Frames Per Second (28 page)

“Sure,” Ben said. “And you saw a way out of your money troubles.”

Kurt shook his head. “Not right then. At that point, I wasn’t in so much trouble. No, this has all happened very quickly. I’d been playing with Jake on a bunch of images, and I scanned in the photos myself at first just to see if I could do it. Sort of teased myself along—you know, could I
make
the shot that Peter missed. I kept at it. Telling myself it was just a hobby, a distraction. Get my mind off my money worries. I didn’t take it seriously, because I knew the dot pattern would show up and I had to print out on electronic imaging paper. But the picture I made turned out so well. So convincing. And then Jake showed me how he had used your old camera stand downstairs to photograph a digital print and then had it printed on conventional paper. And I suddenly realized that if I just softened the focus a little I’d be able to do it all.”

Ben said, “And by then I had already gone in and presented the photos to the senator and you figured if it all went wrong, I’d be held up as the bad guy.”

Kurt wet his lips. “Maybe. I didn’t think of it so directly. I certainly figured you could talk yourself out of any problems. After all, you were in Maine when the shot was taken.”

“So I would’ve said. Of course, I couldn’t prove it.”

“I didn’t think it would get to that. I thought he’d pay up. I thought he was in a jam, and I was in a jam. The kind of campaign funds he has, access to people like Goodhue who want to see him president someday, I thought I could at least wipe out this problem with the margin and restore some of Andi’s money to her. It wouldn’t begin to cover the hit on my own money.”

Andi had bent forward, covering her face. Kurt reached out to touch her and she pushed his hand away.

“I’m sorry, Andi,” he said.

He looked at Ben. “And I apologize to you, too. I wanted you to take that damn logging assignment to get you out of town, make you unavailable in case the senator sent someone around. At the very least, I needed to get you off the staff.”

“Bullshit. You wanted to get me away from you. You wanted to give me an apparent motive. ‘Out-of-work photographer turns to blackmail.’ ”

Kurt considered this. “Maybe. I’ve been less than honest with myself. That’s possible.”

Ben shook his head, marveling. “Is that your version of ‘I do not recall?’”

“I suppose it is.” Kurt paused. “Who did the senator send around?”

“Himself.” Ben told them about the meeting.

Andi took her hands from her face. She reached out and touched Ben’s hand. “Oh my God. I’ve been listening to this, devastated about what it means in our life. Not thinking what could’ve happened to you.” She laughed, shortly, on the verge of tears. “And here I was castigating you today for putting yourself at risk.’’

“What’s the bottom line with the senator?” Kurt asked.

“He’s not going to pay. He says he’ll pull me down with him. Nail me for blackmail.”

“Clearly, my blackmail of the senator ends here,” Kurt said. “The question is, what are you going to do to me?”

“I’m not sure,” Ben said.

The three of them sat in silence for a moment, at an impasse.

Ben cleared his throat, and the two of them looked at him expectantly. “Where did you have the shot processed and printed?”

“I did it myself. Used Huey’s lab one night. I’d taken Photo 101 back in college, I just had to read up on it.”

“Tell me exactly when all this happened.”

Kurt went over to his desk and came around to Ben’s side of the coffee table with a calendar. With a pen, he circled the date three days after Ben and Lucien’s meeting with Cheever. “There. That’s when Cheever would’ve gotten the photo. I mailed it outside the Kenmore Square post office. I figured it would arrive the next day. So I waited until the next day and called him from a pay phone. Said I was Senator Atkins, got right through.”

That coincided with what the senator had said, Ben thought. The call came two days after Dawson attacked Ben in his studio and tried to burn all his photos.

“Have you contacted the senator again about picking up the money?”

“No.”

“When were you going to do that?”

“I figured I’d give him a week. And then there was this thing with you and Sands. I gave it a couple more days. It’s turned into almost two weeks since I called him.”

“You think they’re related? You blackmailing the senator and Sands wiring the bomb that killed Peter?”

“It couldn’t be,” Kurt said. “Peter was killed weeks before I sent that photo to the senator. Before I even had the
idea
of blackmailing him, never mind constructing the photo. And Dawson attacked you a good couple of days before I sent the photo, so it comes to the same thing. And we know he was McGuire’s man.”

“But nevertheless, it made you pause.”

Kurt made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Everything about this has given me pause. I wasn’t sure I was going to go through with it. Collecting the money. I’m honestly not sure.”

“But if you did?”

“If I did, most likely what I would’ve done is called him again this week.”

“And done what?”

Kurt made a disgusted face. “I’ve seen as many movies as anybody. I’d have sent him around to a half dozen phone booths and watched him at three of them to see if he had police or anyone else following. Had him leave the money someplace and then I’d mail the negative of the copy-stand photo.”

“You would, huh?” Ben looked at him skeptically.

“Yes, I would.” Kurt seemed somewhat surprised. “This has been chewing me up inside, doing this. I would’ve returned it, and been done with the whole mess. I would’ve told Andi that I’d taken a bath on my investments but that at least her money and the house were safe.”

He looked to Andi. “I’m telling you the truth. Both of you.”

Neither of them said anything.

“So …” Kurt waited. “So what are you going to do?”

Andi put her hand on Ben’s arm. Stopping him from answering. “Walk with me please,” she said.

Kurt began to shake his head. “Don’t do it this way. Don’t walk out with him.”

“Can I trust you to just stay here and wait?” she asked, sharply. “The kids are asleep upstairs. Can I trust you?”

He jerked, as if she had just slapped him. When he answered, his voice was hoarse. “You can trust me,” he said. “Give me time, I’ll prove it to you.”

