The Lady Upstairs

by Halley Sutton

  She stared up at me, gaze unfocused. I thought it was unlikely that she had ever said one word to Ellen. I was starting to feel the vodka already, slick and fizzy in my veins—no dinner planned until I met with Lou. (Oh God, I hadn’t thought about Lou in hours. What was I going to tell her, what excuse for my lateness? Jackal tied me to his bed, then went to Burbank for a sandwich?)

  Behind her chair stood Wexler, peacockless. He glanced at me and grinned. His teeth were so white they were practically blue. I decided I preferred the actors in the ground. “Where’d your catering platter run off to?” He made a big show of looking around. “Don’t tell me—you’re here to . . . showcase your various talents for the old man.”

  “Am I that easy to read?” I licked my lips and tried to surreptitiously crane my neck, seeking out Ellen’s bright dress in the mausoleum darkness.

  “You’ve got the Ava Gardner thing going with the face and the dimensions, but those clothes—” He tutted. “Besides, he’s got a buck-toothed blonde rubbing carpets thin for him these days.”

  My stomach dropped at that, but I didn’t say anything. Just because the affair was an open secret didn’t mean Klein wouldn’t pay—it only meant I’d have to work that much harder at crafting the right pitch. I shuffled it away—I’d consider that when I had hauled Ellen out of here by the frizz of her hair. I eyed the vodka bottle he was swirling and decided he wouldn’t remember me the next day anyway. “You know Ellen Howard? My little sister. Frizzy blonde hair, about five-six, follows directions like she aced kennel school? Seen her tonight?” Instead of answering, he pushed the bottle up to my face. I grimaced and knocked it away. “Christ, get a grip.”

  “I have something you could grip,” Wexler said, grinning.

  I looked around, but nobody else even acknowledged my existence. Instead, I caught the low hush of murmurs from deeper in the tomb, voices moving like shadows. I walked away from Wexler without saying goodbye, leaving him calling after me. I crept forward, hoping I wasn’t going to find Ellen’s sweating palms pawing at the crotch of Klein’s son in front of the old man himself.

  Thursday, a few more days, that was all I needed. I was so close to paying the Lady back, to getting the money for the police. I held my breath with each click of my shoes against the marble. I had to keep her going until Thursday.

  I got lucky. In front of Bugsy Siegel’s tomb—covered in Tropicana pink and coral kisses—old man Klein was flanked by a tiny army of wannabe movie babes. No Junior or Ellen in sight.

  “So tacky,” said one of two Harlow-blonde hussies.

  “Early in the night for it,” agreed a squinch-faced brunette—pretty in a knockoff-Audrey sort of way. She’d be catnip for marks who wanted to consider themselves American blueblood royalty—yachters, polo players, the country-club set. I shook the thought away. Klein, self-satisfied master of the universe, was rhythmically petting her head like she was a puppy, while the peroxide twins pouted prettily, preening for attention and giving the squat old man all their power. Nothing personal, ladies, I wanted to say, my knees weak with relief. He’s already got a blonde.

  Who wasn’t anywhere in sight. I turned to go—Ellen was still out there somewhere, canoodling; it was only a matter of time before someone spotted her—but Klein’s voice stopped me dead.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  I froze. If I turned tail and scurried away without answering, it would look worse, like I wasn’t meant to be there. Play it big, I told myself. Be bold. There’s no way he remembers you from the St. Leo. He barely noticed you.

  In the dark, Klein’s face lit only by a flashlight held by one of the Harlows, he looked like a helpless old man. Eyes shrunken into the blue half-moons of his sockets. Long hairs curling out of his ears. Not so very many years removed from his own enormous mausoleum. He looked feeble. Not capable of getting it up, much less slapping anyone around.

  I pictured the sharp pink marks on Ellen’s face at the St. Leo. Looks can be deceiving.

  “Sorry,” I said stiffly. “I must’ve gotten turned around.”

  Audrey the Second glared at me. She’d cornered the market on brunettery and she wasn’t looking for a rival. The blondes were staring gloomily at Bugsy. Klein raised his eyebrows and extended a hand, indicating I could remove myself anytime I wanted, or maybe offering me the chance to kiss a ring. I picked the former. As I left them behind, I felt a surge of hatred and thought: Be careful, Mr. Klein. Be careful, and when it all goes tits up, remember: cherchez la femme.

