"What kind is that?" I asked.
"Kind where we talk about who owed what to whom, and all that sort of stuff."
"Sometimes," I said, pretending to be the soul of patience, "one has to talk about unpleasant things."
She sipped her drink, then picked up some peanuts from a bowl and popped them into her mouth.
"I was in trouble-you know that now. Shadow was killed that Saturday night. I had to get away. So I left. What could I have said? How could I have explained? No, the best thing was just to leave, get out fast and clean. The less you knew the better. You see, I didn't want to drag you into it."
That did it. I felt a rush.
"But I was in it. Right in the goddamn middle of it."
"No you weren't, Geoffrey. You were safe. Anything I told you, any good-byes I might have made-then you could have been implicated. But you weren't." implicated?" Of course I was 'implicated'! Are you really pretending I wasn't?"
There must have been a vicious intensity in my voice; a group sitting at another table stopped talking and glanced nervously at us.
"Try and keep it low, Geoffrey. This bar's not tacky Key West."
"Oh, I can see that," I said, looking around.
"It's just so fucking civilized. It tells me something, that you brought me here."
"What does it tell you?"
"That you're afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of me. My anger and what I might do."
"I'm not one to be afraid of things, Geoffrey. And I'm certainly not afraid of you." She gave my arm a gentle pat, as if we were lovers who'd been parted by nothing more than a weekend business trip.
I stared at her.
"You're-incredible!"
She looked at me as if I were mad. Something was wrong, we weren't connecting, were talking about different things.
"It was all your idea, according to Rakoubian."
"You talked to him?" She snorted.
"He would say that. "
"Then it wasn't your idea?"
"What do you think?" she asked.
"If I'd known. you'd talked to Dirty Adam I'd have left you standing there on Duval,"
"Then what would you have done?"
She shrugged.
"Left town. Since this place is now obviously blown." She peered at me.
"How did you find me here anyway?"
"I found you."
"How?"
"What difference does it make?"
"If you found me, someone else might find me. Someone who could hurt me. Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"Arnold Darting? Mrs. Z?"
She exhaled painfully.
"Well, you do seem to know a lot." She squinted at me.
"Why would Rakoubian talk to you anyway? Why would he tell you about them?"
"Because I made him tell me."
"Made him?" She smiled. It was an eager smile, so eager it made me a little bit afraid of her.
"I told him if he didn't talk, I'd throw him out the window."
Her eyes enlarged.
"That's great, Geoffrey. Fantastic! Wow!" She looked at me closely again, then chuckled to herself.
"I wonder-"
"What?" And when she turned cool and didn't reply: "Jesus! Please don't act like that."
"Okay, Geoffrey, if you really want to know, I wonder if I underrated you."
"Oh, you most definitely underrated me," I said caustically.
"was that what this was all about? Rating and underrating? Seeing who could get the better of whom?"
"That certainly was not what this was all about."
"Wasn't it? You get involved in a blackmail schemer don't care whose idea it was-you get yourself involved and part of the deal is to set me up as the 'cover photographer." Then I show up here, find you, and all you can say is 'My, you're looking fit' and 'How did you find me here anyway?" What's with you? How do you hold up your head? Tell me, please. I really want to know."
She smiled.
"Is that really what you want to know, Geoffrey? Did you come all the way down here just to ask me that?"
"What else is there to ask you?"
She shook her head.
"If that's all you care about, you made a wasted trip."
"If you won't answer me, then I guess I did," I said. ,Ohl I'll answer, all right, when you get off that fucking high horse of yours. But if all you want to know is 'How do I hold up my head?-go screw yourself, Geoffrey Barnett."
"Jesus," I said, "I can't believe this. You're indignant. You!"
"Yes! Because who the hell are you to track me down here and ask me crap like that?" She finished off her drink.
"If you want to know what happened, really happened-that's something else, That might be worth talking about. But not this guilt trip you're running on me. That's crap."
"Yeah, crap . I said.
