You’ve Been Warned

9

Chapter 58

IT’S AS IF THE PHOTOGRAPH literally shocks me, sending a thousand volts of instant pain through my fingertips. It drops from my hands, landing facedown on the floor.

Like Michael.

I step back, terrified. How? What? Where? When? I don’t have a single answer to any of these questions. What’s real? What isn’t? There has to be a rational explanation. That’s what I’ve been saying all along, begi

I don’t.

At least not yet.

Back and forth I pace in the tight confines of my darkroom, repeating the same four words over and over in my head.

Keep it together, Kris!

I figure I’ve got two choices. Check myself into the loony bin or continue chipping away at this mystery. I stop pacing as the image of a padded room and me wearing the latest style in straitjackets flashes through my mind.

Decision made.

I rush out to the kitchen and pick up the phone. If I can’t explain the picture of Michael, there’s still the issue of the ghosting effect. On the heels of everything else, I’m thinking it has nothing to do with my camera. But I need to make sure.

“Gotham Photo,” the man answers.

“Hi, can I speak with Javier, please? It’s kind of important.” Like, life and death.

“He’s off today.”

Damn. “Do you know how I can reach him?”

“Afraid I don’t.”

There’s a slight hitch in his voice, and I suspect he does know.

“It’s very important,” I say.

“We’re not allowed to give out personal information. The best I can do is relay a message to him, okay?”

No, not okay!

I’m about to launch into the kind of full-frontal “helpless female in distress” plea that would make Gloria Steinem gag when I remember my closet. Thanks to a few cockroaches – give or take a thousand – I never checked the pockets of my shearling coat for Javier’s cell number.

“Hold on a second, will you?” I say.

I drop the phone, dash to the closet, and pray that my existential exterminator knew what he was doing with that poison spray.

I slowly open the door to see only coats – including my shearling. Chalk one up for my memory; Javier’s card is right where I thought.

“Never mind,” I say, returning to the phone. Click.

The second I get a dial tone, I call Javier. It’s such a relief when he answers.

“I’m so sorry to bother you, Javier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. I’m sure he likes me and I feel a little guilty about this.

I remind him about the “ghosting” effect. “Remember? I mentioned it when I bought the new lens.”

“So the problem wasn’t with your old one, huh?”

“Afraid not. I know it’s your day off, but would you mind taking a look at the pictures? I really need to figure this out.”

“That depends,” he says.

“On what?”

“On how well you know your way around Brooklyn.”

Chapter 59

NOT VERY WELL.

In fact, the closest I’ve ever been to Brooklyn is watching reruns of Welcome Back, Kotter on Nick at Nite.

But after picking up the kids at school and pretending all afternoon that my mouth is still sore from the dentist, I board the F train heading out of Manhattan and hope for the best.

I generally don’t mind riding the subway, except for rush hour, when it’s a madhouse.

Of course, that happens to be right now.

Wedged in with a gazillion other people – including the guy hovering next to me whose twenty-four-hour deodorant is clearly living on borrowed time – I’m afraid the old adage is wrong. Getting there is not half the fun.

But at least I get there, and thanks to Javier’s very precise directions from the 15th Street – Prospect Park station, I easily find the nearby brownstone where he lives.

It’s a pretty nice neighborhood, and I can’t help feeling a bit guilty about my low expectations, if not outright trepidation. I hate those people who think the good life begins and ends in the 212 area code, and here I am acting like one.

Javier’s apartment occupies the first floor, and he greets me at the door with his usual warm smile. He’s dressed much the same as when he’s behind the counter at Gotham Photo – khakis and a button-down shirt, in this case a blue-and-white stripe. The only thing missing is his name tag.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” he asks.

“A Diet Coke, if you have one.”

He does. I follow him back to the kitchen, stealing quick peeks into some of the rooms.

I see a beautifully furnished den with a huge flat-screen television and a cozy library lined with leather-bound books. It’s not what I expected, and again I feel like one of those 212 snobs. How fitting that selling camera equipment to those same people would apparently pay so well.

He pours the soda into a glass with ice and hands it to me. “Now let’s take a look at those pictures,” he says. “Figure out what’s going on.”

“Excellent.”

I reach into my shoulder bag and pull them out. He’s barely had a chance to look at the first one when I realize… we’re not alone.

Chapter 60

“JAVIER?” COMES A VOICE from another room. “Javier? Is someone there with you?” It’s a woman. She sounds old, foreign, and a bit confused.

“Sí, Mamá,” says Javier over his shoulder. He turns back to me. “My mother moved in last year after my father passed away. Unfortunately, her health is not too good.”

“Javier?” she calls out again. “I’m talking to you. Javier?”

He winks at me. “Her hearing isn’t too good either.” He raises his voice. “Sí, Mamá!”

“Con quién estás hablando?”

Javier translates for me. “She wants to know who I’m talking to.” He answers her, “Ella es mi amiga.”

“La has visto antes?”

He rolls his eyes. “She wants to know if she’s met you before. Now I have to introduce you, otherwise she’ll be offended. Do you mind? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I say. “I’d love to meet her.”

Javier leads me out of the kitchen toward the very back of the apartment. He slows for a moment along the narrow hallway to whisper something to me.

“Just so you know, my mother is very religious and she’s gone a little overboard in her decorating.”

I’m not sure why he’s telling me this. That is, until we reach her room.

Jesus!

Literally. There have to be at least a hundred crucifixes hanging on the wall – big, small, wood, ceramic – with another fifty propped up on a bookshelf and bedside table.

“Mamá, ella es mi amiga Kristin.”

She’s sitting in a rocking chair by the window, wearing the plainest of plain tank dresses -cement gray, if I had to name the color. But what I really notice is how incredibly frail she looks. She’s so thin she’d give Penley a fat complex.

As she glares at me with sunken eyes, I walk toward her and extend my hand. It seems like the right thing to do.

Wrong.

Terribly wrong!

I get no farther than a few steps when those sunken eyes explode with fear. She clutches a set of blue rosary beads in her lap and begins to scream wildly. All hell breaks loose in this claustrophobic room full of crosses.

“Espíritus malos! Espíritus malos! Mantengase lejos de mí. Ella está poseída por espíritus malos!”

Javier gasps. “Mamá!What are you saying? ”

That’s what I want to know, but Javier isn’t translating. Instead, he rushes to her, trying to calm her down. She doesn’t.

She gets worse, in fact, more crazed and agitated.

“Ella está rodeada por espíritus malos!” she screams, her sliver of a body nearly out of control.

Javier grabs her and yells something in Spanish, but it’s as if she can’t see or hear him. She keeps pointing and hollering.