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by William Bayer

  Or at least absolution, Janek thought. He turned to her and shook his head. "It wasn't you. He was in a double bind. The more he investigated, the more evidence he found, the more likely he was to implicate himself. In the end he painted himself into a corner. And then there was only one way out."

  There were tears now streaming down her face. Janek pulled her to him, stroked her gray hair and let her sob. He wanted to comfort her but didn't know what to say. And then, suddenly, words came to him as he gazed around at the gold tassels on the cushions, the gold carpeting on the floor, the ornate veneer that had always made him feel uncomfortable, which Al and Lou had used to conceal the ambiguous virtue of their lives.

  "You two had so much. I envied you. Always did. You had so much more than Sarah and me. I used to think about that whenever I saw Dolly, how barren we were, how much we missed."

  "All the pain..."

  "Sure. But don't forget about the good stuff. You lived, Lou. The two of you lived. Sarah and me—we just cohabited. What a terrible way to pass the years."

  He knew he was being maudlin and he didn't care; he was doing the best he could. And then when she started arguing with him, denying that he and Sarah had not had a good and loving life together, he nodded in agreement although he did not agree. The important thing was for her to stop feeling guilty over Al. If he could help her get over that he knew he would feel less guilty over Al himself.

  Guilt: that was what Al's last case had been about. A struggle to stay incorruptible; a moment of weakness paid for by years of shame. Then a glimpse at redemption and the realization that there was no redemption to be had. And the knowledge that in his own special way he, Al DiMona, was also to blame for Tommy Wallace's death.

  Glancing down at the table, at the snapshot of the three grinning cops, Janek understood the confusion that blemished Al's smile. Even then he knew there'd come a day, Janek thought. And thinking that, he grasped Lou harder and held her tight against his chest.

  Narrowing the Focus

  Early Monday morning Aaron called in: "At the Museum of Modern Art. Looking up a couple things. I'll be in around eleven."

  Aaron had something—Janek could feel it, that he was the only one of the five of them to have come up with an idea. He told Stanger to check out Spalding. ("If he gives you any crap tell him he's a murder suspect and I want to see him down here with his lawyer.") He assigned Howell and Sal to interview friends and associates of Ellis. ("I think he's a fake, but we got to be sure. Play it like we think he's a homicidal sadist and see how they react.") Then, when the office was clear, he sat back in his chair to wait. He thought about Al and then about Hart's eyes and how cold they were and how he'd always thought that Hart could kill.

  When Aaron came in he was ready to sell. He took Karp's drawings of Ellis and Lane and tacked them to the wall.

  "You and Karp see Ellis the same way," Aaron said, "a monkey, one paw clutching bananas, the other beating his chest. Suppose Karp's right, too, about my guy, Lane. Then what've you got? An owl, a nightbird, staring out waiting for his prey. Yeah, I know, Karp's a cartoonist. He may have better-than-average insights, but what's that got to do with the case? Nothing except that when I saw his drawing I thought, Wow, that's it, that's just the way I see the guy."

  "Did you talk to him again?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "First time around I got enough."

  "So what have you been doing?"

  "Checking him out."

  "And?"

  "Well, I'll tell you, Frank, he makes movies about guys who stab whores and diddle around with cops."

  Janek waited, and when Aaron didn't add anything he sighed—there had to be more.

  "Come on," he said. "I've heard that story. Ellis—"

  "This is different."

  "I sure hope it is," Janek said.

  They ate lunch at the Taco-Rico, then drove to a repertory cinema near the Columbia University campus. Aaron insisted that Janek come; he said what he'd seen over the weekend was too subtle to explain. Janek said if it was all that subtle it probably wasn't going to throw much illumination on the suspect. Aaron said it might or it might not but that he had a very strong feeling and since the other suspects were more or less closed out what did Janek have to lose?

  So he allowed himself to be dragged uptown, pleading reluctance all the way. He knew Aaron didn't have a bombshell and that he wasn't going to find out what he did have until he let Aaron soften him up.

