Photo Finish

by Terry Ambrose

  “McKenna, you gone pupule. You really think that old coot gonna be able fool these guys they come back?”

  “I didn’t know you cared.”

  “Bullshit. I didn’t know you cared!”

  “There’s a possible thousand-dollar reward for this tip. Harris needs money for her sister’s operation.”

  “So you telling me you doing this so you can get laid, yah?”

  “This is the kind of thing I used to do—find people.”

  He held my gaze, his eyes saying what words couldn’t.

  “It’s the challenge. The rush of solving the puzzle.”

  Silence. Just silence. And that damned introspective stare of his.

  This was beginning to piss me off. “I owe people.”

  “You didn’t even know Shapiro.”

  I almost said, “Not Shapiro, you dummy. I owe you.” Alexander had supported me and my grumpiness for five years. It was payback time. Besides, I knew that Shapiro’s death had been glossed over by the cops just as my symptoms had been glossed over by a doctor. It had taken a new doctor, someone who was a good listener, to finally uncover my Celiac sprue. Maybe it was my turn to listen. “Fine! I’m feeling something. For the first time in—screw it.”

  “Your mana picked a helluva time to come back.”

  He was right. I had picked a helluva time to start feeling strong again. I forced a laugh—it was a pitiful display of bravado. “My mana will protect me. Isn’t that what you guys say?”

  “No amount of spirit gonna save you from a bullet.”

  Well, that sure put a damper on the conversation. I cleared my throat. “I need to go check on Harris. We were gone longer than I thought we’d be.”

  “I’ll go too. If she don’t need nothing, I’m heading home.”

  Harris had parked herself on the couch. She was flipping through channels on the TV, a mound of potato chips on a napkin in her lap, a glass in her hand. She glared up at us when we walked in and barked, “Where the hell have you been?” Her outburst sprayed potato chip crumbs in every direction. She hid her mouth with her hand and took a quick drink.

  I said, “Nice to see you too. You must be feeling better.” And cranky.

  “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from. I’ve got a helluva headache, and every now and again I start yelling at the TV. I keep getting these weird mood swings. It’s like PMS, but it’s the wrong time of the month.”

  I held up my hands. “Whoa.”

  She blushed. “Sorry—again.”

  Alexander said, “You need anything?”

  She waved off the question. “I’m good. I just want to rest.”

  We left Harris to her TV, potato chips, and soft drink. Alexander bid me goodbye, and I went into my apartment and surveyed my collection of boxes. Wow. A puzzle. A challenge. And a dangerous one. I shoved that thought to the back of my mind. The master skip tracer was back. My job was just to find these guys; the cops could do the dangerous work.

  I checked the box labels. The first one read “Business #1.” There were also boxes for #2 and #3. There were boxes for “Photos,” “Personal - Bank,” and even “Business - Bank.” Sadness filled me as I thought about how many boxes my life might come down to. I probably would only have three or four, and that made me even sadder. Shapiro had been a six-box man, I was no more than four, tops.

  Shapiro had business records that someone might want to review, but no one had taken the time to look them over. And the people who were included in these records wanted to destroy them. I slumped down into the chair closest to the photo box, hoping that I might at least get to know the man a bit before I started poring through the business details of his life.

  I lifted the lid and peered inside. Meyer had dumped photographs bundled with rubber bands on top of a single photo album that filled the bottom of the box. Ironically, he’d neatly arranged a dozen little Kodak cartons that probably contained slides against one side.

  I decided to start with the slide cartons for a simple reason. The rubber-banded photos were already in a heap, so I might as well remove the neatness before the slides toppled over and made me feel bad about messing up Meyer’s attempt at organization. Sure, it was weak. And, yes, it was a rationalization. But, I was the one doing the work so I figured I could do whatever I damned well felt like.

