William Bayer - Blind Side

"Can you sit a moment, Geoffrey, while I go and hunt up Harold? He hates being disturbed when he's painting. But I think the two of you should talk."

While she went to search him out I examined the "investment collection" of photographs. Among the classic images, several unusual ones caught my interest. There were two excellent and kinky Mapplethorpes, and a curious work from the late twenties by Man Ray, showing a woman, head encased in a tight-fitting mask, whose gloved and handcuffed hands were suspended by a chain above her head. Another extraordinary and very rare carbrocolor print by Paul Outerbridge showed a woman in high heels wearing nothing but a top hat, a domino mask and a single black fishnet stocking.

"Barnett!" Duquayne pranced across the wide expanse of floor, his paint-spattered sweatshirt catching the late morning light. We shook hands while Amanda watched us coolly from the side.

"Now, what's all this I hear about a disappearance?" He enunciated the word with relish."

"Kim's gone. Her roommate too.

"Roommate too! Oh ho! The plot thickens!"

"Except for you and Amanda, I never met any of her friends."

"But I'm sure Amanda's told you-we barely knew her. She was more like an acquaintance. Friend of a friend. That sort of thing."

I looked at Amanda.

"I remember your mentioning that she brought around other men. I thought for sure-"

Duquayne turned to her.

"Wasn't that at our big drink party, darling? Who ever meets anyone at a thing like that?" He turned back to me.

"Want a drink, Barnett?" He headed toward a built-in bar. Since I couldn't read his eyes, I glanced again at Amanda. She was studying me in an aloof and pitying way, the way I imagined she might gaze at a cripple on the street.

"Perhaps you'd tell me the name of the friend."

"Who's that?" Duquayne handed me a gin and tonic.

"You just said Kim was 'a friend of a friend'?" He glanced at Amanda. I looked toward her too, just in time to catch an exchange of complicity. I had suspected her of lying from the first; now I was certain her lies were calculated. "Really, Barnett-people don't want to be involved. Not in a thing like this."

"Like what?"

"Whatever."

"But, you see, I don't know what kind of thing it is. All I know is my girlfriend's missing."

He sipped from his glass.

"Is she? Or did she walk away? See, that's what's bothering us. Now, if you think she's actually missing, in the 'missing person' sense, my advice would be to go to the police."

I Of course she'd walked-I knew that already. I had no claim on her; I only wanted to find her for myself. I stared at him.

"So that's your advice?"

"We really don't know anything, Geoffrey," Amanda said.

I turned to her.

"Of course you do. You knew Kim pretty damn well. Otherwise you wouldn't have invited her to your intimate little dinner party, and when we arrived you wouldn't have greeted her the way you did. Now, if there's some special reason you don't want to own up to that-fine, just be straight enough to say so. But don't feed me any more crap. 'Barely knew her." 'Friend of a friend." Spare me more of that."

Duquayne put down his glass.

"You don't want to talk to Amanda that way, Barnett."

"Don't I, Harold? I think I do."

"Hey! You're out of line here, guy!"

"Am I? I know this much, Kimberly was bisexual. She also liked to have sex for money. That wouldn't be how you two met her, would it? Hired her through an escort service? Paid her to get into bed with you? Played all kinds of kinky games?"

"Why, you vile little shit!" Amanda said.

"Well, well-Miss Perfect loses her cool!"

"Get out!"

I laughed. Their anger told me I was right. I moved to the door.

"Know something, Duquayne? Your paintings suck. "

He shrieked after me: "Loser!" But I was already on the stairs. Descending, I heard something smack, then break; I think he threw his drink at the wall.

I went back to my studio, brooded awhile, then started looking through my proof sheets, searching not for portraits that explored or revealed character, but for shots that were just good likenesses.

I selected three, separated out the negatives, then handcarried them to a lab on Church Street. I ordered fifty commercial 8 x 10 blowups of each. Then I headed back uptown.

This time, when Brent let me in, his young face was creased with concern.

"Another bad night," he said.

"But he refuses to go to the hospital."

"His choice, isn't it? Is he well enough to talk?"

Brent motioned me toward the bedroom.

"Five minutes tops, okay?" I agreed not to stay any longer.

Jess lay beneath the sheets, the same wet rag across his forehead, his chest hair curled and wet against his skin. At first I thought he looked smaller, as if he'd shrunk in the past three days, but then I realized it was his eyes that were enlarged.

I told him what I'd discovered: that all the background facts Kim had given us were false. As I described my various telephone calls he began to show concern.

"Can't imagine why she'd lie," he said.

"She had no reason to lie to me."

"Maybe like a lot of people who move to New York, she wanted to re-create herself."

"Maybe. So who is she, Geoffrey?"

I shrugged.

"At this point I don't even know if Kimberly's her real name. But I have to find her, Jess. There was too much between us to let it just end like this."

He nodded.

"How will you find her?"

"By finding out who she is. I was hoping you could help me. was there some little thing she let slip in your talks, something that didn't fit? A revealing detail? Anything?" Jess shook his head.

"What about that escort service? You said Shadow introduced her to a woman."

'Mrs. Z."

"That's her name?"

"That's what Kimberly called her: 'So then I went to work for Mrs. Z.' That's about all she said."

He was getting tired. I checked my watch; I'd overstayed my time. "The first time I saw her she was with a bunch of kids. Did she ever mention any friends?"

"No one except Shadow. And you, of course."

I suppose, if I'd been in a different kind of mood, I might have taken some comfort in that.

I found the super in the basement, sitting in a swivel chair. He was dressed in camouflage fatigues and a khaki undershirt, and there was a hunting knife in a scabbard on his belt.

He had carved out a little office for himself down there, from a mess of old beds, trunks, broken bicycles and bins of light bulbs and spare plumbing parts. There were centerfolds from Hustler taped to the wall, and, to complete the executive motif, a battered desk that looked as if it had been scavenged off the street.

He glanced at me over his copy of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

"You again?"

"Didn't think I'd come back?" He shrugged.

"Because she was a call girl?"

"What do you want?"

"Information."

He grinned.

"Ain't got no information."

"Look, they lived here. You must know something about them."

"I keep to myself. Don't pry into other people's stuff."

I laid a twenty-dollar bill on' the desk. He glanced at it, stared at the centerfolds on the wall. Then he shrugged again.

"they didn't have no bank account,"

"How do you know that?"

"they told me. When I asked why they always paid the rent in cash.

"See-you do know something." He didn't reply.

"When I was here the other day, you told me you cleaned out the apartment."

"Garbage-that's all there was."

"No papers, letters?" He shook his head.

"No clothes? Books? Records? Not even an envelope?" I stared at him.

"What was there to clean?"

"Few empty bottles. Carry-out containers from the Chink joint down the block."

"I don't believe that," I said.