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The photos remained mute. Marks tossed them onto the desk and sat for a moment, staring off into the shadows of his office. He reached over and picked up the instant camera, turned it so the lens was facing him, and leaned back in his chair.
“You around?” he murmured. “You want to chat?”
A twitch of his finger, and the flash exploded, filling the room with a second’s worth of blue light. Blinking in the aftermath, Marks plucked the emerging photo from the tiny printer and shook it back and forth, letting it develop. He turned it over and squinted down at it, a strange, languid grin spreading across his face. “Well, hello there,” he said quietly.
The photo was of an out-of-focus and off-center shot of Marks, his nose seemingly too large, his eyes shut against the flash, unattractive and distorted. Over his left shoulder, seeming to lean directly over Marks’s shoulder, was the thin man, clearer than before but still grainy, more a collection of dots than a solid figure. In one hand, held oddly toward the bottom of the frame, he held a white square, indistinct. Marks squinted at it, held the photo alternatively near his eyes and far away, finally setting it down on the desk, unsatisfied.
He whirled and put the phone to his ear.
“Ralph? I know it’s late. Sorry. Listen, I have another favor to ask you.”
IV
“Phil, I damn near shit myself.”
Ralph Tomlin led Phillip K. Marks through gray, unmarked corridors. Marks paid no attention to the fake cubicle walls, didn’t acknowledge anyone they passed. With his oversized raincoat and unshaven demeanor, he stood out. People stared.
“Well? What is it?”
Tomlin shook his head. “Sit down at my desk here. Take a look. You have to see it yourself.”
Marks sat down at the small desk, which was dominated by a huge computer monitor, bigger than any Marks had ever seen. On it was displayed a clear scan of the Polaroid: Marks, blurry, crushed against the camera lens, the Thin Man, dark and skeletal, gri
“Okay.” Marks said testily.
“Now, here’s a blowup and clarification of the lower right-hand corner of the photo, where that guy’s ‘hand’ is. I use the air quotes because that really isn’t a man, Phil.”
“I knew that, considering that he wasn’t in the room when I took the photo.”
“No, I mean nothing was there, Phil. The figure we see there is an optical illusion, a collection of dots: white and black. He’s a black-and-white halftone, is what he is. But here’s the disturbing part: the blowup. He’s holding a card, Phil. For want of a better term, I’d say it was a business card.”
Ralph clicked a key and stepped back as the picture on the screen changed to a detail of the photo: a rectangular, white space, surrounded by the blurred and indistinct lines of the Thin Man’s hand. The card, at this magnification, and with the aid of clarifying software, had words printed on it:
I AM DEATH
Marks leaned back in the chair, let out an explosive burst of breath. “Oh, shit.”
Tomlin nodded, staring raptly at the fuzzy image. “Oh shit is right.” He gri
Marks shook his head dazedly, his eyes locked on the fuzzy words on the screen. “About what?”
Tomlin snorted and glanced down at Marks. “Is he coming for your subject,” he asked, “or you?”
Marks finally tore his eyes from the screen. “Is that supposed to be helpful in some way?”
Tomlin shrugged happily. “I’d just get your subject into an emergency room, if I was you, buddy. If Death’s following him around like that, there’s got to be a reason.”
Marks’s smile was barren. “Unless he’s after me now, right?”
V
Marks walked the dark streets after hours, smoking ill-advised cigarettes and pondering his new concern. As the sun disappeared and the shadowed streets stopped looking cheerily familiar, he wondered unhappily if he was being stalked by a specter, if a photo taken by a helpful stranger might reveal a companion. They were not cheering thoughts. He stopped in a favorite bar, the Full Moon, and ordered a double bourbon on ice, sat in the back by himself, and sipped it slowly, staring at the wall.
“What’s the story, Phil?”
Marks glanced up, surprised, and found Jerry, the jowly owner. “Sorry, Jer, I was woolgathering.”
“Can see that, Philly. Everything okay?”
“Sure.” Marks paused, studying his drink, then looked up again. “Jer, what if you had to tell someone something bad. Something… sad. Something that maybe they didn’t need to know, but you felt duty-bound to tell them.”
Jerry laughed, his belly bouncing within its tight shirt. “I do, every night, Phil, round closing time.”
Marks smiled faintly. “What if you had to tell someone they were going to die?”
Jerry looked away. “Jeez, Phil-”
Marks shook his head, leaned back in his chair. “Shit, I’m sorry, Jer. Just got a lot of stuff on my mind. Don’t pay any attention to me.”
“Easy enough.” Jerry turned away and then hesitated, looking back over his shoulder. “You weren’t going to tell me that, were you, Phil?”
Marks shook his head. “No, no, Jerry. Not you. Just someone I’ve been working with.” He paused, and just as Jerry was about to turn back, Marks continued. “Hey, Jer, you got a camera around here?”
Jerry started walking back to the bar. “Yeah, actually. Keep an old Polaroid on hand for when we get troublemakers and have ta ban ’em. I got quite a wall of shame in my office.” He glanced back as he walked away. “Why, Philly?”
Marks gulped the last of his drink. “Take my picture, okay?”
Jerry retrieved the camera from behind the bar and hefted his bulk back toward Marks’s table. “Sure, sure. Why not?”
Marks nodded absently, pushing his hands through each of his pockets until he’d recovered a small pad of paper and a black-ink pen. He wrote quickly and tore a sheet off, holding it up under his chin as Jerry approached.
“Ready?”
Marks nodded. The flash went off, and Jerry lowered the camera as the picture was spit out. “Who’s this for? With the note and all?”
Marks crumpled the piece of paper up and tossed it on the table. “I’ll know in a moment, Jer. Let me see the print.”
Jerry tore it from the camera and handed it gingerly to him. Marks took it between two fingers and shook it carefully, drying it in the air, then held it up and studied it, silently, for a few seconds.
“You see something strange?” Jerry asked. “I’m prepared for anything, after the last few times you brought your work in here.”
Marks laughed, a grim bark that made Jerry frown. “Jer, sometimes I guess I ought to just leave everything alone, you know?” He stood up and tossed a bill on the table. “I gotta go track down my subject.”
Jerry let Marks push past him and watched him walk out of the bar purposefully, head down. Then he turned back to the table and plucked the photo from it. Looking down at it, squinting in the bad light, he gasped. Sitting at the same table as Marks was a tall, thin man in a dark suit… or at least that’s what it looked like to Jerry. The man was shadowed and indistinct.
Jerry’s eyes flicked to the table and then back to the photo. In his bar, the table was gouged by a million nervous hands and a few serious vandals. In the photo, words had been carved onto the table:
I LIKE YOU BETTER