Lucidity

by David Carnoy

  “No, but it actually helped. Taught me the secret of confidence.”

  “Confidence to do what?”

  “To try to get fifty grand back without a plan. Just play off me. I don’t think things will get ugly, but if they do, you’ve got skills, right? I know you’re a little handicapped but you got some training as a cop? Takedown moves and holds and shit like that?”

  “I carried a gun,” Madden said. “People tend to do what you say when you have a gun.”

  “That’s not really the answer I was looking for.”

  “Don’t worry. I can handle myself.”

  “Just make sure I don’t do anything stupid,” Fremmer said.

  “That I can do.”

  A uniformed doorman greeted them at the front door of the Park Royal. Beyond him Madden took in the spacious lobby with its arches, porticos and intricate plaster decorative accents.

  “May I help you gentleman?” the doorman asked. A sign on a pedestal facing them read, All visitors must be announced.

  “Yeah,” Fremmer said casually, as if he was a close friend. “We’re here to see Isabelle.” A beat, then: “Hruska.”

  “She went out earlier but I think she came back. Is she expecting you?”

  “Why don’t you call up and ask her. Tell her it’s Max. Max Fremmer. Tell her I have that check she was looking for.”

  The doorman, a light-skinned black guy who could have been any number of ethnicities, dutifully rang her.

  “There’s a Max Fremmer here to see you,” he said. “He says he has that check you were looking for.”

  A pause. After a moment, he spoke again. “Yes, here. Now. In the lobby. He’s standing right here.”

  Another pause. He held the receiver to his chest.

  “She says to leave it with me.”

  “Tell her to come down and get it.”

  Another conversation. This one a little longer.

  “She says she can’t come down right now.”

  “Tell her I’ll wait.” Fremmer nodded towards the seating arrangement in the middle of the lobby, four tufted leather burgundy club chairs atop a huge Persian carpet. “That looks comfy. Tell her I have all night. And all day. I can wait all month, the rest of my life. If she doesn’t like that, she can ring the police. I’m happy to have a chat with them.”

  The doorman put the receiver back to his ear and mumbled a brief translation to Isabelle. Fremmer distinctly heard the word police.

  “OK. You can go up,” he said. “Ninth floor. 9G. To your left off the elevator.”

  In the elevator, Madden said to Fremmer, “So you did have a plan.”

  “To get her to talk to me. Not to get the money back. But I figured that would throw her off. That I was coming with a check. Now she knows I know who she is but she’s wondering why I said I had a check. Maybe she’s thinking I’m an idiot and don’t know she already took the money. Which is pretty much what happened. I’m guessing the whole suicide thing was just a diversion to give the check time to clear.”

  “Whose suicide thing?”

  “Mine.”

  “You tried to kill yourself?”

  “No, I told you I didn’t.”

  “Sorry,” Madden said. “You were talking fast. It was a lot of information.”

  “Come on, man. Keep up. You’re not in Mayberry anymore.”

  The elevator doors opened on the ninth floor. Fremmer led Madden down the long hallway to their left, per the doorman’s instructions, and there she was, a few doors down on the right, standing in her doorway, wearing a tank top and leggings, no makeup and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. The new look threw him off for a second—was Isabelle his Rochelle? She was just as sexy, but in a different, maybe better way. Fuck me, he thought, it’s her.

  “Hello, Max. You didn’t tell me you brought company. This your father?”

  “This is Henry. Former ace detective, now ace private investigator.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I thought for a second you were gonna introduce me to your family. I don’t know if we’re quite ready for that, do you?”

  “Come on, Isabelle. Cut the crap. The game’s up. I’m onto you and your schtick.”

  “Really, I thought you were the one with the schtick, Max. Last I checked you wanted to get your schtick inside me. You want to see the pictures? That was quite a party we had the other night.”

  “Shame I don’t remember it, especially since it cost me fifty grand.”

  “You get my note?”

  “I did.”

  “You like it?”

  “I like you, Isabelle. Maybe better than I liked Rochelle. But I’m still going to have to send you and your friend Braden to jail.”

  She laughed. “That’s not going to happen, Max, and you know it. If anybody’s going to jail, it’s you.”

  “For what?”

  “For stalking me. I saw you hanging out in front of the Center the other day.”

  “That wasn’t me, Isabelle. Maybe you weren’t wearing your glasses. And I didn’t follow you back here. He did.”

  Madden gave her a little salute but didn’t say anything. She bit her lip a little.

  “Henry’s good,” Fremmer went on. “A real pro. He’s costing me a lot of money.”

  “Even worse,” she said. “You have a private eye stalking me. Move on, Max. Before you hurt yourself—or anybody else—more than you already have. Think of your son. He’s a good kid. I saw the pictures. And you showed me those nice videos on your phone.”

  He took a couple of steps toward her before Madden held him back.

  “You took fifty thousand from his future,” he said. “Think of that.”

  “You’ll get it back,” she said. “Your client owed money. You’re her manager. You control her finances. She has lots of money coming in.” She nodded in Madden’s direction. “He talk at all?”

  “When he needs to,” Fremmer said.

  Just then he heard the sound of a door opening across the hall.

