While organizing my prints and negatives, I set aside several files for documentary photographs. I often carry a small automatic camera and a couple of extra rolls of film in my pocket. If I happen upon an accident, collision, fire or shoot-out, I snap as many shots as possible and later arrange them into a complete photographic reconstruction of the incident.
Recently I saw a young woman slip while crossing the street, falling directly in the path of an oncoming taxi. Just as she slipped, she screamed, and I raised my camera, getting photos of the entire incident. Her shoulder and neck smashed against the front fender, which dragged her five or six feet. I rushed over to her. While other bystanders tried to comfort her, I began taking pictures from every side. I wanted to establish on film the precise angle and position of the wheels at the moment of the collision, the distance that the woman’s body was dragged and the exact nature of the cab’s contact with the body. By the time the police and ambulance arrived, I had used three rolls of film. When I told the taxi driver that I had photographed the accident, he said he was anxious to have the prints for his defense. He gave me his name and address, and I promised to contact him. Next, I told the police I had photos of the collision and was eager for the woman’s family to see them in case they decided to sue. I was immediately supplied with the name and address of the woman, who at that moment was being lifted into an ambulance.
In my apartment, I developed the negatives and enlarged some of the photographs. I selected shots for the cab driver that could best prove his innocence: according to his set, the woman had crossed the street in the middle of the block and tripped because of her high heels. The street surface had been wet, slippery and slightly inclined, and the traces made by the cab’s sudden braking indicated it had stayed within its lane.
The woman’s set of photos, which I mailed to her relatives, suggested she had been hit by a careless driver who hadn’t noticed her crossing. It looked as if she had waited on her side of the dividing line for the cab to pass, and had fallen only after its fender had knocked her off balance.
I was motoring up the coast, along a scenic highway flanked by the ocean on one side and the bay on the other. A large turn-of-the-century house, towering on a cliff over the water, attracted my curiosity. I decided to explore it, and turned when I reached a private road leading to a gate.
I saw from a sign on the gate that the property was for rent and started up the drive. The road was overgrown with grasses, and the pavement was buried under a blanket of moss. Farther from the highway, the drive became even more forbidding, and I had to force the car across roots and dense underbrush. The grounds were as unkempt as the road; weeds choked the flower beds, bushes had grown into huge grotesque shapes completely obscuring the windows of the house. I parked the car, got out and walked up the steps to look at the realtor’s sign affixed to the padlocked door. Standing in front of the house as the sun set, I surveyed the huge expanse of land and noticed a small guest house a little way off, set up on a knoll. Anxious to reach the highway before dark, I made my way back through the foliage and drove to the nearest town.
Early the next day, I visited the realtor. He was an older man, proud of the community in which he had lived all his life. I asked if I could lease the property for a year, explaining that I was attracted by its privacy and easy access to the beaches. I explained I was an investor whom ill health had forced into early retirement, that I had no family or relatives and that I was anxious to enjoy a year of uninterrupted rest. I offered to pay the year’s rent in advance, and casually indicated that, if I leased the property, I would also rent, through his firm, a sailboat, a motorboat and a car. Intrigued by the prospect of an additional commission, the realtor hurriedly assured me he foresaw no problem in obtaining the lease.
I learned that the property was called the Park, and consisted of over two thousand acres. It was controlled by the estate of a woman who had died in her nineties, about a year earlier. She had lived alone all her life, but toward the end she had shared the place with dozens of cats, all of whom were provided for in her will. A small residential community had grown up next to the property. The Park was protected on one side by the ocean and on the other by the bay, as well as by one of the largest Indian reservations on the Eastern seaboard. The old woman had left the property to her nephew with the strict provision that it be maintained exactly as it had been. The heir was legally prohibited from selling the property or any part of it.
The real estate agent revealed that, when the nephew found himself in financial trouble, he had used the property as collateral with his bank. Now the bank was stuck with it until his death, being bound by the terms of the will. The small property owners of the adjacent community were pleased that the Park had remained intact, even though they were not allowed to enter it. Yet, they were all afraid that the bank might win its court case and sell the property to land speculators, who would turn it into a gigantic development.
Two days later, the lease was ready for my signature. The realtor told me that the bank was pleased he had found a tenant, even if only for a year. My presence would calm the neighbors, he said, and reassure them that the bank had no intention of selling.
In looking over my copy of the lease, I noticed that the realtor had provided bogus references, listing me as an associate of various firms with which he claimed to have done business. I signed the papers with the realtor’s wife and son-in-law as witnesses, and paid the year’s rent in cash.
I took possession of the estate at the end of the week on a hot June day, the air buzzing with insects. Parking my newly rented convertible in the driveway, I set out to inspect the property. On the ground floor of the main house were several drawing rooms plus a dining room and kitchen. The second floor consisted of numerous small bedrooms and bathrooms, furnished with a mixture of good antiques and cheap patio furniture. The heating was primitive and the wiring archaic.
