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"Calves starting to hurt bad."

"Sure they are."

"What do you want?"

"Tell me about the garage."

"What about it?"

"The chop-shop operation—Hart's the banker, isn't he? What's the split? Who else's involved? Who you paying off?"

Silence.

"Okay, have it your way. It's all the same to me." He liked the way he said that; there was the proper degree of resignation in his tone. "Meadowlands," he said to Caroline. She juiced the accelerator. The car leaped ahead.

Frighten him by their relentless silent fury—that was the plan. When Sweeney started sputtering again,
Janek
took a long strip of sheeting, yanked up Sweeney's head, then wrapped the cloth around his lower face till he was gagged. "Now we don't have to listen to the creep," he said.

Caroline said, "Good.
I
like it better that way."

He would be thinking,
Why the Meadowlands? The Meadowlands is where you dump guys you put away.
Janek's
going to do me. The girl's in on it, too. It's got to be more than the garage. But what? They're bluffing. Got to be
.

He would figure he could call their bluff but would think, too, that, worse came to worse, he'd spill on the garage because the way
Janek
coerced him no one could ever make that stick. But
Janek
would know that, too, so there was something deeper going on. He'd worry about that, worry about it a lot. He'd tell himself he was going to get out of this but it would cost him and when the time came he'd have to think fast about how to limit the damage.

He would decide that until he knew what
Janek
wanted there was no way to know how to deal. So the next move was up to
Janek
. For now all he had to do was keep calm and wait.

They passed Newark Airport, crossed into Hudson County, took a turnoff that followed Sawmill Creek. The Meadowlands: a huge rubble-filled swamp between the Hudson and Hackensack Rivers, a place of oily desolation, a place where you got rid of stuff you didn't want, where you shot people, then dumped them, left them to bloat and rot.

They reached the spot
Janek
had picked, a flat between mounds of smoking debris. The light was strange; there was something in the scrub that
luminesced
in the night.

"Get your stuff,"
Janek
said.

She cut the engine, got out, slammed the door. He liked the way she moved, as if she had a job to do. The car shook when she slammed the trunk door down.

"Got it?"

"Everything."

"Okay, let's get this over with."

All the dialogue and sound effects were for Sweeney's benefit. Now the back of the sergeant's shirt was soaked. He knew the crunch was coming, the moment of truth. His mind would be working now at triple speed, and Sweeney,
Janek
knew, wasn't dumb.

"Want to talk about it?"
Janek
asked. The same diamond-hard whisper he'd used before. Sweeney struggled to nod. "Then talk,"
Janek
said. Then: "Oh yeah, the gag."

He got out, went around to the left back door, opened it, grabbed hold of Sweeney around the knees and pulled him roughly off the seat and halfway out. When his face was resting on the edge of the car floor he
eased
him onto the ground, because he didn't want to injure his head.

He nodded to Caroline. She was sitting, door open, in the driver's seat, busy stripping wires.
Janek
set Sweeney so he could see her, then reached around and untied the gag. He unwrapped it slowly. When it was off Sweeney was panting hard.

"You got about six minutes,"
Janek
said. "You can start talking now."

"I don't—"

"Listen, Sweeney. This is it. We're through fucking around."

"Put him on his back," Caroline said. She said it perfectly, like she didn't care if he talked or not. Her eyes were perfect, too—cold hard points gleaming in the night.

Janek
rolled Sweeney over so he was lying parallel to the car, then squatted down beside him. If Sweeney wanted to look at Caroline he had to turn the other way. The idea was to make him twist back and forth as he struggled to watch them both.

"So, tell me."

"Won't stand up."

"Who gives a shit about that?"

"Who's she?" He gestured toward Caroline.

"She's a person who wants to blow you up."

Sweeney stared at her. "Seen her before. Where?"

"My rabbi's burial,"
Janek
said.

Sweeney shook his head. He couldn't figure them out. "You're bluffing. This is some kind of bullshit stunt."

"Suit yourself."
Janek
nodded to Caroline. Sweeney twisted his head to look at her.

"Okay, what do you want?"

"What's Hart's connection to the garage?"

"No connection. My baby all the way."

"Fine. Then you can burn alone. She's going to blow you up little piece by little piece."

Sweeney twisted around to look at her again. She was molding the explosive now.

"Little charges,"
Janek
said. "Maybe your thumbs first. Then a couple fingers. Then maybe your balls. Then, when she gets tired of the screaming, she'll go ahead and do your guts."

"
You're fucking crazy.
"
Then:
"
Why?
"

"Really don't know who she is?"

Sweeney shook his head. She had placed the caps in the explosive. Now she was looking very competent the almost loving way she was closing the plastic around the caps.

"Tommy Wallace's daughter."

"So what?"

"You ordered Tommy killed."

"Bullshit I did!"

"See." It was Caroline who spoke this time. "Told you, Frank. It's okay, too."

"
You're both crazy.
"

"Sure we are. She said you'd deny it. That's why she wants to blow you apart."

"You're a cop,
Janek
."

"So?"

"You can't let her do it."

"All the same to me."
Janek
stood up.

"Wait a minute.
Why?
Just tell me
why.
"

"Because it's personal and I don't interfere in personal stuff."
Janek
paused. "Well, so long, Sweeney." He walked over to Caroline.

