At our hilltop home in Fairfax, we meet our house guards, Fred and Owen, ensconced in their hazy black car. Warren and Johnny settle themselves conspicuously inconspicuous at the far end of the deck.

In the studio, I locate a tape I want to play for Etta. Out on the deck, she shoots my battered face on Kodachrome as evidence for our lawsuit, saying:

“Your missing tooth gives you a fang, like you belong in a vampire movie. But you’ll have to prove you’re as romantic as Christopher Lee.”

I put my teeth and tongue to her lovely neck.

“How’s this for an audition? Or is sucking the vampire’s real attraction?”

“Careful of your lip.” She nuzzles my body. “Is this a pistol in your pocket, or is your big fang rising?”

“Actually, it’s a tape. A young singer named Joan Baez, a Palo Alto High School girl. Some guys in San Francisco are producing her first album and hired me to shoot the recording session. I got a copy of the recording as part payment.” I pull the box from my khakis.

Etta threads the tape and I slump on the sofa, sipping wine to keep my body therapy going. She lights the logs, takes my head into her lap, and we listen to Joan Baez sing.

“Her ‘Scarlet Ribbons’ is exquisite,” Etta says. “If there’s a folk music fad, I’ll bet she’s the queen…”

Sinking back in my pillowed corner, I drift into a relaxed peace, accompanied by the sound of Joan’s angelic voice, forgetting everything… briefly, very briefly… return to the surface to the familiar stirring strains of George Antheil’s music for Stanley Kramer’s The Pride and the Passion.

Etta is now cuddled beside me, glowing on the long leather sofa, bare feet entwined with mine. She’s holding a glass of the sumptuous wine, the bottle waiting on the coffee table, my glass filled. Raising myself slightly, I take a sip, carefully not dripping on her, and say:

“Most critics hated the movie, but it’s one of my favorites, and the soundtrack is gorgeous.”

“I wanted something inspiring because we’re going to need it for the rest of the night. It’s a wonderful saga of courage and determination, the way they lug the big cannon across Spain. Beautiful to watch, and one of those films where the score is essential to the overall impact.”

Setting wine aside, our lips touch lightly and afterwards, we cuddle and drift in near-sleeping silence. I reflect on the equal desire girls share with guys for lovelling, of blissfully though briefly combining with the infinite. I thank God I’ve received this blessing with Etta.

The window glows grey, as it seems to glow the whole day regardless of time, but apparently brighter this afternoon. I feel we are lost in a ‘grey zone.’ Surprisingly, I have little thought and no worry for Annabel and Lara and her delivery of the diamonds, which should be done by now.

Leaving Etta sleeping sweetly, I slip off the sofa, use the bathroom, refill my wine, retrieve the Independent Journal and marvel how Annabel is managing to keep all our names out of the news. I turn to the movie ads, and Etta wakes, asking,

“What’s playing?”

“The Vikings are landing in Mill Valley—they’ll be fighting all next week. And The Fly is buzzing in later.”

“Both sound like a lot of fun.” Yawning, she looks at the TV Guide.

“Ed Murrow has Robert Evans on Person to Person tonight. He’s promoting The Fiend Who Walked the West—a remake of Kiss of Death. Meanwhile, we’ve got a bunch of fiends walking round us, and I want a kiss of life tonight. So—if you are ‘able’—we ‘cain’ finally see Vertigo later. If this whole Lara thing hasn’t made us too dizzy.”

She pauses, picks up a note pad and reads: “‘Movies are the American dream created as a fantasy and given reality by hero worship of the stars.’”

“Where did you get that?”

“It’s an article I’m writing, thinking about submitting to Cahiers du cinéma or Sight & Sound. Critically, movies are finally being recognised the great art form of the 20th Century. On the lowest level it’s about fandom.” She leafs to another page.

