Needless to say Dude was fired on the spot and we never heard anything from the poor stoner again, but I did hear an interesting story about a week later from a friend of his who came by to pickup Dude's final paycheck. He cryptically said something about "Some man putting down some major heat on Dude and made him split for the coast." Whatever the hell that meant.
I did know that the boss was now acting a bit strange too, and had received a couple of private visitors in his office lately and he seemed to be on pins and needles for the next couple of weeks.
Naturally, inside the desk drawer of Dude's corner desk, I found about a dozen packs of developed photos, duplicates of customers pictures that Dude hadn't gotten around yet to taking home. Most of these were fairly tame, mostly nude pictures of girlfriends with a few assorted x-rated shots mixed in for flavor. The usual 'confidential' stuff. These were all run though the shredder, but not before I took a quick look at Walt's last three sets of prints as I ran them one by one into the machine to be destroyed also.
Mostly typical orgy stuff, and pics of a lot of naked (or nearly so) men and women. Why Dude thought these were worth getting fired over, I had no clue, but then again Dude had no clue about a great many things. These were rather typical of Walt's photographs I'd processed for him in the past. I did have to admit that the guy sure did have some interesting friends!
One picture leaped out at me though, it was of a nude young woman with long dark hair kneeling with a collar around her neck before the photographer. She hadn't posed particularly well and seemed much too thin to be healthy. They say that the camera adds ten pounds; in that case she was at least twenty-five pounds or more underweight, as I could count every single rib on her. She was sort of slouching a bit and had a very sad hang-dog sort of expression on her face.
Upon closer examination of the print with a magnifying glass I realized that the marks on her arms and thighs were long parallel scratches. She was a "cutter", and apparently a compulsive one; how sad.
It was her eyes that made the photo work however; she looked into the camera with sad soulful eyes that immediately reminded me of my mother's old brainless cocker spaniel dog "Molly". Molly was a silly little dog that always seemed to have accidents on the carpet and never remembered when punished for it, giving us always a sad look of "Don't look at me, I don't know who did that poop there".
In nearly ten years of working here this was the first photo I ever considered keeping a copy of for myself, but in the end it joined the others and was destroyed in the shredder.
I had seen many photos of this girl before, usually clothed, when doing a brief quality control check on Walt's previous photos before packaging, and if I had to guess I'd say that this was his daughter. I thought I had seen a wedding ring once on some of her older pictures, but this one certainly didn't show one and her hands were clearly visible.
I would have put the entire incident out of my mind entirely except a few odd things kept happening. Twice I was nearly certain someone had been inside my small efficiency apartment and some little things were not quite where I had remembered leaving them.
My advisor at the University, one of my favorite professors, told me right after semester finals that he had an interesting phone call "about me from a colleague" that had asked a lot of questions about my academic and personal life, but he wouldn't say anything about it further so I just assumed it somehow involved my pended application for Graduate School starting next spring. Still, something just didn't seem right.
Classes over, I resumed taking over the early morning duties and things did start to get back into a routine when Walt stopped in one morning to drop off a large package of negatives that he wanted to convert into slides. It's possible to do this (normally slide film is quite different from 35mm film and not many people use it anymore) and I had an expensive machine that could do the transfer but it would be time intensive and frankly not at all cheap to do.
Walt was fine with this and seemed in a very jovial mood; the past unpleasantness was apparently forgotten. I told him that I thought I might be able to have them done by the end of today, if there was any urgency, and he agreed that this would be excellent if at all possible.
Keeping this man happy was now my number one concern in life, and I got to work on the project right away. Unfortunately it was a fairly busy day, with the start of summer there were a lot of holiday pictures coming in and it seemed like everyone wanted rush service rather than having to wait a day or two for their pictures. Our store closed at seven p.m. and I didn't get the last of the slides made until a little after eight p.m.
I called Walt (I had his home phone number with the negatives) and told him I had just finished and he could have them first thing in the morning, but if it was critical that he get them tonight, I could be at his house I thought by about 8:45. It
was
somewhat critical, he said, and he gave me directions to his home.
I was on my bike today; my old '69 Pontiac Firebird was DOA yet again. I loved that car, but the carburetor and exhaust system were nightmares to keep running, she dripped oil everywhere, including under the dashboard, and on a good day got about seven miles to the gallon. I locked up and headed toward the River Oaks area as fast as I could pedal, and got there right about on schedule.
The house was beautiful and large. Much as I suspected, the always nice and genteel Walt was a man of very apparent wealth, and I felt very much like a boy with his hands caught in a cookie jar. I had seen a great many photos of the 'rich and powerful at play', and thanks to idiot Dude running off his mouth, I was probably now seen as a "security risk" in the eyes of my betters. Lucky me.
I hoped that the truth that I had always been a very, very good boy would
maybe
only get some of my fingers broken as a warning.
*******
I rang his doorbell and it was answered by his wife Nellie, who offered me a seat in the living room and said that Walter would be right out to see me. She offered me a glass of orange juice, which I gratefully accepted and drank it down nearly at once. I had to sit and wait for awhile and soon I felt rather drowsy. I think I dozed off for a bit, because I remember Walter coming in and shaking me awake a few minutes after ten-thirty and apologizing for being delayed. We talked for a few minutes, my tongue seemed to be still lost in the fog of sleep and I stammered quite a bit but no one seemed to notice.
