The Mystery of the Moving Image Read online

  My shoulders dropped a bit. I took the phone. “Pete?”

  “Hey! Snow! I got your message about the pickup.”

  I pursed my lips. “I left that message on Sunday. It’s Tuesday.”

  “Well, yeah, but you weren’t open yesterday.”

  “You were supposed to be here on Saturday, Pete. I’ve had my stock for the fair boxed and waiting since last Friday.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about missing the pickup window, but it’s been a busy week of prepping for the event. We welcome our sponsors to drop items off at the Javits Center themselves.”

  “I don’t drive,” I replied. “And I shouldn’t have to trek to the ass-end of Hell’s Kitchen myself when I’m paying a sponsorship level that includes the pickup and delivery of all inventory on display for the fair.”

  Max winced, I think on Pete’s behalf.

  The antiquing community didn’t have a lot of thirty-three-year-olds in it. And there were some members who didn’t enjoy taking a young’un like me seriously. Most had no idea how hard I’d worked to get where I was in the business.

  I’d gone into debt to obtain an MFA and put in several years as a sort-of apprentice under one of the biggest assholes in the industry, my late boss Mike Rodriguez. I took pride in my shop and had labored for three years to cultivate and bring attention to obscure relics of our past. Now, my clients returned time and again because they knew the knowledge, inventory, and attention to detail they’d receive from me was top-notch. Snow’s Antique Emporium has since become the sort of business that the Javits Antique Fair reaches out to, requesting I sponsor their event.

  So I might have been one of the younger members of the community, but God save the poor bastard who took my hard-earned money and didn’t meet my expectations in return.

  “I’m coming by today,” Pete answered, sounding rather unfazed by my agitation.

  “The fair opens tomorrow.”

  “And that’s why I’m coming today,” he reiterated, like I was the dense one.

  The bell above the Emporium’s door chimed. Max and I both turned to see Beth Harrison standing in the open doorway. She was my business neighbor and the owner of Good Books, was about Pop’s age, and had long ago lost her last fuck to give.

  “Good morning!” she declared, walking toward us with something in her hands.

  “When will you be here?” I asked Pete as Max left me in favor of Beth.

  “Oh… should be between eleven and… threeish?”

  “Traffic across town must be a real bitch,” I answered, deadpan.

  “You’ll be there when I stop in, right?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Good. I’ll need you to sign a few forms.”

  “Fine.”

  “Will you be at the fair tomorrow?” Pete asked next.

  I looked up. Beth was giving me a curious expression. Max was staring at his phone. “Let’s just focus on today first, shall we?” I muttered a goodbye and ended the call.

  Beth walked forward. “Someone’s got his grumpy pants on this morning.”

  “I’m actually in a good mood,” I corrected. “That was Pete White from the fair. He was supposed to be here four days ago to pick up my collection for the show.”

  “How professional,” she said sarcastically.

  Max raised his head and turned his phone to show me the screen, even though I was too far away to make out the image. “Marshall’s Oddities is a sponsor, and he’s already set up at the Center.”

  Marshall’s Oddities, owned and operated by copycat Greg Thompson, was my only real competition in the city. I said “competition” because he’d basically stolen my shop’s image of “curious and bizarre” and still tried to pilfer my customers whenever possible. I was more than happy to supply the names of fellow dealers to my clients if there’s something they want outside my wheelhouse, because in turn those businesses sent customers to me. But not Greg. He’d never once scratched my back.

  Frankly, I didn’t want him to. Or trust him to.

  We did not get along, and I was okay with that being the entirety of our relationship. Although… it might also be partly due to the fact that last December I suspected Greg was the nutjob behind the Nevermore murders. But hey. Honest mistake.

  “How’d you find that out?” I asked.

  “Facebook.”

  I grunted.

  Max put his phone away.

  Beth held up the plate in her hands. “So… how’re you boys on this fine May morning?”

  “Why are you so chipper?” Max asked. “You’re talking like a fairy godmother.”

