Read Lucid Intervals (2010) for Free Online Page A

elevators. An hour later he said, “Stop.”
    “Which one?” Cantor said.
    “The one with the hat, the beefy one.”
    “Why him?”
    “It’s his walk, it’s not completely natural. Do you see what I mean?”
    Cantor rewound and watched the man. “Yeah, I see what you mean about the walk. It’s like one leg is stiffer than the other. Maybe he has an artificial leg?”
    “I don’t think so, but I was told he walks funny.”
    “Who wears a hat these days?” Cantor asked. “Nobody.”
    “Maybe an English gentleman,” Stone said.
    “Are his clothes custom-made?”
    “Freeze the shot,” Stone said, then looked carefully at the man’s back. “I think so.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “For a start, his suit jacket has double pleats; ready-made suits more commonly have a center pleat. Then look at his shoulders: there’s no wrinkle near the collar, and there’s no puckering on the center seam. The sleeve has four buttons, too, and it looks like they have buttonholes. A man could get that from an expensive shop, but it all adds up to bespoke.”
    “Bespoke?”
    “What the Brits call custom-made. He’s showing more shirt collar than usual, too. His shirts are probably custom as well, so make a note to check out shirtmakers, starting with Turnbull and Asser. And the hat is a Trilby, taupe in color. That’s very British. See if you can find a shot of him in the elevator.”
    “Why?”
    “Because a gentleman removes his hat in an elevator.”
    Cantor ran through some more shots at high speed. “Here we go,” he said.
    “Maybe we can see what floor button he pushes,” Stone said, but the man didn’t push a button. He removed his hat, though, revealing a head full of dark hair, gray at the temples. The camera was set high, in a corner, and they could see only the back of his head.
    “He’s not balding,” Cantor said.
    “Maybe. He didn’t push any buttons; he was apparently going to a floor somebody else had already pushed.” Sure enough, the man followed another passenger off the elevator.
    “That’s an express elevator,” Cantor said. “It goes only to the higher floors.”
    “Yeah,” Stone said. “The trouble is, none of what we see here actually makes him as our guy. Okay, his clothes look English, and he wears a hat; that’s about it. We don’t know if our guy has gained a lot of weight over the years or gone bald. I can’t tell if he’s wearing a toupee. We can’t really see his nose, either.”
    “Well there’s one thing about him I like,” Cantor said.
    “What’s that?”
    “Of all the people we’ve looked at on this date, he has the most to recommend him.”
    “Good point. What’s the date?”
    “A couple of weeks ago.”
    “Let’s look at the earlier dates, too,” Stone said, and Cantor racked up another cassette and began his search. An hour later he was done.
    “Nope,” Cantor said. “We don’t have him on the earlier dates, just the most recent one.”
    “How many men appear on both dates?” Stone asked.
    “I don’t know, dozens, maybe many dozens. A lot of them work in the building every day.”
    “Well, this guy, Mister Smith, doesn’t seem to work in the building. I think he’s visiting.”
    “Visiting who?”
    “Could be anybody—doctor, lawyer, dentist.”
    “Are there dentists in the Seagram Building?”
    “I don’t know. They’d be really, really expensive dentists, though, if they had offices there.”
    “Nah,” Cantor said, “medical professionals need special plumbing and electrical; they mostly stick to buildings that specialize.”
    “Can we do more to identify the floor he got off on?”
    “I’ve tried,” Cantor said, “but people’s heads were in the way of the buttons.”
    “Do we have shots of him returning to the lobby?” Stone asked.
    “I haven’t seen any,” Cantor replied. “I’ll go through them again, though.”
    “Let me know what you find,” Stone said, getting up from his seat. “I can’t look at that