  “Everything OK, Isabelle?” Fremmer and Madden turned to check out the source of the voice.

  “Yeah, Gary. Thanks for checking. These guys were just leaving.”

  “I’m just trying to put the kids to bed here,” Gary explained, only slightly irritated.

  Fremmer looked over at Madden. If the detective had any opinions on the progress of their situation, he wasn’t ready to share. Fremmer knew from the many articles he’d read that Madden was one of those guys who’d overcome his weaknesses by working harder and being better prepared than everyone else. Preparation called for a plan, some kind of script, which they didn’t have. Fremmer’s gut told him to keep going with the improv. It was time to bring Madden into the game and run a play for him.

  “You’re kicking us out? I haven’t gotten to the good part yet,” Fremmer told Isabelle.

  She looked at him skeptically. “Really?” she said. “There’s a good part? I can’t wait to hear it.”

  “You want to keep doing this out here in the hall or you want to invite us in? I’d hate to disturb Gary and the kids again.”

  “I don’t want to invite you in, Max. I want you to leave.”

  Before she could slam her door and retreat into the apartment he took a step forward and placed his hand on the doorjamb right next to her head.

  “OK, have it your way,” he said. “My associate Carlos Morton hired Henry here to assist us with the discovery phase of the case against Ronald Darby. You know Ronald, the homeless guy who allegedly pushed Candace into the car?”

  “I think all of New York knows Ronald.”

  He leaned a little closer to her so his lips were just a few inches from her face. “Well, Henry here has been going through surveillance footage the police collected,” Fremmer began in his quietest inside voice. “He’s been sitting in a little room looking at a computer monitor sifting through hours of video taken from various cameras in and around Central Park West and 75th Street on the day Candace was hit. It’s tedious w
ork. But Henry here is a nationally recognized expert in … what’s the technical term for that, Henry?”

  “Video forensics,” Madden said. “Or forensic video analysis.”

  “Yeah. Video forensics. Henry actually invented it when he was on the police force. Anyway, he’s been going through hours of footage. And he found something. Something I think you’ll be very interested in.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  Fremmer placed one foot in Isabelle’s doorway as he pulled his phone from his pocket. “Let’s take a look. Photo library open. Scrolling, scrolling. Ah, here it is,” he announced, holding up the screen for her to view.

  “You know this guy?”

  She stared at the picture. Fremmer detected a split second of recognition in her eyes. She knew exactly who she was looking at.

  “This is your friend Zander. He used to be your partner in the fish tank cleaning business and from what we’ve learned, you two had a little side business of ripping people off from time to time. Now Zander doesn’t clean fish tanks anymore. He’s gone into another line of work altogether. He’s what you call an intuit. He runs a business out of his apartment. I had an appointment with him this morning. Very impressive. He doesn’t use standard Tarot cards. He uses art postcards he’s collected from around the world. It’s brilliant, quite frankly. You go in there and ask him questions about your life and he flips these postcards and tells you what he sees in them and how they apply to your current predicaments. You know what was one of the cards that came up for me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Two guys in some sort of bondage situation. I think the card was from Amsterdam or Berlin. According to Zander, I’m a masochist who has to learn to be less submissive. I need to start asserting myself and quit being pushed around—to fulfill my potential. So here’s the deal, Isabelle, or whatever your name is. Henry here found your friend Zander in that video footage. And as far as Candace goes, we think we have the smoking gun.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look, we know Braden is involved,” Fremmer said. “But not for the reasons we thought before. Look at the video. The guy who pushed her appears to have full use of both his arms. Braden would never push her himself. He’d have someone do it for him. And that someone was your friend Zander dressed up as Ronald, who he knew from the neighborhood. He knew where Ronald hung out, and he knew every item of clothing Ronald owned. So Zander dressed up as one of the neighborhood homeless guys and pushed Candace into oncoming traffic.”

  For a moment, just a flash, Fremmer saw real fear in Isabelle’s eyes. And then it was gone.

  “You’re out of your mind,” she said.

  Again, the door across the hall opened and an exasperated Gary popped his head out.

  “Sorry,” Isabelle said before he could complain. “I guess we got a little too carried away. Come on in, guys,” she said, and reluctantly waved them into her apartment.

  They followed her into the entrance foyer into the living room. The apartment was spacious by New York standards. Not a huge apartment, but well appointed, with all new furnishings and finishes, including a freshly remodeled kitchen. A small stack of magazines—Vogue, Elle, New York Magazine—was fanned out on the coffee table and a vase full of fresh peonies and hydrangeas stood on the small dining room table. The place was camera-ready, Fremmer thought. She was a total neatnik.

  There was no offer to sit, no small talk. She started right in on them.

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “Why would Braden want to kill her?”

  “We can’t discuss that right now,” Fremmer said.

  “It involves another case,” Madden explained. “Another crime that took place a long time ago.”

  “What other crime?”

  “A murder,” Madden said.

  “That Braden is involved in?”

  “That’s what the authorities in California are telling us.”

  “California? Braden never lived in California.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “As well as you can know a man without sleeping with him.”

  “And he told you he never lived in California?”

