Cast in Stone

by G. M. Ford

  Carl Cradduck in Korea and Vietnam for the New York Times—in Beirut for Newsday. Hundreds of other war shots of such graphic anguish as to at once capture and repel the eye. Carl with Robert Kennedy, with Martin Luther King, Jr., for the Atlanta Constitution. Carl with about everybody I'd ever heard of. A ton of awards. A couple of plaques. Carl nominated for two Pulitzers for photography.

  As his sister Annie was his only living relative, he'd stayed on after he got out of the hospital. I'd asked him once, years ago, whey he hadn't gone back to New York after the accident. His answer had been short but less than sweet.

  "The city's too tough on gimps," he'd said. "I go back there, I end up on a creeper sellin' pencils. Here, amongst the yodels, at least I got a chance."

  Carl Cradduck had made the most of his chance. In the last fifteen years he'd used his technical wizardry and twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week service to pull himself from-the-small photo shop in South Seattle to a preeminent position as the area's most sophisticated electronic surveillance specialist. C&C Technical was on the cutting edge of the assault on privacy. If you wanted to surreptitiously watch anybody do anything and then record it for posterity, Carl Cradduck was your man.

  He still lived in the tiny four-room apartment behind the store in beautiful downtown Lake City. I'd asked him about that once too, a few years back, right after the grand opening of the new offices.

  "You ought to find some new digs, Carl," I'd said. "Something befitting your elevated station in life."

  He'd set me straight in a hurry."

  "This fucking chair is my digs, Peeper. I can roll around in it here. I can roll around in it in some fancy-ass house down on the lake. Don't make me no friggin' difference. Either way it's me and the chair. This"—he patted the chair—"is my universe. Might as well be right here." End of discussion.

  I'd shown up unannounced at his back door first thing on Saturday morning. With Carl Cradduck, the hour was never a problem. As nearly as I'd ever been able to tell, he didn't sleep. No matter what ungodly hour I showed up, he was always up, seemingly waiting for me. Perfect for a guy in my line of work.

  I heard the hum of his electric wheelchair before the door opened. Carl wasn't surprised to see me. Carl was never surprised by anything. He was a wizened little guy, all vein and tendon. Whole, he wouldn't have topped five foot six or so; in the chair, he gave the impression that perhaps he too might be part of the chair's electronics. His left hand rested on the control panel for the chair. His right hand, beneath the black-and-red checked blanket covering his lap, would be holding the .765mm auto I'd given him after he'd been burglarized in 1989.

  Without a greeting, he U-turned the chair in the hall, leaving the door to me. I followed him down the wide hall to the kitchen, where I tossed the four packs of photographs onto the yellow Formica table.

  "What makes you think she was trying not be be photographed?" I asked, squatting by the table's edge, trying to duck under the smoke.

  "It's obvious to anybody with a triple-digit IQ, Leo. You just gotta open your fucking eyes."

  I looked again. Nothing jumped out at me. The table full of photos looked to my unseeing eyes to be a typical collection of all-American family photos. Some bad, some better, some a total waste of film. Nothing special.

  "There was this philosopher, some Frenchman, I don't remember his name, who said that after a certain age people become responsible for their own faces."

  "Camus," I said. "Albert Camus." Carl was rolling now.

  "The guy was right, you know, which by the way is pretty fucking amazing for a Frenchman, since they're the biggest assholes in the universe, bar none. Back about sixty-seven—"

  He stopped himself, not wanting to seem bitter, as if even that admission was more than he cared to share. His photos were great because they were hon

  est. Knowing Carl Cradduck had taught me that honesty was at best a double-edged sword. Honesty neither makes excuses nor feels pity. Carl liked to say that self-delusion, not baseball, was the national pastime. The fact that Carl Cradduck tolerated me was in some odd way far more affirming than the often-forced affection of my extended family.

