She broke away from me, ran into the water, then high-stepped through it like a drum majorette.
"We've got the pictures! We've got the pictures!" She sang out the phrase like the refrain of a song. She must have noticed me staring at her because she ran back out of the water, and took hold of my hands.
"Don't you see?" she said as she pulled me along the sand.
"We've got them, Geoffrey. Now we've got them! Now we're really safe!"
It took me a while to calm her down, get her to explain what she meant.
When finally she did, we were sipping tea in the loggia at the Casa Marina Hotel, looking toward the gardens and the sea, and she was stone-cold serious.
"When Sonya was killed, they covered it up, made it look like an accident. The pictures of Darling don't prove all that much, just that he's a kinky guy who likes to wear a mask. But Shadow's different.
She's a 'Model Torture Slaying." There's a real police investigation going on. And the pictures tie into it because, really, they're the reason she was killed."
Ceiling fans slowly revolved above us, while elderly hotel guests, in straw hats and lime Bermuda shorts, shuffled by complaining of the heat.
"Fine," I said.
"I know all that. Now what does my having the pictures have to do with us being safe?"
"Don't you see? We have something to bargain with. It's the pictures that made them hesitate. If they didn't care about the pictures they would never have let me go-they would have killed me then and there. And they would have killed you too, Geoffrey, since they think you were the photographer. But they didn't. they threatened you, broke in, threw some lye, talked tough to you on the phone, but they never harmed you."
"All right," I said "so they care about the pictures."
She nodded.
"A lot more than they pretend. Mrs. Z says, 'Oh, they're not important, you've probably made copy negatives, the pictures are just a nuisance." But now that Shadow's been killed they're no longer just a nuisance. They're valuable because they're the motive. Give the cops the pictures and they start looking very hard at Darling and Mrs. Z.
Eventually somebody talks or makes a deal, and then the two of them go on trial for murder."
"Which is why I want to call Scotto." She shrugged.
"That's one way to go."
"Is there some other way?"
"Yes… if we have the guts." I knew then what she was about to say.
"No way! Forget it, Kim. Absolutely not!"
She touched my arm, stroked it.
"Think about it. In the first place, the way it looks, Darling isn't soiling his hands anymore. He's brought' in pros. That guy who called you, the boy who threw the lye, the people who parked the car at Newark Airport-they sound like hired goons.
"Doesn't that worry you?"
"Sure. Because once you go to the cops, both of us are targets. The pictures don't mean anything without the story. And you and I are the only ones who know it."
"There's Rakoubian."
"He won't talk, He doesn't want to die."
"Neither do I," I said.
"Really, Kim, haven't you had enough of blackmail? Your best friend was killed. You're stuck down here. Isn't it time to lead a normal life?"
She stared at me, then shook her head.
"Not yet," she said. "See, Geoffrey, this isn't finished yet. Darling and Mrs. Z-they have to pay."
We didn't talk about it anymore, just spent the morning lying lazily on the beach. Then I took her to her apartment, waited for her to change, and drove her on to her restaurant, as she had to work a double shift. I spent the afternoon by myself, walking around Key West. After three and a half days of staking out the Post Office, I needed to break out and move.
Toward the end of the afternoon, I wandered up to the Southernmost Point. It was a curious place, a dead-end intersection with a large striped concrete buoy bearing the words: SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A. Beside the buoy stood an old black man behind a display of shells and sponges. That was it, there was nothing else.
The understatement appealed to me. This was the tail end of the nation.
It was pathetic, and there was no reason to make anything more out of it. I stationed myself there, then started taking pictures of people taking pictures of one another as they posed before the buoy.
It seemed to me that the premise behind their picturetaking was their conviction that by freezing selected moments from their lives they could somehow cheat aging and death. That seemed poignant to me, well worth trying to express. But it was an elusive idea, and, though it U amp;I IN @ @ I – @ d photography, was perhaps too deep to be exin photographs. , as the afternoon waned, I strolled down to Mallory Pier to attend the sunset. I ate by myself at a Cuban restaurant, and then went back to my room to rest. The moment I lay down I felt empty and forlorn. I'd found Kim, heard her story, and believed in her again. I had, moreover, held her in my arms, and I no longer felt the anger that had brought me to this strange tropical little town. I didn't even think it was important anymore to know her real name; she was who she was, authentic to her vision of herself.
But I was bothered greatly by her idea that we should Continue with the blackmail. That she thought I'd even consider a thing like that disturbed me very much.
She came to me that night after she finished work. She used my bathroom to wash away the sweat and the smell f food, then crawled into bed beside me and molded her body against mine.
"Did you call him?" she asked.
"Scotto. No."
"Why not? I was sure you would."
"Maybe tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's a new day," she said.
"Are you working?"
"Yeah, but I'm free until five." She hugged me.
"Would you like to go snorkeling out on the reef? It's really a lot of fun. One of my roommates has a boyfriend who has a boat. We can borrow masks and tubes."
It was fun. The roommate, Pam, a frizzy-haired blonde, was from South Carolina and spoke with a spunky Southern drawl. Her boyfriend, Doug, who owned the boat, was a genial beachcomber type.
With their lean bodies and gorgeous tans, Kim, Pam and Doug looked the embodiment of sun-worshiping American youth. But they were nice to me, didn't make me feel apart even though I was pale and middle-aged. As soon as we were out on the water the girls took off their tops. Then Doug showed me how to snorkel. The reef was fascinating, the corals beautiful and delicate. I learned the names of different varieties: elkhom, staghorn, pillar, flower, brain.
I liked the schools of tiny fish that darted between the corals, and the occasional moray eel that wriggled its way among the underwater trees.
Doug pointed out sponges on the ocean floor and an encrusted cannonball from an ancient wreck.
The girls had brought along a hamper of sandwiches.
We ate, I took portraits of them, and then we headed back. The whole trip, spent with attractive friendly kids, made me feel good burned by the sun, washed by the sea.
After Kimberly went off to work, I returned to my room, stared at the phone and thought about calling Scotto. But I decided to put it off – I knew that once I called him, my life would be changed. I wasn't ready to break m Kev West idyll yet.
The next day Doug picked us up in his ratty jeep and drove us up to Sugarloaf for flats fishing. Again the girls took off their tops. Kim's anointings of my skin with suntan oil finally began to take effect.
When Kim caught a bonefish, I immortalized her victory with a photograph showing her holding up her catch and grinning like Ernest Hemingway, When we got back to Key West and she went off to work, I thought again of calling Scotto, and again I put it off. I studied Rakoubian's pictures for a while, to see if they contained something new. The shots of Darling in his mask were frightening, but the hurried pictures of him going into buildings seemed almost innocuous.