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by William Bayer

  Janek could see the hurt in Carmichael's eyes, and that he was wondering whether he was going to be treated now the same way he'd been treated by Al.

  "I don't know what's going on," Janek said. "But I think you're right, Al did know something and he didn't play it straight with you at all."

  "So now what happens?"

  "What happens is that if and when I find out what he knew I bring it back to you. And that's a promise."

  Suspects

  Wednesday morning Aaron ran down his first-round list: "Got an even ten to look at. Fancy lawyer who was home alone that night—family away on Martha's Vineyard. Old coot who won't be interviewed—Sal got very bad vibes from him. Stockbroker who his doorman says regularly has call girls in for overnights. Two head-related guys: a hairdresser and a cartoonist. One sex-problem counselor. One spatter-film director. One far-out fashion photographer. Thirty-five-year-old retarded man who lives with his parents—yeah, I know, Frank, but everyone says he's spooky and weird. And a live-in Japanese cook who works for a Swede, a high UN official—people in the building say he's into martial arts, so we were thinking about what Yoshiro said, you know, about, maybe, swords."

  "No women?"

  Aaron shook his head.

  "Okay, see who you can clear up by tomorrow night. Concentrate on the easy ones. I got my doubts about the retarded guy. Whoever did this may have been weird, but one thing he wasn't was retarded."

  He took Caroline to dinner in Chinatown, the same restaurant they'd dined at so magically two weeks before. He hadn't seen her since Sunday; it had been a week since their quarrel. He wanted to show her that he cared and that he was eager now to make peace.

  In the car she started talking about her book, picking up from where she'd left off Sunday night. She said she was considering bringing in a writer, and its pros and cons. "...maybe a serious feminist, but then my feelings about male aggression could get lost in the tirade. Also, a text might start to dominate. A collaborator could be dangerous. Whose book would it really be? The other possibility is to go with quotes."

  "Why not just let your pictures speak for themselves?"

  She glanced at him, irritated. "Haven't you been listening, Frank? I'm worried they're not eloquent enough and that the book might look like a jerkoff job."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You know, like I'm one of those women photographers who get turned on photographing aggressive men."

  She talked on, but he tuned her out. He was hurt by her "Haven't you been listening, Frank?" He wondered if her concerns were genuine, whether she was really struggling with her book or sending him the same message she'd been sending for a week: that unless he capitulated, agreed to leave her father and Al alone, he could expect nothing but merciless self-involvement instead of the care, concern and sharing she had offered him before.

  At the restaurant he told her he'd been over to Hoboken.

  "That's fine, but I don't want to hear about it. Okay?"

  "You talk about what's on your mind. But I can't talk about what's on mine."

  "You can, of course. Except for that. That's between you and yourself." She grinned. "So, what's new on the case?"

  She had staked out a piece of forbidden territory; he could go into it if he liked, but he would have to go in alone.

  He shrugged off her question and switched the subject back to her book, urging her not to worry about what people might think, because her photographs were plenty eloquent enough. She nodded, seemed touched, thanked him, told him she appreciated his help. But then, at the end of the meal, she complained of a stinging headache and insisted on taking a cab home alone.

  "Don't know what's the matter," she said, kissing him on the cheek. "MSG syndrome or something. Anyway, I want you to come to dinner Saturday night. Good night, Frank," she said gently as she settled into her cab, the nicest words she'd uttered since he'd picked her up at the loft.

  When he got home he unstrapped his revolver, took off and carefully folded his pants, pulled out an accordion, sprawled out on his bed, his back against the wall, and played.

  Not music—certainly not music. Squeaks and moans, wails that filled his basement apartment.

  And when he pushed the bellows he felt as if his heart was being crushed.

  Late Thursday afternoon Aaron was ready. At six o'clock he placed a sheet on Janek's desk. "My short list," he announced.

  Janek picked it up. Six names and after each a number designating the apartment keyed to the master chart that now dominated the squad-room wall.

  "Who do you like?" Janek asked.