“Here’s something about critics…” She reads: “‘When a movie doesn’t fit a certain oblique formula of critical expectability, acceptability or respectability, it is disregarded and denigrated for all sorts of superficial or intellectual reasons, such as the stars being miscast, as was said about The Pride and the Passion, even though Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren are all believable within the dramatic framework of the beautifully constructed script. Every movie is essentially a writer’s imagining of a reality he creates according to historical or contemporary circumstances featuring fantasized characters, even when they are based on or purport to represent real personages. If anyone ever believes what they are seeing on screen is anything real, they’re very misguided or misinformed. Believability has to be taken within the context of the overall ambiance of the art. What is real and important is the emotional content. Or intellectual—except movies that are only intellectually stimulating are generally pretty dull, unless one has such an active mind that it can only be satisfied with overfeeding. Unfortunately, a number of critics suffer from this.’ That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

“When I was in LA with my dad, we went to a coffeehouse. The walls were decorated with movie posters. Marlon Brando in The Wild One. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. John Wayne in Hondo. Montgomery Clift in I Confess. Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. Actors as Beat icons. I wonder how they’ll be regarded in 50 years, in the next century? Still icons? Or even more forgotten than Rudolf Valentino, Jean Harlow, or Clara Bow—‘The It Girl’—you know, the major sex symbols of the 1920s? It’s been only 30 years, and hardly anyone knows those names today. Maybe Lara wants to be ‘The It Girl’ of the Beat scene. Louise Brooks is another, long forgotten—and Lara is playing her character of Lulu tonight: victim or victimizer? I wonder about how Lara plays with men.”

“I wonder too,” I say.

Etta smiles. “Wonderful that we live in this era. I feel it’s a new ‘golden age’—something exquisite is in the air.”

Time to return to Annabel’s for the pool party, barbeque and poetry.

It seems warmer, the mist lighter, the sky glowing dull silver, visibility’s decent for half a block. Folding the roof down, I drive the MG. We wear only T-shirts, our jackets stowed in the trunk, the .45 under my seat. Warren and Johnny follow as usual.

Driving into the Melville estate, we drive into the gathering darkness, perhaps an evolving darkness, a darkness that seeps into our feelings. Etta shudders briefly and we exchange a peculiar look, as if we’re somehow not operating in the same physical reality that we previously assumed we were.

The property is littered with guard vehicles. We squeeze into a space beside the veranda, and Ynez opens the front door. We find Annabel in the kitchen, seated alone in the alcove, her head bowed and a glass of her ever-present Seabreeze in hand.

She rises, clad in a becoming, blue swimsuit, hugs Etta, and says, “Everything went well and Lara is safe and God willing we are free of the Devils—for now. Let us enjoy the pool,” and offers us suits. We thank her, but prefer just to enjoy her company.

Carrying the pitcher and our glasses, we go through the studio where her self-portrait greets us in nude glory and my McClures Cove print sits waiting, out the French doors onto the curved redwood patio, furnished with large portable barbecue, large round glass tables and chairs. Stepping down, we follow a cobblestone path leading across a short, neatly cut stretch of lawn and into a grove of large ferns covered with silver gauze.

Annabel walks before us, somehow sadly sagging in her sheer one-piece blue suit. As though she’s aged ten years in the last day.

Leaving the ladies in lawn chairs at the end of the pool, I wander on, looking for some sign of the murder scene, but see none—no yellow tape stuck around bushes.

I drift lazily into the greenery behind Lara’s cabana and become buried in the mist. An odd sense of detachment fills me, a sublime peace as though I’m flowing with a silent, lilting melody originating from within the fog.

At the garden’s rear, a row of tall pines watch with stoic indifference. Between their spiky, gossamer swathed trunks, patrolling guards materialize and evaporate like specters hired to add movement within the static vegetation.

I notice a broken stem hanging from a bush, a leaf showing an odd trace of red. Snapping it off, I see the blood—the remnant of the life that once was. Dropping the leaf, I return to the pool, take a towel from the pile on a chair and place it on the grass near the girls.

“Good idea,” Annabel says. “We have chiggers now.”

I recline on my elbow, basking in the sunless warmth. Etta, straddling a chair facing Annabel, gives me a loving smile. It’s like living a quiet dream.

Lara appears from her hazy cabana, waves, dives in, swims a couple of laps, gets out of the pool on the far side and saunters around to us bearing a big grin, a light blue towel over her shoulders, her wet, sheer white suit revealing more than movies allow.