We went quiet after that. It was as if we both wanted the anger to subside, wanted, each of us, to cool down and rethink our positions.
I looked at her closely. I felt confused. Clearly there was more to the story than Rakoubian had told me. Moreover, seeing her a ain made me realize how much I still wanted her, no matter what she'd done, what horrible lies she'd told.
I knew I mustn't give in to her, that seduction was her game and if I let her seduce me again I'd be a double fool.
No matter what you feel, don't show it, I thought. Listen to her version, and then attack it. Show her up, if you can, for the fraud that she is. And then demolis@ her with your contempt.
I don't recall the exact sequence that afternoon, just that we spent it together in a variety of places, and that each time we moved, my feelings toward her changed. We walked down streets, stopped at bars, drank, then walked again. Most of the time she talked.
She tried everything-pleading, anger, big droopy-eyed sincerity. She mocked and played humble and gave virtuous high-minded testimony. And all the time she did all that, I just let her go on. It was excruciating to listen to her as she scrambled for a foothold. My stony silence urged her on to greater efforts. When I refused to grant her anything, she turned petulant and sulked. Then I'd say something to start her up again. And then she'd be off and running, again trying to persuade me. For the first time in our relationship, I felt I had the upper hand.
Wandering around in the tourist swarm at the bottom of Duval, heart of all the honky-tonk and rinky-dink, with the aroma of pot in the air, the smell of grease pouring out of the fast-food joints, the noise of amplified country music gushing out of the bars, and all the time Kimberly, eyes ablaze, swearing to me, pledging, promising, vowing that she absolutely did not know Rakoubian had been tracking us with his camera:
"Until this very moment, I did not know, I swear to you, Geoffrey, I absolutely swear, I had no idea. None!"
"Then how did he know where we'd be?"
"Followed us, I guess." She looked at me.
"What's so funny?"
"Oh, just a little thing I didn't notice at first, that the places where he shot us were all places you wanted to go; places you chose. Like he was tipped off and waiting to ambush us when we arrived."
"I didn't tell him. I swear. That's just a coincidence."
"Is it?"
"Got to be. Tell me again-where did he take all these photographs?"
"South Street Seaport and Battery Park. Also in my loft. Somehow he got into a room across the street. Then he shot us through the window."
"Can't blame me for that, Geoffrey. He didn't need me to tell him your address."
"Who left the blinds up?"
"Who do you think?"
"Must have been one of us." She smiled.
"Well?"
"What about the other places?"
"Just two, Geoffrey. Two. That's no big deal. We went out photographing maybe twenty, thirty times. Sure, most of those times I chose' the locations, but you could have overruled me."
"I didn't."
"You could have." She shook her head.
"Yo
u can't make a solid case against me, Geoffrey-not just because of Middle of the afternoon at the Green Parrot, a roughneck motorcyclists' bar, with the kind of open-air windows that lift up and out and are then attached by hooks to the ceiling of the overhangs outside: Kimberly, gazing at me, waiting for me to acknowledge her, while I listened to the pool cues clicking against the balls in back, and the little-shrieks of the teenaged girls passing by on the street.
"Knock, knock! Anyone home?"
I turned to her.
"Look, Geoffrey-what Adam told you doesn't make sense. Why would I need a 'cover photographer'? What possible use could one be to me? He was the photographer. He was the one who needed the cover. Not me. I was already exposed."
"You were in on it?"
"The blackmail@ure. Mrs. Z knew. I went to her, laid it out for her, made all the demands. What she didn't know was that Dirty Adam was stage-managing me from the wings,"
"And she never asked you who took the pictures?" Kim shook her head.
"I didn't tell her either."
"Pretty obvious, wasn't it, since Rakoubian was the 'house photographer'?"
"I don't know if it was obvious. But yes-I suppose in his mind it was. I guess what happened was he wanted to protect himself, so he stalked us and took those pictures of us, and I had no idea. No idea at all."
I looked at her skeptically.
"How come you didn't see him then?"
