Bedrooms Have Windows

Ten

It was after nine o’clock when I located the girl who had the photographic concession at the Cabanita. Her name was Bessie and she lived in a trailer. She worked several of the night spots, going from one to the other in the trailer, which also served as a dark-room. Just now it was at the Red Rooster, a country road-house joint about three miles from the Cabanita. It was out away from things and rumour had it the place capitalized on its isolation to put over things that wouldn’t get by elsewhere.

I went in and looked the place over. It was easy to spot the girl with the camera. She was all teeth and legs, curves and affability.

It was Sunday evening, and since the place was way out in the outlying factory district it was pretty well deserted, but the photograph girl got four orders. After she’d shot the pictures and started out, she picked up a raincoat from the girl at the hat-check concession, threw the coat over her shoulders and then dashed for the trailer.

I fell into step beside her. “Want to sell some pictures?” I asked.

She looked at me out of the sides of her eyes. “Nudes?”

“Customers.”

“Sure.”

I said, “Last week you had a little trouble with a couple over at the Cabanita. They objected to having their pictures taken. Remember it?”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Cash,” I told her. “My parents christened me E. Pluribus Unum, but folks got to calling me Cash for short. My nickname is Long Green.”

She looked at me and smiled, and said, “There was a little trouble over one of the pictures I took. I’m busy now. When can I see you?”

“Right now.”

She said, “I have to get this stuff in the trailer and start getting it developed.”

“I’m an expert photographer.”

“I know,” she told me, “guys get lots of lines. They like to go in the dark-room with me. In the dark they have a tendency to…”

“I won’t,” I said.

“Oh well, come on,” she told me. “We have to take a chance sometimes.”

She unlocked the door of the trailer. I followed her inside. She closed the door, locked it and pressed a button. Almost immediately the trailer began to move.

She said, “My partner drives without jerks so I can get these pictures finished before we get to the next place. It’s a job. I have to rush them through.”

She set an electric timer with a luminous dial, turned out all of the lights and for a while we were standing there in absolute darkness, save for a very faint illumination given by a red bulb at the far end of the trailer.

After a moment my eyes accustomed themselves to the dim red light and I could see her moving around, her hands quick blurs of efficient motion.

I said, “You must have quite a job keeping all the stuff straight.”

“It’s not bad,” she said. “I put these things in a developing frame and as soon as the electric timer indicates…”

The electric timer contributed its share by ringing a bell at that moment.

She lifted the container out of one tank, put it into another, said, “We have two minutes now. Then I put them in a chemical bath which gets rid of the hypo and then we wash them in alcohol, dry them, and while I’m in the next place my partner, who’s driving the car, will make the prints. There’s a number on each of the films.”

“Tell me about what happened last Saturday.”

She said, “Every once in a while we run into something like that. I don’t know why. Usually I never take a picture until I’ve verified it, but this time it looked so much on the up-and-up that I fell for it.”

“What happened?”

She said, “This couple were sitting there, eating. Very quiet, very subdued. Just like people who have been married to each other for a long while. Ordinarily I don’t waste time with them. It’s the gay blades and the visiting firemen who want to have a picture of the cutie with them to show the boys back home that give me my business. Sometimes a family party.”

“Go on,” I said.

She kept her eye on the electric clock with the luminous hands.

“Someone asked me if I’d take a picture of the people at that table. I thought this person had been sitting at the table. I guess I was a little careless. I explained to her that we require a minimum of four prints at a dollar apiece and she said that was all right. She said the parties were having an anniversary dinner and she’d like to get some pictures to present to them later on. She said she’d take care of all the charges.”

“So what happened?”

“I went over to the table, smiled, and waited until they looked up. Then I snapped the picture. The man wanted to know what that was for and I told him it was to be a present for him; that it wasn’t to cost him anything. The girl got excited and then he got mad about it and said he hadn’t ordered any picture taken. I told him I knew, that it was a friend of his who was trying to arrange a surprise, and then one thing led to another and he wanted the manager.”

“Who’s the manager?”

“Bob Elgin. He’s the master of ceremonies, and he runs the place. He came over and we had a little pow-wow. I told them that it was all a mistake, and that I’d give him the negative and he could destroy it.”

“Did you?”

