the residents. The local tax base would keep the Third World in prayer rugs and brown rice through the end of the century.
The door to the photo shop stood open. One of those two-tone paint jobs designed to create a psychological demilitarized zone between the two parts of commerce divided the room into equal sections, blue for the customer, white for the vendor. Like photographers’ studios everywhere, the walls were covered with pictures in frames, but that’s as far as the comparison carried. There were no laughing children, no Golden Anniversary couples or glowing brides and grooms, no dogs, no sunsets. Instead there was a tight color shot of Alan Trammell sliding headfirst into base that made you want to spit out gravel, and next to it a close-up of a distracted and scowling local high-placed member of the Malevolent Brotherhood of Bent-Nosed Sicilians with whom I had once had a run-in, and of whom no known photograph existed, or so it said in his FBI jacket. The Feds are prouder of their photo files than they are of having shot Dillinger.
That wasn’t the best of it, though. The cleanup spot went to a blowup the size of a bedsheet. The camera had caught a Big Cat in the middle of a pounce, at an angle that put nothing behind it but empty blue sky. Red spots glinted in both of its tawny eyes and its curved fangs were ivory-colored against the pure white of its coat. Its body was twisted half around, the hinges of its spread jaws exposed in a silent scream of rage or agony or both. It seemed to echo in the stillness of that room.
“Fucking sherpa I brought along to keep me from falling off the mountain shot the poor bastard just as I tripped the shutter.”
I turned to look at the man seated on a stool on the other side of the glass counter. He was using a precision screwdriver on an ordinary Minolta cradled between his thighs.
“Why?” I asked.
“He said he was saving my life.”
“Was he?”
“This world’s got photographers coming out of its ass. What we don’t have enough of is Tibetan snow leopards. My life was worth that picture.”
“Could be he didn’t see it that way. Maybe he sees more leopards than photographers.”
“All I know is he skinned it and traded the hide for a new snowmobile.”
“What was a News photographer doing taking pictures of cats in the Himalayas?”
“I was freelancing for the National Geographic. They were all set to put it on the cover when the fucking Exxon Valdez ran aground.”
He swung the camera up onto the counter by its strap and slid off the stool. It didn’t bring his head up more than a couple of inches. He was a squat solid thirty, moon-faced, with ditchwater-colored hair twisted into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and wore a gray T-shirt bearing the stenciled legend PROPERTY OF JACKSON PRISON: DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF FREEDOM . “Walker? I’m Randy Quarrels.” He took my hand in the crossed-palm clasp I hadn’t experienced in twenty years. His short thick fingers were as strong as C-clamps.
“It’s a long hike from Tibet to a storefront in Birmingham, Michigan,” I said.
“Well, freelancing’s just another word for bare-assed and out of work. There’s something to be said for steady employment. The word is bullshit.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m strictly hand to mouth.”
“You bring it?”
I schoonered the doctored photograph across the top of the counter.
He stopped it—he had fast hands, ideal for shooting leopards—looked at it, held it up to the light and squinted, then turned and carried it toward the back, grunting for me to join him. I swung up the gate and followed. Below the T-shirt he had on khaki shorts with safari pockets and sandals. His legs were covered with old healed-over scars, from thorns or claws I couldn’t tell.
A half-partition masked the working part of the studio and doubled as a background screen on the other side. It was painted deep blue to absorb light and flatter the subject. A stool
The door to the photo shop stood open. One of those two-tone paint jobs designed to create a psychological demilitarized zone between the two parts of commerce divided the room into equal sections, blue for the customer, white for the vendor. Like photographers’ studios everywhere, the walls were covered with pictures in frames, but that’s as far as the comparison carried. There were no laughing children, no Golden Anniversary couples or glowing brides and grooms, no dogs, no sunsets. Instead there was a tight color shot of Alan Trammell sliding headfirst into base that made you want to spit out gravel, and next to it a close-up of a distracted and scowling local high-placed member of the Malevolent Brotherhood of Bent-Nosed Sicilians with whom I had once had a run-in, and of whom no known photograph existed, or so it said in his FBI jacket. The Feds are prouder of their photo files than they are of having shot Dillinger.
That wasn’t the best of it, though. The cleanup spot went to a blowup the size of a bedsheet. The camera had caught a Big Cat in the middle of a pounce, at an angle that put nothing behind it but empty blue sky. Red spots glinted in both of its tawny eyes and its curved fangs were ivory-colored against the pure white of its coat. Its body was twisted half around, the hinges of its spread jaws exposed in a silent scream of rage or agony or both. It seemed to echo in the stillness of that room.
“Fucking sherpa I brought along to keep me from falling off the mountain shot the poor bastard just as I tripped the shutter.”
I turned to look at the man seated on a stool on the other side of the glass counter. He was using a precision screwdriver on an ordinary Minolta cradled between his thighs.
“Why?” I asked.
“He said he was saving my life.”
“Was he?”
“This world’s got photographers coming out of its ass. What we don’t have enough of is Tibetan snow leopards. My life was worth that picture.”
“Could be he didn’t see it that way. Maybe he sees more leopards than photographers.”
“All I know is he skinned it and traded the hide for a new snowmobile.”
“What was a News photographer doing taking pictures of cats in the Himalayas?”
“I was freelancing for the National Geographic. They were all set to put it on the cover when the fucking Exxon Valdez ran aground.”
He swung the camera up onto the counter by its strap and slid off the stool. It didn’t bring his head up more than a couple of inches. He was a squat solid thirty, moon-faced, with ditchwater-colored hair twisted into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and wore a gray T-shirt bearing the stenciled legend PROPERTY OF JACKSON PRISON: DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF FREEDOM . “Walker? I’m Randy Quarrels.” He took my hand in the crossed-palm clasp I hadn’t experienced in twenty years. His short thick fingers were as strong as C-clamps.
“It’s a long hike from Tibet to a storefront in Birmingham, Michigan,” I said.
“Well, freelancing’s just another word for bare-assed and out of work. There’s something to be said for steady employment. The word is bullshit.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m strictly hand to mouth.”
“You bring it?”
I schoonered the doctored photograph across the top of the counter.
He stopped it—he had fast hands, ideal for shooting leopards—looked at it, held it up to the light and squinted, then turned and carried it toward the back, grunting for me to join him. I swung up the gate and followed. Below the T-shirt he had on khaki shorts with safari pockets and sandals. His legs were covered with old healed-over scars, from thorns or claws I couldn’t tell.
A half-partition masked the working part of the studio and doubled as a background screen on the other side. It was painted deep blue to absorb light and flatter the subject. A stool
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