"He was clever. He stayed back. You said he used a telephoto, And remember: I was posing for you, concentrating on you. He was in the backgrounds of your pictures, behind me," She had a point-he didn't show up that many times.
"But what about at the restaurant?" I asked.
"What restaurant?"
"That crazy place in Tribeca with the Madonnas and the Statues oi Eiberty."
"The joint we went to that time with Shadow? Yeah, I remember-he was sitting at the bar. We said hello." She It think I took looked at me, shook her head.
"You don you there to meet him, do you?"
Ishrugged.
"Really, Geoffrey, if I was trying to set you up, wouldn't that be the last thing I'd do?"
"Maybe you're perverse,"
"That perverse?" I seesawed my hands.
"Still don't believe me?"
"I'd like to."
"What's the trouble, then?"
"There're a lot of troubles. For one thing, I think Rakoubian was too scared to lie."
"Maybe you didn't scare him all that much, Geoffrey. Maybe you weren't as forceful as you thought. I know you. You're not a violent man. You're a very gentle guy."
Perhaps she was right, perhaps I hadn't been that forceful. Though, in my memory, the violence I'd felt that night was real.
"What else bothers you?" she asked.
"The way we met. Rakoubian said when you saw me that night @ light bulb went off in your brain. He said that's when you got the idea of using me. And then you started to pursue me." She smiled.
"And you believed him? Do you really think I was wandering around New York looking for a photographer, and I saw you, and I said to myself: Hey!
There he is! Just what I need! Go for it, kid! Is that what you think?"
Of course she was right. That did sound unlikely. Suddenly I wished I could go off by myself someplace and think the whole thing through. But I was afraid to leave her, afraid that if I did I might never find her again.
"Well?" she said, waiting I shook my head.
"So?"
"He knew about it."
"Because I told him, dummy, Don't you see? You're both photographers. If I'd met Irving Penn on the street, wouldn't I have told you?"
"I suppose .
"This was the same sort of thing. I told him after I started posing for you. I said I'd met you, and I was working with you, and then I asked him what he thought.,' "What did he say?"
"He was interested. He asked a lot of questions. He said he knew your work and that you were good. Now that I think of it, he seemed a little jealous too, maybe because he's always going up to girls, trying to get them to pose, and there I was telling him how I'd chased after you, taken off my clothes voluntarily for you. Really, Geoffrey, talk about light bulbs going off in people's brains! That must have been when one went off in his. You saw what kind of creep he is. A born schemer. Later, when I told him you and I were getting into something serious-that's when he must have smelled an opportunity. He thought he could set you up to take the rap for him, just in case things went wrong."
"And he never told you about that little scheme?"
"Why would he? It was his insurance protection plan. He never told me about it because he knew I'd be furious. That I'd cancel everything. And then where the hell would he have been?" She stared at me, eyes big and innocent.
"Well?"
"Well')"
"Makes sense, doesn't it? For his own reasons, Geoffrey. His own purposes. Can't you see-I had no motive to help him set you up. I stared at her.
"Oh, boy, you're good," I said.
At Land's End Village by the shrimp docks and tacky stores, we paused beside the Turtle Krawls, pools where sea turtles were kept in the days wh – en Key West supplied turtle meat to the nation. Now the main holding pen has been turned into an old-age home for reptiles., A few ancient inhabitants paddled about listlessly near the bottom.
Kim pointed to a restaurant behind.
"I waitress over there."
I turned, saw a sprawling low-roofed building with a glassed-in terrace set beside the water. it was long past the lunch hour but there were still cars parked in front. i,d heard of the place.
"I hear it's good," I said.
"Wouldn't it have been a hoot if you'd wandered in, and I'd been assigned to be your waitress?"
"Most definitely a hoot," I answered sourly.
She looked at'her watch. shift starts at five. I want to stay with you, clear things up. I'm going in now to find someone to cover for me tonight."
