“There’s no way I’m—”
“Which do you think would piss Daddy-in-law off more,” I said, drawing out the words, making my voice unhurried and low, a tone Jackal would’ve called my fuck me voice, “your cheating or your stupidity?”
“Jesus,” he said again, “what a bitch you are,” and there was something almost admiring in his tone.
“By tomorrow,” I said. I gave him an address—Lou’s tiki bar—and told him to meet me there by 8 p.m. I said I’d prefer cash.
“How do I know you’ll really destroy the photographs? How do I know you won’t keep digital copies floating around somewhere?”
I flipped the closest photograph over on my desk so I didn’t have to stare at the blank look on my face. It made me queasy. I didn’t want to keep them any more than he wanted them sent to the newspaper.
“I guess you can’t trust me,” I said. “But I don’t want them. I really do not.”
* * *
The hours had gotten away from me while I’d searched Rita Palmer’s name. It wasn’t the most common name, so I’d counted on finding something, but there were no records of a Rita, or Margarita, Palmer in Los Angeles in recent years and certainly no one who looked like the woman I’d seen at the office. Lou had either lied to me or been lied to, and I didn’t like that I wasn’t sure which was right.
I also didn’t like that I hadn’t heard from Lou this morning—not a call or a text. If she was upset at how I felt about the Lady, I could deal with that. If she regretted kissing me . . .
But brooding on it reminded me. I went back to the list I’d grabbed from Lou’s desk, the phone bill, and tried again the two numbers I’d pinpointed as the potential numbers for the Lady. On the first one, the call went straight to voicemail. Hello, you’ve reached Graham. Leave a message. I hung up, wondering if it was Mr. Alibi’s voice on the machine.
But the second phone call was a different story. After three rings, someone picked up and waited on the other end, not saying anything. Breathing loud enough that I knew they were there. My stomach flipped, and I held my breath.
Then, after about ninety seconds: “Why do you keep calling me? Who is this?” The voice was a woman’s, a low register made lower by a trace of anxiety. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t be sure, I couldn’t be completely positive, that it was her voice.
“Hello,” I said, trying to think of something to keep her on the line. Until I was sure. “Who’s this?”
“Fuck you,” she whisper-growled into the phone, her voice shaking. I could hear it now, for real, whoever this was: she was scared. Of me? Or of someone she didn’t know having this number? I wondered exactly what Lou had told her about Ellen’s death. “You called me.”
The attitude was right—it was what I remembered and what I’d expect from the Lady. I was almost positive now. Careful, Jo. Don’t assume you’re right just because you want to be.
I took a gamble.
“This is Jo,” I said, quietly. “I’m calling with a message from Lou. She needs you to come into the office, tomorrow afternoon. She needs you to meet us there. We have things to discuss.”
She was quiet for a very long time. I held my breath, watching cars zip around each other in the complicated braiding of Los Angeles traffic. The air was still sluggish with heat, but it was starting to come down a bit. It was all starting to settle.
“I don’t know any Jo,” she said finally, her voice very cold. “And I don’t know any Lou, but I can tell you if she needs something from me, she can call me herself.”
And then she hung up and I stared down at my phone. After all these years, the Lady Upstairs. A phantom with a cell phone. She’d ditch the phone, maybe, if it was a burner, but the police could track the number anyway—it was a start. And if she was as smart as I thought she was, she’d steer clear of the office now, perhaps permanently—but that was fine by me.
I spent some more time searching for Rita Palmer online, looking through pictures, following links. No digital smoking gun, but now I had a name and a phone number for MacLeish. By the time I closed my computer, I was feeling good, confident. It wasn’t done yet, I reminded myself. But it was close.
I was locking the door, something resembling a bounce to my step, when a shadow caught my eye. Someone was leaning against my car. For a moment, time froze. Lou, I thought, it has to be Lou. But I was wrong. Escobar, MacLeish’s younger, more senior partner, was flicking through his phone, not watching me approach, although I was sure he knew I was there. Even the sight of a blue leaning against my car couldn’t dampen my mood.