  A jet crash wouldn’t have disturbed the partygoers collected in the foyer of the mausoleum. The pianist was still plunking notes on the piano, ignoring the man leaning against it. The birthday girl burped vodka in her seat. Wexler had left, presumably off to hunt peacocks.

  I stepped out of the mausoleum, glaring into the cemetery. Even in the near-dark, I should’ve been able to see some flicker of that bright pink dress.

  Then I heard it: Ellen’s voice, sharp and tearful. I followed the sound and found her slumped over Toto’s shrine, sobbing into the puppy’s metal fur. Not too far away, I could see the shadowy outlines of a small group of revelers, among them both Joel Klein, who wasn’t even looking back at his date, and Wexler, who caught sight of me and gave me a small half salute. I glared at him and knelt next to Ellen, trying to be gentle.

  “Ellen,” I said softly, one hand on her heaving back, noting that the fuchsia monstrosity was already muddied and ripped near the hem, no chance for her to return it and get my money back now. “Ellen, come on, get up. Let’s go home.”

  Ellen raised her head—I don’t think she even registered my presence—and shrieked, “I don’t even want to screw that old fuck—they’re paying me to do it!”

  The conversation among the group lulled, and I could see Wexler’s head lurch up—he must’ve been standing on tiptoe—his eyebrows raised. I didn’t wait to check Junior’s reaction or to see if anyone else had heard exactly what she’d said. I dug my fingers tight into the flesh under her armpits and yanked her up, thrashing against me, then dragged her back to my car.

  Chapter 12

  I shoved Ellen into the passenger side of the car and slammed the door shut, guillotining a handful of pink feathers. I crawled into the driver’s side and locked the door, but I didn’t start the ignition. We weren’t going anywhere until we had a little chat, Ellen and me.

  She was crying again, this time for real—her fake eyelashes were starting to wilt and slide toward her cheeks. With the light from the streetlamp overhead, I could see two pink poufy feathers clinging to her lip gloss. Nineteen grand. The plan I’d worked out with Jackal. Even whatever future life she’d planned for herself. She’d done so much to put all of that in danger, for nothing. For Hiram fucking Klein.

  “So,” I said, conversationally, staring straight ahead out of my windshield. Counting to ten in my head, then twenty, the word motherfuckermotherfucker chasing its tail in my brain. “How long have you been fucking Joel, too?”

  “How did you . . . How did you find me?” A feather quivered on her lip.

  “We might make an actress of you yet,” I said. “That was quite the scene you made back there. Quite the scene.”

  “Do you . . .” Ellen’s eyes darted out the window, and I think it occurred to her for the first time how pissed I was, how much trouble she might be in. She licked her lips. “Do you have a tracker on my phone?”

  “Please. You didn’t make it difficult.”

  Ellen squished herself into the corner of the car, pressing a small glittery clutch into her chest like it would be some protection against me. As if I’d come there to hurt her.

  “This is all so easy for you,” she said. Her tears had slicked muddy glitter down her cheeks. “But for me, it’s like . . . it’s like . . .”

  Outside, another whooping burst of laughter, the crystal clink of a bottle smashed on marble. I wondered
if Junior had heard. I wondered if he would tell his father, what he would say.

  I studied her face again. Beneath the tears and the emotions, she was clear, coherent. She wasn’t that drunk. There was something else bothering her. I tried to think of what Lou would do, or say, in the moment. A million years ago, she’d been kind to me in a diner. I tried to remember how to be kind. “What, Ellen? What’s it like?”

  “It’s like it’s getting harder to remember that it’s all fake,” Ellen said, turning her nose against my glass window. “It’s getting harder to remember that this isn’t really me. I find myself doing things, feeling things, and it’s like, who the hell am I? I don’t care about this man. I don’t care about this shit. But it’s like I can’t stop myself.” She stole a glance at my face and sighed. “I know you don’t get it. And I’m not fucking Joel. I was trying to . . .” She trailed off.

