Switch

by William Bayer

  Stanger and Howell reported back. Four prostitutes visited over the past two weeks. Normal sessions. Nothing unusual. Except afterward Lane had asked them about their friends. Said he was interested in locating a certain type. Actually showed them a photograph. Wanted someone who looked the same, five feet seven, slender, good legs, chiseled features, and he was very particular about the hair and eyes. Eyes had to be deep brown. Hair had to be lighter, layered and graduated longer toward the back. The hair, Lane had told them, was very important. Emphasized he was turned on by that kind of hair.

  "Girls were freaked," said Howell. "Weird situation. We show them photos of a guy. He shows them photos of a girl."

  Janek felt a sharp chill. "I want to talk to them. Bring them in."

  He interviewed the women privately in the tiny interrogation rooms in back. He showed them several pictures of Caroline. Two of them were vague—Caroline could have been the one; two were certain that she was. After they left he sat for a long time, his elbows planted on the table, his head resting in his fists.

  On a cold and glittering Sunday afternoon early in November, Janek packed up most of his clothing, then drove over to Long Island City and stowed it in a closet that Caroline had cleared out especially for his use.

  "Well, you finally did it, didn't you?" Caroline said, watching him, greatly amused. She was standing in a pool of sunlight by a window. "I guess what we're seeing here is 'commitment to a relationship,' as they say."

  "Commitment to convenience too."

  "Oh, sure. And you still got your basement across the river, your refuge in case things don't work out. I understand, the apartment situation being what it is. But they still have those bunk rooms at the precincts, don't they? For the double-shift guys and for when things get rough at home."

  He looked at her. Her skin glowed and the autumn light split up, fractured, in her eyes.

  "It's because of the photographs, isn't it?"

  "What?" He stopped stowing his clothes. Did she know? She couldn't.

  "The guy who took the pictures. You're worried about him."

  "You think that's why I'm moving in."

  She nodded. "Part of the reason. Sure." She turned away. "You know, I've been thinking a lot about that guy, why he took those pictures, what he was trying to do. Made me think of Lane and what Hart said to you at lunch. Remember: 'All you got are photographs.' Well, photographs are plenty. They can be enough." She turned back to him. "Find the photographs, Janek. The ones he took of the girls."

  "What makes you so sure he took photographs?" When she'd said "Lane" his heart had skipped a beat.

  "Came to me this morning, don't know why. I thought: He needs to have pictures; that's how his mind works, like mine."

  "Why? What does he need them for?"

  "Don't know. Some sort of proof, I guess."

  Could she beright? "Proof of what?" he asked.

  There was a long silence before she answered. "Maybe just proof to himself that he was really there."

  "There was a murder, Frank. Double homicide. Peter's mother, woman named Laurie Dill, originally Laurie Lane. And her lover, guy named Norman Baxter. Both of them found slain in a trailer Baxter leased in a Cleveland trailer park."

  It was Aaron's first call since he'd found the house. Janek could feel the tension. It was finally unraveling, that thing he was looking for, the shared past he'd discovered in the movies, the dark and terrible ancient crime.

  "Baxter owned a filling station across from a shopping mall. He was a womanizer, kept the trailer for assignations, matinees. Anyway, Laurie was carrying on with him like she'd been doing with various other guys. The father, this Jesse—seems he was a shmuck. Mushy type, fat, not too bright. Laurie was younger and hot-tempered. Would ridicule him, in front of people, too."

  Janek recognized them: a recruit to the force married to an ambitious girl initially attracted to his uniform. She soon discovers he isn't going anywhere and, worse, is boring in the sack. The cop quickly resigns himself to mediocrity; his muscles turn to lard, his features become lost in fat. The wife turns contemptuous as the marriage becomes a bitter drone. She starts looking around at other men. Begins to flaunt herself. Starts a string of affairs.

