The Lady Upstairs

by Halley Sutton

  The last time I’d seen that smile, her teeth couldn’t stop chattering, and she’d looked from me to Lou, waiting for one of us to say that everything was all right, waiting for either of us to say anything.

  I was shredding the very last of Ellen’s files, resisting the urge to read them again, when I heard the tinkle of the chime on the door, bringing with it a waft of frying beef from Seven Galbi. Then a voice, almost familiar, asking Jackal’s name. I stopped shredding, my stomach tensing.

  Leaning forward, I could see a sliver of two men, one in sunglasses. Cops. A thunderbolt quaked through me, a shot of pure adrenaline I felt mostly in my crotch.

  “She’s in there,” I could hear Jackal say. His voice was smooth, bored, but he’d spoken louder than he needed to—warning me.

  I stared down at the shredder—what was in there would have to stay put. The only thing left of Ellen on my desk was the notebook holding her picture. There was no time to get rid of it and probably no safer place to keep it. I sat down at my desk and smoothed my hair with tremoring hands.

  The two blues appeared in my doorway. Neither offered a hand in greeting. The one in sunglasses was the squarehead I’d seen in the parking lot a few days before—back in that magical time when I’d been worried only about finding the money for the Lady, getting back the police bribe, kids’ problems. If he recognized me, he gave no sign of it. He flashed his badge, introduced himself as Detective MacLeish—as though I’d forgotten—and his younger partner as Sergeant Escobar.

  “What can I do for you, gentlemen?” I asked. I wished I smoked. I wished I had anything to do with my hands besides drum them on that damn notebook. “I sure hope everything’s all right.” My voice came out thick and froggy. If you pressed on my skin, you’d find a small reservoir of gin underneath.

  “We have a few questions regarding an ongoing investigation, ma’am,” MacLeish said.

  I didn’t offer them a seat, but they sat. Escobar took Ellen’s chair, and I stared at the younger cop a beat too long, wondering, with a sick-feeling stomach, if I’d picked all the frizzy blonde strands from the arms. She’d left so many of them.

  Escobar reminded me of a smoldering modern-day Rudolph Valentino with his mascara-dark lash line. He didn’t like my eyes on him, played with his tie, his pant creases sharp as a razor. Wearing a long-sleeve uniform even in the heat. I disliked him immediately.

  Cops always smell a little different. Self-righteousness smells like sweat and pencil shavings covered up with woodsy cologne and stale mint gum. I waited for one of them to speak. They waited for me. We were all so politely waiting, hoping someone else fucked up first.

  MacLeish was much older than his partner and, unlike the last time I saw him, he too was in uniform. He kept a placid smile on his face. He might as well have been shopping for groceries as investigating a murder. If he meant to be the good cop, it would be all too easy to lay your daddy issues right at his feet.

  He didn’t show any sign that he remembered me. I wondered if that meant his partner didn’t know about the money.

  “Tell me,” I said, the silence getting to me finally, “you guys decide ahead of time who gets to be the bad cop? Do you take turns? Or do you decide when you meet—” I broke off and gestured at myself.

  They exchanged glances. MacLeish spoke first. “We do appreciate your cooperation.”

  Didn’t seem like I had much choice, I thought but didn’t say. “I think I’d prefer to be the bad cop. It seems like more fun.”

  “You’ve heard about the murders of Hiram Klein and Ellen Howard,” MacLeish said. Murders plural, I noted. That was quicker than I’d expected. I forced myself to take a deep breath. It would be better to look a little surprised, I thought, arching an eyebrow. Not sure if I was pulling it off. MacLeish watched me, waited for me to respond.

  “I watch the news.”

  “So you’re aware of Ms. Howard’s demise,” the younger one, Escobar, said.

  “You’re quick.”

  He blushed and glared at me. MacLeish had more patience, waited for me to collect myself before he started again.

  “Did you know Ms. Howard?”

  That damn hotel. “A little.”

  “How did you know the deceased?” Escobar again, still red and trying to recover.

