I.

When Joe Devlin arrived at the Hotel Mirado, he felt on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Oh God, he’d prayed on the plane, give me a shot at something new. The magazine he worked for, a digest of threatened landmarks, featured architecturally distinctive buildings in terrible shape. Joe was sick of gutted shells and empty rooms.
         An odor of decay greeted Joe at the front desk. The clerk, a bald, buzzard-like man with white hair sprouting from his ears, took Joe’s credit card and grinned. “You’re from Boston,” he said. “Me too, once. Make yourself at home.”
         There was a big brown stain on the clerk’s shirt, Joe noticed.
         At the elevator, he put down his bag and camera boxes. Looking up he felt his heart plunge. Suspended in the gloom were faded drapes and bent chandeliers. The dry, dusty odor was everywhere. A cross of tape covered the elevator button.
         “—Third floor, to the left,” the clerk crooned.
         Joe turned and took the stairs.
         This would be the last job, he told himself. He would work through it—finish it—then quit. He would go back to Boston and begin a new life, the life that was always meant for him, not this: breathing dust on a landing so dimly lit he had to watch each step. He would return home to make the pictures he had always dreamed of, images like memories of summer, like when he was a child and the world made itself new and took shape before his eyes. He would not do it for money; he was thirty-six years old and money was not his problem. He had always worked hard for others. He had never done anything for himself.
         This would be the last job, he promised. And then he entered the dark, stale hallway that led to his room.

II.

 It wasn’t what he was used to.
         The buildings he photographed were usually empty, boarded up; inside they had a bluish, underwater quality, like sunken wrecks. But here the morning light—a desert light— clipped corners, sharpened edges, and warmed the faded carpets.
         The old clerk was staring at him. It made Joe uneasy. When Joe spread the tripod legs for the big 8 x 10 Deardorff, the clerk waved. “Name’s Price,” he said. “I’m a factotum, here in case you need me.”
         Fat chance, Joe thought.
         Yellowed prints of the Grand Canyon hung on the lobby walls; beneath them hunched tumorous sofas and lamps with parchment shades. Magazines like dry leaves lay curled on chairs. Joe flipped the camera hood over his head. He focused on a vase filled with roses.
         Upside down on the ground glass, the flowers appeared heavy and full. He knew it would appeal to the editors of the magazine. Arranged in a chipped vase, they looked as if they understood experience, but hadn’t been bruised by it. Joe pressed the shutter and lifted the hood.
         “Everything’s the same,” said a high, fruity voice. “The same as always.”
         A skinny old woman with watery blue eyes looked up at him. She was four feet tall, the size of an ancient child.
         The clerk rushed over to her, called her Miss Arthur, and took her bag. Joe watched as the old man leaned close: he thought they would kiss. Price whispered something and put the barrel of his finger to his head.
         The woman stared. “But where will I go?”
         Price pursed his lips. He said nothing. The woman’s gaze and her question came to rest on Joe.
         Then he saw: the roses were wax.

III.

The next day Price told Joe the hotel had been sold to someone in Kansas City, a man who had never seen the place.
         “Maybe,” the clerk said, showing more gums than teeth, “you could send him some pictures.”
         Joe frowned. All day the old man had been watching him, following him around. “I am not a maker of postcards,” Joe said.
         “But if he knew what this place really looked like,” Price said, “then maybe—”
         “I doubt it,” Joe interrupted.
         “—he’d keep it just the way it is.”
         Joe looked at him. He was a bony old man with tufts of hair in his ears, a clown wearing baggy shirts that were never clean, but he was serious. Couldn’t he see the cracked walls, the fallen ceiling in the dining room, the worn carpets and sagging stairs? “Pictures wouldn’t help,” Joe said.
         “They might,” Price said.
         “Mine wouldn’t.”
         “Now you listen,” Price said, forcing Joe back against a wall with a sharp finger pressed to his chest. “For thirty-eight years I’ve worked here behind that desk. This used to be the best. We had the first air-conditioning in Arizona. Anyone who was anybody stayed here—and ate here too before the dining room closed. Senators, winter people, folks who came down for the air.” He tapped Joe’s breastbone like a telegrapher sending code. “This is an historical site.”
         “Right,” Joe said, slipping aside. “That’s why I’m here.”
         Price walked to the middle of the lobby and snatched up a cigarette butt. He held it in his veiny hand and shook it at Joe. “This may be no surprise to you,” he said stiffly, “but the family, they sold it and didn’t even tell me.”
         “It happens,” Joe said. He felt embarrassed, even a bit sorry for the old man, but there was nothing he could do. “Maybe you ought to be realistic.”
         Price’s fist tightened. He put the butt into his shirt pocket and walked away.