  I pulled out the neat little stack of boxes and the hand-held slide viewer and set them on the table. Uh-oh—the seventies all over again. They were all marked with a date and a title. The first was labeled “Mar 1978 - Lake Tahoe.” The others all had similar dates, but different locations. Apparently, this had been Shapiro’s “slide period.” I opened the first box and held the slide up to the light, then the next, and the next, until I’d gone through a dozen of the slides in the box. Shapiro had been into taking scenery in 1978. Slides were excellent for that purpose and Shapiro had obviously caught the bug, much as I had at about the same time. We’d probably stopped shooting slides for the same reason. Although the photographer had been fascinated by scenery slides, everyone else saw them as BORING. I set the slide boxes off to the side in a neat little stack. That’s okay, Bob, I still have mine—somewhere.

  I pulled the rubber-banded stacks of photos from the box, then lifted out the photo album, which was labeled “Our Family.” I was willing to bet that these photos were older. I doubted that they would help much with solving the mystery of Shapiro’s death, but they would help me learn more about the man.

  The album began with the usual bare-assed baby pictures. I’d never understood what people saw in those photos. Though my parents hadn’t done this to me, those photos seemed to have only one real purpose—embarrass the crap out of the subject once he or she had attained some level of self-confidence in the world.

  Think of the power possibilities for a parent who held onto just the right bare-baby photo. Just imagine the President’s mother at a cocktail party. Say Mom has had a couple of glasses of wine, the chef has pulled the perfectly crusted creme brulee from the broiler, the waitstaff is filing into the dining room filled with heads of state to deliver the perfect dessert. Mom stands. She fumbles through her wallet. “Would anybody like to see a picture of my baby boy?” Oh yeah. Sweet.

  I worked my way through kindergarten photos and up to high school. Somewhere in the middle of the childhood photos there was one of a serviceman, his wife, and baby. I assumed they were Shapiro’s parents because there were several others in which the same people appeared. By high school, the photos were in color. There were still pictures of the woman, along with a young man, but the serviceman was no longer around. The last photo in the album was one of the young man graduating from college.

  In all the early shots, the ones where the serviceman was included, the background looked familiar. There were lots of family outings at the beach and then one that was a dead giveaway. The coastline of Oahu, unmistakable with Diamond Head in the background. Shapiro’s father had been in the service and stationed at Pearl Harbor. I wondered if Bob had become a pilot to follow in his father’s footsteps. And why had his father disappeared?

  I sorted through three bundles of photos held together by rubber bands. The first contained shots depicting a much older version of the young man in the family photos. The resemblance to the serviceman was unmistakable. What struck me as odd was that the familiar island background had changed. I’d flipped through several photos before I realized that there was writing on the back of each. The first description was written in a big loopy script that read, “Ginny & Bob, SD Zoo, 1992.” I began checking the backs of the others, almost every one had a description and date. The bundle that I was looking at was from the early nineties. Almost every image included the woman named Ginny, Shapiro, or both. The photos spanned three years, from 1991 to 1994. The one on the bottom was actually a newspaper clipping titled, “Stephens-Docks Wed."

  Shapiro’s girlfriend left him for another man? I held the clipping in my hand, but stared off into space. Shapiro’s life had
been as screwed up as mine, maybe more. After all, he was dead and I was still here. I glanced back at the wedding couple. “Bob, you’ve gotten some bad breaks.”

  Ginny wore a low-cut, white wedding dress. She stood next to a man I didn’t recognize. The man was dressed in a tuxedo and both he and Ginny smiled in the classic top-of-the-wedding-cake pose. The caption read, “Jacqueline (Ginny) Stephens married Harcourt Docks III in a ceremony at Our Lady of the Valley Chapel on April 4, 1998.” The article had been crumpled up, then smoothed out. There was no publication name, so I had no idea where Our Lady of the Valley Chapel was located. Or who Harcourt Docks III was. Sure, I could find him, but at this point, why?

  I secured the photos with the rubber band and put them on the table with the slides and the family photo album. Had Shapiro lost his father and a fiancee? I opened another set of photos. These were from the period between 1987 and 1991. Ginny and Shapiro had been to many places and each grouping of photos came several months apart. Interesting. The first such grouping came in May 1990, the second in July 1990, October 1990, and so on. So Shapiro had kept photos all the way through to the news story about Ginny’s wedding in 1998. Had she been cheating on him the entire time?

