10
The cuts looked far worse than they were. She wouldn’t need stitches, Cassie decided. In the end, she stood naked over the bathroom sink, sobered by the photos she had seen of herself on her phone, and pressed a cold, damp washcloth on each gash until the blood slowed. Then she pressed a couple of cotton balls along the wounds and held them in place with Scotch tape she wrapped around her left hand as if she were a mummy. It looked like a kindergartner had attempted the first aid. Tomorrow morning she would have to buy Band-Aids.
She climbed into her sleep shirt and tried to convince herself that the rest of the crew wasn’t searching out stories about Alex Sokolov the way she was, and so they might never see the images of her at the Royal Phoenician in Dubai. But she failed. Of course they were Googling him: He’d been on their flight. He’d been in her and Megan’s and Jada’s cabin. She lay in bed waiting for the lights of the Empire State Building—the tower was the signature white tonight—to blink out. Eventually someone in the crew would spot the photos. By now the grainy stills had no doubt been shared with the FBI here in the United States and it was inevitable that eventually investigators would explore whether the woman beside Sokolov had been on the plane. First they would rule out friends and acquaintances and clients and hotel employees, but then they would work their way back to the flight. Who had he sat with? Who had he seen? They would ask the crew (They would ask her!) if she recognized the person walking beside the dead man. What would finally give her away, the scarf? The sunglasses? The sharp slope of her aquiline nose?
In the morning, she told herself, she would call Derek Mayes and tell him that she did indeed need that lawyer named Ani. She was going to phone her, but it couldn’t hurt if Derek made a call, too. So much for the manicure. She would buy Band-Aids and retain an attorney. It was time.
« «
In the morning, she called the Unisphere office in Dubai. It was seven a.m. in New York, three p.m. there. In her mind she saw all of those hotel lobbies and all of those airport corridors that used antique clocks to offer the time in, for instance, Tokyo and Moscow and L. A. Her plan, as much as she had one, was first to learn if the woman was actually employed there. If she was, Cassie would ask to speak with her, claiming to be an American expat who was thinking of moving some assets to Unisphere and wanted to set up an appointment. The employee would either agree to meet with her if she was a money manager of some sort or she would direct her to the right person if she wasn’t. She planned to introduce herself as Jane Brown, because as a little girl she had looked up her family’s last name one day in a Kentucky phonebook, desirous of seeing it in print, and she’d seen whole columns of Browns.
The receptionist spoke English with no trace of an accent, and Cassie asked for Miranda.
“Miranda,” the woman said, drawing the name out, clearly expecting as she did that Cassie would offer a surname. She didn’t. She would wait this out. And so the receptionist continued. “What is Miranda’s last name, please?”
“I’m honestly not sure. We met at a dinner party this weekend.”
“This is a small office. I don’t believe we have a Miranda here,” she continued. “Is it possible she works for another firm?”
“It is,” Cassie agreed, and then she got off the phone as quickly as she could.
« «
As Ani Mouradian walked her from the lobby to a meeting room, Cassie found herself wondering how in the name of God Derek Mayes thought she would be able to afford a lawyer like this. The practice was midway up the Seagram Building, a Park Avenue icon between Fifty-Second and Fifty-Third. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. A part of her viewed the location of Ani’s firm as one more small, horrid joke the universe was playing on her: sending the daughter of a drunk who, admittedly, drank too much herself, into a building named after a renowned distiller. The reception area was windowless, but the couches were plush and deep and the wood paneling a dark mahogany that belonged in a British library or university club. She could almost see her reflection in the lacquer. The firm had the northwest corner, however, and most of the offices along the exterior walls were awash in morning summer light.
“How many people work here?” she asked Ani.
“We’re not all that big. I believe, counting paralegals and assistants, there are maybe sixty of us.”
“You know I’m just a flight attendant.”
“Meaning?”
“I probably can’t afford you. I don’t know what Derek was thinking.”
“Everyone thinks your life is so glamorous,” the lawyer said, ushering her into a small, interior conference room, and then shutting the door behind her. The table was round and modern and would seat no more than four people. The walls had white bookcases filled with law books. “But I know better. Derek Mayes is my uncle. Please, sit down.”
She did. Ani took the chair beside her. Cassie guessed that Ani was ten years younger than she was. A part of her was relieved because she guessed a young person had a lower hourly rate; another part of her, however, fretted that she needed all the help and all the experience she could get. She knew she preferred older pilots to younger ones. A new pilot was every bit as competent as a seasoned one when a flight was uneventful. But when something went horribly wrong—when the engines stalled as you descended in a snowstorm, when geese clogged your engines on takeoff—you wanted as much experience as possible. Everyone who flew knew the only reason that US Airways flight 1549 landed safely in the Hudson River one January afternoon in 2009 was because the pilot, Sully Sullenberger, was an unflappable former fighter jock who was days away from his fifty-eighth birthday when a bird strike disabled both of the Airbus’s engines. The guy had white hair. He had years and years (and years) in the air.
“Are you sure you don’t want coffee?” Ani was asking.
“Positive. Your receptionist offered me some. I’m fine.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“I dropped a glass. Not a big deal.”
Ani smiled enigmatically, and Cassie couldn’t read the woman’s face. Did she not believe her? The lawyer had creosote hair that fell to her shoulders, dark eyes, and dark, pencil-thin eyebrows. She was slender—almost slight—and was wearing an impeccably tailored gray suit. Her blouse was a conservative shade of pink.
