'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