Dropping the towel, Lara takes a large pink plastic loop from the grass, places it around her waist. She stands before us, gyrating her body to make it twirl.

“A Hula-Hoop,” she announces with an innocent smile. “Something new.” The hoop loops down about her hips, and she keeps it going by thrusting her pelvis, her green eyes darting between Etta and me.

Annabel frowns and stands, “We need to prepare the barbecue, Lara. The other guests will be arriving soon. Please help,” and heads up the path, disappearing within the dewy ferns.

“One minute, Mother.” Lara moves towards me, whirling the hoop, gives several strong gyrations, jerking her pelvis closer, the breeze brushing my face and the hoop nearly grazing Etta, then stops, letting the loop fall about her feet. She gives us a shrug—apologetic and helpless—and dashes up the path.

Etta reflects. “If Lara’s attitude weren’t so… juvenile, she might represent a wave of future feminism fighting to get out.”

“You mean girls demanding the same status and opportunities as guys?”

“Something like that. There are lots of girls who want more equality with guys, except the ones who want a guy to front for them—you know—that’s a lot of girls. They want power, but they also want a guy who can go out and battle the world and get the money, while they rule the hive like a queen bee.”

“And service the drones when they come home?” I grin.

“If they don’t get serviced by their secretary or some other girl they keep on the side.”

I ask, “Have girls made up their minds what they want?”

She shrugs. “Some have and most haven’t. The so-called ‘Beat’ girls want something more than a home in the suburbs and a new car every year. The idea of being a wife with a houseful of kids doesn’t appeal to them. At least not yet. Some of those girls are just looking for fun, but many of them are intellectual and aware. Aware, for instance, that America is now the most powerful, affluent and complacent country in the world. They know there’s only the ‘bomb’ to worry about, which nobody can control, and the main challenge is to make more money, when most people already have enough. They’re wondering if there isn’t something more. And if there is, what is it, and where can they find it? I don’t know. Maybe we are seeing the beginning of a social revolution, even if a lot of the Beats are only rebelling against conformity, or using sex or drugs for escape.”

“Spoken like a searching sociologist more than a prospective movie critic.”

“You posed a Socratic question and I gave you a Platonic response,” she giggles. “And maybe I’m just rattling on because I feel so tired. It’s been a sad, terrible day…” Etta stares down glumly,

then gazes round into the fog. “Lara’s the only girl her age I know of who isn’t working… at something in the world, even if it’s just ‘dutiful’ housewifery.”

“You think that’s Lara’s real problem? She’s never had to work?”

“Would you work, if you didn’t have to?”

“Never thought about it.” I consider. “Yes—I would. I like taking pictures. Capturing moments. Seeing something new or different or beautiful—and sharing it.”

“It’s your talent. What comes from your true self. Maybe it’s what Lara’s doing—even if she seems a bit crazy. Maybe that’s why I don’t understand her. Even the word “crazy” has different meanings for us. Her mom I can relate to. She’s an artist like my dad, but he makes his art pay, like you, and he uses a lot of his money to buy the kind of art Annabel creates. Until now, Annabel has worked at something I don’t think she cared about so she could create her art, and it doesn’t matter to her whether her art pays.”

“A lot of artists do what she does, work at things they don’t like doing to pay for doing their art, but all the ones I’ve known would rather make money from their art.

“So, maybe,” Etta says, “Lara is like a lot of people. Except she doesn’t have to work at something she doesn’t care about, so she doesn’t care to work. And Annabel doesn’t force her.”

The odor of cooking burgers stirs us from our private reverie.

Annabel has changed into a simple long dark blue frock. She stands with Ynez over the barbecue grill, turning patties and asking everyone for cooking preferences, rare, medium, or well.

A glass table is loaded with condiments, a pitcher of Seabreeze, a vial of Annabel’s ever-present pills, an iced pitcher of lime juice and water, numerous bottles of various alcoholic beverages and a huge salad bowl loaded with cucumber and tomato slices, mushrooms, spring onions, radishes and crisp lettuce.