“So,” she said after a moment, “we do a lot of things here. Some of us specialize in employment law. Labor law, collective bargaining.”
“You have pretty nice digs for a bunch of union lawyers.”
She chuckled. “What makes you think we represent the unions?”
“Well, your uncle—”
“I’m teasing you,” Ani said, cutting her off. “But, yes, the firm makes considerably more money representing the Fortune 500. A lot of my billable hours come from an oil company. We also do criminal defense work, especially white-collar crime. I gather my uncle thinks you might be in need of a little help.”
Cassie wondered just how much her uncle actually knew. She had a feeling he must have suspected more than he had revealed at breakfast. “He does.”
“Go on.”
“I’m curious: what area of your expertise did he think I needed?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. My uncle gives out my business cards like the Easter Bunny gives out jellybeans. I’m the daughter he never had. You called me this morning. Let’s start there.”
Cassie glanced down at the Band-Aids on her left hand. There were five of them on the two cuts. Did they make her look hapless or inept? “You probably assume I have some labor issue with the airline.”
“I assume nothing.”
“Did your uncle tell you about the FBI?”
“He said they met a flight you were on when it landed. That’s all.”
She looked at the books over Ani’s shoulder. They were beautiful, leather the color of a saddle, lettering the gold of a general’s epaulets. Inside, she knew, were pages and pages that could probably substitute for the melatonin tabs she took on occasion when she was combating jet lag. Behind her, on the other side of the door, she was aware of a distant, faraway-seeming conversation. She heard, she thought, a copy machine. She thought of the two photos of her that were online, and then she thought once more of Sokolov’s body in the bed. She saw it from the vantage point of the hotel room drapes as she sunk, hungover, to the lushly carpeted floor. This was probably her last chance. And so she spoke.
“I called you because the other day I woke up in a hotel room really far away from here, and the man beside me was dead.” It was just that simple.
Ani raised one of those immaculate eyebrows but didn’t say a word. And so Cassie went back to the beginning, starting with the flight from Paris to Dubai last week when she first met Sokolov and ending with the broken wineglass last night in a Murray Hill bathtub. She told her about Miranda. She showed her the two security camera images of her from the Dubai news story on her phone. She admitted to trying to wipe the suite of her fingerprints as best she could before leaving but said she may have left behind her lipstick and a lip balm in one of the rooms. Occasionally Ani interrupted her with a question, though none of them seemed tinged with judgment, and sometimes she asked her to pause while she jotted down a lengthier note on the yellow legal pad in her lap. When Cassie was done, she said, “I honestly can’t say how much trouble you’re really in—and I’m working on the assumption that you didn’t kill this man.”
“That’s correct. Well, it’s mostly correct. I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill him, but I’m not one hundred percent sure.”
“You’re not one hundred percent sure?” Ani asked, the surprise evident on her face.
“That’s right. I can’t be completely confident,” Cassie said, and then she explained her tendency to drink and even, on occasion, to succumb to—or, arguably, to court—the no-man’s-land where memory hadn’t a chance. “And then there was the bottle,” she said when she had finished.
“The bottle?”
“In the morning, I found a broken bottle of Stolichnaya vodka. I vaguely remember when we broke it the night before. It was the vodka Miranda had brought. Alex was having trouble with the top. Anyway, the shoulder—you know, the neck and the shoulder of the bottle—were intact. Sort of. The top of the bottle was like a weapon and it was by the bed. I took all the pieces I could find and threw them away after I’d left the hotel.”
“So, are you telling me that you might have killed him? You used the broken bottle as a weapon and cut his throat?” Her voice was flat. Toneless.
“Here’s the thing,” Cassie murmured. She recalled how when people had something utterly ridiculous to explain, they always seemed to begin, It’s complicated. She took comfort in the fact that she hadn’t begun with those two words. “I’m not violent when I black out. I’ve never been told I hurt someone. I may do stupid things and risk my own life, but I don’t attack people. If sometime in the night Alex had tried to have sex with me again, I don’t think I would have stopped him. It’s probably happened to me before. I mean, I know it has.”
“Men having sex with you without your consent.”
She nodded. “Look, I know it’s not a gray area. I just know that when I’m that drunk, I’m not prone to say no. Or, I’m sorry to say, care.”
“You’re right, it’s not a gray area. It’s rape.”
“But I don’t think Alex would ever have tried to rape me. Either I was so drunk I was oblivious—”
“That’s not consent, Cassie!”
“Let me finish. Please. Either I was so drunk I was oblivious, or I was happy with whatever was happening. But if I did ask Alex to stop, I believe he would have. He was a really gentle guy. I mean, he washed my hair in the shower. So, why would I have taken the broken bottle and fought him?”
“Is it possible that you killed him while he was sleeping? Is that where this is going?”
“It’s possible, but…”
“But…”
“But I don’t think so,” Cassie said. “That’s not me. And I’ve thought about this a lot since it happened. And…”
“Go on.”
“And I thought I left. I have this memory of leaving that’s pretty distinct.”
“Leaving the hotel room.”
“Yes. The suite.”
“But you woke up beside him in bed.”
“When I have a blackout, there are gaps. At first I thought I was going to leave with Miranda. Go back to the airline hotel. I mean, I was dressed when Miranda was there. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Ani said, but her inflection was tinged with sarcasm.