  "...Killings very bloody. Multiple stab wounds. Big story around these parts. Being the cuckold, Jesse is suspect number one, but he's got an airtight alibi—he's patrolling the Ohio Turnpike all afternoon giving out tickets right and left. Gets the call on his car radio and rushes to the scene. Freaks out. Bursts into the trailer and starts throwing stuff around. Before they can restrain him he's screwed up everything, including what might have been important forensic evidence. Then he goes crazy. Starts drinking. Pays no attention to his kid. Laurie's brother, a veterinarian name of Harold Lane, takes Peter in. Lots of police theories. Maybe another one of Baxter's women surprised them. Or one of the husbands. No one knows. Bottom line—the case is never solved. Meantime Jesse quits the force and disappears."

  "Find him."

  "What?"

  "You've done a great job, you found the crime. Now go for the father."

  "You kidding, Frank?"

  "I'm not. Go for the father, Aaron. Find him. He may be the key."

  "Yeah, there's muscle, Frank, guys who've done time—they're the ones driving the trucks in and out. Now, whether they're buying stolen cars off thieves or they got their own people out is something I can't tell you—to do that I'd have to start following those trucks."

  "Don't risk it, Sal."

  "Okay, but to really ID these creeps I'd have to bring in some friends. Figure you don't want that done, at least not yet. Another thing, you asked me to check up on rumors the garage gets sloppy. I managed to track one down. A black homicide detective name of Beau Jones—been in the department for years. He owns a Mercedes, took it in there once and got it back with a beat-up old carburetor for which they billed him eight hundred bucks. Got mad. Went straight to Sweeney, told him he was going to file a complaint with Consumer Affairs. Sweeney promised he'd take care of it, got Jones a brand-new carburetor free. But next thing Jones is out of Homicide and assigned to transit-yard security at Gravesend. Now this is one very bitter detective, Frank. Takes him an hour and a half just to drive to work. Spends his time chasing graffiti artists but he doesn't gripe, because he got the message: Don't mess with Sweeney and don't make threats."

  Janek and Caroline went to see Dreamgirls, third row orchestra, eighty bucks. During intermission they collided with Sarah Janek and her date. Awkward introductions. Sarah and Caroline braved it out by shaking hands.

  "Great musical."

  "Terrific. Yeah."

  The other man was Sarah's boss, head of the accounting department at Macy's in Queens. Older than Janek, maybe fifty-five. He and Caroline talked about the show.

  Sarah smiled. "You look good, Frank. Real sorry about Al. Wanted to call you when I heard." She paused. "How's Aaron? Sal?"

  "The three of us are working a case. Both of them are great."

  She gestured toward her date. "We're going to get married."

  "That's terrific. Congratulations."

  "Was going to call you. Don't have to now, I guess."

  "Going to keep the house?"

  "Sure." She glanced over at Caroline. "Nice-looking girl. Hope things work out for you."

  After the show Janek rushed Caroline out of the theater. Driving back to the loft she asked him what was wrong.

  "Nothing."

  "She said something."

  "Going to marry the guy."

  "Is that why you're mad?"

  He didn't answer.

  "How do you feel about it?"

  "Different ways."

  "What kinds of different ways?"

  He glanced at her. "Dammit! Took me years to pay off that house. Now he's going to be living in it."

  She glanced back at him. "Look, it isn't your house anymore."

  "I know."

  "Belonged to another guy. Another Janek.
Same name but different. That house is from your other life."

  At a traffic light on Northern Boulevard she leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

  She came out of the bathroom smiling, her hair wet the way he liked it from her shower. He loved making love to her after she washed her hair, running his fingers through it when it was wet, staring into her eyes as, mysteriously, she stared into his, feeling her holding him tight inside her as she smiled.

  Just then the phone rang. Janek picked it up. It was a quarter to twelve on a Saturday night.

  "Sorry to bother you, Lieutenant." It was Stanger.

  "What's the matter? You lost him? Don't apologize."

  "No, we got him in sight down here on Eighth near Forty-fourth. The same area he met up with Nelly."

  "What's he doing?"

  'That's the funny thing, Lieutenant. We think he's photographing whores."

  "You think." He looked at Caroline. She was getting into bed beside him. "Dammit, what kind of whores?"

