Double Image (7 page)

“Looks awkward.”

“Worse than you think. Hold this while I pull the tripod from the box.” Coltrane expanded the tripod’s legs and locked them, then secured the camera to the tripod. He draped a black cloth over the back. “Now stoop under there and look at the viewing screen.”

Daniel did so, then quickly reappeared from the cloth, rubbing his eyes in discomfort. “Everything’s upside down.”

“And reversed,” Coltrane said. “The photographer has to imagine the way the image would look normally. Not only that — the camera’s heavy. It uses negatives protected by a lightproof holder, two negatives to a holder, so if you want to take a hundred exposures, you need fifty holders, and
they’re
heavy. And then, of course, you need various filters and lenses, which you have to carry with you, and which, I assume, are in the other box. Taking a view camera on a photo assignment can be like going on a safari.”

“You’re sure it’s worth it?”

“Right now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Coltrane stared reverentially at the camera. “Look at the scratches on it. Old.” He studied the manufacturer’s name imprinted on the metal rim at the back. “Korona. I’m not sure that company’s still in business.”

Numbed, Coltrane sank onto the sofa, struck by the implications. This must be the same camera that Packard used to photograph his famous series of L.A. houses, he thought. In a way he had never imagined, this assignment to recreate that series was going to be an education. He had known that he would be literally following Packard’s footsteps: doing his best to find where Packard had placed his camera, trying to reproduce the same camera angles. But Coltrane had assumed that he would use contemporary cameras. Now he understood that modern equipment would skew the experiment, drawing more attention to how
photography
had changed than to how the
city
had changed since the twenties. The further implication was that by wanting Coltrane to use the same camera
he
had, Packard was telling him to do everything possible to try to identify with Packard, to pretend to
be
Packard. Only then would Coltrane understand the decisions Packard had made when photographing those houses.

The phone rang.

Maybe it’s the old man, Coltrane thought. “Hello?”

“You’ll never guess what a messenger just delivered,” Jennifer said excitedly. “The prints and the signed permission forms. This is very definitely a done deal.”

“And
you’ll
never guess what a messenger just delivered to me. The view camera Packard used.”

“What?”

“Get over here. You’ve got to see this camera.”

“HELLO.” Duncan’s voice sounded thick, as if he’d been drinking.

“It’s Mitch Coltrane.”

No response. Coltrane pressed the phone harder to his ear, wondering if there was something wrong with the connection. “Duncan?”

“This is about the camera?”

“I can’t get over how generous he’s being. Is this a good time to talk to him? I’d like to thank him and swear he’ll get everything back in perfect condition.”

“No, I’m afraid this isn’t a good time.”

“Then I’ll call back. When do you think he might be feeling—”

“Randolph died two hours ago.”

A chill started at Coltrane’s feet and went all the way to his scalp. “No. How . . . Yesterday . . .”

“He put up a good front. His breathing got worse around three this morning. Even with the oxygen at its highest setting, he still had to fight for air.”

“Jesus.”

“I phoned for his doctor, but Randolph left strict instructions that he didn’t want to go to a hospital. All we could do was make him comfortable. By early afternoon, he was finally at peace.”

“The camera.” Coltrane had difficulty getting his voice to work. “When did . . .”

“We discussed it last evening. That’s also when he signed the photo-permission forms, which I assume your editor has by now, along with the prints. The project can go forward as planned. For some reason, Randolph thought it important that someone retrace his steps.”

“I won’t let him down.”

“He didn’t think you would. You’d be surprised how close he was beginning to feel toward you. ‘A fellow orphan’ is how he described you. I want to be sure you understand. Randolph found it almost impossible to speak near the end, but he managed an amazing effort to make me promise to tell you.”

“Tell me?”

“The camera is yours.”

“. . . What?”

“It’s not a loan. It’s a gift. I guess you could call it an inheritance.”

