Switch

by William Bayer

  "He emphasized that I had to act really cheap. Wear too much makeup and be insincere. He wanted a real Times Square trull." She demonstrated her harlot's smile.

  He had asked specifically that she not disguise her contempt, that she feign interest but make her indifference manifest. Under no circumstances was she to become sexually aroused. The entire encounter was to be flagrantly commercial; indeed, that seemed to be its point.

  So they met as Lane had prescribed, drove to a nondescript Brooklyn neighborhood and stopped before an ordinary apartment house.

  "It was a walk-up. Six flights. The stairwell stank of roach spray. When we reached the top he unlocked the door. Then came the part that we'd rehearsed. When he turned on the lights I was supposed to look around like I thought the joint was a dump. And in a way it was, though it was also kind of cute. All this crummy furniture arranged just so, like somebody's fancy parlor. A woman's room—old-fashioned lampshades, doilies on the chair arms. Kind of place makes you feel uncomfortable because it's set up just for visitors.

  "He watched me while I sniffed around. I was to look at everything and make faces to show how gross I thought it was. He sprawled out on the couch and loosened his belt. I took off my clothes except for my underwear and shoes, then walked around again telling him how cheap the furnishings were. Ugly, tasteless, dreary, dull. There were these framed photographs of people set up on the side tables. I was supposed to pick them up, stare at them, and tell him how stupid and low-class they looked. So I started doing that and he couldn't take his eyes off me. I'd look back at him every so often to see if I was doing it right. He nodded to encourage me. The harder he nodded the rougher I got. Like I'd pick up this wedding picture and tell him what crud it was. I was supposed to make fun of everything, call the people names, work my way around the room doing crazy stuff like that.

  "It turned him on, I could tell. It was weird the way he ate it up. Every so often I came back to the couch and gave his cock a little tweak. But what kept the scene going was the way I acted toward the photographs. I had to keep insulting them, saying what total pieces of shit the people were. When finally I started spitting at them he really began to writhe. There was one of this woman and when I said she looked like a stupid slut he moaned and gasped and came. That was it. The scene was over. He thanked me, paid me, gave me extra money for a cab. I left. I guess I must have been up there total maybe half an hour."

  The story was so bizarre that when she finished telling it the five detectives stared at her amazed. Aware that she had held them spellbound, she swiveled herself around twice and beamed.

  "Ever see him again?" Janek asked. Nelly shook her head. "Think you could find that building?" asked Aaron.

  "All I remember is the top-floor apartment and how we had to climb up all those stinking stairs."

  "Was he rough or threatening?"

  "Not at all. In fact, he was kind of sweet."

  "You're sure it's the same guy in the picture?"

  "Long as I live,"—she crossed her heart—"I'll never forget that face."

  They wanted to know whether she'd been curious enough to look at the names beside the downstairs buzzers when she left.

  "That's funny," she said, "I remember now I did. There wasn't any name beside his buzzer. That struck me because at my place I didn't put out my name either."

  They questioned her into the early evening, making her repeat portions of her story. They showed her other pictures of Lane taken at other times, trying to shake her confidence. Aaron worked to elicit details of the neighborhood; Janek was interested in the nuances of Lane's behavior. Had he actually told her to spit at the pictures or had she gotten carried away and done that on her own? She shot back her answers. The spitting was her idea. She retold segments as best she could. She stood firmly by her identification and swore she'd only done what Lane had asked.

  They sent out for pizzas and coffee. Did Nelly recall if there'd been any knives around? Pairs of scissors? Swords? Vegetable-cutting devices? She stared at them from her chair, her hair a flame against the gray. No, she didn't recall anything like that. And why were they asking her all these questions anyway?

  The double feature uptown had closed, so it took them until the next afternoon to arrange a private screening of Mezzaluna. Janek and Aaron sat on her either side, watching her as she watched the movie, noting how she began to twitch when the scene came on in which the prostitute insulted the furniture in the parlor of Targov's mother's house.

  "It's the same," Nelly whispered, "the same room, the same stuff!" She stared intently at the screen. "Can't believe this. The same fucking pictures too!"