  "Maybe the same kind he told those girls he was looking for." Stanger paused. "Give us a break, Lieutenant. It's hard to see from here."

  Janek hung up without saying goodbye.

  "Who was that?" she asked.

  "One very tired detective."

  "Important?"

  He shook his head.

  Sal wanted to be there for the kill. He was adamant. "I want to see Sweeney burn." When Janek told him that was out of the question, Sal turned sullen. "I think you owe me, Frank. Considering everything."

  "Things may not work out. It's for your own protection."

  "I can take care of myself."

  "That's not what I meant. The danger's to your career. You're a young guy with a big future. Stupid to risk it over this."

  "What is 'this'?" Janek was silent. "I'm already involved. I feel almost insulted."

  "Don't try and get to me like that, Sal. I did a lot of things for Al and he protected me. And a lot of the time he protected me from myself."

  "Okay, give me one good reason. Just convince me that you're right."

  "It's personal. That's it. There's nothing else to say."

  "No leads on Dad yet. But more goodies on Peter," Aaron said.

  Janek was silent.

  "First place, remember that scene he did with Nelly? Well, get this. Liz Lane, the vet, Harold's widow, the survivor of the couple, remember, who took Peter in—she swears up and down that the furniture Peter used in that scene was the actual stuff from his parents' parlor and that the photographs were photographs of Jesse and Laurie Dill. Now, isn't that a little creepy, Frank? Hiring a whore to spit at your parents' pictures. Isn't that sickening? I mean just a little bit?"

  Before Janek could respond, say that it was sickening though it was what he had suspected for some time, Aaron was onto something else.

  "Found this guy, Chuck Brubeck, used to be a neighbor of the Dills. Peter's best boyhood friend. Seems our little Peter used to torture animals."

  First there was the story of the cat, then the story of the birds. The cat thing happened when the kids were eleven years old. Peter's Uncle Harold was performing a hysterectomy, the boys were playing over at his house and he asked them to help by holding the animal down. No anesthetic. Chuck Brubeck was horrified and threw up. But Peter's gaze never left the operating table. He could talk of nothing else for days.

  "Couple of weeks later he kidnapped a cat belonged to a neighbor, took it into the garage and tried to perform the operation himself. Made a mess of it. Wanton cruelty. Cat bled to death. Afterward Chuck's father found out and gave his son the beating of his life. But when Mr. Brubeck called Trooper Dill, Jesse was preoccupied. It was clear he didn't care." A pause. "You listening, Frank?"

  "I'm listening."

  "Torturing animals—we've heard stuff like that before."

  They had. Over and over in the childhood of sociopaths. "So what's the story with the birds?"

  "That happened maybe four years later, when the kids were around fifteen. Another neighbor, an amateur ornithologist, kept these birds tethered in his backyard. Golden eagle chained up to a stump, raven in a cage and a couple of owls. One night, this was in winter, Peter attacked them with a rake. Asked Chuck to help, but he refused. Peter went ahead anyway. Real massacre. Big story, too. Got national attention in the press."

  Again Janek recognized a phenomenon, people getting more upset about cruelty to animals than when human beings were abused.

  "Neighborhood in an uproar. Talk of a madman loose in the suburb. There were bloody tracks in the snow, but they didn't lead anywhere. Chuck was the only one who knew and he kept quiet. I asked him why. Said he was scared—which is understandable. So then I asked him why Peter had done it. Said he asked Peter the same thing and Peter answered he just wanted to see. See what? I asked. See if he could get away with it, Chuck said."

  After they hung up Janek asked himself, Had Peter really wanted to get away with it?

  Now that it was cool she rarely turned on the fan; the four blades hung silent and still above the bed. Often after she went to sleep he stayed up sitting on the couch, his thirty-eight beside him, an accordion in his arms, silently fingering the keys, waiting...perhaps for Lane.

  He heard her move, turned to look, saw that her eyes were open and that she was watching him.

  "What you doing, Frank?"

  "Just sitting here."

  "Thinking?"

  "Yeah."

  She smiled and closed her eyes.