  "Anyway," he continued, "if you know what to look for, you can sometimes put the people back into the pictures. That's the secret, Leo It's like them old-time Muslims were right. You remember? From those old Ripley's Believe It or Not books. How the people there in North Africa used to be shit-scared of having their pictures taken. They thought it would rob them of their souls. What's interesting is that in a way they were right. Photography does have this way of taking the people out of the pictures. You know what I mean? What you got to do, if you want to make sense out of pictures, is put the people back into the pictures."

  "What do these pictures tell you?"

  "Everything," he said.

  My face earned me another sneer, followed by a resigned sigh.

  "For starters"—he tapped the collage of photographs laid out before him—"most of these images are your typical stagey tourist shit, right?"

  He didn't wait for an answer.

  "But look at the number of misfires. It's unbelievable. I could maybe understand this many blottos if the photographer was one of those rat bastards who likes to sneak up on people in the bathroom, but these things are staged. Theoretically, everybody's supposed to be looking right at the camera, showing off their crowns, right?"

  I had to agree. Nicky, Marge, and Allison most certainly were posing.

  "Look at the spacing in most of these shots. Look at the fuckin' body language. The body language alone ought to tell you everything you need to know. These three look like they got a broom up their collective ass."

  At second viewing, a certain amount of discomfort was indeed obvious. I checked for bristles.

  "Also, look how you can tell that they're way the hell inside each other's personal space. Look how close together they're standing. Only Japs and politicians get that close to their fellow citizens. Look at the facial expressions in this series."

  He pointed to a group of four shots of Nicky, Marge, and Allison in front of the teahouse in the Japanese Garden at the Arboretum.

  "The older broad here"—he pointed to Marge— "who, I'd like to mention, is sporting an absolutely bodacious set of warheads, looks to me like she'd rather be having a high colonic."

  He held the first picture close to his thick lenses and smiled at me.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong, Leo, but old Warheads here, she don't like Little Tasty Trim at all, does she? Lemme know if I'm gettin' warm here."

  I didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer.

  "Fuckin' A," he said.

  "How can you tell all that from just looking at a picture?"

  "Notice how the kid is always in between the two muff. Which, I'd like to mention, would not be a half-assed bad place to be. Not a single shot of the two snappers side by side, and notice how Hooters here"—he tapped Marge's chest—"is always slightly inclined away from Little Miss Tasty." He tapped Allison this time.

  "Tight unit," he murmured.

  He was right about the body language. If you looked

  closely, Marge seemed to keep her body slightly angled away from Allison, as if being blown off center by a persistent wind.

  "So, that probably makes Warheads and the boy mother and son. Am I right?"

  I admitted that they were.

  "Fuckin' A."

  "And Little Tight 'n' Tasty here is the fiancee or maybe the daughter-in-law, then. Right again, huh?"

  My face must have spoken for me. He picked up and then replaced several photos,, bringing each up to within an inch or so of his glasses.

  "Look at the color tones. Good lens. Real warm skin tone. Little Tasty's got quite the tan. Probably got great little tan lines. Late-afternoon sun behind the camera just like it says in the manual. Everything nice-a-nice. Gives a nice rosy glow to the skin. Almost looks like there was a red filter on, which there wasn't. Buuuut—"

  He
drew it out.

  "Look at the kid."

  I studied the picture for whatever Carl saw, but came up blank.

  "Look how sallow he looks compared to the wool. A definite yellow-green cast to him. I'd say the kid's probably not well. Jaundice maybe, or some kind of liver disease."

  "Cancer," I said.

  "How old?"

  "Twenty-two."

  "A bitch," he said with feeling. We studied the pictures in silence for a long moment.

  "It's all there, Leo," he said finally. "I'll tell you somethin' else about this particular series. Helen Keller was really struggling to get a picture of her. He or she was working like a dog at it."

  "How can you tell?"

  "See those strained looks? Those are the expressions of people who have been posing for quite a while—doing the amateur shuffle. You know, a little to the left, a little to the right."

  He threw his short arms left and right as if doing the Charleston.

