Hart

 

"Air's bad," said Hart. "Like breathing fumes." He rubbed the back of his neck and peered out the window with disgust. They were on the Triborough Bridge; girders were whipping by. Hart's ears stuck out and his gray hair was shaven practically to his scalp. The big black car was air-conditioned. They sat in the back; the driver was a cop.

Janek turned, saw his own car driven by Sweeney trailing them at fifty feet. "Didn't know you knew Al."

Hart turned to him slowly. His small cold blue eyes twinkled like freezing little stars. "I try to get to these things even if I didn't know the guy. DiMona was a detective after all."

"He was a close friend."

"Your rabbi—yeah, I heard. Well, it's a lousy thing, Frank. Ought to take away their guns. Never bought this idea they should keep them. Look what they do with them. Eat them for Sunday brunch." The Chief shook his head, tightened his lips, about as sensitive an expression, Janek knew, as Hart could bring himself to make. It was a major effort for Hart to pretend to be a human being. Still Janek wondered why he had bothered to attend the burial.

"...Not working on anything important you couldn't dump now if you wanted to?"

So that was it. Hart hadn't come to pay respects to Al but to talk to Janek on the way back into town.

"Got something for you, Frank. You have to take it over right away. Your kind of case. Psychological." Hart winked as if he'd made some kind of private little joke.

"Everything's psychological."

"This is psycho-logical." He grinned, pleased with himself; master of wordplay, he wouldn't need a ghostwriter when he retired and wrote his book.

Janek waited to hear about it, but now Hart was onto something else. "...couple asshole detectives acting like goddamn four-year-olds. Embarrassing scene, personally embarrassing to me, at the Medical Examiner's yesterday afternoon." He glanced at Janek. "You want to hear?"

"Sure. What happened?"

"Couldn't believe it. Couple of goddamn four-year-olds." Hart wiped his forehead. There was still a strip of sweat above his lip. "Two homicides over the weekend. One in the One-nine, the other in the Twentieth. Monday morning they find this schoolteacher. You probably read about it in the papers." Janek had read about it: a female teacher at a private girls' school found murdered in an East Side brownstone; the afternoon papers had made a big deal about it because the school was classy and the woman lived at a good address. "The second one was on the West Side. Tenement building. All-night call-girl type. They found her Monday, too, but we didn't say much about it then even though there was something peculiar that connected the two cases which we weren't actually aware of until yesterday afternoon." Hart grinned. "Tell you one thing, Frank. You never had a case like this."

"Like what?"

"Hold on. I'm getting to it. Understand that what I'm telling you isn't going to the papers." He turned in his seat so he was facing Janek. His voice turned serious. His tiny eyes were boring in. "The heads were switched. Get what I'm saying? The head of the teacher was with the body of the hooker and the other way around. Now, you see what that means. Someone took an awful risk. Ever hear of anything like that? Like a terror movie or a book."

Janek looked down at the floor of the car. Hart's shoes were elevated—he hadn't noticed that before. He didn't know if it was the smell in the air, or Al's suicide, or the thought of heads being switched, but whatever it was, it was starting to make him sick.

"...The killer decapitates victim A, then goes crosstown and decapitates B, then takes B's head back to A's apartment and places it with her corpse, then goes back crosstown with A's head and places it so it looks like it goes with B."

Maybe much simpler than that, Janek thought, but Hart was probably right—you usually don't carry around a victim's head when you go out to kill someone else. Hart was right about the risk, too, and that the case was psychological. Some sort of crazy statement by a psychopath. But it was not the kind of case he liked.

"...There has to be a reason, right? That's where you come in. Figure it out. I'm handing it to you. Two heads on a silver platter. Interested?"

"What happened at the Medical Examiner's?"

Hart groaned. They were speeding down the FDR; the UN Building was just ahead. "Couple of jerkoffs got the calls. Stanger in the One-nine. Howell in the Twentieth. Know them?"

"Stanger—vaguely."

"Then you gotta know he's a jerk. Take it from me, Howell's just as bad. Okay, Stanger gets a lousy ID on the teacher from her building super. They cart her downtown and then there's some trouble getting someone from the school to look at her, and her parents live in Buffalo, so they can't get down here right away. Meantime, Howell gets the hooker, they cart her down, and at noon yesterday the ME starts to scream. There's a mixup. The heads are switched. Like someone fucked the bodies up."

"They're not perfect down there. They get sloppy, too."

"I know, but not this time. We got photographs. That's the way the bodies were found. Anyway, Stanger and Howell rush down there and they get into a fight. 'Whose case is this anyway?' 'You got my head. I got yours.' 'Let's switch them back and do our own investigations.' 'No sweat—we'll go our separate ways.' They tried to make some kind of bullshit deal, with the photos staring them in the face." Hart shook his head. "Can't believe it. Next thing they started swinging. A fistfight down there between the bodies with the whole staff of pathologists looking on. Why? Because they're morons. They're both detectives, they each got a homicide, each guy wants to work his own case, and if they have to share—I mean God forbid the two killings should be connected!—then they both know one of them's going to end up getting screwed."

"So now you need a lieutenant from outside."

They were passing under the Brooklyn Bridge. "I need a real detective, for Christ's sake, Frank. That's why I'm givingthis to you."

Two men were waiting in Hart's outer office. Janek recognized Stanger; the beefy one, he guessed, was Howell. They were sitting at opposite sides of the room studying the carpet. Stanger had a black eye. Hart didn't acknowledge them. Janek followed him in.

"Set yourself up in that special squad office on the second floor of the Sixth. I'll call Taylor and tell him you're coming. You'll want some of your regular people, I guess."

"Sal Marchetti and Aaron Rosenthal."

"Don't know Marchetti. Aaron's good. Now what am I going to do about those repentant jerks out there?" Hart motioned toward the waiting room.

"They drew the calls."

"Yeah. And disgraced the division. Still, if you can stand them you can have them. Just sit here and nod while I tell them what kind of creeps they are."

Stanger and Howell were called in, and Hart went at them mercilessly. They were assholes. Jerkoffs. Four-year-olds. He ought to discipline them. He ought to take away their shields. But this time he was going to be generous. He was going to give them a chance to redeem themselves. It was one case now, Janek's case. They were both going to work for Janek, and they were going to work their butts off, too. Any questions? No questions—good. Then get the hell out of here. And one other thing—not a word about the switch. Any leaks on that and the ax will fall, and then there'll be four goddamn heads rolling around the morgue.

When Janek left, Sweeney handed him the keys. "Nice car, Lieutenant, but something funny about your engine. I happen to know an honest garage. They give a good discount to NYPD."