Switch

by William Bayer

  Jesse was the dummy. Howell, assigned as handler, had cleaned him up, brought him to New York, kept him fed and occupied. Jesse didn't know what he was doing or why, which was how Janek wanted him. If Jesse didn't know what he was doing, then there was no conspiracy to entrap. If Janek's plan happened to work he didn't want the results to fall apart in court.

  The old man looked good in his night watchman's uniform, tough and skeletal, almost frighteningly intense. A specter from the past, the single flaw in Peter's flawless crime, turned up unexpectedly with evidence in hand.

  Janek introduced him to Sal then marched him past the window several times—it was important the old man be clearly seen. It was possible, Janek knew, that Peter would not recognize him at once, but he would know he was watching a figure of importance, a man for whom the detectives had been waiting many hours.

  Janek took him into the bathroom where he explained the stabbing in great detail, wondering, as the old man nodded, whether he understood how he was being used. Then, when he thought sufficient time had passed for Peter to have begun to grow unnerved, he brought the old man back into the studio and then to the side of Amanda's bed.

  There he conspicuously pulled out four Polaroids. "Look familiar?" Janek asked. Jesse squinted at them hard. Ostensibly he was there to study the crime scene and say whether he recognized elements from the background of the photographs he'd thrown away. "Like the ones you got, right?" Janek nudged him. "Right?" Jessenodded slowly like an old cop dumbly matching the pieces of a puzzle.

  The object was to make Peter think his father had kept the shots, though Janek had resolved never to tell him that he had. It had to be unspoken; Peter had to think Janek had the proof. However successful the interrogation to take place later on, Janek wasn't going to be accused of inducing a confession with a lie.

  His last move, the one he hoped would make Peter crazy, was to take Jesse to the window, open it and place him there facing out. It would be from this display that, hopefully, the realization would sink in. Peter could choose not to believe in Jesse, or to believe in him and still not care. The third possibility, the one Janek was counting on, seemed sometimes, when he thought about it, not plausible at all.

  So he placed the old man in full view, on the very spot where Amanda had once set her exercise mat, then stood beside him feeling the cold night air wash across his face. Did he also feel something else, that same shiver that had brushed him on a night so many months before? He stared, wanting to penetrate the darkened window across, willing himself to make out the face he knew must be lurking there behind the glass.

  For an instant he thought he saw it. A movement...or something. He stared harder, feeling Jesse beside him, hearing the old man's breathing, wondering if it matched the worried breathing taking place across the yard. Then, he didn't know why, he felt the connection suddenly broken. And just then, as he asked himself if he was imagining things or whether his scheme was going bad, he heard a noise and turned around in time to see Stanger come rushing though the door.

  The detective was panting. He'd run up the stairs. "Charged by me," he gasped, trying hard to steady himself. "Came tearing out, Lieutenant. Too fast." Stanger let his arms fall to his sides. "Sorry, Lieutenant. He's gone...."

  The Room

  "Well, at least," said Sal, "you ran him to ground."

  "But where's the ground?" Aaron asked.

  It was Christmas Eve. They were sitting in the squad room. Sal and Aaron had been roaming the city checking out Peter's haunts. Aaron was wearing his yarmulke. Carols, played over the precinct-house PA, wafted to them through the walls.

  The Jesse plan had certainly worked, but not the way Janek had hoped. A week after the dumbshow at Amanda's and Peter had not reappeared, had not returned to his apartment, although Janek still had Stanger posted there.

  "It being the holidays, maybe he's gone home."

  Aaron looked at Sal and laughed. "That dump down in Jersey?"

  "Home is home."

  "This guy's not sentimental."

  "So where the hell does he hide out?"

  The two detectives looked at Janek. The three of them had been puzzling the problem for a week. It seemed logical that Peter was hiding; spooked by the appearance of his father, he had figured the game was up and fled. Jesse was now ensconced back in his cabin with Howell as companion and guard. Peter had known where to address the pictures, but Janek didn't think he would head down there; faced with his father, he had chosen to run.

