Or perhaps things built on the ocean always seemed a bit lost when facing its vastness and depth.
Another structure perched behind the Cliff House, at the very edge of the drop-off. It looked vaguely like a camera, with its lens pointed toward the sky. There was a little ticket-taker booth where the rewind crank would be.
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“The Camera Obscura,” Hitchcock replied. Indeed, a sign above the door confirmed it—CAMERA OBSCURA. “It’s the blind from which we shall observe our tiny quarry.”
Hitchcock donned his hat and sunglasses, then turned away from the giant camera. He led Jack to the men’s room off the terrace behind the Cliff House. Inside, a man with a red jacket was facing the urinal. Hitchcock went immediately into the stall, and Jack examined the towel holder until the man had zipped up and slipped out the door.
“That man didn’t even bother to wash his hands,” Jack said as Hitchcock emerged from the stall.
“Filthy chap. Let’s hope he’s not a waiter at the restaurant.”
Jack slid past Hitchcock and placed the makeup case on the toilet tank. The note demanding to see Aunt Edith was inside. The money was not. As he positioned the case, another man came into the restroom. Jack slammed shut the stall door, and Hitchcock turned his face toward it. “Daddy’s right outside, Son,” he said. “We’ll get an ice cream when you’re done.”
The man used the urinal and headed right out the door.
“Another waiter,” Hitchcock said as Jack reappeared.
The pair were walking out the door when Jack cried, “Wait! How are we going to make sure no one takes the case to lost and found or something, before the kidnapper gets here?”
Jack went back into the stall and opened the bag. He tore a large piece of paper from a blank spot on the message to the kidnapper.
“Do you have a pen?” Jack asked.
Hitchcock took one from his pocket.
On the paper Jack wrote:
men’s
toil at
out of order
Jack hung the paper from the stall door latch.
“That should do it,” he said.
When they emerged from the men’s room, the sun had dipped below the fog and was closing in on the horizon. The tide was going out, leaving behind lifeless kelp and the reek of decay.
Hitchcock drifted toward the Giant Camera’s ticket booth, pulling Jack in his wake.
“Howdy, gents,” said the man in the booth. He wore a cable-knit cardigan over his shirt and tie but would have been more appropriately dressed carnival-barker style, in a broad-striped red-and-white jacket with a cane and straw hat. He was mostly bald, with a tuft of red hair that sprang like a question mark from the crown of his head. “Care to witness the wonders of the camera obscura?” he asked. “Ancient instrument of Aristotle. Described in the writings of the great Islamic scholar Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham. Aid to da Vinci and Vermeer. Only fifty cents, and the world can be yours in a bowl.”
Hitchcock squinted toward the sun, raising his hand to his forehead as if in salute, and said with a casual air, “How much would it be for an exclusive rental from now until, say, just after sunset.”
“Ah! Sunset!” the man said. “A blaze of glory projected for the pleasure of our patrons onto the camera’s viewer. Why watch the real thing, exposed to the cold and wind, when you can see it from the comfort of the camera obscura?”
“How much to watch it exclusively?” Jack repeated.
“Exclusively? Well, sunset is our busiest time. And who can watch the magnificence and grandeur of the heavenly orb descending to the sea exclusively? A drama of light and water. Eternal forces in an endless dance. Why . . . the sunset belongs to the world!”
Jack slipped one of the hundred-dollar bills he had held onto out of his pocket and through the slot in the box office window.
“Sold!” cried the man. “One sunset. To the little boy with the big bills.”
“We’ll need you to stay on and be sure no one else comes in,” said Hitchcock, “and we’ll need you to rotate the lens about one hundred twenty degrees.”
“To the rear? Away from the ocean? But you’ll miss the sunset!”
“We prefer to see the glory and drama of the eternal dance of light played out against the door to the men’s toilet.”
“Suit yourself,” said the ticket seller, and pulled a lever so the entrance door swung open.