  Beth snorted. “I am not. You’ve just spent too much time around your boss, whose good moods resemble most people’s bad moods.”

  “They do not,” I grumbled.

  “Be nice,” she responded. “I’ve got cookies.”

  “Were you going to share?” I asked. “Or were you just taking them for a walk?”

  “I don’t know why the hell I put up with you sometimes, Sebby.” Beth handed me the plate. “I come bearing gifts and you give me sass.”

  “It’s my default setting,” I replied. I picked up a cookie and took a bite.

  “Well, you’d better watch it,” Beth continued, “or that’s the last cookie I share with you.”

  I held the plate out of reach. “No take backs,” I said around a full mouth.

  Beth was always complaining that customers were stealing her pens. I noted she had three or four stuffed into her bun that morning but decided to let her find those on her own. She was wearing a feline-inspired top, although subtle today—just a cat nose and whiskers—but she also wore leggings with creatures on them that looked half-taco, half-cat, so… a typical wardrobe day for Beth.

  “Are you dating a mechanic?” I asked, pointing at her clunky boots.

  Beth looked down briefly. “My cat barfed in my Birkenstocks this morning.”

  “Charming,” I answered.

  Beth put her hands on her hips and walked toward the Kinetoscope. “What have you got here?”

  “This is a whatchamacallit,” Max said, pointing at the cabinet.

  “A what?” Beth asked.

  “Kinetoscope,” I said around the final bite of cookie.

  “What does it do?”

  “It’s a one-person movie viewer,” Max answered, parroting my explanations back to Beth. “It even came with a 120-year-old film.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “My money is on porn or cats,” he continued.

  “I like those odds,” she agreed.

  I set the plate on a nearby table and wiped crumbs from the front of my sweater-vest.

  “Sebby.”

  I looked up. “Seb, Beth. Seb.”

  She ignored me. “You look so handsome in green.”

  “I thought this was blue.”

  She and Max shook their heads.

  “Christ,” I muttered to myself, looking back down.

  “Seb was about to turn the Kinetoscope on,” Max said, almost like he’d caught my it’s-not-blue anxiety and changed the subject. “Want to stay for the big unveiling?”

  Beth clapped her hands together. “Oh yes! Let’s see what you have.”

  I stepped back to the cabinet and gave the Kinetoscope a final once-over before daring to power it on for what might have been the first time in over a hundred years. But against all odds, the machine came to life, the wheels inside making sound as the film was set into a continuous loop. I moved around to the front and glanced in the peephole. The bulb illuminating the projected stills was bright, and I had to squint as I watched.

  It turned out the mystery footage wasn’t Victorian porn or cats, but instead, a boxing match. And one I recognized, at that.

  The Leonard-Cushing fight of 1894. It was sold by Edison as an authentic fight, but the truth was, it was staged and filmed at his studio, Black Maria, in Jersey. Regardless, it was the first boxing match to be recorded, and of the six reels that were onc
e for sale to the Kinetoscope parlors, less than a full round still existed today. The knockout footage—naturally the most popular round with customers—hadn’t survived.

  At least, it hadn’t thirty seconds ago.

  Because I was watching it now.

  Leonard won. I knew he would, but no one in modern times had ever seen it.

  I opened my mouth to say… something, but there was a weird blip in the film, some distortion, and then the scene was different. It was outdoors, the image dark and grainy. Some odd lighting, just above two figures in the scene, illuminated a street that otherwise would have been engulfed in nighttime. The figures appeared to be men—neither from the prior boxing scene. One had very distinctive muttonchops and a bit of a gut. The second man was pretty nondescript. They seemed to be arguing, but the frame rate the movie had been shot at was different from what was used today, making their motions quick and dramatic-looking, so it was hard to tell.

  Without warning, Muttonchops pulled something from inside his coat, and the motion blurred as he lunged. Nondescript Man held his neck and then crumpled to the ground. Muttonchops stared down at him for a few seconds, dropped whatever he had been holding, and ran.

