Double Image

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

“You’re early.”

Coltrane exchanged a puzzled look with Je

“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.”

Je

“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.”

Je

“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 Je

“Maybe not,” a voice said.

4

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?”

Je

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

The ti

“Mother, don’t call the police. These people seem all right. I’m going to let them in.”

“But-”

The woman took her finger off the intercom’s button, then pressed numbers on a keypad on the other side of the gate, freeing an electronic lock. “You’re serious about photographing a house across the canyon, Mr…”

“Mitch Coltrane. This is my editor, Je

“Diane Laramy.”

They shook hands and stepped through the gate.

“What’s this about Rudolph Valentino?”

Coltrane explained the assignment as they climbed a smooth slanted lawn, stopping with their backs to a lemon tree at the hill’s highest point.

“And there it is.” Je

“I was begi

“Eerie,” Diane said. “Looking at that photograph and then at the house, I feel as if I’m in the past and the present simultaneously.”

“That’s the idea,” Coltrane said.

He and Je

Scraping his back against the lemon tree, Coltrane smiled. “Well, I’ll be… Yes. Right here.”

“Let me see.” Je

Bemused, Diane joined Coltrane on his right. He raised the photo so that it obscured the view, then lowered it, the Falcon Lair from the 1920s replaced by the Falcon Lair of the present.

“It’s like a weird kind of double exposure,” Diane said. “This lemon tree wouldn’t have been here then.”

“Or the lawn,” Je

“And none of these other houses.” Coltrane continued to raise and lower the photograph, the effect hypnotic.

“So many years ago. Someone stood exactly where I’m standing now and took that picture.”

“He died on Sunday,” Coltrane said.

Diane suddenly shivered.

“Is something wrong?” Coltrane asked.

“No. There’s just a chill in the air.”

But Coltrane couldn’t help wondering if Diane had shivered for another reason. Her delicate features began to trouble him. Her skin was so translucent that he could see the hint of blue veins in her cheeks. Her eyes seemed sunken, possibly because she had lost a lot of weight. Her slacks and cardigan hung on her. Her kerchief covered her head so completely that he didn’t see any of her hair.

“Well…” Coltrane felt awkward. “We’re taking up your time.”

“No problem,” Diane said. “I’m enjoying this.”

“Even so…” Coltrane studied the sky. “The light’s about as good as I can hope for. I’d better get started.”

5

WHEN HE AND JENNIFER WENT BACK TO THE CAR TO GET THE camera, the tripod, and the bags of equipment, Diane insisted on helping, out of breath even though she carried only a small camera bag to the crest of the hill. Coltrane didn’t have time to think about the implications. He had only about two hours of effective light remaining and needed to hurry.

It took almost fifteen minutes to get the heavy camera secured on the tripod. After that, he used a light meter, calculated the necessary shutter speed and aperture setting, chose a lens, poked his head beneath the black cloth at the rear of the camera, used the bellows to adjust the focus, and compared what he saw to Packard’s photograph. Getting everything lined up was more difficult than he had anticipated. After forty-five minutes of concentrating on an upside-down reversed image, he felt light-headed, as if he were upside down.

He made twelve exposures, but he wasn’t satisfied. Framing the image to make its perspective identical to that in Packard’s photograph wasn’t going to produce a brilliant photograph, he realized. The result would merely be a visual trick. He had to build on what Packard had done, to find a metaphor equivalent to the bird of prey hovering over Falcon Lair.

“Mitch?”

Coltrane rubbed the back of his neck.

“Mitch?”

“Huh?” He turned toward Je

“You haven’t moved in the last ten minutes. Are you all right?”

“Just thinking.”

“You’ve got only forty-five minutes of light,” Je

“Forty-five?” Startled, Coltrane checked his watch. He had lost more time then he realized.

Yet again, he poked his head beneath the black cloth at the rear of the camera. Earlier, when he and Je

“Mitch?”

Coltrane noticed slight movement on the focusing screen. He heard a far-off echoing whump-whump-whump and peered up from the camera to search the sky, seeing that the movement was a distant whirling speck: a helicopter. He inserted an eight-by-ten-inch negative and grabbed the shutter release. “Come on,” he whispered tensely. He held his breath as the chopper’s glinting blades crossed the horizon.