Free Blood Relations by Barbara Parker Page A

testify if it came to a trial, and I said I would. Are you sure he hasn’t tried to contact you?”
    “Positive.”
    “He must have done. You were a witness.”
    “He has you,” Caitlin said. “You saw more than I did.”
    She lowered the umbrella.
    Sullivan followed her back to the cart. “I’m not keen to be the only one. Not that I’m afraid of George Fonseca or a half-rate movie actor or even Klaus Ruffini. In fact, the publicity couldn’t hurt. But if I’m the only strong witness besides Ali-well, I’d feel quite outnumbered.”
    She loaded the tripod and jammed the umbrella into a corner of the cart. “Sullivan, for a minute there I thought you were developing a conscience. I mean, you didn’t do a damn thing when Ali was attacked.”
    Squinting slightly in the sun, he lowered his face to hers. He smiled. “Neither did you, darling.”
    “Caitlin?” Tommy Chang was standing a few yards away with the reflectors, which he had twisted into smaller silver circles. “You ready to go?”
    She turned. “Sure. Do me a favor? Load up everything and take it to the studio, okay?” She grabbed her Nikon and slung the strap over her shoulder. “And run the film by the lab.”
    “Where are you goings”
    “To get paid for this. See you later.”
    Sullivan waved his fingers. “Ciao.”
    Caitlin headed west, crossing Ocean Drive with its slow traffic and packs of tourists, then going farther into the business district of South Beach. Marty Cassie lived on Jefferson Avenue. He had said he would be there. Maybe this time she wouldn’t have to go to hell and back, looking for her money.
    She had brought her camera along because she always brought her camera, a used Nikon she’d bought in New York years ago. She could hide behind its 70-to 210-millimeter zoom and shoot inconspicuously from a distance.
    Commercial photography paid the bills, but her heart was elsewhere.
    On Washington Avenue she stopped under the shade of an awning outside a market. She looked through the lens at a thin, gray-haired woman across the street bathing herself with water from a garden hose. Caitlin had seen her before, usually on one of the benches near the police station. The woman wore red shorts and canvas slippers, and her breasts hung loosely inside a faded halter top. The hose curled out the side door of a French bistro, and a white-jacketed kitchen helper leaned on his elbows on the railing, smoking, waiting for her to finish so he could mop the steps. The water made rainbows of mist. Caitlin could see everything so clearly through the lens. The white wall, white jacket, blue painted railing, red shorts, the woman’s glistening black skin, and a splash of silvery water.
    In the instant before her finger pressed the shutter release, she wondered if the finished print would show all this. Too often, between the lens and the developer the light changed, or the balance shifted, and the result would be no better than an ordinary snapshot. Sometimes, though, her photos were good. More than good. They made her certain that yes!, she could do this, put it all on film, more real than life. Caitlin used to work hard at taking photos that would look good in a galleryOnce she had wanted them to mean something. She didn’t think much about that anymore. They meant what they meant.
    The woman was singing now. Caitlin could see her mouth move, see her thin arms swaying above her head.
    The kitchen helper stuck his cigarette in his mouth and applauded. Caitlin kept her finger on the shutter, and the camera clicked and whirred to the end of the roll.
    She had thousands of photographs, color and blackand-white and weird combinations, with no idea what they meant. Less idea now, in fact, than when she had begun.
    She found Marty Cassie’s apartment on a shady residential block in a fourplex dating from the sixties. Whoever had renovated the place had painted it pink and put a horizontal stripe of purple at the top, trying to get the art deco