  The titles were spelled out on the marquee: "TWO BY LANE: HAIRDRESSER and MEZZALUNA."

  "Two. Christ. You didn't tell me it was a double feature."

  "If you want we'll only stay for one."

  The theater was old and cavernous, nearly empty that weekday afternoon. A bearded wino, sprawled out on a rear-row seat, alternately snored and gasped. A small contingent of young people passed a joint in a row near the screen. The place smelled of old popcorn and stale marijuana smoke. The usher, elderly and decrepit, wore a soiled uniform and a mismatched gray toupee.

  "Not one of your fashionable first-run houses," Janek said. "And not exactly a couple of hits."

  Aaron nodded. "A few critics love his stuff, but he's definitely not commercial. More like a cult director with a small devoted audience."

  Hairdresser was about a killer named Seymour Trent who, after he stabbed his prostitute victims, lovingly gave them each a wash and a perm. He was pursued by a mean piggish cop named Templeton who staggered drunk when he wasn't speeding dangerously in his patrol car around the unnamed California coastal town where the story was set. There was an aura of corruption about everything in this town: cretinous deputies, hostile hippies, leering merchants, toothless, hard-boiled whorehouse madams. At the end killer and cop took part in an extravagant chase through a run-down amusement park. Trent escaped off a speeding roller coaster by jumping into a murky river. Templeton swigged whiskey from a bottle and stared down at the oily water with the eyes of a bedazzled fool.

  A crude low-budget film, probably an early work, Janek thought, employing inexperienced actors playing implausible characters in a story that didn't add up. But he also recognized energy: an atmosphere of menace; the way the killer's knife flashed in the light; and a hypnotic photographic style.

  There was a brief break between the films. When the lights came on, the theater ricocheted with coughs.

  Aaron leaned over and whispered into Janek's ear, "Notice the cop didn't make his collar."

  Mezzaluna was stronger than Hairdresser, though in format pretty much the same. The murderer, Targov, a worker in a slaughterhouse, killed his whore victims with a mezzaluna, the Italian half-moon-shaped vegetable-chopping device.

  When Targov slayed, the murder scene would dissolve into a memory: Targov as a boy watching his mother rolling her mezzaluna from side to side and smiling quietly as if with secret knowledge.

  The detective was named Masterson and the location was Chicago. Masterson was slow-witted, walked with the heavy swagger of a street cop, slurred his words and rocked nervously on his heels when he stood still.

  There was some sort of grim battle of wits between killer and cop; one felt that Masterson knew Targov was his quarry but for some unstated reason could not make an arrest. After numerous complications Masterson tracked Targov to a meat-packing plant, where he chased him amidst a maze of hanging carcasses, fired out his revolver, then lost him in the dark.

  As Masterson shrugged, gave up and backed away, the camera closed in on the shadows. When the detective opened the packing-house door a splinter of light penetrated, reflected off the mezzaluna and made it flash silver in the dark.

  Janek was half nauseated. The story was unreal, the plot absurd, the ending unsatisfying. But still he felt that Lane was skillful; despite the shallowness of his work, he conveyed a vision, something bleak and miserable that stuck in Janek's mind.

  "So you see," said Aaron when they were out on the street, "he makes movies about intense kill
ers who use sharp instruments to cut up whores."

  "What else?"

  "The same contrived, arranged style your lady friend saw in our photographs. The same studied artificial look."

  They got into the car. Aaron didn't start it up; he watched Janek, who stared out the windshield with his hands locked behind his head.

  "You're right about the look," Janek said. "He works hard making the killings beautiful. They're really exquisite if you can stand to look at them. But I think there's more. The stories. That's what you wanted me to see." He turned. Aaron nodded. "The same strange logic, right? Like in our case. All that elaborate moving back and forth. Perfectly planned and executed, with a kind of artistic signature at the end instead of the mess and blood we should have found."

  They talked about it. Aaron said he felt the movies were a smirk. "The cops are slobs, right? Templeton and Masterson. But the killers, Trent and Targov, are brilliant. Remember what you said the first day: 'I'm superkiller and I defy you cops to solve my crime'?"

