He paused to blow his nose, which he then wiped on his sleeve. That gesture and the smell of his sweat and the awful jaundiced folds around his eyes made me want to turn away. But I continued to stare at him to keep the pressure on.
"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.