Switch

by William Bayer

  "I remember the day. More than twenty-five years ago, but I'll remember it till I die. Not just for what happened but for the way things changed. Al and I didn't know it then, but for us it was a terrible day.

  "Fell sometime between the holidays. Very cold—one of those days when your cheeks sting and your fingers get numb inside your gloves. Al called me from a pay phone. I could hear the other two whooping it up. They were in a bar celebrating. 'Found it, darlin,' Al said. 'We're in the clover now.' I must have smiled, because I'd given Al a four-leaf clover imbedded in a plastic disk to wear around his neck for luck so he wouldn't get shot or something on the job.

  "Course it was a young cop's kind of thing, that stash they found. It was in a garage set behind a deserted house. There'd been some windows busted in the neighborhood, kids' vandalism, and it was just a routine call that had brought them to the house behind. There was a fence between the two backyards and part of it was curled back. Can't remember now why they crawled through. Maybe they thought the kids had a gang clubhouse back there. Anyway, they checked out the garage and through a crack they saw the car. It was a green 1940s Chevy convertible, perfect condition, clean and polished, stored up on concrete blocks.

  "It was Tommy who wanted to go in and take a look. He always loved cars and he wanted to see this one close up. So they pried open the door, went in and Tommy jumped into the driver's seat. He started bouncing around and that's when the key fell into his lap. It was like some kind of miracle, they said, the way he shook it loose from where it had been hidden in the folds of the top. When it didn't fit the ignition Al tried it on the trunk. It opened that up and there were two cardboard cartons in there tied up with rope. And of course they were curious and opened one to look inside, and soon as they saw the money they looked at each other and it was then they knew they'd made their score.

  "Cash, lots of it, in old used notes, tied up in bundles, a thousand dollars in each. Left there for years, maybe, and they'd found it, more money than they'd ever dreamed, and they knew it was illegal money and that if they took it they wouldn't be doing anything bad because they'd just be taking it from another thief.

  "I don't know which one thought of calling Dale. Think it was Al. They needed someone higher up to cover for them, and Dale was a friend and a slick operator too.

  "The way they finally handled it, Tommy called in from a booth like a busybody in the neighborhood and said he'd seen two men carrying cartons out of that garage. Then the two of them, being practically in front of the place, radioed back they'd investigate. Later they reported a break-in. In other words, they reported the robbery they'd just committed and then they investigated it themselves."

  Janek imagined the icy glint in Hart's eyes when he thought of that nefarious scheme. "How much was there?"

  "Hundred twenty thousand. They checked around later and found out the house belonged to a guy who was doing time on a numbers charge. It was numbers-racket money, probably the guy's nest egg. They used to laugh about that, how he'd feel when he found it missing after spending years dreaming about it in his cell, using it, maybe, to keep himself going through the hard winters in Ossining. It was a perfect score, Dale said: soiled old bills, out of sequence, no markings on them, illegitimately gained, the score of a lifetime, he said. They divided it in thirds, share and share alike. They were walking on air for a couple weeks after that."

  Listening, Janek had felt a growing chill: Al hadn't taught him that way of being a cop. Lou stopped talking and now Janek could hear a TV blaring from the house next door. Some kind of morning talk show: unctuous host, tittering studio audience and a guest plugging her new book on How to Feel Better, Show Your Feelings, Be Nice to Yourself, Be Kind to Number One. For an instant then Janek imagined Al sitting at the card table in the hall holding the revolver in his mouth, and it wounded him that maybe those had been the last kinds of human sounds Al had heard before he died.

  Lou was staring at him, waiting for him to speak. She still was looking scared.

  "So what happened?" he asked. "You said things changed."

  She nodded. "Not at first so much. I think at first it drew them close. They talked about it a lot and they made a pledge. They wouldn't flash the money around. And no matter what happened they would never reveal where they'd gotten it. And there was more. If one of them ever got in trouble the other two would be there to help."

  "And that's when the picture was taken?"

