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fuckin’ ex-wife of mine. She’s got a fuckin’ hit out on me. Says I implanted a listening device in her. That I get my rocks off sittin’ up here listenin’ to her fuck other guys. Jesus Christ, I couldn’t stand hearin’ that when we were married.”
    Benny Joe uses “fuck” at least once every time he opens his mouth, and I’ve had entire conversations with him where that was the only word he uttered.
    “Sorry, I didn’t get the newsletter. Last I knew, it was some UFO guy on the radio you were obsessed with. Heard you had a picture of the Roswell crash and ratted you out to the Men in Black.”
    “Fuckin’ cocksucker. I’m never gonna call that Commie fuck’s show again. Let’s get the fuck inside in case the bitch hired a sniper.”
    In contrast to Benny Joe’s appearance and mouth, his house is extremely well-decorated in excellent taste. Lots of rich leather furniture, black stone tables and an entertainment center he says cost him a hundred grand, which I believe. He’s also compulsively neat. Not even a book out of place. The only thing that isn’t super-clean is the outside glass because the Dobermans put their faces right up against the windows and snarl and slobber the whole time there’s a stranger inside. Makes you feel welcome.
    But it’s the walls that make the place unique. There isn’t the standard framed Normandie poster or Guernica printanywhere. Instead, the entire house is covered with 48 x 36 blowups of the Kennedy assassination, tacked up with red pushpins—the only color Benny Joe uses. Says the other colors don’t hold.
    Benny Joe’s quirky, but he’s a photographic genius. A fuckin’ genius, if I can be excused for plagiarizing. He doesn’t have much of an eye as a picture-taker, but he’s the best restorer of film and video on the planet, and he can coax things out of an image no one has seen before. He makes a handsome living analyzing security camera tape for business and law enforcement. But he makes more money than God doing exactly the same thing for news organizations—who never met a consultant they couldn’t overpay.
    Benny Joe made his reputation as an analyst at the National Reconnaissance Office, the people who operate our spy satellites. He was something of a legend there, but it all came to a screeching halt one day in the Oval Office. Benny Joe’s boss had been summoned to brief the president about Middle East satellite imagery after some mindless act of terrorism had killed half a dozen Americans. But the boss was a bureaucrat, not an analyst, so to avoid looking like a schmuck in case there were questions, he decided to take along the guy who had actually done the work.
    Knowing that Benny Joe had a proclivity for offering his opinion on just about everything and a compulsion to do it X-rated, the boss warned him that if anybody asked a question, he was to stick to the technical stuff and not go into some rant about Jerry Jones or the ozone layer or the high cover charge at strip clubs or whatever it was that he was exercised about that week.
    But as fate would have it, after the Q&A, the president complimented Benny Joe on his work, then asked him what he thought about the current crisis. Benny Joe looked at his boss, who gave him a reluctant nod, and Benny Joe went with it.
    “Well, shit, Mr. President, if you really want my advice, when you get your hands on the motherfuckers who drewthis up, you should fuck them in the ass until their goats die.” Word is the prez laughed like hell, but nobody else did. Two weeks later, Benny Joe got his ticket punched to early retirement.
    Apparently they’ve had a little trouble replacing him, though, because they keep sending guys around trying to lure him back. He says that’s one of the reasons for the .357. The other reasons come and go.
    “You get that new enlarger you’ve been waiting for?” I asked.
    Benny Joe’s second floor is filled with lenses, snoots, vacuum chambers, strobes and a lot of