IV.

The next morning, as Joe prepared to work outside, the clerk called to him. His eyes looked tired, as if he had been up all night.
         “Have you been to the Collection Agency?”
         “The what?” Joe said, replacing the lens cap on his camera.
         “The Collection Agency. It’s a place that sells antiques.”
         “No,” Joe said. “Should I?”
         Price’s eyes glinted. “Wilder—the fellow that owns it—he’s a lot like you.”
         Joe wondered if the old man was crazy. “What does that mean?”
         “He’s even got some hotel items,” Price said. “You’d like it there.”
         How would you know? thought Joe.

V.

When Joe walked into the Collection Agency, he saw a man in a green silk shirt sitting behind a glass counter. He looked slick but tired, like an aging mannikin. The top of his head was bald. He glanced up at Joe with a slightly bored expression.
         “How much money you got?” he called.
         “What?”
         “Money. In your pocket.”
         Joe’s hand moved instinctively to his wallet.
         The dealer stood up behind a case filled with pistols, coins, and arrowheads. Above were shelves piled high with Indian baskets. “Cash-ectomies are free today,” he said. “I take it you’re here for one.”
         Joe looked at him. The man’s face was square and serious-looking, with dark eyes that seemed to pin him to the bone. The man slowly grinned. Of course, thought Joe. A joke.
         “Sorry,” Joe said. “No cash-ectomy today.”
         The man kept grinning. “Looking for anything else, or am I supposed to have ESP?”
         “I guess you’ll have to guess.”
         Wilder laughed. “All right. This is hard now—don’t tell me. Wait. You’re the guy at the Hotel Mirado taking pictures, right?”
         Joe stared. He felt his face blush.
         “Hold on,” Wilder said, turning around to a desk behind him. “I think I got something for you.”
         He flipped through a pile of old Life magazines, then stopped suddenly to uncover a large, mounted photograph. He handed it to Joe.
         The print, slightly faded, showed two men standing side by side. The words “Wells Fargo” floated like a halo above the head of one—a deputy perhaps, judging from the badge, or a sheriff. He stared straight ahead, holding a rope which trailed up and looped around the neck of an Indian considerably taller than him. The Indian’s face was blurred, but the manacles on his hands and feet were in focus. The depth of field and long exposure made everything but his face perfectly clear.
         Scrawled across the bottom were the words: Crow Flies East. Commercial Hotel, June 3rd, l883.
         Joe stared at the captive Indian with a sense of wonder and appreciation. It was a superb photograph, beautifully composed.
         Wilder tapped it with his finger. “Damn good,” he said. “Rare. The hotel was new here, under its first name.”
         “Hotel?” Joe said.
         “Sure, don’t you see it? Behind them. That’s the Hotel Mirado.”
         It was true. The windows were different now—smaller—and the brick had been partly stuccoed since then, but the section of door that showed was still the same. “Do you have a price?” Joe asked.
         Wilder winked. “Sure, I got a price—don’t you? This is the real thing, early, a piece of the Old West. But sometimes you got to whore things up a bit. Know what I mean?”
         Joe gave him a puzzled look.
         The dealer chuckled. “For two years, this sat in the case. And for two years I had folks ogling it, hemming and hawing. But nobody bought it. They picked it apart, said it had too high a price. But the more I looked at it, the more I thought what a piece of history it was—so I figured it wasn’t high enough. Once I upped it from seventy-five to seven-hundred fifty, I got some serious offers.”
         “But you never sold it.”
         Wilder laughed and gave Joe a good-natured slap on the shoulder. “That’s right. Don’t you see? That’s the beauty. This way, they really want it.”

