Switch

by William Bayer

  "She was practicing for her exercise class."

  "She should have pulled the blinds."

  "Suppose she had? You think she'd still be alive?"

  Peter ignored the question. "There were reflections. Stuff going on. Interesting, the way she'd be there stretching and then she'd turn off the lamp and the scene would change and suddenly you'd see what was happening across the way.

  Peter was speaking now like a director explaining a scene, but his animation rang false to Janek—as if he were feigning emotions he didn't feel but thought he ought to show.

  "...kind of superimposure." Lane squinted as if imagining it. "Connections. Opposites. Great visual idea. Filed it away. Then, when I read she got herself killed, got to thinking about it again...."

  He lowered his eyes, pausing as if weighing whether to go on. Mind-fucking me, Janek thought.

  "Could make a powerful opening. Knew that. But knew there had to be someone else. Man. Watcher. Voyeur. Guy like me. Guy living across the yard. Ever see Rear Window? About this photographer, Jimmy Stewart. His leg's—"

  "Seen it."

  "—in a cast. Pure cinema. Lock yourself up and see what you can do. You're in this one room with your camera. Got to tell your story from there. Got to play fair. Can't show anything the guy can't see. Can't take the camera into the girl's apartment. Rules of the game."

  "Rules? Play fair?"

  "Fair with the audience. That's the challenge—can you tell your story from that room across the yard? Can the guy looking into the victim's apartment plan the crime just from what he sees?"

  "Plan the crime? I thought Jimmy Stewart solved it."

  Peter shrugged. "Well, there's the difference." He stopped talking then, as abruptly as he'd started, peering closely at Janek, waiting for him to take up the thread. And as he let the silence hang between them, Janek was struck by how shrewdly he'd reversed their situation, from one in which a detective had come to measure a suspect to one in which the suspect signaled he didn't care.

  "Well," Janek said after they had sat in silence for a time, "suppose you put in a cop." Peter looked at him. "With a suspect, a film director, in whose movies he's noticed similarities to the crime." Peter nodded. "Now suppose this cop decides to try and trap his suspect by turning the script around."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Making it come out opposite from the way it always does in the suspect's films."

  Peter studied him. "This is a pretty highfalutin' cop you're talking about."

  "Well, what do you think?"

  Peter squinted. "Needs complications. Psychological dimensions. The cop's fear of failure and of being made to play the fool. And physical violence—something that could happen to him or to someone he cared a lot about." Lane paused. "Still, the real drama would be the struggle between the two. Not who wins, who loses; that wouldn't matter much. But the struggle, the confrontation. The killer taunting the cop. The cop doing a terrible burn. The killer calm as rain...."

  It was the master bedroom window which had the perfect view of Amanda's apartment. Lane brought Janek to it last. They stared down at her window together in silence; though a good hundred feet away it looked much closer in the gathering dusk.

  If Janek had had any doubts about his voyeur theory, all of them were settled now. Amanda had been so close, so clearly visible, and the ladder from her roof stood there begging to be climbed.

  Peter spoke first. "What do you think happened over there?"

  Janek turned to him; Peter was searching his face.

  "I'll tell you," Janek said, "I think the killer wanted to murder a hooker."

  "She didn't strike me that way."

  "She wasn't like that and her killer knew it. So he had to work things out."

  "If he wanted a whore why pick her in the first place?"

  "You've put your finger on it. That's the crux of the case." Peter's gaze on him was steady now. "His script demanded a whore but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't make Amanda into one. The challenge, remember? Trying to shoot an entire picture from a window?" Janek turned back toward Mandy's building. He spoke slowly, rhapsodically, wanting to hold Peter's attention now. "I imagine him watching her night after night, standing at his window the way we're standing now at yours, peering out, studying her, working up hatred for her on account of the way she refuses to play her part. Days go by. Weeks. His rage mounts up. He wants to degrade her. Knock her down. Make her dirty. Make her crawl. Then, at last, an idea. Comes to him in a flash. As satisfying as it is brutal. A way around the dilemma of the prospective victim who has refused the coveted role. If Amanda won't be a whore he'll make her into one. He'll find a real whore, one who resembles her, kill them both and then exchange their heads. That way, in a single stroke, he'll double the magnitude of his crime. He'll create two dead and mutilated sluts instead of one, and turn his act into a puzzle that will taunt and defeat the police."