  "I was just spouting."

  "Maybe so. But I get that same message from the movies. They give me a bad feeling, like that to Lane the killings aren't all that important, like the big play's the struggle between the killer and the cop."

  "What were you doing at the museum?" Janek asked.

  "Using the library. They've got back issues of the scholarly film magazines." Aaron unfolded a clipping and passed it to Janek. He had underlined several passages in an article entitled "The Rage of Peter Lane":

  ...and when on the soundtrack we hear a chorale from a mass, the degraded crime-scene becomes a cathedral. Diabolic turns holy. The forbidden act of erotic murder becomes an artistic act of ritual sacrifice....

  The detective: he is inevitable, and in all Lane's stories more or less the same—a clown, a man to be taunted, to be broken and scorned as he fails to solve his case. The killer goads him, makes him mad, and when he charges wildly the killer steps nimbly aside and the detective stumbles, confused, at nothing, at the air....

  As they drove downtown he felt Aaron's stare.

  "So why aren't you more excited, Frank? Usually when you get interested in a suspect you act a little more turned on."

  Janek exhaled. "Who says I'm interested?"

  "What's the matter? You saw it. The crime scenes in his movies look like ours, and the movies are about the same kinds of crazy homicides."

  "Too corny."

  "Okay." Aaron pulled the car over and stopped. "I dug around on this guy. He's given a lot of interviews. One thing he says again and again, that he'd like to make a picture that would inspire a real murder."

  "Grandiose talk. He's trying to sound gruesome. All the terror guys sound off like that."

  "But suppose it's a little different from what he says." Aaron paused. "Suppose what he really wanted to do was make a movie about a murder he first committed himself."

  Life imitating art; art imitating life: that did seem corny to Janek, but still he found Lane interesting.

  Spalding was out of the case: for some reason the old man took a liking to Stanger, invited him into his apartment and confided his theory that the real target in the Ireland homicide had not been Amanda but her dog.

  Ellis' friends were incredulous at the notion that anyone would think him capable of murder. His S&M fashion stills? Tongue-in-cheek. Orgies? Sometimes his guests got kinky and stripped. Homicidal sadist? You got to be kidding. Jack's a pussycat. Though, occasionally, he does overdo the hype.

  Dr. Raymond Evans, Michael Hopkins and Nicholas Karpewicz were also out. And so was Hazel Carter: her weekend alibi had held up. But Cynthia Tuttle's records showed that on one occasion Brenda had joined a class just before Mandy's regular hour. Janek was intrigued. The girls had brushed very close, had likely seen each other, perhaps had even spoken in the changing room. He imagined the one suiting up, the other toweling off, as models and dancers gossiped at adjoining lockers. None of which, he knew, had much to do with the case, though he felt haunted by the possibility that they'd met.

  That left the film director—if the window theory was to stand. Janek stared at Karp's sketch, the one that showed Lane as a brooding owl. He repositioned it on the squad-room wall so that Lane's eyes were on the row of crime-scene photographs.

  Tuesday morning he called the squad together. "We're going to look at this guy real close. He hasn't met you, Sal, so you're the one to tail him. Covertly. No pressure. You lose him you pick him up later, right? Howell and Stanger: get photographs. There're plenty in the film magazines. Now, when you talk to the prostitutes you show them shots of Lane. Have they ever seen this guy? Is he a john? Aaron, you'll coordinate and start a background check. Usual sources—Defense Department, FBI. I want to know who he is."

  "Jesus," moaned Aaron, "another book."

  "Got to know him before I interview him. You think he likes to play games. Fine, we're stupid, just like the apes in his films. We're so stupid we don't even know we're in a game. Here's the strategy: we're looking at him, but no direct approach. When and if we find something, like that he made some memorable expeditions before he found his Amanda look-alike, I'll take a crack at him. And when I do I don't want to be a stupid cop."

  Aaron's greeting Thursday morning: "I don't know, Frank. Are we throwing too much into this?"

  Janek glanced around the squad room. The place smelled of coffee and cigarettes. "Where are the other guys?"

