chapter fourteen

This late in the season, fashion shoots in Miami often began at dawn to avoid the heat of midday. Caitlin waited in the tiny open-air lobby of the Century Hotel to join the caravan to the site. The production van led the way, followed by a rented Lincoln carrying the client and his people, and then by Caitlin in her car, crammed with her equipment. Ali Duncan, who would help Rafael Soto with makeup, sat in the passenger seat with a camera bag on her lap. Two models followed Caitlin in their car, and Tommy Chang’s Jeep brought up the rear. Today, would be the last shots for the fall catalog of Narragansett Traders, a Boston sportswear company. Caitlin got the job because they liked the work she’d done for them last year.

Now her camera was set up on some flat ground fifty yards or so from a ten-foot-high ridge of white sand and rock, which had been tossed there years ago by dredging machines. Virginia Key was home to scraggly woods, a nudist beach, some rundown boat shacks, and the Central District Treatment Plant, the county’s main sewage facility. Low, concrete buildings lay toward the west beyond a chain-link fence. There was no odor, or else the residents of Fisher Island would have raised hell. That exclusive piece of ground lay just north, a landscaped, Mediterranean fantasy of red-tiled roofs and yachts tied to private docks. Miami Beach was out of view beyond it.

Caitlin had a crew of three today: two photo assistants and Rafael Soto. She would have no problem paying them. This was the last day of a four-day shoot at fifteen hundred per, before expenses. Not great, but not bad, either. Caitlin had known top fashion photographers to pull in twenty-five thousand a day. They would shoot dozens of rolls. But she had never seen Richard Avedon waiting around next to a sewage plant to do sportswear for a catalog.

Caitlin and the art director stood under her umbrella and went over some photos from yesterday, which they had taken at a marina. She heard the crunch of gravel and glanced up. Frank Tolin’s green Jaguar was parked next to her own car. The door was opened, a flash of chrome and glass in the early morning sun.

The art director’s expression turned sour under the brim of his red baseball cap.

“He’s a friend of mine. He won’t be in the way.” Frank had come to shoots before, but only when invited. She didn’t know what he was doing there. Two nights ago they had argued, and she hadn’t heard from him since.

He walked around the Jaguar with a cup of coffee from McDonald’s and sipped it as he propped one booted foot on the bumper. He knew to stay where he was. He contented himself with a nod in her direction.

Caitlin sent the boys to check the exposure. Tommy Chang had brought a friend from photography class to help out. Jean-Louis scurried up the rocky hill with the meter. Blond coils of curly, sunbleached hair bounced on his head. He and Tommy were dressed about the same: no shirts, baggy shorts, big sneakers. Tommy, whose bandanna kept his hair from blowing into his eyes, was attaching the Polaroid to the telephoto. The people from the catalog company and the production staff, average age well under thirty, stood around talking, waiting for the models.

When the art director went to check on something, Caitlin crossed the road to talk to Frank.

He finished the last of his coffee and tossed the cup into some weeds. “I’m not going to stay,” he said. “I told Marty Cass I’d meet him this morning.” Frank smiled with one side of his mouth, his mustache tilting. “He’s going to push me to sell the building to those Jordanians he found the other day.”

“Well. Why not?”

“You’d have to pay rent on your apartment.”

“Did you come to tell me that?”

“Oh, Catie. That was intended to be humorous. No, what I came for was to apologize. Our disagreement the other night should never have happened.”

She laughed. “Disagreement?” It had begun with a petty snit over flowers he had sent her, which she had neglected to thank him for. It had ended in profanities and mutual shoving, till she left in a fury, her car screeching out of the parking lot ten floors below.

Frank’s eyes closed for a second in acknowledgment. “Yes. More than a disagreement. You deserve a proper apology. And here I am. Seven o’clock in the morning, hat in hand, so to speak. I’m sorry. I am immensely—galactically—sorry. You didn’t call. I was worried, so I went by your place last night. I nearly came upstairs. A juvenile reaction, but I wanted to see you. In the end, dignity held.”

