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  “Our timing is far from ideal,” Alfred said, “given yesterday’s accident. We’re very sorry—”

  “Our condolences to the Turkel family,” I said. “It seems strange the concrete would fail. Surely the subway was built to withstand overhead traffic.”

  Walther peered at me quizzically, caught off-guard, and rose to my bait. “Our equipment operator appears to have taken the wrong route to the job site, but surely that’s not why you’re here.”

  I could’ve gasped. He was blaming his dead employee, a predictable pattern for Drax.

  Alfred intervened with a half step forward. “No, that’s not why we’re here,” he said, more to me than Walther. “An incident occurred yesterday at another job site, the old train station.”

  Walther nodded. Apparently, he’d been briefed.

  Alfred continued. “Two individuals were detained.”

  “Strange hobby,” Walther said, “breaking into restricted areas to make trouble.”

  “That’s not why we were there,” I said.

  Confused, Walther glanced at me and then Alfred. “What’s this all about?”

  “Our objective was to take photographs,” I said.

  “You…” Walther’s eyes narrowed. “You sneaked past our guards—”

  “Into a public building,” I said, “owned by every Cincinnati citizen. So we weren’t breaking in, more like visiting, before it’s… repurposed.”

  Alfred placed his hand on my forearm, a harmless gesture from all outward appearances, but accompanied by a forceful squeeze.

  Walther smiled without displaying teeth, as if engaged in entertaining but inconsequential sport. “That building is a valuable Cincinnati asset, sitting idle. The city’s elected officials voted to convert it into something that benefits the citizens.”

  “Tony used the same words,” I said.

  Walther addressed Alfred. “This young man works for you?”

  “A lab technician,” Alfred replied. “But what he does in his spare time is beyond my control.”

  Walther returned his attention to me. “So you know my grandson?”

  “Queen City High School. Same graduating class.”

  Walther’s eyes lit up with realization. “I see. You’re the one who met here with Tony yesterday morning.” It was a statement, not a question, but it hung in the air like a bad odor.

  Alfred tried again to take charge. “There was an altercation between Lucas and your grandson, which we very much regret.”

  Walther’s eyes remained on me. “Your boss used the word we. But do you regret punching Tony in the face?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

  Alfred drew in a sharp breath.

  Walther eased up. “My grandson isn’t always diplomatic. What prompted this… this altercation?”

  “Look, I grew up on the floodplain where ratting a guy out can get you beat to a pulp,” I said. “Tony and I will settle our differences on our own.”

  Alfred spotted another opening. “Lucas will also be settling his differences with the police, so enough of that. We have a small request and we’ll be on our way.”

  But Walther’s eyes stayed fixed on me. “Who are you again?”

  “Lucas Tremaine.” To hell with Alfred’s muzzle order. Walther was going to hear my father’s last name. I scrutinized the deep lines on the man’s face for any hint of recognition, but saw nothing. We were nothing. My stomach twisted into a knot the size of a football.

  “I’ve come for my camera,” Alfred blurted.

  “Wait a minute.” Walther seemed amused. “This is about a camera?”

  “A rare camera,” Alfred said, “with great personal and historical value. Your security detail retained it when Lucas was brought here.”

  Walther turned to me. “You used your boss’s camera to take pictures of our job site?”

  “The grand rotunda.”

  Walther tipped his chin up. “For what purpose?”

  I’d anticipated this point in our conversation, had even rehearsed a little speech, the perfect blend of explanation and contrition. “Well, Mr. Drax, I’m a graduate student in urban antiquity. I’m fascinated by Art Deco styling, and the rotunda’s never been photographed by night.”

  Walther listened intently but said nothing.

  “As an artist yourself, surely you’ll understand.” I forced a smile.

  Seemingly satisfied, Walther begged for patience so he could “look into the camera issue.” He then exited to the hall and beyond our vision.

  “What happened to contrition?” Alfred muttered.

  “That was the best I could do,” I replied.

  When Walther returned a few minutes later, three men followed. They took up positions in a tidy row. Walther had summoned reinforcements.

  To the left was a man with his legs spread slightly and hands folded like an at-ease soldier. He wore the Drax uniform and had six inches and a hundred pounds on me. A human gorilla. To the right was Hard Ass, wearing the uniform and a subdued grin. Dead center between the guards was Tony Drax sporting a bruise above his left cheekbone—my handiwork. He held my camera bag, which meant he held my film.

  “You may have your camera back,” Walther said to Alfred, “but the film is problematic.”

  “Wait a minute,” I blurted.

  “Please,” Walther replied calmly. “This conversation is with your boss.”

  Alfred brought his hand to his chin and remained silent.

  The situation was grim and getting grimmer. I’d never get a chance to reshoot the grand rotunda. Drax had probably already doubled the number of security guards.

  Yet I found myself hoping Alfred would intervene on artistic grounds. Respect artists, Dad once told me, because only two things separate man and animal: love and art.

  Alfred had once been an artist, years before wasting his talent on prima donnas like Angelica Dawson. He understood. Just as the great masters painted their art on canvas, photographers painted their art on film.

  Respect the art, Alfred, and save the film.