Xavier and his many semi-suited and sport-coated guards provide the bulk of the misty crowd, which includes Annabel’s attorney and advisor Nathan Girrard. Vicki Kenyon smiles and waves to us. She’s accompanied by a scraggly young man with long curly blond hair, wearing a black and white checkered workshirt and blue denims, who looks more confused than cool.

Etta mentions the dramatic music wafting from speakers mounted on the back of the house.

“Van Cliburn’s new recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1,” Annabel says, not missing a beat in toasting buns. “He recently won the Moscow competition.”

The day is fading into evening, however the mist seems lighter.

“A phenomenon… an incredible phenomenon,” Annabel remarks and turns on the outside

lights which seem to refract the milling bodies even more into amorphous insubstantial beings, “such stuff as dreams are made on.”

Etta takes more salad, picking out the radishes, making a small pile.

We compliment Annabel and she smiles appreciatively, offering more burgers. We accept and eat our fill, accompanied by conversation forgotten as quickly as it’s uttered.

Sitting with Xavier, Warren and Johnny at one of the glass tables near Annabel’s studio, we receive an ‘official’ update.

Xavier says, “We’re all involved in this. I’m the hired help, and you by default.”

“The default is Sean’s fault,” Etta chuckles, “and mine.”

“Just the facts, ma’am?” Xavier grins, intonation imitating Jack Webb.

“About the delivery, the bastards insisted Lara make it alone using Ynez’s Volkswagen. We were ready. Smooth as enrolling in college. All phone booths. Check in here. Go there. Go there. Go there. Finally, leave the stuff there. The whole runaround lasted an hour and a half, and the drop wasn’t made until 3:28. Had her in view most all the time and only lost her during a long run from Fairfax to Terre Linda. Drop was an alley in San Anselmo. We thought we had them, but they managed to grab the bag without us seeing. We don’t know how they did it. Anyway, they got the diamonds and are heading somewhere. I intend to catch them.”

“I’m sure you will,” Etta says.

“Eventually. Annabel’s funding the search. I’ve set up contacts in all the major diamond cutting centers, and Interpol is alerted. A cutter receives a huge reward for fingering the bastards, and there are nice payments for keeping us posted on new customers who inquire about cutting more than a normal number of stones. I hope the bastards are greedy and cash in sooner than later. Until these killers are put down, Annabel wants us to continue guarding Lara.” Xavier pauses.

“Supposedly only Perry knew Lara’s real identity. To everyone else, she was Lulu. Logic tells us Perry brought in pros. They took over and used him as front—then disposed of him. About Perry: His clientele numbered about 50 users a month, Lara included. He sold grass for $10 to $15 per lid, or ounce. Made around $700 a month for himself after he paid his supplier. Two weeks ago, Perry purchased three handguns from an underground arms dealer. A Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum Model 29 revolver. The Magnum is the big gun you heard. A monster. Pretty new. Does more damage than a .45. Takes a strong hand to use it. .32 Browning 1922 and a 9mm Walther P38 with silencer and extra mag. Perry used the Browning and was killed with the Walther. I have confirmation Abe and Teddy were shot with the same 9mm.”

“The 9mm P38 was the main handgun of German troops in the War,” Etta says. “Semi-automatic, eight-round magazine, reliable and fairly concealable. I practiced with one.”

“Knowing about the guns makes one thing clear: the bastards are local. Out-of-towners would have brought their hardware with them. We cross-checked the list of Perry’s customers with Sean’s book buyers. No match so far. And Bailey’s bunch are no help.”

“Legwork doesn’t seem to appeal to the Sheriff,” Etta says.

“He prefers to let his mind do the walking. Regardless, Fielding has become a big question mark, or maybe he’s just an accidental smudge. Regardless, he’s not been seen since Annabel threw him out last night, and we can’t locate him anywhere.”

Rapid footsteps clatter over the hardwood of Annabel’s studio, and Lara skips into view, wearing cliché Beat garb: a tight turtleneck, a skirt shortened to mid-thigh length, leotards and high boots—everything midnight black.

She comes directly to us, focusing on Xavier.

