Long Lost - By Harlan Coben Page 0,80

the Official Photography of Albin Laramie had to be Albin. He wore a cape. A shiny cape. Like he was Batman or Zorro. The facial hair looked Etch-A-Sketched, his hair was a tangled yet calculated mess, and his whole persona screamed that he was not merely an artist, but an "artiste!" He was talking on the phone and scowling when I entered.

I started toward him. He signaled me to wait with a finger. "He doesn't get it, Leopold. What can I tell you? The man doesn't get angles or texture or coloring. He has no eye."

He held up his finger again for me to wait another minute. I did. When he hung up the phone, he sighed theatrically. "May I help you?"

"Hi," I said. "My name is Bernie Worley."

"And I," he said, hand to heart, "am Albin Laramie."

He made this pronouncement with great pride and flair. It reminded me of Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride; I half expected him to tell me that I had killed his father, prepare to die.

I gave him the world-weary smile. "My wife asked me to pick up some photographs."

"Do you have your claim stub?"

"I lost it."

Albin frowned.

"But I have the order number, if that will help."

"It may." He pulled over a keyboard, got his fingers ready, turned back to me. "Well?"

"Four-seven-one-two."

He looked at me as though I were the dumbest thing on God's green earth. "That's not an order number."

"Oh. Are you sure?"

"That's a session number."

"A session number?"

He pushed the cape back with both hands like a bird might before spreading its wings. "As in photo session."

The phone rang and he turned away as though dismissing me. I was losing him. I took a step back and did my own theatrics. I blinked and made my mouth into a perfect O. Myron Bolitar, Awestruck Ingenue. He was watching me with curiosity now. I circled the store and kept the awestruck look on my face.

"Is there a problem?" he asked me.

"Your work," I said. "It's breathtaking."

He preened. You don't often see an adult man preen in real life. For the next ten minutes or so I snowed him with a bit more about his work, asking him about inspiration and letting him prattle on about hue and tone and style and lighting and other stuff.

"Marge and I have a baby," I said, shaking my head in admiration at the hideous Victorian monstrosity that made an otherwise cute baby look like my uncle Morty with a case of shingles. "We should set up a time to bring her in."

Albin continued to preen in his cape. Preening, I thought, was meant for a man in a cape. We discussed price, which was absolutely ridiculous and would require a second mortgage. I played along. Finally, I said, "Look, that's the number my wife gave me. The session number. She said that if I saw those photographs it would simply blow me away. Do you think I could see the shots from session four-seven-one-two?"

If it struck him as odd that I had originally come in claiming to pick up photographs and now wanted to look at pictures from a session, the note hadn't sounded over the din of true genius.

"Yes, of course, it's on the computer here. I must tell you. I don't like digital photography. For your little girl, I want to use a classic box camera. There is such a texture to the work."

"That'd be super."

"Still, I use the digital for Web storage." He began typing and hit return. "Well, these aren't baby pictures, that's for sure. Here you are."

Albin turned the monitor toward me. A bunch of thumbnails loaded onto the screen. I felt my chest tighten even before he clicked on one, making the image large enough to fill the entire monitor. No doubt about it.

It was the blond girl.

I tried to play it cool. "I'll need a copy of that."

"What size?"

"Whatever, eight-by-ten would be great."

"It will be ready a week from Tuesday."

"I need it now."

"Impossible."

"Your computer is hooked up into the color printer over there," I said.

"Yes, but that hardly produces photo quality."

No time to explain. I took out my wallet. "I'll give you two hundred dollars for a computer printout of that picture."

His eyes narrowed, but only for a second. It was finally dawning on him that something was up, but he was a photographer, not a lawyer or doctor. There was no confidentiality agreement here. I handed him the two hundred dollars. He started for the printer. I noticed a link