Lucidity Read online

  “So where’d you come up with the stuff about the postcards?”

  “From his website. And Yelp. He’s got about fifty reviews, most of them quite positive. Of course, you never know who wrote them.”

  This Fremmer guy was strange, but he had a quick mind. Madden was impressed. He still didn’t fully grasp the whole story, had yet to learn all the players and the roles they played. He knew all about Fremmer’s connection to the victim, of course, and Fremmer had explained his conversation with Ronald in the holding cell well enough. What Madden didn’t quite understand was why Fremmer got involved in Ronald’s defense in the first place.

  “You saw her reaction to your Zander theory,” Madden said. “There was something there. Did you just come up with that?”

  “About Zander trading places with Ronald?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look,” Fremmer said, “I can see four possible scenarios. One, Ronald had one of his Looney Tunes moments and pushed her. Two, someone paid Ronald to push her. Three, he actually knew her and pushed her for some unknown reason. And four, someone who looked like Ronald pushed her. If the latter’s the case we’re looking at a premeditated situation and the question becomes, what’s the motive? I can think of a lot of possibilities. The ex-husband is out the picture, he died over five years ago. But I suppose it’s possible she could have rubbed one of these guys she gave handjobs to the wrong way. Pardon the pun.”

  “Handjobs?”

  “Oh, did I neglect to mention that? She had this thing where she’d surreptitiously jack off guys in Apple stores. Research for her books. She’d cover up the action with a backpack or a coat. She put an ad on Craigslist and found plenty of willing participants. The books were fiction, but they were based on a lot of truth. Remember the book Looking for Mr. Goodbar? Her stories reminded me of that, minus the rough sex.”

  A little bell went off in Madden’s head. He remembered hearing something about an accident and an author that wrote books about a woman who gave handjobs to strangers in Apple stores. Did he read about it or did someone tell him? Maybe it was his wife. That would explain why he’d half tuned it out. She was always sending links to articles she’d found about strange crimes. The online version of the Chronicle seemed to feature some bizarro story every day. Clickbait, they called it.

  “I do remember that book,” he said. “Roseann Quinn. That was the name of the real murder victim, the one the book was based on. She had polio as a kid, walked with a slight limp. I’ll never forget someone telling me that.”

  “She lived a couple of blocks from here on 72nd Street on the other side of Broadway. The bar was across the street from her apartment. I forget what it was called then. I knew it as the All State Cafe. Used to go there all the time. It’s something else now.”

  The memory of Quinn took Madden back. When was it that he’d heard about her? Was it college? No, it was after that.

  “Anyway, you did great back there,” Fremmer said. “I think we got under her skin. I bet she called Braden the second we left.”

  Madden would have liked to do the leave-the-cell-phone-recording routine with Isabelle, but she seemed pretty tuned into the possibility that one of them might be trying to record her—probably because she also used her phone as a weapon.

  “Why didn’t we go see him first?” he asked.

  “Mainly because I didn’t want to show up too late at her apartment. But I think it works better this way. If she called him after we left, he may not be so surprised we’ve come to see him, too. If he isn’t so surprised, he may be more likely to let us in.”

  Madden didn’t necessarily agree with Fremmer’s logic, but he knew that on this case, for now anyway, he was along for the ride.

  They walked two long blocks along 73rd Street to Amsterdam Avenue, then turned right and headed north. In the middle of the block, Fremmer stepped off the sidewalk into the street.

  “It’s a perfect evening for a stroll,” he said, raising his right arm. “But Braden’s place is twenty-five blocks uptown. We’ll take a cab.”

  Madden studied the Maps app on his phone so he had some idea of the city’s layout. And he’d read enough books and articles about the city to have a semblance of familiarity with some of its streets and neighborhoods. He knew he was on the Upper West Side near Central Park, but his overall ignorance about the place put him way out of his comfort zone. Too many impressions he had of the city were formed from movies he’d watched as a young man, when it was far grittier. Of course, he’d seen plenty of more recent shots of the city. It seemed like every other movie and TV show was made in New York, with the city playing a major role, so he knew it had changed drastically. Yet some of those early impressions were indelibly etched into his memory, clashing with the tamer version of the city he now experienced. It was a little like expecting to go on a safari in Africa and ending up at the San Diego Zoo instead.