“But I didn’t leave. Miranda left and I didn’t go with her. I stayed. And Alex and I went to the bedroom and made love. After that, however, I got dressed again. I know I did. Or I almost know I did. I have this memory of being at the hotel room door and saying good-bye to him. I really do.”
“I just want to confirm: you were there when he broke the vodka bottle?”
“Yes.”
“So, do you believe it might have been this Miranda person?”
“Who killed him? It’s crossed my mind,” Cassie answered. “This is the first time I’ve verbalized any of this, so I’m almost thinking out loud. Working it through. I guess it’s possible. I left. Miranda came back. Then I came back.”
“And you were so drunk that you didn’t notice that Alex was dead?”
“The room’s dark. Maybe.”
“When Miranda arrived at the suite, she knocked on the door?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I was wondering if she had a key. But even if she didn’t already have one, she steals a key while the three of you are having your little party.”
Cassie hadn’t thought of this, but it would certainly explain how someone had gotten into the room.
“But,” Ani continued, “if Alex knows it’s Miranda, she doesn’t need a key. He just lets her in. How long do you think you were gone?”
“If I was gone? No idea.”
“Why would you have come back?”
“I probably forgot something in the room and went back for it. That’s happened before.”
Ani looked down at her notes and then said, “It’s also possible it was someone who worked at the hotel or knew someone who worked at the hotel.”
“Yes, I agree that’s a possibility.”
“And while I personally have no idea how to break into a locked hotel room, I’m sure there are ways.”
“I guess.”
“This guy told you that he used to work for Goldman Sachs and now has a hedge fund. What else did he say about his job?”
“Nothing.”
“Why was he in Dubai?”
“Meetings,” Cassie answered.
“About?”
“He didn’t say. All I know is what I read online, which really wasn’t very much.”
The lawyer leaned in. “He was a guy. A young guy. My age. When guys my age hit on me, they always talk about work. It’s that alpha male thing to show me how important they are. So, think hard: surely he said something.”
“He really didn’t.”
“And you didn’t ask?”
“No.”
“Well, the fact he didn’t talk about work is revealing, too. Maybe it suggests he had something to hide.”
“Maybe. Your uncle thinks he may have been a spy for some country.”
Ani smiled. “My uncle loves a good spy story. So tell me: what did you two talk about?”
“We talked about my work. He seemed really interested in what I did. Flying. Passenger craziness. He seemed to get a real kick out of the stories.”
“What else?”
“We talked about growing up in Kentucky and Virginia. We talked about food. We talked about drinking. But…”
“Go on.”
“We both got toasted pretty quickly. It’s not that we can’t hold our booze. It’s just that we drank so much,” Cassie explained. It sounded as squalid and confessional as ever.
“What about when Miranda came? What did the three of you talk about then?”
“I don’t remember much. It was late.”
“Why did you think she was there?”
“When she first arrived? I assumed she and Alex worked together or he managed her money. I assumed they were friends.”
“Forgive me, but what kind of friends? Were they lovers? Ex-lovers?”
Cassie looked down at the table for a moment as she answered, because it was getting harder and harder to maintain eye contact with the lawyer. “I thought so at first. I assumed she was there to have sex with us.”
“The three of you,” said Ani evenly.
“I guess.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. It never even came up. She brought that bottle of vodka, we all drank some, and mostly the two of them talked. I didn’t really pay attention.”
“They talked about his work? Her work, maybe?”
“I remember something about a meeting they were going to have together the next morning. That’s all. Late morning, I think. There would be other people at the meeting.”
“Who?”
“Dubai investors in the fund, I guess. I think it was going to be downtown. But I also got the sense that they really didn’t know each other all that well. They may have been meeting for the first time. I think she was maybe somebody’s daughter.”
“Someone he knew.”
“Or someone important in his life somewhere. But I can tell you this: I learned this morning that if she does work for Unisphere, it’s not in their Dubai office.”
“And you know this how?”
“I called them.”
“Dubai.”
“Yes,” Cassie answered, and she recounted her brief conversation with the receptionist.
Ani sighed deeply. Epically. Cassie knew that exhalation well: it was the Sigh of Judgment. “Okay,” she said finally. “Here’s the good news. The crime occurred in the United Arab Emirates and the United States has no extradition treaty with them. The Emirates would have to bring you back via a judicial summons—a letters rogatory request or whatever the Emirates equivalent is of a letters rogatory request. And those go through the courts and can take years.”
Cassie felt a flutter of relief and it must have been visible in her face, because almost instantly Ani held up a finger to stop the emotion from taking root.
“But that doesn’t mean you’re home free. There’s an amendment to the U.S. law that allows us to extradite a person who has committed a crime against an American citizen overseas. I want to check to see if an American citizen is exempt from the extradition.”
“If that’s the case, am I okay?”
“Maybe. But there are other issues in play. Even if the U.S. won’t send you back to Dubai, Sokolov’s family could still go after you in civil court: a wrongful death suit. Think O. J. Simpson. The criminal court acquitted him. The civil court held him responsible and the judgment was thirty-plus million dollars.”
“Oh, my God!”
“The families ended up getting nowhere near that. I heard they wound up with maybe half a million.”
“Still, I don’t have anything like that. All I have is my apartment.”