  "Maybe I like them all." Aaron paused. "Really want to know?"

  Janek shook his head.

  Aaron made his presentation from memory, standing before the chart. He'd eliminated the retarded man, the lawyer, the stockbroker and the cook. The lawyer, it turned out, had not been home alone—he was with his secretary with whom he was having an affair, which he hadn't mentioned the first time around because he was worried it might get back to his wife. The stockbroker categorically denied he'd ever been with a call girl—he simply dated a number of very good-looking women; the doorman who'd made the accusation retracted it, and Aaron had personally bawled him out. The live-in chef had been eliminated based on information from his employer: he'd worked for the Swedish family for more than thirty years, he was Chinese, not Japanese, and he didn't practice martial arts but a system of nonbelligerent Oriental exercise.

  Which left the six men on Aaron's list, who ranged in age from twenty-eight to sixty. All six admitted they'd been home the Saturday night of the killings. At least two were obvious suspects. The other four, for one reason or another, had to be considered.

  "First we have this therapist, Raymond Evans, a Ph.D. clinical psychologist. Soon as he learned we were cops he told us he'd once been arrested as an exhibitionist. No attempt to cover up and no fudging around. Came right out with it. Happened eighteen years ago. Was hanging around a girls' camp in the Adirondacks and showed himself couple of times. No prosecution provided he went into therapy. He did, successfully, he says, and now he's a successful practicing sex-problem therapist himself. I liked him and trusted him. But with that arrest he needs a second look.

  "Next we have this Michael Hopkins who people in Amanda's building call a peeping Tom. Couple of them report seeing him using binoculars. When I pressed he started wriggling hard. Said he didn't own binoculars. Then admitted that he did. Said he's a bird-watcher, no kind of goddamned voyeur, and who was trying to make him out to be a pervert? My feeling is he's a nasty little freak, that he may have spied on Amanda and that he knows admitting that would not be cool. Now, what's interesting about Hopkins is that he's a hairstylist. Got this small very fashionable second-floor shop on Madison."

  "Hmmm. Shampoo."

  "Right. Remember: 'I got this head waiting'; ‘She's another head.’ Clients are 'heads' to these hairdresser guys. Which may mean something or may not."

  The third name was on the list because the man had refused to talk. This was the sixty-year-old, Spalding, regarded in his building as a crank. Slammed the door in Sal Marchetti's face. Later hung up on Aaron. Said they'd have to get a subpoena if they wanted to question him and then he'd bring in his lawyer and sue.

  "Mean," said Aaron. "Nuthouse case. Never has visitors. Always complaining to the building staff. For years the co-op board's been looking for a way to get rid of him, but they're scared because he's litigious and he's rich."

  The last three men were artists, selected because Janek wanted all the artists carefully screened. There was the film director, critically acclaimed though commercially unsuccessful; the very successful fashion photographer who lived and worked on the upper two floors of the house directly across from Amanda's; and a famous syndicated political cartoonist who also worked at home, in his penthouse at the top of the tall building on the corner of Eightieth and Park.

  "You might think the cartoonist is interesting. Hatchet-job headhu
nter type. He draws these itty-bitty animal bodies, then he sticks on a big caricature of the face. The usual objects of derision: mayor, governor, president."

  "What about the photographer?"

  "I'm saving him."

  "You like the director."

  "Goddammit, Frank, what do I do that tips you off?"

  "Always list your favorite second-last."

  Aaron laughed. "Jesus! No wonder I'm no good at poker. Okay, I like him, and because of a couple different things. First, his movies. Lots of creepy sex and blood. Then there's the way he acts. Interviewed him myself. Very cool, which you wouldn't expect, and fascinated by the Ireland homicide. Was happy to tell me he'd seen her exercising. Even took me to the appropriate window to show me what a good view he had. Asked a lot of questions and when I asked him why he was so interested came right out with it, said the killing would make a fantastic opening for a film."

  "Sounds like an honest man."

