Lucidity Page 3

  “Remains?” Shelby scoffed. “You call one arm remains? Where was the rest of him?”

  Madden smiled. “So you’re in that camp.”

  “You’re damn right I’m in that camp.”

  That camp was the Ross-Walker-had-sacrificed-an-arm-to-fake-his-own-death camp. Madden found its hypothesis rather far-fetched, but plenty of people were sure Walker was still very much alive. They pointed to the fact that it was only the lower portion of his left arm, everything below the elbow. That wasn’t so bad, their reasoning went, especially given the quality of available prosthetics. And besides, it was possible that he’d developed some sort of infection and had to have it amputated anyway.

  Madden didn’t buy it. “It seems like there are better ways to fake your death than chop off your arm,” he told Shelby.

  “Well, you need to open your mind, Detective. And I think those figures in that envelope might help you do that.”

  Madden glanced one more time at that envelope, which suddenly felt a little heavier in his hand. Then he said to Shelby:

  “Even if I open my mind, what makes you think I’m the one who can find him? Why me?”

  Shelby smiled. “I’m going to let you in on another little secret, Detective.” This time, he leaned a little closer and lowered his voice: “You know the reason I wanted to make all the money I’ve made?”

  Madden slowly shook his head. He had no idea.

  “So I could afford to make mistakes,” Shelby whispered.

  “That must be nice.”

  “It is,” he continued in a low voice. “It’s the best thing in the world. And I don’t mean that in an arrogant way.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Oh, I think I did, Detective. I think I did.”

  3/ iPhones for Guns

  FREMMER WAS LED INTO THE 20TH PRECINCT STATION HOUSE ON West 82nd Street, his collapsed scooter in his left hand, dangling by his side.

  He’d walked or ridden past the cold, three-story bunker-like building and its utilitarian gray cement façade dozens of times, but he’d never been inside or given it much thought. According to an engraving in the stone on the front of the building, it was erected in “AD 1972,” during the dark ages of New York City architecture. It didn’t fit in with the block’s more charming, renovated brownstones. Instead, its gloomy presence reflected a bygone era of high crime rates and bankrupt city government.

  Much had changed since Fremmer came to Manhattan over twenty years ago. It wasn’t something he often thought about, but he thought about it walking into the station house.

  Entering the building was a somewhat startling experience, like entering a time capsule. The interior couldn’t have been renovated since the building went up. Just around the corner on Columbus the street was lined with ritzy little coffee shops, restaurants, and boutiques, along with a stray bodega or two, faint reminders of the neighborhood’s less gentrified, more immigrant past. Inside the 2-0 he was transported back to the Nixon era. He felt like he could’ve been on the set of Serpico.

  Fiberglass bucket seats, the type that once graced airline terminals at JFK, served as chairs in the entrance area. Past the chairs was a metal police barricade, the kind that contained the crowds at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. A traffic sign had been affixed to it with wire, a bright red directive for civilians to stay away from the door that led to the bullpen, which Fremmer could see through a glass window to the left of the barricade.

  Chu stopped to talk to a Hispanic guy wearing a suit.

  “Looking spiffy, man,” Chu said, the two of them shaking hands and doing a one-shoulder bro hug. “Looks like retirement’s treating you right.”

  As the two caught up, Fremmer’s eyes came to rest on a big sign stuck to one wall near the ceiling: “Cash for Guns.” According to the smaller print, you could trade any gun for $100, no questions asked. Fremmer lifted his phone and took a picture of the sign.

  “Sorry about that,” Chu said, leading him past the stop sign and to the bullpen door. “Old friend. What were you taking a picture of?”

  “iPhones would be better,” Fremmer said.

  “What?”

  “The sign back there should read ‘iPhones for Guns.’ You could sell that, get some real publicity.”

  Chu laughed. “That’s above my pay grade.”

  “I didn’t mean you you,” Fremmer explained. “I meant the collective you. Who’s behind the program, the police commissioner? Or the mayor?”