  I felt a little sting in my chest and didn’t want to name it. So it wasn’t easy, her job. She wasn’t doing it out of any good passion. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to let Klein jerk her around, not on my watch, not on the Lady’s paycheck. I ground my teeth. If Junior hadn’t heard—or if he was the kind of ne’er-do-well who didn’t want to rock the boat in case it affected his paycheck—then it was possible nothing irreparable had happened. Just possible. But it had been a close call, too close a call. I reached into the back seat of my car, pulled out a flask full of whiskey I’d stashed for an emergency. Ellen flinched, her eyes darker than I’d ever seen them in her very pale face. Afraid, like I might throw the flask at her.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I don’t waste booze.” I turned in my seat so that our knees were almost touching. I leaned forward and held out the flask until she took it. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  As I watched Ellen take long, deep swigs from my flask, I realized I didn’t need Lou there to tell me the thing I was now sure of: I’d let Ellen go too long. She’d lost herself, she’d lost sight of the end goal, and now I was going to lose something, too. Except that wasn’t the way I ever played this game. I didn’t lose, not anymore.

  Six months before, I might’ve convinced myself to go to Lou, admit to her and the Lady that I’d fucked up and we needed to find a new girl. That either the mark would take a lot longer than we expected or the case was dead, too compromised. Let Ellen off the hook. But now there was nineteen grand on the line and not only my debt this time, but the money for the police, too. That mattered to all of us, Lou and Jackal and me. To our little blackmail family, such as it was. And it wasn’t an option when I’d found such an easy out, poetic justice practically, to fix it.

  No. I couldn’t let up on her now.

  “Feel better?”

  Ellen nodded, her chin wobbling. She gave me a weak smile, her eyes still watery.

  I took a deep breath. This is what the Lady pays you for, Jo. “Okay, let me see if I can guess what happened tonight. You got invited to a party by the mark’s son. You thought you’d go, hoping Klein would be there, he’d get jealous. Not bothering to tell me, I might add, despite the fact that the dead flamingo you’re wearing was bought with my money. Then—surprise!—Klein didn’t give a shit, and you got sloppy on two sips of champagne, made a goddamn spectacle of yourself. That about sum it up?”

  Ellen slumped in the passenger’s seat, curling her legs up underneath her. Making herself as small as she could. Her face looked puffy and a little raw from the tears. I was careful to keep mine as blank and bored as I could. I told myself that hers was the sort of crying I recognized, an actress’s tears: conscious of the effect you’re making; check the mirror a few times when you’re home alone, to make sure you know what pretty vulnerability looks like on your face. Bright, brimming eyes: check. Swollen lips: oh, sure. Color in your cheeks but no snot running: perfect. And then think to yourself, Yep, heartbreak, nailed it. I told myself she was a better actress than I’d realized. I told myself she knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Please,” Ellen whispered. Her hands were clenched and red. “I don’t know how to do this anymore. Sometimes it even feels like I . . . like I maybe even love him. Why does it feel like that?”

  Dopamine. The thrill of a new adventure. Bourbon. Take your pick. “Maybe I love this whiskey,” I said, gesturing at the flask. “You see what I’m saying?”

  Ellen’s nose twitched and she sniffled. “But he’s not whiskey. He’s a person. Have you ever even been in love?”

  Oink, I almost said to her. Instead, I tried to catch my temper on its way out and failed. “It is a job. He is a job. Listen, love is a thing men invented as a convenient excuse when they’re done fucking women they can’t stand. Sorry, toots, no more hide-the-salami, can’t help it, don’t love you anymore. Not my fault. You see? Jesus Christ.”

  “Do you have to be so goddamn ugly,” she said, bouncing the flask against the dashboard where it tumbled to her feet. But I could see it was the last of her fire, one last flash in the pan.

  I kept on it.

  “You know where he is right now? He’s fucking some new blonde, or a brunette, or both. But don’t worry, he’s not going to leave his wife for any of them, either. They never leave their wives, Ellen. That’s not just a lesson for this case, that’s a good lesson for you to remember. If he tells you he doesn’t want you but still fucks you anyway, don’t ever forget: he never lied to you. You are letting him treat you like this, Ellen. That’s the truth.”

