While she was standing there in stupefied bewilderment, or the best imitation of it she could assume, I picked up the rest of the films, slipped them into my pocket and walked out, quietly closing the door behind me.
She didn’t even hear me go. The last I saw of her as I closed the door, she was standing with wide, horror-stricken eyes, reading the account of Minerva Carlton’s death.
The elevator wasn’t on the third floor and I didn’t wait for it. I took the stairs two at a time, climbed in the agency crock and got out of there.
Four blocks down the street I stopped the car to look at the films I had.
Two of them were nudes. In the other four, the girls wore bathing suits, but there was a man with them. Minerva Carlton’s head was resting on his bare torso. They both looked happy.
I put the films all together in the pocket of the envelope. The print order was on the front. “Three each on glossy,” it said.
Five
I stopped the agency car at the address on Korreander Street and bustled up the steps of the white stucco bungalow.
A gaunt woman in the fifties, moving with awkward, swinging stride, came down the corridor. I could see her through the locked screen door. The inner door was open.
She stood tall and unsmiling, surveying me through the screen.