  Chu didn’t know or seem to care. Following him into the bullpen Fremmer called up the photo he’d just taken and selected it. He then hit the Twitter icon and quickly tapped: Wouldn’t trade a gun for $100. But maybe for iPhone or Android. You? @apple @att @nycgov Get creative. Get #gunsoffourstreets.

  As the tweet was sent out to his 78,383 followers, Chu introduced him to Detective Jason Gray, white, around forty, with a tight buzz-cut and receding hairline both in front and on top. Inside the bullpen the furniture was less dated but still seemed tired. Gray did, too. Sitting at his desk in an L-shaped cubicle, dark circles under his eyes, he looked a little weary. But when he stood up to greet Fremmer his demeanor changed. He was lively and congenial. His deep, booming voice reminded Fremmer of his high-school basketball coach.

  “My brother’s got one of those,” Gray said, referring to the scooter. “Xootr,” he said, pronouncing it correctly—zooter. “That’s not the electric one?”

  “No.”

  Fremmer explained to them that he’d originally bought a scooter years ago because he got tired of chasing after his son, who’d become dangerously proficient on his scooter. At the age of four the kid would zip ahead down the sidewalk and turn the corner, causing Fremmer to lose sight of him. Now Jamie was twelve and Fremmer’s scooter, upgraded to a more deluxe model, had evolved into a day-to-day transportation vehicle.

  “You look like you’ve put some miles on that one.”

  “A few,” Fremmer said.

  They were acting very chummy, which worried Fremmer. There was an awkward silence before Gray half-sat down on the edge of his desk and, motioning to a simple “guest” chair, said:

  “Well, have a seat. We’ve been trying to track you down to get some info on the pedestrian who was hit this morning. Your super said you were probably at one of the Starbucks in the area. You’re a book doctor? What’s that? Like a freelance editor?”

  “Something like that,” Fremmer said, hesitantly taking a seat.

  “My wife wants me to write a book,” Gray said. “She’s always telling me I’ve got some good stories I should get down. You know, if nothing else, for the kids. But she’s my wife, right? She’s biased.”

  “At least she doesn’t hate your guts,” Fremmer said.

  That got a laugh out of them.

  “You divorced?” Chu asked.

  “Never married,” Fremmer said.

  “But you got a kid?”

  “I do.”

  His curt response was met with silence. They were clearly waiting for him to say more, but he didn’t. So Gray finally just came right out and asked him.

  “What’s the backstory on that?”

  “Backstory?”

  “On the kid. He’s got a mother, right? She live with you?”

  “What’s that have to do with Candace? Look, I don’t want to tell you how to conduct your investigation, but could we stick to the pertinent questions? I actually need to pick my kid up from soccer practice in a little while, so I don’t want to waste your time. The bus leaves him up the street, in front of the soccer shop on Amsterdam.”

  The two detectives looked at each other. There seemed to be some sort of acknowledgment in their glance, as if they were on the same page, though it was unclear what that page was.

  “Fair enough,” Gray said. He picked up a notepad on his desk and opened it to a blank page and set it back down. “We’re trying to get some background on the victim, who we understand is a client of yours. How long have
you known her?”

  “Candace?” Fremmer paused to consider exactly when they’d met, but his thoughts were disrupted by the way Gray had said the word “victim.” For some reason, perhaps his own paranoia, Gray’s inflection suggested crime not accident. “I guess I’ve known her about two and a half years but she’s been a client for about eighteen months. I’d have to check my records to give you a specific date.”

  “We tracked down a daughter but no significant other. She got a husband somewhere? Or an ex?”

  “I think he died five, six years ago,” Fremmer said. “He was older. Had some money. I saw some photos. I know he was in his late sixties when she met him. I don’t think the daughter was his, though. Candace mentioned something to me about a sperm bank and being able to pick out her ideal male. The main character in her stories had been married to kind of a sugar daddy. After he died, she’d turned to online dating sites. The guys she met never matched their profiles. So she ended up fantasizing about their profiles and never going out on the actual dates. When you know the author, it’s sometimes hard to know what’s fiction and what isn’t.”