  “I know for a fact he didn’t. He lived in London for a few years and Boston before that. I know people who knew him in both places.”

  She might be telling the truth. She had no reason to lie about that. He didn’t know what to do. Fremmer looked at Madden. He’d lost his momentum. She’d been frazzled, he was sure of that. But how to get back the advantage?

  “Look,” Madden said suddenly. “I’m going to tell you the truth. Can we sit down for a minute. My leg hurts. Childhood polio. I was one of the last cases in the U.S. and I’ve had this messed up foot that’s now turned into a messed up leg. And my back isn’t great either.”

  He sat in an armchair and motioned for her to sit down opposite him on the couch. “Just sit down, both of you. For a minute.”

  They sat—Fremmer on one side of the couch, she on the other, well apart.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Isabelle,” Madden continued. “That’s your name, right? Not Rochelle, not something else? That’s your real, legal name?”

  “Yes, that’s my real name,” she said.

  “OK. Now that we’ve got that straight, here’s the situation. I only recently met Max. He brought me in a few days ago to look at this video. It’s new evidence, part of discovery. Now we’ve also dug up some video of our own and we’re going to turn it all over to the police. Soon. I’m looking for anomalies, right? Anything that proves their client might not be the same guy in the video. And Max here gives me a picture of this Braden fellow. But I don’t see him. He’s not in any of the videos. I’ve got a couple of interns from John Jay working with me but we can only cover so much and go back so far. A few days, right? Maybe a week. Anyway, yesterday Max comes to me with a picture of this fellow Zander. He asks me to look for him. And lo and behold, one of my interns spots him. He’s there. A couple of days before the victim gets pushed, I see him crossing the street in the same spot. And I see this Ronald fellow nearby.”

  “So what,” she said. “Zander lives in the neighborhood. Uptown a little more but why wouldn’t he be around there.”

  “Look,” Madden said. “We’re just giving you a heads-up. A chance to say something. If any of these people are involved in a crime and you know about it, that makes you an accessory to that crime. And this is attempted murder, and maybe even murder from what I hear about the condition of the victim.”

  “I had nothing to do with Candace getting pushed in front of that car. You understand me? Nothing. If you’re recording this conversation, that is my answer on the record. Now, I’d like you to leave. Or I will call the police.”

  “Just one more question,” Madden said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why’d you take fifty thousand dollars from this guy?”

  “I didn’t take. He gave it to me. He repaid his client’s loan.”

  “OK, let me rephrase that. Why did you go to all this trouble to get this money?”

  “First of all, it wasn’t all that much trouble. Second, we have a new product we need to start shipping next week. But we got behind. We were this close to defaulting, which would have left us with nothing. You get it?”

  Madden nodded. Then he stood up, signaling Fremmer to do the same.

  “We’re going to go now,” Madden said. “But we’re walking out of here empty-handed. You didn’t give him his money back. And that means you’re on my shit list. And you don’t want to be on my shit list. You also don’t want me thinking it ever occurred to you that your buddy Zander had anything to do with the crime Ronald is accused of. Save yourself while you still have the chance. Goodnight, Miss Hruska. Sleep well.”

  27/ Evidence Bag

  “LOVED THE QUIET INTENSITY,” FREMMER SAID WHEN THEY GOT back out on the street.

  “The what?”

  “You got that whole Clint
Eastwood thing going. I gotta say I didn’t see it coming. I should’ve, but I didn’t.”

  Madden took the compliment in stride. “That stuff you said about Zander, was it real?” he asked.

  “Did it sound real?”

  “You had me going.”

  “Well, the truth is …” Fremmer started to say, but something had distracted him.

  Madden looked ahead and saw a woman, maybe early thirties, maybe a bit older, in a short black sleeveless dress coming toward them.

  The woman said hello to Fremmer, and they stopped.

  “Hey you,” she said, then kissed him on the side of the cheek. “Were you on vacation? They had a sub teaching your class this week.”

  “I’m off the schedule for now,” he replied.

  “What? Why?”

  “Talk to the manager. Put in a good word, would you?”

  “Are you kidding me? I can’t believe they did that. To you of all people. What happened?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’ll totally talk to the manager. And my friend Amy will, too. She loves your class.”

  “Thank you. And thank Amy,” Fremmer said, and with a slight nod of his head he and Madden started walking together again.

  “The key is fully believing what you say as you say it,” he went on as if their conversation had never been interrupted. “The truth is my friend Carlos did hire an investigator who’s trying to determine exactly where Ronald was that morning. Too bad he didn’t carry a cell phone. That would have made it easy to track him. But we’re basically left with any video we can get a hold of. And the cops are out in front on that. They’ve already collected footage from the same locations the investigator’s going to. It’s easy for them to get it. People want to cooperate with the police.”

  “They haven’t turned it over yet?”

  “The DA’s office is taking its sweet time because it can. But now that the judge has ruled Ronald’s fit to stand trial, they’ll have to turn over what they’ve got pretty quickly.”

  “And the meeting with Zander?”

  “Didn’t happen yet,” Fremmer said. “Drew Masters tried to make an appointment earlier today but couldn’t get one ’til tomorrow afternoon.”