Switch

by William Bayer

  "Everything?"

  "What else could there be?"

  "You said Al told you he thought there was more to your father's death than... Then you broke the sentence off."

  "Shit!"

  "What did he say?"

  "He had some crazy idea."

  "What?"

  "Dammit, I don't know. It's over. Forget it. He never came up with anything. He was an old man playing detective, obsessed and secretive and sly. It got so I just couldn't stand to listen to him go on about it. Not about the case but about how tortured it made him feel. I told him that and we made a pact. He wouldn't mention it anymore. And after that he didn't."

  "You're telling me he never said anything substantive about your father's death?"

  "Nothing. Just that he didn't think it happened the way it looked."

  Janek stood up.

  "Where are you going?"

  "I don't know."

  "You're not going to stay?"

  He shook his head.

  "Why not? To punish me?"

  "I'm all wound up."

  "So am I. I'll put on some music. Let's open another bottle of wine and relax."

  "I played my accordion for you."

  "I loved you for doing that."

  He stood silent, his mind churning, fearing he was getting too close, feeling too much pain. "Maybe I need time to cool off. Maybe it's just my pride. You told me a story no decent detective would believe. I believed it. So now I feel like a jerk."

  "You're not a jerk. You're a brilliant man."

  "And now you don't want me looking into your father's death."

  "No."

  "But I have to."

  "Why?"

  "Because now it turns out Al was working on a case, and that's a very peculiar thing. Because when a detective like Al works a case that's personal he's not inclined to shoot himself."

  "I don't—"

  "Why did he shoot himself?"

  She shook her head. "Depression. Burnout, like you said."

  "You told me he felt tortured."

  "So maybe that's why he did it. I feel guilty about that. I cut him off. I wouldn't let him talk about it. When I did that, maybe...don't you see?"

  Janek shook his head. He turned to her, took her face in his hands, gently touched her cheeks running now with tears. "It wasn't you, Caroline. And it wasn't the case either. Or that Al was bottled up. That's the kind of torment that would keep him going, not the kind that would make him feel shitty about himself and eat his thirty-eight."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Look into it."

  "His suicide?"

  He nodded. "Al's investigation too."

  She gazed at him stunned; she finally understood. He saw her expression change from wonderment to recognition, then she snapped back her head from his hands. "You know, I'm getting a very funny feeling about this conversation. About everything that's happened here tonight. Like the very casual way you started asking about my father. And then the way you shifted the talk over to Al, as if you already knew."

  "I told you, I didn't."

  "Yeah. But that sounds a little pat to me. This was an interrogation, wasn't it?" He shook his head. "Sure it was. I see it now. You knew everything. So maybe you haven't been that straight yourself. Can't blame you. I lied first. Oh, excuse me, I mean fibbed. So you had every right to try and worm the story out. Except that we're supposed to be—what? Lovers? Or more than that?" He reached for her, but she broke away, stood up fast and began to pace the loft.

  "Fuck it anyway. I can't believe you'd come on to me the way you did just to..." She kicked the wall; when she turned back Janek saw that her foot had left a mark. "No, that's impossible. You couldn't be so false. Forget it. I'm sorry. So, okay, you're going to look into it. Al was working on a case and you owe it to him to investigate. You're going to do that whether I want you to or not." She stopped, turned and stared at him. "Am I right?"

  He nodded.

  "Fine. Do it. Get obsessed." There were tears in her eyes again. "Maybe you'll end up shooting yourself, too. That would be just great, wouldn't it? Great for me. Two detectives. Plus my dad."

  She turned suddenly and strode into her darkroom, the portion of the loft partitioned off from the rest. She came out a few seconds later and handed him a photograph.

  "Here! Take it! Torture yourself. Get obsessed—just like Al." She wiped her eyes. "He gave this to me the last time he came. That was about four days before he died. I don't know why. To me it's just a picture of three guys. But he gave it to me with some ceremony, pressed it into my hand like it was special. The guy in the middle ismy dad. And of course that's Al on the left. I don't know who the other guy is. I'd say this picture was taken by an amateur about twenty-five years ago. That's all I know. You're the detective. You figure it out. And now I'd like it if you'd leave."

