from the police station before pulling over in tears. Now I was parked at a meter on the Palisade above the ocean, talking robotically on the Nextel, staring through the windshield into murky space.
“Where are your communications for the past ninety days?”
“They’re in hand notes.”
“But where are they in the file?”
“Who cares? What about the fax on Brennan?”
“Deal with it, and in your spare time get this assessment up to date. By the way, what is this about you wanting to open up an old case from the bank squad?”
“Nothing. I was trying to help someone.”
“The inspectors are coming in ten days.”
I forced myself to sit there, gazing at the ocean like the rest of the midmorning unemployed sleazebag degenerates in their trashy cars. I was doing work again, although this time the thoughts came easily off the conveyor belt, greased by their own logic.
Why was Rick suddenly on this? Because he had turned on me, too.
Kelsey got to him.
Through Galloway.
She had not liked my voice mail about patriotism and the American flag. Golly gee.
A Broadway tune came tap-tap-tapping along:
I did go to the Federal Building — not up to the seventeenth floor to take care of the files like a good girl, but down to the subbasement of the garage, down to Hugh Akron’s darkroom.
This was now my shadow self, the inverted Ana, passing along the bare cinder-block corridor, following clusters of pipes. Soon the noise of blowers and whining car engines had faded, and acrid film developer had replaced the moldy scent of sweat coming out of the fitness center, and there was Hugh, all bones and lankiness, slicing off the edge of a photograph with the razor-sharp arm of a paper cutter he brought down with a surgical
“Ana-stasia!” He smiled.
That English charm went a long way. Rumor was he had been a pilot in the RAF and a pioneer in aerial photography, whose counterintelligence was vital to the Normandy landing, but that would put him way past seventy and doesn’t make any sense.
I have discovered Hugh Akron knows what to include and what to make sure stays out of the picture.
He always wore a Leica, eager to snap your picture, “Just for kicks,” and it was flattering, what the hell. Weeks later you’d get a black-and-white, and there you are, standing by the filing cabinet looking very documentary. The understanding was, you slipped old Hugh ten bucks in American dollars for contributing to your memory book. You didn’t really want the print, but you were not about to throw it away. Parking tickets? Play-off games? Wedgwood china? Airline discounts cheaper than cheap? Don’t ask, don’t tell, see the Brit.
The chlorine smell was overwhelming although the actual darkroom was behind one of the other doors. The counter space where Hugh worked, to a classical music station, was empty and scrupulously white.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, tan cheeks turning an appealing pink.
“I need to run a check through the DMV.”
It used to be you could run a background check on anyone who cut you off on the freeway, but there had been so many abuses the Bureau made it a censurable act to make unauthorized use of the DMV. You are not supposed to do this. You are truly not.
Hugh moved to the computer. “Case number?”
“Left it upstairs.”
“Let’s approximate.”
He typed in something. A flute concerto playing on the boom box was blowing notes of unbelievable sweetness like bubbles drifting on the cold, still, pungent air.
“Name?”
“Sylvia Oberbeck.”
“California resident?”
“Yes.”
His long fingers danced over the keys. He had already accessed the Department of Motor Vehicles database and gone through the security check using, I surmised, not his own ID.
“Driver’s license?”
“Don’t know.”
“Vehicle registration?”
“Don’t know. But she’s an officer with the Santa Monica police.”
“That helps.”
I focused on the pleasing music. It was cold and white as a morgue in there.
“You’re looking peaked. Have you lost weight?”
“Probably.”
“Well, don’t lose any more, my love. Not on that tiny frame. What are you working on?”
He knew about the Santa Monica kidnapping because he had processed location shots of the Promenade. I said we had a good suspect who was also a photographer.
“What’s his background?”
“He knows how to use a camera. He was in the marines.”
“Check
“Great idea.”
Already in progress.
Finally the printer stirred and presented the results.
“Thank you.” I folded the page into my pocket. “How’s the wedding business?”
“Lovely. Do you know Vicki Shawn and Ed Brewster, the firearms instructors? I took their nuptial picture right back there, just the other day.”
I stared at the sterile row of doors. “You mean she came down here wearing a wedding dress?”
“Well of course, what did you expect, body armor? This is what I’m really excited about, however, have I shown you?”
He scooped up the picture he had cropped and gathered a dozen like it.
“What is your professional opinion?” he wanted to know, standing back and folding his hands inside the bib of the rubber apron.
A platinum blonde with large breasts was lying tummy down on a bearskin rug, ankles crossed in the air. Another strode a hobbyhorse. Another, the old barbershop pole. It was classic cheesecake, healthy girls wearing nothing but G-strings, in soft-focus studio shots with phony stars of light in their eyes, poses so quaint they would not have offended Abraham Lincoln.
“Are the fifties coming back?”
Alarmed: “What do you mean by the fifties?” He lowered the blue aviators, peering closely at the prints. “This is the hottest thing. The Internet,” he whispered. “Hit the jackpot with this lot.”
My pits were damp. I wanted to flee.
“Hugh,” I said, and his big head jerked. “You’ve got mail.”
I left the money in an interoffice envelope.
It was odd to be on the other side of deception — I had always been the snoop, after all. But it turned out I
