Free Switch by William Bayer

them straight?"
    "I don't get what you mean."
    "How'd she know if she'd been with him before?"
    "When he'd call from the corner she'd look out the window. If he'd been with her before she'd recognize his face. If she didn't, like he was a businessman from out of town and it had been a year or so and she'd forgot, she'd go downstairs and look at him up close. Those were the rules. She always followed them."
    "She never deviated? Never? "
    Bitong shook his head.
    "You the only one with the keys?"
    "Just the two of us."
    "You just blundered in there when you felt like it?"
    "She had a signal. She'd leave the shade half up."
    "Was the shade up Monday morning?"
    "No."
    "So why did you go up?"
    "I hadn't heard from her. She wasn't answering the phone. I wanted to see what was going on."
    "Then what?"
    "I rang. No answer. So I let myself in. I took one look and then I ran."
    "And locked the door after you?"
    "Yeah."
    "Why?"
    "I just locked it—don't know why."
    "Then you called 911?"
    "Yeah."
    "From the booth on the corner?"
    "Yeah."
    "Why didn't you use her phone?"
    "I wanted to get out of there."
    "You didn't take anything?"
    "No."
    "You just looked and then you ran out and locked the door?"
    "That's it."
    "You took the elevator?"
    "No. The stairs."
    "And then you called 911 from the corner?"
    "I told you that."
    "They cut off people's heads in the Philippines, don't they, Prudencio ?"
    "What the hell you talking about, man?"
    "If, say, a girl's been bad and her man's upset, real pissed off, he just goes to her and cuts off her head. That's the tradition, right?"
    "I never heard of that."
    "You're a Filipino pimp and you never heard of that? You must think I'm stupid, Prudencio . If I heard of it you got to have heard of it. You'd do it, too, wouldn't you, if you were mad enough?"
    "I wasn't mad. What happened to her head?"
    "You tell me."
    "I don't know. It looked like someone else. You're telling me that wasn't her head?"
    "Was it?"
    "I didn't think so then."
    "Because it looked different?"
    "I thought I was freaking out."
    "You do drugs?"
    "Sometimes."
    "But you weren't so freaked out you didn't clean out her stash?"
    "I never touched her stash."
    "Then where's the money?"
    "I don't know."
    "You took it. You saw she was dead, you cleaned her out, then you locked the door and went downstairs and called 911, very, very cool."
    "I didn't take anything."
    "Where'd she keep it?"
    "In the closet. In a pocket of her coat."
    "What coat ?"
    "A long gray overcoat she's got in there. There's a zippered pocket in the lining. She kept the money in there."
    "And you think it's still there?"
    "I don't know."
    "It better be there, Prudencio . Detective Howell is taking you over there now, and he'd better find that money just where it's supposed to be, because if it's not there we're going to fry you. You understand, Prudencio ? You're going to need a lawyer real bad if that money isn't there."
    The pimp nodded. Janek shrugged and left the viewing corridor. He thought Bitong was telling the truth. He was a small-time amateur, venal, slippery, slimy, not the sort to cut off a pair of heads, switch them around, then try to make them fit.
    Stanger brought in Gary Pierson at four o'clock. He was medium-tall and slim, about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. Friendly face, pleasant smile, soft wavy brownish hair. He wore expensive resort-style clothing, his shoes shone like mirrors and his trousers were perfectly creased. Neat as a pin, compulsive, a little rigid in his posture. Janek watched and listened while Stanger doodled him around: hometown, position at Weston, how he'd spent the first half of the summer painting watercolor beachscapes on Nantucket, where he'd rented a little cottage from his aunt.
    How had he met Amanda Ireland? They'd both started at Weston three years ago this fall and had struck up a friendship at once. She'd spent a week with him on Nantucket in July—idyllic days reading and painting on the beach, stargazing