  “You helped her write a book?”

  “Books, actually. I helped her self-publish a series of e-books.”

  “Under her own name?”

  “No, she writes under a pseudonym. Lexi Hart.”

  Gray asked him to spell that for him. As he transcribed the name, Chu pulled out his phone and did a search. Fremmer watched his face take on a perplexed look that quickly transitioned to amusement.

  “Check this out, man,” Chu said, holding the phone up to his partner. “It’s porn.”

  “No,” Fremmer interjected, “it’s erotica. And a sub-genre of that.”

  “What sub-genre?” Gray asked, making a notation on his notepad.

  “I like to call it corporate fetishism.”

  Gray’s pen stopped moving. He looked up at Fremmer. “Corporate what?”

  “Well, according to this,” Chu spoke for him, “it’s a story about a woman who gives handjobs to guys in Apple Stores.” He giggled a little as he read the book description from its Amazon product page. “I might have to buy this. It’s only two-ninety-nine.”

  “You are correct,” Fremmer said. “My client, your victim, has written three books in which the main character surreptitiously jacks off men in Apple Stores. There’s a bit more to it than that, including a Craigslist component, but that, shall we say, is the hook. Sadly, she is my most successful client.”

  “And she owes you money?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much exactly?”

  Fremmer had a strong suspicion they already knew exactly how much she owed him because he’d texted her the amount on more than one occasion.

  “About fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “And you were actively trying to retrieve this sum from her?”

  He nodded. “Look, fellas, I wanna help you out here, but can you tell me what’s going on? Honestly, I’m in shock about the whole thing. Before I go any further, I really need to know what happened. Was this an accident or something else? Because the way you just said victim, it didn’t sound like an accident.”

  The detectives looked at each other again. After a moment, Gray said:

  “We have reason to believe it was not an accident.”

  “And what reason would that be?” Fremmer asked.

  “We have a witness who says she was pushed in front of the vehicle.”

  “Pushed? By whom?”

  “We’re not at liberty to say right now,” Gray said. “But her cell phone was found near the scene and we’re obviously interested in speaking to the people she’d most recently been in contact with.”

  “Look,” Fremmer said. “If you guys think I had anything to do with this, you’re crazy. She kept making excuses why she couldn’t pay me. I pressed her on it. She seemed stressed about something, and I was like ‘Come on, Candace, what’s wrong here? What’s going on?’ She mentioned something about knowing someone who’d done something bad. Really bad, apparently. I didn’t know what to believe. She owed me money. People make up all kinds of shit when they owe you money and can’t pay. I didn’t think it would be a problem with her. She lives in a good apartment. She said her husband left her some money when he died.”

  Gray looked at him calmly. “We didn’t say you had anything to do with it, Mr. Fremmer. We’re just trying to get some background info.”

  “Max,” Fremmer said. “Everybody calls me Max. How is she by the way? Are there any updates?”

  Chu shook his head. “As I said, it doesn’t look good. She’s had severe trauma. Her heart stopped once in the ambulance. They had to resuscitate her.”

  “Christ,” Fremmer said. He put his hand on his forehead, partially covering his face. “Her kid. I feel so bad for her. She’s a nice kid.”

  He pictured Candace’s eleven-year-old daughter Mia getting pulled out of class and being told what had happened. Thinking about it made him nauseous. It also reminded him that he had his own class to teach.

  “I gotta go,” he murmured in a bit of haze. “I can come back later. But I’ve really gotta go.”

  “Where do you have to go?” Gray asked.

  Fremmer looked up. “I teach a spinning class at the Equinox on 92nd and Broadway. But beforehand I pick my kid up from soccer practice on Amsterdam and 94th. Tuesdays are tight for me. And I don’t have my stuff with me.”

  Gray: “Can you arrange for someone else to pick him up?”