“While I was changing,” she says breathlessly, “I just remembered something—someone. The big party at Todd’s, where I did my crazy dance. I was wearing this same outfit, and I remember one guy, because he grabbed my skirt and because I saw him later… here. One of Duane’s patients. As I was driving out, he was on the veranda out front, coming out of Duane’s office. I remember him because I thought it was cool that not all of Duane’s patients were squares.”

“When was this?” Xavier says.

“A couple of weeks ago. After the party.”

“Can you describe the guy?”

“Neat looking. Dark short hair. Maybe in his thirties. Wore a suit. He was dressed differently at Todd’s—like everyone—everyday casual. He had a funny eye—half-closed like it was always squinting and a scar here.” She touches her cheek. “That’s why I remembered him.”

Xavier says, “Sounds like he was injured in a fight or combat maybe. A boxer… or soldier. A hood… or… a former convict. I’ll give your description to the other guys. Tomorrow, I’ll arrange for you to look at mug files of crooks with that sort of facial scar.”

“Crazy.”

“If we can’t find ‘scarface’ in the books, maybe you can help an artist draw a sketch.”

“That’s not necessary,” she grins. “I can draw one tonight and have it for you in the morning.”

“Please! ” Xavier says, “Do not mention anything about this to Duane if you see him.”
Grinning, Lara twirls away and we trail after her.

“‘Who’ll come lie down in the dark with me, belly to belly and knee to knee…’” she declaims.

Etta laughs, “God sure knew what He was doing when He created people.”

“God didn’t create people,” Lara says. “Loving does.”

“Ah,” Etta says, “but Who created loving?”

Lara goes silent, and the mist rolls over us in spectral sheets, then she whispers to Etta so only I can also hear: “Are you ever as horny as I am all the time?”

“All the time,” Etta giggles.

Vicki’s boyfriend, the shaggy blond fellow in jeans and checkered work shirt, takes the stage, which is a tall, bare wood stool set atop a small makeshift platform on the edge of the curved patio, and reads from pages he holds in trembling hands. Either he is extremely nervous, or on drugs, or quite mad, or all three, for he rambles on seemingly interminably:

“…borne up by these crumbling crutches of creation,” he reads in staccato declamation,
“we skirt the edges of the acid-etched arena,
finding ourselves thrust back
in the most obliterating offense
to the beginning of the begat,
when once we went forth
to seek the solution
and bring solace to all.”

Lara grins, I think he’s cute. What do you think of his poetry?

“Edifying,” I say.

“An evasion. A way of saying something without saying anything,” Lara squints comically. “Get it?”

I nod. “Got it.”

“I’m glad you got something,” Lara laughs.

Etta grins, “You were supposed to say ‘good.’”

“Huh?”

“‘Get it?’ ‘Got it.’ ‘Good.’ Danny Kaye. The Court Jester.”

“You sure see more flicks than I do,” Lara says. “Escape?”

“Maybe.”

Etta gazes round at Vicki and her guy. Vicki again smiles and waves to us.

“What are you looking at?” Lara asks.

“Vicki’s fellow. Lost and looking.”

“The Lost Generation. They were after World War I. This is the Beat Generation. You’re one war behind and in the wrong key.”

“Maybe every war is sung to the same tune,” Etta says, “and the generations give the songs different names.”

Lara winks. “Time for Lulu to perform. Enjoy the show, guys.” She heads to the platform, sits on the high stool, her black leotarded legs apart and dangling, sets her bag down and extracts her shiny black journal.

“First, Lulu will entertain you,” Lara says in a soft, intimate tone, “with this tender little morsel I call Ficken,” and recites the poem she gave me during our drive to McClures. Laughter and applause accompany her smirking bow. “Now my latest,” Lulu announces serenely. “It’s called, ‘Fox You, Allen,’ or ‘Foul,’ and if you wanna be dirty, call it ‘Bowel.’ Speaking in a rich, sonorous voice—almost masculine sounding—Lulu recites like John Gielgud in The Ages of Man:

