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,