“Hell, no,” she said. “I had an order of four bucks for that negative. Do you think I was going to throw that away?”

“So what did you do?”

“Gave him the next negative that was in the camera, pulled it out and pulled the slide out of the plate-holder. Elgin took the film and passed it over to the girl at the table and asked him if that satisfied her, and she said it did, so that was all there was to it, as far as those people were concerned.”

“And as far as you were concerned?”

She said, “I found my party. I told her the price of prints had gone up to ten dollars a print. She said that was too steep. She offered me twenty-five dollars for the lot. I felt that was all I could get, I told her I’d mail them. I didn’t dare make delivery that night.”

“And the negative?”

She said, “Just a minute while I put these films in the water.”

She transferred the films, and I heard the rush of running water, then she pulled the top off another tank and I smelled alcohol. She sloshed the films around a minute, then took them out and placed them on hangers to dry. She said, “I could make four more prints for twenty-five dollars.”

“How soon?”

“I’ll put it next on the list. My partner will make the prints while I’m in this next club.”

The trailer came to a stop, evidently at a traffic signal. She reached up, switched on a light, consulted a book which had a lot of numbers in it, opened a drawer in a little filing system and took out an envelope which had a negative.

I took out two tens and a five from my note-case and handed them to her. “When do I get them?”

“Soon as I finish this run in here,” she said. “Want to go in the club and watch me work?”

“No thanks, I’ll stay here and watch your partner do the printing. Can you tell me anything about the person who ordered the pictures?”

“Cute blonde,” she said, “nice figure but unusually small.”

We started on again, rode for about five minutes, then the trailer lurched to one side as the car turned off the pavement and into a graveled driveway.

“This is my next stop,” she said. “You sure you don’t want to come along?”

“No, I’ll wait.”

She took her camera and a supply of flashbulbs, pulled the raincoat to one side, straightened her stockings, fluffed out her scanty skirt, said, “How do I look?”

“Like a million dollars.”

“Thanks.”

“Who’s driving the car?” I asked.

“My partner.”

“Boy friend?”

“Don’t be silly. She’s a girl — homely as a mud fence but a good photographer and a good driver. A man would want to be the whole thing, both in the business and in my private life. Us two girls get along fine. We share living expenses and split the earnings fifty-fifty.”

I heard steps on the outside of the trailer. Someone tried the knob.

My friend on the inside said, “Okay, Elsie, I’m coming right out.”

She unlocked the door.

The woman who came in looked at me with angry disapproval. She was sallow-faced, angular, with a firm, determined mouth and steady, steel-grey eyes.

“It’s all right, Elsie. It’s a business deal. He wants picture number 45228, four prints — twenty-five bucks.”

Elsie said, “Good. We’re making money on that negative. You don’t want it thrown away, I take it.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“When do I get the four prints?” I said.

“Right quick,” Elsie said.

“There are four more negatives in there to be printed, four of each.”

“Okay, Bessie,” Elsie said, “I’ll get them.”

Bessie gave me one swift look over her shoulder, then, with the camera in her hand, the raincoat buttoned, entered the circle of white lights around the building. Elsie rolled up her sleeves and started working. She pulled a printer toward her, connected it up, laid out five negatives in a pile, a pile of printing paper, and started work, slipping the negatives into the printer, slamming the paper in on top of them, latching the printer cover down, making the exposure and jerking out the paper, putting the exposed sheets in a pile by themselves.

“Know anything about photography?” she asked.

“Some.”

“Ever done any of this stuff?”

“Developing and printing, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Uh huh.”

She said, “Start running that bunch of paper through the developer. It works pretty fast. Don’t figure on time; just watch it in the red light. When the prints begin to show, stick ’em through that washing tray and into the hypo. It’s a concentrated developer and it works fast.”

I started running the prints through. Elsie watching me with an expert eye, checking my timing. After she saw I knew what I was doing, she didn’t pay any further attention, but kept on printing the pictures.

By the time she had her pile finished I had caught up with her. I ran through the last of the prints, and Elsie started taking the bottom ones out of the hypo. She sloshed them around for a minute in plain water, then put them in a water containing a chemical to dissolve the hypo, then washed them once more and put them in a dryer.

“Which ones are mine?” I asked.

