THE VOYEUR

FRIDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 3, 2004

Alonso Diaz didn’t mind Friday night shifts, when his colleagues emptied out for the weekend. He preferred to be alone with his photo collection, hundreds of images glowing on his computer. Peering into the lives frozen in the click of a shutter, examining their forbidden secrets, peeking beneath whatever layers they had wrapped around them.

Diaz was a voyeur. Employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Boca Raton Field Office. Tonight, he was annoyed. The hurricane was threatening to rip across his region within days. Hurricanes weren’t good for the terrorist surveillance business. Terrorists tended to stay indoors in bad weather. Out of the reach of Diaz’s cameras.

He sat in the cluttered cubicle they called his “work station,” enveloped by a soiled beige fabric partition plastered with Miami Dolphins stickers, curling and faded photos of family fishing trips with his family, and an array of bureaucratic memos.

He leaned into his computer monitor, rubbed his eyes, and studied the latest photos. In the War on Terror, Alonso Diaz’s weapon of choice was a fast shutter—capturing images of men and women suspected of suspicious behavior, questionable associations, and un-American activities. Agent Diaz connected the dots by building a massive database of pixilated images. Surveillance photos of taxi drivers and fast-food workers, college students and maintenance crews. In black and white. But mostly olive.

Some were suspected terrorists, some were suspected of knowing someone who knew someone who just might be a terrorist, and most just happened to have stumbled within Diaz’s depth of field. It didn’t matter. He often thought, Show me a picture of anyone and I will show you a story to be told, a secret to be outed, a lie to be exposed. It was all so . . . scintillating! The blemishes of human nature just waiting to be developed. Like in the old days in the darkroom. You exposed the image to some light, immersed it in a chemical bath, and before long, patches and blotches appeared. Subtly at first, until a vivid picture emerged.

Today’s collection, for example. Hassan Muzan appeared to be just an overworked towel boy at the Paradise Hotel and Residences. And his conversation with that redheaded woman wasn’t exactly destined for Top Ten Crime-Scene Photos on the Discovery Channel.

But these days, appearances were deceiving and deception appeared everywhere. Diaz had a collection of informants bothered by aspects of Hassan Muzan’s behavior. His strange habit of purchasing and discarding cell phones. His periodic meetings in Little Havana with three suspicious men. His belligerent behavior when asked for too many towels.

So he—literally—became the focus of Diaz’s attention. Framed, shot, pixilated, and uploaded over the past few weeks, a face among the other faces in Alonso Diaz’s Rogues Gallery.

With a cameo appearance by Rona Feldstein.

Soon something would develop from these photos. Maybe not a plot against the United States, but something. Diaz had a hunch.

As Diaz was fond of saying: “Cameras don’t lie. People do.”