  I removed the rubber band from the third set, expecting more photos of Ginny from prior to 1987, but I was wrong. Number one showed Bob Shapiro standing proudly next to an old, beat up, single-engine plane. There were photos of him standing by the propeller, in the cockpit, and shaking hands with a man who had coppery-colored skin and stood slightly shorter than Shapiro. The man was wearing blue coveralls, which reminded me of the description of Roger Lau. I wondered if this might be Roger. I checked the back of the photo. Unfortunately, Shapiro had stopped annotating his memories. Maybe he never had. I glanced at the feminine-looking script on another picture. Had Ginny written all the old descriptions? I set the one with the coppery-skinned man off to the side in hopes that we might eventually figure out who the man with Shapiro was.

  This set was also odd in that there were photos stuck into plastic envelopes. Each envelope contained about twenty photos, all of smiling groups of one to four people standing next to an airplane. On the back of each, someone had printed a name and date in deliberate strokes. Maybe these were clients of Shapiro’s? Was this his writing?

  In the last envelope, I came across a photo of four men. I recognized Shapiro and the man with coppery-colored skin immediately. The man looked a bit heavier in this photo and wore a white, short-sleeved shirt. The third man wore a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, and collar open. The fourth wore a popular Aloha shirt that came from Hilo Hattie. Few tourists made it off the island without dropping money at Hilo Hattie. They have stores on every island, run shuttles to the stores from major hotels and cruise-ship dockings, greet you with a shell lei, and give you something to drink. They just make it easy for you to open your wallet and take part of the islands back with you, even if your only intent is to stuff that part away in a drawer back home and never look at it again until you returned to the islands and, of course, another Hilo Hattie store.

  I hadn’t seen the other man in any of the other photos, but on the back, the deliberate printing read, “Paradise Private Charters, LLC. Principals.” The men stood before a brightly colored plane. The tail of the plane was painted to look like palm trees silhouetted against a sunset. I also recognized the N-Number immediately.

  So Shapiro had business partners? I thought about what Meyer had said. Roger had arranged financing. Maybe the financing had really been a partnership? Had something gone wrong in the deal? I asked the men in the photo a question, “Did one of you kill Bob?” The only sound in the apartment was the ticktock of my grandfather clock and the hum of the refrigerator in my little galley-type kitchen. Actually, I was thankful for that because if there had been another sound, like maybe the photo answering my question, I’d probably have called the loony bin and begged them to come pick me up for two very good reasons—photos can’t talk and killers never confess, unless they’re about to kill you.

  Chapter 19

  It was nearly five PM by the time I’d gone through the entire box of Bob Shapiro’s memories. I was perplexed because I hadn’t found the Medal of Honor or any references to a military career. I resolved to learn more about that later. The rain had been pouring down sporadically since we’d left Meyer’s apartment and I couldn’t help but wonder which of us had placed himself in more danger. Either way, I knew we had to figure out who the bad guys were before they discovered we had information that could tie them back to Shapiro’s death. Great, now I was living up to other people’s examples.

  I wondered if Meyer had seen the picture of the four men and, perhaps, if he knew who they were. I dialed his number and listened while the phone rang once, twice, three times, and then went to the answering machine. “If you’re calling about the apartment, leave a message after the beep.” Bee-eep.

  Crap, I wasn’t ready for a quick message. I hung up and told myself that he wouldn’t pick up the phone this close to five because it was almost after his posted hours. Or maybe he was out working on the grounds. A glance at the window told me that was a stupid idea. I decided to try him again later. Next time, I’d be prepared to leave a message.

  I’d started with the photos to learn something about Shapiro as a person. With that hunger satisfied, it was time to get right to the heart of the matter. How much money did he have? I opened the box labeled “Personal - Bank.” Inside, there were five years worth of envelopes marked as “Tax Return - Personal,” two bundles of personal bank statements stacked together and an envelope marked “Death Certificate.” The returns covered the previous four years, and there was an envelope for this year also. The envelope also contained several certified copies of Shapiro’s Certificate of Death.