“There’s a number on them,” she said. “It’ll tell. How about the twenty-five?”

“I paid your partner.”

“She didn’t say so.”

“She will when she gets back.”

She said, “Okay, you’ll have to wait.”

“It’s all right,” I told her.

Elsie saw that the prints were dry, then she took photographic mounts from the big pasteboard box that was under the shelf in the darkroom, mounted the pictures and again switched on white lights.

It was a neat trailer. There was a kitchenette in front, a bedroom in the rear that had twin beds. It was a big trailer, but everything was remarkably compact.

“I take it you girls live here all the time.”

“Sure. Why not? Why should we be moving things back and forth into an apartment when we already have an apartment on wheels.”

“You rent space in a trailer lot?”

“That’s right. Only it isn’t a trailer lot, it’s in behind a private residence. We drive in there, park under a tree, hook up the electricity, sleep until noon, then have breakfast. We eat again about seven-thirty, then start out to work, and usually wind the business up about three o’clock in the morning.”

“Looks like a nice business,” I said.

“The other person’s racket always does,” she commented dryly. “Seen the evening paper?”

“No.”

“You may as well take a look at it. We may have to wait for Bessie. She’s pretty good at hustling business.”

“Let’s have a look at the pictures.”

“Don’t make any mistake. I don’t know that you’ve paid the twenty-five bucks yet,” Elsie said.

“I won’t take them. I just want to look.”

The pictures had a certain muddy, drab look about them, but considering the circumstances under which they were taken, they were a pretty good job. And the folders classed them up a lot. One was of the redhead who was now lying on a slab in the morgue. The other was Tom Durham.

It was a good twenty minutes before Bessie came back.

“I’ve got a load for you, Elsie,” she said. “I’ll start putting them through while you go to the next place. But you’ll have to finish them. I got nine pictures in there.”

“You mean nine separate jobs?”

“That’s right.”

“Gosh!” Elsie said in a tone of awe. “And it’s Sunday night, tool”

“I kidded them along and got everybody feeling good,” Bessie said. “Did you give this man his pictures?”

“Did he give you the twenty-five?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Elsie said, handing me four prints. “You get the pictures.”

I said, “What about the four prints that you’d taken? To whom did you deliver them?”

“The one that ordered them, of course,” Bessie said. “You mean Lucille?”

“That’s right... Say, you know about her?”

“Uh huh.”

“Where do you fit in on it?”

I said, “I was just picking up some more prints and trying to check upon what happened. You don’t happen to have Lucille’s address, do you?”

“You don’t happen to have another twenty-five bucks on you, do you?”

I said, “You girls seem to be always looking for the side of the bread that has the butter.”

“What’s everyone else always looking for?” Bessie asked.

“You tell me,” I said.

She grinned, and said, “Virtually everybody tips me a dollar, making it an even five dollars for the four pictures. Some of the smart ones try to add fifty cents or a dollar to it and want to own you.”

I said, “All I’m looking for is an address.”

“Give it to him, Elsie,” she said.

Elsie extended her hand.

I gave her another two tens and a five, mentally groaning at the thought of what would happen when Bertha saw my expense account.

Elsie opened the book again and gave me the address: “Lucille Hollister, 1925 Mono Drive, care Mrs. Arthur Marbury.”

Elsie asked me casually, “You got a card with you, Mister?”

“Sure,” I said.

She held out her hand.

I said, “That’ll be ten bucks.”

“Where do you get that noise?”

I said, “I figure you’ll sell that for twenty-five to the next person that comes along. I’m willing to leave you a fifteen-dollar profit.”

The girls looked at each other, then laughed.

Bessie said, “Come on, Elsie, get started. I’ve got to start running those pictures through. It’s going to be a mess. Looks like we’re going to make a killing tonight. We’ve got to get back to the Red Rooster and deliver that twenty dollars’ worth of pictures and then get back here fast. We won’t have time to make the Wishing Well.”

I said, “Okay, I’ll ride over with you, then bail out.”

“I wish you’d give me your name,” Bessie said wistfully.

“I know you do.”

She laughed and said, “You’re nice. Since you won’t tell us who you are, you can help me with this batch on the way.”

“With both hands,” Elsie said acidly.