  “Take it,” Alfred said, “with our apologies for everything that has happened.”

  My heart sank. There was no turning back. I’d frightened my mother, endangered my best friend, and lost my job. Even if Alfred didn’t fire me, I’d quit. I couldn’t work for him anymore. And then what? Nobody hires felons. The situation was hopeless.

  N. Jefferson Chapel wrote about the tragic delusion of the word hopeless. Wedged in a stone passage sixty feet beneath Athens, as the floodwaters of a surprise storm rose to his chin and kept rising, Chapel uttered hopeless and prepared to breathe his last breath. Then he remembered the hollow aluminum legs of his camera tripod, potentially enough breathing tube to reach an overhead air pocket. He worked furiously. The waters receded after ninety minutes and Chapel emerged alive, the word hopeless re-examined. Does one contemplate? Ambulate? Operate? he later wrote. Then one’s exigency is never hopeless.

  I lunged at Tony Drax so ferociously his eyes shot open. He braced for another punch to the face and dropped the camera bag. I snatched it up and hunched like a fullback for a mad dash to the door. According to my plan—materializing on the fly—I’d reach the emergency stairwells and go up, not down, losing my pursuers in the massive building’s infrastructure before escaping on my own terms.

  As plans go, it sucked.

  Hard Ass was a dough-bellied slug but he moved surprisingly fast. He reached me as I tore open the door to the hall. His hand clamped my wrist. His arm collared my throat from behind. I tipped backwards. Gorilla dove for
my legs.

  “On the ground like I showed you,” Tony barked. “On the back—wrists and ankles.”

  Tony had ordered one of his favorite maneuvers for immobilizing a victim. I remembered it well. He’d used it in high school on Reuben before humiliating him in front of twenty half-dressed boys in a locker room.

  Hard Ass and Gorilla obeyed, lifting me off the ground and lowering me to the floor until the tiles flattened my shoulder blades. Hard Ass yanked my arms up over my head and pinned my wrists. At my other end, Gorilla clamped my ankles. Like a Gumby, I’d been bent into a big letter H. I writhed but to no effect. As Tony knew well, the human body’s pulleys and levers are useless in such a configuration.

  With a nod, Walther gave his grandson the go-ahead. Tony placed my camera bag on a nearby island and turned his body slightly to make sure I had a good view from my ankle-height vantage point. He took out the Leica, turned it over, and then hesitated.

  “I beg your pardon,” Alfred said, his tone strident. “Yanking out film like a parachute ripcord works in the movies, but not in real life. You’ll strip the mechanism.”

  Tony looked irked.

  Alfred went on. “They stopped making parts for that camera years ago. Please. You must depress the underside release and then rewind the film. Only then, you simultaneously press the door safety release and pull up the center spool, but gently.”

  Tony turned the tiny handle until we all heard the familiar fwak fwak fwak of a rewound and free-spinning film canister. He then yanked up clumsily on the return capstan, almost dropping the camera. The metal lens cover clattered to the floor.

  Panicky, Alfred leaped forward. “You will not destroy my camera, young man.” He grabbed the Leica from Tony’s hands and deftly manipulated the controls until the back door clicked and swung open. He reached in, retrieved the film, and placed it in Tony’s palm. “There are things in life deserving of respect,” Alfred said.

  But not art.

  Pouty at being usurped, Tony dropped the film canister to the tile floor and glanced down to make sure I was watching. Then he brought his heel down hard. One metal end of the Kodak cylinder shot out and spun to a stop near my cheek. It was official. The film was drenched in toxic light, forever ruined.

  Tony bent, fingered the carcass of the canister and flipped it toward me. It bounced off my chest and rolled to the ground. He mouthed the words river rat and flashed me a grin.

  Back in high school, I’d seen that grin with its condescending configuration of lips and teeth. Below had been Reuben, cheeks shiny with tears, his body another big letter H.

  Walther plucked the lens cap from the floor and handed it to Alfred. “I assume there will be no more of this nonsense?”

  “That is correct,” Alfred said, his shoulders slumped.

  But I wouldn’t feel sorry for him.

  “Perfect response,” Walther said from on high while handing Alfred the photography equipment. “Mr. Daley?”

  “Yes, Mr. Drax,” Hard Ass replied, still cutting off blood flow to my hands with his grip. I imagined full name combinations. Dan Daley. Don Daley. Dick Daley. Dickerson Daley. Nope, Hard Ass sounded best. Hard Ass Daley. “Please release our visitor.”

  Hard Ass obeyed. I rose slowly to my feet and brushed off. My face felt hot.

  “Your valiant efforts to rescue your film,” Walther said, “all to take some nostalgic picture? I don’t buy it. For what purpose did you take pictures of our job site?”

  With the loss of the film, Alfred’s gag order had expired. There was nothing left to protect, nothing left to accomplish. So I chose a different speech, this one penned with acid, one phrase spewing from my mouth before the next phrase had congealed in my mind. “Not just nostalgia, Mr. Drax. You are about to destroy an architectural treasure unlike anything in the world. If you knew the Nazis were about to burn the Louvre to the ground, wouldn’t you want to take a snapshot of the Mona Lisa?”

