William Bayer - Blind Side

out the apartment and packed up the finished cleaning ent a lot of time few things that remained. I also sp thinking about how I could explain it all to you."

"I thought you weren't going to explain it."

"I was. Later I changed my mind."

"Why?"

"Because of what happened, the trap I walked into later that night."

Shadow finall called late in the afternoon. Kim was relieved to hear y from her. Shadow said she'd slept over at one of her friend's, and when Kim told her about the break-in and the damage to their clothes, Shadow sounded upset, but not so upset, Kim thought later, as she should have been.

Anyway, they had a normal enough conversation, and agreed to meet at midnight at Mrs. Z's. Then Kim went down to West Seventeenth to see Adam Rakoubian.

She told him s he was scared, she was going to leave New York, hide out where she couldn't be reached. No more face-to-face meetings with Mrs. Z; from now all the dealings would have to be by phone.

llwfiat about the money drop-off?" Rakoubian asked.

She assured him she'd be there for that. She also told him she thought it was time to lower their demand. If they cut it in half, she said, Darling would think he was getting a bargain.

they quarreled. Rakoubian stonewalled on the money. She, in turn, accused him of talking big while she took all the risks. Both of them,got angry, and nothing was resolved. When she left she began giving serious thought to dumping the blackmail idea and going to the cops.

There was an actor's trick Mrs. Z had taught her: to really consider a certain option, so you can voice it with conviction on the stage. So she actually did consider that as she started downtown to Mrs. Z's. I have to mean it, she told herself. Only by meaning it, will I be able to compel belief.

When she arrived at the loft, Shadow wasn't there, just Mrs. Z alone. The acting teacher, seated in the spectator's throne, got directly to the point.

In the first place, she said, no intelligent person pays blackmail, because he knows, no matter how much he pays, it's only an installment against future demands. Furthermore he knows that even when pictures are turned over, copy negatives have invariably been made.

Therefore the Masked Man (she refused to acknowledge his name) had considered her proposition and refused. Yes, he had once tried on the mask, and yes, he had attended various performances. But he had had nothing to do with any homicide, and could alibi his whereabouts the night the alleged crime had taken place.

This having been said, Mrs. Z continued, the Masked Man wanted to rid himself of the nuisance. He was prepared, therefore, to pay twenty-five thousand dollars for the photographs, and (this was the most important part) a sworn notarized statement from Kimberly in which she would admit to having attempted extortion.

That was it, his final offer, and there would be no further discussion. It was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. So, did Kimberly accept? Or not?

No, she most certainly did not accept, she said, but she agreed there would be no more discussion. Her offer to sell the photographs for a million dollars was hereby withdrawn. She would take them and her story to the cops.

Mrs. Z looked at her closely.

"That is not a credible threat."

Kimberly responded that it seemed credible to her, as, at the very least, the performance loft would be closed, and the involvement of prominent people, such as the Duquaynes, would be exposed. Furthermore, Sonya's disappearance could easily be verified, and regardless of any phony alibis, there would be considerable interest in Kimberly's claim that Darling had murdered Sonya in a violent sex-for-money scene brokered by Mrs. Z.

As Mrs. Z began to show distress, Kim was feeling pretty good. She felt she was handling the situation well, and the time to strike a bargain was at hand.

But then Mrs. Z said quietly that she'd like to show Kimberly a videotape. She turned on a VCR and a monitor, and when Kim saw what was on it, she began to scream.

We were on Duval. It was 11:30, we'd finished dinner, and were walking toward the Post Office to pick up my car . The bars of downtown Key West, filled and boisterous, poured country music into the sticky summer night. .

"It was awful, what she showed me," Kim said, clutching my arm.

"they had Shadow naked and tied up. They'd grabbed her the night before; when she'd phoned me she'd been in their hands. The tape showed her writhing and terrified. It wasn't acting-I knew her too well to be fooled."

:'Was the Masked Man there?"

'You couldn't see him. The camera was focused on Shadow. But you could see these hands moving in and out of the frame, doing all these awful things. I thought they were his. I felt they were, on account of the look in Shadow's eyes."

"What kind of look?"

"Total terror. The look of someone who knows she's going to die."

"Jesus!"

"After about a minute, Mrs. Z turned it off. 'She's halfway now to going the way of Sonya,' she told me. 'She'll go the whole way unless you do what I say.'

"I was to sign the extortion papers and then retrieve the photographs. If I didn't come back in a couple of hours, Shadow . . . well, she didn't have to spell it out.

"There was no choice. I signed, then left the building. My legs were trembling. I don't think I'd ever been so scared.

"My plan was to go to Rakoubian and make him give me all his negatives. If he refused I'd threaten to turn him over to Mrs. Z.

"There was a taxi waiting up the block. It started toward me, then something told me I shouldn't get in, that it was too convenient to find it sitting there in that deserted area that time of night.

"I ran across the street. That's when I noticed two men, one on each end of the block. They'd been waiting in the shadows. When I ran, they started running too. I darted down a side street, then through an alley, and then into that disco, Lil's, on Desbrosses, near where you and I met. No trouble getting in. they knew me there. I ran straight through the place, then out the fire door in back.

"I knew then I couldn't return to Mrs. Z's, no matter the threat to Shadow. Whatever I did, they'd kill us both. They'd have to, to shut us up."

"Why didn't you go to the cops?"

"You kidding, Geoffrey? I was up to my ears in it. I'd withheld evidence on a murder and I was party to a blackmail scheme. And even if I did go, I was sure I'd still get killed. That's how scared I was."

"So you came to me?"

She nodded.

"There wasn't anyone else. I caught a cab coming out of the Holland Tunnel, rode it down to Park Row, then ran down Nassau to your corner and phoned." She took hold of my arm again, squeezed it, then brought my hands to her lips.

"Thank God, you were home. You Saved my life. And you were so damn nice. When you saw I didn't want to talk, you didn't insist. And then I did what I always do when I'm overwhelmed-closed my eyes and went to sleep."

"The next morning you decided to run?"

"Yes. But I couldn't tell you then. Now you see why, don't you, Geoffrey? Don't you?"

"Yeah," I said.

"I guess I do."

I knew most of the rest of it, how she left my place, went back to hers, picked up her bags and said good-bye to Jess. Then she taxied to the airport and called Rakoubian while waiting for her plane.

She told him what had happened, that Shadow had probably been killed, and that she was getting out of it now, was going away.

He tried to persuade her to take another crack at Mrs. Z, or at least wait to see if Shadow reappeared. She hung up on him, boarded her flight, flew to Miami, then took a bus to Key West. In just two days she found an apartment and a job. She wanted to bury herself; she thought she had until I showed up that afternoon.

"Funny," she said, "now that I think of it, Adam should have sounded a lot more frightened than he did. Now, of course, I know the reason: he thought he was safe; he'd set you up to take the rap for him."