Read Online Big Easy Bonanza by Julie Smith, Tony Dunbar - Free Book Online Page B

have prayed, but she was far from believing in anything but her own determination. “Get better,” she sighed, pleading with the filmmaker, but it came out more like a coo.
    He managed a smile. “I am better. The brandy did it.”
    “Can you walk?” she asked for the second time.
    “I think so. Shall we go up?”
    He walked perfectly well, apparently being fairly far along toward recovery. Skip wondered what he’d been hit with. She showed him into her shabby studio, with its Goodwill hide-a-bed sofa now neatly tucked up for her guest, and just as well—when it was open, it nearly filled up the room.
    Besides the sofa, Skip had a chest of drawers, a couple of small tables, and a large dracaena that was usually dusty but seemed to grow no matter what she did (or didn’t do) to it. She would have liked a coffee table, but having to fold the sofa out made that impractical.
    “No pictures,” said Steinman.
    “What?”
    “You have nothing on your walls. I’ve never seen that before.”
    Skip flushed. She’d lived here nearly a year and hadn’t had a single visitor except Jimmy Dee and company. “I haven’t had time, I guess.” She wondered what she wanted on her walls. She’d had heavy metal posters in San Francisco, but would they be suitable for a cop? Wasn’t the whole idea a bit on the sinister side?
    “What,” said Steinman, “would a lady cop put on her walls?”
    “Believe me, I’d be the last to know. Didn’t Cookie tell you I’m no lady? What shall I get for your head? Something hot or something cold?”
    “Damned if I know. How about some more brandy?”
    When she’d gotten his drink and one for herself, she said, “What happened out there?”
    He shrugged. “I’ve no idea, to tell you the truth. I was ringing your doorbell when someone hit me. I was only a few minutes late, so I think I must have been out quite awhile. When I came to, there was no film.”
    “Did you see anyone around before you rang the bell?”
    “I didn’t look.”
    “Who knew you were bringing it here?”
    “Cookie. You. Everyone at Cookie’s house. But they were probably all too drunk to mug a mouse, much less a man mountain.”
    Skip gave him a furtive once-over. Hardly a man mountain, she thought, but certainly a nice, tall round fellow with a pleasant demeanor and blue eyes behind a pair of spectacles that looked as if they grew on his face.
    “Did you have it done at a lab? How about the lab people?”
    “The guy’s a friend of Cookie’s—that’s how I got him to work on Mardi Gras. I had to tell him what it was to get him to do it, and he did seem really eager—normally it would take overnight, but he did it fast, specially. In fact, he did it really fast because he wanted to get over to Cookie’s bash. He got me to give him a ride over there afterward.”
    “So he couldn’t have followed you.”
    “I don’t see how.”
    “Wait a minute. This has got to be a print, right? Where’s the original?”
    He looked sheepish. “Do you know anything about film?”
    “No.”
    “Well, you’ve hit on something there. Almost everybody these days uses color-negative film, which you do have to print. But if you’re in film school, you scrounge for film. You knock on doors of production companies and beg for handouts, practically. You make deals and trades. And if somebody gives you a good price on it, you sometimes end up with color-reversal film instead of color-negative. A guy in a camera store gave me some for practically nothing, and that’s what I was using today.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “You don’t have to get a print.”
    “The original’s all there was?”
    “’Was’ is right.”
    “Did you look at it before you brought it over?”
    “Of course.”
    “And?”
    “It was pretty amazing.”

Interlude
    “AMAZING HOW?”
    “Perfect. Gorgeous.”
    “Move over, Zapruder.”
    Steinman flushed. “Sorry. I guess I sounded callous.”
    “A little. What’s so perfect and gorgeous?