? ?
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.”