Fatigue showed in the shadows on his face. He had a long, narrow face, almost foxlike. He was lean everywhere, with a flat middle, practically no rear end, and long legs corded with sinew. There was nothing to ease the bumps, she had once told him. If they were together for too long, she would come away bruised. Now she felt she was veering toward the edge again, the place where all she wanted was to be left alone in an asexual, ageless state of feeling nothing at all.

She said, “I can’t talk now.”

But Frank was looking past her, shaking his head and smiling.

A male model had just come out of the Winnebago in deck shoes, sailing shorts, and a crewneck sweater. Rafael had pinked his nose and cheeks to simulate the effects of sun and a brisk wind off the North Atlantic. Trailed by one of the costumers, the model started climbing the rock pile. Caitlin could see his underwear through a rectangle cut out of the back of his sailing shorts, and bare skin showed through a missing piece of sweater. The fabric samples would be kept on file. The garments were held together with safety pins.

Frank said, “All this has ruined me for men’s fashion magazines.”

“Caitlin!” Tommy Chang was waving at her. “They’re ready to roll.”

“Gotta go,” she said. “Talk to you later.”

“Wait.” He grabbed her wrist. “Take this thought with you. I want us to live together.”

She made a disbelieving laugh.

“I’ll sell my condo.” He tightened his grip on her arm. “We’ll find a place together. Something new and untouched. We’ll be the first ones to live in it.”

“Oh, Frank. It wouldn’t work.”

“How do you know? Have we spent more than a week in each other’s company?”

“I have to go.”

“Think about it,” he said.

With no more answer than a shake of her head, Caitlin hurried back to her camera.

Bracing one foot on a pitted white rock, the costumer smoothed the model’s collar with a straight pin—she had a mouthful of them—then jumped kangaroo-style down the hill. Caitlin looked through the lens. The wind was ruffling the model’s hair. He was a nice-looking guy, blond and collegiate.

“You get laid a lot, Jeffrey?” The art director liked to keep them loosened up. He was a pudgy guy in faded green hiking shorts and a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt.

Someone started talking about a new restaurant in Moscow called Santa Fe, and how the steaks weren’t bad if you wanted to pay fifty bucks, but you couldn’t get decent salad at any price.

Caitlin called out, “Turn your head to the side a little bit, like that. Okay. Great. A little lower. Now look out to sea.” The camera whirred and clicked. Tommy Chang changed camera bodies, giving her a fresh roll. Jean-Louis ran to check the exposure again, and Caitlin took a series of the model sitting down with an arm draped over one knee.

Then the art director called a break to use the bathroom in the van.

Frank had wandered nearer, hands in his pockets.

Caitlin said quietly, “I was thinking, as I lay in bed at three o’clock this morning trying to sleep, that I might go to New York next month with Rafael. He’s leaving for the summer. We could drive up together.”

“New York. Why?”

“When you hang around Miami too long, Frank, you lose your edge. There’s nothing here except people who see each other all the time at the same places, and all they can talk about is each other, with absolutely no sense of loyalty or perspective, while they try to avoid the worst thing that can happen to them—boredom. I’m so tired of this scene.”

“It’s all a scene, baby. Wherever you go, it’s a scene. New York is worse, or don’t you remember how it was?”

“I could see some exhibits. Take classes. Talk to people who are doing what I want to do.”

“Which is?”

“Taking real pictures. Not making them up. Not—” She lifted an arm toward the bottom of the rock pile, where the next models had come out, two girls in turtleneck shirts. Their hair was perfectly disarranged, as if they had been walking on the beach.

Unnecessarily, Caitlin checked to see if there was fresh film in her equipment cart. She said, “Maybe I could even go overseas and work freelance for one of the news services for a few months.”

Frank said, “You could be a war correspondent in Bosnia.”

She glared at him.

