Wallflower j-3 Read online

"We didn't want to upset you," Stanton said.

  "Excuse me," said Janek, "but could anything have made me feel worse?

  I'm asking you again: Why didn't you say anything?"

  "We were told-" Laura started to speak, but Stanton interrupted.

  "We were asked to keep that to ourselves. Chief Kopta told us not to get you excited, because she said you couldn't go on the case. I don't know how the Police Department works, Frank, but when the Chief of Detectives tells us not to talk about something, I don't see that we have a choice."

  "Well, that's just fine, Stanton. But at the cemetery you made me promise to hunt down her killer."

  "Yes…

  Janek shook his head. "You can't have it both ways. was that rhetoric or for real?"

  "I meant it. Jesus, of course, I meant it."

  "Good." Janek nodded. "Now let's see how far you're willing to go." He turned to Laura. "What do you know about a young man named Greg Gale?"

  Laura looked confused. "Just that Jess was dating him. Then she broke it off."

  "Ever meet him?"

  "I think we saw him a couple of times," Stanton said. "Maybe for a minute or two when he came by to pick her up. Why do you ask? Is he mixed up in this?"

  Janek ignored Stanton's question. He'd decided to concentrate on Laura. She was softer, more vulnerable, more likely to talk.

  "Know anything about Gale's friends and how Jess was involved with them?"

  "A little."

  "Pretty fast bunch of kids from what I hear."

  "Goddamn it, Frank!" Stanton smacked down his drink. "What're you trying to do? We just buried our daughter.

  Surely there's a better time."

  "I'm a detective, Stanton. Good enough for you to ask for my help.

  But then you don't bother to tell me what was done to her or that she was moving with a fast bunch of kids who did drugs and played mind games and had group sex and I don't know what else. Better listen now:

  The girl was sexually mutilated. Doesn't take a genius to figure out she may have been killed by someone she knew. But you don't tell me anything, just leave me thinking she was a victim of a random park killer, and isn't that just awful! Isn't New York a terrible place! Why do we all live in this hellhole? Oh, dear! Oh, God!

  Oh, shit!" Janek steadied himself "You've got two choices, Stanton.

  Tell me everything you know or withdraw your request. Because if you ever hold back anything from me again, I'm out of it. Forever.

  Understand?"

  "Chief Kopta?" "Never mind her. She's my problem, not yours."

  Laura was crying now, softly into a handkerchief Stanton stood beside her chair, one hand on her shoulder.

  "All right, Frank. The hell with it! I don't know what we were thinking. Look, we didn't know exactly what was going on between Jess and Gale, but we got a few hints we didn't like. She was always boy-crazy. We assumed she, you know-fooled around. But we tried not to think too hard about it. What the kids do now, it isn't the same as in our day. If you're a parent, you can't do anything about it so you ignore it, maybe hope it goes away. I guess that's what we did."

  Laura, obviously embarrassed, was staring at the rug. "Go on," Janek said. "Let's hear it all."

  "There isn't much to tell. Early this fall, when Jess went back to school, she told us she wanted to break it off. We didn't question her. We just tried to be supportive. When she said she wanted to see a shrink, I told her to find a good one and not to worry about the fees. And that's just what she did. This Dr. Archer she started going to, a reputable woman, a clinical psychologist, seemed to help her a lot. As for not keeping you abreast of the details of her personal life, there were just some things we felt Jess wouldn't have wanted us to share."

  Laura looked up. "She was a wonderful girl, Frank. But she wasn't perfect. No child is. She loved you very much, and she knew how much you adored her. More than anything she wanted your respect. I think she'd rather have died than disappoint you."

  Janek shook his head. "Laura, Laura-she's gone now. We're past the time when you have to worry about my being disappointed." "Yes, Frank. I know. Of course… they both looked as if they felt they'd been awful and stupid. He didn't want to leave them feeling that way, so he decided to share the contents of their daughter's call.

  "When I got home tonight, there was a message from Jess. She didn't leave the date or time, but it was the last call I got, so I know she made it no earlier than two days before she was killed. She sounded worried, said she wanted to talk to me, said it was important, urged me to call her as soon as I got back. What was it? What did she want? Think hard, because this is important. The girl's upset; then she's killed and mutilated. Maybe she felt she was in danger."

