Switch

by William Bayer

As if, Janek thought, Peter was describing a story he'd made up for a film.

  The tale was told that coldly, he thought.

  The dog was unpredictable, hated strangers, snarled at everyone, so he had to figure out a way to neutralize her, and the way he thought of was to make her familiar with his scent. If he left his scent in the apartment (which is what he'd done by going there so many times) and Mandy came home with Petunia from a walk, and Petunia began to act funny, to rush around squealing and snarling looking for the stranger she could smell, then, well, obviously, since there would be no one there, Mandy would order the little monster to shut her yap, and the next time it happened she would recognize the pattern and would disregard the warning which would be the only warning she would ever get.

  And still, he knew, it would be dangerous.

  Brenda, on the other hand, was a cinch. Vulnerability was the way to court a whore. He had known that for years, had known that all his life. All you had to do with a girl like that was be nice to her to have her eating from your hand.

  He hadn't met Brenda before, hadn't thought of bringing in another woman. That idea came later. But he was getting ahead of himself. Back to Mandy. She was the spur, the cause.

  He had studied her for months. He'd been at home a lot licking his wounds. His last picture, Film Noir, his finest work, he thought, had failed, played two weeks at a crummy theater in the Village, hadn't even made it onto the drive-in circuit, and after that debacle all his sources of financing had dried up.

  So he was home a lot, and he noticed her, and then he started to watch her carefully. Her window, lit up at night, became a screen upon which he could fantasize a tale.

  Studying, fantasizing, he discovered the way into her apartment—that ladder down from the roof, that apparently unlatched window grill. One night when she went out to a movie—he knew because he'd been following her—he got into her building, went up onto the roof, climbed down the ladder, looked through her window and tested the grill to make sure it wasn't locked.

  He didn't go in on that occasion, so that was not one of the nine. So maybe you could say he'd been there nine and a half times before the final night, because you'd have to count that first expedition since it broke the barrier between fantasy and fact.

  He spent hours drawing storyboard sketches of how she might be killed. And the more work he put into them the more exciting the idea became. And then he started following her and then he was caught up. And the more caught up he was the more definitely she was doomed, for once an idea took hold in him he felt compelled to carry it out.

  For weeks he followed her, watching, studying, learning the currents of her life. He knew when she woke up, walked her dog, the time and place where she waited for her bus, her route to the school where she taught, the supermarket where she shopped.

  She'd come home from work and change, right there, in the living room, without even bothering to close the blinds. Like she didn't care. Like she was flaunting herself. Like she was saying, "Hey, look at me, feast your eyes and eat your heart out, jerk. Because I'm a perfect little princess and you'll never touch me. Never never never."

  The cunt!

  He followed her up and down the aisles of the supermarket, watching her pluck items from the shelves. And thus he came to know her favorite brands of scouring pads and laundry soap (biodegradable, that kind of crap). He learned how often she replenished her pantyhose, her impulsive purchases of raisins and nuts, that she liked skim milk, unsalted butter, pink grapefruit and the goody-goody stuff like yogurt and wheat germ and whole-grain bread.

  Her life was measured, her habits were predictable—even her variations held no surprise. A visit to the dentist. A splurge at a bookstore. Dinner by herself at the Chink joint on Third near Seventy-ninth. An occasional evening out alone, at a concert or a film. (She had no taste in cinema; liked the arty foreign stuff, those sensitive French pictures in which the girl shows so much sweet agony you feel like strangling the little bitch!)

  A stop at the library, the bank, the wine store. Lunch with a colleague, that fag art teacher she always dragged around. Clothes to the cleaners. Then off to her exercise class, as if getting into shape meant anything since nobody would ever get to touch the precious tuned-up flesh.

  She did not go out with men. He wondered why. She was decent enough looking, slim, a little drab perhaps, but her features were nice, occasionally even beautiful, when she wasn't looking sappy at some children or walking around smiling smugly to herself. He supposed it was her aura, the image she projected that she was content, that she wasn't sensual or open or worth another person's time. She held her elbows close, avoided eye contact, parted her hair in the middle and let it hang. Still, he saw, people liked her: she acted meek, pretended sweetness, and it was enraging the way she got away with that, since she was so clearly hostile, especially to males.