  "When we've cooled off—"

  "I love you." She stamped her foot. "So damn much."

  "Caroline—"

  She turned away. "Just go now. Please."

  "We'll talk tomorrow."

  "Sure."

  Janek stood there feeling helpless, wanting to move toward her but knowing from her posture she'd rebuff him if he tried. He backed toward the door, then stopped again waiting for her to turn. She didn't. "Good night," he said. Then, very quietly, he left.

  He sat in his car staring at his hands. They wereshaking and he couldn't make them stop. He knew he had opened up some kind of awful wound, and yet he did not see how he could have avoided it. He sat for a while and then, when the shaking stopped, he drove slowly back to New York.

  Later, at home, lying on his bed, he examined the snapshot: three men, three cops in uniform, their arms tossed lightly about one another's shoulders, grinning, almost leering at the lens.

  He turned the picture over. There was a patch of paper glued to its back, soft porous photo album paper as if it had been mounted in an album and then torn out.

  He turned it again and examined the faces. In the middle, Tommy Wallace: handsome, confident, the face of a bluffer, a salesman's face. Al DiMona on the left, happy, perhaps happier than Janek could remember ever having seen him, but looking wary too, as if he couldn't quite believe in all this leering happiness. And the third man, the one on the right, the one wearing the sergeant's stripes, with the expression that said "I've got the world by the tail"—that was Hart.

  Carmichael

  On Friday afternoon the two teams of detectives began conducting interviews. They worked flat out through the weekend. By late Tuesday they had talked to sixty people, with each interview carefully written up and logged. Janek had only to glance at drawings on the squad-room wall where all the overlooking windows had been charted, decide who interested him, then read about him or her in one of four thick, black loose-leaf books.

  But, for all the pressures of Switched Heads, the problem of Al and Tommy Wallace kept intruding. Over and over Janek asked himself if and how Al's suicide was linked up with Tommy's death.

  He also brooded over Caroline. They spoke Friday on the phone.

  ("How are you?" "Fine. What about you?" “Good. Cooled down." "Well . . . that's good.")

  On Saturday he took her to dinner in Little Italy. They drank, laughed, but when he dropped her home she neglected to invite him up. Late Sunday afternoon she called from her tennis club, announced she'd just won a hard-fought match and was in desperate need of sex. He rushed to her loft, where she greeted him in a white terrycloth robe and nothing underneath. Her lovemaking was greedy; afterward she said "Thanks," slipped back into the robe and talked for an hour about her book. "Want another go?" she asked, suddenly. When he nodded she pulled him back to bed. "Great," she said afterward, "really good to tear one off." When he gazed at her astonished, she grinned and turned away.

  Okay, he thought, driving home (she had not suggested he spend the night), she's still angry and wants me to know it. By not talking about Tommy or Al we're saying our positions ha
ven't changed. Fine, I'll do what I have to do, wait her out, and eventually we'll recapture what we had.

  But still he was hurt.

  On Monday he began to wonder whether her message had been stronger. Maybe she's telling me I risk losing herif I insist on going on. But what was his alternative? Forget about Al now that he knew he'd been working a case? Impossible, especially after he'd seen that snapshot which told him that Hart had lied in the car when he said he hadn't known Al and had only come to his burial out of professional respect.

  That afternoon he made a series of calls to people in NewJersey law enforcement. At noon on Tuesday he walked west from the Sixth Precinct house, entered beneath the soot-encrusted marquee of the Christopher Street PATH station, descended the narrow windy stairs to the platform and waited for the Trans Hudson train.

  It was a fast ride through the tube beneath the river. When he emerged he was in Hoboken, a rough and honest blue-collar town. There were magnificent views of Manhattan from the deteriorating port, and the old flea-bag sailors' hotels were being gentrified.

  A two-block walk to the turn-of-the-century Clam Broth House. The restaurant was noisy and jammed. Construction workers sucked up raw clams. Real estate developers were devouring lobsters. Janek scanned the tables searching for a detective. When he thought he spotted one he approached.

  "Carmichael?"

  "Janek?"

