Frames Per Second (27 page)

Lucien put on his coat and grabbed his laptop and briefcase. He smiled at both of them. “Call me if you’re desperate for that thousand bucks. Otherwise, go fuck yourselves.”

CHAPTER 31

“WELL, AT LEAST HE THINKS I HAVE A HOT BODY AND A CUTE smile,” Sarah said. “We got that out of the evening.” She looked sidelong at Ben. “I’m a little looped.”

“I noticed,” he said. “You did a good job.”

He put his arm around her and she leaned her head against his shoulder. She smelled of perfume and champagne, and with her warmth against him, he wished he had no other obligation that night except to take her home.

“You think so?” she said. “What exactly did we learn?
Insider
is a screwed-up place, full of screwed-up people. Most places are, you look too close.” She looked up at him. “How come you’re so sad?”

He held her tighter. Knowing what he had to do next.
 

“Ben?”

“It’s like you said,” he answered. “When you look too close.”

The lights were off when he got back.

He waited in the van, thinking that maybe the best thing for everyone involved was to drive off.
 

But he knew that wouldn’t work.

It was just that every instinct was urging him away. Telling him to hurry to Sarah’s apartment, get there just after the cab dropped her off. Apologize for hustling her off.

“Shit,” Ben said, and pulled around the corner so the van wouldn’t be parked right out front.

“Shit,” he said again, after he’d walked back and found the key in the flowerpot, right where she always left it.

“Ah, shit and damn it to hell,” he said, as he broke into Andi and Kurt’s home.

He started in the office. While the computer was booting up, he went through all the drawers in his former desk, even the little hiding places in the desk, the two ornamental sliding slots that were actually small vertical drawers.

In one, he found what looked like love letters from Andi to Kurt. Ben put them away.

He felt sick to his stomach.

When the computer was ready, he wasted a good ten minutes finding his way through the system until he found two Photoshop folders, one labeled “Jake’s Jokes,” the other, “Kurt’s Works.”

Ben opened Kurt’s folder and as quickly as the system would allow, he opened and closed a dozen photo files. Hobby-type stuff, showing manipulation of scenics and home shots like what Jake had shown.

Ben looked at his watch. Over forty minutes had passed.

On the desk was a disk drive, and beside it, a file box of disks. Ben looked inside. There were a half-dozen disks. Luckily, only two of them were identified as Kurt’s.

Ben opened the two of them and ran through the files.

Nothing important there. But another twenty minutes wasted. He rolled his chair back, frustrated. And hit something soft. Kurt’s briefcase.

Ben put it on the desk and flipped the locks. They snapped open loudly in the dark room. Using the glow of the computer screen, Ben found a half dozen file folders, including one with the black and white prints of Cheever and of McGuire. Nothing that Kurt hadn’t displayed at their editorial meeting weeks ago.

Ben drummed his fingers on the desk, knowing his next logical step, and hating it.

He went upstairs to their bedroom.

There was the faint smell of Kurt’s aftershave lotion mingled with Andi’s perfume. “Oh, Jesus,” Ben said.
Hating
what he was doing.

He swung open an old framed print of a Winslow Homer scene to reveal the safe. Courtesy of the previous owner of the house. Not something Ben or Andi would have ever gone to the trouble to install, but he knew she used it to store her jewelry, as well as certificates for the few stocks they owned.

Ben took out his wallet, and sifted through it until he found his Social Security card. The combination was scratched down on the back.

It didn’t work.

Kurt must have changed the combination.

Ben was almost relieved.

If he couldn’t find out, he couldn’t find out.

But he knew Andi and her habits. And he knew there was still a chance he could move forward. He went back down to the office, and went to Andi’s desk and found her diary. He opened it to the front page and saw the old combination scratched out, and the new one listed below.

He jotted the number down, and hurried back upstairs.

It worked.

Inside, he found more jewelry. More pieces that Kurt had apparently given her in the six months of dating than Ben had given her in all their time together. There was also a small bar of silver with a commemorative insignia. There were several flat envelopes with the Paine Webber label, and then a thick manila envelope.

Ben took that one out.

It was sealed. Something hard-edged bulged in the middle.

Ben hesitated.

Everything else, he could clean up. He could go downstairs, shut off the computer.

And be done with it.

He closed his eyes, and then slid his finger inside the envelope and ripped it open. He dropped the contents onto the bed and turned on the bedside lamp.

There was a prospectus on the silver futures.

There were a series of letters from the Paine Webber broker confirming that Kurt had leveraged the growth in his silver contracts into more contracts … that he simply kept re-extending himself as the price increased.

There was a computer disk.

And a five-by-seven print of Senator Cheever and Teri Wheeler embracing.

It took Ben just a moment to open the files on the computer.

There were almost a dozen separate files showing the stages of individual elements of what were most likely scanned black-and-white prints. Maybe Kurt had gotten hold of the negatives, but Huey probably would have said so. And there was a scanner right beside Kurt’s computer.

There were what looked like the original shots of the senator holding the tray and then of Teri Wheeler laughing, her head arched back. Then the same shots, only this time the senator’s hands were empty of the tray. And the background around Teri had been stripped away. And then of the senator’s image, rotated and placed so that his hands were now around Teri’s waist. The angle of his neck and head taken from another shot and replaced on his shoulders in another … giving the impression that he was kissing her or at least nuzzling her neck.

