“Agent Marriott, Agent King, it’s good to meet you,” he said, slurring the words slightly and then taking a sip of scotch. “I wasn’t going to let you in, but then I thought that you might liven things up a little around here.” He looked over to Paige, and she had the sensation of being looked over in detail by the magician. “You especially, Agent King.”
“I’m glad we could brighten up your day,” Paige said. “But we’re here to talk about a serious matter, Mr. Zint. Maybe we could talk in private?”
“And leave my guests without me?” Zint said. “Nonsense. Come on, join us. We’re playing five card stud.”
“We’re here on work, Mr. Zint,” Christopher said. “It really is important that we speak with you.”
Zint shrugged. “Does that mean that you can’t have fun while you’re doing it? Come on, join me. My butler will get you a drink. You want a drink, don’t you, Agent King. You can almost taste it.”
Paige noticed him tapping his fingers on the table as he spoke, as if to emphasize certain words.
“No, but I’ll play cards if you want,” Paige said. It seemed like the best way to get their suspect to talk right then.
“Shall we start with a card trick?” Zint said. “You think of a card, and if I guess it, you have to tell me something about yourself that you haven’t told someone else.”
“The queen of diamonds?” Paige guessed with a smile. “I spotted your cues on the way in, Mr. Zint. We need to talk to you about Sienna Niven.”
“It would be so much more fun to talk about you,” Zint said. “Come on, play with us.”
Paige sighed and let him deal her in. “If I win, will you talk to us about Sienna?”
“You think you’re going to win?”
“Well, you do have a tell,” Paige said.
Zint smiled at that. “You think so?”
Paige shrugged. “I don’t mean the twitch of your eyebrows. That’s obviously deliberate. But you have tension at the corners of your mouth when you have a bad hand that isn’t deliberate.”
“You think you can read me?” For a moment or two, Zint looked angry, then almost amused. “I feel a really strong connection to you, Agent King. I’m sure you should have a drink with me. Or maybe we could see one another later when you’re not at work.”
Again, he was tapping the table at intervals, as if to emphasize particular words. Paige realized what he was doing.
“Mr. Zint, trying some subliminal hypnosis nonsense isn’t going to work,” Paige said. “I’m not in the mood for cheap psychological tricks. We’re here investigating a murder.”
“Cheap psychological tricks?” Zint said. “I’ve studied human psychology deeper than anyone you’ve met, Agent.”
Paige saw Christopher smile at that. “I feel I should point out that Agent King has a Ph.D. in it, Mr. Zint.”
“Then we have so much in common,” Zint said.
“Is this how it starts for you with women, Mr. Zint?” Paige asked. “Do you try to use techniques from your act to manipulate them into seeing you? Is that what you tried with Sienna Niven?”
“Do you know the problem with today’s culture?” Zint demanded, standing. “A man can’t say anything nice about a woman! He can’t pay her a compliment, or show her that he’s interested in her. And if he dares to while he’s in the public eye, he finds himself canceled.”
“You still seem to be doing quite well,” Paige said.
“That’s because people appreciate the advances I’ve made. I’ve put together a unique blend of NLP, operant conditioning, suggestion, hypnosis, and choice funneling that works just as well in the boardroom as it does on the stage. That’s why people pay me a fortune to work with their companies. Do they pay you like that, Miss Ph.D.?”
He'd gone from trying to hit on Paige to being nasty in a matter of moments. It showed just how quickly he might have turned on Sienna.
“What about Mylene Jacques, or Clarissa Bale?” Christopher said, obviously trying to push past Zint’s attempts at deflection. “Do those names mean anything to you?”
“I think I saw them on the news,” Zint said.
“They were murdered as well, Mark,” Paige said. “Have you ever met them? Have you had the kind of conflict with them that you had with Sienna?”
Christopher had his own question at almost the same moment.