I splashed cold water on my face, threw on some clothes, then noticed that the keys to the rental car were gone. The car wasn't in the motel parking lot either. Kim had obviously taken it.
I walked a mile down Cerrillos to Guadalupe Street, then another half mile toward the Plaza. Traffic was heavy, the trucks spewed out fumes.
A teenage girl, in a lose Alamos T-shirt, leaned out of a car window and snapped my picture with a "point 'n' shoot."
I was sweating by the time I reached Frank's gallery. And then I was annoyed-the door was locked. I knocked and peered in through the glass.
No sign of Frank. And no note telling me when he'd be back.
I was about to give up when he came out of his darkroom, saw me and let me in.
"You said get over here. Then you lock me out."
"Hey! Calm yourself." He motioned me toward the darkroom.
"You're just in time to watch me print."
He hustled me inside, closed the door, shushed me when I tried to speak.
He had an excellent darkroom. There were three enlargers, including a monster 8 x 10 loaned to him by Leo DeSalle. At the moment he was working with a Beseler. He had a strip of 35mm. negative locked in the negative stage. He motioned me back- ' checked his focus, set his grain magnifier aside. Then he slipped a sheet of paper into his easel and fired off an exposure.
I followed him as he removed the sheet, carried it across the room to his sink. He glanced at me, then dropped it facedown into a tray of developer. He poked it with a pair of tongs, flipped it over, and then, as he began to agitate, we both bent forward, waiting for the image to emerge.
It didn't come quickly. Frank didn't use rapid developing papers; he liked only the heaviest most silver-laden varieties. And so it was a good minute before I was able to see that the subject of his picture was Kim.
She wasn't alone. I couldn't make out the other woman. But I could see they were conferring in what looked to be a garden. As the print grew clearer I saw a numbered door in the background. It wasn't our door at the Seek And Ye Shall Find.
"When did you take this?"
"About an hour ago."
"Where?"
"A motel called the Alamo, half a mile from where you're staying, I shot it through the bushes from the other side of the pool. Rooms that border on the pool have these secluded patios in front."
I understood then why he'd avoided meeting Kimhe'd wanted to be able to watch her without being recognized.
I turned back to the print, looked closely at the second woman. Her features, tough and Slavic, were finally coming clear.
"Who is she, Geof?"
I recognized her-though I couldn't quite believe my eyes.
"That's Grace Amos."
"Yeah." Frank sighed.
"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.