  It would be easier to be the bad cop, pushing and digging. It was much harder to make friends. I knew from experience. If that was true, MacLeish was the better policeman. The better cop, yet still the errand boy for the bribe money. And the junior officer to his younger partner.

  “Not friends. Acquaintances.” I caught my nail peeling the edge of the notebook, thumbing pages. I put my hands in my lap. “I wouldn’t say we were friends.”

  “You don’t seem too broken up about the fact she’s dead,” Escobar said.

  I took a beat. I didn’t want it to sound prepared. I heard Lou’s voice in my head: It’s not a crime to know somebody who died. “It was a shock to hear she’d passed,” I said. “But I’m not expecting an invitation to the funeral. Like I said, we weren’t friends.”

  “Someone at the St. Leo said you and the deceased were spotted there together. Frequently,” Escobar said. His palms were pressed hard against the arms of the chair, like he was ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. The deceased. I imagined freshly plucked blonde hairs threading between his fingers, tugging at his knuckles. Winding up his arms to his neck, strangling him.

  Be human, Jo. And stay focused.

  The news had said her friends called her Lenny. “I went there with Ellen once,” I said. “They have a good happy hour. Maybe the word I’m looking for is cheap.”

  “So you admit you were at the St. Leo with the deceased.” Escobar looked like he’d won a prize.

  I didn’t bother answering.

  “Did Ms. Howard pay?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  MacLeish had asked the question casually, not even bothering to look at my face to see how it landed. “When you went to happy hour. Did Ms. Howard cover it?”

  I’d paid with a card. Too traceable. “I believe I did. Why?”

  “Ms. Howard came into quite a bit of money before she died,” MacLeish said, this time glancing up from his notebook to watch my face. I was biting my lip so hard I could taste blood. “Some”—MacLeish paused here, drew the moment out, his partner looking bored—“eight thousand dollars. Any idea where that came from?”

  There it was, the other shoe. I studied the older detective while I tried to think of what to say. MacLeish had leaned forward so his elbows were on my desk and doubled his fists under his chin. Like we were having a real conversation, old friends catching up. His eyes both dreamy and focused. Like he was casually, lazily interested. I suspected not a move I made got by him.

  I took a breath. Decided to gamble. “How much confidentiality does this conversation have?”

  MacLeish’s face didn’t change, but Escobar sat forward, elbows on knees. I knew this man. I knew this type of man. Titillated and ready to judge in equal measure. I brushed my hand against my blouse, pretending not to notice the way it drew tight against my chest, careful to make the move reflexive almost, refusing to look at Escobar to see how it landed.

  “We’re only looking for information on Ms. Howard,” MacLeish said. “Not anything else.”

  The best bluffs have a little bit of truth, Lou had said when we’d been figuring out our official story. And trust me, these cops don’t care if a well-heeled white girl hustles a little extra on the side in this zip code. It ain’t fair, but them’s the breaks. Then Lou had grazed my chin lightly with her nails, turning my face. Besides, you could proposition the pope and get away with it, with your mug.

  “Occasionally I make ends meet as a working girl,” I said. I turned to Escobar, tried not to scan the chair arms too obviously for any long golden strands. “You u
nderstand what I mean?”

  “I understand,” he said, but he’d gone red again.

  “Ellen and I sometimes worked the same circuit. The other thing about the St. Leo, they have good rates for a girl looking to rent by the hour. Discreet personnel.”

  MacLeish was dutifully jotting notes in his flipbook, back to business. I let myself relax an inch. Escobar was trying to regain his composure, but I could see him wondering what it would be like to pay someone for a fuck, wondering my price. Men always think it must be special if someone’s willing to pay for it. I winked at him. He coughed and turned away.

  I’d waited long enough to ask it. I forced my eyes wide. “But hey, I thought the papers said she killed that movie man before she crashed his car. Do you think she was murdered?”

  MacLeish deflected beautifully. “We’re just trying to answer some questions about Ms. Howard’s last days, what she did, where she went. Ms. Howard was a prostitute as well?”