The guest house was more livable. Compact and comfortable, it had a living room and den with beamed ceilings, modern kitchen and bathrooms, two bedrooms, an attic and an attached garage. Since it stood on the highest point of the property, from the attic windows I could see the entire length of the long driveway, the Indian reservation, the expanse of land sweeping out toward the bay, the high dunes on the ocean beach and, with the help of binoculars, the outlying Park grounds. I felt like a lookout in a fortress, able to observe and be ready to receive any unwanted intruders. I decided to use the guest house as my base.
The first night I slept there, I was awakened by headlights shining into my bedroom. Through the window, I could see a young couple emerge from a car parked near the main house and disappear into the woods. Later, I was awakened by the sound of a boat approaching the beach. When its engines stopped, I heard the voices of drunks singing army songs.
During the day, I inspected the Park and came across tire marks, footprints, used prophylactics, traces of recent picnic fires, discarded liquor bottles, crushed beer cans and several empty rifle cartridges.
I drove into the city and bought a camera and military field glasses, both equipped with infrared attachments, a pellet revolver, a wooden replica of a submachine gun from a theater supply company and a dictionary of the language spoken by the neighboring Indians. I also acquired several sets of powerful sound detectors specifically designed for outdoor use.
I spent the following week installing my transmitting and receiving system: I hooked up most of the rooms in the main house, as well as the attic and basement of the guest cottage. Then I placed directional microphones and loudspeakers in the trees and even wired the abandoned wells and half-buried boat wrecks scattered among the dunes. These warning devices worked on various frequencies and were controlled from a central switchboard in the attic of the guest house. They would alert me if anyone trespassed on the property or attempted to break into either house.
Late one evening, my sound monitor alerted me that a boat had pulled onto the beach: I distinguished three male voices. Soon I
heard the men digging a pit, lighting a fire, roasting hot dogs and trying to improve the reception on their battery-operated TV. After a few beers, their comments on the ball game became increasingly raucous.
One of my speakers was hidden almost directly above the men, in the tall, dense grass of the dunes. Just before the ball game ended, I began bellowing Indian phrases through the speaker. The men panicked, splashed around in the water, and almost forgot to take the ice chest and television as they fled.
The Park continued to attract trespassers, by day and night. Trying to reach the beaches, some of the drivers simply lost their way on the Park’s unlit road. Often, a car would stop in front of the main house and its driver would knock at the door. I never bothered anyone who wandered into the Park by accident; I was interested only in those who came to play.
I saw the realtor when I picked up the boats I’d rented from him. On several other occasions, as a neighborly gesture, he and his wife stopped by the house. During one visit, I complained about the trespassers and reported that at night I often heard Indians chanting. The realtor nodded sadly and said that the reservation Indians often got drunk and celebrated some fertility rites at their cemetery bordering on the Park. He speculated that they might be using the Park as a place in which to sober up before returning to the reservation. There was apparently no legal way to stop them.
He warned me against taking matters into my own hands. The big-city radicals always took the side of the Indians, he said, and a violent incident could give the bank reason to break up the Park. His wife agreed, assuring me that the Indians were irritating but harmless, and suggested that I should simply lock myself in, take a shot of whiskey and sleep through the howling.
The next morning, I paddled an inflatable dinghy out to my boat anchored in the bay, and spent a few hours hooking up my remote-control receiver-transmitters. As I worked, I recalled sitting on a quay in Monaco, gazing through binoculars at yachts anchored a few hundred yards off shore. I could see their crews, the stewards rushing around with trays, the passengers’ tanned bodies lounging on sundecks.
It was in Monaco that a small boy saw me staring at the boats and sat next to me. He was about ten years old, barefoot and thin, wearing clothes that he had outgrown. After a while, I asked him what he would most like to do. He pointed at the biggest yachts and said he would like to torpedo them. I asked how. He turned toward me, flushed with excitement, and said all he needed were a few battery-operated toy submarines loaded with real dynamite. He would stage the attack at night, when the passengers were returning from the casino. His deadly flotilla, ready to destroy on contact, would move slowly through the calm waters, passing unseen in the shadows.
The boy spoke rapidly as he described the explosions that would wreck the yachts, illuminating the port like fireworks. He imagined musicians forsaking their instruments, waiters dropping their trays, captains deserting their crews, men abandoning their women, women their children, and children their playthings. He described how the yachts would slowly sink in the darkness, servants and princes fighting one another for places in the dinghies.
Inspired by the boy’s scheme, on my last trip to the city I had bought several battery-powered miniatures of amphibious naval carriers. The toys could maintain a steady course for several hundred yards in smooth water as well as run on the sand on their rubber wheels. I loaded each toy with a waterproof packet of explosive powder, which I could detonate by remote control.
One Friday night, I was awakened by sounds of boats and people. I quickly dressed and made my way to the dunes, scanning the waterline through infrared field glasses. Two pleasure boats had beached there and two young couples were busy setting up a midnight picnic. There was no moon, and, unobserved, I launched the dinghy and rowed to my boat. Through earphones attached to the directional microphones, I continued eavesdropping on my visitors, who were growing rowdier with every drink.