  The current-year file held bills for the standard-type stuff: phone, electric, cable, and other ho-hum. There was also a social security statement showing his projected income. Assuming that he’d lived a few more years, he would have had the opportunity to decide whether to keep working or be a lucky stiff and kick back.

  I did a quick check on the previous years’ records and noted that Shapiro claimed annual net income of about $30,000. Unless he was sheltering, he was a poor bastard just like me. The difference between us was that he had a half-million-dollar airplane, and I didn’t even own a car. Of course, he was dead. He could keep the plane. I ran through the personal bank statements for a year before deciding that if he was sheltering income, he was keeping his personal bank account clean. He was either very smart or just scraping by.

  Financial Wizard McKenna said that the personal income box was no more than a curiosity thing and included nothing of value about why Shapiro had been killed. Nosey McKenna said there was more to learn. The fact is, I knew how much he made, so I let Financial Wizard placate Nosey by telling him to look for the source of the income. I repacked the box and put it off to the side, then tackled the “Business - Bank” box. That satisfied both FW and Nosey. I could only hope that Harris hadn’t figured out how high maintenance I was.

  This box also included tax returns for the same periods as the personal records. The current-year file was stuffed full of credit card and purchase receipts as well as monthly income statements for his business. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw his monthly gross income of almost $15,000. Every month was roughly the same. Some were slightly higher, others lower. But in the end, Bob Shapiro drew $2,500, paid bills with about $8,000 and put the rest into a fund he’d labeled “Business Expansion.” I did some fast math and came up with nearly $50,000 a year going into that fund.

  Next, I pulled his business check register and looked over the entries. Sure enough, there was a draw to Shapiro each month for his living expenses, payments to a fuel company, Lau Maintenance, a bank, an insurance company, and various other suppliers or vendors for airplane services and parts. There was also an entry marked “BET” of between $4,000 to $5,000 each month which wo
uld be the Business Expansion Transfer I’d seen on the income statement.

  His deposits were equally uninformative, just a weekly entry marked “Deposit” that totaled up to the monthly income shown on the income statement. I wondered where the business expansion fund was located. I also wondered why there were no payments to the partners I’d seen in the photo. Lau was getting paid for services. But, what about his share of the profits? And what about the other partners?

  I glanced down at the box labeled “Business.” If these guys had a partnership agreement, it would be here. I didn’t like potentially mixing up records, but wanted to be able to compare the check register with what the partners had agreed to. I went into my office and grabbed a pile of sticky notes, came back and pasted notes with the box name on the backs of the two photos I’d removed. I stuck another one on the check register and piled the rest of the stuff back into its little cardboard home.

  I opened the first Business container. On the very top was another ledger. The ledger had six columns: date, client name, deposit amount, flight completion status, total amount paid, and comments. “Goddamn,” I muttered. I slapped a sticky note on the ledger and reopened the carton for photos. I removed one of the plastic envelopes and chuckled at the top photo. A family of four, all dressed in matching Hilo Hattie prints, posed for the camera. Dad and son wore matching shirts, Mom and daughter wore matching sundresses. Their name was Thomason, and the date was 7/14/09. I always got a kick out of families who bought the matching outfits. “Bet you guys wear those a lot back home.”

  I flipped through the client register until I found July 14, 2009. There was the entry for Thomason. They’d put down a $100 deposit, had a completed status on their flight, and paid a total of $540. The comments section showed that they’d had four in their party and had received an “extended tour.”

  I seriously doubted that anyone, even a psychopath, would kill Bob Shapiro because he hadn’t liked a tour. That probably left out anyone in this book. I glanced outside. Dark. I’d missed sunset and dinner. What was there in the fridge? Not much other than some wilted lettuce, a half jar of peanut butter, a few gluten-free condiments and a small amount of cheese. I didn’t feel like cooking and I didn’t have anything to cook, even if the mood came over me in a flash, which wasn’t likely. That meant some takeout from Ching’s down the street. I checked outside. No rain, thank goodness.