  Every trace of bemusement vanished from Walther’s expression as if I’d slapped him with an open hand. He squared his shoulders and I expected a counterattack. But he spoke softly, methodically. “You have more on your mind than a dusty old train station.”

  I promised myself to not blink or look away. “Does the name Tremaine mean anything to you?”

  “Perhaps it would,” Walther said, “if you’d get to the point.”

  “Jack Tremaine was my father. He worked for you, on a shoddy worksite, with negligent practices, your practices, that got him killed.”

  Walther pointed an index finger at Alfred’s face. “You used our past dealings to come in here with slanderous accusations.”

  “Our dealings?” Something primitive flared in Alfred’s eyes, but faded fast. He shook his head. “I came for my camera. That’s all.”

  Walther thought a moment before showing me a synthetic smile, his eyes as cool as metal. “I remember it now. You and your mother poured your hearts into a legal action and it didn’t go your way. I’ve felt that disappointment myself.”

  My heartbeat pounded in my ears. I wanted to spring from where I stood, bowl him over backwards, and smash the cold condescension from his face. “You felt disappointment over what, a contract dispute? A quest for a lower tax rate? I lost my father. And you blamed him for what happened, just like you blamed yesterday’s screw-up on your own employee.”

  Walther relaxed his shoulders, claiming the high ground. “I’m afraid I’m at a loss.”

  I laughed. “You’ve never lost anything in your life.”

  “You don’t know your place, young man.”

  “You brainwash your employees with slogans about personal integrity and corporate responsibility, but you’re a hypocrite.”

  Walther stared at me unblinking, his jaw muscles pulsing below his earlobes. A few seconds passed, the air between us electrified. Nearby employees gawked.

  “This conversation is over,” Walther said. “Mr. Daley, please escort these gentlemen from the building.”

  . . . . .

  As Alfred and I cleared the main doors of Drax headquarters, I anticipated an earful from the old man, so I spoke first. “Take back the bail money, Mr. Blumenfeld. You bet on the wrong guy.” At that moment, jail didn’t seem so bad—reading, sleeping, three meals a day. Life had become too complicated.

  “You think your legal troubles count for a hill of beans?” Alfred’s upper lip quivered, his thin, blotched skin stretched drum tight over his forehead. “You don’t know nothing from nothing, you dumbhead. It’s like you give them your gun and say go ahead, shoot me with this.”

  “What’s your big idea, diplomacy? A lot of good diplomacy did back there.”

  Alfred’s eyebrows shot up. “You called that man a Nazi!”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Walther Drax plays golf with the chief of police every month. If he says you slandered his family name and threatened bodily harm—”

  “I never threatened.”

  Alfred waved a hand. “Whether you did so or not, the chief will believe him because that’s the way things work in this town. We are schmutz under the fingernail.”

  “And you’re okay being schmutz?”

  Alfred scowled and gritted his teeth. “Of course not. But for now, this is the way it has to be. For now. Suspend this little crusade of yours, or five thousand dollars will be pocket change compared to the trouble you’ll have. Do we have an understanding?”

  I was surprised at the intensity of the stick figure standing before me. For now, he’d said, as if privy to a hush-hush future. Well, that future would not include me.

  I spun on my heel and made a bee line to the bus stop
, my eyes locked on the pavement. I never looked back to check where Alfred went.

  . . . . .

  After my defeat at Drax, I decided to work off my frustration at the YMCA. Reuben agreed to meet me there.

  The Y was okay if you didn’t mind old guys strolling around naked, dangling their dicks, hands on their hips, like they were surveying a conquered land. I didn’t care. Their flab reminded us to stay in shape.

  In one corner of the gym, a handful of sweaty guys pumped iron and huffed themselves up for show. Out on the floor, others shot hoops in a blizzard of taunts and squeaking rubber.

  I chose the pegboard climber, clutched a thick sweat-stained peg in each hand, and began my ascent, my legs dangling as counterweights. I reached the top in fourteen Mississippi seconds, not even close to my goal of ten.

  “Not bad,” Reuben said from below. “Now come down and do it again without touching the floor.”

  I did as challenged, down and up, then down again. Panting, I held out the pegs. “Your turn, smartass.”

  “What happened this morning?”

  “Scared you can’t do it?”

  “Come on.”

  “A bunch of crap, that’s what happened. Do it.”

  Reuben looked peeved. “You twisted my arm to come down here and now it’s nothing?”

  He wouldn’t let up. “Okay, but let’s sweat while we talk.”

  Reuben grabbed a twenty-pound medicine ball from a wooden rack. A basketball-sized leather orb filled with sand, the medicine ball developed the pushing and pulling strength needed for maneuvering in spaces better sized for rodents than humans.

  We moved a few feet apart and began tossing the ball back and forth. With each catch, we lifted the orb over our heads, lowered to below the waist, raised to the chest, and tossed. Catch, lift, lower, raise, toss. Repeat until muscles scream.

  Between gulps of air, I told the story of the morning’s festivities, including the newspaper clipping of the excavator breakthrough, meeting Walther, the admission of our photo shoot, the destruction of the film, and our unceremonious exit.