  The monotony of her life became a drama. How long, he wondered, could it go on? He could not imagine how she could endure such a tiresome routine: get up, make coffee, read the paper, walk the dog, go to work, come home, walk the dog again, stop at the store, cook dinner, grade papers, walk the dog a final time, return, bathe, listen to the radio, stretch-exercise, turn off the lights, resign herself to emptiness, fall into dreamless sleep.

  That was the suspense: would she break out of it, do something, finally, to shatter the design? He felt that she might, that she was a bomb waiting to go off. And so he waited. And nothing happened. And that made him angry, too.

  He could predict when her period was coming. She would grimly buy a small bottle of aspirin and an Econopak of sanitary pads. She'd grimace waiting for her bus, speak with irritation to her building super, yank back on her dog, greedily munch sunflower seeds on her walks. You'd think those damn periods would do something for her, make her conscious she had a twat. At least cause her to own up to having one instead of pretending she was this porcelain doll. Then, maybe, he wouldn't have hated her so much for being such a little hypocrite. But she didn't own up to anything; the longer he studied her, the greater his hatred grew.

  Because she was a fake. Mean. Nasty. Not generous and sweet the way people thought. She was a fuckless bitch and she was asking for it. For something. Begging for it, he thought sometimes.

  So maybe that was just the way he looked at it. Maybe other people would have drawn different conclusions. So what? He was burning up with hatred. He had this itch to despoil her. Cut her down.

  If, he decided, he could not finance a new movie to siphon off his rage, then he would kill her and that would be better than any movie—more difficult, complex, brilliantly planned and executed, unsolvable and ultimately more satisfying; by comparison his stabbing of his mother would seem like child's play.

  (Oh, yeah, he'd taken care of her. And that Neanderthal she was sleeping with. Assumed Janek had dug that up. No point in bringing Old Jesse around if Janek hadn't figured out the connection first.)

  Their eyes met twice. She was on her way to work, on her bus, and he was on it, too, across the aisle. The driver stopped suddenly and some of the standing passengers were thrown. She glanced up, saw him staring at her, creased her brows as if struggling to remember him and, failing, turned back quickly to her book.

  The second time was when he tracked her to a movie, a revival of Les Enfants du Paradis at an upper Broadway theater that from time to time had played his own old films. The movie was long and she had gone to the last performance. It was raining hard when she came out. She paused a moment, made a decision, ran into the street and flagged down a passing cab. He watched her slide into it, lean forward, speak to the driver, then suddenly turn and stare panic-stricken out the back. As the taxi pulled away he had no doubt she saw him, a receding figure staring after her, standing alone in a belted raincoat beneath a dimly lit marquee.

  It was around that time that he got the idea of turning her into a whore. He began to plan in earnest and came up with the notion of the switch.

  He started goi
ng to whores, looking for one who resembled her. ("Yes, you were right. I was impressed—I didn't think you'd get that far so fast. They were look-alikes, but not in an obvious way; only in a way that suited my purposes.") And checking out the whores was fun because they didn't pretend to be anything but what they were. Which was trash, of course, but at least they knew it. Not like Mandy. She didn't know what she was.

  Anyway, Brenda turned out to be very important because it was the switch that made his crime a work of art. It seemed impossible in practice, if so beautiful in concept, and yet he felt he could do it, that he had the brains, experience and temperament to bring it off. So the plan became a puzzle that filled his days, a game he would play out with flesh and blood. And in the end it was the blood that almost got to him—he nearly swooned when he cut off Amanda's head.

  The blood.

  He had always loved blood, from way back, early in his childhood, when he'd watched his Uncle Harold operate. Something about it was beautiful, the color, sure, but also the way it moved. Spurted sometimes, or flowed slowly, spreading out into puddles, rich and thick.