Ben and Andi started up the winding trail behind the house. They climbed silently for about ten minutes, a walk they had made together many times over the years. He let her go ahead into the moonlit woods up toward a rocky ledge. She moved fast and both of them were breathing a little harder by time she reached the outcropping.

She sat down, and put her head in her hands. He sat beside her, looking back at their former home, saying nothing. Sweat trickled down his back.

Finally, she sat up and brushed at her eyes with the palm of her hand “Enough,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “It’s not as if I didn’t know something was up. He hasn’t been sleeping. The way he was reacting to you. I told myself it was all just adjusting to the new situation. Pretty stressful for anybody, to move into a family like this.”

“Blackmail is pretty stressful too. If you’re not used to it, that is.”

“Please don’t,” she said. “You’ve certainly got the right, but please don’t do that now.”

He nodded.

“Thank you.” She held his hand for a moment, and then let go. She was trembling.

“Is it true what he said?” Ben asked. “You gave him everything to invest?”

“I gave him a lot. But not all of it. I loved him—and I probably still do—but, no, the blue chips that I inherited from Uncle Gus are still in my name and I never made them available to him. Certainly, the house and the equity in it are in my name. So if it’s a matter of just keeping up the mortgage payments, I might be able to swing it on my own for a while.”

“That’s assuming your assets aren’t seized. You’re his wife and he’s run up substantial debts—you’re in trouble here.”

She nodded. “Oh, we’re in trouble, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.” She looked at him. “Ben, right now I’m so angry and disappointed with Kurt I’d like to stand up and scream and throw rocks and generally just have a good tantrum. But the fact is you and I have to make some decisions right now. So I’m going to try to keep it together and tell you some things. Because what you do is going to have a big impact on all of us—including the kids—for a long time to come.”

“I’m listening.”

“I know Kurt. Even though I’m shocked with what he’s done, I believe what he’s told us now is the whole truth. It’s just that he’s so insecure … his parents were a disaster. His dad was disappointed with everything Kurt did from day one. Dismissive, bitter mother who left them early on. And then Kurt’s first wife left him because he couldn’t give her children. He has a low sperm count. She filed for divorce the week they found out. Told him kids were important to her and she wanted her own from her own husband—and she left… . Well, the fact is children were pretty damn important to him too.’’

“Andi, how many rough life stories have you heard in your career? Somebody defending some heinous thing they did because their mommy wasn’t nice to them? And what would we do? Take the picture, write up the story.”

“That’s what
you’d
do,” she flashed. “Not me. Not my whole career, you know that.”

Which was true enough. PollyAndi.

She said, “Kurt’s love for me and the kids is genuine. I know it is. I’ve seen his face. I’ve seen his delight in the kids even when he didn’t know that I was watching. He’s felt like an outsider all his life.”

“You certainly have become forgiving,” Ben said. He immediately regretted the sarcasm.

“I’m working at it,” she said, steadily. “I know I didn’t stand behind you the way I should’ve and look where we are now.” She gestured to the woods around them, their house down the hillside. “I didn’t ask you up here to discuss whether or not I made a mistake marrying Kurt. He and I have to work that out.”

“So what do you want from me?”

She leaned forward, and spoke softly. “Ben, at this moment, most of the damage is repairable. We can tell the senator it’s over and give him the negative, erase the files. Kurt can rehire you.”

“Do you think everything that’s happened—Peter, Dawson, Sands—are all unrelated to this?”

“It sounds like Peter stirred up something with this McGuire guy and you with Johansen. And from what Kurt said earlier, the police are confident Peter was killed by Sands, right?”

Ben nodded.

“Besides,” she said. “The timing’s all wrong for what Kurt did to have caused anything else.”

Ben rubbed his forehead. He agreed with her on the last point. “Are you asking me to just sweep this all under the rug? Me go back to my investigative reporting with Kurt leading the charge— while we both know he’s a blackmailer? Doesn’t that sound just a tad hypocritical to you?”

“I don’t give a damn about hypocrisy at this moment, Ben! This is our family, and whether you like it or not, Kurt is a part of it now. And at this point, all he’s done is send a photo and a letter. At this point, the senator can walk away relieved. At this point, we can get an accountant in and see what it’ll take to straighten this mess out. Maybe we’ll be living in a low rent apartment next month. Maybe we’ll be bankrupt. That’s better than having the kids watching you put Kurt in jail. And exposing him will mean exposing the senator. I can tell you without even meeting the man what
his
choice would be.”

She held Ben’s arm tight. “Please. For me, for the kids, for everyone—let it end right here.”

CHAPTER 33

IT WAS ANOTHER LONG NIGHT. LITTLE SLEEP. FEELING AS IF HE HAD bit into something sickening and the result lay in his belly. And the healing cuts from the flying glass were still itching like crazy.

Ben circled the problem as the damn digital clock did its thing, spinning through the numbers.

At five-thirty, he got up and made some coffee. Took his binoculars and went up onto the roof and watched the sun come up.

Fantastic sunrise. One sailboat tacking out of the harbor against a fresh morning breeze. Not far past it, a huge cargo ship made its way out of the harbor with the help of three tugs. From that distance, it was beautiful in a form-follows-function sort of way. High bow pointing proudly at the horizon. Under the tighter focus of the binoculars, Ben could see rust at the waterline; the black soot on the stacks. He knew from a photo essay he had once done on the Merchant Marines that if he had been standing on deck, the juxtaposition of order and disorder would have been even more dramatic. Of rust eating away at the edges of painted deck equipment. Of the constant, daily business of repair and replacement.

And he thought of the constant squabbles among the men. The big and small dishonesties of the day. The pilfered food, the smuggled contraband, the brutality under the decks.

Still the ship would sail.

Most of the time.