  The scene looped and brought me back to the fight.

  “So?” Max asked excitedly.

  I raised my head, looking at him and Beth. “I… think I just witnessed a murder.”

  Chapter Two

  “THE INFANT feeding bottle was all the rage in the late Victorian era,” I told my customer as she crouched in front of a display case to inspect an item. “It was often a glass bottle that came with a rubber tube and nipple, allowing a child to feed themselves.”

  “I imagine that was beneficial when women wore corsets,” she replied, looking up at me.

  “Yes, exactly,” I said. “That was the major selling point for mothers at the time. Unfortunately, by the turn of the century, it had earned the moniker ‘murder bottle.’”

  She made a face and looked at the bottle, situated beside its original packaging. “Murder?”

  Was it just me, or were the murders of bygone days making themselves a bit too known today?

  I’d called Calvin after watching the boxing match turned death show. I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t like the perpetrator could be arrested, what with being unbelievably dead by now, but there was no statute of limitations on murder. And that had been a real killing. So I called the cops, like any good citizen would. It was just convenient that my cop was fairly accustomed to the outrageous at this point.

  The customer—shit, what had she said her name was? Nancy? Nancy.—Nancy was staring up at me expectantly.

  “Er—yeah, sorry. The rubber tubing was very difficult to clean,” I hastily said, tapping the glass case. “Which made it an ideal breeding ground for bacteria. Coupled with the famous Martha Stewart of the time—Isabella Beeton—advising it wasn’t necessary to clean the nipple for several weeks….” I waved my hand. “It became the murder bottle.”

  “That’s awful,” Nancy said. “And the infant mortality rate was already so high then.”

  “Oh yes. The feeding bottle exacerbated the problem.”

  Nancy stood, still eyeing the item.

  “Not too sure this will be a suitable birthday present for your coworker, though,” I stated.

  “We all have that one friend who’s super interested in weird and morbid things,” Nancy said with a laugh.

  Don’t judge me, Nancy.

  I moved around the backside of the case, opened the sliding glass door, and removed the bottle and packaging. “Would you like this gift wrapped?”

  “That’d be wonderful,” Nancy answered.

  When I looked up, I noticed a customer who must have slipped into the shop as quiet as a mouse, carefully eyeing the Kinetoscope. I waved to Max and asked when he joined me, “Would you ring Nancy up for this feeding bottle and wrap it for her?”

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  “Thank you for your business,” I said to Nancy.

  “Thank you for all of your help!”

  Once the two left my side, I moved away from the display case and approached the new customer. “Hello. Ah, sorry, this isn’t for sale.” I patted the top of the Kinetoscope briefly.

  I realized he was considerably younger than I’d pegged him to be at a distance. I usually had an uptick of college-aged customers come autumn, with students new to New York exploring the neighborhoods, some looking for odds and ends to spice up their dorm rooms, though a few came in for legitimate school research. I didn’t have anyone his age shop at the Emporium who wasn’t usually a student somewhere nearby. Although, it was May, and most terms had just ended… but I supposed he could have been enrolled in an early summer program at NYU or SVA.

  He gave me an annoyed look. “I don’t want to buy it.”

  “Was there anything I could help you with, then?”

  “No.”

  Snotty shit.

  I sighed and rubbed the spot above my left eye where a headache was starting. “Okay.”

  The kid looked around briefly. “Why do you have so much weird crap in here?”

  “What constitutes as weird for you? Because some may think it mundane.”

  He pointed at a framed photo hanging on a nearby wall. “Are those dancing skeletons?”

  “The Arsenic Waltz,” I corrected. “It mocked the usage of arsenic in dyes for clothing during the nineteenth century.”

  “What?” He looked confused. Or disgusted. I wasn’t sure.

  “Arsenic is a poison.”