  When he made movies he always fussed around with the blood. He was famous for that, the way he insisted on applying it to his actresses. The makeup people could do the faces, but he always did the blood. It had to be just so, the way he remembered it from those primitive operations, and from the way it had flowed out of The Whore back in the trailer years before.

  But it wasn't as if he were some kind of vampire. Janek should not misunderstand. He didn't actually like the stuff. What he liked was the way it looked.

  So when he planned the crime (and he did consider it a single crime; sure, there were two parts to it, but each one by itself was meaningless—it was only the combination of the two that made sense) he thought a lot about how he wanted the blood to look and how he didn't want any of it to get on his skin or clothes. So he used the shower curtain to protect himself with Mandy, and the rubber sheet with Brenda, which he'd told her was just "his little kinky thing." (She'd fallen for that easily; nothing surprises a whore; they know all about fetishes; from the start he'd palmed himself off to her as a "mild rubber freak.") And he had worn plastic clothes and gloves even though it was hot. And used plastic bags to carry the heads, and still he'd nearly swooned.

  So, anyway...

  Peter stopped talking after a while; Janek guessed he was exhausted. It was three in the morning. Sometime during the tale the new year started. There was a sputtering of firecrackers, then the thunder of many fireworks at once, then an occasional squealing of tires out on the street, a burst of drunken singing, a siren wailing on a distant avenue. Laurie's reconstructed parlor was growing cold.

  "What did you use?"

  "Huh?"

  "To cut off the heads?"

  "Oh." Peter pulled himself out of his reverie. "Couple of old Jap swords I had around."

  "Where did you get them?"

  "Antique store in San Francisco. That was back five years ago."

  "And the knives?"

  "What?"

  "You killed them first, before—"

  "Yeah. Kitchen knives. Standard stuff. Paid cash at a cutlery shop. They won't remember, of course."

  Of course. "The vehicle?"

  "God sakes, Janek. 'Vehicle'! Next thing you'll be calling me 'the perpetrator.' " He laughed scornfully. "You mean how did I get around? Motor scooter. Carry-box mounted on the back for the heads. Kept the swords in a guitar case. The changes of clothes and gloves and stuff in a backpack from an Army-Navy Store."

  "So what did you do with all of it?"

  "Deep-sixed it, naturally."

  Naturally. "The scooter too?"

  He shook his head. "Abandoned the scooter. Figured someone could use a decent set of wheels." He paused. "You need all this for the file, right?" Again that withering scorn. But then, in a new voice done with scorn, filled with resignation, "What difference does it make? Sure, I'll tell you. I'll even show you. How's that? I'll even take you there."

  Walking across the icy deserted street toward Janek's Volvo: "How did you get into my girl's loft?"

  Peter smiled. His breath was steam. "Wondering when you were going to ask me that."

  "Well?"

  "Fire escape."

  "In daylight. Lucky you weren't caught."

  "I went in at night."

  Janek turned; they'd reached his car. His hands trembled as he unlocked the door.

  "...Yeah. Went in there when you were sleeping. Could have killed both of you in the bed. Spent half the night in her darkroom crouching on the sill. Heard you fooling around in the morning. That's a pretty high-strung girl you got there, Janek. Thought I could spook her pretty good." He laughed then, his voice filled again with resignation and despair: "Wanted to make you crazy. That's all."

  Driving to Manhattan across the Williamsburg Bridge, the river black beneath them, black like roiling oil:

  "What do you care about all this crap? You solved it psychologically. So tell me, how did you find the old Greenpoint hideaway? How'd you even know I had the place?"

  When Janek told him about Nelly Delgado, Peter blinked—he couldn't remember who she was. Then, when he did remember, he shook his head. "Been years. Completely forgot. But she didn't. Should have thought of that."

  Janek glanced at him. The inference was clear: If Peter had thought of it he would have done something about it. Found her and killed her—that was what he meant.