Her charges were ready. She was attaching the wires to the switch. "I'll move the car," he said. "Blow that up, too, we're really stuck." They laughed. She got up, brought her charges and wires over to Sweeney, stood staring down at him lying hog-tied face-up on the ground.

Janek
started the ignition. This was the turning point. If Sweeney believed them he'd have to deal. If he didn't, if they'd lost him...
Janek
didn't want to think about that.

Call me now, motherfucker
.

"
Janek
!"

He turned. Sweeney's eyes were panicked. "Yeah?"

"I'll give you the garage."

"Already got it."

"You said—"

"Tell you what—I'll trade you."

"
What?
"

Janek
got out of the car, came over, stood beside Caroline. Sweeney looked helpless writhing in his bonds. "Don't care about the garage and neither does she. What we care about is Hart. Hart ordered Tommy Wallace killed. Wanted him out because he thought he was being blackmailed. Supposed to look like a gangland execution but wasn't done all that well. And now there's a Hoboken detective who can show that Wallace's body was stashed in a stolen car stripped in your back shop. You think your goon mechanics will keep quiet, but they won't—not when they find out we're talking homicide. You got one chance, Sweeney. Come over to Hoboken with us now, give evidence against Hart and I'll see you get a deal on Wallace. About the same as you'd get for chopping cars, four to five, something like that. But meantime the garage carries on, it's yours, still making money, making plenty for you when you get out. You'll do hard time, sure, but not like Hart. He's Chief. He'll really get it. You'll be lost in the shuffle. Hart ordered the killing, so he's the guy who ought to pay. That's the deal. The garage for Hart. Take it or leave it. Up to you."
Janek
glanced over at Caroline. "She's got a grievance and far as I'm concerned she can take care of it any way she likes."

Sweeney looked into
Janek's
eyes and then into Caroline's and then at Caroline's hands. She was fluttering her fingers the way Jamie Sullivan had taught her.

"Forget it, Frank," she said.

Janek
nodded. He looked at her charges. "Never mind the little ones. Tape the big one to his belly and do it all at once."

And then it happened, so fast
Janek
could hardly believe it. Burned, broken and bluffed out, Sweeney began spontaneously to talk.

What was strangest of all,
Janek
decided later, was the way he addressed himself to Caroline. As if he owed her the story, as if he needed to justify himself to her, as if it was very important that she understand his relatively minor role in the execution plot.

Janek
tape-recorded everything, breaking in to ask questions, pinning down times and places, getting details so that if Sweeney decided to recant he'd still have enough to make a decent case. But he didn't think Sweeney would recant or claim they'd forced him to confess. The garage deal was too good and, more important,
Janek
thought, once Sweeney betrayed Hart, no matter under what duress, he would find it nearly impossible to feel loyalty toward him again.

H
e found a phone booth in Lyndhurst and dialed the number he'd been harboring for months.

It was one o'clock in the morning. Carmichael's wife answered. He could hear her nudging Carmichael awake. "Get up, Jim, Some cop from Manhattan. Says it's urgent. Wake up...."

"Who the hell—?"

"
Janek
."

"
Who?
"

"Frank
Janek
. Lunch at the Clam Broth House. We talked about the Wallace case."

"I remember you. Why you calling now?"

"Oh, Carmichael,"
Janek
said, his voice lilting, high on what he'd done, "I got a terrific gift for you, the Big Case you've been waiting for. So wake up and get your ass down fast to your station house and get a stenographer and be ready to read a man his rights. Meet you there in fifteen minutes. You're going to be famous, you lucky,
lucky
cop...."

H
ours later, after he'd called Lou and told her what had happened, he stood on a Hoboken pier, facing Manhattan, a hundred million lights sparkling in the towers across the river, the city luminous against the cold black winter night.

She called his name. He turned. She was holding her camera to her eye. He faced her lens straight on. She pressed her shutter.

Click
.

It would be a photograph he would study all the rest of his life, bringing it out whenever he questioned what he had done. Then he would look into his face, his eyes, searching for his passions, the costs he had paid, and, for all the brilliance of his end games, the melancholy that filled him when his two great cases were finally solved.

It was a great photograph, he thought, the city soft but present in the background, the face of the detective sharp, his features etched, filled with fatigue and triumph, sadness too. The face of a man who had made a dangerous journey into a lawless country that for years he'd been too frightened to explore. But with love and luck the man had made the crossing back. All that was in the picture. She had caught him cold, he thought.

“SWITCH”: Q&A WITH WILLIAM
 
BAYER

Q: How did you come up with the concept of the switched heads?

A:
 
As you can imagine, I get that question a lot. The glib answer is that I'm a sick pup. How else could I come up with such a thing? The guys who produced the four-hour TV miniseries (titled “
Doubletake
,” broadcast on CBS) told me that when the story was first pitched to them they wanted to gag! But the truth is that the idea didn't come to me all at once, but evolved over time.

Q:
  
Can you say more about this evolution?

A:
 
Like a lot of people who lived in New York, I was fascinated by the famous
Hoffert
-Wylie case, also sometimes called “the Career Girls Murders.” Two educated upper-middle class young women roommates were found murdered in their Upper East Side apartment. There was a lot more to
Hoffert
-Wylie than that; an innocent man was convicted of the crimes and later exonerated. But what struck me was the notion of two murdered roommates. And then I got this idea: what if each girl was found in her bed, but the girls' heads had been switched?