  "Maybe too honest. And there's another thing. He goes with your Psycho association to the shower attack." Janek shrugged. "You think I'm reaching?"

  "No more so than with the others. Tell me about the photographer."

  "He's hot right now. Does these pictures with the models under attack. Dobermans yapping at their legs, that kind of stuff. Also leads what they call 'an avant-garde lifestyle.’ Orgies, pot, cocaine..."

  Janek nodded. "When in doubt go for the obvious: A kinky photographer who gives sex parties is obvious, but I like your list; we'll look at them all. Put Howell on the therapist. He'll be relentless on account of that old arrest. Sal gets Mr. Shampoo. Forget the crank for now. Stanger can check out the cartoonist. You like the director, so you get him. What's the photographer's name?"

  "Jack Ellis."

  "I'll take him."

  Aaron sighed. "'When in doubt go for the obvious.' I don't know, Frank—maybe we've been working together too many years."

  Crosscurrents

  Janek gave them leeway: each could pursue his suspect in his own way. And so by their divergent strategies they revealed themselves as detectives and as men.

  Howell was confused by Dr. Raymond Evans, perhaps disconcerted by the absence of a hard surface upon which to hammer. Accustomed as he was to brittle whores and sleazy pimps, his tough-guy manner proved ineffective. In the end the therapist refused him nothing except eyes downcast with shame.

  Howell brought him in for questioning. Just before the crucial passage of his interview he invited Janek to the one-way window to watch his suspect take the heat:

  "So you saw her?"

  "Sure."

  "How many times?"

  "I'd say around a dozen."

  "Turn you on?"

  "Not in the slightest."

  "Why not?"

  "It's showing, not watching, that turns me on."

  "What did you feel?"

  "Pity. I thought she might need help—"

  "Might?"

  "—couldn't be sure about her motives. Was her exposure accidental? Did she know she could be seen? Did she care? I watched her enough times to be fairly certain she wasn't acting out. Then I stopped. No point after that. Wasn't a case anymore of...there-but-for-the-grace-of-God."

  Janek knew then that Raymond Evans had not killed Mandy Ireland, let alone switched her head with that of Brenda Beard. Evans was a compassionate man who relieved his suffering by treating others. Howell would eventually see that, too, he thought, although the detective continued the questioning another hour.

  Sal Marchetti chose to play hard-ass; Michael Hopkins' lie to Aaron about owning binoculars was an insult to be repaid. Sal made the rounds again of residents in Amanda's building. Had the hairstylist across the way been spying into windows or had he just been watching birds?

  "Birds!" exclaimed the silver-haired woman who lived in the apartment below Amanda. "He'd have to climb halfway out his window to see high enough." Would she be willing to swear out a peeping-Tom complaint? "I most certainly would! You ought to lock him up."

  Armed with affidavits from five complainants, Sal confronted the voyeur late Friday at his hair salon. Hopkins, about to leave for his weekend home, was extremely irritated by the intrusion.

  "I told that other detective—"

  "Nice place you got here. How many heads you do a day?"

  "I personally see eight or so clients. But I don't see what that has to do—"

  "Eight heads, huh?"

  "I supervise eighteen or twenty more."

  "That's a lot of heads."

  "What are you trying—"

  "You must dream about them."

  "What?"

  "All those heads. Ever get them mixed up? Switched? The heads, I mean."

  "Look, young man, I don't know what you're getting at—"

  "You're a pervert, Hopkins. Five people in the building across say you are. They want you put away. I'm going to stick you in a lineup so they can pick you out. And then, Hopkins, you're going to be fucked."

  Which, it turned out, was more or less what Hopkins wanted, or so Sal interpreted his confession when he reported it back to Janek later that night.

