Chapter 26: Escape Clauses - Lucidity

MADDEN DIDN’T KNOW QUITE WHAT TO MAKE OF THE GUY. SITTING on the stool with his elbows resting proprietarily behind him on the mahogany bar, he projected an air of confidence. Or arrogance. At first glance he looked younger than Madden expected, anywhere from late thirties to mid-forties. As he got closer though, Madden noticed the scattering of gray in his beard stubble. He knew plenty of guys like this in California. The outfit—ironic T-Shirt, expensively distressed jeans, retro tennis shoes—and the attitude—simultaneously laid-back and intense. Guys like Shelby were driven by that underlying intensity. Madden could see the same zealous quality in the eyes of this Drew Masters, or whatever his name was. The guy was focused. He knew what he wanted. He was a businessman.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Madden,” he said, greeting him with a warm, easy-going grin.

“Hopefully I won’t regret it. I’m not in the habit of taking a call from a complete stranger one day and then getting on a plane and flying across the country to meet him the next.”

“Well, I’m glad I was able to persuade you. I wouldn’t have made you come if I didn’t think it’d be worth your while.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Another warm smile from Mr. Double Down, a.k.a. Drew Masters. There was something a little smug about it.

“Inside or outside, Detective?”

“Excuse me?”

“You want to eat inside or outside?”

“Inside, I think.”

The place felt crowded though it was only about three-quarters full. Double Down got up from his stool, picked up his backpack from the floor, and signaled the hostess, who gathered up two menus and led the two men past the bar to one of the larger four-tops in the back.

Nice service, Madden thought. “I’m guessing you’re a regular here?” It was more of a statement than question.

“Here and every Starbucks on the West Side,” Fremmer responded. “Just water for me, no ice, please,” he told the hostess.

Madden said he wanted the same.

“We should order now. You must be starving, and we don’t have much time. Tell our server I’ll take the steak frites medium rare,” he told the hostess. “You want the same? You seem like a meat-and-potatoes guy. Best thing on the menu. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

“No,” said Madden. “But why the rush?”

“I have to get home to my son,” Fremmer explained. “His homework helper said he’d stay until I got back. But we have some work to do after we finish here.”

“What kind of work?”

“I need you to pretend you’re a private investigator, which shouldn’t be hard.”

“What for?”

“You’ll see. Did you bring Shelby’s contract?”

He did. Madden took it from his inside coat pocket and handed it across the table. Fremmer read through it once, his eyes darting around the page. Then he went through it again, more slowly the second time.

“What are you looking for?” Madden asked.

“Escape clauses.”

“Are you a lawyer?”

“Yes.”

That surprised Madden.

“What kind?”

“The kind that slips escape clauses into contracts.”

“How’s it look?”

“Not bad. You didn’t get an exclusive, which means he could have made the same deal with someone else. Or with me right now. But other than that, I think we’re good. You’re seeing my poker face right now, but trust me, inside I’m doing cartwheels. It’s more than I thought. I wasn’t expecting the extra million for finding both of them. You OK if I keep this?”

Madden didn’t care what he did with it. He’d received his last monthly fee. As far as he was concerned, he was finished with the contract. Until yesterday anyway.

“Tell, me something, Mr. Masters—”

“Drew,” Fremmer cut him off. “No one calls me Mr. Masters.”

“Because it’s not your real name.”

“Not just that. No calls me by my real last name, so why should anybody call me by my fake one?”

Madden rolled his eyes. “OK. So, Drew, tell me this. If you think you can make a deal with Shelby, why don’t you?”

“You and I know both know he’s a prick. But putting that aside, which I’d do under the right circumstances, I need your help, Mr. Madden. This is an intricate and delicate situation. Do I look like a detective? Do I look like I’ve got law-enforcement connections in Northern California? That’s why I need you. You’re the pro, not me.”

“You’ve seen how far that’s gotten me with this case.”

