William Bayer - Blind Side

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 wanted 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.