He announced himself from downstairs; he knew she wasn't trigger happy but he'd seen too many mishaps to want to come charging through her door. As it turned out she was lying in bed calmly watching TV.
She looked up at him. "Hi. I'm fine," she said. She turned back to the screen. "Now that you're here I can get all feminine and nervous again.”
He leaned down to kiss her. Bogart and Bacall were exchanging heated sexual innuendoes; the movie was The Big Sleep and Caroline was totally engrossed. He noticed his extra revolver next to her camera on the bedside table. He sat down beside her. "Going to try to bluff Lane out."
Several seconds passed before she turned and looked him in the eye. "God, that's a terrific line." She shook her head, got up and switched the TV off. "Bogart's fine, but you're better, Frank." She reached for him. "He's a good detective but you're the best."
In the morning he explained it to her, how the bluff would work, the role Jesse would play and the chances of success. "A gamble," he said. "Except if I lose I'm no worse off than I am right now. Which is loser-city. Because without a confession I'm never going to make the case."
"What makes you think it'll work?"
"I feel something explosive in the father-son relationship," he said, "that's maybe strong enough to blow Peter apart. He's too controlled to be really stable. That's his weakness—all that control. Switched Heads was perfectly done, but then he went ahead and took those pictures. Why? You said maybe he needed proof, for himself, to show himself he'd really done it. I read it differently. To me it's like he needed to create evidence. Something confessional there, something to exploit. Suppose I could freak Peter out, put him in a deranged frame of mind. Then things could get really interesting. Under the right conditions maybe he'd break and spill...."
An icy day a week before Christmas, a perfect day, Janek thought. Too cold and windy for Peter to want to go out, but the air so clear he'd see everything—if he looked.
The first step was to attract his attention. They'd planned that part carefully. A burst of activity, squad cars parked in front of the building, detectives coming and going, assuming energetic poses, conferring urgently in Amanda's studio, behaving as men do when a change is imminent.
"I don't know, Frank. It's a cute idea. But I'd say the odds are one in four."
"Well, you know me, Aaron—I never play the odds."
They were standing around Amanda's bed while Janek conspicuously framed it with his hands, as if he were taking photographs or trying to match up imaginary shots with real ones. He tried not to overplay; Peter knew acting, could read a false performance. But even if Peter thought it was performance, Janek felt certain he'd be tantalized, if only out of curiosity and for the pleasure of watching them bungle their show.
The only important thing was that Peter watch.
They spent the early evening standing around, waiting for the night. When darkness came they were well illuminated—all the lights in the studio were on.
Finally Sal went to the window and peered out. "He's there," he said. "I know it. Sitting in the dark, watching from darkness the way he likes."
"You sure?"
"Positive. He's an owl, Frank."
Janek nodded, then looked at his watch.
Jesse was the dummy. Howell, assigned as handler, had cleaned him up, brought him to New York, kept him fed and occupied. Jesse didn't know what he was doing or why, which was how Janek wanted him. If Jesse didn't know what he was doing, then there was no conspiracy to entrap. If Janek's plan happened to work he didn't want the results to fall apart in court.
The old man looked good in his night watchman's uniform, tough and skeletal, almost frighteningly intense. A specter from the past, the single flaw in Peter's flawless crime, turned up unexpectedly with evidence in hand.
Janek introduced him to Sal then marched him past the window several times—it was important the old man be clearly seen. It was possible, Janek knew, that Peter would not recognize him at once, but he would know he was watching a figure of importance, a man for whom the detectives had been waiting many hours.
Janek took him into the bathroom where he explained the stabbing in great detail, wondering, as the old man nodded, whether he understood how he was being used. Then, when he thought sufficient time had passed for Peter to have begun to grow unnerved, he brought the old man back into the studio and then to the side of Amanda's bed.
There he conspicuously pulled out four Polaroids. "Look familiar?" Janek asked. Jesse squinted at them hard. Ostensibly he was there to study the crime scene and say whether he recognized elements from the background of the photographs he'd thrown away. "Like the ones you got, right?" Janek nudged him. "Right?" Jessenodded slowly like an old cop dumbly matching the pieces of a puzzle.
The object was to make Peter think his father had kept the shots, though Janek had resolved never to tell him that he had. It had to be unspoken; Peter had to think Janek had the proof. However successful the interrogation to take place later on, Janek wasn't going to be accused of inducing a confession with a lie.
His last move, the one he hoped would make Peter crazy, was to take Jesse to the window, open it and place him there facing out. It would be from this display that, hopefully, the realization would sink in. Peter could choose not to believe in Jesse, or to believe in him and still not care. The third possibility, the one Janek was counting on, seemed sometimes, when he thought about it, not plausible at all.
So he placed the old man in full view, on the very spot where Amanda had once set her exercise mat, then stood beside him feeling the cold night air wash across his face. Did he also feel something else, that same shiver that had brushed him on a night so many months before? He stared, wanting to penetrate the darkened window across, willing himself to make out the face he knew must be lurking there behind the glass.
For an instant he thought he saw it. A movement...or something. He stared harder, feeling Jesse beside him, hearing the old man's breathing, wondering if it matched the worried breathing taking place across the yard. Then, he didn't know why, he felt the connection suddenly broken. And just then, as he asked himself if he was imagining things or whether his scheme was going bad, he heard a noise and turned around in time to see Stanger come rushing though the door.
The detective was panting. He'd run up the stairs. "Charged by me," he gasped, trying hard to steady himself. "Came tearing out, Lieutenant. Too fast." Stanger let his arms fall to his sides. "Sorry, Lieutenant. He's gone...."