“I’ve done my homework, Mr. Madden. For someone so unfortunate you’ve been quite fortunate. You’re a sympathetic character. Polio, drop foot, a victim of sexual abuse, you’re the embodiment of the American spirit: grit and perseverance.”

“No, I’m not. And I don’t want people to think of me in those terms.”

“Humble, too, eh? You just can’t help yourself. All I’m saying is that Shelby knows he has to pay you because of who you are. And if you get paid, Mr. Madden, you know what that means?”

“What?”

“I get paid. Which brings us to the sub-contract I’ve drawn up for the two of us. It simply stipulates that should you fulfill the terms of Mr. Shelby’s contract I get half of the payout within seven days of your receiving payment, whatever that amount may be.”

Fremmer reached down into the backpack at his feet and brought out his own one-page document.

“You’ll see that my name has been redacted from the copy you’re looking at. But as soon as you’re ready to sign, I have four unredacted copies prepared and a notary on standby in the restaurant to make it official.”

Madden looked up from the document. Did he say in the restaurant?

“You have a notary here? I didn’t know they provided such services.”

“She works at the First Republic on 76th Street. Does all my notarizing. Very service-oriented, the folks at First Republic. I’m picking up the check for her and her sister. They’re sitting two tables to our right.”

Madden looked over and saw two attractive if somewhat heavyset Hispanic women. Both wore glasses. One waved at him, presumably the notary. At that moment, Madden allowed himself to believe for the first time that this might actually be real.

“You don’t mess around do you, Drew,” he said.

“No, I don’t.”

Madden perused the document one more time. To be safe, he should have had Dupuy take a look at it. But things were complicated enough with him verbally offering her a bonus if they found Stacey or Ross that he didn’t want her to know about this. The terms also seemed pretty straightforward. And his curiosity was killing him. Why was this guy being so careful about protecting his identity before he signed something? It didn’t make sense. What was the big deal?

“Well, let’s do this,” Madden said. “I came here to see what you’ve got, so let’s see it.”

With that, Fremmer removed the redacted document and replaced it with the four copies of the unredacted version. As Madden read over the new document, Fremmer waved to the notary, a signal to come over.

“Hank Madden, meet Marjorie, the best damn notary in the city.” Marjorie came equipped with her stamp, pocket embosser, and a glass of wine. She acted like she did this all the time.

The whole operation took less than five minutes.

“So long, Drew Masters,” Madden said once Marjorie had gone. “Nice to meet you Max Fremmer. Now tell me, why all the secrecy?”

Fremmer didn’t answer right away. Instead he said, “I’m gonna to need your permission to record our conversation. What I’m about to tell you is well, sensitive, and a detailed record of evidence will benefit us both.”

He was taking no chances. Only when Madden had consented—and announced his stated consent along with the exact time, all recorded on Fremmer’s iPhone—did Fremmer begin to explain.

“If you knew who I was, if you Googled me, the stories that would come up … you might be able to put two and two together. I couldn’t risk that.”

“What kind of stories?”

“I wear many hats but one of them is book editor slash publisher. I have a client, Candace Epstein. She writes erotic fiction for me. Under a pseudonym. About two weeks ago she was pushed in front of a car. She’s been in the ICU ever since. I’m pretty sure she’s Stacey Ross.”

Madden was stunned. Stacey Walker in the hospital? Is that what he said?

“I thought you said you knew where she was buried.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Fremmer replied. “She buried herself here. In New York. But she never died.”

“How do you know it’s her?”

“Look,” Fremmer began, “her injuries were severe. She wasn’t expected to survive at first. I’m one of the few people, maybe the only one, who’s spoken to her. She briefly woke up after being in a coma for five days. But only for a moment. She didn’t know who she was. She thought she was in Stanford Hospital in California. Then she said something about living in Menlo Park and that her husband Ross had tried to choke her. That’s when she became all worked up and they made me leave the ICU. I didn’t have time to ask any more questions.”