VI.

As Joe worked through the hotel, he became frustrated by the disappearance of things. First was the long pendulum clock behind the front desk, an absence making a bare spot the shape of a giant keyhole. Next was the mission-style sofa on the landing leading to the second floor. There in the afternoon, Joe noticed it was gone that night when he came back from dinner.
         He asked Price about it. He complained that his work was being ruined.
         Price stood next to the roses. He seemed to be watching the sun sink into the new buildings farther down the street. The light from the evening sky gave him a detached, otherworldly look. “Nothing we can do,” he said quietly. “They’ve settled, and now they’ll have to deal with it.”
         “Deal with what?” Joe said.
         “Consequences.” Price jerked his thumb in the direction of three high-rises down the street. “I been watching them creep up from year to year. That’s what they have in mind for here.”
         In the lobby, perhaps in the entire hotel, their voices were the only sound. With its dark, Victorian woodwork, long marble counter, tall ceilings and dusty drapes, the lobby reminded Joe of a tomb.
         “June first, Sattady,” Price said. “That’s the last day. So if you want to stop things from disappearing, you’ll just have to cram them into your camera.”
         Saturday, Joe thought—it was the day after he planned to leave.
         Later, outside, as he prepared the Hasselblad, the eyes of passersby went from Joe to his camera and then to the hotel, as if asking: “Why bother?” To them the hotel was not just beginning to fade.
         It was already gone.

VII.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Wilder said, wearing a shirt the color of blue ink. “Soon as it’s not for sale, everybody wants it.”
         Joe frowned. The old photograph had begun to haunt him. For some reason he had a hard time remembering the faces in it. “I just want to look,” he said.
         “That’s a fine way for me to get rich,” Wilder said, rising abruptly from his chair. “But before you do, I want you to check out something else I got. Roy!” he shouted. Turning to Joe he said, “Like you to meet my good friend Roy.”
         A scuffling came from somewhere in the stacks of boxes and spindly furniture behind them. A short, sweaty man crawled around the corner of a large trunk. When he stood up Joe saw that he had a red, sun-burned face and a week’s worth of black stubble that looked like dirt. Roy flicked his eyes at Joe and brushed himself off.
         Wilder caught Joe’s eye and made a circling motion at the side of his head. Then he called to Roy. “This here’s the photographer staying at the Hotel Mirado. He look like an Indian to you?”
         Roy grunted, giving Joe a poisonous stare.
         Nice, Joe thought.
         “Show us what you got from that storage unit,” Wilder said, pulling Roy over to a glass case.
         “You already seen it.”
         “He hasn’t,” Wilder said, smiling at Joe. “Come on, he’ll get a kick out of it.”
         Roy pulled a long necklace out of his pants pocket. Shards of black ice hung between the beads.
         “Bear claw necklace,” Wilder said reverently as Roy held it in Joe’s face. Joe stared at the long, dark claws.
         “That and a whole bunch of other stuff is from a storage unit Roy bought at auction,” Wilder explained. “Hopi, Zuni, and some Navajo stuff, too. Now all he’s gotta do is sell it to me.”
         “The hell I do,” Roy said and shook the hair from his face. Wilder grabbed the necklace but Roy pulled back.
         Joe watched, horrified. The necklace held.
         Wilder let go. “Why don’t you show us what you got in the box?”
         Roy glanced at Joe and seemed to consider. He went over to a big hatbox on the floor and kicked the lid off. Inside Joe saw a big crushed bird.
         “Eagle feathers,” Wilder declared.
         “Headdress,” Roy said softly.
         “Museum quality,” Wilder said, leaning back and resting his elbows on a cabinet behind him. “He’s got a ceremonial outfit that goes with it, too. Ol' Roy’s a lucky fuck, only he’s too dumb to know it.”
         Roy turned to Joe. “They’ll kill me,” he said. “They got a lawyer after me who says I got to return everything on account of it’s illegal for a white man to own.”
         “Then give it back,” Joe said.
         Roy made a rude sound and shoved the bear claw necklace into his pocket. He looked straight at Joe, who stared back, amazed at how bloodshot Roy’s eyes were, a pair of pink nets with a dark pupil caught in the center of each.
         “That’s right, give it all back,” Wilder said. “But they didn’t give it to you, did they? Hell no. Stuff like that goes higher than giraffes’ nuts and you paid over two hundred for that unit. They didn’t pay their rent and so now it’s yours. It’s that simple. Now consider,” Wilder went on reasonably, “you owe me, you gotta pay. You sell this stuff, you double your money.”
         “Four-hundred!” Roy gasped. “Yesterday you said six!”
         “That was yesterday. You wait longer, I’ll make it three. I got risks.”
         “They’re after me, not you,” Roy said.
         “Relax,” Wilder said. “What are they gonna do, phone the Great Spirit?”
         “I heard rocks last night. Little rocks. They threw them at the trailer.”
         “They don’t know where you live,” Wilder scowled. “Rocks.”
         Suddenly the shop door rattled. Roy spun around and stepped on the headdress.
         “Get that covered!” Wilder barked, and Joe’s heart leaped as he threw the lid on the box. Roy pitched to his hiding place behind the trunk.
         The door opened slowly. A short Indian wearing a Yale T-shirt walked in. He was someone Joe had seen once or twice at the hotel. His arms were hard-looking; he held a brown shopping bag.
         “Got some doorknobs,” he said. He shook the bag.
         Wilder waved to Roy. “I’ll handle this.” Then he winked.
         Joe moved to the door.
         “Hold it,” Wilder called. “You haven’t seen the picture.”
         “I’ve seen enough,” Joe said.

