"they said the Masked Man did it. And it wasn't the first time he'd done something like that. Kimberly knew about some other girls, real call girls, who'd gotten involved with him and had also been badly hurt. She and Shadow were afraid of him. they wanted to expose him. they wanted justice for Sonya, so they said." He smiled. "Maybe Shadow did want justice. But Kimberly . He shook his head.
"She just wanted money."
"I take it they didn't know who he was?"
"Nobody knew. Because of his rules. See, when he would appear, he always wore his big fencing mask. Nobody ever saw him without it. No one. Ever. Not even Mrs. Z.
He smiled again. He liked his role: the man with the saga to impart.
"The scenes were held in the gutted loft on the top floor of a rotten old building she owns down on Vestry Street. The rot and ruin are very much part of the mystique. Have you any idea of the kind of well-known people, society people and people prominent in the artshow many of them have traipsed down there and gotten off on the dingy decrepit character of the place?"
Yeah, I told him, I did have an idea, then I told him to get to the point. He seemed unduly impressed by the social and celebrity aspects, but what interested me was how come no one had ever seen the Masked Man unmasked.
"Because of how things were arranged," he explained.
"Now, the way you normally go in is through the front door. Then you climb four flights of dilapidated stairs. By the time you get to the top you're out of breath. That too is part of it-the entrance is the prologue, as they say.
"But there's a back door, too-a private entrance, which opens off a service alley behind the building. If you enter there you can take a private elevator to the top. That was the door the Masked Man used. He had his own key to it, and he entered only after everyone else was upstairs and the front door was locked. Then he'd come up in the elevator, change in a little dressing room, and make his entrance wearing the mask. When the performance was over, he'd leave before anyone else. We'd have to stay locked in until he was gone."
He looked at me.
"to you it probably sounds grotesque. But it wasn't. Not at all. It was-I'm not sure this is the right word-to us it was almost awesome."
Yeah, awesome.
"We used to speculate about him. You would too, if you saw this scrawny old guy, practically naked, wearing this peculiar mask, but who seemed to have such an aura about him, to exude such power, command such deference and respect. Who was he? we all wondered. He was somebody-that much was sure. But who? We didn't know. That was the little riddle Kimberly and Shadow wanted me to solve."
"Let's go back," I said.
"If Mrs. Z never saw him, how did they communicate?"
"Only by phone, according to her. No one even knows how he found out about what she did. The first time he was probably brought as someone's guest. And then when he saw what was possible, that, in fact, anything was possible if you had enough money and were willing to pay, he got in touch with Mrs. Z and made special arrangements for himself.
"The way she explained it to us, he'd call, outline what he wanted, she'd make some suggestions, they'd come to an agreement, then he'd commission a performance for a particular date. Then he'd come and go unseen, just the way I said, leaving the fee in cash in the changing room. We speculated about the amounts. The kind of things he liked and the fact that they were put on for him alonefor that kind of very private performance, we all thought he probably paid a lot."
"Fine, Rakoubian. Nicely told," I said.
"Now, exactly what kinds of things are we talking about here?"
He grinned.
"Special things. Sexual things. Call it 'violent theatrical sex if you like."
"You mean orgies?"
"I do not. Performances, sexual performances. Very artistic sometimes. At least the ones I saw . . . "
I didn't argue with him. One man's art is always another man's trash, as borne out by his own split-beaver rk, samples of which were still simmering in acetic d on the floor. Yes, the fumes from my show of force re still in the air-a reminder of the menace I had ught into his sleazy little life.
Perhaps he sensed the menace again then too; when his eyes met mine, I saw loathing in them, which quickly shifted to obsequiousness, as he begged me to loosen the twisted coat hanger that was cutting so painfully into his shins.
He nodded when I refused. He was an Armenian; he knew how to accept a bitter fate. And yet this fat sadeyed little perfumed man with the silly little airs, with blood caked on his cheeks and ears, was, in some awful sense, my double. I looked at him and he looked at me, two photographers eyeing each other with mutual contempt. It was midnight, and I still had questions; the interrogation of the bound prisoner went on.