  More than anything he was struck by the number of people out on the streets. And how everyone seemed so collegial. It was almost ten on a Tuesday night and there were people everywhere, sitting outside at restaurants, strolling along the sidewalks, even grocery shopping. Palo Alto and San Francisco were bustling on Friday and Saturday nights, but they tended to empty out fairly quickly on weeknights, particularly earlier in the week. Back in his younger days he sometimes felt a little uneasy walking around the city late at night without his gun.

  He felt much safer here.

  And the other thing that stood out was the number of people out walking their dogs. That surprised him. All the dogs. This had to be prime dog walking time.

  “They film Taxi Driver around here?” Madden asked as they got into a cab.

  “Not here so much. The campaign office was down on Columbus Circle. But they shot Three Days of the Condor a couple blocks over on Broadway. The alleyway where Redford gets shot? That’s now a really expensive garage behind the Ansonia on 73rd and Broadway. And then he runs up Broadway past the Beacon. You remember that?”

  “Vaguely,” Madden said. “I remember the movie but not the scene.”

  “Well, you can watch it on your phone when you get back to your hotel. You tired?”

  “I’m OK. It’s only seven for me.”

  “Good. So, this is the plan.”

  “There’s a plan this time? I didn’t know you did plans.”

  “I do a plan when the plan calls for a plan.”

  “Well, let’s hear it then.”

  “We get Braden to drink something and then we take whatever he drank from.”

  Fremmer pulled a couple of large Ziploc bags from his backpack. They were folded down into a smaller rectangle.

  “One for you,” Fremmer said as he handed one to Madden, “and one for me.”

  “That’s the plan?”

  “Yeah, you check him out, then we get a DNA sample. A fingerprint or two wouldn’t be bad either.”

  “What about the fifty thousand?”

  “We’ll deal with that as we go along. But I somehow doubt we’re going to leave there with that, not without someone putting a gun to his head. But a cup we can do. He likes herbal tea.”

  “What if he isn’t there? Or doesn’t want to let us in.”

  “I don’t know. That’s not part of the plan.”

  “Well, do you have a contingency plan?”

  “I do,” Fremmer said. “But you don’t want to hear it.”

  28/ Contingency Plan

  FREMMER PRESSED THE BUZZER AND WAITED A FEW SECONDS. NO ANSWER.

  So he waited another few seconds and pressed the buzzer again.

  Still nothing. He buzzed again, this time longer. Then one more time for good measure.

  “Maybe it’s broken,” Madden said.

  “I was just here a few days ago. It was working fine. He’s not answering.”

  Fremmer looked up. There was a light on upstairs. Someone was home.

  He hit the buzzer again, but this time he held the button down and didn’t let go.
>
  “What are you doing?” Madden said.

  “I’m trying to piss off whoever’s inside.”

  He heard the inner door open, then footsteps. Mission accomplished. The main door opened and Braden appeared before them, his face flush. He was not happy.

  “Stop it,” he said.

  Fremmer finally let go of the buzzer. “Thanks for coming out, Victor. Now, why don’t you invite us in so we can have a friendly chat? Don’t worry, I’m not here to talk about the fifty thousand you took from me.”

  “Who’s this?” Braden said.

  “My private investigator, Henry.”

  Braden offered his hand to Madden. “Victor Braden,” he said, shaking Madden’s hand. “I don’t know what he’s paying you, but it’s not worth it. He’s a complete lunatic.”

  Fremmer watched Madden’s face as he took Braden in. They were standing a few feet apart. Madden looked him directly in the eyes. He didn’t say anything, he just stared, which made Braden uncomfortable.

  “How’d you lose your arm?” Madden asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The arm, how’d you lose it?” repeated Madden.