“As I was leaving the ICU, I hit Google to see what came up. When I put Ross and Menlo Park in there, a lot did,” Fremmer explained, “including the article that Tom Bender did about you and Shelby. And then I did some comparisons.”

Fremmer reached into his backpack for his iPad, turned it on, handed it to Madden. He studied the image on the screen—two women side by side.

“My client Candace is on the left. Stacey Ross is on the right.”

Two different women—the older Candace with dark, curly hair, and the younger Stacey with straight dirty-blond hair—yet there was a resemblance. They were not a perfect match, but as far as leads went, it was pretty promising. Still, Madden didn’t completely buy it.

“Did she tell you she was Stacey Ross? Did you record the conversation like you’re doing now?”

“No,” Fremmer said. “I didn’t think to do it. I was just hoping she might tell me something about who pushed her and why.”

“I don’t know,” Madden said. “It might just be some weird coincidence. She might have read the same article you read and woke up thinking she was part of the story. As you said, her brain is pretty scrambled.”

“I thought about that,” Fremmer said. “But look, it’s pretty simple to confirm. Just take this back with you to California …”

He pulled something else from his backpack, an envelope that he placed in front of Madden on the table.

“What’s that?” Madden asked.

“That’s a DNA swab I took from her at the hospital a couple of days ago. They’ve got her back in a medically induced coma. She has a daughter in California somewhere, right? See if you get a match. And I assume that the police may have some of her DNA samples still stored in some evidence room somewhere.”

Fremmer was right. It was that simple. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Then it hit him: If she were still alive, what did that mean? It meant Ross hadn’t killed her. So why had she disappeared in the first place?

“I’m sorry,” Madden said after a moment, feeling a little dizzy. “I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Gets your head spinning a little bit, right?” Fremmer said. “Well I’ve got something else guaranteed to blow your mind.”

“Yeah?”

“I know a guy who’s missing part of his arm. He and my client are friends. Maybe even more than friends.”

“Which arm?”

“The right arm. And by that I mean his left arm.”

“Is he Ross?”

“I can’t tell. His name is Braden. Candace has known him for years. He runs an organization called the Lucid Dreaming Center out of his apartment about twenty-five blocks north of here. Hand me the iPad, I’ll pull up some photos.”

Madden passed the tablet to Fremmer, who scrolled through his photo library until he found the image he had in mind, a shot of an older gentleman Photoshopped next to a twenty-year-old newspaper image of Ross. Madden could see no resemblance between the two men. Well, maybe there was a slight resemblance, but he felt none of the feeling he got when he looked at Fremmer’s client next to Stacey.

“You ever meet Ross?” Fremmer asked.

“I saw him at the station house once,” Madden said. “But I never interviewed him. And it was a long time ago.”

“If you saw him again, do you think you’d know it was him?”

“Maybe. I watched enough interviews to know his voice. Why?”

“Well, one of his associates stole some money from me. After we pay her a visit, I thought we’d go see him. And by ‘we’ I mean I’m bringing you along as my newly hired private investigator.”

“How much she steal?”

“Fifty thousand.”

Madden let out a low whistle. What was this guy trying to rope him into?

“How’d she do that?”

“Drugged me and had me write a check.”

“You couldn’t stop payment on it?”

“I didn’t know it existed. The last thing I remembered before waking up in a hospital room on suicide watch was having a drink with her at a neighborhood bar. That was six days ago. I only noticed my bank account was short fifty grand yesterday, after the check had cleared.”

“Ouch,” Madden said.

“Yeah. I’m trying to be cool because I just met you and don’t want to make a bad first impression. I’m actually pretty upset. Doing my best not to punch a wall.”

“You want to do this tonight?”

“Yeah, right after we eat. It’s been a rough few days. I’ll tell you all about it over steak frites.”

“I might need a drink a first,” Madden said.

“I’d join you,” Fremmer said. “But the way I feel right now, if I start I might not stop.”