VIII.

Out on the street, Joe walked quickly. His heart wouldn’t calm down. His arms and legs seemed uncoordinated, as if they belonged to a variety of other people. He had intended to look at the photograph and now he felt mixed up in something weird and confusing.
         He wondered if he should call the police. But what would he say? What would he tell them? Was Wilder ripping Roy off, or was Roy the thief? And which was illegal, the headdress or the necklace?
         Why should I care? he asked himself. The sun was making him hot and miserable.
         He walked down Central Avenue. It was a street full of bright stores in glass and steel, chain hotels and restaurants. When he finally came to the Hotel Mirado, Joe stood outside and looked at it for the first time without a camera between them. His eyes followed the shelter of its wide, old-world arches and cast-iron balconies, its tall windows grouped in twos and threes. He felt calmed by its symmetry, its order.
         Leaving the bright sun, it took a minute for Joe’s eyes to adjust to the lobby. Then he saw someone else, not Price, behind the marble counter. A pimply kid in a polo shirt.
         “You on the list?” the kid asked. He showed Joe a piece of paper with mostly crossed-out names. Joe found his and asked where Price was.
         “Chest pains,” the young man explained. “He’s in the hospital having tests.”
         Joe thought back to the morning. Price’s face was clay-colored, yellow.
         “I’m a temp,” the clerk said and smiled.
         Joe went to his room and closed the door. The room was stifling. He switched on the overhead fan and went to change his shirt. As he opened the closet, the doorknob came off in his hand. On the other side, the knob and plate were gone.
         He took off his clothes and lay naked on the bed. Directly above moved the slow blades of the ceiling fan. When his eyes closed, Joe thought about the same things he often thought about. He believed that at some point in his life he had completely lost control. Somehow he had become cut off from life itself, isolated, stuck on the outskirts of his and everyone else’s experience. It was always the same, he thought. He opened his eyes and watched the fan blades circle overhead, each like a snapshot, a glimpse of the same thing over and over again. He thought about the pictures he’d taken of the hotel, the hallways, floors and ceilings, the wallpaper flecked with tiny thistles, the windows showing the mountains and the moon rising like a radiant nickel, the beds and dressers reflected in mirrors, the dusty bulbs, the cracked plaster, the empty hangers in closets, the chandeliers tangled like dead spiders. They were the same wherever he’d gone.
         He heard a sharp noise. A knock. He listened: the sound became indistinct, like the scratching of an animal. He slid off the bed, grabbed his pants, and crept to the door. Opening it soundlessly, he saw a man across the hall crouched with a screwdriver. The man stared blankly at Joe and went back to work.
         It was the Indian from Wilder’s shop.
         Joe closed the door and dialed the front desk. “Look, this is Joe Devlin, upstairs,” he said, heart pounding. “I found him—the guy unscrewing doorknobs.”
         A burst of static went through the line. “Who?” said the clerk.
         “How do I know?” Joe said. “He looks like an Indian.”
         “Oh, that’s Ralph.”
         Joe blushed and held the phone away from his ear. “Don’t you care?”
         “Hell no,” the kid laughed. “You didn’t scare him, did you?”
         From the hallway came a thud on the floor and then a rolling sound. “I guess not,” Joe said.
         “Good,” said the voice on the phone. “Now don’t worry, nobody’s going to take your things. Ralph’s working for Mr. Price.”
         Joe’s eyes widened. “But he’s ripping you off.”
         The clerk laughed. “Everybody’s ripping this place off, man.”

