Blind side

4

Here's something I have to tell you, Geoffrey. Wanted to tell you in the car… but I was afraid."

It was I:00 A.M. We were lying naked in a huge double bed in the Seek And Ye Shall Find Motel in Santa Fe. It had been thirty-six hours since we left New York. We'd spent most of the evening in the room eating carryout food and watching TV. I'd just turned off the set. I was bone-weary, about to close my eyes, when Kim announced she had something to say.

"Mrs. Z was in the building when I burned it. There wasn't any way to get her out." And then, when I didn't react: "Don't you hear me, Geof?

She got burned up."

She spoke in a monotone, tired and subdued, as if recounting some ordinary little fact.

"Poor Mrs. Z-she's just cinders now," she added wistfully.

"Sounds like a very bad dream," I said, all my denial mechanisms running flat out.

"Prettier to think so, isn't it?" She settled back, stared at the ceiling.

"She double-crossed me. I had to see her. I had to protect myself.

Then… things got out of hand." She paused again.

"Starting that fire-I thought it would be difficult. But it wasn't. It wasn't hard at all."

I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so I stayed silent. Then, to make the time pass, I looked around the room. It had the sorrowful quality of most motel roomsschmaltzy framed prints on the walls, ruffled lampshades and other mawkish touches meant to make it seem like home, but which, because they spoke of the anonymity of the person who had chosen them, made me long for my Manhattan loft.

She turned to me.

"Don't you want to know why, eoffrey?"

"Sure. Tell me why," I said quietly.

She started to speak, then caught her breath; perhaps she feared the effect of what she was about to say. When she finally spoke it was in a rapid stream, as if blurting it out, like removing a bandage fast, would somehow hurt me less.

"I lied to you in Key West. Rakoubian told the truth. The blackmail was my idea. Except it wasn't. He just thought it was. I brought it to him-that much was true. But the original idea came from Mrs. Z."

The room started to feel cold.

"She came to me after Sonya was killed, said we could backmail Darling and make a fortune. That all we needed were some photographs and for that we could use Rakoubian. She told me to propose the idea to him without telling him she was part of it. I did. I even helped him set up his camera in the changing room. Mrs. Z gave me the keys. Now the poor creep's dead and he never knew she was behind it all."

"And the 'cover photographer-who was behind that?" I asked, suddenly on a knife's edge between fury and helplessness.

"Oh, Geof, believe me: Rakoubian thought that up on his own. I swear to you, Geoffrey, I didn't know. I. had absolutely nothing to do with that."

I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, knelt on the tiles in front of the toilet and began to heave. I wanted to throw up. When nothing came, I moved to the sink and splashed cold water on my face.

Later I stood against the bathroom door and studied her. Our sheet covered her to her waist; she was bare above. Her hands were linked behind her head, her hair splayed on the pillow. The spaces beneath her arms were dark. I couldn't see her eyes.

"You do believe me, don't you, Geoffrey?"

I shook my head.

"I swear!"

"You swore to me before."

She looked up at the ceiling.

"That was in Key West."

For a moment I didn't know what she was talking about. Then I thought I did.

"Oh, I get it. Everything you said down there was false. But that doesn't matter because Key West is-what? A liar's paradise? Is that what you want to say?"

She didn't answer, just continued staring at the ceiling. I watched her awhile longer, waiting for her to speak. When she didn't, I broke the silence.

"I take pictures of you. We talk, sleep together, make love. But for all of that, after all these weeks, I have no idea who you are."

She shrugged.

"I'm just a girl you met who got you shooting people again."

"Yeah. An ordinary girl."

"Go ahead, mock me. But I want you to know-"

"What?"

"Know me, Geoffrey."

Ilaughed.

"What's the matter?"

"Everything," I said.

We'd left New York the day she burned down the building, traveling under assumed names. I'd flown to Dallas on one airline, she to St. Louis on another. We'd each spent the night in our respective city of transit, then continued to Albuquerque, where we'd met that morning at the airport. We'd rented a car, eaten lunch at the Sanitary Tortilla Factory, then had driven up to Santa Fe.

Frank had been adamant: the three of us must not be seen together. So Kim and I had cruised Cerrillos Road looking for a suitable motel. We chose the Seek And Ye Shall Find because of its pink-and-white facade, and because the name appealed to Kim-it was, she said, pretty much the story of her life.

What was that life? What had she been seeking? And what had she managed to find? What was she seeking now from me? That's what I wanted to know.

She'd told me so many different stories I couldn't keep them straight.

At least one of them, I figured, had to be true. But then, I thought, that might not necessarily be the case. Perhaps all of them were lies, I was thinking about that, and what I was going to do about her, when finally she began to speak, in a strange emphatic way I'd never heard her use before.

"She thought up the whole thing, brought me into it. Then, when the crunch came, she chickened out. Maybe she thought Darling would find out she was the blackmailer. Maybe he accused her, so she had to give him proof that he was wrong. Whatever the reason, she switched sides.

Didn't say anything, just switched. One day I was her dear accomplice, next I was good as dead. She sold me out to save her ass. Only reason she let me get away was she knew I'd tell Darling the whole rotten scheme was hers."

"Yeah, Kim. But the bottom line is she didn't kill you, did she?"

She shook her head furiously.

