God help us! For years we treasured this man and all that time he was a lunatic. Then he thought: Is it any wonder that so many of us end up putting our pistols in our mouths?
The Threat.
When Janek arrived at Special Squad, he found a fax on his desk. It was from an officer he didn't know named Tom Capiello, a member of the police artists unit. The message was simple and to the point: "Drop by.
I've got something to show you."
While Janek was pondering what this might mean, he received a call from his zone commander, Joe Deforest. Deforest said a man named Stephen Kane, chief of security at Sonoron Corporation, had arrived in New York and wanted a briefing on the Dietz case.
"Fine, Joe," Janek said, "send him over. He can tell us more about that stolen chip."
There was a pause at the other end, then Deforest cleared his throat.
"Seems Kane's boss, some big shot named Cavanaugh, called the mayor's office last night. Word came down from Kit. The briefing's to be held over there."
"Fine," said Janek. "I'm coming over anyway. I'll drop by early and fill you in."
When he put down the phone, he had no doubt about what had happened.
Cavanaugh, the Sonoron chairman, had posed some difficult questions to the mayor-such as, how often are visiting businessmen assassinated in their rooms at top-of-the-line Manhattan hotels? By the time this needling query reached Kit, the order was clear: Kane, Cavanaugh's security chief, was to be shown special deference, which meant don't send him over to Janek's grubby Special Squad, brief him in a plush suite in the Headquarters building.
Janek quickly gave instructions to Sue and Ray. They were to continue to show the police sketch until they got a lead on the redhead who had accompanied Dietz to his room. Leaving Aaron in charge of the office, Janek taxied downtown to Police Plaza. When he got there he went straight to the artists unit, where he asked the receptionist to point out Capiello.
She gestured across the busy room to a man sitting at a desk against the far wall. As Janek walked over he passed a row of artists working at computer terminals with witnesses.
"Now let's try some noses," he heard one say. "Was it short, long, fat or thin?"
"It was kind of squashed," said the witness, a black lady with steel-gray hair. "You know, like a boxer's."
Capiello looked up just as Janek approached. He was middle-aged with bags under his eyes and a sorrowful, earnest face. He was also one of the few artists in the room who was not sitting before a computer. From the array of art materials in front of him, Janek could see he was one of the last of the breed who sketched freehand with charcoal and pastels.
"Janek?" Janek nodded. Capiello gestured for him to take a chair.
"Thanks for coming down, Lieutenant. I could have sent the material over, but I wanted to show it to you myself."
Capiello struck him as the sort of technical policeman who probably didn't get much satisfaction from his work. Now that he had come up with something, he wanted to squeeze a little pleasure out of it.
Capiello pulled out the sketch of the redheaded girl in the Dietz case.
"This isn't my work," he said. "I don't usually look at other artists' composites, but I was working late last night, and on my way out I noticed this one posted by the door.
Don't know why it caught my eye. It just did. I thought the girl looked familiar. But I was too tired to put it together. It didn't hit me till I got home." Janek smiled. "Happens to me all the time." "Anyway,"
Capiello continued, "I wasn't positive till I got in this morning. I came early to check and soon as I saw it I sent you the fax."
Capiello opened the center drawer of his desk, extracted a hand-drawn sketch. He laid it beside the computer generated drawing of the redhead, then turned both portraits around so that Janek could compare them.
"I drew this three months ago, beginning of the summer, on another case.
Hair color's different, cut's different, too but otherwise the girls look the same."
Janek could see the similarity, especially in the eyes the same vulnerable eyes that had held his interest the day before.
"What was the complaint?" "Well, that's the thing," Capiello said.
"There wasn't any homicide.
Still, I think it's the same person."
Janek studied the two sketches as Capiello explained. Something about this girl touches me. I wonder why.
"It was an odd case," Capiello said. "The complaining witness was a magazine editor. I dug up the data." He passed a complaint sheet across the desk. "Anyway, this guy was pretty anguished about what happened to him and adamant about tracking the girl down. Seems he picked her up in a neighborhood bar, then took her home expecting to, you know… But then she put something in his drink that put him to sleep. When he woke up she was gone and so was his money and his watch."
Janek looked up from the sketches. "Anguished?"
Capiello nodded. "That's why I remember him, He talked while I drew.
He was very disturbed. Seems the girl did some fairly weird things while he was out, like going through his personal stuff and cutting up his underwear. She also wrote something nasty on his chest. It was strange the way she wrote it, he said@ It looked like nonsense till he looked at it in a mirror."
"So, how was Cuba?" Deforest asked when Janek stepped into his office.
"You didn't get much of a tan."
"It wore off," Janek said. Deforest laughed. "I was supposed to be on a covert mission."
"That's always the trouble when you get involved with Mendoza." Deforest shook his head. "Sooner or later everyone finds out."
Deforest was a big, blocky man in his early forties, with pale skin and arctic eyes. Although transparently ambitious for bigger and better commands, he was what Aaron called a stand-up guy." Janek respected him for his intelligence, his record as a working detective and his intense loyalty to subordinates. He also thought Deforest could end up one day sitting behind Kit's desk.
Janek briefed him on the Dietz case. Deforest agreed that finding the girl was the only way to go and that if the artist's sketch was shown on TV, it could scare her off. He also agreed that the mirror-writing connection to Capiello's complainant was a promising lead. "But I'd hurry if I were you," Deforest said. "A scent like this can go cold pretty quick."
Promptly at eleven, Deforest's secretary announced the arrival of Stephen Kane. The moment Kane entered, Janek knew he didn't like him.
The security man was in his midthirties, with a flashy, vain appearance.
His loafers were fancy, crafted out of exotic reptile skins, with little tassels affixed to the tops that flopped back and forth as he walked.
His watch was showy, a thick Rolex with a diamond encrusted bezel. These accessories were consistent with the grooming of his hair-long on the sides, fastidiously combed back, meeting and crossing behind his head, then tapering down to a point. To keep up a cut like that, Janek thought, he'd have to see his barber every other day.
After introductions, they sat down in easy chairs at the informal end of Deforest's office. Janek was amused to see Kane position himself so that he could give his primary attention to the zone commander.
"What've you got to tell me?" he asked in a manner not contrived to endear him to Deforest.
Deforest looked over at Janek. "It's Frank's investigation., "It's more like what can you tell us?" Janek said. "We understand Dietz was recently fired."
"That's right."