by Andrew Gross
Didn’t I take care of you? Wasn’t I good to you, baby? I loved you. I trusted you. I mourned you, Charlie. It tore me fucking apart when I thought you were dead.
How can you possibly be alive?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Saul Lennick’s office was close by, on the forty-second floor of one of those tall glass office towers on Forty-seventh and Park.
Karen hurried over, without even calling, praying he was there. His secretary, Maureen, came out and immediately saw the distress and nerves all over Karen’s face.
“Can I get you anything, Ms. Friedman?” she asked solicitously. “A glass of water?”
Karen shook her head.
“Please come on back. Mr. Lennick’s available. He can see you now.”
“Thank you.” Karen exhaled with relief. Thank God!
Saul Lennick’s office was large and important-looking, filled with a collection of African masks and Balinese burial artifacts, with a view of the Manhattan skyline and, to the north, Central Park.
He had just hung up from a call, and he stood with a look of concern as Maureen rang Karen in.
“Karen?”
“Something’s going on, Saul. I don’t know what it is. But Charlie’s done something…in his business.”
“What?” Lennick inquired. He came around and pulled out a chair for her in front of his large desk, then sat back down.
She was about to blurt out everything she knew and had discovered—starting with seeing Charlie’s face in the documentary. And that he was alive!
But she managed to catch herself at the last second, worried that maybe Saul might think he was talking to a raving lunatic, and decided to tell him only what she’d seen today.
“I came across something, Saul. Something Charlie wrote out before he died. I don’t know how to even begin to explain, but I do know it fits into all these crazy things that have been happening. Those people from Archer. Samantha. I didn’t know what to do with it, Saul.”
“With what?”
Agitated, Karen told him about finding the safe-deposit box. The cash and bonds. The passport. Charlie’s photograph next to the fake name.
“At first I thought maybe it was another woman, but it wasn’t another woman, Saul. It’s worse. Look at me, Saul, I’m a goddamn wreck.” She took in a breath. “Charlie’s done something. I don’t know what. He was my husband, Saul. And I’m scared. I feel like those people are going to come back. People are coming after us, and now I find this box full of cash and a false ID. I’m not going to put my kids in danger, Saul. Why would Charlie be hiding this stuff from me? I know you know something. What the hell’s going on here? You owe that much to me, Saul—what?”
Lennick rocked back in his leather chair. Behind him the vast skyline of New York spread out like a giant panoramic photo.
He exhaled.
“All right, Karen. I was hoping I’d never have to bring this up. That it had somehow all gone away.”
“What, Saul? That what had gone away?”
He leaned forward. “Did Charles ever mention someone by the name of Coombs? Ian Coombs?”
“Coombs?” Karen shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t recall.”
“What about an investment outfit called Baltic Securities? Did he ever mention them?”
“Why are you asking me all these things, Saul? I didn’t exactly get involved in my husband’s business. You of all people know that.”
“I do know that, Karen, it’s just that…”
“It’s just that what, Saul? Charlie’s not here. All of a sudden, everybody’s making these innuendos about him. What the hell has my husband done?”
Lennick stood up, dressed in a navy pinstripe suit with gold cuff links at his wrists. He came around the desk in front of Karen and sat back down on a corner of it. “Karen, by any chance did Charlie ever mention any other accounts he might have been managing?”
“Other accounts?”
Lennick nodded. “Completely separate from Harbor. Maybe offshore—the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands, perhaps? Things aren’t governed by the SEC or the U.S. accounting laws down there.” His gaze was measured, serious.
“You’re scaring me a little, Saul. Charlie was a stand-up guy. He didn’t keep things from anyone. Least of all you.”
“I know that, Karen. And I wouldn’t have brought it up. Except…”
She stared. “Except…?”
“Except you found what you found, Karen. The cash, that passport. Which together don’t look exactly stand-up to me.”
Karen tensed. Her thoughts flashed to the face on that screen. Their entire lives together, they had shared pretty much everything. Stuff with the kids, their finances. When they were angry with each other. Even what was going on with the dogs. That was how they did things. It was a matter of trust. Now, in the pit of her stomach, Karen felt this doubt. Chilling her. Over Charlie. It was a feeling she’d never had before.
“Whose money are we talking about, Saul?”
He didn’t answer. He simply pressed his lips together and brushed back his thinning gray hair.
“Whose money?” Karen stared at him directly.
Her husband’s mentor let out a breath. His fingers drummed on the top of his walnut desk like a funeral dirge.
He shrugged. “That’s the trouble, Karen. No one’s exactly sure.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Karen was frantic. The next few days, she barely dragged herself out of bed, not knowing what the hell to do. Samantha was starting to act concerned. It had been almost a week since Karen hadn’t been herself, since she’d seen Charlie on that screen. Her daughter’s eyes reflected that they knew that something wasn’t right. “What’s going on, Mom?”
As much as she wanted to, how could Karen possibly tell her?
That the person she admired most in the world, who had always provided for her and kept her strong, had deceived them in this way. What had Saul said? Setting up accounts. Running money, for people she didn’t know. Offshore?