  Laura stared at him. "I can't imagine."

  "Could have been about her father," Stanton said.

  Laura nodded. "It could." She turned to Janek. "A few weeks ago she started asking me questions about Tim. I was surprised. We'd barely talked about him in years. I thought, well, it probably came up in her therapy. I suggested she talk to you. I told her you knew Tim in a completely different way. She seemed pleased with that. She loved talking to you, Frank. So maybe that's why she called."

  Janek thought about it. Did wanting to talk to him about Tim fit the tone of her message? Not likely. "Well, maybe so," he said. He wound up the discussion, kissed Laura on the cheek, and started for the door. Stanton escorted him out to the hallway and stood beside him as he rang for the elevator.

  "Well?"

  "Well-what, Stanton?"

  "I want you to promise me you'll hunt her killer down."

  "I thought I already did."

  "I want to hear you say it."

  Janek looked at him. Stanton's eyes gleamed with a lust for vengeance.

  "Yeah, I promise," Janek said. "I promise I'll hunt him to the ends of the earth. How's that?" Stanton nodded. "Fine. That's fine, Frank. It feels good to hear you say the words."

  The elevator arrived. Janek got in. The cigarette smoke was even more pungent than before.

  "We'll stay in touch. Won't we?"

  "Yeah, we'll stay in touch," Janek said to the closing door.

  He was dreaming when, at six the following morning, his ringing telephone woke him up. As he groped for the receiver, he tried to recapture his dream, but the details were instantly lost to him, leaving him with nothing but a vague sense of dread.

  It was Monika, and the fine clarity of her voice quickly drove away his demons.

  "I was worried, Frank. You didn't call."

  "Sorry. I got back too late. I figured you'd be asleep."

  "I've been thinking about you, imagining what you've been going through.

  I wish I could be there with you now."

  Wasn't she fabulous! Perhaps Venice had been more than a dream.

  "I love the glass," he said.

  "I hoped you would."

  "I put it by my window. I want to look at it every day, to remind myself of Venice and how I met you there and what we found together." He pulled himself short. "Hey! I better shut up. This is getting sentimental."

  "Don't be afraid of sentiment, Frank." "No, Monika. But sometimes I'm wary." And then he poured out to her everything that was bothering him: the way Jess was stabbed, the gluing, the decadent boyfriend, and finally the diary.

  "I couldn't bear to read it. I don't know why. First I thought it was her handwriting; then I realized I was afraid of what I'd have to read. Boyce almost leered when he offered it to me. I guess I didn't want… what? Disillusionment. Then, when he told me about her, that gang she was running with, having sex wearing a blindfold while the other kids watched… I don't know. I've seen a lot, maybe as bad as it gets, but I never connected Jess with anything sordid. Of course, it wasn't necessarily ugly. It all depends on how she approached it. She was a grown woman. She had every right to live her life. But still, I can't seem to come to grips with it. It's as if there was a part of her I didn't know."

  M
onika told him she thought that if he just looked at it in a certain way, he wouldn't feel so confused. As for Jess's secrecy, she assured him that that was not at all uncommon in a young person, especially with an older person the youngster loves.

  "I think she knew that to you she would always seem a perfect little girl. And I think it's a sign of her love for you that she didn't want to disturb your illusion."

  "Okay," he said, "that makes sense. But this sex thing-"

  "Don't dwell on it, Frank. She sounds to me like a fairly normal young woman, fully entitled to her secrets, insecurities, struggles, her groping expressions of sexuality. No one is obliged to be a moral paragon. And there's so much in her diary that sounds positive. The fact that she broke off with the rotten boyfriend and started seeing a therapist is an excellent sign. And the fact that she tried to reach you when she felt she was in trouble@at alone should tell you how much you meant to her. I hope you don't love her any the less for what you've found out."

  "Nothing in the world could make me love her less," Janek said. Then he started to choke. "God! I don't want to break down again."