  I glanced over my shoulder when I heard the bell ring at the shop door. Calvin stepped inside, with Dillon on a leash. The pup was probably thrilled to be out of the house and on a walk with his dad. Calvin pulled off a pair of sunglasses and hung them from his AC/DC shirt, which had to be nearly as old as me. He was wearing those ass-hugging jeans I loved and an old, beat-up pair of Vans sneakers. Calvin made home decorating look damn good.

  “This place is like a basement full of useless shit.”

  I turned back to my charming new friend. “Why’re you here?” I countered.

  “I’m not—I’m leaving,” he said, as if between the two of us, I was the bigger asshole.

  “By all means, the front door is right there.” I stepped sideways and motioned with both arms outstretched.

  He took a brief look around the shop again but appeared increasingly frustrated as he did so. Like he had sincerely come hunting for something, didn’t want to admit to it, and was angry I didn’t have it—whatever that might have been.

  The kid finally shoved by me and made his way through the aisles toward the door. Calvin saw the push and looked at me, but I shook my head and waved my hand in a shooing motion.

  Calvin moved aside, watched the brat storm out, and then joined me. “Who was that?” he asked, leaning down briefly to remove Dillon’s leash.

  “The Future.”

  He gave me an amused smile. “I see the inclination toward enjoying the company of our country’s youth skips a generation in your family.” He kissed me. “Why’d you call me here?”

  “I like you.”

  “Nice try.”

  “You know how there’s no statute of limitation on murder?”

  Calvin reached up to massage his temple. “It was my day off.”

  “Look at this.” I tapped the Kinetoscope. “This is an Edison Kinetoscope.”

  “Are we talking Thomas Edison?” Calvin crossed his arms, and his biceps flexed and bulged and… distracted.

  “Uh—huh. Yeah. That’s the guy.” I looked at the cabinet. “But there was no contact information from the owner inside the crate. No documentation, letter—not even a postcard.”

  “I’ve yet to see the correlation between a piece of furniture and murder.”

  “It’s a movie viewer,” I corrected. “And—you’re absolutely certain it’s not for you?”

  He gave me a critical look.

&nbs
p; “Maybe someone sent you a really morbid birthday present?” I suggested. Not that I sincerely thought it was a gift, but Calvin did work homicide and he was going to be forty-three this Friday. And it had been established how susceptible the Emporium seemed to be to death and mayhem since the two of us met.

  “No one would send me an Edison Kinetoscope. What is this about?”

  I let out a heavy breath. “It came with a reel of film. It still works, Max and I watched it. It’s the final round of the Leonard-Cushing fight of 1894. It’s not supposed to exist, by all accounts.”

  “And did Leonard kill Cushing?” Calvin asked dryly.

  “No.” I paused for a beat. “Someone else died, though.”

  “It’s a movie.”

  “Not—no, the murder isn’t part of the film, Cal. Someone spliced two scenes together. It’s not staged or fake. A man actually died and someone recorded it.” I turned the Kinetoscope on and tugged Calvin close. “Watch it.”

  With a sigh, he relaxed his arms and leaned over the peephole to watch the scene.

  I waited, anxiously studying Calvin’s body posture as the seconds ticked by. Louis Armstrong projected from the shop speakers, Max was chatting up customers, and Dillon wove around this and that across the showroom. When enough time had passed that Calvin would surely have reached the outdoor scene, I noticed his jaw tense. And that was the only reaction I needed to authenticate what I too had seen.

  “So?” I asked, for the sake of nicety.

  Calvin straightened and looked at me.

  “It’s real, isn’t it?”

  “Seb—”

  “I told you.”

  “Don’t get carried away,” Calvin chastised. “We don’t know anything—when or where or—”

  “Mid-1890s. It was filmed relatively close to the same period as the boxing match.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The frame rates match, they were both shot with a Kinetograph camera, the film itself was precut—”

  “All right,” Calvin interrupted, holding up a hand. “We still don’t even know where this occurred. It could be any city in America that had a camera in the 1800s.”

  I looked at the Kinetoscope briefly. “It’s New York—the Flatiron site.”