He spread placating hands. “Mind if I ask what you intend to do for money? Manhattan ain’t cheap.”

“I know people. Last summer I stayed in Miami and nearly starved to death. I might just as well be poor there as here.”

“Would I let you starve?”

She laughed. “How much do I owe you already?”

“I’ve lost count. You know, it’s a little hard to believe, sweetheart, that there’s no work to be had in all of South Florida.”

“There’s work. I know of an import-export company that wants pictures of the company officers in the boardroom for the annual report.”

“Does it pay?”

“Weddings and bar mitzvahs pay,” she said.

“Yes, but those are boring.”

“My God. You can be such a bastard. I think you should leave now.”

He stood silently for a moment. The wind lifted a strand of dark hair on his high forehead. “I’m sorry. You’re making me crazy, you know. How do you expect me to feel? Do you think I’m happy you won’t be around? It scares the hell out of me, thinking about you going to New York. You might never come home.” The strong white light showed every line and sag in his face. “We’ve been together a long time, Catie. Good or bad, but we’ve stayed together. I love you.”

The last words came out as a whisper, and his mouth made a lopsided smile. Caitlin noticed that his lips were chapped. How weak and unattractive, she thought. Begging like that. I wish you’d just go away. And then, embarrassed by her thoughts, she turned to a clipboard hanging from her tripod, where notes for the next series of photos had been written.

“I wouldn’t live there permanently,” she said. “I can’t stand the cold anymore. And I’ll be back over the summer as well, for depositions and the trial. Sam Hagen says I’ll be one of the witnesses.” She had told Frank about talking to Sam. Not everything. Only that she had gone to help Ali Duncan.

Cupping her hands, Caitlin yelled to Tommy Chang. “Take those reflectors about twenty feet down the ridge.” She watched him toss the silver circles into the air and catch them. His black hair flowed down his back.

Frank sat on a folding metal chair and extended his legs. “Sam looked pretty good on TV.”

She shrugged. “I suppose so.” A segment of his press conference had been shown on the eleven o’clock news Friday night. She and Frank had seen it in his bedroom as they undressed after coming back from dinner. They had never made it into bed. Frank asked about the flowers he’d sent, and whether she took his gifts so much for granted that a thank-you was optional.

Now Frank sat with his fingers laced behind his neck. He tapped Caitlin’s calf with the toe of his boot. “You know what I read in the paper this morning? Eddie Mora’s on the list of possible running mates for Senator Kirkman. That means Sam Hagen could be our next state attorney, if he runs for election. What do you think about Sam as state attorney?”

Still holding the clipboard and pencil, Caitlin kept her eyes on the notes she’d made. She was deciding how to respond. Finally she said, “I think he’d do a good job. He could probably win an election.”

“Sam’s a great guy.” Frank reached out to hook the back of Caitlin’s shorts and pull her toward him. “Did he remember you?”

“Of course. Let go, Frank, I’m working.”

Last night they and another couple, a client and his wife, had gone to Pagliacci, a supremely chic restaurant in Coral Gables. Three hundred dollars for dinner. Almost half her rent for the month, if she had to pay rent. Frank had gone to the men’s room three times, coming back with his nose red. On the way home they fought about it. He told her he was tired, that he had needed it, that she should shut up. Later she’d been brushing her teeth when Frank turned on the nightly news. She caught the words state attorney’s office and sexual battery prosecution, and she came out to see. And there was Sam in a roomful of lights and people. It only lasted a few seconds, but long enough to tell her that of course he couldn’t have given all that up for her. Even so, she had expected, as Sam Hagen had led her to his office last Monday, and closed the door, that he would show some flicker of interest. He was a man, and she was still attractive. And they had been lovers, after all. Three years wasn’t that long ago. But she had seen nothing in his eyes. Nothing.

“Hey, folks! Heads up!” The art director came out of the production van with a bottle of water, yelling for everybody to snap it up, let’s go, he had a plane to catch at noon.