  “Another parent from the team?” Chu suggested. “Gotta be someone.”

  They were right, of course. There were people he could call. And while he might be able to get a last-minute teaching sub, he’d already done it several times, and the fitness manager had warned him that other instructors were available to take his slot, he didn’t care that Fremmer was one of the gym’s most popular spinning instructors.

  “How do I know you guys aren’t fucking with me?” he asked. “How do I know what you’re saying to me is true?”

  “I assure you we aren’t fucking with you,” Gray said. He then turned over what looked like a standard piece of paper on his desk but was really a piece of thicker, photographic paper that had a photo on the front. “You ever seen this guy? The one on the left?”

  Fremmer leaned forward and peered more closely at a photo of two guys in their early sixties, both dressed formally in coats and ties. Fremmer recognized them immediately, but wasn’t sure how he knew them until he saw the prosthetic hand sticking out of the guy on the left’s coat sleeve.

  “Yeah, they’re the lucid dreaming guys. They have that place, a center or institute or something, uptown. You know, you try to take control of your dreams. Candace is into that stuff. She does some bookkeeping for them and some other stuff. I’m not sure if she gets paid for it or not. I met the guy on the left once. The one with the fake arm. Braden, I think his name is. I Googled him at some point. The other guy is a former Columbia professor, I think. There was some talk of doing a book. She wanted to do one.”

  “Did she show you anything she’d written about him?” Gray asked. “Or the institute?”

  Fremmer shook his head. “Not that I remember. Why?”

  “We’re just checking up on some people she’s been in contact with recently. Like you.”

  “You think she had some dirt on him?”

  “We’re still trying to determine what exactly their relationship was.”

  “So someone pushed her? You know that for a fact?”

  “We have a witness,” Chu reiterated.

  “And some video,” Gray revealed.

  “Video, huh?” Fremmer said. “Well, seems to me like you’re looking at least at murder two and possibly murder one.”

  “Maybe,” Gray acknowledged. “Maybe not.”

  “No offense, fellas, but I have a law degree from an accredited university. I even passed the bar. And that’s some serious shit. I wouldn’t tread lightly around tha
t, would you?”

  The detectives looked at each other again. They didn’t seem to know quite how to respond. So Fremmer went on:

  “As I said, I want to cooperate, but I’ve got some things to do. And I don’t think there’s anything to stop me from getting out of here. I can come back after the class or first thing in the morning.”

  That didn’t seem to sit so well with Gray. He glanced at Chu one more time, then said:

  “What if I told you there actually was something stopping you from getting out of here?”

  “What would that be?” Fremmer asked.

  “A warrant out for your arrest.”

  Fremmer’s eyes opened wide. “A warrant? For what?”

  “A parking ticket.”

  “A parking ticket?” Fremmer laughed. “Are you kidding me? I don’t own a car. When’s it from?”

  “1998.”

  “1998? Are you serious? That’s almost twenty years ago.”

  “Well, you should have paid it,” Gray said.

  4/ Embrace the Hate

  MADDEN DIDN’T OPEN THE ENVELOPE RIGHT AWAY ONCE SHELBY left. The customer in the gym outfit needed help picking out a bungee cord to secure a couple of bikes to the rack on the back of her car. He suggested she buy a combo pack with some shorter and longer cords, then went outside and attached them to her bikes for her.

  A few other customers came in, not exactly a steady stream, but enough to keep him occupied. He broke for lunch forty-five minutes later, the envelope still sealed in the back pocket of his jeans, walked up the street to Cafe Barrone and settled in at an outdoor table.

  Shelby’s contract was a single page. Madden felt his heart race as he read through the terms. The whole thing was crazy. Was he reading the zeroes correctly? There were six, weren’t there? He counted again, just to make sure. He was still staring at the contract when his phone rang. He looked at the Caller ID and saw it was Tom Bender. His first impulse was to decline the call, but after letting the ringer cycle twice, he decided he needed to speak to the guy sooner rather than later.