“If she killed him? Absolutely,” said Ani, her tone decisive. Then: “You should call back Frank Hammond. Then call me back. Let’s plan on meeting tomorrow, regardless of whether he wants to see you again.”
Tomorrow was Friday. She had something on Friday. Maybe. She flipped through the calendar in her mind, trying to recall what it was. Then it came to her: Rosemary. Her nephew and niece. She needed to call Rosemary back because her sister and her family were coming to New York. Her sister had said something about the zoo on Saturday, so she guessed she wasn’t going to see them tomorrow.
“Sure,” she told Ani. “What time?”
“Come by my office around twelve fifteen. There’s a really good falafel cart around the corner on Fifty-Third Street, and it’s supposed to be a beautiful day. Do you like falafel? We could eat al fresco.”
“That’s fine,” she said, not really answering the question.
“Okay. But call me after you talk to the FBI.”
* * *
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“The air marshal on the flight said you and Sokolov were talking a lot. He noticed,” Frank Hammond was saying on the phone.
“I don’t remember,” Cassie said, as she opened her suitcase and started unpacking. A part of her knew that she shouldn’t be multitasking: all her attention should be on the FBI agent. But the unpacking was calming her.
“And the other crew members said he was your guy.”
“My guy?”
“Your section.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“And you two had a lot of interaction.”
“I doubt I had any more ‘interaction’ with him than I did with any other passengers I was serving,” she said. It was a lie, but interaction struck her as a vague, ridiculous word that was impossible to quantify. She wondered whether the flight crew was volunteering her name so enthusiastically or whether it was only the air marshal. She guessed it was also possible that Hammond had phrased his sentence this way because he was bluffing: he was trying to frighten her into believing that he knew more than he did.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “You chatted. A lot. It wasn’t just about the wine list.”
“I was polite. He was polite.”
“You were flirting. He was flirting.”
“Maybe he flirted with me a little,” she said. “But passengers flirt. They’re bored. They flirt with all of us when it’s a long flight.”
“Got it. Anyway, that’s why I’d like you to come in and chat. I want to see if Sokolov might have said something that can help us help the authorities in Dubai. That’s all.”
“May I bring a lawyer?” she asked. She wished instantly that she hadn’t inquired. What if he said no? But he didn’t. She dropped a dirty blouse into the hamper.
“That’s your right,” he answered simply.
“Okay, let me find out when my lawyer is free.”
“But we want to see you tomorrow.”
There wasn’t precisely an edge to his voice, but for the first time he hadn’t sounded quite so casual. Quite so laid back. It suddenly felt a lot less like this was busywork to him. And so she called back Ani and then she called back the agent, and they agreed to meet the next day at the FBI offices downtown at Broadway and Worth. She said that she’d be there at two o’clock sharp.
* * *
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She read the obituary in the newspaper, matching the man recalled in the story with the one who had made love to her in Dubai:
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Alexander Peter Sokolov, 32, died July 27, 2018, while traveling for business in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. He was born March 15, 1986, in Alexandria, Virginia. Alex, as he liked to be called, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia, double majoring in mathematics and foreign affairs, and then earned a Master of Quantitative Management at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He helped run the Stalwarts Fund for Unisphere Asset Management out of their Manhattan office. He loved his job because he loved data, but he also loved the fact that his work took him often to Russia, the Middle East, and the Far East. He was fearless, whether he was playing his beloved squash or exploring the world. But he was also a kind and generous friend and son. He loved movies and books, especially Russian literature, but most of all he loved anything surprising and new. He leaves behind a grieving father and mother, Gregory and Harper, as well as an extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins who will miss him dearly.
The funeral was the day after tomorrow, Saturday, at a Presbyterian church in Charlottesville. She imagined it crowded with Alex’s classmates from the University of Virginia, his childhood friends, and at least some of the employees he worked with at Unisphere. A part of her wanted to go, but she knew that she shouldn’t. She wouldn’t.
The obituary was short and actually revealed very little. In the end, that didn’t surprise her, either.
* * *
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She stared at the text from Buckley the actor. He said he had an audition on Friday for a pilot that was going to film in New York in the autumn, and had to get a haircut first thing in the morning. He wanted to know what country she was in, but hoped wherever she was, she was dancing barefoot. She recalled how her tale of the dead passenger in the coach bathroom had made him smile. She hadn’t answered his last text, but she decided to answer this one. She told him that she had just flown in from Rome, her feet were killing her, and the last thing she did before strapping in before landing was empty an airsickness bag full of some little boy’s pee into the lavatory. She added that the bag wasn’t full, because a lot of the urine had wound up on the passengers in the row ahead of the child, and he should take a moment and read the venom about the flight and the airline on Twitter. The hashtag, which already had a life of its own, was #WorstFlightThatDidntCrash. (It was actually a rather high bar, she thought, when she saw the hashtag gaining momentum.)
He suggested a late lunch the next day, after his audition, and she wondered what he would have thought if she had texted back that she was seeing her lawyer and then the FBI right about that time. She thought of the way they had parted the previous Sunday morning and sighed. She knew that most men desired her because she was attractive and she was smart, but also because she was a drunk and she was easy. This one? She hoped for his sake he wasn’t as different as he seemed, because she always disappointed those men quickly or broke their hearts over time.
She texted back that she was busy during the day tomorrow and going to the zoo on Saturday with her nephew and niece. She thought it made her seem wholesome—certainly more wholesome than she was. She suggested dinner tomorrow night and he agreed.
She couldn’t imagine what condition she’d be in after a second interview with the FBI and the print edition of the New York Post hitting the stands. She wondered if he would see the image and recognize her.
At some point she’d kicked off her shoes and pulled off her pantyhose, but she honestly couldn’t remember when. She had taken the bookend with Romulus and Remus from her suitcase and placed it on the glass coffee table. She couldn’t recall doing that either. It must have been when she was on the phone with the FBI. She stretched her toes; her feet really were killing her. She never had gotten that manicure, and now she needed a pedicure, too. That’s what she’d do this August evening. That would be her exciting Thursday night. She’d call neither Paula with her love for Drambuie nor Gillian with her willingness to pick up the pieces of the messes she left behind. (Momentarily she was struck by the ironically sobering revelation that all of her friends always expected the worst from her. But surrounded as she was by far more troubling and immediate realities, the insight passed.) She’d call no one. She’d steer clear of the bars and be level-headed and crisp tomorrow morning when she picked up the New York Post, when she met with Ani and Frank, and when—once more—she had to face the ghost of poor Alex Sokolov.
* * *
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