I nodded, watched her disappear into the restaurant, then turned back to the Krawls. A fortyish woman with the bright eyes of a true believer was showering the turtles with hunks of squid. I peered down into the mossygreen water, saw one old monster attack a mass of tentacles with his jaws.
I thought about Kim. was she lying? Fifty-fifty, I thought. But I hoped she was telling me the truth. After Kim arranged things at the restaurant, we walked into Old Town. She took my arm as she talked:
"Rakoubian came to me. That's how it started. He knew Shadow and I were broken up over Sonya, but he ew I wanted approached me alone because, he said, he kn vengeance. He said he could see that in my eyes.
" 'So what makes you such a big expert on my eyes?"
" I asked him.
" 'Years of experience. I'm a photographer, dearie. Girls your age, they're my stock-in-trade. I know girls and I know their eyes and I know vengeful eyes when I see them. And yours are vengeful. Am I right?'
"He was right. I did want vengeance. He smelled that out. He knew my type, So he said: 'Help me get pictures Of this guy and you'll get your vengeance." And since that didn't seem like such a bad idea, I agreed.
"We talked. After a while we got onto the subject of money. The Masked Man was rich-that much was obvious. He was a rich old man. 'Just the kind of man,' Rakoubian said, 'who can get away with murder.'
"I asked Adam what he meant. He said, you know, the usual stuff: the rich don't go to jail, they can afford the kind of lawyers who keep you out. they pay off the judge, or bribe the jury, or get a mistrial, whatever-he doubted even if we managed to get pictures, they'd amount to very much. Because what then, really, would we have? Just some pictures of some rich old guy putting on a mask. Big deal! So what? Who would care? And how would that tie him to a murder? Guys like the Masked Man, Adam said, they always get away with it.
"But then he became expansive. He said he had an idea. He asked me if it wouldn't be a much sweeter revenge if we used such photos, assuming he'd be able to take them, to
make the Masked Man pay.
" 'See,' he said, 'that's what it's all about. In the end it's always money. That's the real revenge, dearie, because that's where it hurts them. The pocketbook-that's where they feel the pinch. Look, nothing's going to bring Sonya back. But we can hurt the guy for wasting her. What we have to do is get our pictures, then threaten him with exposure. Tell him we're going to turn him over to the cops. Unless he pays us a million bucks.'
"That's when the whole notion of blackmail first came up. And I liked it. I admit that, Geoffrey. I liked it very much. It appealed to me on all sorts of different levels. Yeah, I liked it. And Rakoubian could see I did. He had me figured right, didn't he? I was a tough little bitch. And he knew it. Yeah, he could see it in my eyes………
We wandered up and down Caroline, Eaton and Fleming streets and then through various lanes: Weaver, Finder, Love and Locust. As we walked the houses brooded over us; the sky began to darken, the great palms shivered and cast longer shadows. On one block we passed a porch where a parrot was tethered to a perch. It screeched at us: "Hi! Fucky-Ducky! Hi!" And then the crazy little bird cackled like a madman in the dusk.
"What's your name?" I asked her.
She looked at me.
"You know my goddamn name."
"Yeah, I know your 'goddamn name." It's your real name I want."
"Is it so important?"
"to me it is."
"What does 'real' mean?"
"Come off it, Kim. This isn't philosophy class."
"You know I'm no philosopher, Geoffrey. You know I'm just a blackmailing little bitch."
I stopped and peered at her.
"Is that how you define yourself?"
"That's how you define me now, isn't it?"
"Maybe," I said.
"But I want to know more. Your name, who your parents are, where you went to school, your past. I want to know all that. And I want to hear it straight."
She met my eyes straight on.
"Oh, I could give it to you straight," she said.
"We could go through all that crap, and then what would you know? And who's to say anyway what name is really real, the name you're born with or the name you give yourself? Is it 'Bob Dylan' or 'Robert Zimmerman'? 'Cary Grant' or 'Archie Leach." Or take Lauren Bacall-you say I remind you of her. Well, I read she was born 'Betty Perske." So is that her name? Or is her real name 'Lauren Bacall'?"
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