  They shook hands and Janek sat down. Then several seconds of smiling silence as they sized each other up.

  Carmichael had the right tough and weary face, flat at the bottom like the base of a paper bag. His thick iron hair was cut short, but there was sensitivity in his features; for a moment he reminded Janek of Al, the same troubled vulnerability, the same all-it-would-take-is-one-more-lousy-thing-to-make-me-throw-in-my-shield-and-retire.

  Carmichael signaled he was host by suggesting several dishes. They both ordered the mixed-seafood platter and, when the beers came, simultaneously began to sip.

  "Not so often we get one of you New York guys over here," Carmichael said. "Usually it's the other way around."

  "Check me out?"

  Carmichael nodded. "Know you're the guy who killed Flynn, if that's what you mean."

  Janek felt his stomach tighten. But then, to his surprise, Carmichael went on:

  "It was fifteen years ago. You killed your partner in selfdefense. The people who count thought you were justified. Now you're a star lieutenant of detectives. If you'd played your cards a little better you'd probably be a chief. In which case we probably wouldn't be having lunch." Carmichael's eyes were steady; he didn't come on too strong, nor did he seem particularly impressed. "Wasn't hard to check you out," he explained. "Plenty of guys born here working over in NYPD."

  Janek smiled. He liked Carmichael. "Figures. The great towers beckoning from across the river."

  "Especially at night."

  "Yeah, New Jersey boys lying in bed with hard-ons for our sordid city."

  Carmichael grinned. "You're just our backyard," he said.

  The seafood platters were piled high with clams, shrimps, crab, a lobster tail and french fries. They ate in silence.

  Then, after the first pause for beer, Janek laid it out. "Meet a guy named Al DiMona?"

  Carmichael nodded as he chewed. "I surely did."

  "Shot himself couple weeks ago."

  Carmichael stopped chewing. "Think you've figured a guy..." He shook his head.

  Janek leaned forward. "How did you have DiMona figured?"

  Carmichael squinted. "Guy who thought he was onto something. Guarded but nervous too. Sensitive guy with lots of wheels spinning inside. Last guy in the world I'd have thought... How did he do it, Janek?"

  "Ate his gun." Janek paused. "He was my rabbi. We stayed close, though I didn't see him much after he retired. I got divorced couple years ago, and since my wife and his were friends . . . Anyway, I want to play this straight. I'm here on my own. There wasn't anything phony about his suicide. Didn't leave a note, but he pulled the trigger and, naturally, his wife's upset. Says he was working on something, probably over here. I promised her I'd look into it. That's why I called."

  "Wallace?"

  Janek nodded.

  "Yeah, DiMona was around to see me about that."

  "Can you talk about it?"

  "Don't see why not. He came around, said he'd worked with Wallace, cared about him, wanted to know what happened and wasn't here to bug me or butt in."

  "I'm not, either."

  "Appreciate that. What do you want to know?"

  "Let's start with Wallace."

  Carmichael nodded, then slowly exhaled. "Looked like a gangland killing. Body stashed in the trunk of a stolen car. Shot in the head close range someplace else. I checked around. Wallace was in trouble. He gambled and he couldn't pay. He'd been threatened, too—told people that. Looked like they wanted to make an example of him and called in a professional to do the job." He shrugged. "You know, you can bust your ass on a case like that and never get to first base. There wasn't any pressure, so I put it on the shelf."

  "Not even from the DA?"

  Carmichael snorted. "No one gave a shit. Then your friend came over. Took me to lunch. We ate at the table over there." Carmichael gestured toward a booth. "Asked me what happened and I told him what I've been telling you. He confirmed that Wallace had been threatened, but then he asked how thoroughly I'd checked that out. I told him the truth, that I didn't have the time, that it was pretty clear what happened, that I could spend the summer on it and waste the summer too. So then he offered to help me out. Not in a pushy way. Just said that he had the time, he cared and would I mind."

  "And you said, 'Sure, go ahead.'"

  Carmichael met Janek's eyes. "The guy was willing, he seemed on the level, and what the hell difference would it make? I even gave him some names. Low-level mob informants. If I'd had the time I'd have checked with them myself. Now here was an experienced retired detective offering to do my shit work for free."