I see the best girls of my generation
destroyed by mindless foxing,
starving cat ready for one wow fox,”
screaming from forlorn booze drenched dens
of their big suburban play pens,
cats going crazy for wild fox swellings
outside of their stifling kitty dwellings,
scrounging the streets for the bloated twitch
to cool the pain of their throbbing itch.
Hung out in effigies
the pinup prodigies
stuck up in lockers
of foxed-up boxers,
the craving cat crying
from the heat of trying
in her day of lying
with the last fox dying…”

For nearly ten minutes Lara rants on about so many sad and unfortunate foxes that if I were hunt master, I’d call the hounds to chase the cats instead. I notice Annabel gazing hauntingly at her daughter, a mix of motherly pride, incomprehension and pain. As Lara finishes to enthusiastic applause, Annabel slips alone into the house.

Xavier and his guards drift away, and Lara is chatting with Vicki and her friend. Girrard appears to have left.

Etta says, “I think it’s time to leave.”

We find Annabel in the kitchen, so lost in thought or drunk she doesn’t hear us approach. We thank her for the wonderfully relaxing gathering.

She says, “I have heard about the man with the scar. I hope there is no connection. I hope Duane can clarify everything.” She gnaws her lower lip. “I no longer have the business that has been my life for 25 years, since I was 17. I signed the papers earlier this evening, or was it afternoon? So difficult to tell, because by the clock it is still late afternoon but the absence of sunlight makes it seem like night. Before the signing, I was hurting here.” Annabel touches her chest. “Afterwards, I felt better.” She frowns, and taking her glass and pitcher of Seabreeze, she stalks into the studio as though it is her final refuge. “Perhaps I can even work now.”

She lifts her pallet and a brush, studies my photo, moves to add a stroke to the painting, then uncertainly sets the tools aside. “And perhaps not.” Annabel sips her Seabreeze, gazes longingly at the photograph. “Only a few days ago. We were so much younger then, so innocent… so naïve.”

Abruptly, she grips her chest. “Please—my pills. Over there.” She points to the little table where the pitcher of Seabreeze sits. “Give me three, please.” She gulps them down with her drink.

“They have a new invention, the pacemaker. Possibly it will help.” She pours another glass of seabreeze and sips more tranquilly. “Yes, I am aware drinking is not good.” She laughs. “But, besides painting, you know it is the thing I most enjoy.”

Annabel gazes ruefully “Money. Authority. They mean so little. My painting. Perhaps the expression of a woman who is never fulfilled. With Lara, I seem a failure. But she and I are truly similar. We are similar through our differences. We both want the freedom to be ourselves, but we have yet to find what our true selves are. We both want love and to be loved in our own particular, peculiar way.” She sighs again. “I hope you will continue to be friends. To us both.”

Annabel goes to the open French doors and gazes into the darkness. “I am not a superstitious person, but is it not odd how everything has changed since this fog arrived? Right and wrong. Black and white. This haze is appropriate. It seems everything exists in shades of grey. The fog is breaking all records for density and holding pattern. Half the businesses in the county have closed or operate on short hours. People are advised to stay home and avoid accidents. A freak of nature. Some freak.

Even the clarity I have found this past day seems mottled, as if I have mixed too many colors together.”

Annabel is right. It is indeed a grey world we exist within, one I thought I’d left behind with the War and would never see again. Yet, here we are in this house that’s merely a shell—however magnificent—for the sickness of the people it shelters. And here is this rich lady who has heart trouble all her money can’t cure, facing the prospect of death at an age only a bit older than me, and who is seeing the continuation of her life in terms of a daughter who often appears to have little compunction beyond a tiddlywink—a thin plastic disc children have little interest in playing with today, enticed and enthralled as they are by the latest fad or personality, whether Davy Crockett or Paul Newman or the Hula-Hoop or Elvis or whatever or whomever comes next, lost in confusion—or their passions for drugs or sex or something else. And the fog endures.

Annabel drinks and faces us. “I must be crazy. Are we all crazy?”

“Possibly,” Etta smiles.

She comes close and stares longingly into our eyes. “Sean, Etta, if something were to happen to me, I hope you will do what you can for Lara. I know I can depend on Nate and his firm to manage her finances in perpetuity—a hard word to say— in perpetuity,” she forces a smile, “and with a concept even harder to grasp—it means eternal and timeless. But Lara has no affinity with Nate. I hope you both will provide a human connection, if you can.”