  "Please don't be embarrassed with me." He smiled. "I just hate the clichd. You know: toughNew-York-cop-with-feelings." "I never thought of you as tough."

  "How did you think of me?"

  "You were the big American I kept running into all the time, whom I lured into following me."

  He smiled. She really was the best thing to happen to him in years.

  There was a tremendous amount of mail waiting for him at the post office, so much that the clerk suggested he borrow a mail sack to carry it home. Junk mail, bills, magazines, and then, among the letters, one that didn't look right. He picked it out of the multitude and examined it carefully. It bore no return address. His name was handwritten in block letters on the envelope: 11 LIEUTENANT FRANK JANEK." The postmark, dated the day after Jess's killing, told him it had been mailed from Green kill Prison. He ripped it open, read it quickly, then threw it down with disgust. The text,

  unsigned, was short and to the point: "JANEK, I SLEEP BETTER KNOWING YOUR GODDAUGHTER IS IN THE GROUND."

  The road into Green kill is as stark as the old red-brick buildings that comprise its campus. The complex looms upon a hill. Beneath its walls cows graze fields, a pastoral touch which, though meant to calm the inmates, only enrages them by mocking their confinement. Below the fields there is a moat, and below that interlocking rolls of razor wire. That October day, beneath stone gray clouds, Green kill had a brooding presence. As Janek entered, he felt the screaming silence of the place and the stem essence of its gloom. But most of all, he felt the weight of unserved time.

  He showed his badge, parked in the visitors' lot, then waited in the reception area until his visit was cleared by the warden's office. He checked his gun and ammo with the property clerk, was frisked by a gate guard, passed through the electronic barriers without setting off any alarms. Then he was escorted to a small plain attorney's room.

  Rusty Glickman, dressed in blue denim, was waiting for him in a cheap plastic chair set up before a battered wooden table.

  "Pleasure, Janek," he said. But as he sat down, Janek responded only with a look. It had been fifteen years since he'd last seen Glickman. Now he wasn't certain he'd recognize him if he passed him on the street. Glickman's tight black hair had mostly fallen out, replaced by a grayish fringe. His taut, lean body had gone to fat, and his breath stank of tobacco-not surprising since lung cancer, caused by excessive smoking of cigarettes, was the most frequent killer of lifers. But as Janek studied Glickman, he recognized the expression around his mouth. Even fifteen years of incarceration had not extinguished the sneer that said, "Whoever you may think you are, to me you're a total piece of shit."

  "What brings you around? Social call? It's been what? Fifteen years?"

  Again Janek didn't bother to answer. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the letter, and placed it flat on the table. Glickman glanced at it. "So?" "You wrote it."

  "So what?"

  "Why?" Glickman shrugged. "Why not?" He smirked.

  Janek slowly moved his head in close, deliberately invading Glickman's space.

  "I know you re slime. But what could you possibly have against Tim Foy's daughter?"

  "I got nothing against her. I didn't even remember he had a daughter till I read about her in the papers."

  "So why?"

  "You, the big shot detective from New York, got the balls to come up here and ask me that? I thought you were supposed to be smart, Janek." Glickman's voice was loaded with scorn. "I saw this shitty miniseries where this actor-what's his name, he's a lot better-looking than you-where he struts around making like he's so fucking brilliant. Lieutenant Frank Janek the character was called.

  What a pile of shit."

  Janek stared at him. "Once a psychopath always a psychopath." He stood. "I don't need your abuse." He moved toward the door to call the guard.

  "'Cause of you, I gotta spend the rest of my life in a rathole while you get to run around in New York playing Great Detective. You ask why I wrote you about the girl. I wrote you so you'd come up here and I could look into your eyes and see your pain. That's all I wanted.

  Now I'm satisfied. I've seen it. It looks pretty good to me. I like seeing you in pain, Janek. Like I said, it's a real pleasure."

  "Guard!" Janek shouted, then waited facing the door. No matter what Glickman said to him, he vowed not to react. But Glickman was on a roll. He had only a few more seconds and nothing to lose.

  "You call me slime. You're the slime, Janek. You and your buddy-what's his name?-Foy. And his little cunt of a daughter, too.