  I am her guardian, he thought. I must protect her from knowledge of her jeopardy. And thinking that, he realized that he had finally, truly, entered into the madness of the case.

  Later he saw her watching him again. "It's Lane, isn't it?" she asked.

  Their eyes met. He could see that she knew, perhaps had known ever since the first intrusion.

  Hart called. "What's going on with Switched Heads?"

  "I got feelers out."

  "Feelers. What the hell are 'feelers'?"

  "We're investigating," Janek explained.

  "Yeah. Right. Well, you investigate. Investigate the hell out of the thing. Because I wasn't bullshitting you about that deadline, Frank. You're warned. Your time is running out."

  He watched Lane's windows from Mandy's chair, saw the lights go on and off. Another time, when Lane didn't come home, he watched one of Ellis' parties and saw a girl with long straight black hair do a bump-and-grind striptease to the unison clapping of the other guests.

  Aaron was onto something. He called to say he was leaving Cleveland for New Jersey in the morning.

  Find me Jesse, Aaron. I need him now.

  He told her, "He lives on a knife's edge. The movies and homicides come out of the same stuff. He sees his mother as a whore and kills her over and over again. When he does it in a film he's acting fairly healthy. When he kills and switches heads he's monstrous. But his films are shallow—he never became a first-rate artist because he could never get beyond his mother. He got stuck. The old crime was always there. And he committed it, didn't just fantasize it like other kids. So now when he relives it the only thing he can do is try and make it puzzling and beautiful. Switched Heads is his latest design, very complicated, requiring lots of concentration, which spared him from having to face what it was really about. More than anything I want to see him put away."

  Thanksgiving was cold; December came in with a chill. One afternoon early in the month Janek went to his old apartment on West Eighty-seventh, took off his pants, hung them up carefully, pulled out an old accordion, sat down on his bed and filled the room with sound.

  She was shooting on Sixth near Thirty-ninth when suddenly a streak of pain leaped across her throat, a terrible white-hot searing pain that made her yell.

  "For a second or two I was in shock," she said. Then she saw a kid running away from her down the block. She reached up, found that the small gold chain she wore was gone. The kid had ripped it off her neck.

  Janek moved his fi
ngers to the place where the chain had been torn, a thin red line, a bruise. "I thought, 'Well, baby, this is it,'" she said. "It was him, I thought, measuring me, measuring my neck for—" she shook her head and smiled—"dismemberment."

  They were lying together on the bed. The whole evening she'd been pensive. Janek had had the feeling something had happened; he'd waited patiently for her to bring it up. "Then it came to me, that it was just street aggression, just a kid stealing a chain. And I knew then I could handle it. I could shoot aggression and live with it, too." She kissed him. "You know, Frank, I've changed these last few months. I'm stronger than I was. And I know the reason. You've been so gentle with me and strong. You were there when I was scared. You moved in here to protect me—of course I knew that. And by doing that and being the guy you are you've helped me work this through."

  She kissed him again, then wrapped her arms around him and pulled him upon her. "God, I love you, Frank."

  On December tenth, at nine-thirty in the morning, Aaron Rosenthal called.

  "Got him, Frank."

  At last! The model for all the blundering cops in all the awful films.

  "Living in a shack down here in rural Jersey. You wouldn't believe the place. Got a job, too. Typical old-cop job. Night watchman at this abandoned car racetrack."

  "What's he like?" Janek could feel the excitement rising through his chest.

  "Strange. Very strange. I don't think he's what you're expecting. For one thing, he's not fat anymore. Jesse's a very thin man now. Looks like Abe Lincoln until he opens his mouth. But then, Jesus, there's nothing there."

  Jesse

  He took the Metroliner to Philadelphia, was met by Aaron at Thirtieth Street Station. Then they drove south in a rented Toyota Aaron had been using for a week.

  A voyage from ignorance to knowledge, Janek thought; or so he hoped—impossible to know until he met the man. They drove in silence across the girder bridge into Camden, through a petrochemical maze, past industrial parks and finally, when they reached the suburbs, past half-empty sterile shopping malls.