Blind Side

by William Bayer

  Kim nodded at me through it all. She smiled at my surprise when I first saw Grace topless, and giggled as I recounted my misadventures with Heidi the dog. When I was finally finished, she shook her head.

  "Did you know I was that girl?"

  "Which girl?"

  "The one Grace fell in love with," she said wistfully. was a waitress in that bar in Shaker Heights. . . ." I looked at her. There was still something that knotted My stomach: the ever-loving tone in her letter to Grace.

  "Are you still in love?" I asked.

  Kim laughed.

  "Me and Grace?" When I nodded, she turned serious.

  "I think maybe she's still a little in love with me. And certainly I feel something for her, though I wouldn't exactly call it love."

  "What would you call it?"

  "I care for her. She launched me. Loaned me the money so I could go to New York, even though that meant I'd be leaving her forever. I feel about her the way you probably feel about your friend in New Mexico-that she's my closest friend, a sister almost. Did you read my letter to- her?"

  "It wasn't in the envelope," I lied.

  We woke early, kissed, made love, showered, ate breakfast, then drove to Smathers Beach. There was hardly anyone on that southern crescent of the island, just a few joggers running along Roosevelt Boulevard and a couple of purveyors of soft drinks and tacos positioning themselves for the mobs that would descend later on.

  I parked behind a van with a map painted on its side showing its owners were in the midst of a five-year drive around the world. Then we walked out onto the sand, actually ground coral, and strode along the water's edge.

  "Oh, Geoffrey, Geoffrey. . . ." She spun around on her heel.

  "How the hell am I going to get myself out of this?"

  I took off my shirt. Though it was only eight o'clock, the sun felt wonderful on my back.

  "Seems to me there aren't too many choices," I said.

  "I'll call Scotto, tell him what happened, and turn over the photographs."

  She stopped whirling.

  "What are I you talking about?"

  "I think that's the best solution.'

  "What photographs?"

  "The ones of Darling." She looked stunned.

  "You've got Rakoubian's photographs?"

  "I took them from him. I thought I told you that."

  "Where are they, Geoffrey?" Her voice was urgent.

  "In my suitcase back at the motel."

  "Jesus!" she said.

  "I can't believe this! You've got the pictures. Oh my God!"

  She broke away from me, ran into the water, then high-stepped through it like a drum majorette.

  "We've got the pictures! We've got the pictures!" She sang out the phrase like the refrain of a song. She must have noticed me staring at her because she ran back out of the water, and took hold of my hands.

  "Don't you see?" she said as she pulled me along the sand.

  "We've got them, Geoffrey. Now we've got them! Now we're really safe!"

  It took me a while to calm her down, get her to explain what she meant. When finally she did, we were sipping tea in the loggia at the Casa Marina Hotel, looking toward the gardens and the sea, and she was stone-cold serious.

  "When Sonya was killed, they covered it up, made it look like an accident. The pictures of Darling don't prove all that much, just that he's a kinky guy who likes to wear a mask. But Shadow's different. She's a 'Model Torture Slaying." There's a real police investigation going on. And the pictures tie into it because, really, they're the reason she was killed."

  Ceiling fans slowly revolved above us, while elderly hotel guests, in straw hats and lime Bermuda shorts, shuffled by complaining of the heat.

  "Fine," I said.

  "I know all that. Now what does my having the pictures have to do with us being safe?"

  "Don't you see? We have something to bargain with. It's the pictures that made them hesitate. If they didn't care about the pictures they would never have let me go-they would have killed me then and there. And they would have killed you too, Geoffrey, since they think you were the photographer. But they didn't. they threatened you, broke in, threw some lye, talked tough to you on the phone, but they never harmed you."

  "All right," I said "so they care about the pictures."

  She nodded.

  "A lot more than they pretend. Mrs. Z says, 'Oh, they're not important, you've probably made copy negatives, the pictures are just a nuisance." But now that Shadow's been killed they're no longer just a nuisance. They're valuable because they're the motive. Give the cops the pictures and they start looking very hard at Darling and Mrs. Z. Eventually somebody talks or makes a deal, and then the two of them go on trial for murder."