  She was crying soundlessly, mouth open in a wet red O. Staring straight out the window, her nose practically pressed against it. The kill shot was close. I could sense it.

  “The whole production knows about the two of you. He’s screwing everything with tits, but they all know about you. How would they know, Ellen, unless you’ve been making yourself a spectacle over him? Pathetic.” I shook my head. She was crying so hard she was trembling, each sob rocking her back and forth slightly on the seat. “You have him right where you want him if you can be strong for me for a few more days,” I said, and I reached out and threaded my fingers through hers. She jerked away from me, but I was stronger and I held her tight when I said: “Make him pay, Ellen. We’re so close. Get back some dignity and make. Him. Pay.”

  She didn’t look up as I turned the engine over, started to pull out of the cemetery and head back toward her apartment. She didn’t move at all.

  I didn’t look at her again until I pulled up to her curb, and then I scanned her crumpled face. Her feet were curled under her like a little girl’s, and she clutched herself around the middle, like she was trying to keep herself together. Pink feathers on the seat, the car’s floor, her face. “Thursday,” I said, and we both knew it was a threat I meant to keep.

  Ellen sobbed for a moment or two, her jaw mawing at the air like a gulping goldfish. Then, in the tiniest voice: “I’ll be there.” She didn’t look up as she clicked the car door open and climbed out. I knew she meant it. Thursday, she’d be my girl, and it would run smoothly, exactly the way it should have from the start.

  Thursday would be fine. I just didn’t know what would be left of her on Friday.

  * * *

  Olvera Street at night glinted with candy-colored Día de los Muertos flags, even weeks after the holiday. Mariachi strummed guitars at the mouths of different restaurants, while a host of people chattered over meals of varying levels of authenticity. Cielito Lindo was located at the front of the street, a small cultural wedge of the oldest part of the city, between Little Tokyo and Chinatown.

  By the time I got there, the taquito stand was closed for the night, all boarded up.

  I found Lou in the third bar I tried, a little wrought iron joint with a reddish glow and eight-dollar pitchers of margaritas. She had her back to me, slumped over a tumbler, the scarlet tint of the lighting catching the slinky satin sheen of her cocktail dress. She stiffened when she caught sight of me from the corner of her eye.

 
“Hey.” I slid into the empty seat next to her. A nearly full glass of amber on the bar in front of her. She didn’t look at me.

  “I’ve never been stood up before.”

  “I’m here now, aren’t I?” I was too tired, the ghost of Ellen still too near, to soften my tone. Lou had taken maybe two sips of her bourbon. I wasn’t sure what was worse: that she wasn’t drinking it, or that she’d ordered bourbon at a margarita joint. “So I didn’t stand you up if I showed.”

  “Not once, never even with a mark. Never even before.”

  As a rule, Lou did not talk about her life before the Lady Upstairs. I knew what I knew, which was more than Jackal did, but it still wasn’t much. She didn’t share the details with anyone, not even the Lady, I was sure. It thawed me a little, that Lou was sharing something with me she wouldn’t tell the Lady. I touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I should’ve called. I got stuck in traffic.”

  Lou was wearing a little scrub of makeup—darkened lashes, lipstick glossy and reddish. If she knew I was lying, she didn’t show it. She stared sullenly at her glass. Finally, she said: “So what is it, you don’t want to spend time with me or you don’t want to work Carrigan?”

  “Neither. I’m sorry, I lost track of time—” That old saw. I heard Jackal’s excuses in the office as soon as I said it and bit down on my tongue. Lou stared straight ahead, unwavering. She might’ve been straining to read the tequila labels on the amber-tinted bottles behind the bar for all the attention she paid me. I decided on something that was a close cousin to the truth. “Okay. Fine. The truth is, I am worried about Carrigan. He’s too rich, Lou. He’s too connected. There’s too many ways for it to go bad.”

  “You don’t think you can do it.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time we got in over our heads together.”

  It wasn’t something I liked to dwell on, what had happened after my pie diner breakfast with Lou. I didn’t regret it—I couldn’t allow myself to regret anything that had turned me from that woman into Jo, that had brought Lou and even Jackal into my life. But it wasn’t a pretty chapter, what had come between apple cheddar and my first successful case, weeks later.