Hope for a break and fear of failure wrestled in Behr’s gut as he parked in front of Williams Photographic. And fear was winning. The world had changed. Years ago, before shopping online had become ubiquitous, there would have been two dozen brick-and-mortar photography stores to investigate, to see if anyone recognized the picture Behr held. Now there were four. Five if you counted this place, down toward Franklin, which seemed too far away, but which now represented a last chance. The day had bled away in a spiral of dead-end questions and futility, including a call from Breslau’s office around lunchtime informing him that the department’s software had come up blank on the face in the picture from the Oriental Grand. So whether it was the software’s shortcomings, or the man wasn’t in the system—either way, it was bad news.
Hope: Behr believed his man was a photographer. That taking pictures was integral to his obsession.
Fear: He could shoot digitally, download to his computer, and print his pictures at home.
Hope: Something about the man, his age, his methods, felt analog, not digital. And Quinn had said something about recognizing the smell of film-developing chemicals during his encounter.
Fear: That Quinn was brain damaged. And after visiting a few Walgreens and Walmarts with photo sections, Behr had learned they didn’t even sell developing supplies and they processed their color film in-store while sending out their black-and-white to a lab in Chicago. There was no way this guy would let his images be handled publicly.
Hope: That if Quinn was right about what he smelled, and if Behr was right about the guy being analog, the man might insist on buying his chemicals in person.
Fear: That the other shops he’d stopped in, Courtland Camera and Winter’s Imagery, had tiny chemical sections and none of the salespeople recognized the man in the photos.
Fear: That even the most analog types these days just went ahead and ordered hard-to-find shit online when they had to, and if his man did, Behr was all the way back to nowhere.
Fear: He was down to his final stop.
Fear was kicking hope’s ass at the moment.
Behr got out of his car and entered the store. As soon as he walked in he felt the pretension of photo snobbery in the air. He quickly found a clerk, wearing a velvet vest over his T-shirt and a straw porkpie on his head, fiddling around with a tripod. Behr showed him the photo from Oriental Grand and asked if he knew the man in it. Velvet Vest hardly gave it a look.
“Nah, bro, I don’t. I’m kinda new. Ask Benj, he’s been here forever. He might.” Behr’s eye went to where the clerk was pointing, and he saw a lanky salesman with a chin beard who was playing with his iPhone near the back of the store.
Behr glanced around for a moment and spotted a display of the most expensive cameras in the place and went to it.
“Can I help you with something there, chief?” Benj, the lanky salesman, inquired. Behr could see his shoes behind the glass counter: hipster sneakers with the white toe caps.
“Maybe,” Behr said.
“You a photographer?” Benj asked. “Do you currently own an SLR?”
“Have a Nikon D-90,” Behr said.
The hipster salesman nearly stifled his snort. “Solid body,” he allowed.
“Yeah. Might be time to upgrade,” Behr said.
“Well, there’s plenty of room to move up from there,” the salesman said. “Plenty.”
“Uh-huh,” Behr said. “Let me see that one, please,” Behr said, pointing at a boxy black number that rested on a velvet-covered pedestal.
“That one?” the salesman said reluctantly.
“Yeah.”
Benj took the camera gingerly from the case and handed it over.
“That’s a Hasselblad H4D-60,” he said reverentially.
“Is that right?” Behr said and ran his hands over it like a low-rent pimp checking out some new flesh. “Pricey?”
“A little over forty thousand.”
“Wow.” That’s when Behr pretended to almost drop it. Benj leaned forward, almost keeping his cool. Behr regained control of the camera and said, “Must take a hell of a picture.” Then he drifted down the counter, camera still in hand, toward the film-processing section, knowing Benj would follow.
“It’s a professional’s tool,” Benj said, his pretension evaporating. “Regardless of income level, it’s more camera than most people need. You could save plenty and still come away with a great product if you look over here.” The suddenly helpful salesman pointed at a nearby glass case.
“That’s a relief,” Behr said and practically tossed the Hasselblad back to him.
“Look, the truth is I’m old-school. I’m interested in getting back to shooting film, not digital, and there’s this guy who’s supposed to know a lot about this stuff. I was hoping to ask him for some advice. Maybe you know him?” Behr took out the photo and showed it. Behr studied Benj, while Benj studied the picture.
“Well, sorry, can’t help you,” the salesman said.
“So you don’t know him?” Behr said.
The suggestion that he might not know something seemed to rankle Benj. He cocked his head with an air of superiority before answering. “Look, man, ours is a shrinking business, and I’m not in the habit of giving out sensitive information on customers.”
“So he is a customer?” Behr asked.
Now Benj looked pissed. “Is there anything camera related I can help you with? Otherwise—”
Behr picked up a large bottle of film-cleaning solvent and hefted it in his hand. “Is this flammable? It says here on the label it’s alcohol based, must be pretty flammable. Oh yeah, it is, I see the warning now. You have a lot of it? You keep it stored in back? Man, if this stuff caught fire, this whole place would go up like a Roman candle and burn for days. Hasselblads and all …”
Behr craned his neck and glanced around. “I’m sure there’s a shitload of security cameras here, so whoever started something like that would probably cut power to the store and come in with a black mask on in case of battery backup, that way no one would know who did it and he’d never get caught.”
Behr let that hang out there for a minute, then finished. “Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’d only burn for like five hot minutes and there’d be nothing fucking left, not even helpful employees.”
“Are you threatening … are you saying you’re gonna come burn down the store?”
Behr fixed him with a flat gaze. “I’m just a solo P.I. on a case who doesn’t give a shit about anything except getting a name. So you can tell whoever you want about this conversation, but I promise you this: if this place ever goes to torch, I’ll be sitting across town somewhere in public with lots of people, maybe even a cop or two, and it will never, and I mean never, track back to me.”
Benj grew very uncomfortable and looked around as if searching for help, but none was coming and Behr wasn’t going anywhere.
“Fine. I know him,” Benj said in a small voice. “It’s not like he’s some friend of mine, fuck it. We don’t see him much in here, but when he comes in he buys heavy quantities of developer, fixer, and stop bath.”
“Name?”
“It’s … slipped my mind,” Benj said.
“You have records of your transactions?” Behr asked.
“Yeah …” Behr followed as Benj went behind the counter and got on the computer. “He … I don’t see any credit card information. I see where we’ve sold a lot of developer—that goes into the system for automatic restocking—but no purchase info.”
“Meaning?”
“He must’ve paid cash.”
Shit, Behr thought. He envisioned sitting out in front of the store for weeks, months on end, hoping for the guy to show up to resupply while bodies piled up and the reward went unclaimed.
“Oh, there’s an old note in here …” Benj said, almost emitting a nervous laugh at what he read off the computer. “There’s a phone number. It says: ‘Call Hardy Abler when Kodak D-76 back in stock.’ ”
And just like that Behr finally had a name.
“We’re good now, right?” Benj said. “You’re not gonna do what you were saying …”
But Behr was already out the door.