  "Which is why I want to call Scotto." She shrugged.

  "That's one way to go."

  "Is there some other way?"

  "Yes . . . if we have the guts." I knew then what she was about to say.

  "No way! Forget it, Kim. Absolutely not!"

  She touched my arm, stroked it.

  "Think about it. In the first place, the way it looks, Darling isn't soiling his hands anymore. He's brought' in pros. That guy who called you, the boy who threw the lye, the people who parked the car at Newark Airport-they sound like hired goons.

  "Doesn't that worry you?"

  "Sure. Because once you go to the cops, both of us are targets. The pictures don't mean anything without the story. And you and I are the only ones who know it."

  "There's Rakoubian."

  "He won't talk, He doesn't want to die."

  "Neither do I," I said.

  "Really, Kim, haven't you had enough of blackmail? Your best friend was killed. You're stuck down here. Isn't it time to lead a normal life?"

  She stared at me, then shook her head.

  "Not yet," she said. "See, Geoffrey, this isn't finished yet. Darling and Mrs. Z-they have to pay."

  We didn't talk about it anymore, just spent the morning lying lazily on the beach. Then I took her to her apartment, waited for her to change, and drove her on to her restaurant, as she had to work a double shift. I spent the afternoon by myself, walking around Key West. After three and a half days of staking out the Post Office, I needed to break out and move.

  Toward the end of the afternoon, I wandered up to the Southernmost Point. It was a curious place, a dead-end intersection with a large striped concrete buoy bearing the words: SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A. Beside the buoy stood an old black man behind a display of shells and sponges. That was it, there was nothing else.

  The understatement appealed to me. This was the tail end of the nation. It was pathetic, and there was no reason to make anything more out of it. I stationed myself there, then started taking pictures of people taking pictures of one another as they posed before the buoy.

  It seemed to me that the premise behind their picturetaking was their conviction that by freezing selected moments from their lives they could somehow cheat aging and death. That seemed poignant to me, well worth trying to express. But it was an elusive idea, and, though it

  As the afternoon waned, I strolled down to Mallory Pier to attend the sunset. I ate by myself at a Cuban restaurant, and then went back to my room to rest. The moment I lay down I felt empty and forlorn. I'd found Kim, heard her story, and believed in her again. I had, moreover, held her in my arms, and I no longer felt the anger that had brought me to this strange tropical little town. I didn't even think it was important anymore to know her real name; she was who she was, authentic to her vision of herself.

  But I was bothered greatly by her idea that we should Continue with the blackmail. That she thought I'd even consider a thing like that disturbed me very much.

  She came to me that night after she finished work. She used my bathroom to wash away the sweat and the smell f food, then crawled into bed beside me and molded her body against mine.

  "Did you call him?" she asked.

  "Scotto. No."

 
"Why not? I was sure you would."

  "Maybe tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow's a new day," she said.

  "Are you working?"

  "Yeah, but I'm free until five." She hugged me.

  "Would you like to go snorkeling out on the reef? It's really a lot of fun. One of my roommates has a boyfriend who has a boat. We can borrow masks and tubes."

  It was fun. The roommate, Pam, a frizzy-haired blonde, was from South Carolina and spoke with a spunky Southern drawl. Her boyfriend, Doug, who owned the boat, was a genial beachcomber type.

  With their lean bodies and gorgeous tans, Kim, Pam and Doug looked the embodiment of sun-worshiping American youth. But they were nice to me, didn't make me feel apart even though I was pale and middle-aged. As soon as we were out on the water the girls took off their tops. Then Doug showed me how to snorkel. The reef was fascinating, the corals beautiful and delicate. I learned the names of different varieties: elkhom, staghorn, pillar, flower, brain.

