Blind Side

by William Bayer

  When she saw me she signaled me to stand back. For a while I watched her work. It was a strange scene, Callas singing her heart out while that lean little Vietnamese woman in the huge mask created showers of sparks.

  Finally she turned off the torch and raised her visor.

  "Want to talk, Geof-Frey?"

  I nodded. She pulled off her asbestos gloves, tossed them onto her worktable. Then she led me around the side of the house.

  We walked out into the front field, where her sculptures were set amid the weeds. Again I saw, in the strong abstract forms, images of skeletons.

  "Oh, yes, Geof-Frey," she said, "they are the icons of this country. New Mexico is crucifixes and bleached old skulls. Crosses, swastikas and bones."

  She led me to her largest piece, took my hand, pressed it to the metal. "Caress, Geof-Frey. Feel the texture. The sun and the rain, how they mark the steel. Old wood, iron….. they change here. Age. Adapt. In time they become….. part of the land." I looked at her. She had aged in the years since I had met her, but there was still something youthful in her face, her eyes. There was a moment there when I felt a surge of love for her, as intense as the love I'd felt so long ago in Saigon.

  "Mai ."

  She brought her finger to her lips.

  "Don't say it, Geof-Frey. "

  "You know wat I'm going to say.

  "What you're doing here. I don't want to know. Frank doesn't tell me. Better you don't tell me. Best keep it secret. Okay?"

  "Okay," I said.

  "Frank has changed. Do you see it?"

  I nodded.

  "He's more bitter now. Kids don't see it yet. He's so kind with them. But I worry. One day they will see. He needs luck, Geof-Frey. Before too long. Life is good here. I am happy. But Frank not happy. He wants more. We have everything. But for Frank She shook her head.

  "Not enough."

  "He's an American, Mai. You know us, we're never content.

  She smiled. We walked farther into the field. Some of her sculptures had rust on them, an effect, she told me, that she liked.

  "You're sorry I came, aren't you?" I asked her.

  "Always love to see you, Geof-Frey,"

  "You think I'm bringing trouble here. Trouble for Frank.

  "Better not talk about this," she said.

  "Now I go back to work."

  I watched her as she walked urgently back across the field, then around the side of the house to her studio.

  Ali and Jessie cooked the dinner that night, a melange of dishes that Frank called "Viet-Mex." Afterwards we retired to his shop to further refine the plan. I called Kim to coordinate our trip to New York, and then, though it was only ten o'clock, I went to bed.

  In the morning, I said good-bye to Jude and Mai, thanking her for everything. At the bus stop in lose Carillos I kissed the girls.

  "So long, Geof-Frey," they said in unison. they broke up-they had rehearsed Mai's pronunciation of my name.

  When we reached Albuquerque, Frank pulled off the Interstate, then into the empty corner of a parking lot at a shopping mall.

  "Something I want to show you,' he said, reaching to the rear seat, picking up a flight bag. He opened it, removed a camera. It was a Leica R-4, the model I use.

  "This is your gun," he said.

  "Hey, Frank!"

  "Hear me out, okay? You don't carry guns, you carry cameras, right?" I nodded.

  "So here's a camera. The fact that it contains a gun-well, so what? It's still a camera, . 't it?"

  isn "Does it take pictures?"

  "No. 11 "Then it isn't a camera."

  "Okay, it's a gun in the shape of a camera. Satisfied?"

  "Not quite."

  "What's the matter?"

  "It's a gun."

  "Jesus, Geof. Going to sit here and split hairs?"

  I started to laugh.

  "What's the matter?"

  "A gun-camera!"

  "A gun concealed in a camera," he corrected me.

  "Yeah. The point is-"

  "What?"

  "It's still a friggin' gun."

  "Okay, it's a gun. It really shoots. Two shots. Twentytwo caliber. But this is not an offensive weapon."

  "It's such a cliche, Frank. I mean, Jesus! the gun hidden in the camera, It's like a cheap spy novel or something. "

  "You think this is like a cheap spy novel-is that what you think?" "Don't act insulted."

  "I am insulted. I was up half the night putting this together, to accommodate your delicate sensibilities."