  "It being the holidays, why don't we go home?"

  "That," Aaron said, "is a great idea."

  They went downstairs together. There was a Christmas tree set up in the lobby, a pathetic little spruce laden with tinsel. An old sergeant in a Santa costume sat grinning on a bench reserved for drunks. Police officers' kids crowded around and giggled.

  Light snow was falling when they stepped outside. The sky was dark and people hurried along the sidewalks clutching packages. The three detectives stood together for a moment, then headed for their cars.

  On his way to Long Island City Janek found the traffic almost sweet. Drivers were polite and the Queensboro Bridge seemed magical, the snow clinging to its girders like a fringe. He listened to Bing Crosby sing "White Christmas" on the radio, thought of Lou DiMona and wondered if she'd flown to Houston to spend the holidays with Dolly.

  He parked outside Caroline's building, retrieved his presents and carried them up the stairs. Climbing, he felt like a very weary detective, but when he opened the door and she ran into his arms he felt himself shedding all fatigue. They ate, drank, listened to music, made love, lay touching each other until they fell asleep. In the morning they exchanged gifts. He gave her a new gold chain and an oversize graphite tennis racquet. She gave him a soft gray button-up sweater and a waffle iron—he'd once told her he was sometimes seized with irrational cravings for waffles.

  Watching her make breakfast, he wondered why he was so happy. For years Christmas had filled him with gloom. It had been a day that never passed quickly enough, but this year—a unique sensation—he hoped it would go on and on.

  "That's because you're not alone," she said. "This year you have a home."

  "But I didn't feel this way when I had a home before," he said.

  "You didn't have a home," she said. "You had a house."

  In the afternoon they went for a walk. The snow had stopped, the sun was out, the air was clear and sharp. She carried her Leica. He watched while she stopped and took pictures. He never tired of watching her or of the intensity she transmitted when she worked.

  "Funny how the last few months have been filled with so many photographs," he said. "Yours. Then the crime-scene shots. Then that old snapshot of your father with Al and Hart."

  "And Lane's shots of me, too. Don't forget them."

  "And the pictures he sent Jesse—the ones you told me must exist." He looked at her. "So where is he? Sal says he'd head for home."

  "Sal's right."

  "Not the cabin. Howell's down there, anyway."

  "Maybe there's another home."

  "Where?"

  She shrugged. "Everyone's got a place."

  They walked. A boy rode toward them on his new Christmas bicycle. An old man stood on the corner tossing seeds at a flock of pigeons. Another home.... So many photographs.... Janek looked up. A plane cut across the sky, leaving a trail of vapor. He stopped. He looked at her. "The parlor," he said.

  "What?" She stopped too, to search his eyes.

  "The place where he put his mother's furniture." He could feel his voice rising. "The chairs with doilies on the arms. The side tables holding the family photographs. The place in the movie. The place he took the girl." He paused, still looking at her. "The room."

  He knew all about secret rooms, had been in them before. We all have them, he often said—secret hiding places like Mandy's stash, chambers in the mind, and, sometimes, actual rooms. They are the places where we store our demons and our fears, the props o
f our childhoods, the memories that control our lives. Aaron had long recognized Janek's fondness for uncovering secret rooms. He called it "Frank's specialty."

  "He loves the process," Aaron said.

  It was the day after Christmas. The squad room. Eight A.M. Janek had called Aaron and Sal at home the night before: "That's where he's holed up. So now we got to find the place."

  He had ordered Sal to cover for Stanger while Stanger located Nelly Delgado and brought her in. She was sitting with them now swearing she could never find it, sniffling on account of a cold, angry at being hauled out of bed. Janek tried to soothe her. Certainly she could remember if she tried. The two other detectives were busy, Sal on one phone trying to locate the prop man who'd worked on Mezzaluna, Aaron on the other talking to Peter's aunt in Cleveland, begging her to remember where she'd shipped the furniture when Peter had asked for it when he'd first moved to New York.

