Free Void in Hearts by William G. Tapply Page B

aimlessly around the broad brick plaza, trying to match up the scene in the photograph. Although it was only midafternoon, the thick wet clouds overhead cast a dark pall over the city and made it seem like dusk.
    I made a complete circuit of the marketplace. I cocked my head at the buildings, seeking angles that would include one of the lollipop streetlamps along the left edge of my view.
    It wasn’t working.
    Although I moved briskly, the damp chill penetrated my topcoat. My ears burned, and my nose began to dribble.
    I ducked into the bar at Durgin Park and climbed onto a stool. The bartender was down at the other end talking with a woman whose corn-colored hair was cut like the Dutch boy on the paint cans. She wore a pink blouse with several strands of gold around her neck. Her black skirt was slit most of the way up the side, revealing a lot of sleek thigh.
    She was, I guessed, either a hooker or an attorney.
    The bartender wore a black beard, so densely grown and closely trimmed that it looked painted on. “Help you, mate?” he said, moving down the bar toward me. Australian, I judged. He made a ceremonial pass with his rag at the spotless counter in front of me.
    “Jack Daniel’s, on the rocks.”
    I shucked off my topcoat and folded it on my lap. I lit a cigarette and took the sheaf of photographs out of their envelope. I studied the one with the gas lamp and the building in the background again. One more wild-goose chase in a career full of them.
    The bartender set my drink and a small bowl of dry-roasted peanuts in front of me. He glanced at the photograph before he went back to the lady.
    I munched peanuts, sipped my drink, smoked, and stared unfocused at the picture. My thoughts strayed to Becca Katz, thence to Gloria. I had bedded Becca without hesitation. I had refused to do the same with Gloria. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had treated them both shabbily. I found it all very confusing.
    “Whatcha got there, Captain?”
    I looked up. The bartender was craning his neck, trying to examine the photograph that showed the streetlamp. I turned it around for him. “I’m trying to figure out where the photographer was standing when he snapped this,” I said.
    I expected him to ask why, and my mind swirled with the senseless lies I could tell him.
    Instead, he said, “Why, over by the kiosk, mate.”
    “What kiosk?”
    He touched the picture with his forefinger. “This is the kiosk. Bostix. Where they sell discount theater tickets, you know. Next to Faneuil Hall, Captain. I’d say the cameraman was just behind it.”
    It was a very blurred shape in the foreground on the right edge of the photo, a slope of low roof, a smudge of wall, little more, so shapeless that neither Charlie nor I had registered it. The streetlight on the left of the picture, as fuzzed as it was, appeared sharply focused by comparison.
    “Thank you, thank you,” I said. I dropped a ten-dollar bill onto the bar, stood up, and humped into my topcoat.
    “Wait for your change, mate,” said the barman as I turned to leave.
    “Keep it. You’ve earned it.” It could have been the same ten-spot Les had given me a couple of weeks earlier. Easy come, easy go.
    Outside, hard grains of sleet fell like shrapnel from the prematurely darkened sky. Traffic moved slowly, showing fog lights. I found the kiosk positioned more or less in the middle of the plaza. I stationed myself so that it loomed on my right. The perspective was wrong, even accounting for the foreshortening effect of the long lens Les Katz had used. I crossed the street and tried again. The angle was okay. But now the streetlight was out of position, and Faneuil Hall in the background looked wrong. I crossed the street again. Slowly I walked around the kiosk. Then it dawned on me. Les had stood with his back to Faneuil Hall, shooting beyond the kiosk and up a flight of steps at the office building across the way.
    I took out the photo and studied it. It fit. The building was