3

The train was delayed because of snow. By the time I finally slogged back to my apartment, it was dark. I ate some tuna fish out of the can, then settled at my ancient computer to Google Quinn O’Boyle.

I came up with nothing. No one in Iceland, no one who looked or sounded like the man he might have become, the kind of guy who’d send a nude photo of himself to the teenage lover he hadn’t seen in thirty years.

After a few minutes I gave up and scanned my e-mail. Nothing but spam.

Or almost nothing.

From: derrabe@norwaymi.com

Subject: Photo Op

Dear Cassandra Neary,

I am a longtime admirer of your masterpiece Dead Girls and saw your photograph of the late Aphrodite Kamestos in Stern. I am wondering if you would have interest in a brief professional consultation of some photos I am considering as an acquisition.…

Another weirdo. I started to delete it but stopped when I scanned the end of the message.

I would of course not expect you to perform this service gratis and would be happy to discuss it with you as regards generous remuneration for your time.

With respectful regards,

Anton Bredahl

I had better luck Googling this guy. He was the owner of an Oslo club called Forsvar, a former air-raid shelter that specialized in industrial music, death metal—stuff like that. From its Web site, it seemed like a lot of his customers hadn’t gotten over the bad news about Ian Curtis. The rest looked like they’d just come from Anvil’s anniversary tour. There were a few underlit photos of the club’s interior but none of its owner.

I sat for a minute and wrote my response.

Anton,

Sure, let’s discuss.

CN

I hit reply and went to pour myself a drink. When I returned, another message had already popped onto the screen.

Can you talk now? What is your phone #?

I stared out a gray window glazed with sleet. I finished my Jack Daniel’s, thought What the hell, and typed in my number. A minute later the phone rang.

“This is Anton Bredahl.”

“You’re quick.”

“I am more comfortable in conversation. First let me say I know your work—I have a copy of Dead Girls.”

“You and twenty-five other people.”

He laughed. The connection wasn’t great, a cell phone or Skype. He sounded younger than me—late thirties, maybe. Not much of an accent.

“Yes, it was hard to find,” he went on. “An American friend told me about it. I bought it from a dealer a few years ago, someone in Oslo here who specializes in photography. It is a valuable book now, did you know that?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I paid one hundred and forty euros. The exchange rate was not so good, so—it was expensive. I should have waited until now, right?” He laughed again. “Someone should bring it back into print. It’s a good book. That is how I recognized the photo in Stern. The same eye, I thought. It’s good you’re taking photos again.”

“It’d be better if I was getting paid for it.”

This time he didn’t laugh. I finished my drink, wondering if I’d pissed him off.

“Yes, that is why I wanted to talk to you. I collect photographs.”

“The Stern photo isn’t for sale.” I’d already stuck the negs in various books around the apartment, a half-assed attempt at hiding them. “None of my stuff is for sale, sorry.”

“Oh, no.” He sounded slightly embarrassed—for me, I realized as he continued. “Actually, I was wondering if you would be interested in looking at some photos and perhaps assessing them. Not my own photos—I’m not a photographer. Photos I am thinking of acquiring for my collection. I think there is some overlap in our taste.”

“I kinda doubt that.” I paced to the kitchen and poured another drink. “I haven’t done anything since Dead Girls; you know that, right?”

“You did the Stern photo.”

I had a spike of paranoia—he was a cop, the whole Stern thing had been a setup to implicate me in Aphrodite’s death—but before I could hang up, he added, “Joel-Peter Witkin—I bought his work very early on. But it is his later photos that I find most beautiful—the ones of the cadavers, before they became too camp. I have a number of other photographs as well. Weegee, but also—well, my taste is fairly … esoteric. You understand?”

“Right.” I relaxed and knocked back the whiskey. “Yeah, I sure do.”

“Esoteric” has roughly the same relation to my camera work as “erotica” has to porn. This guy liked the photographic equivalent of rough trade—very rough trade, as in dead people. Witkin’s most notorious pictures center around cadavers and various body parts gleaned from morgues and hospital freezers, rearranged and posed to evoke images like the martyred St. Sebastian, or surrealist tableaux that would give Buñuel the creeps.

Bredahl said, “You like Witkin’s work?”

“Yeah. Some. The stuff that isn’t trying too hard. It’s beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?” His voice lifted. “So many people don’t perceive how beautiful it is, the way he sees the world. That image of the severed heads kissing is sublime.”

“I wouldn’t hang it in my kitchen. But yeah, it’s an amazing photo.”

Joel-Peter Witkin was definitely a somewhat esoteric taste. Also an expensive one: After Jesse Helms denounced his work as degenerate, prices went through the roof.

All this made me wonder why Bredahl needed me to take a look at his photos. Witkin was way out of my league. If I hadn’t flamed out in the 1970s, you might have found my name alongside his in the Wikipedia entry for transgressive art. As it was, I was barely a footnote. Still, I needed to eat. Or drink, anyway.

“So you want me to authenticate some stolen Witkin photos? I’m not a curator; I couldn’t give you an estimate of how much they’re worth or anything like that. But I could take a look at them.”

“No.” Bredahl paused for such a long time I thought the line had gone dead. “I don’t want you to make an assessment of their value. I would like your opinion. I would like the use of your eyes, as a consultant, someone who will tell me whether these pictures are authentic or not. The particular sequence I would like you to review is not by Witkin. These are a slightly different kind of photo. As I said, very specialized, very—”

“Esoteric?”

“Yes. Some people might find them quite offensive.”

“Listen, if this is some kind of kiddie porn—”

“No, of course not. But I must be—how do I explain? Circumspect. More than anything, I need to know if these photos are … authentic. You understand?”

“No.” I swallowed the rest of my Jack Daniel’s. “Look, I don’t think this is going to work, okay? I have to—”

“I will cover all your expenses. Not in Oslo—Helsinki. And I will pay you six thousand euros.”

I did the math in my head.

“Yeah, well, okay,” I said.

“I’ll arrange your flights. Is Thursday too soon?”

This was Wednesday. “Thursday?” I’d only been out of the country once, on an ill-fated trip to Belize. I frantically rifled my desk until I found my passport under a stack of ancient contact sheets. It was valid for another year. “Yeah, Thursday’s great.”

“Excellent. Now…”

I gave him the info he needed to arrange the flight.

“I’ll e-mail you a link so you can look at a few things in my archive.” I heard him light a cigarette, then inhale. “What I’ve put online, anyway. Probably it would be good not to share this with your friends.”

I promised not to share it with my friends. Not that I have any. I had a sudden bad thought.

“Hey—you know a guy named Phil Cohen?”

“Phil Cohen? No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I think so. Is that a problem?”

“No. That’s good. I’ll wait for your e-mail,” I said, and hung up.