  "You do that for a while and everybody comes out looking like they're takin' a shit."

  He tapped Allison's half-hidden face.

  "The tight unit had plenty of time to get ready. We got this one with her hair over her face. Number two where she's got one side of her face behind his arm, and a third where she's looking the other way, for Christ's sake."

  He lined the three stills up on the table top. He picked up the negatives from the bottom of the envelope, holding the thin brown strips carefully by the edges.

  "Watch," he said. "I got fifty says they were taken in this order."

  He tapped the three photos again. "One, two, three. Wanna bet?" "No way."

  I'd played in card games with Carl. He had a nasty habit of going home with everybody's folding money.

  One after another, he held the strips up to the light.

  "That's why there's three of four in every series. The photographer can tell he's not quite getting her and keeps pushing the button."

  I must have looked dubious. He continued.

  "Bingo," he said. "Here they are. Right in a row, one, two, three."

  I took the negative and held it to the light. Carl was right. The three photos were indeed sequential.

  "Where's my fifty?"

  "I didn't bet."

  "You don't have to take the bet. That's life's little joke, Leo. You're playin' whether you know it or not."

  He pointed down at the table. "Look at the one with her hair in the way," he said. "Look at her hand." "What about it?"

  "It's on the outside by her ear, like she's moving the hair in rather than out of her face. If she were moving her hair out of her face, her thumb would be on the outside and up. You try moving hair out of your face that way. You'll poke out your fucking eye, is what you'll do. And speaking of poking, I'd sure like to wet a finger in that one."

  When I ignored him, he began to paw through the photographs again.

  "How many pictures we got here?" he asked no one in particular.

  He counted up one row and across, then multiplied.

  "Fifty-six," he said, answering his own question. "You remember back to those thrilling days of yore, before no-fault divorce, when I had the little shop down on Michigan and you used to bring me all those motel-room specials you used to take?"

  I admitted I remembered.

  "Even under those circumstances, you bein' the worst photographer on the planet, bad light, people diving under beds, you still used to get usable shots of them, didn't you?"

  I nodded.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "I always figured it was by virtue of my great cunning and dare."

  "No, Shamus, it's just a numbers game. That's why I sold you that autowinder. If you take enough shots, something will come out. Watch the pros. They'd never admit it, but half the time they just keep burning film until luck takes over. They know that if they get enough prints, they'll stumble on something good when they get in the darkroom."

  "So what do we do?" I asked.

  "We?" he chucked. "Okay, you."

  "Well, Leo, I'll tell you. You're a lucky bastard on two counts. First off, there's your timing. Just a few years ago, this would have been a first-class pain in the ass. Woulda cost you a fortune. Now"—he snapped his fingers—"it's a piece of cake. Actually," he chuckled, "it's a piece of software. Adobe Photoshop. Hell of a fuckin' program. Do everything except milk your lizard for you."

  I poked him back on track.

  "So the computer will do it?"

  "Only in the hands of a master, my friend, which is where you get lucky on the second count. You have me," he said expansively. "For"—he waggled a thick finger—"a nominal price, of course."

  "Of course," I agreed. "What needs to be done?"

  "First, we pick out the best of this crap."

  He took his time as he poked through the collage of prints covering his worktable, eventually selecting six, piling the rest.

  "Then?"

  "In the old days, I'd have had to take the negatives into the darkroom, adjust the focus and the distance from the camera so they more or less matched each other, cut the damn negatives by hand, and then patch them back together. The twist would have come out looking like Marge Schott that time of the month."

  "But with this software—"

  "Now, I'll just scan the pictures into the hard-drive memory and do all the editing right on screen."

  "And then we'll have a picture of the girl?"

  "No, then we'll have a composite of the girl."

  "But it will be a likeness."

  "All composites look like Karl Maiden," Carl corrected.

  He sensed I was losing my patience and moved along.

  "Then we run it through the digital enhancer, which smooths out the rough edges and gives us more or less a finished product."

  "More or less?"

