antees. You only have my word. Can you trust me? Let's put it this way: if you don't talk straight when I untape your mouth, you're going down to the street headfirst.
Understood?'
When he nodded I took hold of the tape and carefully pulled it from his lips. It hurt him, but not nearly so much as when I'd ripped it off.
After he recovered from his pain, he looked at me as if I were some kind of maniac. And as this was just the impression I wished to encourage, and in fact was how I was feeling, I stared at him maniacally until he spoke.
'What do you want to know?'
'Everything.'
'How much do you know already?'
'Assume I know nothing and take it from there.' He looked confused.
'Where do I begin?'' 'Begin at the beginning,' I suggested not unkindly.
He glanced at me, nodded, and then stared out across the damaged room.
The shards of his lenses were scattered all around. Perhaps it was the sight of them that finally inspired him to talk.
'It was all Kimberly'S idea… he began.
Once he got going it wasn't easy to stop him. Even with his bloodied face and bound ankles and wrists, he behaved as if he were some kind of star. I didn't bother to disabuse him. I let him digress, elaborate, puff himself up with words, because always, in the background, was his knowledge that I was dangerous. Only a totally crazed photographer would deliberately destroy a fine set of lenses the way I had.
'Kimberly and Shadow-they were part of Mrs. Zeller's group.
'That's 'Mrs. Z'?'
He nodded.
'The kids all call her that. She encourages it, no doubt because it makes her sound like a fascinating character. If you knew her, you'd probably agree she is. She's a powerful woman. Extraordinary.'
'Way I heard it, she runs an escort service, which makes her just another bordello madam to me.'
'She does not run an escort service.' He was offended.
'She's an acting coach, an extremely gifted one. She also offers unique performances for individuals and private groups.'
'So it's not 'escorts'-it's 'performances' we're talking about?'
He nodded.
'But what performances! They've been compared to Oh! Calcutta!-but they go much further and they're customized.'
He began to tell me, then, about Mrs. Z. He wanted to make sure I understood just how classy a woman she was. I let him talk, meantime trying to cope with the notion of Kim not as call girl but as actress in bizarre little plays. … it began with private parties. Mrs. Z had this group of young people. Kimberly, Shadow, Sonya, a few more, and an equal number of talented males. they were all studying with her, they were young, attractive, they needed money, and they were uninhibited exhibitionists.
So, the way it started, she'd get them to work up these sexual vignettes for private dinner groups. Very discreet. to be invited you had to be introduced. Then, after word got around and people began offering her large sums if she'd only include their particular fetish or fantasy, she fixed up the top floor of the building she owns, making it a private little stage. She writes the scripts, rehearses the players, provides costumes and direction. Some of her clients are pretty famous. People you may have heard of. I won't mention any names.'
'How do the names Harold and Amanda Duquayne grab you?'
He glanced at me, surprised. Then his eyes turned canny: he would have to be careful; I knew more than I'd been letting on.
'Yes, I've heard talk about them,' he said.
'That they're very much into that kind of thing. And other downtown people too. to them it's a species of-'performance art.'
' He laughed.
'That's what they call it. Of course it's only sex. But to justify it, they have to give it a fancy name.'
'Anyway?' I said.
'Yeah, anyway… He seemed surprised at how bored I was.
'Kimberly and Shadow were members of the group. And they were good friends too, with Sonya. Do you know about her?' I shook my head. 'She was the girl who died.'
So two girls were dead.
'Died or was killed?' He shrugged. 'It was, as they say…
'unfortunate.' According to Mrs. Z, there was some kind of accident, the poor young thing died, nothing could bring her back, and nothing could be gained by pointing fingers or assigning blame. That's what Mrs. Z said. But when Kimberly and Shadow came to me, they said something else.
He paused to blow his nose, which he then wiped on his sleeve. That gesture and the smell of his sweat and the awful jaundiced folds around his eyes made me want to turn away. But I continued to stare at him to keep the pressure on.
'they said the Masked Man did it. And it wasn't the first time he'd done something like that. Kimberly knew about some other girls, real call girls, who'd gotten involved with him and had also been badly hurt.
She and Shadow were afraid of him. they wanted to expose him. they wanted justice for Sonya, so they said.' He smiled. 'Maybe Shadow did want justice. But Kimberly. He shook his head.
'She just wanted money.'
'I take it they didn't know who he was?'
'Nobody knew. Because of his rules. See, when he would appear, he always wore his big fencing mask. Nobody ever saw him without it. No one. Ever. Not even Mrs. Z.
He smiled again. He liked his role: the man with the saga to impart.
'The scenes were held in the gutted loft on the top floor of a rotten old building she owns down on Vestry Street. The rot and ruin are very much part of the mystique. Have you any idea of the kind of well-known people, society people and people prominent in the artshow many of them have traipsed down there and gotten off on the dingy decrepit character of the place?'
Yeah, I told him, I did have an idea, then I told him to get to the point. He seemed unduly impressed by the social and celebrity aspects, but what interested me was how come no one had ever seen the Masked Man unmasked.
'Because of how things were arranged,' he explained.
'Now, the way you normally go in is through the front door. Then you climb four flights of dilapidated stairs. By the time you get to the top you're out of breath. That too is part of it-the entrance is the prologue, as they say.
'But there's a back door, too-a private entrance, which opens off a service alley behind the building. If you enter there you can take a private elevator to the top. That was the door the Masked Man used. He had his own key to it, and he entered only after everyone else was upstairs and the front door was locked. Then he'd come up in the elevator, change in a little dressing room, and make his entrance wearing the mask. When the performance was over, he'd leave before anyone else. We'd have to stay locked in until he was gone.'
He looked at me.
'to you it probably sounds grotesque. But it wasn't. Not at all. It was-I'm not sure this is the right word-to us it was almost awesome.'
Yeah, awesome.
'We used to speculate about him. You would too, if you saw this scrawny old guy, practically naked, wearing this peculiar mask, but who seemed to have such an aura about him, to exude such power, command such deference and respect. Who was he? we all wondered. He was somebody-that much was sure. But who? We didn't know. That was the little riddle Kimberly and Shadow wanted me to solve.'
'Let's go back,' I said.
'If Mrs. Z never saw him, how did they communicate?'