  I shook my head.

  "Yeah, yeah, I know-no weapons. You only carry a camera. So when you went to see Rakoubian, planning to clobber him, you took along your old Nikon to do it with. Tell me something: What's the difference between using a camera as brass knuckles and using a camera as a gun?"

  "You're shaming me, Frank."

  "Good. That's what I want to do."

  I looked at him and then I remembered Kim's advice, to let danger and the possibility of violence excite me, to go with it rather than resist.

  "Okay, Frank," I said, "why don't you show me how it works.

  He opened the back and showed me the mechanism. He'd chopped down the handle of a single-action Beretta semi so it could only take a two-bullet magazine. He'd installed the gun in the shaft of a 90mm. Leitz Elmarit lens, whose diaphragm closed to the very edges of the barrel opening. A piece of molded plastic, easily pierced by a fired bullet, acted as the concealing front "lens" element.

  It was a clever little toy, especially the way the depth of field lever acted as the cocking mechanism and "trigger." I hung it around my neck beside my own Leica. The two camera bodies were indistinguishable. "You start carrying this as a second camera. You're an old photojournalist-nothing odd about that. You usually use a @5mm. lens, so carrying a second camera with a 90 is only logical."

  "I wouldn't want to get the two mixed up."

  "You won't," he assured me.

  "When you raise the gun-camera you can't see anything through the finder. But notice the little notch at the front of the accessory shoe. That's your sight. When you fire, don't hold the camera too close-it'll kick a little and you don't want to damage that million-dollar eye."

  I tried out the sight.

  "See-ms simple enough."

  "It is. Just aim and fire. There won't be much recoil. The gun's fixed inside the body with a small version of a Ransom rest. That holds it in place and allows for recoil and muzzle lift. The springing's set so the barrel's brought back into alignment for the second shot."

  "Is it loaded?"

  "Not yet." He opened it up again and showed me how to load it.

  "If and when you fire it, you'll be amazed at how quiet it is. There's steel-wool packing between the gun barrel and the lens shaft, with just a little room left in the back for the first ejected shell. There'll probably be more noise when the bullet hits than from the powder explosion. "

  He watched as I played with it.

  "Well?" he asked.

  "Well, what?"

  "Still think it's corny?"

  "Of course it's corny. It's also Pretty goddamn ingenious."

  "Will you carry it!"

  I'll think about it."

  "Fine. You do that, Geof. Remember, you only use this up close, eight feet or less, and you only use it if you have to. It's awkward to fire. It's not very accurate. It won't knock anyone down or blow anyone away. But you can put a bullet into a person, and a bullet in the body isn't a treat. It's a last-ditch defensive weapon. People kin pictures. So, for all its are used to seeing you ta 9 draWhacks, it'll give you one not inconsiderable advantage -the element of surprise."

  He started up the car, pulled out of the lot, and drove me to the airport.

  "I'd like you to carry this when you go after Darling, in case he tries anything, and because I think carrying it will help your confidence. But that's up to you. Naturally, you can't carry it past airport security, so if you decide to take it with you, you'll have to
stash it in your check-through I ies for carrying a concealed weapon

  "There're big=," in New York."

  "The biggest penalty I know of is death."

  "What happens if I'm caught with it?"

  "Plead innocence. You didn't know'you had it. Your -gun freak out in buddy gave it to you, this crazy camera New Mexico. Don't worry-I'll back you up."

  I knew he would too. But still I hesitated.

  "After a while you'll get used to it. Your camera and your gun-camera@they'll both be standard equipment. it'll b-e just like your credit card, Geof-you won't want to go anyplace without it."

  I held the thing up to my eye again, aime just ahead. It had a nice feel, a nice weight. it would make a good souvenir when we were finished.

  I told him to pull over,. and, as he watched I smiling, I wrapped the gun-camera in my dirty laundry and stuffed it in a bottom corner of my bag.

  It wa since I was last in New York, but the city was still as hot and damp as it had been the day I left for Miami. I taxied from the airport to the Howard Johnson Hotel on Eighth Avenue and Fifty-first Street. We'd chosen the place because it was middle-class and nondescript, full of large in and out, the kind of place where they groups moving aon't remember you at the desk, where they don't even look you in the eye.