  I liked the schools of tiny fish that darted between the corals, and the occasional moray eel that wriggled its way among the underwater trees. Doug pointed out sponges on the ocean floor and an encrusted cannonball from an ancient wreck.

  The girls had brought along a hamper of sandwiches.

  We ate, I took portraits of them, and then we headed back. The whole trip, spent with attractive friendly kids, made me feel good burned by the sun, washed by the sea.

  After Kimberly went off to work, I returned to my room, stared at the phone and thought about calling Scotto. But I decided to put it off – I knew that once I called him, my life would be changed. I wasn't ready to break m Kev West idyll yet.

  The next day Doug picked us up in his ratty jeep and drove us up to Sugarloaf for flats fishing. Again the girls took off their tops. Kim's anointings of my skin with suntan oil finally began to take effect.

  When Kim caught a bonefish, I immortalized her victory with a photograph showing her holding up her catch and grinning like Ernest Hemingway,

  When we got back to Key West and she went off to work, I thought again of calling Scotto, and again I put it off. I studied Rakoubian's pictures for a while, to see if they contained something new. The shots of Darling in his mask were frightening, but the hurried pictures of him going into buildings seemed almost innocuous.

  Several times on my various walks I'd passed the Key West Public Library. At two the next afternoon I entered the low pink-hued building, found a chair in the small reference section, and spent the afternoon researching the mysterious architect.

  He appeared, from the pictures I found of his various homes, to be as rich as Rakoubian had said. In a spread on his Manhattan town house in Architectural Digest, I saw two paintings by Gauguin on the dining room walls and a portion of his priceless collection of Japanese scrolls and screens.

  But it was his remarkable vacation house in Jamaica that intrigued me most, a building he had designed himself. In this elegant structure, made of bleached wood and great expanses of glass, he had tried, he said, "to combine the majesty of a Palladian villa and the austerity of a traditional Japanese house."

  Each piece of furniture was a handmade original, every object exquisitely chosen, every flower perfectly arranged. Floating above the fireplace was a gilded medieval sculpture of an angel. It seemed improbable that a man who had created such a paradise could be so awesomely corrupt.

  But as I read other articles I found subtle indications.

  "A tough boss, incredibly demanding, he doesn't suffer fools gladly," an associate said.

  "He's quite capable, when displeased, of treating you as if you don't exist."

  Another architect, a rival, said, "We are what we build, and Arnold Darling's buildings reflect his soul. Sharp, hard-edged slashes against the sky, there is no comedy in them, no wink of complicity. His is a brutalism that conceals its brutality. Darling diagrams the cruelty of our corporate age."

  I believe in the efficacy of photographs, that a welltaken picture can often tell you more about a subject than even a firsthand look. So I pored over photographs of Arnold Darling's work, searching for keys to the man, and by the end of the afternoon I began to understand a lot.

  He was secretive. The articles told me that, but his buildings expressed it too. No question that he was an artist who channeled his feelings into structure and form; the buildings were strong, sometimes even magnificent, but there was also stealth and cunning in them, a clandestine rage and a taciturnity that matched his tight-lipped face.

  Walking from the library down to Mallory Pier, I thought about Darling in his mask. Why, I asked myself, does he wear a fencing mask, instead of one made of rubber, or one of those fetishistic black-leather jobs you see in sex boutiques?

  There was a reason he liked the fencing mask, and the more I pondered it, the more clearly I saw how that was connected to his designs. Such a mask does not cling to the contours of the face; rather, it acts as a second skin. Darting's buildings were like that, seamless, self-protective. Their vauttlike doors gave an impression of impenetrability and their deep-tinted windows hid their occupants from sight.

  But there was more. A fencing mask, designed to protect the face from the consequences of combat, is, by its nature, aggressive. It's the mask of the warrior, the man who attacks, and who, while so doing, conceals his eyes.

  At the bottom of Duval, I paused before a person I'd noticed several times before, an old man, sitting against a wall, quietly playing a harmonica. When our eyes met, he gestured toward a tin cup by his feet. I put five dollars in it and asked if I could take his picture. He nodded, then began to play again.