  Madden may have set a speed record for the missing hand question.

  “That’s a bit personal, considering you’ve just met, don’t you think?”

  “No,” Madden said.

  “I’ve got visitors in town from Germany. I have to get back to them. If you touch that buzzer again, I will call the police.”

  “Just answer the question,” Madden said.

  Braden nodded in Fremmer’s direction. “He knows the answer, ask him.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  Braden looked at him disbelief. “A staph infection, OK? Many years ago. There, you satisfied?”

  “You sure about that, Ross?”

  Braden looked at him, befuddled.

  “What?”

  “Come on. Don’t tell me you forgot your own name?”

  Braden seem genuinely bewildered.

  “What are you talking about? You’re as crazy as he is, aren’t you? Both of you need to get out of here now. You understand me?”

  Well, this isn’t going according to plan, Fremmer thought. Time to go to the contingency.

  “We are sorry to disturb your little soirée,” Fremmer said, stalling.

  “It’s not a soirée.”

  Fremmer looked to his right and saw what he needed: a woman coming up the street, walking a small dog. He took a step closer to Braden. Then he got right up in his face.

  “You know what, for all your highfalutin lucid dreaming crap you’re a two-bit criminal,” he said, purposely letting his saliva fly in Braden’s face.

  Braden made a move to push him away, and Fremmer suddenly turned into a basketball player looking for an offensive foul, letting Braden throw him against the pavement, violently. His backpack blocked the fall a little, but he hit his hip and shoulder harder than he intended. His head touched down, too, which also hurt. He lay there for a moment. Braden looked at him, then at the would-be witness. He had a panicked look in his eyes.

  “I didn’t do that,” he said to the woman with the dog, pleading his case. “I didn’t push him that hard.”

  Before she had time to answer—and before Braden had time to get out of the way—Fremmer got up and slammed him in the face, square in the nose. The force of the punch didn’t immediately drop him, but his back banged up against the closed front door of his townhouse. His legs then buckled and he kind of rode the door down to a seated position, his butt on his doorstep and his knees pressed up against his chest. He held his hand up to his nose. In a matter of seconds he was bleeding profusely.

  Fremmer had a handkerchief ready.

  “Here,” he said, kneeling down to hand it to him. “Press it against your nose. Lift your head up.”

  Braden looked up at the dog walker, who looked both startled and alarmed.

  “He tried to hurt me,” Fremmer said. “You saw it.”

  “You broke my nose, you son-of-a-bitch,” Braden mumbled through the handkerchief.

  Fremmer let him hold it to his face a little longer. Until it was good and soaked. Then he took it away, ripping it from his grasp.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Madden, who also seemed pretty astonished by what he’d just witnessed.

  They walked over to Broadway, where Fremmer pulled out his Ziploc bag and put the handkerchief inside, sealed it, and handed it to Madden. Then he hailed a cab.

  “So, that was your contingency plan?” Madden asked Fremmer after he’d closed the cab door.

  “Yeah, you like it?”

  Madden started laughing. “You know, he’s right. You are a lunatic. There’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t think that’s Ross.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Fremmer took a couple of seconds to consider the ramifications of Madden’s statement. “Well, it felt good anyway. And at least we now know for sure it isn’t him, don’t we?”

  29/ Ask the Void

  MADDEN WOKE THE NEXT MORNING LATER THAN HE WANTED TO. HE was supposed to meet Fremmer at nine-thirty at a coffee shop on Amsterdam between 78th and 79th. He had to rush to get over there on time.

  Nine-thirty came and went. No Fremmer. As Madden sat waiting he thought about their encounter with Braden. People changed a lot in twenty years, they’d seen that with Bronsky, but they didn’t change that much. He remembered Ross Walker as a bigger man than Braden. Not necessarily that much taller, but he thought they had different bone structures. Plastic surgery could change someone’s look, sometimes radically, but Madden thought he’d have been able to tell if Braden had had major work done. He just looked like he’d had a facelift/neck lift combo, and some hair plugs. Whoever had done the work had done a good job, but Madden could still tell right away there was something off about his face—something didn’t quite look natural.