After waiting an hour, I began broadcasting through one speaker my single Indian incantation. The picnickers were startled but I heard the men assuring their women that as long as there was only one Indian they could easily chase him off. Armed with driftwood, they crawled inland looking for the drunken native. I waited for a while, then I activated the second speaker hidden in the bushes, creating the impression that the Indian had moved away from the beach. Next I turned on a third speaker at the opposite end of the woods. Through various directional mikes I followed the progress of the pursuers, who still thought they were chasing only one Indian.
With the men in the woods, I launched my amphibious toys. The little boats bobbed through the water and rolled onto the sand.
I pressed a button, and the first boat exploded in a white flare with the noise of a firecracker. Seconds later, I sent moans and Indian phrases through several of the Park’s most powerful speakers. Stunned by the explosions and the ghostly voices from the depths, the picnickers rushed back to the shore. I stopped the chanting but rapidly detonated the remaining toys. When one of the women screamed that she saw Indians arriving in canoes, the couples fled, abandoning their belongings, their boats churning up the shallow waters of the bay. I went back to the guest house, had a shot of whiskey, as the realtor’s wife had suggested, and slept till late morning.
The summer was at its peak, and the Park was full of wild flowers. When I drove down the path, my car had to plough through lush foliage and blossoming shrubs. The meadows abruptly changed their color as gusts of wind blew back and forth across them.
One afternoon, from my attic, I saw a girl of about twelve bicycling slowly down a narrow path, with a boy of six or seven trotting behind her. I immediately switched on a speaker in one of the wells and began moaning and sobbing. The sounds were multiplied by echoes. The girl whirled around and bicycled furiously back toward the gate. The little boy ran after her, weeping.
In less than two hours, they returned with nine other children, ranging in age from about six to thirteen. Carrying slingshots, stones and bows and arrows, they crawled through the bush like seasoned guerrillas. When the band approached the main house, I activated a speaker hidden in the grass several feet from them, and started my incantations in throaty whispers gradually rising to howls. The children were ready for their prey and shot their missiles directly at the voice. I began to moan as if I had been hit, and, suddenly frightened, the children ran from the Park, shouting.
I called the theatrical supply company and asked if it could provide a life-size dummy of a dead male Indian, which I needed for a play. They told me the company accepted orders for dead Indians only by the dozen, and that a single body would be quite expensive. I called several shops in the city before finding one that had recently acquired top-quality dummies from a bankrupt Hollywood studio. I made arrangements and drove in to pick up the dead Indian.
Following my specifications, the make-up man at the supply company had dressed the Indian in only a headband and loincloth. I asked him to cover the body with bloody wounds supposedly inflicted by the sample arrows and slingshot pellets I had taken with me. Because the play was to be staged outdoors in the daytime, I explained, it was important that the corpse look real. The make-up man complimented me on my feeling for detail. He advised me that, although standards had slipped elsewhere in the business, his mannequin was made of high quality plastic that closely resembled the texture of skin.
In a few hours, my Indian was ready. His skin was mottled with gray spots, and the blood seeping from the wounds around the arrows was amazingly realistic. To prevent his wounds from chipping and smearing, I wrapped the dummy in a blanket and placed him carefully in the trunk of my car. Next to him I stashed a can of imitation blood I had bought from the make-up man.
In the Park, I removed the speaker and placed the dummy in the grass at the exact spot where the children thought they had attacked an Indian. I scattered their arrows, stones and pellets over and around the dummy, then soaked the ground with imitation blood. I dribbled clear corn syrup on the wounds, and by
the time I left, a swarm of flies had arrived to feed on the syrup.
As I had expected, the children returned to the Park after school. Carrying bows, arrows and slingshots, and axes, hammers and wrenches, they crept through the woods quietly. I loaded my camera, hung my wooden submachine gun on my shoulder and fastened the microphone of a tape recorder on an outside pocket of my military jacket. Soon two of the children had spotted the flies and discovered the dead Indian. The other children gathered around.
Just then I stepped from the brush, and aiming my gun, ordered them to drop their weapons and put up their hands. I shouted that anyone who disobeyed my orders would be shot. The children were terrified. They dropped their weapons and clasped their hands behind their heads. The younger ones started to cry. Pointing at the dead Indian, I told them I had seen them kill him when he was peacefully returning from the cemetery, where he had gone to pray. I had not moved the body or reported the crime only because I knew that sooner or later the killers would come back.
I put the gun in the crook of my arm and raised the camera to photograph the children. In unison, they shielded their faces from the camera with their hands, like criminals being led into court. I raised the gun and threatened to present the police with their corpses instead of their photographs. They dropped their hands. After I finished the group photographs, I took a full-face and profile picture of each of them and had them dictate their names and addresses directly into my tape recorder. I warned that lying would implicate them even more seriously.
I announced that they would all be charged with the murder of an unarmed, innocent Indian. Each one of them would be sentenced to many years of solitary confinement, and their disgraced parents would have to change their names and their jobs and move to another state. Their coldly premeditated crime would make headlines in the newspapers and the whole world would see their vicious faces on television.