  He turned back to Peter before he finished speaking. The curiosity was gone. Peter's face was still again.

  "Well?"

  "That's a truly incredible story."

  "Don't believe it?"

  "You got enough going on over there without dragging in a second girl."

  "What's wrong with a second girl?"

  "Farfetched. Grandiose."

  "Funny," Janek said. "I've seen a couple of your movies. Compared to them I'd say my story's pretty solid."

  Lane looked at him. "What did you think of them?"

  "What?"

  "My movies."

  "Oh." Finally, a soft spot. "Found them disturbing, to tell the truth."

  "They're meant to be."

  "Sure. But I don't mean the way you think."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Oh, I don't know." He worked to keep his tone mild and free of rancor. "Felt that for all the blood and gore in them, in the end they lacked real blood." He waited a moment for Lane to respond, but the director's eyes remained blank. "Your characters are made of cardboard, Peter. And most of your visual ideas are borrowed from Hitchcock. I know there're critics who say you have a powerful vision but, frankly, I don't think you do. You see, when I looked at your stuff all I could feel was the wounded little guy who'd made them up. A cop-hater with a chip on his shoulder serving up a pathetic little rage."

  It was an enormous insult. As Janek delivered it he carefully studied Peter's face. His eyes were empty and his body still, like a sentry guarding a vault.

  An Accumulation of Regrets

  "You'd have liked it," Janek said. "Real aggression. Two boxers feeling each other out, then, suddenly, they start to punch. He didn't do the tar-baby bit. Wanted to show me his fancy footwork from the bell." He stared up at the ceiling, the fan slowly revolving above the bed. "He's crazy, of course. And also very smart."

  They were lying together, their limbs entangled, the bedding pushed to the side. It was nearly midnight, a hot, humid evening, last gasp of the sultry summer weather that still lingered upon the city although the calendar said its time was past.

  After leaving Lane's apartment he had driven straight to the loft, filled with a great need to hold Caroline close. An hour of lovemaking had restored him. He now knew the man he had to beat. The sickening feeling that came from facing madness was replaced now by a detective's need to understand.

  "Nothing there to sympathize with. No visible agony or passion. About the only human thing he showed me was a sour vanity about his work."

  "Why do you think he did it?" He could feel her body tremble.

  "Don't know. My theory of the disturbed filmmaker, the genius in torment, didn't hold up. He's so much colder than I thought. So much more furious and controlled. I'm not even sure that making Amanda a whore was all that important to him in the end."

  She pulled back to look at him. "Then why?"

  He studied the fan, the blade turning, turning, becoming a disk. "I got a feeling from his movies that he uses people the way an artist uses paint. Plays with them, arran
ges them into unusual patterns, to make something he wants to see. A design."

  "You're saying—"

  "That maybe he wasn't driven to this. That he simply did it willfully. If that's true, then the victims were irrelevant, just actresses forced to play gruesome roles."

  "He must have had a motive."

  "Sure. But it doesn't have to have anything to do with them. He could be trying to impress somebody. Or just playing some kind of game."

  She looked at him. "I'd think that kind of game would be pretty dangerous."

  He nodded. "That's what he likes about it. The danger—that makes it fun. And now that he's met me he's got someone to play against. I could feel him sizing me up, trying to decide whether I'd make a tough competitor or be a typical easy match."

  She traced her finger upon his face, exploring the lines, the wrinkles, gently touching him, her fingertips speaking eloquently of her love. "What are you going to do now, Frank?"

  "I'm going to nail him."