  Their voices were different, too. Braden’s voice was more affected and not as deep as Ross’s. That was something he could have altered with practice. But Walker never struck him as the type of guy who would practice to be someone else or completely change his persona. The fact was if Fremmer had hit Ross Walker like he had, Walker would have made him pay for it afterwards. Missing hand or not, he would have tried to put Fremmer on the ground.

  Madden once heard a story about Walker assaulting a guy on a golf course in Santa Clara. The guy had complained that Walker’s group was being loud and disruptive; they were intoxicated. When the guy got in Walker’s face, Walker head-butted him. They ended up wrestling to the ground and trying to pummel each other. The guy filed charges against Walker, but those were dismissed because the golfer and his playing partner refused to cooperate with the investigation. Everyone involved assumed that Walker had threatened further physical violence.

  Last night, back at The Lucerne, Madden had told Fremmer what he knew about Ross and what he thought about Braden.

  “I never had any close interactions with him so I can’t tell you one hundred percent. But my gut says it isn’t him.”

  He could see this upset Fremmer, and he understood why. If Braden wasn’t Ross Walker then maybe Candace Epstein wasn’t Stacey Walker. That possibility had also crossed Madden’s mind. “But,” he told Fremmer, “my gut also tells me the Stacey connection is real.”

  He warned him that DNA tests didn’t happen as quickly as they did on TV crime shows. Madden could pull some strings to try to expedite matters, but he couldn’t just walk in and say, Here’s a DNA sample we plucked off some woman in a hospital in New York, would you mind comparing it to those Stacey Walker samples you filed away? And while you’re pulling evidence, could you go ahead and pull some of Ross’s samples?

  Just the thought of all the miles of red tape gave him a headache. Moving through official channels meant questions about whether the DNA samples were obtained legally. Braden certainly hadn’t willingly
offered his sample. Neither had Candace. There were proper procedures for acquiring DNA evidence, and the police and forensic labs took those procedures seriously. Had Fremmer thought about all that?

  He said he had. “But I figured we’d worry about it later,” he told Madden. “The most important thing is to get some hard evidence for Shelby. I was worried the contract had some onerous verification requirements but it’s pretty vague.”

  “Do I even want to know how you obtained a sample from Candace?” he asked Fremmer.

  “That part was easy. I bought a DNA test kit at Walgreens, went to visit Candace in the ICU, and when I was sure nobody was looking, I swabbed the inside of her cheek.”

  “So how do you prove where the swab came from?”

  “I recorded the entire procedure on my phone. I propped it up on the counter and hit record. The video file can be our witness if Shelby asks for more proof. Now you just have to get your own cheek swab from her daughter and then we send both into swabtest.com. It’s like $100 per test. They can have results in three-to-five working days, so we’ll have what we need to meet Shelby’s requirements for verification before the contract expires. The police can sort out the rest later. We can’t be late on this. From what I’ve read about Shelby, he won’t pay if you miss the deadline.”

  Madden didn’t have the heart to tell Fremmer that he didn’t know how the daughter would respond to a request for a DNA sample. She might not love the idea. Also, Madden didn’t like the fact that Fremmer was so focused on the money. He understood it but didn’t like it.

  Where was Fremmer anyway? He was sure they said nine-thirty. After ten minutes of waiting at the shop, Madden began to worry. They’d talked about Madden returning to California as soon as possible, but the earliest flight he could get a seat on was a red-eye that night. They’d meet for breakfast, then Madden could do a bit of sightseeing. He at least wanted to visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum of Natural History.

  At nine-forty-two his phone rang. It was Fremmer calling from the same 347 number. He hadn’t changed it yet.

  “Sorry,” he said in a low voice. “I was about to leave to meet you when this detective showed up. It’s taking longer than I thought, I might not be there for a while. I know you want to get down to the Memorial. Maybe you should just go ahead and we’ll meet later before you go to the airport. We still have to discuss your book.”