“That’s something. But none of this may even matter. On the other hand, those photos of you? Any day now they’ll be in the U.S. media. And pretty soon after that, you will be, so to speak, outed.”
“Am I that recognizable in the pictures?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to see them blown up. I’d have to see the originals. But from what you tell me, someone on the plane with you—one of the crew—will make the connection that it could be you. So will the FBI. What are your plans today and tomorrow?”
“I’m supposed to fly to Rome tonight.”
“Not Dubai?”
“No.”
“Good. Never go back there.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“I mean that.”
“I understand.”
“And after Rome?” asked Ani.
“I fly back here. We arrive in Italy tomorrow morning, Tuesday, overnight in the city, and fly back to the U.S. on Wednesday just before lunch. We’re there a little more than twenty-four hours.”
“Pretty cushy compared to what some flight attendants endure.”
She shrugged. “I did my time on the regionals. I’ve been doing this a lot of years.”
“Oh, I know the drill. I know how it works.”
“We still haven’t discussed how in the world I’m going to pay you.”
Ani put her yellow pad on the table and sat forward. She looked almost kindly at Cassie and said, “Look, it’s not yet time to burn the carbons—”
“Burn the carbons?” she asked, interrupting the lawyer.
“Just an expression. Do you know what carbon paper is?”
“Of course.”
“Hey, I’ve never actually seen a piece. But I gather people overseas in the foreign services or the CIA used to have a saying: when the world was completely falling apart and the embassy was being overrun, that’s when it was time to burn the carbons. You know, to make sure that the Soviets or the jihadists or whoever wouldn’t get the state secrets. Anyway, it’s not yet time to burn the carbons, okay? So, breathe.”
“And as for payment?”
“My sense is you might come home to a shitstorm on Wednesday. Not a burn-the-carbons shitstorm, but it could feel…distressing. It could be distressing. So, I want you to go ahead and fly to Rome because I want to be sure you remain in the airline’s good graces, and because I want to be sure you’ve behaved in no way that suggests guilt. Forgive me, no additional way. The existence of those security camera photos is likely to give this story legs in the tabloid media here in the U.S. You watch. It may be as soon as tomorrow or the day after. The police in Dubai are going to bring better photos of you—good photos of you—to the Royal Phoenician and ask around. They’ll show the pictures to the bellmen and the hostesses and the people who work in the gift shops, and ask if you might have been the woman with Alex Sokolov. I have no idea if this Sokolov guy might have been a CIA spook or a Russian spook or whatever. Doesn’t matter. The family might simply be very well connected. Either way, I am quite sure that the FBI is going to want to talk to you again and this story could be around for a while.”
“I see.”
“But here’s the good news. I am also confident that my firm will represent you pro bono. You’re attractive and you work in a job that most people still believe—I know mistakenly—is kind of sexy. I don’t like to advertise the fact that we’re media ghouls, but we are. We really are. Years ago this place was pretty white shoe, but no more. So, we can help prevent your extradition, if it actually comes to that—which I doubt it will. We can help if there is ever a civil case—which, yes, is a little more likely, but still not something to lose any sleep over just yet. And we can help if the airline ever gives you any grief.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“The airline? Oh, they might be a royal pain. My sense is the union will have your back if that ever happens. But we will, too.”
“And you’d do this just for the press?”
“The free press. Operative word is free. We may no longer be white shoe, but we also don’t pay for subway ads.”
And then they were done and Ani walked her to the elevator. There Cassie went to shake the lawyer’s hand. Instead Ani hugged her, and inside Cassie wanted to cry with gratitude.
« «
Most of the time, airlines booked the overnights for the Long Island airports at Long Island hotels. If you only had twelve hours, it made no sense to go into Manhattan, especially since Manhattan lodging rarely came with a free courtesy van: the airports were too far away and the traffic too unpredictable.
But not all of the time. If the overnight was long enough, even the U.S. carriers would send their crews into midtown and provide a van to and from the airport. Certainly many of the foreign carriers did. It was a very civilized perk for an out-of-town crew to get a night a few blocks from Times Square or a subway ride from Greenwich Village instead of one where your room overlooked the lights of Runway 4R.
Cassie knew the departures for most of her airline’s overseas JFK flights by heart, and even which domestic sequences were likely to have a layover long enough that the crew would be staying in midtown. And she knew that frequently the airline used the Dickinson on Lexington and Forty-Ninth. So whenever she could, she would take the subway from her apartment three stops north to the hotel and hitch a ride with a flight crew to the airport. The alternative? Get off at Grand Central and take the Airporter bus. The Airporter only cost ten bucks with her airline discount, which was about what she could afford. But in the summer she would sweat like a marathon runner—the polyester uniform didn’t help—and her makeup would melt on her way to the subway. In the winter, she would freeze or her suitcase and clothing would be sprayed with road salt and slush. There were flight attendants who thought she was insane to live in Manhattan when her base was JFK, but Manhattan was everything that her childhood home in rural Kentucky wasn’t. She was never going to give up that apartment. Never. Besides, she knew lots of flight attendants who would waste a valuable day off or have to get up early commuting from Buffalo or Boston or Detroit to their base—including Megan, who came in from D.C.—and then spend a half day or an overnight in some squalid crash pad near the airport. She’d lived in one once, the bottom bunk in a basement bedroom in a ramshackle townhouse in Ozone Park, Queens. There were at least a dozen other flight attendants who lived there—or, to be precise, crashed there for a few nights or few days or few hours a month.