  "Sal's sitting in a car outside Lane's building. Stanger and Howell will be in later. The whores aren't up till afternoon."

  "So what's the problem?" Already he felt tired. He'd spent the night thinking about Hart. His hatred surprised him; it went beyond anything he'd felt in years.

  "The problem, Frank, is Lane. He's top of the list by default. We're five guys. And now we're all working on him full time."

  "Thought you liked him."

  "I do like him. But..." Aaron shrugged. "Is the allocation right?"

  Janek sat down. His mind was whirling. There were Tommy Wallace and Hart, and Switched Heads and Lane. "Got to allocate the way I feel, Aaron. May look like default, but I'm running on a hunch. I felt something at her window. Made me shiver. It's someone out there, someone who can see in. Lane fits. Right now I got to go with that. So—anything else?"

  "Yeah. Sal's having trouble. It's not a one-man job. Even a normal, low-key surveillance you're talking at least three guys and you're better off with five. But Lane's not normal. Doesn't keep regular hours. Doesn't go to a job, sleeps late, then stays out half the night. But the other morning Sal missed him. Doorman said he went out at dawn. Wanders around a lot, too. Like he'll take a series of subway rides, down to West Fourth Street, change to a Brooklyn train, then switch back to a train heading uptown. Or he'll ride down to City Hall, then walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Quite a few times Sal's lost him. No way he can keep up."

  "Maybe Lane knows he's on him."

  "Yeah. That's possible."

  "If Sal's talking to the doorman—"

  "Doormen know we're watching the neighborhood. Sal didn't let on he was particularly interested in Lane."

  "Still—"

  "Sure. He could know."

  "So you want two more men."

  "Would help a lot."

  Janek shook his head. "Hart won't give them to me."

  Aaron nodded and turned back to his phone. Janek watched him awhile, listening to him work. Aaron was good, a superb telephone investigator. Janek wished he could tell him why he didn't want to ask Hart for anything.

  Lane didn't own a car. Which left the possibility he'd rented or leased one, or had used a stolen car that night. Which meant checking with all the car-rental agencies in the city, and the registry of stolen-car complaints going back three days before the homicides. None of which would prove anything, as Aaron and Janek knew perfectly well, since Lane could have rented a car in Philadelphia or Baltimore or anyplace within hundreds of miles. Or used fake ID to rent one. Or stolen one on L
ong Island or upstate. Or owned one he'd registered under an assumed name. Or had used a taxi whose driver hadn't responded to their call to check all destination lists. Or had taken a bus and hadn't been remembered because he'd carried the heads in a gym bag. Or had marched across Central Park carrying them in a backpack on an eccentric nocturnal urban hike. Which meant that a check of rental agencies and the registry of stolen-car complaints was hardly worth doing. Which didn't mean it didn't have to be done. Which it was. With the expected result. Which still didn't mean anything.

  As Aaron put it to Janek as they shared another in an endless stream of pizzas at the Taco-Rico, "Well, at least we know one thing. He's got a driver's license. So we can assume he probably knows how to drive."

  At the end of each day Janek would drive uptown, check the mailbox at his basement apartment, take a shower, change his shirt, then drive over to Long Island City to Caroline's loft.

  He'd become a short-haul commuter and, he decided, he did some of his best thinking on the road. He developed a little ritual: As soon as he swung from the access ramp onto the Queensboro Bridge he would glance back at Manhattan in his rearview mirror. Darkness was falling earlier; the twilight vision he'd enjoyed the first time he'd driven to her—the glow behind the buildings, the luminous city set powerfully against the fading sky—was replaced now by the spectacle of lit skyscrapers standing guard before the black, impenetrable night.

  The sight never failed to move him or to inspire some kind of idea. And when he arrived she would be there waiting for him, her loft filled with soft jazz music and softly dancing light, and he would take her in his arms and breathe in the scent of her body and her hair, and then they would drink wine and make love on her brass bed beneath her gently turning ceiling fan and sometimes he would feel less anger in himself and other times a tension he could neither fathom nor define.