  I found the house phone, asked the operator to connect me to Mrs. Lynch.

  "Hello?"

  "Mrs. Lynch? This is Mr. Lynch."

  A pause, then a throaty "Well, hello there, Mr. Lynch."

  "May I come up?"

  "I would surely love it if you would, Mr. Lynch."

  She was waiting for me on the bed, naked and spread-eagled, surrounded by a scent of lemon and musk.

  "Geoffrey, Geoffrey! Come do me. Quick………

  I tore off my clothes.

  "Hurry," she said. Her arms, above her head, gripped the top of the headboard. As I lowered myself upon her she arched her back.

  "Yes, Geoffrey! God! Yes!"

  We took showers after we made love, then sat in easy chairs and gazed at each other. Then I called Frank at his studio in Santa Fe, told him we'd arrived and were together. Then we got dressed, went out and walked. I told her she looked great in her big-city clothes, with her Florida tan and her bleached-out hair. She said I looked pretty good myself.

  "Weathered, kind of like a cowpoke," she said.

  We walked down Eighth toward Forty-second. It was dusk and the whores were just coming out. The crack dealers had been out for hours.

  "Great to be back," she said.

  "Feels like I've got this city by the hairs."

  "The way you've got me, Kim?"

  "The way we've got Darling," she corrected me. She smiled.

  "We're going to be rich, Geoffrey. Rich!"

  We had a feijoada complete in a Brazilian restaurantnightclub on West Forty-fifth. I ordered champagne, and after we ate we danced a few sets. She felt good in my arms.

  "to getting even," she said, toasting me with her glass.

  "And to money," she added.

  "This time it's going to work. I know it. . . ."

  At eleven o'clock we split up. She went back to our room to call Mrs. Z, while I went downtown to collect my mail.

  I hesitated outside my building. Nassau Street at that hour was as deserted as it should have been, and I didn't notice anyone lingering about. I emptied my mailbox, stuffed to its top, then rode up in the elevator. Upstairs I checked around my door. The ruined paint from the lye attack was prominently visible, but the door itself looked to be intact.

  When I opened up, there were two slips of paper lying on the floor. Messages from Scotto: "Urgent I talk to you. Call me when you get back." and "Still waiting to hear from you!" I crumpled them up, locked the door behind me, then rewound my answering machine. I dumped my mail on my desk, and, as I listened to my messages, started to sort it, throwing away the junk.

  In my wastebasket there were remnants of the Chinese carryout dinner I'd eaten just before I'd gone to see Rakoubian. The bag was swarming with roaches. I carried it to the hall and dumped it down the compactor chute.

  My phone messages weren't all that interesting. One from my gallery, another from a collector who wanted to buy a print of my PietA. Nothing, thank God, from the goon who'd threatened me before. But there were four messages from Scott@the first two pleaded, the third was slightly irritable, and the last, left two days before, expressed considerable anger that I hadn't called.

  I was deep into my mail, sorting the -bills, when my telephone rang. The sound startled me. I switched on my machine to screen the call. It was Scotto, and the first words he said were: "I know you're there. Pick up."

  I hesitated.

  "Pick up, goddamnit!" He sounded mean.

  I picked up.

  "Hi, Sal," I said. "Just got in."

  "I know."

  "How do you know?"

  "Guy works for me saw the light go on."

  "You've got my place watched? What the hell's going on?"

  "A murder investigation's going on. When're you going to stop playing dumb?"

  Okay," I said.

  "Now, why don't you cool down?"

  "I mean it, Geof-Aon't mess with me. I'll be there in half an hour. Buzz me in."

  I considered calling Frank for advice, but he'd warned me not to call him from the loft. Kim was only to make her initial calls from our motel; after that we were to use public phones. Well, I thought, maybe it's better this way, since I have to deal with Scotto anyhow. But he sounded pissed off, which made me wonder if there'd been developments and if I was in some kind of trouble.

  It was over an hour before he showed up, and when he did he came on like a bully.

  "Where have you been?" he snapped.