Caitlin called, “Jean-Louis, I need you over here, s’il vous plaît.” He trotted toward her umbrella, curls bouncing, eager as a puppy.

“Frank, I have to shoo you away.”

The two leggy, sun-ripened girls trudged up the hill, hips swaying, one of them grabbing the other’s arm to keep from slipping down. The backs of their bodysuits were cut out and clipped with clothespins. This would be a shot from the waist up, featuring the necklines of the body suits. The girls’ legs were bare, and they wore sandals.

“Tommy?”

“Right here,” he said.

“Go get me some water, will you?” Caitlin asked. “Lots of ice.”

She brought the camera into sharp focus, and Jean-Louis held up the meter and called out the exposure. Caitlin yelled that the models were too shiny. The assistant costumer, who had stepped just out of camera range, came forward to pat a sheen of sweat off their faces. Apparently they wore dark-tinted contacts. They weren’t squinting in the bright sun.

The art director yelled, “Hey! Lean back so we can see the snaps on the crotch.”

The blond model laughed. “You want me to unsnap it?”

“Yeah, show us some bush.”

Their slender figures were crisply outlined against the pure blue sky. They posed one way then the other, side by side then apart. Smiling into the lens, then away.

The art director was dancing. “Give it all, girls. Pump it. Pump it up.”

Tommy Chang washed his hands in the production van bathroom, dried them on somebody’s old T-shirt, then came out to fill Caitlin’s water bottle.

One of the models sat at the makeup mirror with Rafael Soto. She had her mouth open while he went around it with a lipstick brush, and her face was pointed up at the TV behind the driver’s seat. She was watching a tape somebody had made of a soap opera. There was a model with short blond hair reading a magazine, and the guy model was in the back changing clothes again.

Ali Duncan stood at the table wiping off Rafael’s hot curlers and things, and Tommy had to move around her to get to the fridge. “Hey. What’s up?”

She put her blue eyes on him for a second. She didn’t talk much to guys anymore, which was understandable. She would hang out with Rafael Soto, but that was different.

Tommy filled Caitlin’s insulated container with ice, then poured in some Evian and screwed the lid back on. He noticed the box of wheat crackers. Lowfat, no salt. He took a handful of Chips Ahoy instead. The van was like a little house, everything all crammed in together. He leaned against the counter and looked at Ali again. Her hair was in a red braid down her back, and there were curls around her face where it had come loose.

He went over to stand next to her. “Are you supposed to be the new student of the master?”

She stared at him.

“That child is a genius,” Rafael declared. He winked at her, then tossed the little brush into his makeup case and came back with a big one. He flicked powder all over the model’s face.

Tommy went over to see what he was doing. “Why’s her mouth brown like that?”

“It isn’t brown, it’s natural. She has to look like your basic girl next door, so as not to distract from the clothes. This is catalog, not editorial.” Rafael’s glasses were like red letter O’s, and the lights on the makeup mirror slid across them when he moved.

“A few years ago,” he said, “I was on a shoot with Helmut Newton, lots of white skin and black lipstick and death-ray eyes. Catalog is something of a reversal, but you take what you can get in this trade.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

The dark-haired model was looking at herself in the mirror, tilting her head this way and that. She smiled. “Divino. Rafael, you are fabulous.” She kissed the air beside his cheek.

“Gracias,” he said. “The manipulation of reality to create the illusion of truth.”

She gave him a puzzled look, then went into the back to change. The guy was still back there, but Tommy had noticed that models didn’t mind getting undressed in front of each other.

He moved out of the way when he heard the door opening. It was Caitlin’s boyfriend, Frank, who stepped up into the van and asked if he could get some coffee.

“In the pot,” Rafael said, waving a comb. “Carmen, honey. Ven aca, mi amor. Let’s make you beautiful.” The model on the sofa went over and sat down and started talking about a guy she was going out with. Rafael told her the guy was a total jerk, was she crazy?