What kind of people?
All that money, it terrified Karen. What was it for? She began to think that maybe Charlie had committed some kind of crime. Did Charlie ever mention any other accounts he might be managing?
No, she had told him. You know Charlie, he was an honest guy. He fretted over nickels and dimes for his clients.
Had she been kidding herself all these years?
A few more days went by. Karen was driving herself half crazy, thinking about Charlie being out there somewhere, what all this meant. It was late one night. The kids’ lights had long been turned off. Tobey was asleep on her bed. Karen went downstairs to the kitchen to make herself some tea.
Charlie’s photo was on the counter. The one from the memorial: in his white polo shirt and khaki shorts, Topsiders and aviator Ray-Bans. They had always thought it was vintage Charlie, kicking back on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean—a cell phone stapled to his ear.
You knew him, Saul….
Karen picked it up, for the first time restraining an urge to shatter it in anger against the wall. But then the strangest memory came to mind. From deep in the vault of their life together.
Charlie—waving.
It had been the end of a glorious week in the Caribbean, sailing. St. Bart’s. Virgin Gorda. They ended up in Tortola. The kids had to be back to school the following day.
Then, strangely, Charlie announced he needed to stay on. A change of plans. Someone he had to see down there.
Out of the blue?
So he accompanied them to the local airport, the little twelve-seater shuttling them back to San Juan. It had always made Karen a bit nervous to fly those tiny planes. On takeoff and landing, she always held Charlie’s hand. Everyone made a little fun of her….
Why was all this coming back now?
Charlie said good-bye to them at the makeshift gate, more like a glass door leading out onto the tarmac. “You’ll be fine,” he told her with a hug. “I’ll be
back up north in two days.” But buckling herself in, in the two-engine plane, Karen felt an inexplicable jolt of fear shoot through her—like she might never see him again. She had thought, Why aren’t you with me, Charlie? a flash of being alone, reaching out for Alex’s hand.
As the plane’s propellers whirred, Karen’s eyes went to the window, and she saw him, on the balcony of the tiny terminal, in his beach shirt and Ray-Bans, his eyes reflecting back the sun.
Waving.
Waving, with his cell phone stapled to his ear, watching the tiny plane pull away.
Offshore, Saul had said to her. Tortola or the Cayman Islands.
Now that same fear rippled through Karen, staring at his photo. That she somehow didn’t really know him. Not the way it mattered. His eyes dark now, not reflecting the sun but deeper, unfamiliar—like a cave that led to many chasms. Chasms she had never explored before.
It scared her. Karen put down the photo. She was thinking, He’s out there. Maybe thinking of her now. Maybe wondering, at this very moment, if she knew, if she suspected, felt him. It gave her the chills. What the hell have you done, Charlie?
She knew she couldn’t keep bottling this up forever. She’d go insane. She had to know. Why he had done this. Where he was.
Karen sank down on a stool at the counter. She put her head in her hands. She’d never felt so confused or so isolated.
There was only one place she could think to go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Hauck headed back upstairs to his office from the holding cells down in the basement. He and Freddy Muñoz had just taken a statement from a scared Latino kid who was part of this group from up in Norwalk who had been heisting fancy cars from backcountry Greenwich homes, a statement that could now blow the case wide open. Joe Horner, a detective from the Norwalk police department, was holding on the phone for him.
As Hauck turned in from the hallway, Debbie, his unit’s secretary, flagged his attention.
“Someone’s here to see you, Ty.”
She was seated on the bench in the outer office, wearing an orange turtleneck and a lightweight beige jacket, a tote bag on the bench next to her. Hauck made no attempt to conceal that he was pleased to see her.
“Tell Horner I’ll get back to him in a minute, Deb.”
Karen stood up. She smiled, a little nervous to be here. Hauck hadn’t seen her for a couple of months, since that other situation, the people harassing her, had quieted down and they’d pulled the protection. He had called once or twice to make sure everything was okay. Smiling, he went up to her. Her face was pallid and drawn.
“You said I should call.” She shrugged. “If anything ever came up.”
“Of course.”
She looked up at him. “Something did.”
“Come on in my office,” he said, taking her by the arm.
Hauck called to Debbie that he’d ring the Norwalk detective back, then led Karen past the row of detectives’ desks through the glass partition into his office. He pulled out a cheap metal chair at the round conference table across from his desk. “Sit down.”
It was clear she was upset. “You want something? Some water? A cup of coffee?” She shook her head. Hauck pulled another chair around and sat, facing her, arms across the back. “So tell me what’s going on.”
Karen sucked in a breath and pressed her lips tightly together, then reached inside her purse, the expression on her face somewhere between grateful and relieved. “Do you have a computer in here, Lieutenant?”
“Sure.” Hauck nodded, wheeling around to a credenza by his desk.
She handed him a small DVR disc. “Can you put this in?”
He reached down and inserted it into the computer beneath the credenza. The disc kicked in and came to life, some kind of TV show or news report in mid-airing on the screen. A mass of people on the streets of New York. In unrest. Amateur footage, a handheld camera in the crowd. It became immediately clear he was watching the aftermath of the Grand Central bombing.
