Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“Wait, one more thing. The clerk who ID’d Rosemary? He saw her? They didn’t go through the back?”

“No, he saw her. They must have come in the front. I gotta run. You want, I’ll keep poking around, but this is already going away. What I can’t figure is the studio. But maybe they got trigger happy-grabbed the phone before there was anything to cover up. It happens, you get nervous about people. Maybe they don’t like Rosemary screwing around. But that doesn’t get us anywhere. We need someone there that night. Or every night-the romance that broke his heart. But all we’ve got is a jump. Yesterday.”

Check the loan-outs. Danny had rented the Cherokee months before Rosemary. Maybe for someone he didn’t bring through the front door. He started out for Personnel to get the monthly lists, but got sidetracked by Hal instead, excited about something.

“I was thinking about the guards,” he said, leading Ben to the cutting room. “You know the faces are hard to see. Medium pan shots, nothing closer.”

“It’s newsreel film. Army. They don’t do close-ups.” Heads tilted up to the light, long lashes making shadows.

“Right. But take a look at this.” At the Moviola, a frozen frame of the guards being led away. “Just for the idea. It’s a work print. But they should have the camera originals in Culver City. Now look.”

He took a lens and held it over a section of the viewer so that a single face leapt out of the frame.

“Blow up the negative here. Show his face.”

Ben looked at the spot enlargement, the guard’s eyes caught forever on a piece of film. In the full running shot he’d be turning away from the camera, a close-up of shame itself.

“It’ll cost, though, the lab work. You’re not just splicing.”

“What if the quality’s not good enough? The stock’s grainy.”

“Wet-gate print it.”

“What?”

“Before you transfer. It takes out the scratches. We always do it with a sixteen-millimeter transfer. Come back here, I’ll show you.”

Ben followed him, not really wanting to take the time but feeling obligated. He had felt in Hal’s eyes the line worker’s mild contempt for the foreman still learning the fundamentals. The whole technical side of film-making-the developing tanks, the chemical emulsions, the synchronized sprockets-were things handled by someone else. They went through heavy double doors to a big factory space of drying rooms and machines that made the transfer from light to image, Merlin’s workshop.

“See, the transfer’s clear,” Hal said, leading him to a machine. “But you couldn’t close in on this. Depends on the exposure, what light was retained.” He pointed to the sample, an indoor shot of people lying in bunks. “You blow up these faces, you don’t have enough resolution. Like a night shot. See what I mean?”

Ben looked at the faces, visible now as individuals, but slightly blurred, not good enough for full-scale projection.

“I tried printing with more light, but you can’t get the background up. Too dark in the first place.”

He reversed the process, the faces slipping back into a formless crowd.

“But the other stock we can work with.”

Shadowy faces in a crowd. Ben stood still, eyes fixed on the enlarging mechanism.

“Hal,” he said, not looking at him, thinking. “You can do this with any picture, right? Bring up the background.”

“Depends how it was printed. If you can work from the negative, you can pretty much get whatever’s there.”

“The negative,” Ben said, elsewhere.

“That’s right. Then you control the printing, kind of coax it out.”

Ben looked at his wristwatch. “How long would it take? Blow up some negatives? Stills?”

“No time. What stills?”

Ben touched his upper arm. “I’ll be back. Keep the machine free, okay?”

“What stills?”

In the car he tried to remember the lighting in the pictures, windows shining down on the Cherokee alley, the glare of a police flashbulb, a few people standing near the body, the rest outside the circle of light, like dots in an afterimage. He tried to remember the women-a distraught neighbor, anyone from the studio, maybe even Rosemary herself, who hadn’t been there-but all he’d really looked at before was the body.

Iris’s car was in the driveway so he parked on the street and walked around to the back of the house, the French doors wide open, another invitation to rifle through Danny’s desk. Liesl was in the kitchen grating potatoes, her face pink from the work, wisps of hair spilling down out of the pile on top.

“Oh! What are you doing here?”

“Just picking something up.” Wanting to go over to her, touch her arm, but aware of Iris at her ironing board. “I thought you were going to keep the doors locked.”

“Well, at night. Oh, now you won’t be surprised.” She waved the knife. “I wanted to surprise you. My roast chicken.”

He nodded to the mixing bowl. “What’s that?”

“Kartoffelpuffer.” A hesitant smile. “I told you I could cook.”

“What did Riordan say? About the locks.”

“Who?”

“The man I sent over to check the house.”

“No one’s been here.”

Ben looked at his watch. Cutting it close or not coming. Or maybe he’d been there without announcing himself, playing burglar.

“That’s a lot of food. Are people coming?”

“No, just us,” she said, looking at him, her eyes soft. “It’s going to rain, I think. So it’s cozy, eating in.”

He held her stare for a second, trying not to smile in front of Iris, then headed to the study.

The photographs were just as he’d remembered, Danny lying with a dark smear around his head, people huddled at the edge of the flash. Two angles with two backgrounds, one of the parking area, the other leading to the street. He looked carefully at the faces in front but still didn’t recognize anybody. They’d be neighbors, rushing out at the sudden sound, then the police lights, something more exciting than the radio. But who were the people right behind them? He slipped out the written reports, leaving the prints and negatives in the envelope.

“When will you be home?” Liesl said, then flushed, the simplest domestic question now somehow suggestive. “I only ask because of the chicken.”

“I’m supposed to see Riordan after work. If he shows. Eight, eight-thirty?”

“Yes, all right. But you’ll call if you’ll be late? So I know.”

This time he did smile, not caring whether Iris saw. Something any couple might say.

Hal looked at the pictures, waiting for Ben to explain.

“What exactly are we looking for?”

“People you can’t see clearly in the prints.”

“They’re dark.” He held up one of the negatives to the light, then turned it on its side, looking at the numbers in the margin. “These are police? Where’d you-?” He stopped, still waiting. “Who’s the victim?”

“My brother.”

“I thought-”

Ben nodded. “I want to see who was there. Somebody from the building, maybe. Anybody I could talk to.”

Hal looked at him, skeptical, then took up the negatives. “Okay, let’s go to work.”

Ben watched, fascinated, as Hal manipulated the negatives, enlarging, then disappearing into the darkroom with its trays of solutions. But even the studio couldn’t produce a miracle. In the shot looking toward the parking lot, faces were barely visible, even blown up. The alley angle was better, street lamps at the end providing a kind of backlight. They looked at the enlargements together, Ben hoping that Hal, familiar with everyone on the lot, might suddenly recognize somebody. But they were all anonymous, caught unexpectedly in suspenders and house dresses, one woman in curlers, hand over her mouth.