  "I don't think I have to answer that." He glared at me.

  All right, I've been hiding out."

  "Someplace pretty nice, looks like to me. Nice dark tan you got.

  "What's the trouble, Sal?"

  "I already told you."

  "You told me there's a murder investigation. I already knew about that."

  "Dave Ramos wants to go to the D.A., have you designated a material witness."

  "Which means?"

  "You go before the grand jury. Then you talk or else."

  "Fine. I'd like to talk. I'll tell them what I told you: my girlfriend's missing since the night her roOMmate's murdered. In the meantime my life's threatened, and someone throws lye at my eyes. When the investigating officers refuse me protection, I feel I have a right to leave town and hide o-ut."

  "Guess what, Geoffrey? You're annoying me."

  "And you're,bugging me, Sal. So why don't the two of us cut the shit. '

  "Tell me where you've been."

  "I don't want to tell you."

  "I know you've seen her." He gestured toward my reconstructed serial portraits of Kim.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "I smell it."

  "Maybe your nose is off."

  "Maybe it's not. Maybe I Smell her all over you. Maybe you've been eating out her snatch and the fumes are still coming off your face."

  I gave him a severe look of disgust.

  "I thought you were a classy guy."

  "You thought wrong--I'm a cop." I hesitated. I knew I had to give him something.

  "If I did decide to tell you anything, Sal, it would be that she doesn't know who killed Shadow."

  "How about why Shadow was killed?"

  "She doesn't know that either."

  He went quiet, just stared at me. When he spoke again it was with confidence.

  "We found that Mrs. Z you told us about."

  That worried me, though I tried not to show it.

  "What did she have to say?" I asked.

  "You won't tell me nothin'. Why should I tell you?"

  "Let's trade."

  "I'm a cop. I don't have to trade."

  "Suit yourself," I said.

  "Now, if you don't mind I've got
mail to answer here."

  He groaned.

  "You're acting like a real asshole."

  "That's the story of my life."

  "Don't be a sucker."

  "What do you want?"

  "Kimberly Yates. I want to talk to her."

  "She won't talk to you. Anyway she's out of state."

  "Which state? Okay, forget it. I won't ask you that. I'll ask this: last time we talked you were sure about one thing, that her building super didn't do it. Tell me why you were so sure?"

  "Just a hunch."

  "A hunch, huh? You know, you really are a jerk." He knew something-I could tell: he had an I-know-it look on his face.

  "Everyone thinks we're stupid. Stupid cops Thick heads. Lugs. Who else would go into this kind of work? Got news for you, pal. A few of us are bright. Dave Ramos, for instance. He gets interested in something, he starts looking around, and when he does he's very methodical. Ever hear of VIA?"

  "What's that?"

  "Visual Investigative Aid. An approach to criminal investigation. A way to chart what you know and what you don't, useful when you have a complicated case. You chart this stuff, then you draw lines in between, and sooner or later you start to see connections. You see what you need to know to put the thing together. Knowing what you need to know-in police work that's half the battle. "

  He smiled at me, and that made me nervous. He did know something, I was sure of it.

  "Okay, you call me from the airport, that means you're going someplace. So Dave and me, we listen to the tape-yeah, we tape everything. We listen and figure out you're calling from La Guardia. So we check on what flights are going out of there around the time of your call, we get the passenger lists, and, lo and behold, we find your name on a flight to Miami." He smiled again.

  "Shakes you up a little, doesn't it?"

  "A little," I agreed.

  "So we make some calls, check around Miami, hotels and stuff. And car rental companies. Don't want to forget those."

  I didn't say anything.

  "Seems there's this fella, Geoffrey Barnett, he's rented this nice little Toyota Corolla. Guy rents a car, guy returns a car. When he returns it to the airport we start checking on flights again. And guess what? We find his name, this time on a flight to Dallas with a connection to Albuquerque. So, using deduction, we're more or less sure the little honey pot's in either Florida or New Mexico. Maybe she's back here now. Not a bad suppose, since you're here and you follow the honey. Course, we can check with the airlines, run her name through their computers. Or you can tell me now and save me the time.