Tommy ate another cookie. Ali was packing used makeup sponges into a plastic bag. He spoke to her so nobody else could hear. “I’m sorry about what happened. I guess you don’t want to be reminded and all, but I wanted to, you know, tell you.” His face was getting hot. “That’s it.”

Her hands stopped moving. She laid them flat on the table, then looked at him. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something, too. You have chocolate on your upper lip.”

He brushed at his mouth, laughing a little.

“Eurotrash, if you want my opinion,” Rafael was saying. “At least they shaved their legs. The agent must have told them to. You have to tell these girls, the Germans especially, about personal hygiene.”

The guy came from the back in long pants and a windbreaker, said hi, then went out.

Ali went over to Caitlin’s boyfriend. “Excuse me? Frank? I mean, Mr. Tolin? Can I ask you a question, as a lawyer?”

“Sure.” He was stirring some sugar into his coffee.

“Somebody came by my apartment yesterday who said he worked for Klaus Ruffini’s lawyers, and he wanted to take my statement. I tried to call Mr. Hagen but it was Saturday. I told the guy to go away. Was that all right?”

He nodded. “You don’t have to talk to anybody unless Sam Hagen says so. Call him tomorrow, let him know what happened.”

“Yeah, I will. Thanks.”

Frank Tolin went over to see Rafael put makeup on the model.

Ali picked up the magazine the model had left, then plopped down in one of the bench seats at the table.

Tommy slid in across from her. “Hagen. He’s the prosecutor.”

“Uh-huh.” Ali’s head was bowed over the magazine. She had a pink shirt on with a thin gold chain. He could see the pulse in her neck.

He said, “Yeah. Caitlin said you and her went to see him. How’d it go?”

Ali lifted her face. “All right.”

“That’s good.”

“They’re friends from a long time ago,” Ali said. “She told me all about him first, so it was okay. I have to see him a few more times, but I don’t mind. Except he wants me to move back home.”

“Are you going to?”

“No way. Me and my mom do not get along. And how would I get to work? I don’t have a car.”

“I do.” He ate the rest of the cookie, then brushed his thumb across his mouth. “I mean, if you need to go somewhere I could take you. I’ve got the red Jeep. That’s my car. I guess you saw it already.”

She only looked at him, then started reading the magazine again.

Tommy asked, “Did you ever meet his son? The one that died?”

“Yeah, a couple of times. He was nice. A little wild, but he was okay.”

“Know what I heard?” Tommy would have mentioned Charlie Sullivan by name, but Rafael was there. “Somebody told me he was hittin’ the drugs. Some serious shit.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ali said.

“Stupid, man. Stupid.”

“I know,” she said. “Well, I tried coke, but not anymore. Stavros was doing crack, which is the worst. George Fonseca got him started on that, plus heroin.”

Tommy heard the clack of a brush getting thrown onto the table at the makeup mirror. Rafael said, “For your information, children, Stavros was not a junkie. He wasn’t that messed up. He was a delightful, intelligent young man.”

Frank Tolin was eating a wheat cracker. He said to Rafael, “How well did you two know each other?”

The way he asked it made Rafael stare at him through his round, red glasses. Then he turned his back and started looking for something in his makeup case.

Frank glanced at Tommy and Ali, then left the van. He was whistling through his teeth.

When the door closed, Rafael said, “Why she’s in love with him I fail to comprehend.” He held his hand over the model’s eyes and sprayed her hair.

Ali settled back into the corner with the magazine.

Tommy said, “So. You Rollerblade.”

She turned a page. “Yeah, how’d you know that?”

“I saw you a couple of times at Lummus Park. You’re pretty good.” She looked over the top of the magazine. He made the cookies into a stack, then a line of four. “Maybe you’d like to go out sometime.”

“Thanks, but I’m busy.”

Tommy could feel himself blushing. “No, I mean, we could, like, meet there and skate. At the park.” Her blue eyes were on him like spotlights. He shrugged and looked back down at the cookies.

