SHOOTER: A Fragment from Moloko Print in its new chapbook series. (Excerpts below.)
JERRY CRANE did not believe in perfection any more than he believed in his real name. If he had, he would never have worked as a shooter for the tabloids. Crane was born Jiri Kiranek, a truth-telling fabulist, tall and lean, a refugee from wealth and privilege.
In his younger days he was often high on speed, always riffing, full of imagination, his bitter humor tinged with sardonic taunts. Now not quite in middle age, he still had a facile street-smart intellect. He told ambling, long-limbed tales. It was a peculiar form of truth-telling. His eyes would flare, sly yet self-deprecating. His best disguise of course was modesty, which made him more seductive. Jerry stood on the sidewalk next to the low stone wall and stamped his feet against the cold. Celebrities were a way of life for him, but so was waiting. He'd been there for more than an hour in the dark. The entrance to the Plaza Hotel had a doorman whose royal blue overcoat and gold epaulettes suggested a cockeyed admiral in somebody's Navy. Behind him, the lobby looked as warm and cozy as a Vienna coffeehouse. A cab pulled up. . . .
JERRY HAD no objection to celebrities. Opera divas, rock stars — they were all the same to him. He couldn’t have made a living without them. Some were easy to work with. Warhol did whatever he asked. Ginsberg was easy, too. They spent a day talking about poetry and
Kerouac before he shot Ginsberg's portrait. Some were not so easy. Salvador Dali, for example. Jerry spotted him at the Oak Bar in the St. Regis Hotel. He made a simple approach.
"Would you be kind enough to sit for a portrait?"
Dali did not look up. "How much will you pay?"
"I can offer you a drink."
"Write me a letter."
The next day Jerry returned to the St. Regis and bribed the bell captain for Dail's suite number. When he knocked on the door, the great man himself opened it — that was a surprise — but more surprising, he gripped Jerry's arm by the elbow and steered him to a pitch-black room.
"Take my picture!" he commanded.
Jerry said he had no light.
"Use your flash!"
Jerry snapped a shot at random. Dali then escorted him out of the suite.
"Never come back!"