  "More like"—he waggled a hand—"an average of a good likeness. You've got to understand, Leo, when you digitize something, you tend to lose the character along with the rough edges. The same process that keeps everything from looking like Leona Helmsley also takes some of the human element out of it. My assistant, Mark, says it makes everybody look retarded. It ain't real nice, but the kid has a point. What you get is a homogenized version of the image."

  Before I could ask another question, he continued.

  "But we can adjust the picture, pixel by pixel, until we get it right."

  "Really?"

  "You just have Warheads tell me what needs to be fixed. More chin, higher cheekbones, anything. We'll eventually get it right."

  Confidentiality being the cornerstone of my business, I felt a need to put an immediate stop to Carl's assumptions regarding Marge Sundstrom.

  "For your information, Carl, the woman in those pictures isn't—"

  He cut me off.

  "Forget it, huh, Shamus," he snapped. "It's in the pictures, just like it was in your face when I started talkin' about her tits. I just hope you're gettin' some of that, Leo. Be a terrible waste otherwise."

  Before I could deny all, he began to laugh at me. His laugh, created on the inhale, honked like a wedge of Canada geese as he reveled in my discomfort.

  "You better stay the fuck out of poker games, Leo. Just have her make corrections, and we'll come up with a workable image."

  "Like one of those Identikit pictures the cops use?"

  "Better. Way better. Those Identikit drawings are more like caricatures. The cops have to show those things to a shitload of people before they get somebody to make an ID. Lots of the citizens just can't make the mental leap from the drawing to a real face. We won't have that problem. We'll end up with a photo, instead of just a fuckin' drawing."

  "How long and how much?"

  "I'll need the weekend and two hundred."

  "Now and two and a half," I countered. "I want to be up and running on this by Monday morning," I said.

  "Three," he shot back. "Don't forget my fifty." "That includes all the changes we might have to make?" "Fuckin A." "Dea
l."

  9

  H.R. McColl did a hell of an impression of cheerful. Thirty-five years of kissing well-heeled asses had provided the senior partner with an impenetrable veneer of unctuous affability as slick and stout as any Willapa Bay oyster.

  Just this side of sixty, he was a tall man. His sharp cheekbones were framed by a shock of thick white hair, shaved nearly bald on the sides, worn in a short Marine brush cut on top—all bones and angles in a dark gray wool suit. The deep purple tie and matching pocket hankie added a slight contemporary touch to his otherwise conservative attire.

  "Let me set your concerns to rest, Marge." The resonant basso profundo held a nearly incantatory assuredness. For punctuation, he leaned back in the chair, crossing his ankle over his knee, exposing a well-controlled two inches of light gray sock. Smooth—the patient parent assuring the frightened child that the bedroom closet was free of ghosts.

  "I can assure you that we are doing everything humanly possible. I'm sure you understand. This is not nearly as simple a matter as it might seem."

  "I don't see why not," Marge shot back. "We are the next of kin. There's no question about that. At the moment, there's no money involved. All we want is an accounting for the funds."

  I wondered how long it had been since the senior partner of the august firm of McColl, Moody and Cole had been called to a meeting at a client's office on a Saturday afternoon. His easy grace suggested that this was a service that he regularly provided to his corporate clients. I knew better. McColl, Moody and Cole specialized in asset retention. They had so perfected the mechanics of the international banking system as to make it nearly impossible for any governmental body to keep track of the considerable sums with which they were routinely entrusted. They didn't launder money; they had it dry-cleaned.

  From Carl's, I'd headed home for a shower and a change of clothes. My appointment to meet Marge at the Sundstrom office wasn't until one o'clock. After steaming the nicotine out of my skin for a half hour or so, I dressed in a pair of clean jeans, a burgundy chamois shirt, and my dress Nikes. I made myself a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches, washing them down with a Barq's root beer, and was in the process of rounding up some random clothes to accompany my Sunday-go-to-meeting outfit to the cleaners when the phone rang. It was Marge.