Today she didn’t waste time on a manicure, not after spending so much of the morning with the lawyer. But the subway was delayed, and the crowd on the platform grew as she stood there, her roller beside her and her phone in her hand. It wasn’t near rush hour, so the hordes from New York Life hadn’t yet descended into the tunnel, but still there were droves because this was Manhattan. And it was when she had been standing there nearly ten minutes that the claustrophobia was replaced by something deeper: unease. She began to inventory the people around her. There were the young mothers with their small children, the high school kids and the college students, the white collar and the blue collar and all manner of delivery women and men. It was just another midsummer melting pot of the aged and the youthful, an abstract of smileless faces above polo shirts and summer dresses, above blazers and sweats and tees for the local sports teams.
But she had the sense, real or imagined, that in this crush was someone who was there just for her. There was someone watching her. She could tell herself that this was mere paranoia, absolutely understandable after what she had seen in Dubai. It was, perhaps, an inevitable if mean-spirited trick of the mind.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling. She was a woman, and she had spent enough time alone on subway platforms or streets late at night to know when something was wrong. When someone approaching was sketchy. When it was time to move and to move fast.
And so she did. She put her phone in her purse and grabbed the handle of her suitcase and began to push her way through the throngs, plowing forward with her head up and alert, scanning for that single individual who saw her and knew her and…
And what? Was someone actually going to attack her?
She couldn’t say. Maybe she was just being watched. Maybe it was all in her head. But she wasn’t going to risk that.
As she struggled to pull her suitcase through the revolving bars, she glanced behind her to see if anyone else was trying to fight their way upstream on the platform. She checked again as she lugged her suitcase up the stairs. But a train hadn’t arrived at the station, and so she was all alone as she made her way back up to the sunlight on the street. There was a cab across Park Avenue, heading north and slowing for the red light at the corner. It hadn’t a passenger, and so she raced for it, climbing into it from the street side.
“The Dickinson, please,” she told the driver, and looked back at the subway entrance as the light changed and the vehicle started north. There, emerging onto the sidewalk was a solitary figure in shades and a black ball cap, the brim pulled low on his head. A man. She couldn’t see his face; already they were too far away. But he seemed to be scanning the sidewalks, and then his gaze paused on her cab.
She told herself it was nothing; it was a coincidence that someone else had grown impatient and decided to walk or take a cab rather than wait for the next train.
But she didn’t believe that.
« «
By the time she got to the Dickinson, her own airline’s shuttle had left. She had missed it by no more than five minutes.
Fortunately, Lufthansa used the Dickinson as well. So, as she had at least three or four times in the past, she slipped the shuttle driver a ten and thumbed a ride with a German crew that was about to leave.
It was awkward: the pilots ignored her and the flight attendants whispered a few jokes to each other at her expense, but no one really cared. Mostly they understood because their salaries were as unimpressive as hers. A ride to the airport for a fellow flight attendant? Really, not that big a deal. Still, she stared out the window, half expecting to see a faceless man in a ball cap on the sidewalk snapping a cell phone picture of her in the van. When they had left the stop-and-start traffic of Manhattan, she read the paperback Tolstoy she had with her and tried not to be envious of the fact that she was not a part of the flock. She tried not to think paranoid thoughts, but she was sure she overheard one woman say something about Dubai to another. She feared she heard the syllable mord multiple times, and when she looked it up on her phone using Google Translate, it meant—as she suspected—“murder.” But she told herself that it was unlikely she had heard the word correctly. Why would they even be aware of Sokolov’s death? It would mean that someone in the shuttle had flown to Dubai recently, too, or would be flying there soon.
Which, alas, was possible. Very possible.
Before leaving her apartment, she had checked her computer one last time to see if the photos of her from the Royal Phoenician had gone viral. She’d done this every twenty minutes that day when she was home, it seemed. They hadn’t. At least not yet. But she knew that Ani was right and they would. She knew any moment she would get a text from Megan or Jada, because she had to believe that they were following the story, too—though, of course, not with her own vested interest.
She breathed in slowly and deeply and almost managed to convince herself that no one had been watching her on the subway platform. Almost. She took comfort in the fact that now she had a lawyer. She definitely felt better. But as the van inched its way along the Long Island Expressway, she sure as hell didn’t feel good.
« «
For a moment she paused before the window and watched the winking light at the edge of the wing, the distinct blink-blink of an Airbus. She shook her head, coming back to herself before she grew lost in the slow, rhythmic strobe. She had coach on this flight because it was Rome and she didn’t yet have quite enough seniority to always hold business or first class en route to the Eternal City. Of course, a lot of flight attendants preferred coach. These days, no one felt entitled to anything in economy, and so the passengers—especially on an overnight flight to Europe—were rather docile: the airlines had beaten out of them the idea that they had virtually any rights at all. Moreover, most people checked their suitcases on international flights, unlike on domestic ones, and so there was far less stress as people fought and jockeyed for space in the overhead compartments. Her only issue with coach? You really couldn’t flirt. There were too many people and the aisles were too thin and there were just too many families. Of course, she wasn’t in the mood to flirt. Not tonight. She wanted a drink—she needed a drink—and so when most of the cabin was sleeping or reading or watching movies on their laptops or tablets and she had a moment alone in the rear galley, she did something she almost never did: she took a plastic Cutty Sark single and downed it in one shot. Then she filled her mouth with Altoids, crunching them into bits and using her tongue to run the sand over her teeth.