"She would have! She lured Shadow to be killed. That was the night I ran to you. And you were there for me, Geoffrey! You were the only one I could trust. Now, isn't it funny? You don't trust me at all. Even now, now, while I'm telling you the real truth, you don't believe a word I say. Not a solitary word."

"Is there a difference?" I asked. She stared at me confused. "Between the truth and the 'real truth'-is that a distinction I should know about?"

"All you do is mock me, Geoffrey."

"Want me to feel sorry for you?"

"That's not what I want!"

"What do you want?" "I want you to believe me! I want you to love me!"

I retreated back into the bathroom, sat down on the edge of the tub. Oh, Christ, I thought. Jesus Christ!

Later, sitting in the motel-room easy chair, feet stretched out on the matching ottoman, I tried to get her story straight. Kim faced me, attentive, straight-backed and cross-legged on the bed, her perfect bared breasts thrust forward, harbingers that she would speak the naked truth.

"Now, let's see if I've got this right," I said.

"First, Mrs. Z doublecrossed Darling." She nodded.,,Then the two of you set up Rakoubian."

She nodded again.

"Then he got the idea on his own to make me look like the blackmail photographer."

"So far you've got it right."

"Then Mrs. Z got scared and double-crossed you. She lured in Shadow and turned her over to Darling. Under torture, Shadow inadvertently pinpointed me. So they came after me, thinking I'd taken the photographs."

"Couldn't tell it better myself."

"Meantime, after you and I got back together, you decided to take revenge. But before you got around to it Rakoubian was killed, because you told Mrs. Z he was the real blackmail photographer."

She shook her head.

"She already knew that. It was Darling who didn't know. You told him when you ambushed him on the street."

"So I signed Rakoubian's death warrant-is that what you think?"

She thought about it for a moment.

"I suppose you did… in a sense."

Yeah. In a sense.

"Which brings us," I said, "to the night before last, when you slipped out after I fell asleep. was it your idea you were going to send Mrs. Z a message?"

"Not send her a message, Geoffrey. She was going to be,the message." 'You went there to burn her?"

She looked appalled.

"Absolutely not! All I wanted to do was turn her around, make her see things our way. Also I wanted my extortion confession back. It was a loose end. I didn't feel comfortable with it floating around. "

"And then?"

"Like I told you-things got out of hand."

"Out of hand! You're incredible! You burn an old lady to death, and you talk about it like it was just some freak accident or something, like you were at a dinner party and by mistake you spilled some wine on the damask!" Her eyes closed down to slits.

"Old lady! That's what you think she was? She was evil, Geoffrey-totally evil. She was a witch. You've got to burn a witch!"

She told me what happened. When she called Mrs. Z, after she discovered Rakoubian had been killed, her old acting coach begged to see her. That morning the cops had come around asking about Sonya, and a little while later Darling had called her in a rage. My ambush had gotten to him; he wasn't used to being on the receiving end.

Then the Duquaynes called, and they were the final straw. Everything was falling apart.

So Kim told her, sure, they could probably work something out, she'd stop by to see her later on. She didn't say when, just suggested Mrs. Z leave the key to her back door beneath a garbage can in the alley, and sometime in the night she'd drop in.

"I woke up around three o'clock. You were snoring away." She smiled.

"Guess all our lovemaking wore you out. You looked adorable in your sleep. Adorable…" She giggled.

"Anyway, I got up, dressed, taxied downtown, found the key, crept in and took the elevator up. She was waiting for me in her bedroom. I sat down on the bed and we talked.

'You double-crossed me,' I told her calmly. 'The whole thing was your idea, then you sold me out." 'But I had to, my dear,' she said. 'You don't know Arnold. He's ruthless when he's angry. It was me or you. I chose myself. You would have done the same."

"She wasn't humble or scared the way she'd been on the phone. No, she was haughty and arrogant. She said the time had come for the two of us to make peace, and that we could still do a deal if I was interested.

She said Darling was furious because of what you'd done to him that morning. All his fury was now focused on you, Geoffrey. You! There was only one way I could set things right, and that was to betray you. If I did that the slate would be clean. Darling would relent. I'd be off the hook." She glanced at me.

"You look skeptical."

"I guess I am," I said.

"Don't you want to hear what she wanted me to do?"

"Sure. Tell me," I said.

"You speak so casually, Geoffrey. It's as if you don't believe anything I say." I didn't know what to believe, but I was curious.

"Why don't you tell me," I said.

"Then I'll let you know if I believe you or not."

She nodded.

"I was to bring you around in the morning to a certain address.

Darling's people would be waiting for you there. I wouldn't have to come in. I only had to deliver you to the door. They'd snatch you right inside." She turned and stared at me, directly into my eyes.

"they were going to blind you, Geoffrey. Hold 'you down, then slowly drop acid into your eyes. Drop by drop, and Darling was going to watch them do it. He was going to stand over you with a camera and take photographs of the whole thing. Pictures of your pain, your fright.

That's what he was going to do, Geoffrey. That would be his revenge!"

I started to shudder. My pulse began to race. All the terror came back to me from the night the boy had come and thrown the lye. I didn't think then about whether she was telling the truth. All I could think about was blindness. A little bottle of acid in someone's hand. The liquid moving slowly to the bottle's lip. The first drop trembling slightly, reluctant to depart the glass. Then falling, falling slowly toward me. Darling leering. The flash of his strobe. I shut my eyes to make the vision disappear. And Kimberly talked on.

