Chicago, his clerk said.
“He’s already working on his spring show. Of cours
e, if your show does the business he expects, he’ll postpone it.”
Soothing information. But how would my photos play after the newspaper article? Would Ted balk at being part of the “exploitation” of dead black men? This was likely to be his take on it. Or his attorney’s.
I debated calling Ted, but decided a day or two’s wait wouldn’t hurt. Either he’d go nuts over it or he wouldn’t. No need to find out which one yet.
“You know I’d no business showing up at your apartment when you called me,” Detective Saad said later at a coffee shop. “I should’ve contacted the local cops immediately. You didn’t make what’d happened clear on the phone. Certainly it’s tested my credibility in the department. If I’d known the circumstances…”
“I shouldn’t have called you,” I said. “But you’re the only cop I know. And besides, I wasn’t thinking about what happened to Bill as a crime—it was an accident and I didn’t know what to do.” I sighed. “Boy, have I said that a million times. People involved in a horrific event don’t always read it the same way a cop does. My god, I was in a state of shock.”
If I hadn’t been, I’d have contacted an attorney instead of a cop before opening my mouth. If I hadn’t been in shock, I also might not have taken the pictures of Bill.
He looked at me strangely, reading my mind. “Yet you still took those pictures of him before you called me.”
I looked around, wondering if anyone could hear our conversation. “Yes, and I’ve told you why I did it several times now.” I shoved the coffee aside. “So hang me.”
“If I’d pointed out the makeup on that sheet covering him to any of those cops, you’d have spent another ten hours or so being questioned.”
“Oh, who’s to say it wasn’t from me. I was under that sheet minutes earlier.”
“It was tucked right under his chin.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I hadn’t counted on you finding new ways to knock men off. Hey, I’m sorry,” he said a second later, slapping a hand on his mouth. “A lousy thing to say.” He removed his hand and added. “My ex-wife’s always telling me I’m an insensitive pig.”
“So why’d you invite me out for coffee today? It can’t be that you want my company. Not a woman as dangerous as me. A callous bitch.”
“Well, I do enjoy your company, but you’re right, that wasn’t my reason.”
“So?”
“Cal Black, one of my colleagues, spotted you in Southwest Detroit last week taking pictures of tags. You can only follow your photographer’s nose so far in Detroit without getting spotted.”
“I take pictures. That’s it.” I thumped my fist on the Formica and his coffee overflowed. “And I don’t take the kind of photographs you find in HUM magazine. Except for hire, of course.
“You can’t be so naïve that you don’t know such activity can get you into trouble? Why can’t you play nice and take pictures of girly stuff? Why are you so attracted to dangerous subjects?”
“Why are you?”
He wiped up spilled coffee with a napkin and shrugged. “I would’ve thought you were smart enough after Derek’s experience to know gangs are nothing to fool around with.”
“I wasn’t photographing people—only their tags.”
“The two are never far apart. Find another subject.”
“Is this an official police order?”
“No. Call it a request from a friend.”
We talked a little more and then he grabbed the tab and headed for the cash register.
“Photography is the story I fail to put into words.”
Destin Sparks
“Want me to go with you?” Di asked.
“That’ll make me seem weak. He must have seen or heard about the article by now. I don’t know why he hasn’t called.”
I was pacing again, having spent the day planning and discarding various strategies for dealing with Ted.
Ted was unlocking the door when I arrived. He gave me a quick glance and pushed open the door. “Come in,” he said unnecessarily since I was right on his heels.
He swept across the room and immediately began making a pot of coffee. I could tell from his movements he was very angry.
“Look,” he said when the machine started making noises, “it was bad enough when the police hauled me in for questioning. But I could let that pass because it became clear after a few minutes it was an accident. The project wasn’t threatened by such a mishap. Nobody knew about it except the cops.”
“It took the police days to recognize…” I started say, but he waved it away.
“The newspaper article effectively crashed and burned the whole project. Nobody’s gonna get past the scenario the article outlined. That you—well, the both of us—are exploiting the deaths of black men. Two white people, I might add.”
Should I tell him I was not strictly a white woman? Would that raise or lower my street cred?