« «
When they landed in Rome, it was still the middle of the night in America, and she had neither e-mails nor texts that were alarming. Mostly, she had e-mails from clothing and lingerie companies. The world had stood still.
« «
In the van, traveling from Fiumicino Airport into Rome, some of the crew made plans to meet in the lobby and stroll to the Spanish Steps. Apparently the Spanish Steps weren’t far from their hotel, and the Steps, in turn, weren’t far from some pretty tony shopping. The extra, a young flight attendant who had been called up from reserve to work the route, had never been to Rome and was so excited to be there that he was orchestrating a group visit to the Vatican. He was at once so enthusiastic and so charismatic that even one of the pilots said he might go.
“God, it’s been years since I’ve been to the Vatican,” that captain said. He was an older guy who commuted to work from West Palm Beach. His hair was the silver she liked in a pilot, and his skin was dark and leathery from years in the Florida sun. “Sign me up.”
“I say we do the museum, too,” said the young guy masterminding the trip. His name was Jackson, and he had been working coach with her. He was from a small town in Oklahoma near the Texas panhandle—“Nothing but grain elevators, crazy preachers, and people looking for Route 66,” he’d said—and couldn’t have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five. He was a baby. From their conversations in the galley and while playing Words with Friends on their phones in their jump seats, she had come to believe that his childhood had been a thousand times better than hers, but in some ways just as provincial. Becoming a flight attendant was at once rebellion and escape.
“You know there’s a secret room at the museum with nothing but statue penises,” the captain added. “My daughter studied abroad in Rome for a semester and said this is no urban legend.”
“Yup. I think it was a pope who had their junk broken off and covered with fig leaves,” said another flight attendant, a part of the team who had been working the business class cabin. Her name was Erica and she was a grandmother, but that was all Cassie knew about her. “But they actually kept them? Had not heard that. Wow. Who knew?”
“Okay, I have a mission in life. It’s probably above my pay grade to get the marble men back their privates, but someday I will see that secret room,” Jackson told them.
“Imagine: the Vatican has secrets,” Cassie said. She hadn’t spoken in a while and found the good cheer in the van infectious. But her pleasure was short-lived.
“Yeah, imagine,” said Erica. “God, the whole world has secrets. We all have secrets. Why should the Vatican be any different? A friend of mine was working a flight from Paris to Dubai last week. When they landed at JFK at the end of the sequence, the crew was met by the FBI. Why? A guy on the plane to Dubai was murdered in his freaking hotel room!”
“I’m not following,” said Jackson. “A passenger was killed in Dubai. Why did the FBI want to talk to the flight crew?”
“Well, they’re saying it was just a robbery that went bad, but my friend doesn’t believe that. Not for a second. The FBI asked the flight attendants if they’d seen anything unusual on his laptop or noticed any papers on his tray table or he’d said something that might be helpful. She thinks the fellow was a spy or one of the other flight attendants was a spy. You know, CIA? KGB? Something like that. My point? There are people out there with pretty serious secrets.”
“An airline is still a great cover for a spy,” said the pilot. “Always has been, always will be. You have a reason to travel. It’s easy—easier, anyway—to smuggle whatever you’ve stolen from the Pentagon or the Kremlin from one side of the planet to the other.”
Cassie watched from her seat in the van as several members of the crew started searching their phones for news of a dead man in Dubai. She reached into her purse for her sunglasses. She stared out the window, wishing she had an excuse here in Italy to hide herself in a scarf.
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Cassie decided not to join any of the crew on their different excursions. She murmured that she just didn’t feel up to much that afternoon, but she told the group that was shopping closer to the hotel to let her know where they were having dinner: she might catch up with them then.
At the hotel, she didn’t set the alarm on her phone and she didn’t ask the front desk for a wake-up call, and she was sound asleep by eleven in the morning. She opened her eyes on her own a little before two in the afternoon, waking to an almost catlike contentment. She never slept better than those deep, late-morning naps when she landed in Europe. For a long moment she gazed at the large abstract of the Coliseum on the wall beside the bed, and then she watched the thin, laser-like strip of light from the drapes. Eventually her mind wandered back to the last time she had awoken in a hotel room bed and she grew a little queasy. She knew she should reach for her phone on the nightstand.
Still, however, she allowed herself a moment more to linger. She thought of the cats at the shelter and she thought of her nephew and niece. She wanted to fixate on things that she loved and the moments in which she was not a mess.
Finally she stretched out her arm and grasped her phone. She pulled the sheet back over her head and looked at the screen. Was it worse than she expected? Perhaps. Perhaps not. She saw that she had slept through a phone call from Frank Hammond of the FBI and texts—three of them—from Megan. The texts alone told her all that she really needed to know:
Don’t know where you are but I saw two photos online. Have you seen them?
Call me when you can. I’m still in U.S. Not flying out til tonight. I have your back.
Guessing you’re in Europe. Call me. Jada and Shane have seen the photos too.