"The moment she said that I went into a fury. I picked up this coffee thermos she kept beside her bed, and brought it right down on her head.

When she went limp, I turned her on her belly and looked around for something to tie her with. There was a coil of rope we used for our bondage scenes. I knew just where it was. I ran and fetched it, and then I tied her up."

She paused as if to catch her breath.

"That was the weird part, Geoffrey. I'd never touched her before. In class she always had us touching each other, but she always kept aloof.

So there I was, handling her, tying knots around her limbs, and doing that got me excited, like finally I had this power over her-I was in control.

"When I had her hog-tied, I went to the kitchen and found the varnish remover. She woke up while I was pouring it around. 'Going to burn me, Kimberly?" 'Yeah, you got it, Mrs. Z!" I said."

Kim rolled her head across the pillow, as if she were suffering some sort of delirium.

"She started blubbering, begging me to spare her. But I felt no pity, none at all. I couldn't forget how she'd played solitaire while Sonya's bones were being broken. And the way she'd smiled when she'd showed me the video of Shadow being tortured. ,, 'No deals,' I said, 'it's your turn now." I smacked her again, untied her, and started all these fires around the room. I stayed until the flames caught the bedding, then waited across the street until the fire engines came. I left when I heard a fireman say the smoke was so thick he couldn't check if anyone was trapped."

She stopped rolling her head.

"I hurried back to our hotel. I remember I sang to myself in the shower there, just an old song to help me forget. But I was glad I'd done it.

And I haven't regretted it since. I figured that since killing Rakoubian had been their message to us, killing Mrs. Z would make a good message back. And it turns out I was right too. Darling heard us loud and clear."

I must have looked at her strangely then, because she smiled back.

"Yeah, I've talked to him, Geoffrey. I phoned him from St. Louis last night. Told him to get his ass out here, and don't forget the cash.

Told him if he didn't show day after tomorrow, the same thing was going to happen to him."

"Jesus! You called him! Where did you get his number?"

"Out of Mrs. Z's book before I lit the fires. I'm glad you weren't with me, Geoffrey. It wasn't pretty. Not at all. But like I said, maybe you have to burn a witch. Maybe that's the only way to get rid of one…

Her eyes closed not long afterwards, as if her act of confession had made it possible for her to sleep with impunity. But I lay awake beside her, more frightened than I'd been since the night of the lye attack.

She was a killer. I'd seen joy in her eyes even as she'd admitted that.

Now I was entangled with her. We were lovers and partners in a blackmail scheme. For all I knew, I might also be accessory to a murder. And more frightening than any of that was my conviction she had still not told me the entire truth.

A little before dawn I stole out of our room, took the car, and drove down to Galisteo. The house was quiet when I drove up, so I sat in one of the deck chairs in front and waited for the sun.

It rose out of the mountains, triumphant light, burnishing Mai's sculptures turning them into images of broken dinosaurs. By the time Frank sat down beside me I was starting to wonder if things were as bad as I'd thought.

He surprised me: he already knew Mrs. Z was dead.

"Kim phoned from St. Louis, told me everything. f told her to call Darling and what to say. After she spoke with him, she called me back and we talked for quite a while. "

"About what?"

"You, mostly, Geof. I told her she had to tell you the truth. Told her if she didn't, I probably would. She said she'd think about it. Thanked me for my advice."

I looked at him. His eyes were spectral, fracturing the rising sun.

"I'm frightened of her, Frank."

"She's crazy about you."

"Is that what she says?" He didn't answer.

"What the hell am I going to do?"

"Wait till this is over, then decide."

"Let's get the money first-right?"

"We're close now. You don't want to mess up the deal. "

"Two more people are dead, Frank."

"Two very bad people." He shook his head.

"Look, Geof, you didn't 'kill' Rakoubian. He was always going to get killed. As for Kim's little bonfire, if you look at it a certain way, it was a pure act, a justifiable act of revenge.

"Does that make it okay?"

"Maybe not 'okay." But human. Very human."

"You don't think she's a monster?"

"What's a monster? I don't think you have to be afraid of her, if that's what you mean."

I turned to him.

"Why wouldn't you see us yesterday? You didn't want to meet Kim. Why?"

"I'll meet her eventually."

"But not now. This idea the three of us can't be seen together-that's bullshit." He shrugged.

"Why?" He didn't answer.

"Don't you trust me, Frank?"

"Course I trust you. And now I want you to trust me. Sometimes, in this kind of an operation, it's better to keep a few things compartmentalized."

I didn't quarrel with him, but I was upset, which is why, when he urged me to stay for breakfast, I turned him down. Also, I wasn't in the mood to face Mai and the kids. Our parting was cool when I left to drive back to Santa Fe.

In our room at the Seek And Ye Shall Find, I found Kim breathing heavily, evidently asleep. When I got into bed she reached out for me, then molded herself against my flank.

I don't know how long I slept or what I dreamt about; I remember only that I was awakened by a harshly ringing phone. Groping for it, my eyes still closed, I could feel she was no longer in the bed.

"It's Frank. I'm at the studio."

I opened my eyes. Kim was gone. The room was filled with blinding light. I looked at my watch-it was almost one in the afternoon. Kim probably woke up, saw I was sleeping, then walked down to the Plaza to shop, I thought.