  "Guy takes you from Times Square to Brooklyn in a cab," Janek said, "he's got to take a tunnel or a bridge." Nelly nodded. "There're three bridges. Williamsburg, Manhattan, Brooklyn." He looked at her. "Or did he take the tunnel?"

  "No. It was a bridge."

  "There, you see—it's not so hard."

  "But I don't know which."

  "Of course you don't. That's why Sal's going to show you all of them. Sooner or later it'll start coming back. Would you be willing to be hypnotized? We have a police hypnotist."

  Nelly glared.

  By ten o'clock Sal had found and spoken with the prop man, the set decorator and the production manager. They couldn't remember much except that the scene between Targov and the whore had been shot on a set Peter had ordered built. So where had they gotten the props? Peter had chosen them, the set decorator said. Where? He didn't know, though the prop man vaguely remembered a truck. A union truck driven by theatrical teamsters? No, the picture had been made nonunion; Peter had employed film students. They'd used a rented van. When the set was struck they'd hauled the stuff away.

  "Back to where he kept it," Aaron said.

  "Unless he gave up the place and put the furniture in storage."

  Janek didn't think he had. "It was his refuge. He needed that room. You don't give a refuge up."

  "Refuge against what?" Sal asked.

  "Anger. Madness." Janek paused. "That's always the curious thing. The place where the fury was forged becomes the place where the fury is relieved. If Peter went to such pains to recreate his mother's parlor he's still got the place and that's where he is."

  Sal was assigned to drive Nelly to Brooklyn. They would try to locate the neighborhood, then explore it block by block. She remembered that the building wasn't on a corner, that it didn't have an elevator and that it was six stories high. So maybe, Janek admitted, there're five thousand such buildings in Brooklyn. So we do the legwork, he said.

  Aaron booked a flight to Cleveland. Liz Lane hadn't kept her copy of the mover's bill of lading and had no record of Peter's old address. She didn't even remember the shipper's name. She'd found it in the Yellow Pages, had chosen it from an ad.

  Janek drove him to the airport. He encouraged him while they waited for the plane. "Get her to remember the year and then the season and then get the phone company to find you a phone book from that year. Go through it with her. She might remember whether the ad was on the right or left. Worse comes to worst, call all the interstate shippers. Make a list and work your way through."

  When he returned to the precinct he phoned the city rent commission. Was there a way to locate a tenancy if all you had was the tenant's name? He got the answer quickly enough: "Sorry, Lieutenant—no."

  After four days Sal asked to be relieved. He was sniffling; he'd caught Nelly's cold. "She's a good kid, but it's hopeless, Frank. Miles and miles of tenements. Everything starts to look the same."

  Liz Lane spent three days pondering an old edition of the Cleveland Yellow Pages before she phoned Aaron at his motel in the middle of the night. She said she thought the shipper's name was "from the Bible or maybe from a myth." Aaron drove over to her house. For the tenth time they went through the phone book together. She narrowed it down to the Atlas, Hercules and Samson moving companies. The next morning Aaron contacted all three and cajoled them into searching their dead files. It took two more days before Atlas found the papers and could give him the address of the consignee. Aaron phoned it in from Cleveland. Janek and Sal rushed over to the place. There was nothing there but a vacant lot. Ten years before, the building had been demolished.

  Aaron flew back to New York.

  At two o'clock in the afternoon on December thirty-first Janek interviewed Nelly Delgado again. He took her through her story step by step—the drive to the tenement, the walk up the stairs, the layout of the apartment, the scene. He was looking for something, anything, a detail she didn't realize was important, a small thing that had slipped her mind that could help him find the place. Her impressions were less than vivid. Had she seen a telephone? No. Had she used the bathroom? No. Did the windows face the front of the building? She didn't know. Why not? The curtains had been drawn and also there'd been shades.

  From her description Janek drew a floor plan, then located the positions of the couch, the chairs, the side tables, the buffet.

  "What happened when you reached the door?"

  "I waited while he took out his keys."

  "Then he unlocked it?"

  "Yes."

  "Then what happened?"

  "We went in."

  "You first?"

  "No. Him."

  "Then?"

  "He turned on the lights."