  "Admits he's a peeper, Frank. Admits he gets off on it. Likes to peer out with the old binocs. Sure, he saw Amanda. Lots of times. But the crazy thing is he couldn't stand her. Hated it when she stood there stretching herself, because, get this, she interfered with his view. Sounds crazy, I know, but I went home with him and it's true. And here's the kicker. That guy Ellis you're working on who gives the so-called sex parties—stuff that happens at his place gets reflected in the windows of Mandy's building when the lights are off inside. In other words, if you live, like Hopkins, in the building next door to Ellis sometimes you can see what's happening at Ellis' place by looking at the reflections across the way. Because Ellis doesn't close his blinds. And he doesn't turn off his lights. So Hopkins sits at home and watches and sometimes late at night he sees these scenes. When I was there I didn't see much. Just some people sitting around sipping drinks. But I got the point. The windows on her brownstone act like mirrors. So Hopkins is peeping out at fucking orgies, Frank. To him Mandy was a nuisance. She was in his way."

  There was something else too. Sal dropped the word "head" about forty-nine times before Hopkins finally picked up on it.

  "I asked him then wasn't that what hairdressers call their clients. 'Not me,' he said. 'To me they're silly cunts.' So, Frank, there you are. Like Aaron said—he is a nasty little freak."

  "No way, Lieutenant. This is one gentle guy. There're five kids all under ten crawling around up there, plus two dachshunds and four cats. Not to mention the fact that physically he couldn't have done it. He's got some kind of degenerative muscle-tissue disease."

  Stanger had spent all of Thursday afternoon with the caricaturist, Nicholas Karpewicz, known as "Karp," watching him draw, listening to him speak on the phone, observing his relations with his children and his wife. But then, after he eliminated Karp, Stanger got interested in something else.

  "The room where he works has this huge picture window. He owns the commanding position on the area. From up there you can see everything. So I start asking him about people. This couple I talked to. That single guy. The old bag in the garden apartment. And he knows who I mean, picks up on them right away. Starts doing little sketches, just a couple of strokes, and he gets them right, the faces, the expressions. That's his thing. Features. Heads. Later he draws in the body to make his comment. Maybe because he's sort of a cripple he's developed this way of letting the air out of people by sticking them on animals, a mule, say, or a goose.

  "Anyway, I threw him some of our suspects. First Ellis. Then Lane the film director. Then I toss him Hopkins, who he's never seen. Then Evans. Then that old crank, Spalding. Ask him what kind of body he'd put under those guys. Right away he puts Spalding on a turtle."

  Stanger laid Karp's sketches on Janek's desk. Spalding's huge head was sticking tentatively out of a tortoiseshell, a good caricature of a mean, fr
ightened, over-armored recluse.

  Dr. Evans' face, dominated by deep sad droopy eyes, was mounted on a miniature shaggy Saint Bernard. The watchful eyes of Peter Lane, the moviemaker, were implanted in a silent brooding owl. And Jack Ellis, the orgiastic fashion photographer, was depicted as an opportunistic baboon.

  "I asked him finally," Stanger said, "to draw me his vision of Amanda. First he didn't want to do it. Then, I don't know why, he picked up his pen and started to draw. She came out kind of different from the rest."

  Stanger pushed the drawing forward.

  It was a chilling work Janek saw, a fine careful drawing bearing no relation to the other swiftly sketched cartoons. The background was black, with the girl emerging from it like a phantom, her body rigid, withholding, her face a mask, expressionless, yet yearning too.

  Aaron was playing his cards close. When Janek asked how he was coming with Peter Lane he smiled, then lightly bobbed his head from side to side.

  "Got to hand it to Stanger," Janek said. "Didn't know he had it in him."

  "Sal still thinks he's a fuck-up."

  "He probably is. But maybe not a shallow fuck-up like we thought."

  "It's either your guy or mine," Aaron said. "How you doing with Ellis?"

  Janek shrugged. "Maybe it's none of them, Aaron. Maybe my window theory's full of shit."

  Jack Ellis was the most likely perpetrator of Switched Heads:

  He lived directly across from Amanda's, with a perfect view into her window.

  He indulged conspicuously in drugs and kinky sex.

  He was a professional fashion photographer accustomed to manipulating models.