"What's up?" I asked Frank. "Developments. I think you should come over here."

"Developments?"

"Better get your butt over here, pal." He hung up without saying good-bye.

I splashed cold water on my face, threw on some clothes, then noticed that the keys to the rental car were gone. The car wasn't in the motel parking lot either. Kim had obviously taken it.

I walked a mile down Cerrillos to Guadalupe Street, then another half mile toward the Plaza. Traffic was heavy, the trucks spewed out fumes.

A teenage girl, in a lose Alamos T-shirt, leaned out of a car window and snapped my picture with a "point 'n' shoot."

I was sweating by the time I reached Frank's gallery. And then I was annoyed-the door was locked. I knocked and peered in through the glass.

No sign of Frank. And no note telling me when he'd be back.

I was about to give up when he came out of his darkroom, saw me and let me in.

"You said get over here. Then you lock me out."

"Hey! Calm yourself." He motioned me toward the darkroom.

"You're just in time to watch me print."

He hustled me inside, closed the door, shushed me when I tried to speak.

He had an excellent darkroom. There were three enlargers, including a monster 8 x 10 loaned to him by Leo DeSalle. At the moment he was working with a Beseler. He had a strip of 35mm. negative locked in the negative stage. He motioned me back- ' checked his focus, set his grain magnifier aside. Then he slipped a sheet of paper into his easel and fired off an exposure.

I followed him as he removed the sheet, carried it across the room to his sink. He glanced at me, then dropped it facedown into a tray of developer. He poked it with a pair of tongs, flipped it over, and then, as he began to agitate, we both bent forward, waiting for the image to emerge.

It didn't come quickly. Frank didn't use rapid developing papers; he liked only the heaviest most silver-laden varieties. And so it was a good minute before I was able to see that the subject of his picture was Kim.

She wasn't alone. I couldn't make out the other woman. But I could see they were conferring in what looked to be a garden. As the print grew clearer I saw a numbered door in the background. It wasn't our door at the Seek And Ye Shall Find.

"When did you take this?"

"About an hour ago."

"Where?"

"A motel called the Alamo, half a mile from where you're staying, I shot it through the bushes from the other side of the pool. Rooms that border on the pool have these secluded patios in front."

I understood then why he'd avoided meeting Kimhe'd wanted to be able to watch her without being recognized.

I turned back to the print, looked closely at the second woman. Her features, tough and Slavic, were finally coming clear.

"Who is she, Geof?"

I recognized her-though I couldn't quite believe my eyes.

"That's Grace Amos."

"Yeah." Frank sighed.

"I thought so. But I needed to be sure. "

I looked at him.

"What's she doing here? What the hell's going on?"

He picked up the print, ran it through the stop bath and then into a tray of fix.

"I think something pretty bad is going on," he said.

I stayed with him while he printed out his surveillance shots, waited patiently until he developed each sheet. It was a tortuous way to find out what he'd seen, but for me, that afternoon, a slow tortuous way was best. I could have inspected all his negatives at once; I preferred to watch the situation unfold.

And unfold it did. The sequence of shots, which he'd grabbed very cleverly from a concealed position beside the motel pool, showed Kim and Grace talking, embracing, then kissing. The last shot showed them disappearing into Grace's room, arms wrapped about each other like lovers.

"Blackmail wasn't Mrs. Z's idea. And it wasn't Kim's. Grace was the brain behind everything. She had to be."

We were in Frank's Land Rover, driving south, on our way to inspect the payoff site. I was still in a daze, reeling from the darkroom, but Frank kept calling our destination "the battlefield," and, like a warrior anticipating combat, spoke in sharp clipped phrases while clenching a cheroot between his teeth.

"I even think it was Grace's idea to set you up as the 'cover photographer." She had Kim plant it with Rakoubian, and he fell for it@f course. Got to hand it to the dyke. She had a terrific plan. Get Rakoubian and Mrs. Z to do the dirty work, and you to take the blame.

Get Darling to kill off Rakoubian, then have Kim kill off Mrs. Z. Not hard to figure out what they've got in store for us, once we get the money out of Darling. Get rid of us, scoop up the loot, then go off hand in hand into the sunset. Shit! It's so fucking Byzantine, Geof.

Double crosses within double crosses within one enormous fucking double cross."

I stared out the window. The shrub grass was starting to redden; autumn was coming to New Mexico.

He laughed.

".. always worried about Grace. The trail to her was just too slick. You see that Cleveland number on your phone bill, fly out there, find the house, follow her to the topless joint, manage to wangle yourself a date. She offers you a massage, giving you just enough time first to find the photograph of Kim upstairs. Then there's the friendly neighbor woman conveniently posted next door to help you get the little doggie back inside the neighbor woman who hasn't spoken to Grace in years, but knows in just which particular potted plant she hides her extra key. See: they made it seem hard, but it wasn't hard at all. And diverting you through Cleveland was a brilliant stroke-it gave Grace the chance to look you over, see if you were right for what she had in mind."

Crazy as it sounded, it made sense.

"But why me?" I asked.

"they needed a photographer."

"There're plenty of photographers."