"So what did the Masked Man actually do?"
"Sat in his chair and watched."
"He didn't participate?"
"As far as I know, only one time. That was when the accident occurred."
He took a deep breath then and looked beseechingly at me, to indicate how greatly he would be in my debt if only I would loosen his bonds. I shook my head. He was the kind who probed constantly for a weakness, and, if and when he found one, would never relent. Better, I thought, to leave the wire cutting into his ankles, lest he think me merciful and begin to lie.
"I don't know much. As I mentioned, there were clients who did participate. But not the Masked Man-he seemed strictly the spectator type. He'd watch and then he'd leave. It was harmless. Just a special kind of private show.
According to Rakoubian, the Masked Man liked to see girls hurt. That was his thing, and so all the scenes constructed for him were built around that theme.
Kimberly was particularly good at it, Rakoubian said; she would wince and contort, so you were sure she was in terrible pain. But, he emphasized, a kind of ecstatic pain, a pain willingly accepted because it was erotically charged.
There was this notion of sacrifice too, he said-that the girl would submit in order to please. A very old story, of course. But the beauty of it, the interest, Rakoubian insisted, lay in the variations and details.
Anyway, one night the Masked Man expressed a desire to join in. The evening had begun normally enough. That particular night Sonya played the part of victim, which seemed to turn the Masked Man on. She was just the type of thin, proud, blond, imperious girl he liked to see victimized. And so he asked Mrs. Z if he could take her into another room to engage in a private scene.
At first Mrs. Z refused. Her interest was in artifice. Though there was violence in her scenes, and at times the violence seemed real, it was never extreme, no one was ever really hurt or marked.
But the Masked Man repeated his request, and this time Mrs. Z conveyed it to Sonya. And even though, like the others, Sonya found the Masked Man spooky, she agreed because she was hard up just then, and was looking to make enough so she could leave New York, move back to Europe and start over as a model.
Rakoubian was reaching the climax of his story. He checked my eyes, to be sure I was still under his spell. Then he began to speak with a quickness and an edge he hadn't used before.
"There was some dickering back and forth over the money. Then they finally agreed on a price. Then Sonya went with him into another room. And then something went wrong. The Masked Man got carried away. Sonya was killed, there was a great deal of distress, and Mrs. Z had to cover everything up.
"Things weren't the same after that. A couple of the kids quit and the Masked Man disappeared. But then one night he was back again, sitting in his old chair, doing his thing as if nothing had occurred. It was shortly after that that Kimberly came to me."
"Why?"
He squinted at me.
"I don't know what you mean?"
"Why you?"
He addressed my question with a maximum display of dignity.
"She knew me, that's why. I worked for Mrs. Z sometimes.
What kind of work?"
Photographic work. Stills, videotaping. Scenes her clients wante
d captured on film. So Kimberly came to me, because she knew me as the house photographer. She said she wanted pictures of the Masked Man so she could blackmail him on the murder. She said she wanted to make him pay for what he'd done to Sonya. Pay heavily, she said."
"What was the deal?"
"Find out who he was, Get pictures of him, preferably ones that showed him putting on or taking off his mask. After I got them, we'd present him with a set of prints and make our demands. Kimberly was talking about asking for a million dollars. I thought that was grandiose. But we agreed, whatever we'd get, to split it down the middle."
"So you got the pictures?"
"I got them. I staked out the back entrance, and, using infrared, got some good shots of him coming in. The I n Kimberly managed to get me inside one time when Mrs. Z wasn't there, and that's when I planted a camera in the ceiling of the dressing room that I could operate by remote.
"I got lucky, got the goods. The shot of him in the performance room was easy. Once I saw his face, and knew who he was, I followed him around, got more pictures of him on normal film. But the crucial picture, my tour de force, was the one of him taking off the mask." I picked that photograph up, looked at it again.
"Who is he?"