  Janek kept his eyes on her face, observing her wonderment as the scene unfolded. He believed in the authenticity of her gulp when the screen prostitute began to spit at the framed photographs. And when things progressed further, when Targov slowly and lovingly drew the mezzaluna across the distracted girl's throat, Nelly began to scream. Janek knew she'd never seen the movie before.

  Sal had tried hard, but it was tough. "Hart covers himself real good," he said. Janek sighed. "But still I got you stuff." Janek looked up. Sal was grinning.

  "Bastard."

  "Shit, Frank—you pull those deals on me all the time."

  They were sitting in Janek's favorite Greek restaurant on Howard Street. Between them a basket of pita bread, a plate of stuffed grape leaves and a bottle of Retsina wine.

  "So what did you get?"

  "At least let me tell my story first."

  Janek sat back. Getting to tell the story was Sal's payment for doing the job.

  "Knew right off there was no way to get a reading on Mrs. Hart's finances short of pulling a black-bag job on the residence or the mail. Since I knew your attitude toward that kind of maneuver plus that this had to be a very quiet dig, I thought about it awhile before I came up with a plan. Sort of sex plan, actually, Frank—"

  "Sex!" Janek laughed. "What did you think you were going to do? Screw old Karen Hart?"

  'Better than that. Screw a certain girl who's been eying my ass."

  Janek listened, throwing in obscenities at appropriate moments, nodding enthusiastically as Sal recounted all the splendid lovemaking that had weakened the high moral posture of the sex-starved records clerk who had access to the computer that guarded the financial statements required of all the division chiefs. It was a good story, too, he thought, full of drama and moral quandary. And the assignment had inspired a mobilization of all Sal's resources: the persuasive powers of a narcotics detective honed on addict informants, the hours he'd spent in the gym keeping his body hard, years of experience dating and laying siege.

  "See, she's the type who wouldn't fiddle with her income tax even if she knew she could get away with it. So I had to pitch it to her like there was this sort of, hmmm, higher morality involved."

  Exactly how he'd done that remained obscure; Sal couldn't remember the sequence or the words. But he did recall that the Roman Catholic faith had been invoked (helpful since the girl was also an Italian-American), that IAD (acronym for the much feared Internal Affairs Division) had been mentioned, and that he had exhibited a malaise appropriate to a young officer forced to work undercover against men to whom he felt bonded on account of the shared dangers of the job.

  In the end she'd yielded, giving Sal the printout, knowing he needed it to break a case so sensitive that even he had no clear idea what it was about. And, of course, he felt rotten knowing how cruel it would be to dump her now. She'd gone all the way for him, and, sure, he'd given her great sex in return. But still he'd manipulated her principles, for which, he felt, no number of good screws could fairly be exchanged.

  Janek looked at him. Was he serious? "You were a narc, Sal. A detective manipulates. You know that. That's what we do."

  "Sure. But in bed, Frank?"

  "In bed. On the street. In a shit-house interrogation room. We extract what we need. We make our cases. We investigate. And if you're a decent human being you
hate yourself sometimes. But you do it anyway because that's the job."

  More wine. A big Greek dinner. Lots of soul-searching, good advice, and soon Sal Marchetti came to terms with what he'd done. He'd completed his assignment and pleased his rabbi. By the time dessert arrived he was feeling proud.

  The printout didn't tell where Hart had gotten his money, but it did confirm that he was rich. He and his wife jointly owned a Park Avenue apartment and three investment properties in Queens. In addition Karen Hart held a portfolio of stocks, bonds and various other forms of government and commercial paper worth, at the end of the previous year, approximately $2,000,000.

  So—Hart had turned forty thousand in cash into an estate of nearly three million, and, in the same twenty-five-year period, had risen from sergeant to CD. An astonishing dual accomplishment, Janek thought; he wondered how many other dirty little deals Hart had done.

  "Want me to go further on this thing?"

  Janek nodded, brought out a card and laid it on the table. "Know anything about this?"

  Sal picked it up. "Sweeney's brother-in-law's garage."

  "What do you know about it?"