"Sure, but you're special, Geof. Somehow they found out about you, that you were a portraitist who couldn't take portraits anymore. That's how they got to you. And you didn't see it happening because they came at you from your blind side. That's what they counted on-that you wouldn't see."

My blind side. Sure. I'd have been a sucker for anyone who'd have come along and helped me overcome my block. There'd been several times when I'd been ready to stop chasing Kim, when I knew I'd been a fool. But still I kept coming, afraid that if I didn't find her again I'd slip back into the hole she'd found me in.

Frank paused to relight his cigar.

"It's Grace who's been pulling the strings. Everyone's, including ours.

She works through Kim."

"But why? Why does Kim do it?"

"Oldest reasons in the world, Geof. Love and money." He laughed again.

We drove on in silence for a while.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"No way are we going to let them take away that money! We've come this far, we're not tossing in our jocks."

He had it figured out. Darling was due in Santa Fe the following morning. Assuming he showed up, and Frank was sure he would, we'd proceed with our original plan. Kim would contact Darling, arrange the pickup out to the payoff spot. Then, while Kim and I made the exchange, Frank would confront Grace. They'd have, he said, a little talk.

"What kind of little talk?" I wanted to know. "Sufficient to discourage her."

"And if she doesn't get discouraged?"

"She'll get neutralized."

"How?"

"That's my problem. Yours is keep hold of the money."

"What if Darling tries to kill us?"

"He probably will. So we'll have Kim do a little wetwork.

Wetwork-what the hell is that?"

"Hey, Geof! Don't go soft on me. I told you up front there could be killing in a deal like this. Anyway, it's Kim you should worry about.

Once that money's in her hands, things'll get dangerous. Whatever you do, don't turn your back on the lying little bitch…

He turned off the highway, then drove along a dirt road. He followed a stony track, then cut cross-country. He pointed ahead as we came around the side of a hill. I looked, saw a cluster of half-finished wooden buildings.

"There's our battlefield."

But they weren't buildings, they were fagades, the ruins of an old movie set. Low-budget Westerns had been shot there years before. Now the place was abandoned.

"These days, when they make a Western, producers want an entire town,"

Frank explained.

"Not just Main Street, but side streets too, a hotel, a second saloon, a courthouse, a big white church with a steeple. There's no water or electricity here, and it's hard to get to. No one's shot a movie here in years."

Frank, however, had shot many still pictures there. After he found the site he'd been haunted by it, and had come back numerous times to photograph. One day when he was shooting, a couple from Albuquerque drove up. they turned out to be the owners, who'd recently inherited the land.

When they found out Frank liked the place, they asked if he'd be interested in buying it. He offered them thirty-five hundred dollars, they haggled for a week, and finally sold it to him for four. He showed me around, and, as he did, I understood why he liked it for the payoff.

It belonged to him, he controlled the access, so if Darling brought along goons and they tried to follow him in, we'd spot them in time to get out.

Also, the set was remote. The tracks that led into it didn't appear on maps. There were no farms around, or ranches, or Indian burial grounds-nothing to attract a stranger or a tourist.

But its best quality was the special mood created by those rotting old faqades. Set up in the middle of nowhere, they constituted a kind of ghost town (a false ghost town, to be sure, since there had never been a human settlement there)-haunted, otherworldly, and thus psychologically intimidating.

Frank sketched out the scenario:

"Say you're a guy who's never been out here before. You've brought your cash, you're ready to deal, and late in the afternoon this gorgeous babe picks you up-at your hotel. She takes a look at your money, gives you a quick weapons search, then drives you out into the countryside. It's almost twilight, you're thinking you're driving into wilderness, then she turns off the main road, hands you a blindfold and tells you to put it on.

"Okay, you can tell by the feel of the car that she's driving along on dirt. But you don't know which direction she's going, and when she finally stops, and you take off the blindfold, you find yourself in this weird environment.

"There're these strange deserted storefronts behind you casting long shadows on the dust. Could be armed men behind them ready to shoot you if you make any fancy moves. Meantime it's getting cold and dark and you can't see all that well. And, on top of everything else, no one's there-you have to wait.

"After a while, a good long while, this guy steps out through the creaky old saloon doors. He's this photographer guy who ambushed you a few days before in New York, and now he's walking toward you, confident, taking your picture as he comes. You show him your nioney, he shows you his incriminating photographs, you make the exchange. He walks back into the saloon, you get back in the car and the girl drives you back to your hotel. So'@Frank looked at me-"how do you like it so far'."' "So far it's fine. What happens to me?"

"You walk right out through the back of the set. Come on, I'll show you."

I followed him to the saloon doors, he pushed them open, then I followed him through. they creaked as they swung closed behind us. In back the faqades were unpainted wooden walls, held up by a network of supports.

"You walk through here carrying the money, then you follow the path around to the other side of the hill. My old Volvo's parked back there.

You get in and follow the back road out. Kim doesn't know about the Volvo or the back road. She only gets one dry-run ride out here with me tomorrow morning. She won't have time to come back and check around.

Plus she'll have no reason to suspect you. "What if I run into her on the road?"

He shook his head.

"You'll be driving the opposite direction. You go back to the Madrid road, then follow the track along Galisteo creek. You stop at my place, drop off the money, then drive back to Sante Fe, where the three of us meet to split the loot."

"And by that time, hopefully, you'll have persuaded Grace to leave."

Frank nodded.