  Lou nodded. "Sometime that first week."

  "And after that?"

  "They started to drift. They just couldn't seem to stay friends."

  "Why?"

  "Their personalities. They were so different even if they didn't know it then. But with the money the differences began to show. And also suspicion, each of them feeling the other two knew something they might use against him someday.

  "You remember how Al was such a worrier? He started worrying from the start. He'd wake up in the middle of the night. 'What if someone finds out? I'd be cooked. Course we'd still have the loot. You could get along. Guess it would be worth it. You don't score like that except once in a lifetime. And maybe not even then.'

  "That was the way he was. He used to tell me how he'd worry over a case for a month, then you'd come in and see right into the heart of it. He always said you were a born detective, Frank. He said for you things were easy which were very, very hard for him. Well, that's the way he handled the money, like it was a problem he had to worry about. He was afraid to invest it, afraid someone would start asking questions if we used it to have a little fun. So he kept it in cash in a hiding place down in the cellar. And there's nothing in there now, because there's nothing left."

  "What did you do with it?"

  "Spent it. A new dishwasher here, a new washer-dryer pair there. The porch extension. The barbecue. Down payments on the Dodge and then the Mustang. A little on the Honda too."

  "That doesn't account for forty thousand dollars."

  "Four years at Michigan for Dolly does. So she went there and majored in art history, got married, had three children and now she wants to get divorced and move to Houston and start all over again. You know, Frank, I doubt we had any fun out of all that money except maybe for that two-week Caribbean cruise we took a couple years ago. But even then we had bad luck. We got seasick and it rained.

  "Now, Dale—he was different. He knew what to do." She smiled as if to herself. "You know how people say he can afford to live on Park Avenue because he married a wealthy woman? Not true. Karen Hart never had a dime and she didn't inherit anything either. Dale took his share and invested it. He set up a brokerage account in Karen's name. He invested shrewdly the way he was shrewd about everything, planning for the long term the way he always did. That's how come he always ends up so far ahead of everybody else. The way he made CD, brown-nosing the chiefs, building up debt in the department." She shook her head. "He was always headed for the top."

  "What about Tommy?"

  She smiled. "He was the good-time guy who threw it all away. We all warned him, 'Don't act flashy.' He promised he wouldn't, but he couldn't help himself. He'd go on spending sprees. You know: 'Set them up, drinks for everyone.' Girls, gambling, stupid bets when he was drunk. He blew half his share in less than a year, then he got worried and invested the other half in a bar and grill. It failed the way everything he touched always failed—his cases, his marriage, and, considering what happened, I guess you could say his life.

  "Finally he quit the force, left his family and moved out to Newark, where he became some sort of salesman. In the end he had nothing. He talked to Al about it once and it was kind of touching what he said: 'We each used our money like the kind of guys we were. I was always a sap, so, of course, I wasted mine.' Never explain, never complain—that was Tommy Wallace. No matter how stupid or drunk he always had that smile, which was why we always liked him anyway."

  Janek understood it then, why they could not stay friends. Their score was their bond and also the mech
anism that drove them apart. There was no falling out; rather a falling off. The money stood between them as an embarrassment, making them avoid one another until it came back to haunt them years afterward.

  "It was last spring," she said, "that Tommy turned up. Didn't call or anything. Just came by and rang the bell. We were watching TV, me upstairs, Al down in the workshop he'd made out of his den. I answered the door and I recognized him right away. It had been ten years at least. He looked pretty bad, but he still had the smile. Al came up, the three of us stood talking for a while, then Tommy said he had to talk to Al alone and so the two of them went downstairs.

  "He told Al he was in trouble. He owed ten thousand dollars, couldn't raise it and he'd been told that if he didn't he'd get broken legs or worse. He asked Al for a loan, and Al didn't hesitate. He pushed aside the workbench, reached into the hiding place and brought out all the cash he had left, about thirteen hundred dollars.