  As I focused on his face I was struck by its vulnerability, the very opposite of what I'd seen in I)arling's. There was pathos there, and pain, and the ravages of life. Nothing in his countenance was masked.

  I think it was at that moment, the moment I took that picture, that all the anger I'd previously felt toward Kim was suddenly transferred to D-arling. I hadn't cared about him before, but now, on my way to the sunset ritual, I began to care very much. This was the man who had murdered Sonya and Shadow, and had ordered lye thrown at my eyes. He was rich and secretive and evil, and now I too began to hate him.

  The hatred seethed in me all that nip-ht. but if Kim @Me' to me after sensed it, she didn't let on. When she c work, she was gentle and loving. She stroked and fondled me and whispered endearments in my ear.

  The next morning, when we were eating breakfast, I asked her what she meant by "pay."

  She looked at me curiously.

  "You said Darling and Mrs. Z 'have to pay.

  She laughed.

  "Pay money, of course."

  "Would that really do it for you?"

  "it would be reparation."

  "Doe s money repair?"

  "Of course not, but it can help." She gazed at me.

  "If a person feels injured and sues for damages and wins and is paid, that helps to even up the score. That's why people looking for equity always ask for money."

  "You sound like a lawyer."

  "I'd have made a good one. I have a lot of indignation. I think you've noticed that."

  "So you want Darling to pay us a million dollars?"

  "That wouldn't be so bad now, would it?" She smiled.

  Later at the beach, as she was oiling my back, I brought up the subject again.

  "Why would he pay this time, when he refused before?"

  "Because of Shadow. The case against him is stronger now. "

  "But he's made it clear he won't pay. That's what Rakoubian said."

  "Rakoubian's stupid. He doesn't understand. Of course he'll pay if he's got no alternative."

  The way she was sitting on me, rubbing in the oil, reminded me of the massage I'd gotten from Grace. I liked the feel of her weight on my body. Suddenly I felt aroused.

  "We'd have to do it differently this time," I said.

  "Yes, we'd have to be much more clever. And now that we know where Mrs. Z st
ands, we wouldn't be falling into any traps,"

  "What about that affidavit you signed?"

  She played her fingers on my neck.

  "Who cares? It confirms my story. I signed it under duress. It was a fake anyway, just a way to make me think they'd let me go."

  "Blackmail isn't all that easy, Kim. Sooner or later you have to show to collect your money."

  "Between the two of us, Geoffrey, with all our brains, I'm sure we can figure out a way."

  I turned, looked up at her.

  "Then what happens? What's to prevent them from killing us afterwards?"

  "The same thing that kept them from killing us in the first place."

  "What's that?"

  "The photographs."

  turned my head back to the sand.

  "We wouldn't turn them over-is that what you're saying?"

  "I wouldn't, would you? But even if we did, we'd keep back copies. they know that. Mrs. Z said as much."

  "In that case, what would they be paying for?"

  "Silence.

  "You've thought this through."

  "I've spent a-month thinking about it." She bent forward, lay her face against my back, kissed my spine.

  "Do you think it can be done, 'Geoffrey? You know, done properly?"

  The next two days, while I tortured myself over the problem, she acted as if she didn't have a care. It was as if, having transferred the burden to me, she finally felt she could relax.

  We went about our routine, swimming and snorkeling in the mornings, then she would go to work, and I would walk around taking pictures and feeling agonized.

  Though we spoke of many different things during our times together, our brief exchanges about the blackmail ran through our conversations like a thread:

  "What do we do about Rakoubian?" I asked her. We were lying in bed in my motel. She was fondling me through my clothes.

  "Ignore him."

  "What if he wants a cut?"

  "He gave up his right when he chickened out. Jesusl Why worry about him?" She stroked my cock.

  "Now, here's something worth discussing," she said.

  Afterwards, resting together, my hands cupping her breasts, I asked her what I should say to Scotto.

  "Tell him anything you want."