Inside, the room was completely dark, except for the top of a round, waist-high white cylinder perhaps six feet in diameter, which sat in the middle of the room. It was concave, like a shallow bowl, and projected onto it was a scene of the ocean waves crashing against Seal Rocks.
The silence of dark spaces settled on Jack. He wondered where the image in the bowl was coming from. He couldn’t hear the rhythmic thwip, thwip of a projector.
“You are standing in the bowels of history,” Hitchcock said, his voice a reverent whisper. “ ‘Camera obscura,’ from the Latin for ‘dark room.’ And you can draw a straight line from these dark rooms to the cinemas of today. Somewhere in the depths of time, someone noticed a peculiar optical effect. A pinhole in the wall of an otherwise dark room projected an entire scene of the brightly lit world outside onto the wall opposite. Clever chaps have since added lenses and photosensitive paper, and shrunk these cameras until they could fit in your hand. And later they added cranks and motors and reels of film so you could capture movement. But these huge camerae obscurae—they were the beginning.”
“Wow,” said Jack. The image in the bowl reflected in Hitchcock’s intense eyes.
“Many early exhibitors were denounced as sorcerers and burned alive for their trouble, an end some would find fitting for today’s motion picture directors.”
A mechanical cranking of metal on metal sounded, and the scene playing out on the pedestal before them began to turn, from the ocean to the broken glass ruins. Jack saw the man with the red jacket and the deplorable hygiene habits walking on the beach.
“Hey! This is showing what’s going on outside right now.”
“It wouldn’t be much use to us if it didn’t,” said Hitchcock.
The scene continued to move as the lenses and apparatus above rotated away from the sea.
“But why do people pay to see this projected inside when they could see the same thing outside for free?” Light and shadow, reflected from the bowl, danced over Hitchcock’s face. With him in his dark suit, his head seemed disembodied and ghostly.
“Indeed,” he said. “You may as well ask why people pay to see my movies of blackmail, murder, and intrigue projected on a screen, when they could watch the same activities in their bedrooms, or boardrooms, or through their neighbor’s window. Perhaps viewing life from the darkness, they can see things in a new light. All experiencing the same story, but each with his own reaction and thoughts.”
The scene continued to rotate. It was different, watching what he could otherwise see outside, here in a darkened room. It felt safe. No one could see what he watched. No one could know what piqued his interest or made him angry—or made him sad. And more—here was this scene, projected for him in this shallow bowl, like someone had gathered the world and contained it, rendered it harmless, and then scooped it out for his uncomplicated consumption.
The scene came to rest on the men’s room door.
“Now we wait,” said Jack.
“And watch,” said Hitchcock.
Wait they did. Men entered the restroom and men left, but all of them were taller, or fatter, or darker, or older, or younger than the kidnapper. Not one was as short as The Suave Man. None of them were women, like his accomplice. And no one walked out with the makeup case.
Life played out in the light of the bowl, surrounded by the shade of the tomb.
The darkness made Jack bold. He pulled the silver charm from his shirt.
“Mr. Hitchcock,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about something a lot, and I need
to know. What happens. What happens to people when they die?”
“I’m afraid my expertise on such matters ends when life does,” Hitchcock said.
“But you must know something,” Jack countered. “Your TV show deals with death every week.”
“I’ve told stories describing dozens of ways to dispatch someone or to be dispatched, and read a thousand more, but none that can tell for certain what happens after. I was raised to believe all unblemished souls go to heaven. I have no reason to doubt that and every desire to believe it, though I worry sometimes about my own black marks. In any case, I feel certain that something goes on beyond death.”
“But what if you become trapped,” Jack said, rolling the charm between his thumb and finger, “like a phantom walking the earth or a soul in some limbo, or what if you disappear altogether?”
Hitchcock wrapped his hands around Jack’s. “I think it is the memory and the emotions of the living that become trapped, not the souls of the dead,” he said. “If we want to make sure they are free, perhaps we only need to let them go. Then we can honor them by living our lives as they would want us to.”
