It was just before noon, the fourth day of the stakeout, when I finally caught sight of her, and then it was only by a fluke.
I had turned my attention away from the arcade for a moment when I caught a glimpse of someone familiar in my rearview mirror. It was a young woman riding a bicycle up Whitehead Street in the direction of the Southernmost Point.
A quiver of excitement ran through me, and also the thought that perhaps my luck still had a way to run.
I was afraid to follow her by car; I had seen enough of Key West to know there were numerous one-way streets and impassable narrow lanes. So I grabbed up my camera bag and started after her on foot.
At first I thought I'd lost her. I was devastated. But then I saw her standing astride her bike, talking to another girl on the sidewalk in front of the Green Parrot Bar.
I took a position in front of a motorcycle store across the street, where I could see them reflected in the plate glass. When I was sure they were too wrapped up in their conversation to notice, I turned and raised my camera to take a closer look.
No mistake. It was Kim. The wet place where my shirt stuck to my back suddenly felt cold. That telephoto brought her close, right against my eye. I tripped the shutter out of sheer perversity.
A funny thing about a single lens reflex camera: when you use it to watch a person, there's a certain distancing, no matter how powerful your lens. It has to do with the complex system of mirrors, the pentaprism, that stands between the subject and your eye. For this reason many photographers prefer a range-finder camera; they feel the viewing is more sensitive because it's more direct. But I have always liked the distancing makes me feel safer and helps me cast a colder eye.
After I took that picture of Kim, my eye went very cold indeed. I was no longer just following her on the street; I was a photographer using my camera to inspect.
I focused on her hair. It looked different from when I'd seen her last.
She'd cut off a lot of it, and it was lighter, streaked by the summer Florida sun.
I tilted down to her chest: her breasts heaved beneath a dazzling white T-shirt with the words "Key West" emblazoned on the front. I tilted further: she wore matching cotton shorts. Her white clothes made brilliant contrast with her tanned skin. With my camera I caressed her bare legs and thighs. She looked good. But she'd betrayed me, suckered me. I'd been her-"fall guy," her "cover photographer." Yet, for all of that, I longed to reach out to her and touch…
The street conversation was over. The other girl went off. Kim started walking her bike along Southard toward Duval.
I followed. Would she turn around? If she did I'd raise my camera and use it as a shield. I almost smiled when I thought of that; that was what Rakoubian had done when he'd stalked us in New York.
On Duval she reversed direction, headed north. I let people pass, so there were bodies between us, then I too joined the parade.
She was moving less quickly now, slowed down by the crowds. I got her nicely framed between two young men in matching white tank tops. Then we marched along united for a block, she, the guys and I in lockstep, fifteen feet apart.
As I followed her I felt my excitement grow. Stalking Grace in downtown Cleveland-that had been cool, smart, passionless. This was something else.
I felt the bloodiust of a hunter on the track of a rare, seductive game. to follow or to kill-the choice was mine. That hunter's power made me heady; it also reactivated the hibernating photojournalist inside. As we walked I twisted the telephoto off my Leica, mounted on a 35mm.
Elmarit, then raised it to my eye.
Even as I followed I wanted to take a shot at her. But when I looked through the viewfinder, all I could see were the backs of the two guys in front. The place between them where she'd been was empty. My prey had disappeared. It was twenty minutes before I gave up my search for her. Thinking she might have turned into a shop, I checked all the stores on the block. But of course you don't walk into a store with a bicycle, and her bike wasn't parked anywhere around.
There was a little alley she might have used; it was for pedestrians, but she could have ridden through. Or perhaps, in the instant when I'd looked away, she'd spotted me, mounted her bike, turned at the next corner and driven off.
All that seemed so unlikely that I began to doubt myself. Had I really seen her? Had she really been walking just ahead? Or had I gone delusional? Had the heat and all the salty starchy food clouded my brain?
I was standing on the sidewalk, wondering what to do, when suddenly I sensed a presence just behind. I trembled as I felt her breath upon my ear.
"Hello, Geoffrey," she whispered.
She said I should come with her, that she knew a quiet bar where we could talk. And so we walked in silent tension to the end of Duval, all my bitterness held tight inside.
She guided me into the compound of the Pier House hotel, where, the moment we entered, we were cut off from the rowdiness of the street. But the quiet there only added to my stress. By the time we reached a proper little bar called the Chart Room I felt I was about to burst.
Kim ordered a Bloody Mary. I ordered a Perrier. The waiter went away, and then our eyes finally met.
She peered at me.
"You look fit, Geoffrey."
"Do I? I'm not feeling very fit."
She was studying me the way one might study someone one had wounded, to measure how serious the injury was.
"No," she said, "I don't imagine you are."
"You never said good-bye."
"Oh, God!" She shook her head.
"Didn't you owe me that?"
"I'm sure I did," she said gently.
"I'm sure I owed you a lot of things."
The waiter brought our drinks. She smiled at him.
"I hope this isn't going to be one of those conversations, Geoffrey.
"What kind is that?" I asked.
"Kind where we talk about who owed what to whom, and all that sort of stuff."
"Sometimes," I said, pretending to be the soul of patience, "one has to talk about unpleasant things."
She sipped her drink, then picked up some peanuts from a bowl and popped them into her mouth.
"I was in trouble-you know that now. Shadow was killed that Saturday night. I had to get away. So I left. What could I have said? How could I have explained? No, the best thing was just to leave, get out fast and clean. The less you knew the better. You see, I didn't want to drag you into it."
That did it. I felt a rush.
"But I was in it. Right in the goddamn middle of it."
"No you weren't, Geoffrey. You were safe. Anything I told you, any good-byes I might have made-then you could have been implicated. But you weren't." implicated?" Of course I was 'implicated'! Are you really pretending I wasn't?"
There must have been a vicious intensity in my voice; a group sitting at another table stopped talking and glanced nervously at us.
"Try and keep it low, Geoffrey. This bar's not tacky Key West."
"Oh, I can see that," I said, looking around.
"It's just so fucking civilized. It tells me something, that you brought me here."
"What does it tell you?"
"That you're afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of me. My anger and what I might do."
"I'm not one to be afraid of things, Geoffrey. And I'm certainly not afraid of you." She gave my arm a gentle pat, as if we were lovers who'd been parted by nothing more than a weekend business trip.
I stared at her.
"You're-incredible!"
She looked at me as if I were mad. Something was wrong, we weren't connecting, were talking about different things.
"It was all your idea, according to Rakoubian."