Dead to Me by Mary McCoy

reassure me that the cup had been washed. I was still hungry when I finished,
but I needed to save my last few dimes for bus fare.
    By the time I finished my meal, it had been close enough to an hour. As I walked down the alley behind Fleming’s Fine Family Photography, it occurred to me that Mr. Fleming might be
planning an ambush. The alley was empty, no cars or people in sight. Just to be safe, I pressed my back flat against the wall and inched along until I was standing just outside of Fleming’s.
When I peeked through the glass door, I saw Mr. Fleming sitting in a leather swivel chair, smoking, and staring daggers at a boy who sat across from him. Mr. Fleming looked too angry to speak, and
the boy looked too scared. It didn’t look like an ambush in any case, so I knocked on the back door. Mr. Fleming let me in, locked the door behind us, and closed the blinds.
    “Meet my son, Alex,” he said, offering me a seat. “I believe he’s the person you want to talk to.”
    Up close, I could see that Alex wasn’t much older than me. He wore his fine blond hair like a kid’s, slicked back with too much pomade, and his stark-white eyebrows made him look
perpetually surprised. He had the pale, rheumy eyes of a kitten you didn’t expect to live long—not the sort of person I imagined would do well in a criminal underworld. I took the
picture of Ruth out of my bag and put it down on the table in front of him.
    “Did you take this?” I asked.
    He nodded.
    “For someone named Rex?” I ventured.
    Again, he nodded. He picked it up, and I noticed that his hands shook. “I don’t take pictures for Rex anymore.”
    Mr. Fleming sighed and inhaled deeply on his cigarette. “That’s what happens, Alex. You fool with those people, and you pay the piper. You pay and you pay and you keep
paying.”
    With this last sentiment, Mr. Fleming picked up his ashtray and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall near Alex’s head and shattered.
    “Idiot child,” he said more quietly, and went back to his smoking, flicking the ash into a coffee cup.
    Alex’s hands shook harder as he swallowed and gave me what I’m sure was the steeliest look he could manage at the moment. “What do you want?” he asked. “How
much?”
    “How much
more
, you mean,” Mr. Fleming roared.
    For a moment, I was tempted to play along, to continue being whoever it was that Alex and Mr. Fleming seemed to think I was. Because it was someone who terrified them, someone to whom they would
have given up anything, information or cash. Maybe they deserved it, but I didn’t think there was any joy to be had in terrorizing the school photographer and his son.
    “I’m not after your money,” I said.
    “Then who sent you?” Mr. Fleming asked.
    “Nobody sent me,” I said, taking the picture back from Alex. “But I need information. I need to know where these came from.”
    Mr. Fleming looked skeptical, but Alex swallowed and nodded.
    He explained that he’d been taking pictures of sunbathers and bodybuilders at Venice Beach for his portfolio when Rex approached him and asked if he’d like to make a little extra
money. Rex asked if Alex had his own studio, and being eighteen and proud, Alex passed off his father’s business card as his own. Soon they had an arrangement, and Rex started bringing girls
by after the studio had closed.
    Sometimes Rex would ask the girls if they wanted to take their clothes off, but he never made anyone do it. And even that work seemed mostly on the level, Alex said. It was artistic, tasteful
even, and the girls all seemed to enjoy themselves anyway. But then, after about a year, Alex started to notice things that troubled him. Rex started to bring in different girls, and even Alex knew
that these girls would never get a screen test. Emaciated girls with dark circles under their eyes and bad wigs and too much makeup. Girls who posed wearing elbow-length gloves to hide the track
marks on their arms. Girls who