  If Peter had lights he had electricity. If he had electricity he had an account with Con Edison. Perhaps the account was under an assumed name, but Nelly remembered there'd been no name beside the buzzer. What about the mailbox? She didn't remember the mailbox. But the electric company had to send bills somewhere. Janek picked up the phone.

  By five o'clock they were running computer checks. Janek fed the Con Ed girl names. Peter Lane: the only account was the one on Eightieth Street. Peter Dill: there were two; Sal and Aaron left to check them out. Janek tried all sorts of variations on Lane and Dill, and when he'd exhausted those he started with the names of the killer characters in the films. At 8 P.M. he was sure he had it: Targov, Ivan; 12309 Oakland Avenue, Brooklyn, in Greenpoint near McCarren Park.

  He drove there alone. An ordinary street. An ordinary working-class neighborhood. A Polish delicatessen on the corner, then a dry cleaner's, a shoemaker's shop, an oculist. Hanukkah candles visible in many apartment windows. A Christmas tree blinking in a bakery.

  He entered the building. No name beside the buzzer for the top-floor-rear apartment. He rang for the super. The inner door clicked open. A white-haired woman with glasses stepped into the hall.

  "Yeah?"

  Janek showed his shield. She frowned, motioned him in. There was the smell of garlic on her breath. No, she didn't know 6B. No, she didn't have an extra key.

  Janek climbed the stairs, resting at each landing. The odor of roach poison, apparent in the lobby, was nearly overpowering by the time he reached the top.

  He pulled out his revolver, cocked it, held it ready. He knocked. No answer. He pressed himself back against the wall, turned the knob and pushed.

  The door swung open slowly. At first he thought the room was empty. But when he moved to the doorway and stared into the gloom he met a pair of hard gray eyes.

  A Long Night's Confession

  He had been inside Amanda's apartment nine times before he killed her. Nine times! Could Janek believe that? Nine! Nine!

  Think of the risk. Incredible! An absolutely impossible feat. But those expeditions had been necessary, first to case the place, plan, rehearse. But even more important (and he doubted Janek had considered this) on account of the single great imponderable: the dog.

  That awful dog, that snarling Petunia—she'd been his biggest worry. Because if he was waiting for Mandy, waiting for
her behind the curtain in the shower, the dog might sense his presence, warn her off, and that could blow everything, cause her to scream, force him to rush out into the living room and attack her there. Then there would be a struggle. He would have to kill her without the advantage of surprise. And that could lead to variables. He might be forced to improvise. And unless he carried out his script exactly as he had written it he could put himself in jeopardy. Worse, he could risk the perfect symmetry of his design.

  Anyway...

  Later, when it was over, Janek would recall how easily it had come, entering the dimly lit room, seeing him curled up on the shabby vintage-World War II sofa. "Hello, Peter," he had said gently, putting away his thirty-eight. Then he had sat down very quietly in a chair with lace doilies on the arms.

  It took no prompting on his part to encourage Peter to begin, and, once he did, Janek felt no need to urge him on. They sat in silence for a while in that strange and gloomy room, lit only by an old-fashioned lamp whose shade bore a ragged lacy fringe. And then Peter started talking and Janek listened, nodding, as the story tumbled out. Peter seemed smaller now, boyish, without his former menace, and all the while the framed photos of Laurie and Jesse Dill sat perched on the side tables like silent sentinels to the extraordinary discharge of their son.

  Peter, Janek knew, was not confessing particularly to him, but to Jesse, perhaps, or to some fantasy father by whom he wished to be absolved. In the end, Janek felt, it didn't matter: he was there, a detective-confessor, an empty vessel waiting to be filled. As soon as Peter made his proud boast that he had been in Amanda's apartment "nine times!"the crime was as good as solved and the only outstanding issues were the details Janek hadn't figured out.

  The rage he had figured out long before.

  And so he listened, glancing from time to time at Peter slumped on the couch, eyes half closed, blank, vacant, speaking in a soft but passionate whisper, directing his words not particularly to him but more generally to the room.