The Negative

       I guess the way it came about was that I was looking through some old negatives in my father’s darkroom. He was quite a photographer in the days before digital cameras and cell phones came along. He took a lot of pictures for fun, but also did some free lance work for a couple of newspapers and magazines. He kept at it until the digital cameras came along. He didn’t want to betray the cameras that were his old friends, and he didn’t want to learn about a whole new technology in his late 60s. So, he stopped.

        His death, years later, hit me hard. We were on good terms, I guess, but there were conversations I wanted to have with him that never happened. His darkroom in the basement of his suburban Chicago home was a place he spent so many hours, and in an odd way I felt connected to him in there.

        Under the red “safe” lite I saw there was a folder with negatives in it marked “Daily News.” I took one of the negative strips out and put it on the light board to see it more clearly. I guess a lot of people my age and younger have never seen a photographic negative. They are acetate strips of 35-millimeter film that have pictures on them, except opposite. Everything black is white, and everything white is black. When the negatives are printed the pictures come out just as they appeared the day they were snapped.

        One frame looked interesting. It showed two men in suits talking with each other, but nobody else was nearby. Just for fun, I put the negative strip into the enlarger and blew up that section of the picture and made a print. I had already mixed up the chemicals – the developer to bring the image to the white print paper, and the “fixer” to make the image permanent. The smells brought back memories of the hours I spent with Dad in his darkroom, learning the ins and outs of it all.

        Within a few minutes the image was developed, and it was safe to turn on the light. The paper was still wet, but what I saw in that picture made me do a double-take. What I saw couldn’t be real, but it was.

        I dried off the print, put the negative strip into a special folder and hid it inside of a book. Then I went upstairs and sat in the kitchen for a moment wondering what to do next. Should I call the local police? Nah. They wouldn’t take me seriously. They still think of me as a weird kid with a skateboard, even though I don’t even know where my skateboard is anymore. That was 10 years ago.

        Besides, this wasn’t a local thing. It wasn’t a county or state thing either. It was national, and maybe international. I decided I needed to contact the FBI. There was a problem, though. Over the years the FBI had become so politicized that something like this might get buried or mysteriously lost or destroyed. Or the messenger might get shot.

        Then it occurred to me that my best bet was to get the photograph to the right media source so they could make it known to the world. But who would that be? It was getting harder to know who was reliably doing news versus supporting whatever administration was in power.

        I remembered that my college roommate, Charles, had a friend who did a lot of investigative reporting. He didn’t seem to have strong political views but was always trying to find the truth about things. So, I called Charles. He gave me his friend’s email address along with a second, “secret” email address, “just in case.” I didn’t know what he meant by that.

        Here’s what I wrote to the guy, whose name is Mick Jackson:

             “Dear Mr. Jackson,

  My name is Oscar Morganford. I’m a friend of Charles Lakeman. He gave me your contact information so I could share something important with you. My father was a freelance photographer for several news magazines in the 1970s and 1980s. Going through some of his photographs after his death last May I stumbled on a picture that clearly shows then Vice President Murphy speaking at an event near Chicago with the man who eventually assassinated President Anderson.

     As you may recall, then incoming president Murphy claimed never to have met the assassin – a man named Marcus Williams. This photograph proves that to have been a lie and leads to the possible conclusion that Williams killed the president at the behest of Murphy.

     I’m turning to you with this information because I am unsure how to proceed without putting myself in danger.

             Please advise.

        Sincerely,

        Oscar Morganford

        Less than five minutes later I got an email from a different email address with nothing but a phone number and the initials MJ.

        I called the number and the person who answered had his speech slightly garbled to avoid detection. We arranged to meet in a concourse at O’Hare Airport the next morning. He said he would be wearing a disguise as an elderly woman and would be wearing a purple felted scarf. I said I would not.