Karen asked him, “Did you happen to watch that documentary, Lieutenant? Last Wednesday night?”
He shook his head. “I was working. No.”
“I did.” She brought his attention back to the disc: people running out of the station onto the street. “It was very hard for me. A mistake. It was like living the whole thing all over again.”
“I can understand.”
Karen pointed. “Just about here I couldn’t watch it anymore. I went to turn it off.” She stood up and came behind his back, leaning over his shoulder, facing the screen. “It was like I was going crazy inside. Watching Charlie’s death. All over.”
Hauck didn’t see where this was heading. She reached her hand across him for the mouse. She waited, letting the action on the screen unfold, people staggering up onto the street out of a remote entrance to the station, gagging, coughing out smoke, faces blackened. The handheld camera jiggled.
“That’s when I saw it.” Karen pointed.
She positioned the mouse on the toolbar and clicked. The picture on the screen came to a stop. 9:16 A.M.
The frame captured a woman reaching out to comfort someone on the street who had collapsed. In front of her was someone else, a man, his jacket dusty, his face slightly averted from the camera, rushing by. Karen’s eyes fixed on the screen, something almost steely about them, hardened, yet at the same time, Hauck couldn’t help but notice, sad.
“That’s my husband,” she said, trying to keep her voice from cracking. She looked him in the eye. “That’s Charlie, Lieutenant.”
Hauck’s pulse came to a stop. It took a second for it to fully sink in just what she meant. Her husband had died there. A year ago. He had been to her home, to the memorial. That much was clear. He turned again to the screen. The features seemed a bit familiar from the photos he’d seen at her house. He blinked back at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean,” Karen said. “He was on that train—that much I’m sure. He called me from it, just before the blast. They found pieces of his briefcase in the wreckage….” She shook her head. “But somehow he didn’t die.”
Hauck pushed back from the desk, his eyes intent on the screen again. “A hundred people might look like that. He’s covered in ash. There’s no way you can be sure.”
“That’s what I told myself,” she said. “At first. At least it’s what I was hoping.” Karen moved back to the table. “Over the past week, I must have looked at that scene a thousand times.”
She reached in and drew a sheet of paper out of her bag. “Then I found something. It doesn’t matter what. All that matters is that it led me to this safe-deposit box at a bank in Manhattan that I never knew my husband had.”
She slid the sheet across the table to Hauck.
It was a photocopy of an account-activation form from Chase. For a safe-deposit box and, attached, what appeared to be an account history. There was a lot of activity, going back a couple of years. All the entries bore the same signature.
Charles Friedman.
Hauck scanned down.
“Check out the last date,” Karen Friedman told him. “And the time.”
Hauck did, and felt a sharp pain stick him in the chest. His eyes flashed back at her, not understanding. Can’t be…
“He’s alive.” Karen Friedman met his eyes. Her pupils glistened. “He was there, at that bank, four and a half hours after the bombing. Four and a half hours after I thought he was dead.
“That’s Charlie.” She nodded to him, glancing at the screen. “That’s my husband, Lieutenant.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Who have you told?”
“No one.” She stared back at him. “How could I? My kids…after what they’ve been through, it would kill them, Lieutenant. How could they even begin to understand? My friends?” She shook her head, glassy-eyed. “What am I possibly supposed to say to them, Lieutenant? That it was all some kind of crazy mistake? ‘Sorry, Charlie’s not rea
lly dead. He’s just been fucking deceiving me over the past year. Deceiving all of us!’ At first I thought maybe you hear about people who come out of these life-altering situations, you know, affected….” She placed her finger on the bank forms. “But then I found these. I thought about taking everything to Saul Lennick. Charlie was like a second son to him. But I got scared. I thought, what if he’s really done something? You know, something bad. What if I was doing the wrong thing…? How it would affect everybody. I got all scared. Do you understand what I mean?”
Hauck nodded, the stress clear in her voice.
“So I came here.”
Hauck picked up the bank papers. Because he was a cop, he had learned over the years to withhold his reactions. Gather the facts, be a little circumspect, until a picture of the truth becomes clear. He looked at the bank form. Charles Friedman was there.
“What is it you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.” Karen shook her head in consternation. “I don’t even know what he’s done. But it’s something…. Charlie wouldn’t just do this to us. I knew him. He wasn’t that kind of man, Lieutenant.” She pushed a wisp of hair out of her face and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, tears smearing. “The truth is, I don’t have any fucking idea what I want you to do.”
“It’s okay,” he said, squeezing her arm. Hauck stared back at the screen. He ran through the usual responses. Some crazy shock reaction—amnesia—from the bombing. But the bank form dismissed that one fast. Another woman? Embezzlement? He flashed to the scene in the parking lot with Karen’s daughter. Two hundred and fifty million dollars. Yet Saul Lennick had assured him Charles’s hedge fund was perfectly intact.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what did you find in there?” Hauck asked, pointing to the record for the safe-deposit box.
“Money.” Karen exhaled. “Lots of money. And a passport. Charlie’s picture, with a totally assumed name. A few credit cards…”