“We can try, Annabel,” Etta says.

“Please do whatever you can for Lara, in whatever way you feel is right. Will you promise?”

“Yes, I promise,” I say.

“I believe you. I believe you are people who keep their word, and you do not give your word unless you feel you can keep it.” Her eyes wet with tears, she pours herself into our arms.

We hug her mightily, and I absorb a jungle of sorrow and regret and thwarted passion—and determination.

She draws back with a sigh. “Thank you. Both of you—please take care of yourselves and take care of each other always… my very, very dear friends.”

We leave reluctantly… as if feeling there’s something more we need to say, but don’t know what it is.

Outside, the fog embraces us as an ashen torrent—strangely soothing like a neutral grey kiss—and we cut through its thickening mass, enforcing early night on a day that should be one of the longest of the year.

Parking in the lot across from the Tamalpais Theatre, where I first met Lara only two days earlier, we invite Warren and Johnny to see Vertigo, our treat as before, and as before they accept and sit several rows behind.

After the movie’s over, Etta says, “The most baroque, bizarre and boldest movie Hitchcock has made.”

I agree, “Just bitchin’ to add another ‘B’ to a movie I sense is even better than anyone right now thinks it is,” and we decide to stay over for the next showing.

Waiting for it to begin, Etta says, “The book it’s based on is called The Living and the Dead and set in France. The plot and dreamy mood are similar—and the James Stewart character is still deceived by the girl. The main difference is that at the end, when he finds out his new girl is really his old girl, he strangles her and the police take him away.”

During the second showing, just after the Kim Novak character reveals she’s the same girl, Johnny slips into the row behind us and pokes his head between ours.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he whispers. “Xavier needs you. Ziggy Ziegler is dead.

We speed to Tidewater Photo on the Miracle Mile—the fog beating over us. The small parking lot is filled with squad cars. We leave the MG on the road.

Sirens sound, and lightbars of squad cars—red and blue bursts—flash through the fog like a flock of UFOs, roar up both sides of the divided road and converge. Uniformed and plain-clad cops emerge and scurry about, conversing discordantly about errant husbands, homicidal lovers and obscure lechers. The chaos continues.

The spotlights and strobes reflect off the surrounding mist and beat on my eyes in bleary refraction, blasting the milling figures with eerie splashes of color. Shaped into surrealistic silhouettes bearing translucent haloes, the multitude of cops seem like phantoms from outer space, and I feel invaded.

My hallucination becomes tangible when one of the aliens approaches us in the form of an older cop in sport jacket, a badge on his pocket. He has a sallow pockmarked face with piercing grey eyes. “I’m Detective Howard with the local San Anselmo Police Department.” He speaks with a soft, hesitant voice. “The Kodak delivery guy found them. He was making a very late pickup and the shop was closed, but he has a key.”

A frowning Xavier joins him. “It’s grim, but the cops need help from someone familiar with the shop and its layout. Ziegler and his girl have been dead several hours. Both shot in the head with a medium calibre gun. Ballistics will tell us if it’s the same 9mm that killed my men. That’s why Detective Howard called me. I’ve filled him in on Ziegler’s connection with our case. We need to learn who the girl is.”

I say, “Her name is Juliet.”

Xavier says, “Etta, you may not wanna see this. They’ve not removed the bodies yet.”

“I can stand it,” she says.

Behind the counter, Ziggy and Juliet lie on their backs like discarded marionettes, limbs twisted, their forearms crossed, conveying a sense of cockeyed complicity in their mutual demise. Their expressions show shock, glazed eyes open, neat bloody holes in the centers of their foreheads. Still hooked on one ear, Ziggy’s glasses lay askew across his face, tangled in his beard, and Juliet’s dyed hair flares out on the dark floor forming a misshapen halo.

Feeling devastated and sickened, Etta and I dash out and deposit our dinner in the weeds beside the building.

Xavier brings us water.

Etta says to me, “I thought you’d seen a lot of this.”

“In war, you’re too busy staying alive to get sick.”