"One way or another."

"And Darling? What about the 'wetwork'? When does that take place?"

"We'll leave that up to Kim."

We approached the Volvo. I got in, turned the ignition switch. The car started up. The gas gauge showed the tank was full.

"Okay," I said, "it's a good plan. So tell me: what's the flaw?"

"The only flaw is Kim may be tempted to kill you after the exchange.

Darling too, of course."

"Both of us?" That sounded impossible.

"to make it look like you killed each other," he said.

"Jesus, Frank!"

"It's a possibility."

"What's my defense?"

"First, she doesn't know I'm not behind the storefronts covering you.

Second, she likes you. Third, she's not afraid of you. She's only afraid of me."

"Why only you?"

"Because I'm ex-Special Forces. I'm a mercenary. I'm in this deal for the cash. You're not likely to go on the warpath if she and Grace steal the money. But I am, so I'm dangerous. When we're together for the split-that's when I figure they'll try and take us out."

"And if you're wrong, if she tries to take me out right here?"

"You have your gun-camera, Geof. If she tries anything -use it. Don't even hesitate."

I nodded, then turned away, waiting for that idea to sink in. Such a thick aura of treachery had come to surround the enterprise that at that point no betrayal seemed impossible.

Betrayal: the word was in my mind.the rest of the afternoon, as I walked about Santa Fe.

"You need time to think it through, put it together in your head," Frank said, as he dropped me off at the Plaza.

I wandered the central part of the city, the area of expensive galleries and boutiques. Everywhere there were tourists gawking at Navaho rugs, Santa Clara pottery, necklaces, rings, belts embellished with silver and turquoise. And all the while two phrases echoed in my brain: I've been used; I've been betrayed.

Over and over I asked myself how I'd fallen into such a vortex. Did she love me? Apparently not. Had she ever? I doubted it. Had I loved her? I definitely had. Did I now? I couldn't.

When, weeks before, back in New York, we had lain in my bed watching Double Indemnity, Kim had told me she was sure Phyllis Dietrichson decided to use Walter Neff the minute he walked into her house.

Had she known she was going to use me from the moment she spotted me on Desbrosses Street, and then with a sultry confidence asked, "Are you iin alien creature?"

It seemed she had, that that meeting between us might not even have been an accident. And the irony of it was that though she'd apparently known all about me from the start, I still knew nothing about her. Not even her real name.

The next twenty-four hours were extremely tense.

That night Kim and Frank met for the first time, when the three of us had dinner in the atrium of the Villa Linda shopping mall. It was a perfect spot for such a meeting. There were a dozen fast-food outlets ringing the walls, with tables and chairs set under a skylight in the middle. People walked by, but no one lingered. The place was totally anonymous.

Frank was highly attentive to Kim. She couldn't possibly suspect he knew her secret. Watching them together, listening to them talk and plot, I still couldn't quite believe what he'd uncovered.

But he'd shown me photographs, and generally speaking photographs don't lie, no matter what Dave Ramos thinks. Grace was in Santa Fe. She and Kim had met. They'd conducted themselves like lovers. And the feeling I'd had very early that morning-that Kim had still not told me the entire truth-was well home out by Frank's analysis.

He was right about another thing too: the trail through Grace in Cleveland to Kim's hideout in Key West had been much too easy to follow.

I'd congratulated myself on what a shrewd detective I'd been. Now I understood I'd been a fool.

I made love to Kim that night. I had to. I was afraid that if I didn't she'd suspect that I knew. At first it was awful. Her lies were so abundant, calculated and ensnaring, I quivered at each caress. She misunderstood my trembling, mistook it for passion. And when that seemed to arouse her, I played along. Then I actually started to enjoy it. It was so easy to play false, revel in deceit. Perhaps I was beginning to understand her. was Frank right? was she motivated only by love for race and money? Or was there something more-some actual pleasure she took in perfidy? I tried to put myself in her place, understand how it felt to have done what she had done, to plan the things that she was planning-as if life were a game in which to play was to cheat, to speak was to lie, and the only purpose a lover had was to be used and then betrayed.

Frank came by early in the morning, first to show Kim the way out to the battlefield, then to drive her to Albuquerque to see if Darling came in on the plane.

I stayed in our room at the Seek And Ye Shall Find, trying to make sense out of what was happening. I even considered walking up to the Alamo to have my own little talk with Grace. But what could I say to her, when, it seemed, I had totally misinterpreted our encounter? And then it struck me that even as she had pretended to be my friend, I had betrayed that "friendship" when I broke into her house.

Lies, lies… everywhere mendacity. And now all our individual lies, reaching a critical mass, were about to converge and to explode.

The phone rang a little after 1:00 P.m. It was Frank, calling from the airport.

"He's here!" he said.

Not only had Darling arrived, but he was exerting an especially tight grip on an oxblood leather attache case.

"It's even got brass corners," Frank said.

"That's where the money is."

There was, he said, no sign of accompanying goons. He was sure the man had come to deal. And Darling hadn't spotted Kim. After she'd pointed him out, Frank had kept her in the background. Even if Darling suspected he was being watched, he had no knowledge of who his watcher was. He put Kim on the line.

"God, it's exciting! I've been dreaming about this for weeks. Just a few more hours, Geoffrey.