  "Hear they give a good discount to cops."

  "Anything else?"

  "That sometimes they get sloppy. That maybe going there's not worth the hassles."

  "Suppose you look into that."

  Sal smiled. "First Hart. Now Sweeney. This thing must be big. Know you can't tell me what it is, but do you ever win with guys like that?"

  "We'll seewho wins. Here's what I need. First, who really owns that garage? Second, just what kind of operation is it? Third, who works there? Fourth and most important—just how 'sloppy' do they sometimes get?"

  A stalemated case: he knew he had the right man, but he didn't know how to get him. Nelly Delgado was good, but she wasn't nearly enough and now they were all behaving like treadmill detectives going through the motions. Stanger and Howell had reverted to their former sluggishness, and on several occasions Janek had caught Aaron reproachfully searching his face. On an autumn afternoon in mid-October as they were preparing to go home he asked Aaron to stay on. They talked over the case for an hour, shared a paella at a Spanish restaurant on Bleecker Street, then returned to the precinct house to talk about it some more.

  "When you get down to it," Aaron said, "all Nelly tells us is that Lane's a very freaky suspect. We read the crime-scene photos a certain way and we get a bad feeling from the guy. But Hart's right—DA'll take one look at that and puke. Bad odds on turning up hard evidence, which means there's only one way to make this case and that's to get a confession. If the suspect stonewalls, our tough luck. That's the way I see things, Frank, and that maybe it's time to start thinking someday we're going to have to close this down." Janek nodded. "That what you want to do?"

  "Course not. But Lane's not going to confess. We can keep watching him, even apply some pressure. But he strikes me as the kind who'll thrive on treatment like that."

  "Because it makes his game all the more exciting."

  "And because he's a sociopath who doesn't feel guilt. Without evidence, pressure or guilt there's no incentive for him to talk."

  Janek had thought these things himself and also that Switched Heads was not a case from which he could walk away.

  "We both know these kinds of cases," Aaron said. "And we know what happens to detectives who try to break down unbreakable guys. Make you crazy. Years pass and you get to be one of those haunted types who prowl the corridors downtown. 'Oh, him? Rosenthal? He's a one-case guy. Obsessed. Been after this joker for fifteen years.' People don't like detectives like that. They back away when they see you coming. The wife walks out and the children turn against you. The crime ruins not the criminal but the cop." Aaron paused. "You want my gut feeling? Still too early now to throw it in, still got to go through lots of motions. But it's getting time to withdraw from it in our heads. Just a question now of owning up to that and taking the necessary mental steps."

  He stood, stretched, then sat down again, this time more resigned. "Sal's doing a side job for you, isn't he?" He looked at Janek, then turned away. There was silence in the squad room then, both men sitting very still, as still as Lane, Janek thought.

  "That's right," Janek said.

  "Well..."

  "Doesn't have anything to do with Lane."

  "So the rest of us just bust our asses, right?"

  "Lane was onto him, Aaron. The stakeout wasn't any good."

  Aaron nodded. "I get it. So now you guys are in business for yourselves."

  "I'd like to tell you about it. I really would."

  "I understand. Rabbi stuff. So, okay, tell me this: Why won't Hart give us extra men?"

  "That's complicated."

  "Well, shit, you know me, Frank. I can barely grasp..."

  Aaron was hurt and Janek was angry with himself; he should have seen what was happening, should have read those anguished reproachful stares.

  "Has to do with Al," he said. "Even Sal doesn't know that. He's working for me blind."

  Aaron shook his head. "Three rabbi generations. Jesus!"

  "It's all connected. Something between Hart and Al. When I let on I might know about it he dangled a precinct command. When I didn't bite, he gave me a deadline, the end of the year, and told me to screw off on the extra men."

  "Well, you sure picked a great guy to have a feud with. Now I understand why you couldn't ask him for favors." Aaron paused. "I'm a good solid detective. I like to think I'm sometimes very good."

  "You are."