Howard explains: “I’ve not had the bodies removed yet because I felt I was missing something, something in how they fell. I think they were both shot instantly, from midway back between the door and the counter, while the shooter was moving, as if the shooter came into the store with the intention of killing them, and the robbery was an afterthought. Cash drawer was open and all the money gone. I think we’re supposed to assume it was a nasty robbery, maybe by one of Ziegler’s junkie friends.”

In the rear, Etta shows Howard the locked cabinet where employees kept their valuables and Ziggy his cameras, and where to find the key. Juliet’s purse is there containing her identification, and nothing seems missing. Everything seems in order in the darkroom and processing area.

Howard says, “We found a white, plastic surgical glove in the parking lot.”

“Ziggy used only white cotton gloves,” Etta says.

“Hopefully, the FBI can extract fingerprints, but it’ll take a couple of weeks.”

The bodies are now removed and we return to the front area. The counter and numerous surfaces are covered with white fingerprint powder.

On the dark wood floor, the white chalk outlines of the bodies of Ziggy and Juliet linger as ghosts of a wasted tragedy that should not have been performed.

Etta and I notice the Ziggy’s negative file drawer is ajar and its interior compartments of what were neatly arranged and labeled sections of negatives of individual photographers are a bit of a mess. My negative strips are stuffed partly askew in their compartment and a few sleeves are stuffed out of place at the front of the drawer.

I pull them out, coordinate and count them—29 negative strips. “One is missing.”

Etta checks them over too. “McClures Cove—the single frame with the blank tail. It’s not here.”

“You’re right. McClures Cove was number 30. I keep a log. It’s gone for sure.”

Quickly, we finger through the compartments of all the other photographers, but do not find it mixed in with someone else’s.

I tell Xavier: “The photo print you saw on Annabel’s easel today.”

“A lead as thin as your film,” he smiles cynically, “but clearly connected to Lara’s kidnapping. I’ll ask Annabel to check her print.”

Etta suggests we take our print home to study.

Outside, the mist covers the stucco storefront like a shroud, cold and uncaring. The remaining cops stand around silent as mourners, and the scene reverberates as a déjà vu nightmare.

In the car, Etta says, “this is… the worst… Juliet—wow! It could be me. Seeing them like that—it makes me want to kill the monsters myself.”

Xavier and his men trail us—pairs of blurry, quavering yellow lights.

It’s three in the morning when we begin huddling over the big print lying on the coffee table before the fireplace—Xavier, Warren, Johnny, Etta and me—all of us studying the image under the bright illumination of the spotlights, not knowing what we’re looking for, accompanied by wine, cheese and leftover lamb and chili.

A call comes from Detective Howard, and Xavier summarizes: “A man phoned Golden Shore yesterday morning—to buy the picture. He had a low voice—‘gruff’, she said. He described your photo but she never asked where he’d seen it. She didn’t tell him who had purchased it, but did say Tidewater did the printing and she’d have a print for him today.” Xavier snorts. “The bastards learn where the negative is, and kill Ziegler and his girl to get it.” Scowling, he downs a glass of wine and stares at the print. “What’s here that’s so important?”

We spend the next 20 minutes trying to find out—assisted by our house guards—intensely examining the sands strewn with small stones and seaweed, the rock formations, the passageway, looking for whatever is significant enough for two people to be murdered to hide. None of us find anything.

Xavier phones Annabel—she too has had no success, but will continue looking and Lara is helping. He says:

“Fielding still can’t be found, and this picture is a major lead. Let’s try to make it ‘talk.’”

An hour later, all seven of us are wasted—hallucinating animals, faces and human body parts in the rocky surfaces and within the sandy debris.

“I’m just seeing black and white spots,” Warren complains.

Xavier decides to call it quits, and asks me to photograph the print as a safeguard.

I shoot the blowup in my studio, using a tripod, the finest grain film and my sharpest lens, bracketing widely, and give the film cassette to Xavier, plus the negative strip of the six additional frames of the scene.

He says. “Well make large prints of every shot, and study them all to hell.”

The house guards return to their post, and Xavier departs with Warren and Johnny. We watch them descend.