It was after five on a Thursday afternoon in the summer, but she reminded herself that people were still working. There might be people in the office.
And so that part of her that even sober cavalierly hopscotched across lines most adults had the common sense to respect led her now to the soaring atrium of an office building on the Avenue of the Americas. Here was where Unisphere housed its Manhattan employees and where, once upon a time, Alex Sokolov had worked. The idea had come to her when she had been stripping off her uniform, planning to change into a casual summer slip of a dress for a mani-pedi and then a quiet evening at home. Instead she put on a blouse and skirt and pantyhose, and took a cab to the building on Forty-Ninth Street. She simply had to know more than she was learning on the web, especially with another face-to-face meeting with the FBI tomorrow afternoon.
She told one of the two uniformed men behind the chest-high marble counter that she had a five-thirty appointment with Alex Sokolov, showed them her driver’s license, and signed in. But when they asked her to write her name in the book, she scribbled something that looked more like Alessandra than Cassandra and a last name that was indecipherable.
As she expected, after a few minutes a slim, statuesque woman in a black blazer emerged from the elevator bank. She had gray eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, and introduced herself as Jean Miller from Human Resources. “And your name is Cassandra?” she continued.
“Alessandra,” Cassie answered. She shrugged. “They sound the same.”
“Alessandra…what?”
“Ricci. Alessandra Ricci.”
The executive motioned toward a marble bench far from the elevators and led Cassie there. “Let’s sit down.”
“Is everything all right?” Cassie asked. “I thought at first you were Alex’s assistant and were going to escort me upstairs. But you said you’re with personnel. Has something happened?”
She nodded. “Yes. Something has. I’m so sorry you haven’t heard and I’m so sorry I’m the one who has to tell you.” She took a breath. Then: “Alex was killed last week in Dubai.”
Cassie wrapped her arms around her chest and stared at Jean, hoping that she wasn’t overacting. “My God. Killed? How?”
“Someone stabbed him. Or, I guess, cut his throat. In his hotel room.”
“That’s horrible. Just awful,” she murmured, looking down at her shoes and shaking her head. “Why? Have they caught the person? Or the people?”
“No, they haven’t. And we don’t know why. The motive was probably robbery.”
“In Dubai? That city’s supposed to be so safe.”
“I guess things can happen anywhere,” said Jean.
“He was such a sweet guy. Did you know him well?”
“I knew him better than I did some of the other managers.”
“How come?”
“He was from Virginia. I’m from North Carolina. Not a lot of southerners in this office. So even though our paths weren’t likely to cross all that often for work, we sometimes had coffee. Sometimes we chatted. ‘Visited,’ as we might say in the South.”
Cassie almost said that she was from Kentucky, a reflex. She stopped herself just in time. Instead she said, “He introduced me to Russian literature. I hadn’t read Tolstoy, not even in college, until we met.”
Jean smiled. “He was weirdly bookish.”
“Weirdly?”
“The sort of man who runs a hedge fund isn’t usually the sort of man we think of curled up with a book.”
“What books did he talk to you about?”
“Oh, you know…”
Cassie waited, hoping Jean would elaborate, but she didn’t. When she remained silent, Cassie said finally, “He loved Tolstoy and Pushkin. Turgenev. We talked about whatever he was taking with him to read on airplanes all the time.”
“I’m glad you two shared that.”
“He had a girlfriend in Dubai—a friend who was a girl. Her name was Miranda. Any idea who that might be? He ever mention her when you two would…visit?”
“Why?”
“He told me he was going to have dinner with her when he was there. He was looking forward to it. They were just friends, but he was hoping it would become something more. He had a crush on her. You said you knew him a bit. Did he ever talk about her? Miranda?”
Jean looked at her a little more intensely now. “What’s her last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either,” she said. “But I’ll be sure and tell the police about her. The FBI, actually. I think you need to speak to them, too.”
“Yes, of course. Absolutely.”
“Tell me, why were you supposed to meet with Alex today? His assistant had nothing on his calendar this afternoon. He wasn’t even supposed to be in America today. I asked her on my way downstairs.”
“Was he supposed to be in Dubai still?”
“Moscow.”
“He traveled a lot.”
“He did. Was your meeting today a personal thing, Alessandra? Is that why he didn’t tell his assistant?”
She shrugged. “We’re friends, yes. We were friends. Sorry. But I was also a client of his. Of yours.” She recalled his obituary. “I’m invested in the Stalwarts Fund.”
Jean seemed to take this in, absorbing the information. Cassie considered the possibility that she simply didn’t look wealthy enough to be an investor. But then Jean said, shaking her head ever so slightly, “That is such an old boy fund. Such an old man fund. Why did you invest in it?”
“Alex recommended it.”
She sighed. “I thought we’d called every one of his clients to tell them what had happened to poor Alex.”
“Maybe I have a voice mail I missed.”
“Maybe. But we were persistent,” Jean said, and for the first time she sounded slightly dubious. “I really was under the impression that we’d spoken with everyone. Everyone.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Would you like me to schedule a meeting for next week with someone about your account? Or a phone call tomorrow?” She pulled a phone from her blazer pocket and opened a calendar app. “We can do this right now.”
“Yes. Certainly. Who would that be?”
“We have a couple of managers who are diving in. You tell me what’s convenient for you.”
“Okay,” she agreed, and she suggested anytime on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, and then offered a fake phone number and a fake e-mail address. When Jean stood, Cassie stood with her and exited back into the summer heat, aware that the executive probably was memorizing every detail about her that she could. She guessed the woman would be on the phone with the FBI before she had even crossed the street.
* * *
? ?
As she walked south, she inventoried in her mind the little she had learned: Alex was going to Moscow from Dubai and he had never mentioned a person named Miranda to this other Unisphere employee. He ran a fund that, at least in the opinion of this woman from personnel, had a select group of investors: old boys. She couldn’t fully translate what that meant, but she had a sense it meant Russian. Old Russians. In her mind, she saw a portrait of the Politburo, circa 1967. A lot of bald white guys with bad haircuts.
It wasn’t much, but it was something, and she was glad she had gone there.