  "Sure. Maybe. But nowhere near your league. Potentially you're a great detective. You look deeper, see things, connect things up." Aaron stood, walked over to the wall and stared, as they had both done so many times, at the crime-scene photographs. "It was you who understood this case. Don't know that anyone else could have done it. Sure, someone might have thought of the window. Maybe I would have come up with that. But to know what to look for, to focus the search so that I was able to pick up on Lane so fast. And the way you figured out the meaning behind the switch—that was a stroke of genius." He turned from the wall to face Janek. "Okay, so we're going to get this guy." He smiled. "So how are we going to do it?"

  "Back to the beginning. Re-examine the fundamentals."

  Aaron nodded. "Yeah."

  It was late when they left the precinct. Janek drove Aaron home. In the car his thoughts turned again to Hart.

  "Suppose," he asked Aaron, "you had a case like Ireland/ Beard but different in one major respect. No possibility of getting a confession, no physical evidence, but the certainty there were accomplices. How would you attack?"

  "Pretty basic stuff," said Aaron. "Locate the accomplices and turn them around."

  "Suppose you're not in a position to offer a credible deal."

  "Never knew a prosecutor who wouldn't deal."

  "Suppose this isn't that sort of case."

  Aaron thought about that. "It's the same situation even when you're in business for yourself. You get something on A you're willing to ignore if he'll help you by squealing on B. It's only tricky because it's not official, which means the deal depends on trust. It's like those wartime intelligence interrogations where they dangle a guy out of a plane. If he talks he comes back in; if he doesn't they let him go. An approach that only works if he's convinced the bargain will be kept both ways. To create that kind of conviction you got to believe in it yourself. But once you go that route, seems to me, there isn't any turning back."

  When they arrived at Aaron's house in Brooklyn, Janek lightly touched his arm. "You think I'm getting in too deep."

  "Going up against Hart." Aaron shook his head. "I don't know, Frank. That's a very heavy guy."

  It came to him as he crossed from Brooklyn into Queens, Hart's sneering "all you got are photographs" ringing in his ears. A switch snapped between the two cases. Lane's films: something in them he'd felt but hadn't seen, something that had been haunting him for weeks.

&nb
sp; Cinema Studies

  They viewed the complete works of Peter Lane in a shabby Times Square building filled with second-rung prop and costume houses and seedy rehearsal halls. A stale smell in the corridors of greasy take-out food and sweat. "It's either this," said Aaron, leading Janek into the screening room, "or our spotless Police Academy auditorium."

  Ripper; Magenta; Hairdresser; Mezzaluna; Winslow Road; Film Noir: the movies flickered by in a twelve-hour marathon that included short breaks for coffee, quick trips to the lavatory, a fifteen-minute lunch at an eggroll place across the street. "We're going for total immersion," Janek announced, which was what he and Aaron got.

  The movies exhausted them and hurt their eyes. Axes, razors, shears employed at pounding rhythms with repeated strokes. Moans of pain. Pants of ecstasy. Agonized stalking released in sudden vicious assaults. Janek couldn't reconcile the tony language of the critics with the gruesome stuff he was seeing on the screen. And he noticed Aaron becoming strange, sometimes mumbling to himself.

  "See, basically there're two kinds of spatter films. The crummy, obnoxious drive-in stuff, like someone's got rabies and is going around biting people in the neck, and the class acts by Hitchcock, De Palma, guys like that. Thing about Lane you got to remember, he's in the second category. Has his following, almost like a cult. His stuff gets shown at festivals."

  The next movie was Winslow Road. The killer kept a garden behind his house on a middle-class suburban street, where, it turned out, he grew exemplary vegetables fertilized by the remains of the whores he lured to his potting shed and killed. There was a long sickening sequence set during a lightning storm during which he sliced up a girl with a pruning shears, then lovingly ground her into compost.

  "There! Hear it on the sound track?" asked Aaron in the middle of this scene. "There's a chorus singing behind the thunder. Guess what? We're in a cathedral, Frank."

  In the end, Janek decided, the stories were pretty much the same. A ritual set of killings. A cat-and-mouse game with a stupid cop. An elaborate chase and an inconclusive finale—the killer disappearing, the cop left looking like a jerk.