  "What happened?"

  Carmichael grinned. "That's when it started getting interesting. DiMona went to see these guys and he must have been pretty good with them, because they agreed to check around." Al gave them money, Janek thought, but he didn't say anything, just let Carmichael go on.

  "Word came back. There wasn't any contract out on Wallace. The people who order that kind of stuff wanted that clear and also that they were pissed. Wallace was smalltime. He was into them for ten grand tops. Sure, he'd been told to pay, and, yeah, there'd been some pressure. But nothing serious, nothing like a bullet in the head. Because Wallace was the kind you just wrote off and forgot."

  "Someone killed him."

  "Right. That's why these guyswere mad. Someone had offed Wallace and made it look like a professional job. The mob guys didn't like that. Bad publicity. When they make an example they want the credit, but they don't like getting blamed for stuff they haven't done."

  "So then what happened?"

  "Your friend got pretty excited. Took me to lunch again. Said this showed there was more to the Wallace killing than met the eye. I had to agree with him, and I knew what he wanted, too. He started making nice about how it was clear we were overworked over here, and how he had a lot of experience, et cetera, and since the investigation would have to be reopened anyway, how did he think my chief would react if he volunteered to help? I told him forget it. My chief would never accept an over-involved, retired New York City detective nosing around in a New Jersey case. He looked kind of stricken, so I promised I'd work hard on it and call him if anything came up. Frankly, I wasn't all that sincere, because I was getting a funny feeling from DiMona, that he was a little too eager, that he knew more than he was letting on, and that maybe the best move for me was just to leave this thing alone. Sooner or later I figured he'd come around again, and then I'd press him and find out what he knew."

  "So you didn't call him?"

  Carmichael shook his head. "Thought I'd let him simmer
awhile."

  "Did he call you?"

  "Yeah. Couple of times. And one day in July he actually showed up. It was one of those broiling humid days. He said he was just driving through. Bullshit! I was annoyed. Told him I was busy and couldn't talk. He looked really hurt. I figured he'd be back inside a week.

  "But then a weird thing. Something actually happened on the case. The guy who owned the car where Wallace was stashed came around to get some insurance papers signed. Seemed there'd been some problems with the car he hadn't noticed when he got it back. Seemed it didn't work too well, stalled out, sputtered, leaked, stuff like that, and when he took it into his garage the guy there told him it was filled with crap. Okay, he knew the stereo was missing. But it turned out there were other things. Good parts had been stripped off and replaced with junk. And the tires were cruddy, worn out, not the practically new ones he'd had on before. So suddenly when this guy's telling me this I get a flash on the Wallace case. He'd been put in the trunk of this stolen car that turned out was cannibalized, which suggested the car hadn't been stolen just to store his corpse, so maybe he was mixed up in stolen cars.

  "I called DiMona. Told him I had something. He was over within the hour. I sat down and watched him carefully because I was wondering if he was mixed up in Wallace's death himself.

  "I told him about the car. Laid it out for him. I could see he was getting excited. But then when I asked him what he thought it meant, he shook his head and got up to leave. That's when I got pissed. 'Look,' I said, 'you asked me to let you in on this. I just told you a lot. Now you act like you're holding back. What kind of asshole deal's that?'

  "He glared at me. Highly indignant. Then he started in. He'd been the one, did I forget, who'd picked apart my contract-killer theory that I'd been too lazy to check up on myself. I could see we weren't getting anywhere, so I told him to get out. And that was the last time I saw him. He didn't come around again."

  "Did he call?"

  "No."

  "So what happened with the case?"

  Carmichael shook his head. "Nothing. So, okay, it's not a mob thing. So maybe it's a car-ring thing. Sometimes I wonder about it. It's there in the back of my mind. But it's not on my list of most haunting unsolved cases. Except now that you tell me DiMona ate his gun..." Carmichael paused. "Look, first this retired New York detective comes around asking about a nothing case. Now you say you think it may be related to his suicide. Tell you, Janek, I'm getting kind of tired feeling so left out. Is there something going on I ought to know?"