IX.

The last morning was noisier than usual. As Joe slipped into his clothes, he heard footsteps in the hallway and doors slamming. Someone was making a last sweep. He went to the windows and raised a shade. In the street below a paper bag blew into the traffic. As Joe watched, the bag reared and seemed to dodge each passing car. The way it moved it almost had a personality. Then a truck flattened it.
         He thought about Price. He imagined Price exacting a secret revenge—even if it came down to filched doorknobs.
         In the lobby everyone was packing up. Joe had never seen most of them. A few he’d caught peeking around corners or watching from cracked doors as he worked. Half a dozen were gathered in the sunny end of the lobby. The chairs were gone now and the old men sat on their suitcases.
         “They know they’re supposed to be out of here,” the new clerk said.
         Joe carried his bags to the door. As he passed by, one of the old men raised his hand and said something. Joe stopped and leaned closer.
         “You with the wreckers?” the man asked. Though quite pale otherwise, his hands were knotted, cherry-red. On his lap lay an empty dog collar and leash.
         Joe shook his head.
         “We thought you were a wrecker,” the man said. Behind him Joe could see the others with their dry, accusing faces.
         Joe moved quickly to the door.
         “Well, well—if it isn’t the Grim Reaper!”
         Joe whirled. Wilder stood on the sidewalk outside the hotel. He held a trash bag.
         “Cheer up, partner. I’ll give you a good price for that camera gear.”
         Joe shuddered. “What are you doing here?” he said.
         “Supervising. There’s work to be done.” Wilder put a finger to his lips. “By the way,” he added, “there was a little development after you left the other day. Roy made a deal with the Indians. They were real pleased—paid him and thanked him and everything.”
         “No,” said Joe.
         “Don’t believe me? Roy kept the best of it—they didn’t even know what they had in there. You ought to come on down and see what I bought off him. Why, you and me could work together—you take the pictures, and I’ll send ‘em to Sotheby’s.” Wilder chuckled as he reached into the trash bag. “Look what they gave Roy. Those Indians sure do have a sense of humor.”
         He pulled out a toy Indian with a red rubber head and a drum between its knees. Joe groaned. How low could he go?
         “Watch this,” Wilder said, winding the key on its back. He set the toy on the ground. The head dipped and the arms flapped up and down, rapping the drum.
         What saved Joe was how the spectacle seemed to simplify things. He couldn’t walk away. Opening one of his camera boxes, he felt a rush of adrenalin. In the top section was a trigger-rigged Leica M3.
         “Hey friend, don’t shoot!” Wilder said, trying to keep a straight face. He raised his hands.
         Joe raised the camera to his eye. Within the frame was Wilder, the toy Indian, the entrance of the hotel. As Wilder bent down to wind the toy, the old men from the lobby straggled out to watch. They looked like an assemblage of scarecrows. Joe pulled back to let them in.
         Wilder crouched on his hams and guided the toy Indian. He looked attentively at Joe, like a prize fighter sizing him up. Wilder grinned, as if between them was a developing recognition.
         “Who’s it for, hot shot? The National Enquirer?”
         “It’s for me,” Joe said, and pulled the trigger.
        

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