assignment of the blame? Even then, if I believed the whole scheme had been his and she'd been only his confederate-even then, because of its awful logic, she'd still helped to set me up and throw me to the wolves.
Well, I didn't care about Rakoubian anymore. Or Mrs. Z. Or Arnold Darling-I didn't care whether he'd gotten carried away with Sonya, or what kind of a perverted sexual monster he might be. All I could think about was Kim, and the rage I felt against her. Better that she'd been just a call girl; at least there was a particle of degraded honor in that. I could find no merit in her having been a member of a kinky performance group. was this woman whom I had loved and held and kissed-was she really so cold, false, cruel and corrupt? Had I really been so unimportant, so insignificant in her life? Had she really held me in such contempt?
I had to know.
And I knew where to go to find the answer.
2
If your pictures aren't good enough, it's because you aren't close enough. You must be part of the event.
The following morning at La Guardia airport, I stopped to call Sal Scotto from a phone booth.
'Where you been?' he asked.
'Trying to get hold of you.
'I got your messages,' I said, 'but I've been out of town. '
'We need to talk.'
'That's why I'm calling. I'm at the airport, about to leave again.'
He hesitated.
'Don't think you should leave just now, Geoffrey. Dave and me, we need clarification on a couple things.'
'Like what?'
'That super over in Devereux's building-we've been looking into him.
There're a few little items that don't quite add up.'
'Forget about him.'
'What do you mean 'forget about him'? You're the one steered us to him in the first place.'
'I was wrong. He didn't do it.'
'How do you know that?' He paused again.
'If you do know something, Geoffrey, you'd better tell me right now. Way I've gone out on a limb for you, wouldn't want to think you're jerking me around.'
'You didn't go out on a limb for me, Sal. My life was threatened. I asked you for protection and you refused.'
'Protection! That's in the movies! I did everything I could.
'Doesn't matter. Forget it. When and if I have something to tell, I'll tell you, okay? Meantime, my regards to your charming partner. 'Bye, Sal.'
'Hey! Don't hang up… He was still sputtering when I did.
It's a three-hour flight from New York to Miami. Any month between December and March is a good time to go, and October and May can be okay too if you're not a nervous sweaty type and don't like to walk too fast.
But if you make the trip when I did, on the last day of August, and arrive a little after noon on what the natives tell you is the hottest day of the year, and if you haven't lived all that perfect a life anyway, and it's occurred to you you may deserve a little stint in purgatory for your sins, you will, upon arrival, have the opportunity to know just how hot the furnaces of hell are going to be.
Actually at first it didn't seem so bad. I stepped off my air-conditioned plane into an enormous air-conditioned airport full of congenial happy people, most of whom were speaking Spanish. From there I took an air-conditioned minibus to the parking lot of the car rental company of my choice, and there transferred into my rented airconditioned car.
It was the few moments in between when I was in the open air that I'll remember all my life. I'm talking about a dank humid ovenhot heat that hits you like a fist. I've photographed in the tropics, been baked and broiled and smelled the smells, but I never experienced such a scalding hotness as I did that August day. It was composed of torrid wind, coming off the Everglades, tainted with decay, then made noxious by aircraft and automobile fumes.
And I was about to drive a hundred sixty miles deeper into the fire. In retrospect, I'm glad I did. It would have been too simple to take the plane. It wasn't that the drive to Key West was all that difficult-I was one of very few maniacs braving the road that sweltering August afternoon. But those three and a half hours on the highway gave me a chance to rest and think, and also a sense of the distance I had to go.
If Key West is, as they say, 'the end of the line,' then it may be necessary to literally travel a little of that line in order to fully appreciate the meaning of being at its end.
The turnpike led me through the southern suburbs of Miami, then on to the fringes of Everglades National Park. The divided highway ended at Florida City, and from there on it was one long commercial strip of Long John Silver's, Captain Bob's, Bojangles, boat rental agencies and live-bait shops, Once on the Keys I started to move: Key Largo, Islamorada, Long Key, Conch key, Grassy Key, Boot Key, and then the interminable Marathon, after which the honky-tonk gave way to the empty road, an asphalt ribbon crossing the islands, rolling across the bridges. There was hardly another car in sight.
My eyes began to smart as I drove into the sun. Colors were bleached to tones. The roots of the little mangrove islands looked like snakes poised to strike, and the water off the reef took on the flat purple-gray color of a bruise.
A pickup truck passed, going ninety-five. There was a rifle in the window rack, and two shirtless men in back with ragged beards and billed fishing caps, sipping beer from the can. they gave me a sinister wave, a silent greeting that said, We'll be seem' you later, hub, and, when we do, don't mess with us. Then they were gone, and ahead there was only the empty road again, the black baked-out ribbon, rolling south toward heat and emptiness.
Big Pine Key. Ramrod. Sugarloaf. Torch. The scrubencrusted islands called Saddlebunch. Then Boca Chica and Stock Island, a huge automobile graveyard, and thenfinally and at last-Key West.
At first it didn't look like any kind of paradise I had ever seen. There were gas stations and fast-food joints and a couple of shopping malls and an enormous flatroofed Sears. But when I got off the highway and drove deeper into town, a breeze blew forth, the sky began to darken, and I found myself in another world.
There was a special texture to the quiet shady streets, lined with old wooden buildings-shacks, houses, mansions all mixed together, some rotting, others superbly restored. Magnificent tropical plantings too;
I counted banyans, jacarandas, sapodillas and palms, hibiscus, oleander and fountains of bougainvillaea pouring off bal ies. And surrounding everything was a beguiling scent, warm sweet aroma of night-blooming flowers.
I wound my way through this section (which, I rned from my map, was called Old Town), I began to ecompress. I passed a young black girl skipping rope, a group of laughing Cubans clustered on a veranda playing cards. And then I spotted a truly beautiful woman of a certain age, sitting alone on a second-story balcony. I slowed my car, our eyes met, then, slowly, she smiled at me and waved.
I checked into a motel called the Spanish Moss, a little shabby, but a veritable Ritz Carlton compared with my lodgings in Cleveland. Then I took a walk.
I wanted to get a feel for the place, and so headed for the main street, Duval, to join the throngs. Here I merged with sailors, gay couples, bikini-clad adolescents carrying fishing poles, all headed toward Mallory Pier for the famous ritual of Key West-bearing witness to the sunset.