She put her phone down on the pillow beside her and closed her eyes. It was interesting that Megan had been careful to text nothing incriminating—or, at least, not irrevocably damning. The short sentence “I have your back” was the only thing she had written that might even be problematic, but Cassie had watched enough legal dramas on TV to know (or, at least, to be able to reassure herself) that a remark like that could be construed a thousand ways.
But its implication was clear to Cassie: Megan believed that she was the woman in the security camera photos and likely had spent the night with Sokolov, and now Megan was willing to cover for her friend. She was willing to keep to herself the fact that Cassie had only returned to her hotel room in Dubai moments before the crew was supposed to be downstairs to leave for the airport. Perhaps she was willing to do even more than that: perhaps she was willing to be part of an alibi.
Either way, Cassie knew that she had to call Megan back. She wasn’t sure about Hammond. She should probably call Ani instead. Wasn’t that what lawyers were for?
Either way, however, first she needed a drink. She should probably eat something, too.
She climbed from the bed, surprised by how cold the room was, and saw the small refrigerator in the hotel room was empty. There wasn’t a minibar, which meant that she’d have to go downstairs. And while she guessed it was possible she’d run into someone from the flight, she thought it unlikely. By the time she had showered and gotten dressed and taken the elevator to the lobby, they’d be long gone—if they hadn’t left already.
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When she was dressed, her hair dry and her makeup on, she sat on the edge of the bed and surveyed the hotel room. She had never stolen anything from a hotel for herself, but over the years she had taken things for her sister and her nephew and niece. Sometimes she tried to rationalize the thefts: the hotel was overpriced, the stuff was junk anyway, and (of course) everyone else took the soap. She could recall bringing her sister a beautiful black bathrobe from France (which she had actually stolen from the dirty hamper of a maid service cart in the hallway), exotic throw pillows from Vietnam, fancy wooden coat hangers from San Francisco, a Wedgwood blue coffee service from Italy (which was on the corridor floor outside another guest’s hotel room), very fluffy towels from Miami, and a brass magazine stand from Germany. For the kids she was most likely to pilfer little decorative sculptures or small but interesting prints or paintings or photos that weren’t bolted to the wall. (When she took a photograph or a print, she would always steal it the moment she checked in, calling down right away to the front desk to report the blank spot above the bed or beside the armoire.) She’d brought them images of lighthouses and skyscrapers and the iconic architectural landmarks of Paris and Sydney and Rome. In her hotel rooms, she’d found them trinkets and paperweights of dragons (Hanoi), Vikings (Stockholm), and ballerinas (Moscow).
Did her sister suspect the gifts were stolen? Perhaps. But Cassie always insisted that she had paid for them, in some cases swearing that the objects were sold at the hotel gift shop. She always cleaned them, boxed them, and wrapped them when she was back in New York.
She wasn’t searching for gifts for anyone in particular right now, but she noticed a small replica of a famous statue of the mythical twins Romulus and Remus as infants, nursing from the wolf that saved them. It was on a side table, atop the leather-bound guest directory and a magazine for tourists about Rome, and she realized that once upon a time it had been half of a pair of bookends. She stood up and lifted it. The bookend was maybe six inches long and six inches wide, and made of copper. It was hollow, but filled with sand. Her nephew was about to start sixth grade, and she had a vague memory of studying the Greek and Roman myths when she was that age. She associated Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, with her beautiful young teacher for sixth grade: Diana Dezzerides. She thought Tim would get a charge out of the sculpture once he had been properly introduced to the great myths. It would be a Christmas present. She would tell Rosemary that she had discovered it in an antique store, and because it was only half the set, she had gotten it for a song. The key would be to find something equally as idiosyncratic for her niece.
The idea of slipping the copper bookend into her suitcase gave her a small rush. The truth was that she didn’t loot like this to punish the hotel or because it was the only way she could afford to bring her family gifts; she didn’t even really try and convince herself that it wasn’t all that different from stealing the soap, because she knew it was. Like almost everything else she did, it was crossing a line that most people wouldn’t. She did it because it thrilled her. It was just that simple. She did it because it was, like so much else that made her happy, dangerous and self-destructive and just a little bit sick.
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The hotel bar was quiet in the middle of a weekday afternoon, but it was cozy and dark and warm without being hot. Most people preferred to drink outside in the sunlit piazza, and so Cassie had the place to herself. She brought her paperback with her, though she was never one of those single women who minded eating or drinking—certainly not drinking—alone. She didn’t bring the book as a prop or a buffer against intrusion. She thought she might actually see if “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” would offer any spiritual insight into the death of Alex Sokolov. She doubted it, but she’d read a little more of “Happy Ever After” upstairs in her hotel room and found that the story had been a welcome diversion from the maelstrom of her real life. She was starting to like Masha: she was starting to like her a lot.
The bartender was a slim young guy with reddish-brown hair he slicked back and a trim mustache. His eyes were moonstone, and the uniform here was a white shirt and blue vest that happened to match those eyes perfectly. He smiled at her and she ordered a Negroni, and then took it with her to a leather booth in the back, choosing the one beside a replica of a classic sculpture of Mercury and beneath a Tiffany lamp with a stained-glass shade. She made sure there was cell service before she got comfortable. Then she took a long swallow, savoring the burn of the gin, and sucked for a long moment on the orange peel. When the glass was half empty, she sat back and called Megan. Her friend picked up quickly.
“My overseas plan is fine for texting, but not great for talking,” she told Megan, “so we should get right to it.”
