by Adam Mitzner
My plan isn’t much of one. I’ll suffer through lunch and then accede to his request to go back to his place. Once there, I’ll search for Tumi luggage while he no doubt prepares for sexual conquest. I don’t have an exit strategy, not a small detail considering I suspect Paul of being a murderer—possibly of two women—but I’ll deal with that later.
“My pleasure. After all, you’re much better looking than him.”
Paul gives me a smile that I bet he thinks is sexy as hell.
“This wouldn’t have been my first choice for lunch with you, as it’s kind of a guy mecca,” he says. “But I hate to cancel a reservation, given that I have special table status here.”
It’s ironic that we’re at 21. When Charlotte and I were little, my father would take us here for our birthdays. It was very exciting for us to order a twenty-one-dollar burger. I remember how impressed Charlotte was that the ketchup came on a little dish and not in a Heinz bottle.
The waiter approaches and asks if there’s anything we’d like to drink.
“I normally don’t at lunch,” Paul says, “but I’m game if you are.”
I want him drunk. It will help later.
“I have nowhere to be this afternoon,” I say with what I hope he perceives as a flirty smile. “What do you think goes well with an overpriced burger?”
“I’m thinking a cabernet,” Paul says. He peruses the wine list, which is as thick as a novel. “Yes, we’ll take a bottle of the Brunello di Montalcino La Torre 2009.”
Amoroso calls back thirty minutes later. “We need the full hundred million,” he says, then hangs up without uttering another word.
I take it as a sign that everything is heading in my direction. The Pouch deal will come through, and that will put me in line for another big bonus this year. And today I’ll turn the corner on the Charlotte situation by killing Ella.
After the wine is poured, when the waiter has stepped away, I tell Paul that my sister’s body has been found. He acts as if he hadn’t heard, which must be a lie—unless Paul is purposefully shielding himself from all forms of media because he doesn’t want to be reminded of his crimes.
“I’m so sorry,” Paul says, as if he had nothing to do with it. His feigned empathy lasts about a second before he gets to what he really wants to know. “Do you think they’ll be able to find out who did this now?”
I tell him that there has been a break in the investigation, but I’m not at liberty to share it just yet. I want him to sweat. From the smug look on his face, it hasn’t worked. I suppose killing two women hardens your nervous system. Then again, maybe Paul was always immune to guilt.
A few minutes later, our entrées arrive. By then Paul is droning on about this deal he’s working on, without any awareness that I couldn’t possibly care any less about it. All I want is for this part of the plan to be over so I can move on to phase two.
When the waiter comes and asks if we’d like any dessert or a digestif, I use the request as my opportunity to get into Paul’s apartment. Once there, I’ll be able to find out if he has a matching Tumi suitcase.
“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.
Ella barely lets me enter the apartment before her mouth is on mine. It reminds me of the night we met at Lava—how Ella knew exactly what she wanted and wasn’t going to be denied.
I would have preferred to talk first. After all, I’m here for information, not to get laid. But she literally pulls me into her bedroom. The room is so dark that I can barely see her face as she reaches for my pants. I decide to give her what she wants—then I’ll get what I’m after.
Dylan understands that I’m not interested in foreplay. It’s only a matter of seconds before he’s inside me.
From the first thrust, I’m cast into another dimension. In no time at all, I’m over the edge. Seconds later, I’m there for a second time.
Left to my own devices, I would have taken things more slowly, but Ella’s on her own timetable. She pulls me on top of her. A moment later, she lets out a shudder. Her head rolls back and her arms flay to the side, tightly gripping the sheets.
Charlotte was extremely vocal during sex. At times, it felt almost like she was narrating. Ella is her opposite in that regard. Almost mute. If I didn’t know better, I might think that she’s just going through the motions to get things over with. But I do know better. I can feel each of her orgasms, until they start coming in waves that won’t stop.
When it’s over, we lie there in a heap. The thick scent leaves no doubt what’s just occurred. My sheets are soaking wet.
“Jesus,” he says.
I laugh. “I’m sorry for taking such advantage of you. I don’t know what came over me.”
He gives me a sideways glance. “I don’t think you’re really sorry.”
He’s right, and I tell him so. “Not even a little bit. In fact, I’m actually more thankful than sorry.”
“I’m going to get some water,” he says. “Do you want any?”
“If you’re getting it. Sure.”
He climbs out of the bed and I watch his perfectly formed ass walk away.
I don’t even bother to try finding my underwear in the dark. Instead, I stroll out of the bedroom as naked as the day I was born.
The contrast between Ella’s darkened bedroom and the brightly lit living room is so stark that I’m initially blinded. It takes a moment for my pupils to adjust. When my eyes can focus, they catch sight of a yellow legal pad on the dining-room table.