  "Tommy was grateful but said that wouldn't be enough. For the people he was into he had to have the ten. They talked about it awhile, then Al called up Dale at home. You got to understand it was the first time they'd spoken in years. Al hadn't even gone in for the interview you're supposed to have when you retire from the division. Anyway, he told Dale about Tommy, then he put Tommy on and came upstairs to wait. A while later Tommy came up and he was bitter. 'He refused, the prick,' he said.

  "But it hadn't been so simple. It seemed he and Dale had quarreled. Tommy made some threats and it got rough. He told Dale he'd go to the DA and tell about the money. Dale, he told us, laughed at that and said the statute of limitations had run out long ago. And then Tommy told him he'd better think it over because statute or no statute a story like that could cost him his job.

  "Early the next morning Dale came to the house. It was his first visit here in twenty-four years. He tried to persuade Al they couldn't make the loan because they'd be giving in to blackmail and there'd be no end to it if they did. 'He'll have us over a barrel. He's got nothing to lose while I'm CD and you're a pensioned cop. I know how prosecutors work our kind of threesome. Give immunity to the weakest guy so they can burn the other two.'

  "Al said he didn't see it that way, that he didn't think Tommy would blab. That he'd only made the threat because he was desperate and that if they made the loan they'd have fulfilled their pledge and they wouldn't have to help another time.

  "In the end Dale agreed. He gave Al nine thousand in cash. Al put in a thousand of his own, then told Tommy to come by and pick it up. Tommy was very grateful. He confirmed he'd made an empty threat. 'Dale's a shit,' he said, 'I wouldn't hesitate to squeal on him, but I know if I did I'd hurt you and Lou, and that's something I'd never do.' So that was the end of it, at least we thought. And then, about three weeks later Al found out Tommy had been killed, his body found drying up in the trunk of a stolen car over in Jersey somewhere.

  "When Al called Dale to tell him what had happened, Dale acted like he didn't care. 'Got what he deserved,' he said. 'Took our money and spent it on himself. We can kiss our loans goodbye and be grateful too, because Tommy won't be coming around to hit us for any more.' Al told Dale he was a prick to say a thing like that. Dale laughed and said he had to get back to work, that he didn't have time to discuss Tommy Wallace anymore.

  "Al wanted to believe that's what happened. Maybe for a day or two he did. Then he began to worry about it the way he worried over everything. He started waking up in the middle of the night and after a week he couldn't sleep.

  "So he went over to Jersey and got in touch with the detective handling the case. They struck some kind of deal, because Al started looking into it himself. It was then he came alive again, like I told you, Frank, before. I hadn't seen him like that since he'd retired. That case became his life. He thought about it all the time. And the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that the syndicate execution was a fake and that Dale Hart had had Tommy killed."

  "Was that just his theory? Or did he have some real evidence?"

  She shrugged. "He kept it all to himself. He was like that, you know, a canny detective. But he did tell me how he felt, that it was the big case of his life. That the money they had found may have been the score of a lifetime but that if he could prove Dale had had Tommy killed that would be a bigger deal than any score.

  "And that was very important to him, Frank, because when he retired he felt his life had been a waste. He'd always wanted to be a great cop, break a great case and become a legend in the division, but he never lucked into anything except that stash. Now suddenly, after he retired, and on account of that stash, he thought maybe he had.

  "Thing was, he knew he was in a bind. If he could pin Tommy's murder on Dale he'd have a tremendous case. But if he did that he'd also ruin himself, because he'd taken a third of that money, had been in on the loan and because of that could be a suspect, too.

  "I asked him how that was possible. He said that if Dale was pushed there wasn't anything he wouldn't do, including trying to make it look like it was us who'd had Tommy killed. 'We both had a motive,' he said, 'we both had a lot to lose if Tommy talked.' When I understood that, I begged him to forget it. Dale was too dangerous. If Al went up against him we could lose everything—the pension, the house, even our lives. If Dale was capable of having Tommy killed why would he hesitate to do the same to us?