  I thought of all the care Lou had taken drilling our terminology into my head—we were consultants, and our girls, specialists. “A working girl. That’s right.”

  “A working girl,” MacLeish repeated, letting me know he’d caught the difference.

  “We’ve spoken with her friends and family,” Escobar said. “No one mentioned anything about her being a pro.”

  “It probably didn’t come up at Christmas.”

  “Was Hiram Klein a client?”

  I sucked on the inside of my cheeks, pretended to think about it. “Not if she killed him, no.”

  “Why not? You think the deceased was having an affair with Mr. Klein?”

  I gave them both a drop dead look. “You don’t murder clients. There’s no money in it.” Unless he was violent, I thought but didn’t say. Unless you’d been pushed past your limit.

  “You ever hear rumors about Hiram Klein? From the deceased or any other call girl?”

  I thought about Klein’s fingerprints, tattoo-fresh, across Ellen’s face. She wasn’t the first woman he’d tried that with. “Rumors? What do you mean?”

  Escobar didn’t answer. “Was Ms. Howard ever the violent type?”

  I tapped my nails on the desk, pretended to think about it. Anyone could be the violent type, given the right circumstances. The right motivations. “No-oo,” I said finally. “I didn’t think she was. But you never know, I guess.”

  Escobar and MacLeish exchanged glances, and MacLeish jotted something in his notebook.

  “Anything else I can help you boys with?”

  “I think you’ve given us quite a lot today,” MacLeish said. “We know where to find you, if we have any follow-up questions.”

  He rattled off my address, which shook me. Would I be there tonight, in case they wanted to swing by with further questions? I nodded.

  “That’s all?” I looked back and forth between the two of them.

  “If you want, I can cuff you for the thrill of it,” Escobar said.

  “Thanks,” I said, giddy, my knees weak with relief. I didn’t realize, until they were rising from their chairs, how much I’d expected this interview to end with me in custody. “But I charge for that.”

  At the door, MacLeish stopped and turned to me. His downturned eyes were unhappy—like he was a little sad at what was about to happen. My knees locked up, and my palm came to rest on top of the notebook.

  “Your book there,” he said, jutting his chin at my desk. I flinched. He saw. “That a datebook?”

  “A–a what?” My teeth were chattering. I pressed my lips together and tried to take slow, even breaths through my nose.

  “You know, a datebook,” MacLeish said. His partner was still outside the door, craning his neck to look in on Jackal. “My daughter got me one for my birthday last year, keeps track of all your appointments in a day. A little old-fashioned, I told her, most people nowadays, they use their phone for that sort of thing.” He shrugged. “I thought maybe you were like me. A little old-fashioned.”

  I’d let myself forget he was playing the good cop. I’d let myself be lulled in. “No,” I said finally. “Only a notebook. Nothing special.”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding, smiling. “Then I don’t suppose it has any old appointments with Ms. Howard scheduled inside. Dates, times, locations.”

  “N-no,” I stammered. I cleared my throat. Buck up, Jo. “You can come back, if you want. Look at anything you like. With a warrant.”

  “No need,” he said breezily, reaching over and knuckling the desk right next to my hand, right next to the notebook with Ellen’s torn picture inside. “You’ve been very helpful.” I realized he was giving me a taste of it, what he was capable of. Escobar, all puffed up, didn’t know how to dig. I’d been right: MacLeish hadn’t missed a thing. I’d practically been tapping Morse code on the damn book—of course he’d noticed—but he’d waited until his partner was distracted to deliver the message.

  He stopped at the door. “Eight grand,” MacLeish mused, shaking his head. “Such an interesting number. You have my card, if you think of anything else to tell me.”

  My throat dried up as he joined his partner in the lobby. A warning. I had to find that money soon.

  I had my eyes closed, so I didn’t see Jackal push the door to my office open. But I could smell his woodsy cologne.

  “What’d they want to know?”

  I popped my eyes open, stared down at my desk. “If I knew her. How I knew her.”

