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negatives for death.
Was the kid smart enough to have a backup plan? Oh my God, I thought. Phillip was
a photographer s assistant. He had to have made copies. I pulled the van to the curb right
before the entrance to the Kennedy. I turned to Creed and said, Get out. Take a cab.
What? How dare you?
I have something important to do. Get out.
Robert will hear about this.
I couldn t care less what Robert hears. You re a blackmailing scum and taking a cab
to the airport isn t the worst thing that s going to happen to you in the next few weeks as
all this comes out.
You re not going to say anything&
I won t have to. It s very likely Hallahan killed that boy. When he s caught, and I m
going to make sure he s caught, the police are going to want to know where Phillip got the
photos. That will bring them to Elise and that s when your name will come up.
Oh my God, he said. Can you talk to her for me? Can you
Get out and find a cab.
He was tempted to keep arguing, but the look on my face must have told him how
futile that was. Defeated, Creed opened the door, and with great effort he opened the back
passenger door and pulled out his suitcases. He d barely shut both doors when I pulled
back into traffic. I drove a few blocks until I found a White Hen with a payphone clamped to
the side of the building. I pulled into the parking lot, jumped out, and dialed information.
The operator and I had fun trying to correctly spell Stanislov s name, but eventually she
found it. When she started to give me the phone number, I asked for the address instead.
She gave it to me.
On the west side of Chicago there are a lot of small, four story brick buildings, which
were once clothing factories of one kind or another. Shirts, skirts, pajamas and blouses
were all once made on the west side. All of that work had moved down to the south and
was now done in Alabama and Mississippi, at least according to Sally Field who had just
made a big splash in Norma Rae. Now successful or at least wealthy artists in need of
space were buying up the small empty factories. Stanislov s studio was one of these
buildings.
I rang the buzzer on the first floor, which seemed to be largely garage and loading
platform. When a voice came over the intercom asking who I was, I explained that I was
from the festival and tried not to say much more. I got buzzed in.
Of course, he hadn t told me where to go, so I stood in the small lobby looking at the
freight elevator. I was about to press the button when I heard the elevator coming down. A
minute later the mesh door was pushed aside and I was staring at the famous Stanislov.
He wore an old ratty bathrobe. He hadn t shaved in a few days and the last time he
tried it hadn t gone well. His eyes were a paunchy brown and had the same look charities
liked orphans to wear in fund raising photographs. He was forty something but looked a
lot older.
I m here about Phillip, I said, and watched pain flicker through his whole body. I
think I know what happened to him.
He nodded, and said, We ll go to my studio. He had a little bit of a South Side
Chicago accent. The whole Stanislov thing was just to give him a European feel. Americans
on the one hand are a xenophobic people, while on the other think everything from Europe
is better. Go figure.
As we rode the elevator up two stories to the studio, I explained who I was and my
relationship to Phillip s murder. When we got out, I saw that the floor was largely empty
and there were windows everywhere. Two shooting areas had been set up with large rolls
of colored paper hung from the high ceiling. On the far end of the floor a small room had
been built. It had a closed door with a red light just above it. I assumed that was the dark
room. Close to where I stood in front of the elevator were a couple of large worktables
covered with black notebooks, each filled with negatives and proof sheets. Sitting parallel
to one another, as though in a library, six metal shelves held the black notebooks not
currently in use.
Given the way Stanislov looked, I said rather than asked, Phillip was your lover.
Yes, he was. A wonderful young man. He would have done anything for me.
And did, I guessed.
My business isn t going well. The posters for Film Fest Chicago get me a lot of
attention. But not always the kind of attention that results in offers from J. Walter
Thompson, he said, naming one of the biggest ad agencies on Michigan Avenue. Phillip
did what he did to help me.
We stood near one of the worktables. Next to one of the shooting areas there was an
old, sagging sofa and a beat up easy chair for models to take a break. We could have sat
down, but Stanislov didn t offer.
Was it your idea to blackmail Hallahan?
No, I wouldn t have done that. Phillip cooked it up on his own.
You don t seem all that surprised.
I was on the phone with Robert last night for nearly three hours. He told me
everything. If I d known what Phillip was up to I d have put a stop to it.
I wasn t sure whether to believe him. He seemed genuinely upset by the boy s
death& so I didn t think he coldly sent him out to blackmail the director. But he might have
done it and regretted it. Or maybe he hadn t known anything about it.
Did Phillip print the negatives? I asked.
He nodded. Then he reached over and slid a manila envelope toward me. I opened
the envelope and slid out a stack of nearly two dozen photos. I tried to remain
dispassionate as I flipped through the photos. They were clearly Dennis Hallahan, younger,
in his early forties, having sex with Elise, a girl at the very beginning of puberty; on the
brink of a womanhood she d never quite reach. I tried not to think of her as the broken
woman I d met. On her face was a look I recognized. Love. In shot after shot she looked at
Hallahan with love. And he looked back with nothing but lust. He was taking advantage of
her love, using it against her. I couldn t help but think that was more obscene than any of
the sex acts.
How did he take these? Was there a third person involved? I asked, my mouth dry.
No. He used a remote shutter release. You can see it one or two of the pictures. He
took the photos from me, casually flipped through them, then laid one down on the table.
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