"You don't know?"
"I've seen the face, but I don't connect it to a name."
"The name's Arnold Darlin The moment he said it I remembered: I'd seen him in a brilliant color photograph on the cover of Fortune a couple of years before. I recalled the picture well. Darling was posed before an intimidating black office tower. I could even remember the caption underneath: "Arnold Darling: The Corporate Buccaneer's Favorite Architect." A ruthless man, a man to be feared-the article had been clear about that. Formerly a professor of architec ture, he had made a mid-life career change from academic to mastcr builder. He'd been phenomenally successful. With daring designs, based on an instinctive feel for the kind of secretive power and controlled menace the new generation of corporate raiders wished to project, he'd obtained several highly visible commissions. It wasn't long before he was regarded as form-giver for the takeover age, winning jobs away from more traditional favorites, such as Skidmore, Owings; Johnson and Burgee; and I. M. Pei.
But there was more to Darling than mere success. He was considered a major cultural figure. He had donated the design and construction costs of the Darling Auditorium at New York University, and had endowed the triennual Darling Prize, described as "a Nobel for sculptors." He was often cited too as one of the most aggressive collectors of Japanese scroll paintings and screens. A powerful man, refined and generous, and now it turned out he not only liked to see girls hurt but he liked to hurt them himself. No wonder Kimberly had been scared.
"Okay," I said, "that was the blackmail scheme. Now, why were you photographing Kim and me?"
Rakoubian looked at me, hesitated, then lowered his eyes.
"Insurance," he muttered.
"What kind of insurance?"
He turned cautious.
"It was her idea. She said we needed another photographer."
"Why?"
He paused again.
"We weren't sure how Darling would react. We didn't want the blackmail traced to us. So Kimberly came up with the idea that we should deal with Darling through Mrs. Z. She'd transmit our demands and act as conduit for the money, and for that we'd give her ten percent. "
"What does all that have to do with me?"
"The plan was that after Kimberly approached Mrs. Z, she'd disappear. That way, if Mrs. Z was co-opted by Darling, Kimberly would be safe from any reprisals. But there was always the possibility that Mrs. Z and Darling would try and track her down. In that case Mrs. Z would go to Shadow, Kimberly's roommate and best friend, to find out where Kimberly had gone."
"Get to the point, Rakoubian. Why the pictures?"
"Documentation."
"Of what?"'
"That you were a photographer and that the two of you were a pair. Kimberly left them around her apartment, and she even planted one in Shadow's wallet That way, if Shadow was pressed, she'd have something to show. It was a diversion and also a way to do a dry run, to see how Darling would react."
"That's what you mean by 'insurance'?" I stared at him. He didn't answer.
"I don't believe you. Kim and I met by accident."
"She told me. That's how she got the idea. She ran into you photographing on the street, and this light bulb went off in her brain-that there should be what she called a 'cover photographer." So she went to work on you, got you interested in her, and then when the two of you went out to photograph, she had me take those pictures. Of course Shadow wasn't in on that. The idea was she'd steer them to you unwittingly."
Even as I listened to him I couldn't believe what he was saying. I think my mind glazed over to protect itself from the consequences of an enormous rage.
". . . Shadow didn't know anything about the blackmail. She thought the only purpose was to identify the Masked Man so he could be turned in to the cops. Kimberly felt that if Shadow was confronted, she'd tell Mrs. Z that her roommate was seeing a photographer, and then Mrs. Z would draw the obvious conclusions that Kimberly had helped you plant a camera in the changing room, and that you had taken the blackmail shots.
"Got to hand it to her. It was a terrific plan. First, because if things went wrong, Darling's attention would be diverted to you, and I'd have time to escape. Second, for the way it brought Mrs. Z into the plot. She, after all, had brokered the deal between Darling and Sonya that led to Sonya being killed. Since she was implicated in the death, and we were offering her a cut, we didn't think she'd hold back any of the money. The threat was clear-if she did hold back, we'd turn her in as well. But Darling wouldn't see it that way. He'd suspect Mrs. Z of acting for herself. For that reason, Mrs. Z would become a kind of fall guy too, who'd provide us with another layer of safety. "
"Fall guy! Is that what I was supposed to be?"