"Yeah. Then easy street," I said. they returned to the motel a little after 3:00 P.m. to give me their report.

Darling had rented a car and driven to Saiita Fe. As instructed, he'd taken a casita at the posh Rancho Encantato. As soon as he'd checked in, Kim had called him on the house phone, told him to present himself at the front gate at 5:45. She'd pick him up no later than 6:00. If anyone was with him, or if he wasn't carrying the money, or any attempt was made to follow her car; the deal was off. He had only one shot at buying our photographs. Blow it, she told him, and he'd be out of luck.

Now she wanted to rest until it was time to pick Darling up.

"Got to come down from the high," she said.

"See you on the battlefield." She kissed me at the door.

Once we were back in Frank's car, he turned to me.

"Play kissy-pussy games with Grace-that's what she means by 'rest."

" I asked him what he thought of her.

"Attractive and seductive. Can't blame you for falling for her, Geof.

"But you wouldn't have-is that what you're saying?"

"No, I'm not saying that. I might have fallen for her too. "

"So, I haven't been a total fool."

"The only fools in this game," he said, "will be the guys who end up dead."

Out at the site we went over everything, walking through the exchange three times. I played Darling's part, Kim's, and then my own. I understood my most important task was to give Kim and Darling the impression that Frank was hidden behind the storefront watching my back.

When Frank thought I was sufficiently rehearsed, he presented me with a chocolate bar and a thermos of water. He suggested I take some pictures. He thought using my camera would help me pass the hours until Kim and Darling arrived.

He wished me luck with Kim, and I wished him luck with Grace, then he got into his car.

"So, now it's just the two of us," I said. "Yep. Just like a buddy picture, Geof."

I didn't use my camera to pass the time. At that point photography seemed irrelevant. There were two cameras around my neck, one of which wasn't a camera but a gun. But, on that particular afternoon, it was the phony camera that seemed most real.

I strolled about, the afternoon wore on, the shadows lengthened and the light started turning sweet. When I sat down on the saloon porch to eat my chocolate bar, I heard a sound that made me jump. A rattlesnake slithered out from beneath the steps. After that I kept clear of the set.

At 6:15 I started watching the valley, alternately looking at my watch.

By 6:30, when our rental car had not appeared, I began to worry. Had something gone wrong? Maybe Darling had changed his mind, or maybe he'd pulled a fast one in the car. What if he'd decided to take Kim hostage, only agreeing to release her when we handed over the photographs?

Finally, on the verge of despair, I spied a trail of dust. It was the car. The sun was behind me; its rays caught and glittered off the chrome. If it was Kim, she was driving extremely fast. I watched awhile to be certain it was really she, then retreated to my position behind the saloon doors.

She drove straight to the place where I'd been standing, then stopped hard, creating a little storm of dust. I saw Darling sitting beside her wearing his blindfold. He didn't look animated. Then, when I saw her leave the car clutching his brass-cornered attache case, I realized something was wrong.

She set the case down in the dust, then continued around to the passenger side. I remember thinking how curious it was that she was wearing an evening dress. Then, when she opened the door and Darling fell out, I knew right away that he was dead. I rushed out of the saloon. By that time she was backing the car away. I stared down at Darling, then pulled his blindfold off. Even in death his tight thin lips were pursed and his chin tilted up with arrogance.

Kim had parked a hundred feet away. Now she rushed toward me, looking radiant.

"Geoffrey! I did it! It's over!" She plunged into my arms.

"'What happened?" , I shot him as soon as he put on the blindfold. It wis spooky driving out here sitting beside him, but I couldn't just dump him on the road.

Open the briefcase, Geoffrey." I stooped and opened it. It was stuffed with ne'atIV arranged bundles of fresh currency bound by rubber band "See! I got it! Frank's idea. I mean, why go through that whole dumb payoff routine? Just see that he had the cash, then let him have it. He said you wouldn't do it, you'd hesitate. 'Do your wetwork as soon as you can,' Frank said. So that's just what I did."

I believed Frank had told her that, that there'd been more than one part of the plan he'd kept compartmentalized. I was angry with him for that, but not half so angry as I was afraid. For now I was truly afraid of Kim. If she was capable of assassinating Darling as he sat right beside her in a car, she was perfectly capable of killing me.

"What did Grace tell you to do?" I whispered.

"Grace? What are you talking about?"

I exploded: "Don't try and fake with me, Kim! Frank spotted you. He took pictures of the two of you kissing in her patio."

"Pictures! Why, that prying little sneak!"

"You're the sneak. Whose idea was it anyway, hers or yours?"

She shook her head and glared at me.

"Fuck you, Geoffrey! Whose do you think?"

"Tell me!"

"Hers, of course. She thought up the whole thing."

"Yeah. So now that you've got the money, what does she expect you to do about me?"

She lowered her voice.

"Kill you, of course."

"Of course. Then make it look like Darling and I killed each other, right?"

"Oh, Geof!" she moaned.

"What about Frank? He'd fol ow you to the ends of the earth if you pulled a stunt like that."

"I know, I know… 11 "So? Are you going to kill me?"

Tears formed in her eyes.

"Do you really think I could?"

"I can't be sure. Can I, Kim?"

She nodded, as if to acknowledge that was true. Then d me.