He poured two cups of coffee and handed me one. I was sick of coffee and didn’t move. He set it down on the table. “I can’t jeopardize the future of this gallery—my future—by seeming to use other people’s tragedy for my success. Fuck, Vi, this is Detroit. Now that the whole project’s been framed in racial terms, there’s no going back or forward. I’m sorry.” He shook his head, almost ferociously. “I’ll be lucky if I survive the mention of the gallery in the story. Damned shame.”
“So where does that leave me?”
I didn’t know why I asked him this. He’d never shown himself to be altruistic in the past, never been at all interested in me. “Any ideas about where I could go for a show?” He glared at me. “Well, I do have to make a living. I sunk months into this job.”
“I imagine that gallery in Soho might still be willing to show your work. New York’s a million miles away. Even if they’ve heard about the article, they’d probably see it as a bonus. Or wouldn’t much care.” He smiled slightly. “New York doesn’t know Detroit exists.”
“No kidding—I lived there for a few years. Would you call them? Give me an introduction at least?”
He shook his head. “You’re on your own. I need to steer clear of you and your business. I’m not going to let you drag me down with you a second time. You seem to have an unerring instinct for making bad choices.” He walked over to his battered desk and opened a drawer. “But here’s Alan Richter’s card. I told him about you months ago, forwarded the first two photos you did along. He liked them. Remember? So give him a call.” His voice softened momentarily. “I know this all seems unjust, but maybe it’ll work out for the best. Your work might be too big for Detroit anyway. Too tied to hard times.” He smiled slightly. “Locally, it’s more of a reminder of what’s happening—what people see every day on the news—than a piece of art. It may just be too personal too. People are going to recognize these men.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Who knows, maybe later I’ll regret letting you get away.”
I was back in the car in ten minutes, shaking and angry, my usual state nowadays. Too big for Detroit! A few months ago, he’d ripped my work from his walls with nary a kind word. But I took the card home and set it on the counter, looking at it for the next day or two. Then I picked up the phone and called the gallery.
“Ted told me about your project a few months back,” Alan Richter said, remembering immediately. He’d answered the phone himself so clearly the gallery wasn’t a big or busy one. “And I’m not in Soho, Ms. Hart. I’m in Hell’s Kitchen. The gallery in Soho wasn’t mine; I was an assistant there. They’re calling Hell’s Kitchen Clinton now. We’re at Forty-eighth and Tenth.”
I pictured the neighborhood west of the theater district, wondering if it’d changed over the years. “So where do we go from here?”
“Well, let’s start by you emailing me your files. Ted sent me one or two a few months ago, but I’d like to see the whole group. But I have to warn you, the earliest we could do this is next summer.” I heard him snapping on a light switch. “Let’s see. I’m booked through
June. If it works out, maybe a July-August show.”
“Next summer?” Would the earth still be here?
“Think it over,” he said. “But let me know if you’re going to send me those photographs. My clerk’s quick with the delete button since a virus infected us a few months ago. We don’t open any files we don’t recognize.”
Next summer? The words kept running through my head.
And I’d no guarantee. Hell’s Kitchen was no more promising than Ferndale—or at least it hadn’t been when I lived in New York. There was a long line of ifs between a show in New York next summer and now. Would the photos make any kind of splash in a city as big as New York? Was it what I wanted—a splash? Did I want to mess with New York again? The photos were about Detroit. They deserved to be shown here. The men deserved it even if I didn’t. It was personal.
Once again, I lined the twelve photos up across the tables, seeing Bill among the others for the first time. He was naked, and so the shot was only from the chest up. His nakedness seemed as elegant as any costume. His skin looked luminescent, especially in black and white. There were subtle differences, of course. The angle was different, the lighting more subdued, slight shadows on the walls, the look of a body not prepared as skillfully, not embalmed. But he looked fine.
Weeks later, and I still couldn’t believe Bill was gone, that I was inadvertently responsible, that at some point, I’d fallen for him hard. If I’d let him do what he wanted to do, what he’d planned to do that night—he might be alive. Perhaps the mirror would’ve fallen on me; maybe I’d be dead. If I had quashed the idea he had inadvertently presented me with all those months ago, he’d be alive and perhaps Derek as well.
This was good work. I knew it was—but waiting nearly a year—hell, a year! Maybe I could find a gallery in Chicago or Toronto—out of the fray, but not with the tight schedule of a New York spot. I’d like to get it over with now—get it over with and go on to the next thing—whatever it was.
Shot In Detroit Page 26
