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