“See, if you had small children, you’d have a great plan for talking. But if you had teenagers, like me, you wouldn’t: the last thing you want is to deal with your daughters’ dramas overseas. I’m in the same boat as you.”
“Your kids are terrific.”
“They’re hormonal beasts who love me madly one day and want me locked in the attic the next.”
“I read your texts. Are you alone? Can you talk?”
“Yeah, now is fine. The beasts are out,” Megan said. Then: “Look, I saw the photos. We’ve all seen the photos. It is you, isn’t it?”
And instantly Cassie understood her mistake: she shouldn’t have called Megan back. She should only have phoned Ani. Yes, she and Megan had known each other for years, but in the end Cassie was now going to have to ask Megan to perjure herself. She wasn’t quite at that place yet, however—she was still too sober. But the crux of the problem was really very simple: she had told Megan one thing in Dubai and Derek Mayes another at the diner in New York. So far she had told the FBI nothing. If she was to accomplish anything right now, she should see if there was a way to reconcile her two stories and get Megan and Derek on the same page. She swallowed the last of her Negroni, and the bartender, as if he were telepathic, emerged from behind that great, wonderful balustrade of a bar and was at her side, asking if she wanted another drink. She nodded enthusiastically.
“What photos?” she asked Megan, stalling for time by playing dumb.
“You haven’t seen them? You really haven’t seen them?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cassie could hear the woman’s great sigh of exasperation through the phone. “There are two photos on the web of a woman who looks like you and is wearing a scarf that might be the one you bought when we landed in Dubai. You know, at the airport? The photos are from the hotel in Dubai where the guy from two C was killed. The hedge fund guy. In one picture, she’s with the dude; in the other, she’s alone. Jada is sure it’s you. Shane is absolutely positive.”
“And you?” Cassie asked. She wished Alex Sokolov were more than the guy from 2C or the hedge fund guy. He deserved better. “What do you think?”
“Tell me, were you with him? I know you didn’t kill him. But were you with him? Just tell me that. The FBI has been calling. I’m supposed to meet with them today and I need to know what you want me to say.”
What you want me to say. The words echoed in Cassie’s mind.
“I guess the FBI will be calling me, too, when I get back,” she said, instead of mentioning that she already had a message from an agent herself. She watched the bartender preparing her drink, and tried to will him to hurry up. She needed to ratchet up the pain medication.
“Yeah. I guess,” said Megan, her tone equal parts frustration and derision.
“I’m glad I’m in Italy. Where are you this month?”
“Berlin. The seven-thirty flight tonight.”
“I like that flight.”
“You’re not answering my question. Should I read something into that?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then what’s going on? What’s really going on?”
The bartender returned with her drink and when he placed it on the table, she had an urge to reach out and touch his long, beautiful fingers. Instead she murmured her thanks and plucked the orange peel from the rim, tossing it unceremoniously onto the table beside her small paperback book. Then she drank it down at least an inch and a half. “Here’s what I want you to do,” she began.
“Go on.”
“I want you to forget I ever told you that I picked up a guy at the hotel bar in Dubai. I want you to forget we ever spoke that morning in my hotel room before we left the city. As far as anyone knows, I never left my hotel room that night. I didn’t even order up room service. That’s all.”
There was a long pause and Cassie used the opportunity to drink some more. Her stomach was empty. She knew she would be feeling better soon.
“So you want me to lie,” said Megan.
“I doubt it will ever come to that.”
“It will.”
“Then, yes. Please.”
“Can you tell me anything more?”
“Oh, Megan, I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea. I just don’t want you to get sucked into this. Assume I really did hook up with a guy from our hotel. Why not just believe that, okay?”
“Because you’re a spy.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“One more thing,” Cassie said. “You haven’t told Jada or Shane or anyone about our conversation in my hotel room in Dubai that morning—and what I said, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, then. Good.”
“Send me your schedule for August, so I know when we’re both going to be in the same time zone,” Megan asked. “We have a lot to talk about. It would be great if it could even be in person.”
“I agree,” Cassie said. “I’ll send you my schedule. Maybe we’ll be at JFK the same day.” Then she thanked her—deeply and sincerely—and took the last of her Negroni to the bar. She knew she should call Ani now, but she couldn’t cope. She just couldn’t. The bartender was leaning back and looking at something on his phone. He had a gold badge with his name: Enrico.
“Another one?” he asked when he noticed her. He had only a trace of an Italian accent.
“Yes, please. You make a good one.” She couldn’t recall the last time she’d had sex sober, and wondered a little now at the synaptic connection between her body—body image, really—and booze. Between intimacy and intoxicants. She ran her fingers through her hair: she needed another drink to make these sorts of mental gymnastics go away. Some lives, including hers, were best left unexamined. She was buzzed just enough to crave a little shame. To crave this young waiter.
“Campari is an acquired taste,” he said.
“Oh, I acquired it a long time ago.”
“It couldn’t have been all that long.”
She shrugged. “You’d be surprised.” Then: “Your English is very good.”
“I have a grandmother who’s American. And we have lots of American guests here.”
“Tell me something, Enrico,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Did they pick the vests here because of your eyes?”
He smiled at her, one side of his mouth curling up a little higher than the other. If he hadn’t been so young, she guessed it would have looked rakish. She hoped he only worked until dinner, so she could bring him back to her room and still get a good night’s sleep.