Double Image

Each night, when he checked his answering machine, there was always at least one hang-up call and that strange mournful music.

FOUR

1

IN A CITY OF IMITATION, the house was unique. Designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, it had been constructed in 1931 for a movie producer whose films were unoriginal but who knew enough to let an original-minded architect do his job. In an area prone to earthquakes, it was made from reinforced concrete. Its staggered three stories created a castle effect. Glinting windows dominated the upper rooms, which were flanked by shrub and flower-filled terraces. Pounded copper sheets displaying pre-Columbian designs that resembled arrowheads led up each corner and along the parapets.

In Packard’s photograph of it. But Coltrane had no idea if the house still existed. Using his Thomas Guide and information from one of Packard’s biographies, he approached the area via a densely built, narrow, tree-lined street that curved up one of the numerous hills near the Hollywood Reservoir. Doubt made him uneasy, but as he crested the hill, peering over and down toward the middle of the congested area across from him, he felt his heart beat faster when he recognized what he was looking for.

His breath was taken away. This was one case where Packard’s photograph didn’t do justice to its subject. For one thing, the house had a presence, a solidity, an immediacy that the photograph, even using tricks of perspective and shadows, only hinted at. For another, Packard’s photograph had been in black and white, leaving Coltrane unprepared for the greenish blue of the hammered copper trim along the corners, or for the coral tint of its stucco and the red and yellow of the flowers on the terraces.

After so much effort trying to find the sites from which Packard had photographed the other houses, he had chanced upon the exact spot he needed for this house on his first try. He couldn’t get over it. Excitement swelling in him, he got out of his Blazer, opened the back hatch, and arranged his equipment. Waiting for a truck to pass, he set up the view camera in the street (he was amazed by how efficiently he was now able to handle it), made the necessary adjustments to match the image with the perspective in Packard’s photo, inserted an eight-by-ten-inch negative, and took the picture.

His chest relaxed with satisfaction. To make sure there hadn’t been a mechanical failure, he decided to take a dozen more exposures, but basically he had gotten the job done – and there wasn’t any need to find details that commented on the difference between the past and the present, because in this case there wasn’t any difference. Although the neighborhood had become overgrown, the house had been maintained exactly as it had once looked in Packard’s photograph. It was as beautiful as ever.

A horn sounded behind him. He waved for a station wagon to squeeze around him, then redirected his attention to the house below him. After retrieving the exposed negative, he decided to check that the camera hadn’t shifted slightly, and he stooped to peer beneath the black cloth, concentrating on the upside-down image on the focusing plate.

Movement caught his attention – someone coming out of the house’s front door, a portly man carrying a large cardboard box to a Mercedes sedan, then returning to the house. The man wore a green sport coat and had a distinctive rolling gait.

No. Coltrane frowned. It can’t be.

2

HE WAS WAITING AT THE MERCEDES when Duncan Reynolds again came out of the front door, carrying another cardboard box. As heavy as the last time Coltrane had seen him, his face as ruddy, Duncan set down the box beside an azalea, closed the door behind him, picked up the box again, and only then noticed Coltrane at the curb.

Duncan hesitated, concealing his surprise, then walked down a sloping concrete path to the street. “I don’t suppose I need to ask what you’re doing in the neighborhood.”

“Want some help?”

“Why not? Since you’re here.” Duncan, his eyes a little bloodshot, surrendered the box and unlocked the Mercedes’s trunk.

When Coltrane set the box inside next to three others, he got a look past an open flap, seeing binders of sleeve-protected photographs and negatives.

Coltrane stepped back from the car. “So we know why I’m in the neighborhood…”

“I’m just taking care of the final details,” Duncan said.

Coltrane shook his head, not understanding.

“The movers were here earlier, carting away the furniture. But I didn’t trust them to handle the photographic materials.”

Coltrane continued to look perplexed.

“Of course.” Duncan gestured with realization. “You didn’t know.”

“Know?”

“This house belonged to Randolph.”

“Belonged to… This was his?”

“After Randolph photographed it, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He was so haunted by the unusual design that he bought it.”

Coltrane continued to feel amazed. “None of his biographers ever mentioned that.”

“Well, as you must have gathered by now, Randolph liked to keep many details about his life confidential. He bought the house through an intermediary and put the title in the name of one of the corporations he inherited from his parents. Sometimes, he came here to reminisce about his youth. Mostly, though, he used it as an office, an archive, and a darkroom. Would you like to see the inside?”

3

A BROAD CHECKERED SKYLIGHT BATHED THE ENTRYWAY IN brilliance. Stairs led down and up, the areas beyond as bright as the entryway. Coltrane had never been in a house that collected so much light. Following Duncan, he climbed the steps and faced a white room with a wall of windows that looked down on a garden. The room’s lack of furnishings made its clean lines even more elegant.

“Bedroom and bathroom to the right.” Duncan pointed through a corridor into another sunlit area. “Dining room to the left. Note that its walls are draped with chromium beads. Original Art Deco design. The kitchen’s beyond it.”

As the stairs continued upward, Coltrane’s movements made a hushed echo. The next level was equally sunlit.

“A bathroom, a bedroom, and a study. Another balcony.”

One final set of stairs, and Coltrane reached a single room with four walls of windows and a skylight. A glass door in the middle of each wall led onto a flower-filled terrace.

“The master bedroom.”

Coltrane pivoted, spellbound.

“But I haven’t shown you the most important section,” Duncan said.

Curious, Coltrane followed him back down to the entryway, from where they descended toward the lowest level. In back, past a darkroom, windows looked out onto a narrow pool, its water reflecting the house’s coral stucco. Beyond was a flower garden.

But Duncan paid no attention to the view and instead guided Coltrane to the left, toward a white door within a white wall. When Duncan pulled at a recessed latch, he revealed not another room but another door, and this one was metal. He unlocked it. “This area used to be another bedroom. Randolph converted it into…” Beyond the door was an area more murky than the darkroom. “… a vault.”

Cool air spilled out, making Coltrane step back.

When Duncan flicked a light switch, a harsh glare exposed a windowless area that was filled with librarylike metal shelves, all but one of which were empty. “This is where Randolph stored all his important negatives and master prints.”

For no reason Coltrane could understand, he didn’t want to enter.

“A separate air conditioner keeps the area cooled to a constant fifty-five degrees.” Duncan’s footsteps scraped as he walked along the concrete floor.