        I bought the cheapest one-way ticket I could find so that I could go through security to meet him. I had no intention of traveling anywhere. The traffic, parking, and the TSA line were all about normal, by which I mean slow and frustrating. I made my way to the concourse and the gate number he’d given me.

        We sat next to each other in the waiting area outside a gate where a plane was boarding. He really did look like an elderly woman. I tucked the manilla envelope into the bag she or he had placed on the floor. I got up and left and she or he went to board the plane.

        I got my car out of the short-term lot and made my way back to my dad’s house. When I got there, I turned on the TV and saw that an airplane had been shot down just outside of the O’Hare Airport air space over lake Michigan. I went to the bathroom and threw up. Then I packed some things, grabbed the negative of the photograph, and raided the large salt-glazed stoneware pot where my father kept his “safe” money, and hopped on my bicycle. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I couldn’t stay there, and I was pretty sure they, whoever they were, knew my car license number. I stopped at a coffee shop and put on my baseball hat and sunglasses. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it was the best I could do. I never expected to be a fugitive on the run.

        I sat and thought. Somehow, despite his efforts to remain undercover, Mr. Jackson was clearly being surveilled. Now I was on their radar too. Worst of all, I didn’t know who “they” were. I did know that someone who would have their president assassinated to become president and would have a commercial aircraft shot down to keep from being exposed wouldn’t hesitate to kill me.

        So, I did what I had to do. I tried to go viral. I made a new Facebook account and a new “X” account under an assumed name: TrueJustice. Then I took a photograph of my father’s picture and posted it on both sites with the following message:

        “The plane that crashed today was shot down. On that plane was investigative journalist Mick Jackson. He had been given a photograph showing former President Murphy talking with assassin Marcus Williams, who he swore under oath he had never met. Someone doesn’t want that picture made public. Too late! This is that picture. No edits or manipulations have been done.

Did Murphy have our then president killed to become president? I don’t know. But I do know that President Murphy lied under oath. I also know that his hand-picked candidates have ascended to the presidency after his two terms. Were they involved? I don’t know. Who shot down that plane? I don’t know. I’m just the guy who still has the negative. – TrueJustice.”

        I posted both messages and got back on my bike. I couldn’t go back to my dad’s house. And, I had to ditch my phone and buy a burner phone. I took a Lyft ride to a big truck stop on Interstate 80. I walked around looking at the trucks. I found one with some conspiracy theory bumper stickers on the back and walked up to the cab. The driver had a gnarled face and wore mirrored dark glasses. He looked at me suspiciously.

        I told the guy what was going on, and that I was in real danger from the feds or somebody, and he welcomed me in. I think I made his day. He was going to Phoenix and invited me to come along for the ride. He also wanted to hear all about my TrueJustice posts. It took a few hours before anybody read either one of them. My alter ego had no connections, followers or subscribers since he was just a few hours old. Before long, dozens of people saw it, and then hundreds, and then thousands. The FBI sent a direct message asking me to get in touch with them. I didn’t.

        Facebook shut down my account on the second day. “X” did not, and the number of people reading my post cruised past a million. Congress set up a special counsel to investigate the whole thing. They really wanted to talk to me, but by then I had purchased a new identity from a guy named Luis who I met in Phoenix. At least for the time being Oscar Morganford didn’t exist. Tony Tantano was my new name. My beard was coming in nicely. I was ready to start a new life.

        Eventually I figured out how to monetize my “X” account and now TrueJustice brings in more than enough for me to live on. Somebody even came up with a line of clothing, made in the USA, with “TrueJustice” as the logo. They send 10% of sales to me. I’ve hired a manager with that money to investigate other corruption in the government and elsewhere.

        It looks like the past three presidents are going to go to jail, along with their top advisors and some of their donors, all because of a photograph my father took, probably not realizing the importance of it. I hope a lot of other people go to jail too. Our country shouldn’t be run by corrupt politicians and powerful people who were never elected. It may be too much to hope for, but so far things are looking up.