  The next morning, as he made coffee, feeling clearheaded, his thoughts turned again to Al and Lou. He and Caroline had discussed Lou's story casually for two weeks as if mere knowledge were enough and no further action were required.

  "Hey," he said, shaking her awake, offering her a mug of coffee. She opened her eyes. "How do you feel?"

  She stretched her arms above her head. "Great."

  "Sleeping with you restores me."

  She sipped her coffee. "Yeah. I notice that."

  "Been thinking about the way Hart acted in the car."

  She drew her brows. "When?"

  "Driving back from the cemetery. When he assigned me the case. That was when he told me he hadn't known Al personally. A lie. We know that now."

  She took another sip. "Well?"

  "When I spotted you at the cemetery I thought you looked out of place. I got this idea you might have been Al's mistress and since I'd promised Lou I'd find out what he'd been doing, I made a move so I could catch you and get your name when the group started breaking up."

  "Sounds like fairly standard detective practice."

  "Yeah. But just then I saw Hart whispering to his sergeant, who hurried over and interposed himself."

  "Between you and me?"

  Janek nodded. "He said Hart wanted me to drive back with him. I did and that's when he gave me Switched Heads."

  "So what's the insight?"

  "Say he recognized you as Tommy Wallace's daughter. He also knew Al had been my rabbi. Al kills himself and doesn't leave a note. It would be natural for me to try and find out why. Hart doesn't want any trouble. He's come to the funeral to check me out. He spots you and, worse, notices me watching you. I make a move toward you. He gets worried. So he sends over Sweeney to intercept."

  "Sweeney's the sergeant."

  "Right. So now he's got me in his car. He wants to distract me really good. So he gives me this crazy case to tie me up, the kind of case that can destroy a detective's brain. Maybe he figures by the time I'm done with it, solved or unsolved, Al's suicide will be very old news and if anything ever turns up about Al's investigation into your father's death it will look more or less like what it was, namely a farce."

  "You don't think he was going to give you the case anyway?"

  "Maybe. He certainly had it in reserve. But what makes me think he hadn't thought it through was the mistake he made, that lie about not knowing Al."

  She'd been watching him closely. He had the feeling she was struggling to keep something in. "Quite an improvisation. Is Hart that slick?"

  "To get to be Chief of Detectives you got to be very slick."

  "Well," she said, "what are you going to do about it?"

  "Haven't decided yet. Al couldn't do anything, could he? Except make a lot of empty threats."

  "I don't understand." She looked angry. "You just finished telling me Hart played you for a fool."

  "He even called me in after a week on the pretext of discussing Ireland/Beard. Then the first thing he does is ask me was how Lou is getting along."

  "You told him—"

  "That she was coming along all right. Now that I think back on it I remember he lost interest after that."

  "But that's outrageous." She was full of indignation.

  "I'd say less outrageous than the rest of it. Wouldn't you?"

  "So you're just going to let it go at that?"

  He stared at her. "I didn't say I was going to let it go."

  "You have to do something."

  "Sure, I do. So, tell me—what would you suggest?"

  She pulled herself up, sat still by the side of the bed, then pulled on her robe and walked toward the galley. Halfway there she stopped and turned. "I don't get it. Last night you tell me you're going to nail Lane. But that's just a case you were assigned. Now, this morning, I don't hear you saying anything about nailing Hart even though it seems he killed my father and drove your best friend to suicide."

  There was something marvelously confrontational in the way she was standing—defiant, angry, outraged.

  "The first rule for a detective," he said as softly as he could, "is don't take your cases home."

  "Oh, screw that shit!"She was furious now; the explosion had finally come. "That may be the first rule for you. But I'm not a detective, thank God." She paused. "Think I'll go to Hart and confront him. Fling Lou's story in his face. How would you like that?" She turned on her heel.

  He walked up to her in the galley, stood behind her, put his arms around her and grasped her. She struggled to get away.

  "I've been waiting to hear you say that."

  She continued to twist and squirm. "What are you talking about?"

  "To hear you come after me, mad, and push."

