She sat back, exhausted. She'd been talking nonstop for an hour. As soon as she stopped she stared down at the table as if she couldn't bear to meet
Janek's
eyes.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" he asked. "Why all the crap about how Al was working on something and could I find out what it was?"
"I'm sorry, Frank. You're right to be angry. But, you see, I didn't want to tarnish Al. I was afraid if I told you about the money you wouldn't care about him anymore."
"Then why ask me to look into it in the first place? If I discovered what he'd been doing why would my feelings be any different then?"
"It was stupid. I know. It was just that I had this idea."
"What?"
She glanced up at him, a painful glance. "That you might want to take over the case and bring down Hart the way Al wanted to do."
"If that's what you wanted you shouldâ"
"I know. I just thought that if I hinted around you might stumble on it on your own. But when you came by two weeks ago and told me there was nothing, I decided to let it go." She exhaled. "Tommy was dead and Al was dead and whatever Dale had done just didn't make that much
differ
ence anymore."
"But I did find something."
"Yes," she said. "Where did you get the picture?"
"Al gave it to Tommy Wallace's daughter."
"Oh, I see. Yeah, I saw her at the funeral." She looked perplexed. "But how did you get to her?"
He ignored her question. It would require a complicated answer and he didn't feel like discussing his relationship with Caroline. But it occurred to him that Al's act of pressing the snapshot into Caroline's hand had been done with the same sort of ambivalent hope that had driven Lou to tell him Al had been working on a case and then ask him to find out what it was.
He thought about it. Al must have been brooding over suicide for weeks. Most likely he had prepared affidavits which implicated Hart. But at the last moment he lost his nerve, possibly because of something Hart said to him on the phone. So he burned his papers, his affidavits and his notes, preferring to go out as an inexplicable suicide rather than as a cop too cowardly to make his case even if in the attempt he brought down ruin upon himself.
But still he'd given Caroline that photograph, hoping she would follow it up. The odds against that happening were astronomical, considering how strongly she'd resisted letting him talk to her about his agony. But astronomical or not, Al's last bet had been won.
Janek
had gotten hold of the snapshot, had pulled the story out of Caroline, Carmichael and Lou, and now he was in possession of a set of facts that he could pursue in a way that Al could not.
"Oh, Frank..." Lou was sobbing. "I see now it was all my fault. I didn't understand. He wanted so much to be a great cop, to break open a great case and pull Dale down. But I wouldn't let him do it. I begged him to leave it alone. I was afraid we'd lose that stupid pension. I denied him his chance forâI don't know. Redemption, I guess."
Or at least absolution,
Janek
thought. He turned to her and shook his head. "It wasn't you. He was in a double bind. The more he investigated, the more evidence he found, the more likely he was to implicate himself. In the end he painted himself into a corner. And then there was only one way out."
There were tears now streaming down her face.
Janek
pulled her to him, stroked her gray hair and let her sob. He wanted to comfort her but didn't know what to say. And then, suddenly, words came to him as he gazed around at the gold tassels on the cushions, the gold carpeting on the floor, the ornate veneer that had always made him feel uncomfortable, which Al and Lou had used to conceal the ambiguous virtue of their lives.
"You two had so much. I envied you. Always did. You had so much more than Sarah and me. I used to think about that whenever I saw Dolly, how barren we were, how much we missed."
"All the pain..."
"Sure. But don't forget about the good stuff. You lived, Lou. The two of you lived. Sarah and meâwe just cohabited. What a terrible way to pass the years."
He knew he was being maudlin and he didn't care; he was doing the best he could. And then when she started arguing with him, denying that he and Sarah had not had a good and loving life together, he nodded in agreement although he did not agree. The important thing was for her to stop feeling guilty over Al. If he could help her get over that he knew he would feel less guilty over Al himself.
Guilt:
that was what Al's last case had been about. A struggle to stay incorruptible; a moment of weakness paid for by years of shame. Then a glimpse at redemption and the realization that there was no redemption to be had. And the knowledge that in his own special way he, Al
DiMona
, was also to blame for Tommy Wallace's death.
Glancing down at the table, at the snapshot of the three grinning cops,
Janek
understood the confusion that blemished Al's smile.
Even then he knew there'd come a day
,
Janek
thought. And thinking that, he grasped Lou harder and held her tight against his chest.
E
arly Monday morning Aaron called in: "At the Museum of Modern Art. Looking up a couple things. I'll be in around eleven."
Aaron had somethingâ
Janek
could feel it, that he was the only one of the five of them to have come up with an idea. He told Stanger to check out Spalding. ("If he gives you any crap tell him he's a murder suspect and I want to see him down here with his lawyer.") He assigned Howell and Sal to interview friends and associates of Ellis. ("I think he's a fake, but we got to be sure. Play it like we think he's a homicidal sadist and see how they react.") Then, when the office was clear, he sat back in his chair to wait. He thought about Al and then about Hart's eyes and how cold they were and how he'd always thought that Hart could kill.
When Aaron came in he was ready to sell. He took Karp's drawings of Ellis and Lane and tacked them to the wall.
"You and Karp see Ellis the same way," Aaron said, "a monkey, one paw clutching bananas, the other beating his chest. Suppose Karp's right, too, about my guy, Lane. Then what've you got? An owl, a
nightbird
, staring out waiting for his prey. Yeah, I know, Karp's a cartoonist. He may have better-than-average insights, but what's that got to do with the case? Nothing except that when I saw his drawing I thought, Wow, that's it, that's just the
way I
see the guy."
