Bowman’s eyes lingered on the picture. “Yeah, that got things stirring.”
“Did you know her?” Corman asked.
“I seen her. She come in a few times, bought some things.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“She didn’t do no talking,” Bowman said. “She come in, pick up what she wants. She put up the money. Sometimes it come up short. I say, no. So she put something back. Sometimes, it works the other way. She come up with too much money. I always give change, but I never seen her count it.”
“Did you ever see her with anyone?”
“No. She was always alone ’cept for that doll she carried around with her. She acted like it was real. Always holding it real close, like she was afraid somebody was going to snatch it from her. She even bought food for it.”
“Similac?” Corman asked. “She bought that here?”
“Yeah.”
Corman glanced down the center aisle. At the end of it he could see a few cans of Similac nestled among a smattering of other baby products, diapers, baby food, a small box of rubber pacifiers. For an instant he got the same feeling he’d once had in the bar near Gramercy Park where 0. Henry had written “The Gift of the Magi” during one long snowy afternoon, the fibrous touch of the Great Man’s presence, the soft scratch of his pencil, the sense of what he’d been though. “Would you mind if I took some pictures?” he asked.
Bowman shrugged. “Don’t matter to me. I ain’t here for long no way.”
Corman drew out his camera and headed down the aisle, taking pictures as he walked, one picture at each step, until a single can of Similac filled the neat rectangular window of the viewfinder.
When he’d taken the last shot, he returned to the front of the store. Bowman was watching him steadily as he came up the aisle. “Was she somebody, that woman?” he asked.
“I don’t know who she was,” Corman said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” He took a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and wrote down his name and telephone number. “If you hear anything about her or find anybody in the neighborhood who knew anything about her, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.”
Bowman took the paper and dropped it into the drawer beneath the counter. “These people around here, they don’t do much talking. They don’t none of them have the right papers, you know? They don’t want to be seen. And ‘cause of that, they got to be blind, too.”
“Still, if …”
Bowman grinned widely. “These here pictures, you going to get some money for them?”
“I hope so,” Corman said, then heard Pike’s voice out of the blue, tossing him another line if Julian’s turned to dust, warning him to grab it before it got away, sink his fangs into Groton’s death.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
CORMAN HAD WALKED through half the bars in his neighborhood before he finally spotted Harry Groton in the Irish Eyes. For a moment he lingered just inside the door, feeling somewhat like a steely-eyed vulture as he watched Groton from behind a pane of frosted glass. Then he headed toward him, his eyes watching Groton closely as he neared the small booth where he sat.
Groton was alone, his large hands wrapped around a glass of beer. He had a round face with slightly popped eyes. A thin red netting of broken veins lay across his nose, and his lips were raw and cracked, as if he’d just swept in from the desert wastes. His eyes were blue and heavy-lidded so that he often looked drowsy. He wiped his mouth quickly as Corman slid into the seat across from him.
“How you doing?” Corman asked casually.
“Okay,” Groton replied. One of his large furry eyebrows trembled slightly, then collapsed. “What’s new?”
“Nothing much.”
“You drinking anything?”
“Maybe a short one,” Corman said. He walked back to the bar, ordered a beer of his own, then returned to the booth. “Here’s to you,” he said, then took a quick sip from the beer and returned the glass to the table. “You hang around this part of town a lot?”
“Enough,” Groton said. “Used to shoot it some.”
“You been shooting a long time,” Corman said.
“Since I was eighteen,” Groton said. He laughed, but edgily, as if at himself.
“Must have seen a lot,” Corman added.
“You writing a book?”
Corman forced a laugh. “Me? No. I’m a shooter. I leave the words to other people.”
Groton wagged his finger at him. “That’s your mistake, partner.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” Groton said. “You know that saying, ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words’?”
Corman nodded.
“It’s bullshit,” Groton said with a sudden vehemence. “I’ll tell you what a picture’s worth. It’s worth thirty-five bucks a print. A few bucks more for color.” He lifted his glass slightly. “That’s what a picture’s worth.” He took a quick sip from the glass, then returned it loudly to the table. “I never had a picture up from page five. Front page? Forget it. I’m talking page five.”
Corman could smell the air souring around him. Groton’s self-pity was like a musty odor, and the fact that he probably had a few legitimate reasons for it didn’t do a thing to relieve it.
“You shoot blood and guts, you’re on the front page five, minimum four times a year,” Groton went on irritably. “But you shoot some rich little twit’s birthday party at the Met, you’re back with the motor pool and the boiler-room jobs.”
Corman cleared his throat softly. “I had a shoot a few days ago,” he said. “A jumper on Forty-seventh Street.”
“East or West?”
“West. Good shots, too, but Pike said no.”
Groton shrugged. “When a spade jumps out a window, that’s page eight, column one, no shots. That’s the way it’s always been. Nothing changes.”
“She wasn’t black.”
“Well, these days, even whites end up on the back pages.”
“She had a college degree,” Corman said. “At least that’s what I heard.”
Groton leaned back slowly, rubbed his stomach gently, groaned. “Gas,” he explained. “Lately, I get real bad gas.” He curled one of his large red hands into a fist, pounded it softly against his stomach. “I guess I’ll have to get off the sauce,” he said quietly, more or less to himself.
“You never worked the news beat, did you, Groton?” Corman asked.
Groton shook his head. “Not me. I got a different gig altogether. Society.” He belched quietly. “But even that beat, it has its secrets.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you got to know how to shoot it.”
Corman cocked his head to the left. If he took over Groton’s job, he’d need to know how to play the inside track.
“You got to flatter the rich, that’s the secret,” Groton said. He laughed. “That’s the only secret there is.”
“How do you do that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you this,” Groton said. “You don’t concentrate on their fancy clothes and shit.” He shook his head dismissively. “That’s what the young turks do, dumb fucks.”
“You don’t?”
“Just enough for atmosphere,” Groton told him. “But I’ll tell you something about the rich. They don’t give a shit about their clothes and their big fancy dining rooms. When it comes to publicity, that’s not what matters to
