"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 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.
Betrayaclass="underline" 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.