And then the individual pieces were overlaid onto each other, including the return of the background image, and the foreground frame of the window.

Another version with what looked to be fine-tuning of the shadows and light on their faces.

And finally, there was the finished scene. The shot that Peter apparently saw, but missed.

The shot Kurt had constructed.

How handy, Ben thought. Thinking of what Jake had said at his birthday dinner a million years ago. “No more missed shots.”

CHAPTER 32

BEN WAITED IN THE VAN UNTIL THE BEDROOM LIGHTS WENT OUT. First Lainnie’s around nine-thirty, and then Jake’s about an hour later. Ben sat there for another half hour, hoping his son was drifting off deeply.

Ben had cleaned up any sign of his break-in before he had left. He had put everything back as he had found it. Everything but the packet containing the disk.

With that in hand, he took a deep breath, walked up to the front door, and rang the doorbell.

Andi opened the door a crack and peered out. She whispered, “Are you drunk?”

“We’ve got to talk.”
 

“Not
now
we don’t.”

“Somebody at the door, honey?” Ben heard Kurt say.
 

And then the door swung open.

Kurt stood there in his bathrobe. Pajamas and slippers. His querulous look changing quickly to anger. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Ben held out the photo of the senator and Teri Wheeler. “I’m here to talk about this—and this.” He held up the big Paine Webber envelope with the disk in front of it.

Kurt’s face blanched. He looked up the stairs behind him swiftly and then back at Ben. Clearly wondering how the worst had happened.

Ben almost felt sorry for him.

“What is that?” Andi asked.

Kurt tried to close the door. “Call me at the office.”

But Ben put his foot in the way. “No. This concerns all of us.”

Andi said, “What is it?” She pulled at the door and at first Kurt wouldn’t let her open it. “Kurt!”

He relented and the door swung wide.

She said, “What’re you talking about?”

Ben looked at Kurt. The man had turned gray. He leaned back against the door. His breathing was shaky. “How did you …”

“I broke in,” Ben said. “While you were at the movies.”

“Broke in
here?”
Andi said.

“Let’s go in the library and talk about it,” Ben said. “And keep your voice down so the kids don’t have to listen to this.”

“They’ll listen to you getting arrested if you don’t get out of here,” she began in a harsh whisper.

But Kurt put his hand on her shoulder. He shook his head ever so slightly. “No, we’ll listen.”

She went silent. She touched her husband’s face, suddenly scared. “What is it, Kurt?”

He took her hand. “He’s right. We need to go where the kids won’t hear us.”

“I’ll explain,” Kurt said when they reached the library. His voice was hoarse.

After Ben closed the door, Kurt held out his hand for the file and the disk. After a moment’s hesitation, Ben let him have them.

Kurt waved him and Andi to the loveseat and sat across from them with the coffee table in between.

Kurt stared at the photograph for a time, and then cleared his throat. His hands were shaking.

He looked up. “I’ve always tried to do the right thing. Kept to my responsibilities. It’s the way I was brought up, it’s most likely my nature. Kind of dull, but that’s who I am.”

He focused his attention on Andi. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You and the kids. I just wanted to keep it. Keep this life together.”

She looked confused. “You have it. We’re right here.”

“I know. I know you say that.” He touched his chest. “But inside I feel every day like I might lose it all. That disastrous marriage to Kathleen.”

He looked at Ben. “And you. Having you around on the edges all of the time. Wanting back in.”

“Wanting a life with my kids,” Ben said. “I was clear about that.”

Kurt nodded. “I know what you said. Maybe I even believed you. But it’s not what I felt inside. You understand the difference?”

Ben didn’t answer, and Kurt didn’t wait.
 

“So I took a risk,” he said. “I wanted to move us away from this house. This damn house that feels in every board like you’re still a part of the place. I wanted to make us our own home and move away from you and have a fresh start.”

“The way it looks to me, you wanted me discredited and ruined.”

Kurt shook his head. “I didn’t consciously go about that. I got myself into a jam, and I saw a way out.”

“What happened?” Andi asked, quietly.

“Those investments I’ve been telling you about. You trusted me so completely. And they were good for a time, but they’ve gone south.”

Her face paled. “How far south?”

He looked her in the eye. “I’ve lost all my own capital. And most of what you gave me months ago to invest. And then I panicked and tried to recoup it all by buying silver futures. The market went against me. I was desperate.”

Her hand flew to her mouth.

Kurt continued, his voice heavy. “There is no new house. We might lose this one. The market kept opening down the limit every day … I couldn’t move the silver … with what I owe, I don’t see how we can keep up the mortgage.”

He put the picture down in front of her. “And so I did this.”

“What do you mean you
did
this?”

“I fabricated this photo.” He jerked his head toward the computer. “Using Photoshop. Scanned in the prints.”

He looked toward Ben. “When Peter was telling me what happened, how he blew it using your camera, he told me there was a shot like this. Right after he ran through the roll, he saw the senator come up and hug Miss Wheeler and kiss her. They were there for just a split second, and Peter was berating himself—and I was berating him—for missing the shot.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“It was useless without the picture. I … I didn’t want to go up against the senator with just my word about what Peter saw.”