  “What’d you tell ’em?”

  “What we agreed. That Ellen and I knew each other from ‘the Circuit.’ You know, for call girls.” My head was pounding. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be somewhere cool, having a drink with Lou, listening to her tell me, It’ll be all right, we’ll figure out a new plan. Together.

  “There’s a circuit?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “But men always think there is.” I squared the corners of the file folders on my desk and, in one motion, slid the notebook and Ellen’s headshot into my purse. Then I crossed to my bar cart and poured myself a glass of gin, straight, my trembling hands spraying drops over my toes.

  To Escobar, at least, I was almost certain I’d come off cool, unrattled. And MacLeish I wouldn’t have to worry about once I had the money. That was all he’d been trying to do, I decided. Scare me, let me know how unpleasant he could make things if the money didn’t make it back to him. I could almost convince myself.

  Jackal made a noncommittal noise and studied his hands.

  “What? Something wrong with that?”

  “You and Lou were working Mitch Carrigan?”

  That came out of left field. I frowned. “Starting to, yeah.”

  “Lou’s idea?”

  “The Lady’s, I think. Why do you care?”

  “Lou’s talked about him for years. Always told her it was a bad idea, but she couldn’t let it go. Kept saying how the Carrigans were the big score we needed. That taking them would make us real power players in the city.”

  I snorted. “That shows what you know. It was a note direct from the Lady.”

  Jackal nodded, chewing on his lip, staring through me.

  I didn’t like the idea of Jackal and Lou deciding on marks, talking through problems without me. That she might’ve listened to Jackal’s concerns about Carrigan for years and ignored mine. “What? You have something to say about it?”

  Jackal shook his head, coming back to earth. “Nothing. You don’t mind that she called it off?”

  The Lady had found Lou and Lou had found Jackal before she’d found me. I knew that much. She’d picked him because he was competent with the technology, smart enough not to ask questions. Decent muscle, no moral code. Plus: that face. In a pinch, he could be a lure for one of our girls. It all made sense to me—I hadn’t bothered to ask if their relationship went any deeper than that. I’d always assumed I
knew the answer. But I hated what the thought did to me, that maybe Jackal was close enough to Lou to offer his opinions on the marks and that she might listen.

  “It was the right call,” I said. “Too risky.” Jackal nodded, but I could tell he was still turning it over in his head. “You’re so eager for another score? That side business isn’t paying out to your bookie the way you’d hoped?”

  Jackal’s head darted out into the hallway, looking to see if there was anyone to hear. “Jesus, Jo.”

  “Go away,” I said, and meant it, dipping the tip of my tongue into the juniper. Jackal’s meddling had jump-started the first inklings of a plan. Maybe my Monday wasn’t yet wasted. “I have better things to do and I’m sick of your face.”

  * * *

  The gin kept me company while I pondered the pieces. If I got the money back and got it to the police, maybe the Lady—maybe Lou—would never know I’d taken it. It would have to be quick. There wouldn’t be time to do it the right way, all the weeks of surveillance, choosing a girl based on the mark’s preferences. No, this job would have to be faster, messier.

  It wasn’t the best way to work. The best stings took weeks to set up because you only had one shot to hook him. But Lou had been the one to teach me. And I’d taught dozens of girls. I knew the game as well as anyone—better than anyone. And, well, I had the name, didn’t I? I’d already done some of the research. I still had my doubts about Carrigan, but that didn’t matter anymore. I’d kissed caution goodbye in a moonlit canyon. I’d either pull it off and get the money—enough for the police, enough for the Lady, enough to put this whole damn city behind me if I wanted—or I wouldn’t and I’d go to jail for the rest of my life for murder.

  I could hear Jackal stomping around his office, making a show of his irritation. I didn’t want to talk to him. And the only thing keeping me was waiting to see if Lou turned up. But I didn’t have to sit around and wait, like a lapdog, for her scraps. She hadn’t called since Chinatown. She hadn’t come by the office. No reason I should wait on her.