"Did you talk to him again?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"First time around I got enough."
"So what have you been doing?"
"Checking him out."
"And?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Frank, he makes movies about guys who stab whores and diddle around with cops."
Janek
waited, and when Aaron didn't add anything he sighedâthere had to be more.
"Come on," he said. "I've heard that story. Ellisâ"
"This is different."
"I sure hope it is,"
Janek
said.
They ate lunch at the Taco-Rico, then drove to a repertory cinema near the Columbia University campus. Aaron insisted that
Janek
come; he said what he'd seen over the weekend was too subtle to explain.
Janek
said if it was all that subtle it probably wasn't going to throw much illumination on the suspect. Aaron said it might or it might not but that he had a very strong feeling and since the other suspects were more or less closed out what did
Janek
have to lose?
So he allowed himself to be dragged uptown, pleading reluctance all the way. He knew Aaron didn't have a bombshell and that he wasn't going to find out what he did have until he let Aaron soften him up.
The titles were spelled out on the marquee:
"
TWO BY LANE: HAIRDRESSER and
MEZZALUNA."
"Two. Christ. You didn't tell me it was a double feature."
"If you want we'll only stay for one."
The theater was old and cavernous, nearly empty that weekday afternoon. A bearded wino, sprawled out on a rear-row seat, alternately snored and gasped. A small contingent of young people passed a joint in a row near the screen. The place smelled of old popcorn and stale marijuana smoke. The usher, elderly and decrepit, wore a soiled uniform and a mismatched gray toupee.
"Not one of your fashionable first-run houses,"
Janek
said. "And not exactly a couple of hits."
Aaron nodded. "A few critics love his stuff, but he's definitely not commercial. More like a cult director with a small devoted audience."
Hairdresser
was about a killer named Seymour Trent who, after he stabbed his prostitute victims, lovingly gave them each a wash and a perm. He was pursued by a mean piggish cop named Templeton who staggered drunk when he wasn't speeding dangerously in his patrol car around the unnamed California coastal town where the story was set. There was an aura of corruption about everything in this town:
cretinous
deputies, hostile hippies, leering merchants, toothless, hard-boiled whorehouse madams. At the end killer and cop took part in an extravagant chase through a run-down amusement park. Trent escaped off a speeding roller coaster by jumping into a murky river. Templeton swigged whiskey from a bottle and stared down at the oily water with the eyes of a bedazzled fool.
A crude low-budget film, probably an early work,
Janek
thought, employing inexperienced actors playing implausible characters in a story that didn't add up. But he also recognized energy: an atmosphere of menace; the way the killer's knife flashed in the light; and a hypnotic photographic style.
There was a brief break between the films. When the lights came on, the theater ricocheted with coughs.
Aaron leaned over and whispered into
Janek's
ear, "Notice the cop didn't make his collar."
Mezzaluna
was stronger than
Hairdresser,
though in format pretty much the same. The murderer,
Targov
, a worker in a slaughterhouse, killed his whore victims with a
mezzaluna
, the Italian half-moon-shaped vegetable-chopping device.
When
Targov
slayed
, the murder scene would dissolve into a memory:
Targov
as a boy watching his mother rolling her
mezzaluna
from side to side and smiling quietly as if with secret knowledge.
The detective was named Masterson and the location was Chicago. Masterson was slow-witted, walked with the heavy swagger of a street cop, slurred his words and rocked nervously on his heels when he stood still.
There was some sort of grim battle of wits between killer and cop; one felt that Masterson knew
Targov
was his quarry but for some unstated reason could not make an arrest. After numerous complications Masterson tracked
Targov
to a meat-packing plant, where he chased him amidst a maze of hanging carcasses, fired out his revolver, then lost him in the dark.
As Masterson shrugged, gave up and backed away, the camera closed in on the shadows. When the detective opened the packing-house door a splinter of light penetrated, reflected off the
mezzaluna
and made it flash silver in the dark.
Janek
was half nauseated. The story was unreal, the plot absurd, the ending unsatisfying. But still he felt that Lane was skillful; despite the shallowness of his work, he conveyed a vision, something bleak and miserable that stuck in
Janek's
mind.
"So you see," said Aaron when they were out on the street, "he makes movies about intense killers who use sharp instruments to cut up whores."
"What else?"
"The same contrived, arranged style your lady friend saw in our photographs. The same studied artificial look."
They got into the car. Aaron didn't start it up; he watched
Janek
, who stared out the windshield with his hands locked behind his head.
"You're right about the look,"
Janek
said. "He works hard making the killings beautiful. They're really exquisite if you can stand to look at them. But I think there's more. The stories. That's what you wanted me to see." He turned. Aaron nodded. "The same strange logic, right? Like in our case. All that elaborate moving back and forth. Perfectly planned and executed, with a kind of artistic signature at the end instead of the mess and blood we should have found."
They talked about it. Aaron said he felt the movies were a smirk. "The cops are slobs, right? Templeton and Masterson. But the killers, Trent and
Targov
, are brilliant. Remember what you said the first day: 'I'm
superkiller
and I defy you cops to solve my crime'?"
"I was just spouting."
"Maybe so. But I get that same message from the movies. They give me a bad feeling, like that to Lane the killings aren't all that important, like the big
play's
the struggle between the killer and the cop."