  That's what she was, wasn't she? A little cunt, a slut, running around, twitching her horny little ass in the park. Know something?

  I'm glad she's dead!

  The guard had arrived, was working his key in the lock, but Janek didn't care. Even as he yielded to his anger, he knew he was making a mistake. But fuck it! he thought. He turned, raised his foot against the leg of the table, and shoved as hard as he could, propelling the table straight toward Glickman, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor.

  "See that!" Glickman shouted to the guard. "See what he did!

  Struck a prisoner! You saw it! He struck a fucking prisoner!

  That's grounds for a lawsuit! A big lawsuit! You're really fucked now, asshole! Probably cost you your fucking pension!"

  Glickman was laughing, a sneering, bullying laughter, the kind you'd expect from a slimeball who'd order a bomb planted in another man's car.

  But Janek was already out the door. As he walked down the corridor, he could hear Glickman's laughter resound against the walls. By the time he reached the security gate he knew that he himself was now walking on a knife's edge of sanity.

  That night, when he got back to New York, the craziness was really cooking in him. But being conscious of it and wanting to give it up were two different things. I may be strung out, he thought, but I've still got control Though emotionally exhausted, thoroughly jet-lagged, fatigued from his journey to Green kill, he was nonetheless ready to do what Boyce was not: corner Greg Gale and squeeze him till he bled.

  He called the number Aaron had provided and got a taped answer off a machine. He didn't like the sound of Gale's voice, a snotty prep school whine.

  Angry but composed, Janek taxied to a block on West Ninety-eighth between Broadway and West End. He found Gale's building easily enough, a subdivided gray stone town house. He rang the buzzer to be sure Gale wasn't in, then walked over to the garage across the street. Yes, indeed, the night manager said, he knew young Mr.

  Gale. He kept his car there, but it wasn't there now. He'd taken it out earlier that evening. Janek tipped him in return for permission to wait in the office until young Mr. Gale returned.

  Then he settled back into a beaten-up swivel chair and tried to get some sleep.

  Two hours later he felt a light touch on his shoulder. The manager, hovering, ges
tured toward the garage drive. A well-polished red Porsche was angled in the entrance, and a lean young male, dressed in a trench coat, was making his way across the street.

  "Thanks," Janek whispered, then hurried out. He reached the vestibule of the town house just as Gale was unlocking the inner hallway door.

  "Greg?" Greg turned. He had light, wavy hair verging on blond and the smooth, symmetrical features of a secondary lead in a soap opera.

  The only striking thing about him was his pallor; he looked like the kind of person who ventured out only at night.

  Janek flashed his shield.

  "This must be about Jess." Janek nodded. "Got time to talk?"

  Gale glanced around. He seemed reluctant. Janek tried to make himself vulnerable. "Been waiting quite a while, Greg. Pretty cold out there." He rubbed his hands together as he spoke. Gale nodded. "Well, okay. Shall we talk down here?"

  "Up to you." Janek rubbed his hands again to emphasize the chill.

  The young man shrugged. "Let's go upstairs." He grinned. "I gotta take a leak." He was poised and he was handsome and the thought of Jess in his arms filled Janek with disgust. But he played along and smiled and followed Gale up the stairs, enjoying the thought of how the little jerk was shortly going to be sorry he'd invited him into his place.

  Inside the apartment Gale excused himself, leaving Janek alone to look around. It seemed pretty lush for a college student, but then so did a red Porsche. There was black leather upholstery furniture, a sleek stereo, a top-grade TV with matching VCR, big collections of CDs and videotapes, a shelf of mystery novels, and, most striking, a large photograph hanging over the fireplace. Beautifully framed, it showed a muscular naked black male posed on one knee before a standing young woman. Dressed in white equestrian garb, she peered down at the black with a disdainful lascivious smile.

  When Gale reappeared, Janek gestured toward the picture. "Interesting," he said. Gale showed his teeth. "Like that, do you?" "I didn't say I liked it. I said it was interesting." "I took it." "You're a photographer?"

  "I fool around with it a little, yeah." Though the kid obviously wanted to sound self-deprecating, he came off as shallow and arrogant.