SO, WEIGHED DOWN WITH GRIEF, Coltrane brought Packard back to life. He couldn’t help thinking that way as he worked in the darkroom, a faint amber safelight over his head. Jennifer stood next to him, watching somberly as he used tongs to slide a sheet of photographic paper into a tray of developing solution. He stirred the solution. Briefly, the sheet remained blank. Then the magic took place, an image coming to life on the paper, a black-and-white picture of the old man gazing up.

Jennifer wasn’t able to speak for a moment. “It’s fabulous.”

Sorrow negated any tone of satisfaction that Coltrane might have felt. The odor of chemicals was bitter. “I took a dozen exposures, but this is the one I knew I wanted.”

The image showed Packard looking shrunken in his pajamas and his housecoat, sitting in his wheelchair, the fireplace in the background. The aperture setting Coltrane had used had allowed him to keep that background in focus, specifically part of a burnt-out log in the hearth, the kind of symbolic detail that Packard had liked to use in his early work.

“His eyes,” Jennifer said.

Coltrane nodded. “The expression in them constantly changed — from arrogance to impatience to irony to amusement to calculation. But this particular expression was the one I wanted. Earlier, when he’d looked at the collection of his photos I brought for him to autograph, his eyes became sad. There wasn’t a hint of pride in his reaction to what he’d created. Instead, the only thing the photographs seemed to do was remind him of the passage of time.”

“Did you have any trouble getting him to hold the book in his lap?”

“Not at all. He told me, ‘I surrender myself .’”

“So now we have a photograph of a fragile old man who happens to be a genius, inspecting the contents of one of his books. A photograph about a photographer and his photographs.”

Coltrane’s voice was filled with melancholy. “His photos stayed the same, but he got older.”

“But now he stays the same in this photo.”

“I wonder what it’ll feel like, going where Packard did, doing what he did, trying to be him.”

APPROACHING THE BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL, Coltrane steered left off Sunset Boulevard and headed up Benedict Canyon Drive. It was a little after eight Wednesday morning, the day after Packard’s funeral. Determined to start the project, he and Jennifer had set out early. They drove through the shade of towering palm trees, past expensive homes concealed behind meticulously trimmed hedges and tall house-hugging shrubs. The sky was clear and bright for a change, the clouds having moved on.

“Don’t keep me in suspense. Which house is first on the list?” Jennifer asked.

“Falcon Lair.” Coltrane wore his typical work clothes: leather hiking boots, jeans, and a navy sweatshirt.

In contrast, Jennifer had an orange sweatshirt with a
Southern California Magazine
logo. Her short blond hair was tucked beneath a baseball cap, making her face look attractively boyish, reminding Coltrane of the movie actor she now mentioned. “Rudolph Valentino?”

“The sheik himself.”

“I never understood why he called the place Falcon Lair.”

“In the mid-twenties, Valentino’s second wife was trying to get the studio to let her supervise the production of one of his movies. The picture was called
The Hooded Falcon
. But she ran up costs so much that the studio canceled it. To make her feel better, Valentino named the mansion they were building in honor of the aborted project. They got divorced shortly afterward.”

“And what happened to Valentino?”

“When his wife left him, he threatened to blow his brains out. Instead, he bought tons of antique furniture — suits of armor and Moorish screens, crap like that. It was more than Falcon Lair would hold, but he managed to cram it all in there. In the end, he almost spent himself into bankruptcy. He worried about his career until he died at the age of thirty-one from a bleeding ulcer.”

PACKARD’S MUCH- PRAISED PHOTOGRAPH OF FALCON LAIR had been taken from a neighboring hilltop. It showed the thirteen-room mansion tiny in the distance, surrounded by a high white wall, perched on a flattened ridge, looking so isolated that it bore an intriguing resemblance to a Spanish monastery. None of the many hills beyond it had any houses on it, but tentacle-like roads predicted the invasion about to take place. On the bottom left of the photograph, amid exposed earth on one of the slopes, a developer’s sign announced BEVERLY TERRACE. The implication was clear. Soon the area would be filled with comparable estates. The remoteness that made the location attractive would be destroyed. As if commenting on the impending invasion, Packard had managed to capture a bird of prey hovering in the foreground.

