When we rolled up to the corner of East 65th Street and Third Avenue on the Upper East Side, it occurred to both of us that prostitute was perhaps not the right term after all. A gentleman’s escort seemed more accurate. An expensive one, at that.
There are apartment buildings in the city, and there are luxury apartment buildings. This was definitely the latter. Even the doorman’s suit was nicer than mine.
At the security desk, a guy in a guard’s uniform gave us a look that all but screamed retired cop. Elizabeth did with him what I couldn’t do. Flash a badge.
On the twenty-eighth floor we stepped out of the elevator and into a large foyer. A vase on the pedestal table in the center of the space held an arrangement of freshly cut flowers, mostly hyacinths. Their violet-blue color matched the vertical stripes of the wallpaper lining the hallway.
The address Julian had given me brought us to the last door on the right. A corner apartment. Again, I let Elizabeth lead the way. Not only did she have the badge, she had the better job title for the task at hand.
Within seconds of her knocking we heard footsteps approaching on the other side of the door. Elizabeth didn’t wait to be asked who we were.
“I’m agent Elizabeth Needham,” she said, before holding up her badge in front of the peephole. “Are you Paulina?”
“Yes,” came her voice.
“Could you please open the door? We need to speak with you.”
There was a pause. Pauses are fine. Just so long as they’re not followed by footsteps walking away from the door. Or, worse, running. Neither was the case. A dead bolt snapped, and like that we were standing in front of a tall and slender blonde wearing a pair of sweatpants and a white T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back, she had no makeup on, and the heavy-framed glasses she was wearing looked straight out of Revenge of the Nerds. Still, she was absolutely, positively stunning.
“Come in,” she said.
She had the Russian accent of someone who’d clearly been working over the years to get rid of it. Detectable, but only barely. She didn’t inquire who I was, which meant Elizabeth didn’t have to introduce me. Perfect.
I’d gone over the questioning back in the limo. I would never ask Elizabeth to follow a script, just her instincts, but there was one particular question I needed posed to Paulina Zernivik, and it had to come before any others.
“Have you heard from Carter von Oehson since his suicide?”
I watched carefully as Paulina processed the implications of what Elizabeth was asking her. I wasn’t so much waiting for the answer—at least not the one she’d put into words. I all but expected her to pretend she didn’t know who Carter was.
No, what mattered was the answer she’d give before even opening her mouth. The body language. The squint of recognition on hearing Carter’s name. A sudden tensing of the shoulders when the brain, in a fit of panic, tells her to lie. All the unmistakable signs that she was hiding something about Carter’s disappearance.
C’mon, Paulina, show me what you’ve got…
Only her eyes didn’t narrow. Her shoulders actually relaxed. Paulina Zernivik had nothing to reveal—except relief. The kind you can’t fake.
“Oh, thank God,” she said.