Maybe she's gone down to the lobby, I thought, to buy a newspaper, or get some aspirin, or munch on something in the coffee shop. I picked up the phone, dialed the desk, asked the clerk to page the lobby and restaurant for Mrs. Lynch. He said the restaurant was closed and there wasn't anyone in the lobby, and he'd been on since five and the only person he'd seen go out was a man in logging clothes.
He promised he'd page her anyway and call me back if he saw a woman around. I waited ten minutes by the phone before I realized it wasn't going to ring.
Maybe, I thought, she went out for a walk. She was overexcited and couldn't sleep. I dressed quickly, went downstairs, checked in with the clerk. He told me where to find the all-night eating places in the neighborhood. I thanked him and stepped into the street. it must have There was a slick on Eighth Avenuerained, though I'd had no sense of that inside the hotel. The air was sticky. The autumnal flavor of the day before was gone. The yellow glow of the streetiamps was reflected in the pavement. I could hear the wail of distant sirens downtown.
No whores around. They'd long since gone home, or were out on dates, or wherever they went. The transvestites and pimps and dope dealers were all gone too. Only a few homeless people remained, a man curled in a doorway down the block, another sprawled across a grating in front of a discount movie house across the street.
I made the round of coffee shops, but didn't see her. And then I wandered aimlessly, After a while I found myself beside the river. No trucks around, everything closed, and the damp air stagnant without a trace of Wind. The sirens still shrieked far away. I watched the oily water lapping around the rotting piers. She went somewhere, 'somewhere specific. She had'a destination. The only thing I could think to do was go back to our room and wait.
The sun was well up by the time I returned. There were people on the streets and the traffic had begun to build. A big air-conditioned bus was double-parked in front of the hotel. The lobby was choked with baggage. The desk clerk didn't notice me. A group was in the process of checking out.
As I rode up in the elevator I felt depressed. I told myself she shouldn't have deserted me this way. She should have left me a note, an explanation. But that wasn't her style. I'd learned that before. She came and went as she pleased.
I knew she was back the moment I opened the door. Her clothes were piled in the center of the room. There was an odor in the room too that didn't belong@omething harsh and resinous.
I could hear water running. She was in the bathroom. I moved to the doorway and looked in. She was taking a shower, singing to herself, an old Cole Porter tune:
"It's the wrong game with the wrong chips, Though your lips are tempting, they're the wrong lips,"
I leaned against the doorframe, waiting for her to finish, watching her perfect body in silhouette against the plastic curtain.
"They're not her lips but they're such tempting lips.
She pulled the curtain, saw me, and then, for the briefest instant, she looked scared. A moment later she flung herself upon me, naked and wet.
She hugged me while planting kisses on my face.
"Thank God, you're back, Geoffrey! It was terrible."
"What happened?"
"I had to take a shower to wash away the smell. My clothes stink of it too. I'm going to throw them out."
"Stink of what?" She was trembling.
"Varnish remover."
I stood back from her. That accounted for the resinous odor in the other room.
"Why varnish remover? I don't understand."
She shook her head.
"That's what I used. Hold me, Geoffrey. Please." Her eyes were wild.
She had the same on-the-edge took the night she'd come to me after running away from Darling's men. I held her.
"Used for what?"
"to set the fire."
"Jesus, Kim! What are you talking about?"
"The message-remember?" I shook my head.
"Come on, Geoffrey. Of course you do. Frank told us to send them a message, demonstrate that we were serious. Well, that's what I did. It was a big message too. It said, Don't mess with us, do what we say."
I could feel her body shaking in my arms.
"My God, what did you do?"
She looked up at me.
"I was so furious about what they did to Adam, I guess I got carried away." She stood back. Droplets clung to her body. Her hair looked great, wet and tangled. She looked so good I wanted to screw her then and there.
She pushed her mouth against my shirt, spoke against my chest.
"Early this morning I torched Mrs. Z's building. Firebombed it. When I left, it was in flames. The whole rotten place was burning up." She looked up at my face again.
"God, how I wish you'd been there, Geoffrey! to see the flames! to see them dance!"
4
I want to photograph what is evil…
Here's something I have to tell you, Geoffrey. Wanted to tell you in the car… but I was afraid."
It was I:00 A.M. We were lying naked in a huge double bed in the Seek And Ye Shall Find Motel in Santa Fe. It had been thirty-six hours since we left New York. We'd spent most of the evening in the room eating carryout food and watching TV. I'd just turned off the set. I was bone-weary, about to close my eyes, when Kim announced she had something to say.
"Mrs. Z was in the building when I burned it. There wasn't any way to get her out." And then, when I didn't react: "Don't you hear me, Geof?
She got burned up."
She spoke in a monotone, tired and subdued, as if recounting some ordinary little fact.
"Poor Mrs. Z-she's just cinders now," she added wistfully.
"Sounds like a very bad dream," I said, all my denial mechanisms running flat out.
"Prettier to think so, isn't it?" She settled back, stared at the ceiling.
"She double-crossed me. I had to see her. I had to protect myself.
Then… things got out of hand." She paused again.
"Starting that fire-I thought it would be difficult. But it wasn't. It wasn't hard at all."
I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so I stayed silent. Then, to make the time pass, I looked around the room. It had the sorrowful quality of most motel roomsschmaltzy framed prints on the walls, ruffled lampshades and other mawkish touches meant to make it seem like home, but which, because they spoke of the anonymity of the person who had chosen them, made me long for my Manhattan loft.
She turned to me.
"Don't you want to know why, eoffrey?"
"Sure. Tell me why," I said quietly.
She started to speak, then caught her breath; perhaps she feared the effect of what she was about to say. When she finally spoke it was in a rapid stream, as if blurting it out, like removing a bandage fast, would somehow hurt me less.
"I lied to you in Key West. Rakoubian told the truth. The blackmail was my idea. Except it wasn't. He just thought it was. I brought it to him-that much was true. But the original idea came from Mrs. Z."
The room started to feel cold.
"She came to me after Sonya was killed, said we could backmail Darling and make a fortune. That all we needed were some photographs and for that we could use Rakoubian. She told me to propose the idea to him without telling him she was part of it. I did. I even helped him set up his camera in the changing room. Mrs. Z gave me the keys. Now the poor creep's dead and he never knew she was behind it all."
"And the 'cover photographer-who was behind that?" I asked, suddenly on a knife's edge between fury and helplessness.
"Oh, Geof, believe me: Rakoubian thought that up on his own. I swear to you, Geoffrey, I didn't know. I. had absolutely nothing to do with that."
I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, knelt on the tiles in front of the toilet and began to heave. I wanted to throw up. When nothing came, I moved to the sink and splashed cold water on my face.