We shook hands and I left, heading on home and by the time I got home about at about eleven p.m. most of the fog had lifted.
My dreams that night were rather odd, I dreamed that I was back there in Walters home and he was showing me the slides that I had prepared for him on a screen and he asked me questions about each picture. When the photo of "Mollie" appeared on the screen, the same one that I had so closely examined the previous month from Dudes stash, I remember calling out "that's Molly", and telling him the reason I'd given her that name. This interested him very much and I dreamed we had talked about that girl and her problems in great detail.
At the end he asked me what I thought of her, and I think I replied something like "she could be very beautiful, but I don't think she knows how to love or be loved. I think she's hollow inside, or flat just like the photograph. I'd want to take her and hold her tight to me, but she'd just crumple up or tear and fall broken to the ground."
In the morning I passed everything off as just a dream and tried to put it all out of my mind. In a fit of pique I did leave a note on the table at home asking my secret watchers to do something useful like change the kitty litter for me, if convenient, and not to drink the last beer I had in the fridge. Three days later the cat's litter box was changed somehow while I was at work and my last beer did disappear from the refrigerator, probably at the same time. I made a note to myself to leave some cream in a bowl on the kitchen floor for the Brownie.
Whatever was going on, my life didn't seem to be in immediate peril and I saw no need to pack off to the coast myself. I just had to survive six more months of this job and then I'd be in Graduate School. If anything was going to happen, it would probably happen soon or not at all.
The correct answer was of course, soon.
********
About a week later on a Friday afternoon I got a phone call from Walter (now that I knew his real name I decided not to be overly 'familiar' with him) who asked me if I was available to come by his house again this evening, as he had a possible financial opportunity available to discuss with me.
Ok, sure. I'm as trusting and gullible as it's possible to be, and without any second thoughts I agreed to come by right after store closing. And I did. This started perhaps the single strangest conversation of my adult life.
"What do you remember of your visit to me about a week ago?" he asked.
"Well, I think I slept through most of it, but it involved some sort of CIA truth serum and a lot of naked pictures of your daughter, who would be an absolute stunner if someone could sit on her long enough to get a sandwich or three down her. On second thought, I couldn't sit on her - her ribs are so thin now that they'd probably break. She needs some serious guidance in life, to become something other than an Assistant Crack Whore."
This was all guesswork on my part, but you don't get into Graduate School being a total idiot, even if I had worked a horrible job for a worse boss for nearly ten years of my life, since early High School.
Bingo. He blinked a few times and then smiled at me and offered me a choice of some wine or a beer. I took the beer, and we settled in to get to know each other a bit better with all of the bullshit now gone and all of our cards now on the table.
Walter (well it was back to being "just Walt" again now), told me a bit about himself. He was a Senior Child Psychologist for a big school district here in Houston, and had a lucrative private practice as well. He specialized in the most disturbed kids there were - killers, rapists, and just plain everyday young budding sociopaths. His private clientele was the top of the pyramid of the wealth and power structure of the State.
He knew "literally" where bodies were buried and the innermost secrets of many of the most important people in the State and in the Country. Particularly involving their sex lives at a place called "The Club" and other places like it affiliated around the country. The Club was not the real name of course of this meeting and playpen of the obscenely rich and powerful. Some secrets are too important to even whisper about, and I'd like very much to keep my lips and tongue attached.
I had seen photographs of many of these people, and some of those pillars of society would probably even kill to protect their secrets.
I started to really appreciate Walt's attitude and candor. He was the most pure WYSIWYG (what you see it what you get) person I had ever met in my life. He had no tolerance whatsoever for the slightest amount of nonsense and kept everything straightforward and honest. I could grow very used to dealing with that.
How did all of this affect me and why was I here and now knowing things that could get me killed if I sneezed the wrong way?
In short, he had a "job" proposition for me. The Club needed a trustworthy photographer that had a proven ability to keep his mouth shut, and my qualification in that aspect was beyond reproach. I would be "accepted and trusted" due to my long experience with the areas most trusted confidential photography lab. I was also likely to be a much better technical photographer than their current one (Walt had gotten drafted into handling that job some time ago and was a very indifferent amateur).
The hours would not be long, mostly evenings a few days a week, usually Friday and Saturday nights, that would not interfere with my studies, and if things "worked out" I could be virtually assured of a full scholarship for Graduate School next spring.
All of this I could agree to. My first night would be tomorrow night, and I had no problems about quitting the photo lab nearly immediately. In addition, I would be given a large budget for purchasing several good cameras and professional grade development equipment, and a room somewhere inside the Club would be available for my use as a darkroom and development lab.
The next offer he made greatly confused me, and the more the matter was discussed the less optimistic I felt about it. This all was related to and concerned his daughter.
Much as I had surmised, she was indeed a very, very troubled lady. Her mother had died when she was young, and she had always resented her step-mother Nellie even though Nellie had done everything possible to try and gain her love and trust.
It had never happened. It didn't help that Nellie was very much a sexual submissive herself and she and Walt enjoyed an active bondage relationship together, but theirs was certainly not an S&M relationship.
