Eight o’clock on Sunday evening, Stanton King trailed his lovely wife, Lola, through the snooty throng at Merrick Gallery. As usual when Lola passed by, men nodded in approval and spoke her name, women smiled with icy politeness and edged closer to their partners. It was the same performance Stanton had witnessed for the entire span of their marriage, and he took more than a little pleasure in watching it unfold.
After all these years, Lola King had lost none of her power to excite. As they made their way across the gallery, male libidos drummed in counterpoint to the hiss of female envy. At times such as these, in crowded rooms, Stanton took an honored place beside his wife, matched her step for step, received her cool hand on his offered arm, feeling more intimate with her in such public gatherings than he ever did when they were shut together in private.
Nearly once a week they were similarly engaged. Gallery openings like tonight’s, or dedications of halfway houses, fund-raisers for homeless shelters and historical-preservation-league functions, environmental campaigns, thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners for one or another of Lola’s charitable causes.
It delighted Stanton that even in her sixties Lola was the object of such palpable lust and that he as a result could bask in covetous esteem. Sadly, the display was all pretense, for Lola had not shared her bed or body with Stanton in decades and they rarely engaged in conversation on topics more intimate than the grocery list, but still, the wave of arousal that rippled through the gallery cheered him. It was the reason he accompanied her to these stuffy events, simply to live out the public version of what he no longer enjoyed in private.
Tonight Stanton’s white frizzled hair was unruly as always, an electrified mass that bore a resemblance to Einstein’s. He wore a blue aloha shirt decorated with white oversize hibiscus blooms. White slacks and white shoes. A costume that in Miami was considered formal wear.
Lola was tricked out in a pastel pink sheath dress with a scooped neckline that displayed the ample cleavage she’d possessed since her twenties. Her waist was slim and the swell of her hips still well within ideal proportions. For tonight’s occasion she’d swirled her red hair into a dramatic display, and her complexion, an unblemished creamy white, was undusted by powder.
Within her blue eyes, a dark light fluttered like a volatile magnetic field. It was Lola’s custom to fix her gaze on whoever was closest at hand. She was not one of those annoying women always scanning for a better circumstance. It was part of her charm, part of her wondrous attraction, that she could bring the full force of her allure to bear on a single individual.
After greeting several acquaintances, Stanton and Lola joined the line that moved in a slow clockwise amble around the perimeter of the gallery to view the artwork. Behind him Lola settled into quiet pleasantries with Miguel Marquez Estefano, a squat, silver-maned Cuban gentleman who operated the largest Toyota dealership in the city. Lola and Estefano occupied seats on several boards together, and after a brief acknowledgment of Stanton, Estefano held Lola’s attention as the conga line progressed past the black-and-white photographs that were the cause of the evening’s celebration.
In the far corner of the room Stanton noted Mr. Alan Bingham, the photographer whose work they were honoring tonight. Stanton identified him from the snapshot on the printed program, a gaunt man in his fifties, surrounded by well-wishers and friends. He seemed a quiet sort. Wispy and unassuming. The type of individual who could slip here and there and snap his photos without stirring the air around him.
His exhibit displayed the seamy edges of Miami with a wry, good-hearted slant. Strippers and drunks, obese tourists frolicking inelegantly, forlorn immigrants trapped behind razor-wire fences, all of them staring frankly into the lens and revealing some angle of themselves that was cocky or profoundly desperate or just plain goofy. As the line moved forward, Stanton entertained himself by looking past the obvious subjects of the photos and trying to place the locations where each was shot. Krome Detention Center, Miami Beach, Opa-locka, a strip club on Biscayne Boulevard. All of them rendered in the unsparing black-and-white manner of Diane Arbus but tinged with a hearty humor Arbus never managed.
Midway through his journey around the large hall, with Lola and Estefano trailing behind, Stanton confronted a shot of Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston poised mid-ring on that night in 1964. He halted briefly and craned forward for a sharper view, his heart rising quickly to a hammering percussion. A wave of chilly sweat broke out across his back.
Beyond the fighters, in the third row of the Miami Beach Convention Hall, sat a group of fans who were watching the proceedings in various degrees of attention. Framed perfectly by the rope rings, these fight fans were most certainly the focus of the photograph. Five of them sitting side by side.
It was, Stanton saw with horror, a collection of notorious people who might easily be recognized by any of a dozen patrons in the gallery tonight if they bothered to stop and take a longer look and burrow back into their memories for faces and events from forty years ago.
Stanton slid forward, his breath tight, and behind him Lola and Estefano passed by the boxing photograph, unaware of its import. But as they were edging forward to the next selection, Lola halted and reversed course. For several seconds she absorbed the image before her.
When she turned to Stanton, the faint smile that had been fixed on her lips all evening had vanished. Her eyes were blurred and her features tensed into a grim, rubbery mask. Her lips drew open as if she meant to scream.
“It’s nothing, darling, I’ll take care of it,” he assured her. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”
Stanton broke from the line and headed for a rear exit. The moment he was in the alley, he drew his cell phone from his trousers and made the call.
In his panic he misdialed and got an angry man who clicked off as Stanton was apologizing for the wrong number. He looked up and down the dark alley, drew a long breath. He counted to ten, then to twenty.
He focused on the keypad and punched the numbers, and after a single ring the familiar voice answered.
“I have a job for you,” Stanton said. “It’s of the utmost importance.”
Stanton stepped farther from the rear exit.
“It will involve illegal acts. It must be done tonight. Are you willing?”
One in the morning, in the alley behind Merrick Gallery, Carlos Morales splashed kerosene on the heap of framed black-and-white photographs. Snake stood watching. When he’d emptied his can, Carlos scratched a match with his thumbnail, flicked it into the pile, and they watched as the flames meandered through the photos.
“Now for the good part,” Carlos said. “Mr. Photographer.”
As he was turning to leave, Snake glimpsed an image he hadn’t noticed before. The photo lay on top of the pile, flames moving around it. He went back, leaned over the fire. A shot of a boxing ring, two black men at arm’s length, behind them the crowd. Cassius and Sonny. February 1964.
“What the hell’re you doing?”
Without thought, Snake thrust his hand into the flames. Gripped the frame, but the heat crippled his fingers and the photograph slid away, wedging deeper into the bonfire.
As it was consumed, he studied the image, watched it darken and crinkle, turn to red and yellow ribbons of fire twisting into the night. Cassius up on his toes, Liston heavy and slow. Behind the boxers, rows of men in suits and white shirts and narrow ties, some with kerchiefs in their breast pockets.
Then he saw the two men sitting side by side, and his heart roared.
Three rows from the ring was a man with a birthmark on his cheek, Mayor Stanton King. Next to him a stocky man thrust a cheering fist toward the boxers. A diamond flashed on his pinkie finger. Exactly like the ring on the man Snake had confronted in his sister’s room forty years before.
By the time Snake noticed the stocky man and his diamond, the flames had eaten away his face, and seconds later the fire consumed the rest of him.