  She stopped struggling. He loosened his grip. She turned. "You mean this was a setup? You were trying to get me mad?"

  "Something like that."

  "Then you are going to do something?"

  He nodded.

  "Then that was bullshit about how you haven't decided yet?"

  "Yeah," he said. "But I'm not going to do it alone. You're going to help me. Because if it isn't important enough to you it's not important enough to me."

  Later, when she was dressed, he escorted her to the tennis club. He carried her racquets; she walked her bike.

  "Al had a great case," he said, "tie the CD to a murder. But he botched it. Hart had a hold over him because Al had taken money, too. That's what they mean when they say a good detective doesn't get personal. When the guy you're after has that kind of leverage on you there's nothing you can do."

  She glanced at him. "Are you all that free of leverage?"

  "The job's the only thing he's got over me and I don't want the job if it means he gets to yo-yo me around." He paused. "Remember how we got to the point one night where you admitted maybe you were hiding from certain things? Well, I've been thinking about that and I've decided I've been hiding, too."

  "Behind what?"

  "My shield, my profession. Playing the detached detective. And, you know, I'm getting tired of telling myself we're all criminals at heart and that the only worthy feeling I can have is to be filled with pity for us all. Maybe my dear ex-spouse was right—it's an awfully heavy burden I've been carrying around. Maybe that's why I've felt so tired the last few years, as if every new case was just an added weight."

  "Oh, Janek, what brought all this on?"

  "Lane and Hart. Hart especially. I really hate that son-of-a-bitch. I'd like to get very personal and stick it to him. It's been years since I felt anything like that."

  "But still you feel funny about it."

  She was right, but he found it difficult to explain. They walked a block in silence. "Maybe I feel you won't like me so much," he finally said.

  She looked surprised. "I don't understand."

  "That afternoon it rained—"

  "When the loft turned dark while we were making love." He nodded. "I told you about the burden then."

  "Yes
?"

  He glanced at her, then turned away. "You said it was the thing you loved about me most."

  "Yes. But that doesn't mean—"

  "I was wondering if you'd feel that way if you found me full of hate."

  "But you're not full of hate. You just hate Lane and Hart." She searched his face, then reached out to him. He gave her his hand; she took it and held it tight. "Don't be afraid I'm not going to care for you because you're a human being." She stood on her toes to kiss him. "That's wonderful, you see. Makes you fuller, a man struggling with a contradiction. If anything it makes me love you even more."

  When they reached the tennis club he waited on the terrace while she went to the locker room to change. Her opponent, the tall woman he'd watched play with her the other time, had called to say that she'd be late.

  "You said it's been years since you felt the way you're feeling now." Caroline, looking good in her tennis clothes, settled down beside him. They were the only ones on the terrace. "What made you change—way back then, I mean?"

  "I went into the deep-freeze when I killed my partner."

  "You mention that a lot, but you don't talk about it."

  "Because that was the turning point: After that I had to feel detached." He paused. "Was either Terry or me, you see. Terry Flynn. My partner and my friend.

  "He was a very good detective, had a sixth sense that made him extraordinary. But he was crazy too, full of anger, and he hated the criminal-justice system with a passion. What happened was that we were being taunted by this minor hood, a creep named Tony Scarpa, a 'scumbag,' as Terry used to say. And Terry got it into his head that we were going to execute the guy, take the law into our hands, become rogue cops and take him out. I didn't think he was serious. He'd talk about it and laugh. But he was serious. I found that out too late, one night in a coffee warehouse on Desbrosses Street where we cornered Scarpa with enough dope to make a fairly decent case. But Terry wasn't interested in making a case; he was out for blood. So there was Scarpa down on his knees and Terry pressing a revolver against his head, a clean gun he'd gotten hold of, and I was yelling at him to stop before he pulled one off. Then I knew he wasn't going to stop, that he was going to kill the guy, and that if he did he'd ruin his life, so I knew I had to take that gun away. I tried. He fought me off. Then he pointed it at me and I could see he was way out of control. He started firing.