It takes me only a second to scan the page.
Tumi suitcase
East River
Missing since Tuesday
Tall, black hair, handsome
Banker
Patek Philippe watch
Art gallery/topless out-of-focus photo
Married
Scar/initial/hip
I know immediately what I’ve just read. Ella has written down clues about Charlotte’s murderer.
How does Ella know I own a Patek Philippe? I’ve never worn it around her, as it doesn’t seem to be the kind of accessory an altruistic doctor would possess. And why on earth does she think that Charlotte’s killer owned one?
Tumi suitcase. The cops found it, apparently. But if they could trace it back to me, I would have already been visited by a swarm of New York City’s finest. It must be a dead end, just as I’d thought. The police seemingly also know that she went missing Tuesday, not Wednesday. McDouche must have changed his story to pass the polygraph.
But why has Ella concluded Charlotte was killed by a married banker? Only the banker part applies to me. And what does art gallery/topless out-of-focus photo mean? That isn’t me. I never took a photo of Charlotte topless, and we never went to an art gallery—or anywhere in public—together.
It’s the last entry—scar/initial/hip—that stops me cold. Somehow, Ella knows that Charlotte’s killer has a scar in the shape of his initial, and yet her phrasing indicates that she doesn’t know the letter it forms, which means she still doesn’t know the killer’s name. How could she know that? Maybe Charlotte told her . . . but then wouldn’t she also have shared the name that goes with the initial?
Relax, I tell myself. Even though the police have a lot more than I thought, neither they nor Ella know the one thing that matters—that I killed Charlotte.
But is that right? Is it possible that she hasn’t realized that I have a scar on my hip in the shape of a C? Even though she thinks my name is Dylan, if she notices a scar in the place she believes Charlotte’s murderer was so marked, that certainly would be too much of a coincidence for her to overlook.
This is the second time I’ve been naked before her. Both times, it was in her dark bedroom. Clearly, she hasn’t noticed. After Lava she was drunk and, just now, we went at it so fast and furious that I’m certain she didn’t see it.
But maybe that’s not right. Could it be that she didn’t know after our first session, but this time she’s seen it?
“Hey, did you get lost out there?” Ella calls from the bedroom.
“Just a second,” I shout back.
Dylan returns to the bedroom a minute later with two glasses of water, one in each hand. He holds one in front of his genitals, as if he’s embarrassed. He has nothing to be shy about, however. Far from it. A point that’s driven home by the fact that a highball glass doesn’t remotely cover him.
But then I feel a sharp pain in my brain. I now understand why Dylan’s suddenly become so modest.
I can see it through the glass. On his hip is a scar. It’s smooth, almost as if it were created with a scalpel. It’s in the shape of the letter C.
It’s like a bolt of lightning has struck me. Paul didn’t kill Charlotte. The naked man in front of me is my sister’s murderer.
Dylan matches the physical description of Matthew Harrison and now shares Charlotte’s fictional lover’s most defining feature—a scar on his hip. What Gabriel surmised must be right. Charlotte used the meeting with Paul in her book, but there can be only one explanation for why she decided to give Matthew a scar on his hip: She knew Dylan. More than just knew. She’d seem him naked.
Dylan Perry does not have a cyber footprint. Everything I know about him—including his name and his occupation—is based solely on what he’s told me himself. I think about what Gabriel said—how sociopaths like to stay close to the investigation. What better way to do that than to get close to me?
I’m instantly consumed by rage. All I want to do is leap out at Dylan and strangle him with my bare hands. Or grab the lamp on my nightstand and crack his skull. Instead, I suppress all impulses to attack—not because of my more charitable instincts, but for the least Christian reason of all. I’m concerned that I’ll fail.
He’s twice my size and obviously capable of choking the life out of a woman with whom he’s recently had sex. If I lunged at him now, he’d make quick work of me for sure. And grabbing the table lamp will not serve me well. It’s likely not heavy enough to do the job, and this is certainly one of those situations where I’ll only get one shot. If I try but don’t manage to kill him—or at least sufficiently stun him so that I can follow up with another blow—Dylan will surely kill me.
I scan the room for something else to bring the odds more in my favor. Everything else I see is soft or too unwieldy: fabric-covered chairs, clothing, my television, the cable box. None of those things converts well into a weapon.
And then I remember. My purse. It’s on the nightstand. And inside it is a knife.
I had thought about bringing a knife into the bedroom upon my return but decided against it because, given my nakedness, I had nowhere to hide it. I considered briefly dropping it in the water glass, but concluded that the element of surprise would be of greater advantage than a blade.