He looked scared.
"I'm just using Kimberly's words."
"She decided everything, according to you. Think I'm buying that?"
"Please! Listen!"
"I've been listening. And all I've heard is: 'according to Kimberly,' 'Kimberly thought,' 'Kimberly decided,' 'it was all Kimberly's idea. . . ." You want me to believe a twenty-five-year-old kid thought all this up by herself? Meantime a slick old phony con man of a photographer was just doing what he was told?"
He grinned at me then, the same shit-eating grin he'd showed me earlier. That time I didn't hit him. There would have been no point. The trick was to keep him on his toes so his lies wouldn't get out of hand. So far he'd been useful: he'd given me a coherent explanation for most of the things that had had me confused. The story was coming together. But the part about my being their 'cover photographer'-had Kim really used me that way? The thought was devastating, almost unthinkable. Still, I had to know.
"Kimberly felt that if Shadow was confronted, she wouldn't name you right away," Rakoubian said.
"They'd have to frighten her a little to get her to talk. But eventually she'd tell them about the two of you-if only to save herself."
"But things didn't work out that way. Your plan, which you keep insisting was so terrific, ended up getting Shadow killed. "
He hung his head.
"It never occurred to us Darling would kill her."
"Why not? He'd killed Sonya. You knew he was a sadist and a freak."
"That was an accident. It happened in the throes of passion. Killing Shadow was cold and vicious. We just didn't anticipate . . ."
He was wrong. From what Scotto had told me, Darling had gotten carried away with Shadow too. But I didn't interrupt; the story, mercifully, seemed finally to be coming to its end.
"Darling and Mrs. Z had formed an alliance. They'd shown us they'd rather kill than pay. Even so, Kimberly wanted to keep pressuring them for money. But once I heard what happened to Shadow, I wanted out."
He paused, wiped his nose on hi
s sleeve again. This time I looked away. He waited until I faced him. Then he showed me a weak smile and went on.
"We had a fight. Kimberly said we had to continue. But I was the one who had the photographs, and I said no. That was it. She disappeared. I have no idea where. And you, you're all right now, because we dropped our demands. It's all finished now. It's over."
"Not quite," I said.
"Kimberly's gone, you're sitting here holding the pictures. But guys are coming around to my place trying to throw lye in my eyes."
"I don't know anything about that, Barnett. We never anticipated-"
I focused on him with total scorn.
"Yeah. So you say. Maybe I ought to go to work on your Hasselblads and finish off your slides."
"Go ahead, if it'll make you feel better. But it's Kimberly you want to punish. Sure, I was her partner. But I was a patsy too. The whole scheme was hers. She's the one who brought you into it."
After I untied Rakoubian, he massaged his repulsive hairy wrists, complaining that they'd gone numb. Then, when I got up to leave, he begged to show me some of his pictures, nudes he'd taken of Kim.
they were exactly what I'd have expected, cheap secondrate pin-up stuff. I tried to be polite, but when he complimented me on the nudes I'd taken of her, I told him to cut the collegial shit. I told him, as far as I was concerned, we had nothing in common as photographers.
He was offended by that, and even tried to protest when I started toward the door with his box of blackmail pictures under my arm. But he acquiesced when I pointed out that since I'd been set up to take the blame for them, the pictures now rightfully belonged to me.
It was two in the morning when I finally stepped out on the street, feeling wasted, desolate, utterly destroyed. I walked all the way back to my place, and as I did I thought the whole time about the awful way that I'd been used.
Kim's betrayal of me, as described by Rakoubian, was so monumental, it seemed beyond belief. to have set me up that way, to have left me there to take the rap, to have latched on to me just because I was a damn photographers scheme like that, so calculated and heartless, was something I could barely comprehend.
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