“Is that lovely cognac you mentioned at Sant Ambroeus still available?” I ask.
“In fact it is,” he says, “but it’s not cognac. It’s Armagnac, which, in my humble opinion, is far superior. So you’re in for a real treat.”
He gives me a cocksure smile. I smile back because he’s expecting me to, but I can’t dislodge from my mind that the same smirk was probably on full display when he choked Charlotte to death.
Paul’s apartment is exactly as I’d imagined it. It reminds me of Patrick Bateman’s place in the movie American Psycho, minimalist and stylized to the very last detail. The walls are a stark white and the floors a dark stain. The furniture complies with the monochromatic scheme—black leather sofa, white chairs, black-and-white photography on the walls.
“You have a lovely home,” I say.
“Thank you,” he says, seeming proud of himself. “I’ve been here for about five years. I have one of the smallest places in the building . . . because my place isn’t quite fourteen rooms. It’s what’s known in the prewar world as an ‘Edwardian five,’ which is a one-bedroom with a full dining room, and a second, very small bedroom designed to house a maid. An apartment for old-world bachelors who entertain.”
“Or latter-day investment bankers with commitment issues,” I say.
“Yes, that seems to be the market today,” he says, laughing.
I look around the living room, although I don’t really expect to find Tumi luggage beside his Mapplethorpes.
“Allow me to pour us that Armagnac,” he says.
“While you’re pouring, I’m going to excuse myself for a moment. Which way to your bathroom?”
He points down the hallway, past the dining room, and then heads to the kitchen to open his fancy liqueur.
I walk past the bathroom and smack into his bedroom. A king bed with an enormous headboard is front and center. It’s the only furniture in the room aside from an ultramodern glass desk under the window. Paul apparently doesn’t watch television in bed—or maybe he does it on a laptop.
His closet is the size of my bedroom, with at least twenty-five suits, all on padded hangers, assorted by color, looking a little like a paint palette at the hardware store, the grays going from dark to light. His ties are similarly arranged by hue on a rack on the door, and his shoes are stacked floor-to-ceiling. In the back is an array of sweaters so plentiful it evokes that scene with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby.
But there it is. On the top shelf. A medium-size suitcase made of space-age-looking black material: Tumi.
I unzip it. Inside is another suitcase of the identical design. Paul has a set. The small and medium sizes are here, but the large is not. It’s no doubt now in the police evidence room.
“Hey, where’d you go?” Paul calls out from the other room.
“Coming!” I shout, as I scamper back to the living room.
Paul is standing at his counter, snifter in hand. I walk over to him with murder on my mind. But how?
“This is Armagnac, which is often confused with cognac, but they’re actually completely separate drinks,” he says—pontificates, is more accurate. “In fact, Armagnac predates the invention of cognac by seven centuries,” he continues. “The main difference is that Armagnac is only distilled once, whereas cognac goes through the process a second time. The result is that it’s more flavorful.”
He hands me my glass of Armagnac, but I don’t take it. Instead, I grab a chef’s knife from the butcher block and brandish it as if it were a gun.
His eyes widen, and he takes a step back. “What the hell, Ella?”
“Pull down your pants.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Pull down your goddamn pants!”
He looks even more terrified than before. Undoubtedly afraid I’m going to go Lorena Bobbitt on him.
“Do it!” I scream.
He slowly reaches for his belt and unfastens it. Then he pulls down the zipper. Finally, his pants drop to the floor, leaving pinstriped boxers.
“Those too,” I say.
“Ella, please.”
I can’t deny that I like seeing him so defenseless. I take half a step closer to him and jab the knife. “Now!”
His boxers drop to his ankles. He looks about as ridiculous as a man can look. From the waist up, he’s dressed in full business attire—pressed white shirt, silk black tie, jacket—while from the waist down he’s naked as the day he was born, his flaccid penis hanging between his legs like a sad bird.
I walk backward toward his door, continuing to wave the knife. He doesn’t move toward me, clearly relieved that I’m retreating.
A moment later, I’m on the street. I still have Paul’s kitchen knife in my grip. I slide it into my purse as I reach inside to retrieve my cell phone and call Gabriel.
“I just came from Paul Michelson’s place. He has Tumi luggage.”
“You saw it?”
“I did. In his closet.”
“That’ll be enough for a search warrant for sure. We’ll pick him up right now.”
I come close to telling him the other part—that Paul doesn’t have a scar on his hip. I withhold it for two reasons. First, I’m convinced he killed Charlotte, and therefore there’s no reason to sow any doubt in Gabriel’s mind. The scar could have been fiction, but nearly everything else matches—he’s a banker, he wears a Patek Philippe, he met Charlotte at the museum, just like she described in the book. And he has the same Tumi luggage.
Second, it’s too humiliating for me to admit to Gabriel that I held Paul at knifepoint and made him pull down his pants. I assume that Paul will explain this to Gabriel when they pick him up, but then I assuage that concern with the realization that Paul’s been coached well enough—by me—that he’ll know to exercise his right to remain silent.
“Ella . . . are you okay?” Gabriel asks.
“I . . .” I stop in midthought. Gabriel’s not the person to confide in that I’m angry with myself that I didn’t kill that son of a bitch. I wanted to, I truly did. And if he had the scar, maybe I would have. But at the last second, I lost my nerve.
“Ella . . . ?” Gabriel says again.
“Yeah . . . I’m fine. It’s a lot, you know?”
“You did great. Be proud of yourself. Your sister’s going to receive justice.”
I know he means to comfort me, but his words have the opposite effect. I had the opportunity to deliver justice in the biblical sense, and I failed.
37.
Dylan knocks on my door at seven. I’m not sure exactly what comes over me, but all the emotion I’ve been bottling up, not only since I learned that Charlotte was dead, but from the moment Zach called to say she was missing, suddenly bursts free. Rather than debilitating me with sorrow, it manifests by my ravishing Dylan.
“Are you sure?” he says when I start kissing him. “I mean, we can just talk . . .”
I can barely catch my breath. “No, I need to do this. Now.”
It isn’t more than thirty seconds later that we’re in my bedroom, groping at each other in the dark. I almost feel badly for Dylan as he tries to keep up with me. I can’t recall ever being so overwhelmed by desire. It feels like needing a fix. I have to escape one existence and enter another.