  "But Al was determined. He'd gotten it into his head that he owed this to Tommy, and also to make up for what the three of them had done. He got more and more obsessed with it until finally, when I kept complaining, he wouldn't talk to me about it anymore.

  "I don't know what was going on with him those last few weeks except that beginning in August he seemed to be making up his mind. He was quiet and he was out a lot. I don't know where he went. I asked him to go see the department shrink or at least talk it over with you. He wouldn't. I think he was ashamed. He just kept getting quieter and quieter. He didn't sleep much and he spent a lot of time downstairs brooding in his den.

  "He spent that whole Saturday night down there. When he came up to the kitchen he looked terrible. A little later—this must have been about eight in the morning—I heard him shouting over the phone. I stood at the top of the stairs and listened. I knew he was talking to Dale. He was threatening him, saying he knew he'd ordered Tommy killed. He was shouting all this vicious stuff and then suddenly he stopped, which made me think Dale had hung up in his ear.

  "Al came back up to the kitchen. I saw something wild in his eyes. I started to beg him then, 'Let it go.' He didn't answer, just stared at me with those crazy eyes.

  "He went back downstairs and I know he burned a lot of papers. I found the ashes later and I never found any notes about the case. Then he went outside for a while, just stood on the front lawn looking at the street. Then he came back in and said he was feeling better. He set up the card table in the hall and started whittling that flute. About an hour later I heard the shot."

  She sat back, exhausted. She'd been talking nonstop for an hour. As soon as she stopped she stared down at the table as if she couldn't bear to meet Janek's eyes.

  "Why didn't you tell me this before?" he asked. "Why all the crap about how Al was working on something and could I find out what it was?"

  "I'm sorry, Frank. You're right to be angry. But, you see, I didn't want to tarnish Al. I was afraid if I told you about the money you wouldn't care about him anymore."

  "Then why ask me to look into it in the first place? If I discovered what he'd been doing why would my feelings be any different then?"

  "It was stupid. I know. It was just that I had this idea."

  "What?"

  She glanced up at him, a painful glance. "That you might want to take over the case and bring down Hart the way Al wanted to do."

  "If that's what you wanted you should—"

  "I know. I just thought that if I hinted around you might stumble on it on your own. But when you came by two weeks ago and told me there was nothing, I decided to
let it go." She exhaled. "Tommy was dead and Al was dead and whatever Dale had done just didn't make that much difference anymore."

  "But I did find something."

  "Yes," she said. "Where did you get the picture?"

  "Al gave it to Tommy Wallace's daughter."

  "Oh, I see. Yeah, I saw her at the funeral." She looked perplexed. "But how did you get to her?"

  He ignored her question. It would require a complicated answer and he didn't feel like discussing his relationship with Caroline. But it occurred to him that Al's act of pressing the snapshot into Caroline's hand had been done with the same sort of ambivalent hope that had driven Lou to tell him Al had been working on a case and then ask him to find out what it was.

  He thought about it. Al must have been brooding over suicide for weeks. Most likely he had prepared affidavits which implicated Hart. But at the last moment he lost his nerve, possibly because of something Hart said to him on the phone. So he burned his papers, his affidavits and his notes, preferring to go out as an inexplicable suicide rather than as a cop too cowardly to make his case even if in the attempt he brought down ruin upon himself.

  But still he'd given Caroline that photograph, hoping she would follow it up. The odds against that happening were astronomical, considering how strongly she'd resisted letting him talk to her about his agony. But astronomical or not, Al's last bet had been won. Janek had gotten hold of the snapshot, had pulled the story out of Caroline, Carmichael and Lou, and now he was in possession of a set of facts that he could pursue in a way that Al could not.

  "Oh, Frank..." Lou was sobbing. "I see now it was all my fault. I didn't understand. He wanted so much to be a great cop, to break open a great case and pull Dale down. But I wouldn't let him do it. I begged him to leave it alone. I was afraid we'd lose that stupid pension. I denied him his chance for—I don't know. Redemption, I guess."