NEAR THE TOP OF BENEDICT CANYON DRIVE, Coltrane chose a secluded street to the left and headed higher into the wooded hills. The neighborhood became increasingly deserted the more the houses looked expensive.

“How do you know this is the way?” Jennifer asked.

“I don’t. Monday, I bought a contour map and tried to orient it with Packard’s photo and a Beverly Hills street guide. Falcon Lair is on one of those bluffs to the right, so we have to go in the opposite direction to find the spot where Packard took the photograph.”

Jennifer shook her head. “These streets weren’t here back then. There’s no way to tell which route Packard used.”

“And all these trees cut off the view, so we don’t know where we are in relation to Falcon Lair.”

Six hours later, dogged determination was all that kept them going. “This assignment needs an explorer, not a photographer,” Coltrane said as he steered onto yet another side street.

Jennifer squirmed. “My rear end hurts. I feel as if I’ve driven to Vegas and back.” Empty coffee cups, along with scrunched-up junk-food wrappers, littered the floor of the passenger seat — from several bathroom trips to West Hollywood. “I bet I put on ten pounds.”

“Maybe getting me to do this project was Packard’s idea of a practical joke.” Coltrane reached the crest of what seemed the hundredth side street and pointed toward a walled estate on the left. “Do you think
this
is where he took the photograph?”

Jennifer glanced from the estate toward the barely glimpsed view to the right. “Let’s give it a try. Anything to get out and see if my legs still work.”

A breeze smelled sweet. Despite the recent rain, Coltrane heard a lawn sprinkler.

“Could be.” He studied the estate. It was higher than the street. In fact, it was on the highest spot around. “From inside, we might be able to see over the trees toward the opposite side of the canyon.”

Jennifer checked her watch. “Ten after two. The light will soon be perfect.”

“Yeah, maybe the day won’t be a total waste. Maybe I can still get some shots.”

The rhododendron-lined driveway had a closed metal gate. A smaller closed gate had a sidewalk leading onto the property. An intercom was mounted on an ivy-covered wall.

Coltrane pushed the button.

“Hello?” A female voice, sounding tinny, came from the intercom.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m a photographer for—”

“You’re early.”

Coltrane exchanged a puzzled look with Jennifer.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” he said to the intercom.

“You’re not supposed to be here until Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“For our daughter’s wedding.”

“I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“My God, don’t tell me you can’t be here for the wedding!” the woman said.

“I don’t know anything about that. I work for
Southern California Magazine
and—”

“Magazine? But I
don’t want
any magazines.”

Jennifer started to giggle.

“Ma’am, I’m not selling magazines. What I want to do is take some photographs of a house across—”

“
Photographs of our house
? My husband will go insane. He hates anybody knowing anything about our private life. The last movie he produced was about Arab terrorists. He says, if they find out where we live, they’ll blow us up in our sleep.”

Jennifer bent over, trying to stifle her laughter.

“Ma’am, I have no intention of photographing your house. I want to photograph
Rudolph Valentino’s
house.”

“Rudolph Valentino? You’re not making sense! For all I know,
you’re
a terrorist. Young man, I can see you from the house. If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the police!”

“Please, let me explain!”

The intercom had been making a slight buzzing sound. Now it went dead.

When Coltrane turned to Jennifer for moral support, he found her slumped on the curb, holding herself, laughing. “Only nineteen more houses to go,” she managed to say between guffaws. “At this rate, you’ll be done by next summer.”

“Maybe not,” a voice said.

JENNIFER STOPPED LAUGHING. They spun toward the gate, where an attractive, delicate-looking woman in her late twenties studied them. She was tall and slim, wearing tan slacks and a brown cardigan. Her arms were crossed. A kerchief covered her hair.

“Are you really from
Southern California Magazine
?”

Jennifer stood and showed her best winning smile, gesturing toward the logo on her sweatshirt. “Cross my heart.”

“Just a second.” The woman reached through the bars on the gate and pressed the intercom.