"I'm a bad person, Geoffrey. I make My ON Sometimes I think -.." She lowered her voice"Sometimes I think I'm really evil." She pulled back, placed her hands on my shoulders, then linked them behind my neck.

"We'll have to kill Grace. We won't be safe until we do. She'll want the money. She'll come after us. We'll never breathe free with her alive."

"What about Frank?"

"Kill him too. Then there'll be more for us."

"He's my friend!"

She squinted at me as if I were some kind of fool.

"Fine, Geoffrey, if you feel that way, you can split your share with him."

"So long as you get half?"

"That's my deal with Grace."

"And I'd better match it. How can I ever trust you now?"

"I don't know, Geoffrey. I don't suppose you really can:" She pressed herself against me, forced her mouth against mine.

"I want you, Geoffrey. I want to make love with you-right here. Now.

In the dust. With Darling's body on the ground. And the money… the money very close. The light playing on us, spotlighting us. How do you call it, Geoffrey? The 'splendorous failing light." That would be great. The look of it, I mean. The splendor of it. The baroque effect. With the shadows long and ominous. Like the end of an opera.

Or those weir(ifilm noir movies you like. Wouldn't that be something?

Wouldn't it?"

She kissed me again, then rolled her tongue across my lips. Then she burrowed her mouth into my shoulder and nibbled on my skin. I could feel the bite of her teeth, smell the lemon-and-musk scent of her hair. ere's something I have to tell you," she said, speaking softly against my chest.

"Frank's dead. Grace killed him, walked into his studio an hour ago and shot him in the face. It was fast. Frank never even knew. But she's crazy, you see. That's why we have to get rid of her."

I felt something go weak within me then-my best friend dead, Mai a widow, four kids orphaned on account of me. This was worse than Guatemala, worse than anything. Now the whole enterprise was meaningless.

"Where's Grace now?"

"Back at our motel."

Grace was waiting back in our motel, because she knew Kim was coming back alone. I took a step, backwards. I knew then what I was going to do.

"What's the matter?"

"I want to take your picture," I said.

"You always want to do that when you're afraid. Think I'm going to kill you, Geoffrey? That I'm a black widow spider or something? Are you really still afraid of me?"

I raised my camera.

"Sure. Maybe a little bit."

She brushed my camera aside.

"Later."

"Now, Kim. While there's light. Before we make love. A shot of your … eagerness." She smiled. She liked that. She stepped back from me. We stood six feet apart.

"Afterwards we'll make love in the dirt. Promise?" I promised.

She stood looking at me.

"How do you want me to pose?"

"You're fine the way you are."

"Isn't there some special thing you want me to do?" She placed a hand on her hip, stuck out the other and assumed a self-mocking sultry pose.

She should do something.

"Tell me you're evil, Kim. Whisper it just the way you did."

I raised Frank's gun-camera to my eye, cocked it by pulling the depth-of-field lever.

"How did I say it?"

"Softly. You smiled at me in a way I'd never seen you smile before."

She smiled then, that same special way, and, when she did, I plugged her. There was a little pop, nothing loud at all, and simultaneously a neat little hole appeared in her throat. She raised her hand instinctively to protect herself, but she was a good two seconds too late. She looked at me surprised, then fell to her knees, then rolled onto the ground. The setting sun painted her red. I watched as the blood spurted from her wound.

"I'm going to die," she said.

I stood and watched her. She was pressing her fingers against her throat.

"I'm afraid, Geoffrey. Help me. Help me. Please. I looked down at her. She was still pressing the wound, trying to stop the flow.

"Find a phone. Call an ambulance."

I shook my head.

"Please," she begged. She was trembling and her eyes were clouding up with pain.

"Going to watch me die, that what you want to do?" She looked over at Darling's attache case, then smiled knowingly.

"The money. You did it for the money. Sure."

"I never gave a shit about the money, Kim."

She tried to laugh at that, but she was too weak and could only smile.

"You really were going to kill me after we made love," I said.

She nodded.

"You got me first. Didn't think you had the balls for a move like that." She swallowed hard. I could hear the blood gurgling in her throat.

"I always underestimated you."

She looked at me curiously then, as if she were seeing me for the first time. Then another wave of pain swept across her face.

"Finish me off. Please, Geoffrey."

"No more bullets," I lied.

"My gun. In my purse in the car." I didn't move, just watched her.

"Please, Geof. Please. It hurts so bad."

I knew it hurt, but I wasn't going to shoot her again. Instead I let my gun-camera drop, picked up my working Leica and focused in on her eyes.

She didn't turn away, stared straight at my lens. She looked truly evil then, like a dying reptile. Maybe this time, I thought, I'll get her right. I took her picture. Afterwards I picked up Darling's attached case.

"Please," she whimpered, "stay with me. Don't leave me alone."

I didn't stay with her. When I left she was still alive. the sun was sinking, and there wasn't anything I could do for her, no purpose I could serve. Walking to the car, I saw a pair of vultures, black forms circling slowly against the darkening sky. When I reached the car, I turned for a final look. The sun was gone. I couldn't see Kim; she was lost in the shadows cast by the set.

I looked up. Four more vultures were perched on the roof line of the movie-set facade. That old rattlesnake will finish her off, I thought.

And then those ugly birds will have their dinner. She and Darling will be white bones in a couple of weeks.

You find bleached-out bones and skulls all around New Mexico.