The director gently pulled Jack’s hands open, and the charm dropped and swung back on its chain. Jack felt the little tap it made as it struck his heart.
“Do you think I could someday be as brave as my father?” Jack asked.
“No,” said the director.
“Hey!”
“I think you’ll be just as brave as yourself,” Hitchcock continued. “In the two days I’ve known you, you’ve faced down the police, a kidnapper, and an overzealous social worker, to say nothing of a very prominent director of films.”
“But I was scared every time,” Jack said.
“My dear boy, you are operating under the misconception that fear is the opposite of bravery, when in fact it is an essential component. Courage is taking action in spite of fear. The opposite of bravery is inaction.”
Jack wasn’t convinced.
“If your inability to draw your father is what’s stopping you from knowing this, then draw him. You have seen him, after all.”
“Huh? When?” Jack asked.
“Your mother did say you look just like him.”
Silence fell in time with the sun. A rose glow bathed the men’s room door, and the image in the bowl had become nearly as dark as Jack’s thoughts.
“Any sign of him?” Jack asked.
“None,” said Hitchcock. “The last man left ten minutes ago, and sunset is nearly over.”
As if to underscore his statement, the final light faded and the image winked out. Jack went to the exit and peeked out, then motioned for Hitchcock to follow. The director cast off from his observation post. With a wave to the ticket seller, they entered the men’s room.
The sign still hung on the stall door but had been turned upside down. Jack pushed past Hitchcock and into the stall. The pink makeup case still sat on the toilet tank.
“I guess he didn’t come,” Jack said. Then he spied a piece of paper stuck to the side of the toilet bowl. It had writing on it. Jack turned his head to read it better. “ROM HER.” It was his own handwriting, torn from the note he’d left in the case.
Hitchcock was staring at the toilet bowl too. “Open the bag.”
Jack did. The letter he had written was still inside, but when he unfolded it, he could see that words and letters had been carefully torn from it. They fluttered like dry leaves to the floor of the stall. The remaining letters now read: “OR F AN AG E FOR YOU.”
“HAHAHAHAHA . . .” In his mind Jack could hear Laughing Sal crowing down by the beach, and he knew, this time, it was because the joke was on him.
THE GLOOM IN JACK’S HEART remained for the rest of that evening as they returned to Hitchcock’s suite and spoke long into the night about what to do next.
“I’m sure he didn’t go in the restroom,” Jack said. “I didn’t see everyone’s face, but the kidnapper is too short to miss.”
“Perhaps he had another accomplice,” Hitchcock said.
“And we’re no closer to finding Aunt Edith,” Jack said. He thought of the social worker’s ominous “I’ll be back” and wondered how long he had to find his aunt.
“One can’t help noticing that things do not add up here,” Hitchcock said. “Were I writing the events of the past few days as a screenplay, Alma— Mrs. Hitchcock— would have my head. ‘Too many inconsistencies,’ she’d say.”
“It’s more than ‘how did we miss The Suave Man at the camera obscura?’ ” said Jack. “It’s questions we’ve asked but didn’t answer. Like why was my rich aunt wearing fake jewels? Why did she have ten thousand in cash? And why did the kidnapper overlook the cash when he left the first ransom note?”
“And the hidden location of the first note we found in your aunt’s purse,” Hitchcock added. “In the cinema, clarity is of paramount importance. It is indispensible that one’s audience be perfectly aware of the facts. Without clarity the audience cannot be frightened, or anxious, or anything but confused.”
“But what about the characters?” Jack asked. “They don’t always know what’s happening.”
“Not at first. But eventually they must. Some final clue lets them know they’re facing a murderer, or a foreign spy, and that they are in very real danger.”
“So how do you get them there?”
The director waved his hand in the air. “With a revelatory scene. Something to move them from suspicion to certainty. A whispered conversation overheard. An overlooked clue discovered,” Hitchcock said. “Flowers that grow down. A monogrammed hat that is too large. Bottles of uranium stocked in the wine cellar.”