  Janek drove him to the crime scenes. He wanted to know every detail: the way the wind had felt on his face as he'd raced through the park that sultry night, whether he'd grasped up the heads by their hair, the sound he'd made when he'd brought down the sword, whether he'd stared into or avoided the girls' lifeless eyes.... He wanted to know these things in the belief that if he did he would finally understand. But the details didn't help. He didn't understand. All he could feel was the coldness and the rage.

  Driving downtown on Ninth Avenue, the same route Peter had taken after he'd completed the switch:

  "Those pictures you sent Jesse..."

  "Stills from my films. Except, of course, for the final set. Thought he'd like them. Thought they'd make a good reminder. In case he let himself forget."

  "You were trying to torture the old guy."

  "Wanted him to know I was still around."

  "So you tracked down where he lived?"

  "You did, too."

  "Took my best detective three weeks."

  "Big deal. Every time the fucker moved it took me three months."

  "So"—Janek turned to him—"you wanted him to remember. Was that what it was all about?"

  Peter glanced at him, then stared out, then he shook his head.

  On West Street, crossing Fourteenth, New Jersey across the river lost in whorls of blackening mist:

  "What was it then?"

  "Much more than murder. I don't expect you to understand."

  "Try me."

  Peter smiled. "Okay, Janek. Call it art."

  "I don't buy that. You were a film director. You made movies. You had an outlet. That should have been enough."

  Peter shrugged. "Film's imitation." And then, his voice level, his eyes half-closed, his mouth dead serious: "Tell you a little secret, Janek. Even the real thing is not enough."

  It was important now to find the knives.

  Peter was bored. He waited in Janek's car, stretched out on the back seat, handcuffed, his coat thrown over him like a blanket. Janek rubbed his hands together as he paced the Bank Street Pier. The fog was heavy, wet. Janek stopped from time to time to stare at the water lapping the pilings beneath the rotting planks.

  Finally, at dawn, the police boat came. He stood watching the divers while they struggled into their wet suits, checked their canisters and underwater lights. They were happy to come, even so early on New Year's Day. They knew Janek and they knew about his case.

  When they were ready, he showed them the place where Peter said he'd ditched
the stuff. Then he took Peter back to the precinct, got the skeleton of his confession onto videotape, returned with him to the pier, checked on the underwater work, then walked up to Fourteenth Street looking for a diner.

  It was nine in the morning on New Year's Day, but he found one open, no customers, the waitress's hair done up in a beehive, the counterman in a grease-stained butcher's apron, a streamer of bunting hanging over the cash register and trailing to the floor.

  He ordered a mug of coffee, carried it to the pay phone in back, woke up Aaron and Sal, told them what had happened, then picked up a coffee-to-go to take back to Peter in the car.

  Aaron was the first to come. He'd called Stanger; Howell was too far away. Sal arrived a few minutes later. The two detectives wore nearly identical three-quarter-length black leather coats.

  The fog was even thicker now and they could hear boat horns calling and answering off the Battery. The police divers worked steadily, bringing up objects covered with muck. The radio crackled on the boat while a mound accumulated: empty liquor bottles, a discarded pail, hunks of glass, bricks, a tire iron, the carcass of a bicycle—all coated with a black ooze that made them shine beneath the harsh quartz lights.

  Stanger came and stood with them. He too wanted to be there for the finish. None of them paid any attention to Peter—it was as if the knives were now the most important thing, the evidence more important than the man.

  The sun finally broke through, a gray and noxious hazy sun that reminded Janek of the day they'd buried Al except that that day had been hot and this one was very cold. Aaron, nudging him with his elbow, motioned for him to turn around. When he did he saw the patrol cars, a half dozen of them parked at odd angles in the lot behind the pier, lights on, silhouettes of cops visible through the windshields, waiting, watching, silent in the mists that rose from the pavements all around.

  "What's going on?"

  "Guess our show's on the air," Aaron said.

  "Who knew?"

  "Jesus, Frank, everybody knew."

  He shook his head. The case had never been in the papers, not the part, at least, about the switch. But in the department it had become a famous case, and now, on this New Year's morning, word had gone out on the police radio band that it was nearly done.