“People might talk about you,” she said.

He laughed. “I don’t give a damn. And they’d better not say anything about you either.”

“Sometimes they do, right to my face.”

“If you were with me, they wouldn’t. I wouldn’t let anybody bother you.”

Ali laughed, but not like she thought it was stupid, what he’d said. “Well. Thanks.” He noticed that she had dimples.

For the last series of photos, Caitlin set up her camera close to the shore for a view of Fisher Island’s greenery and red tile roofs. These would appear in the background to give the impression that the models were in the Mediterranean.

She glanced around when Frank handed her the ice water she’d asked for ten minutes ago.

“Where’s Tommy?”

“Hitting on Ali Duncan,” Frank said.

Jean-Louis nodded and laughed. “Man, I thought he didn’t have the guts to talk to her. I bet him five bucks he wouldn’t.”

“Well, go tell him to get his fanny out here, will you?” Caitlin flipped the mouthpiece open on the container and drank. It wasn’t hot yet, but in another month summer would set its teeth and not let go till late October.

“Aren’t you supposed to see Marty Cass?” Caitlin said. She picked up some Polaroids that Jean-Louis had just taken.

“Marty can wait.” Frank took them out of her hand and laid them on the cart. “Before the little rascals come back, I want to know: Was George Fonseca giving heroin to Matthew Hagen? Ali and Tommy were talking about it.” When Caitlin stared at him, he explained, “It matters for the lawsuit I’m doing for the Hagens.”

“I thought it wasn’t going anywhere,” she said.

“So far, no, it isn’t, but if I find a defendant who isn’t out of state, insolvent, or immune from judgment, then maybe I’ll file it to see what happens. But if Matthew was not only drunk but nodding off because he’d been shooting smack—”

“What are you going to tell Sam and Dina?” she asked.

“That depends on what you tell me,” Frank said. “Was he or wasn’t he?”

Caitlin finally said, “He’d had some problems, but I don’t think he was seriously hooked on anything. He was trying hard not to be. Don’t tell them if you don’t have to.”

Tommy and Jean-Louis came running out of the van. Tommy came over to get the exposure meter, and Jean-Louis picked up one of the big reflectors on the ground near the models.

“Get over there!” The art director was jabbing at his watch. “Places to go, things to do, people.”

Looking through the lens, Caitlin focused on a young man and a girl in matching windbreakers, both smiling. The girl was leaning lightly against his chest. Caitlin pressed the shutter and the camera clicked and buzzed, two frames per second. The art director came over to check the angles, then shouted for the models to stand in another position.

“Catie? I have to go.”

“Okay.” She looked through the viewfinder and pressed the shutter release. “I’ll call you later.”

“We’ll talk about what I asked you before.”

“All right.”

Tommy told her to wait a second, the sun was going behind a cloud.

Frank said, “You don’t remember what I asked you before.”

She turned around and made a guilty smile. “I’m sorry.”

“Come live with me. I’ll buy us a fantastic place. You can have your studio right there if you want.”

He was happy, she could see that. She knew she’d have to tell him no. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said.

A motion caught her eye. The brim on the art director’s hat had turned toward the production van. Now the client and the costumer looked in the same direction, and so did the woman they were talking to.

Then Caitlin heard someone wailing.

Rafael Soto was at the door of the Winnebago, swinging from the frame. He took the steps down, walked a few feet, then sank to the ground.

Everyone ran to him. Caitlin pushed through. “Rafael!” She knelt beside him. “What happened?” Looking up she saw Ali Duncan’s wide-eyed face at the door.

Rafael pressed into Caitlin’s shoulder. “He’s dead! Oh, God. Oh, God. They shot him.”

“Shot who? Rafael, please.”

He sobbed. “Sullivan. He’s dead. I called the agency about the job tomorrow, and they told me. Someone shot him. Oh, my God, he’s dead.”