“Well, there aren’t any whispered conversations to overhear right now. So how do we find an overlooked clue?” Jack asked. This was the director’s area of expertise. Jack knew he’d have an answer.
Hitchcock made a little steeple of his fingers and pulled nervously at his bulbous lower lip. “Perhaps by reviewing what we already have, we’ll see something in a new light,” he said.
“Like we saw the ocean in a new way at the Giant Camera?” Jack asked.
“Precisely,” Hitchcock said. “Though I think we should wait until tomorrow to take a fresh look. We are both tired now, and we would likely miss something important if we tried to give things a second look at this hour.”
Jack reluctantly agreed. It was decided that he should again sleep on the sofa in the director’s room. He went to his aunt’s to grab his pajamas and toothbrush. He fed Muffin. Back in the director’s suite he brushed his teeth. He stared into the mirror, making different faces to look like a brave man. But it was useless. He was an eleven-year-old boy in cowboy pajamas.
Hitchcock had folded Jack’s clothes and set them on the coffee table. On top sat his sketchbook and pencil.
Jack turned to the ghost image of his dad and closed his eyes. His mother said he looked just like his father. Jack ran his thumb along the contours of the pencil. Up popped the face he’d seen every day in the mirror. He knew he could rotate it in space, but could he move it through time? He imagined the lines of his face stretching, the angle of his jaw sharpening, the chin growing more prominent. The eyes remained the same. When he looked at his sketchbook again, he saw this new face imprinted on the page. He let his pencil follow the lines.
In the end he had a very nice picture of what he might look like when he was older.
And no earthly idea if it looked anything like his father.
He threw the sketchpad onto the table.
• • •
The next morning they ate breakfast again in the director’s suite. Jack found he was much more able to stomach the food this morning than he had been the previous day. He even found he liked the bubble and squeak.
Hitchcock had several different newspapers delivered with breakfast. “It’s my habit. to review who bludgeoned whom while I sip my coffee,” he said. GRACE’S BRIDESMAID ROBBED OF JEWELS the above-the-banner headline of on
e screamed. Others told the same story. “Life imitates art,” the director said. He looked sad.
When they were finished, they went to Aunt Edith’s suite. Jack dragged the coffee table from the sitting room into his aunt’s bedroom. “I want to see everything all together,” he said, “and we can’t move all the chocolates from Aunt Edith’s bed.” He removed the bedspread that Hitchcock had used to cover the chocolate note. Then he retrieved Aunt Edith’s handbag and the makeup case.
On the coffee table he laid out the note that had led them to Mission Dolores and the newspaper article with the circled words. Beside these he unfolded the note he had written, and which the kidnapper had torn and left in the men’s room at the Cliff House.
“Three notes,” Jack said. “Four, counting the chocolate one on the bed.”
“ ‘We have her. No Pole,’ ” Hitchcock read. “I mean ‘police.’ ”
Below the newspaper article, Jack placed the envelope with “Open Immediately” in newsprint. Then he fished the blue envelope from the handbag and placed it below the handwritten note. Next he unloaded the rest of the contents of the handbag one by one onto the table. The used Kleenex he immediately tossed into the wastebasket.
He laid the pawn tickets beneath the blue envelope. The bill from Ransohoff’s he examined closely. “All of her clothes were special ordered,” Jack said. “Do you think that means anything?”
Hitchcock reviewed the invoice. “ ‘Amount due: three hundred and seventy-five dollars,’ ” he read. “Your aunt had expensive tastes. And she was fond of using credit.”
Likewise, another bill, for the television, showed an amount due. As did a bill from the hotel. Jack arranged all the bills on the table, as well as the coin purse, which contained three dollars and twelve cents in change. The last things he pulled from the handbag were the beauty potions, creams, and powders.
“I guess that’s it,” he said. He turned the handbag upside down and shook it. A small object dropped out, skittered across the table, and came to rest against a jar of wrinkle cream.
A Hitch at the Fairmont Page 11