“All the crappy condos in all the world and you happen to be waiting outside mine,” I said, laughing as I fumbled in my purse for my keys. “What makes me such a lucky girl, Officer?”
Escobar was dressed in plain clothes today, khaki pants and a black button-up, practically choking him. He watched me riffle through my purse with disapproving eyes. One hand was jammed in his pocket, and I wondered, for a moment, if he had a gun in there.
Escobar glared at me. “I wanted to stop by and see if you’d remembered anything else. About the deceased.”
“Where’s your partner, Sergeant?” I made a big show of looking around. Escobar scowled. If he was going to make much of a cop, he’d have to learn to control his temper better. And maybe that temper would let slip a few details on MacLeish I might be able to use to even the playing field. “And while we’re on the subject, how’d he get demoted?”
“I’m working solo today,” he said. He wasn’t working today, period. I’d almost bet money on it: this was a visit on his own time. “Where were you the night Ms. Howard and Hiram Klein were killed?”
“I spent the night,” I snapped. “With a friend. What else do you want to know?”
“How she wrangled Hiram Klein into the car, for one,” Escobar said, squinting now as he watched my face. “Heavy man for one woman. How she ended up strangled is another question I have for you.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what to tell you,” I said. I’d found my keys, and I unlocked my car door, wondering if he’d try to stop me from opening the door. “Because I sure wish I could answer those things for you, but I really can’t help you.”
I’d gotten one leg into the car before Escobar caught the door and held it. “What did you do with the gun?”
I looked up at him. He really was a good-looking man. In another moment, in another lifetime, I would’ve loved spending time counting those long dark lashes. At least that question I could answer almost honestly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never held a gun in my life.” This time, when I wrenched the door out of his hands, it slammed shut. Through my window, I could hear him yell something about how I’d be seeing him again, and I held a hand up in a wave. As I sped off, I ticked my fingers down until there was only one left up.
A good cop, I thought as I stared at his shrinking form in my rearview mirror. How useless in this city.
Chapter 28
The twenty-four hours waiting to meet Carrigan were torture. If I could’ve, I’d have spent the night at the tiki bar so I could make sure I didn’t miss him. When the time came, he was early to meet me, but by then, I’d been waiting nearly an hour.
Only a handful of patrons sat at the half-moon tables, where germy little handfuls of stale pretzels and peanuts floated in faux-coconut shells next to Technicolor-disaster cocktails. The bar didn’t have the same luster as the last time I’d been there with Lou. Now, the ugly décor—the browned and splotched wood of the floor and the exposed beams, the lumpy clientele—was just ugly, not charmingly so. Jo will tell me she hates this bar, but I bet she loves it. She’d been wrong, for once. It wasn’t the bar I loved.
For the occasion, I’d dressed up: tight black dress that hugged my ass and hips, stilettos, red lipstick. The shoes pinched my toes and the patent leather
was scraped in places, but I liked the inches they added to my stems when I crossed my legs. A moneyed woman, I’d thought, looking in the mirror before I left. I’d taken a picture and sent it to Jackal, who sent me back only a full row of dollar-bill signs.
In the movies, Carrigan would’ve been carrying something ridiculous, like a suitcase weighted down with gold bars. Instead, when he sat down next to me, his expression permanently pickled, he threw a large envelope onto the table in front of me.
“Half cash and a cashier’s check,” he said by way of greeting. I clawed it open and the sight almost took my breath away: bundles of rubber-banded bills nestled alongside a long white check that might as well have been made out to Freedom instead of Cash. “Where are my photos?”
Wordlessly, I slid my own envelope across the table. I watched his face while he went through the photos, keeping the manila folder tight against his chest, as though everyone in the bar were dying to see them. It took a while. Jackal shot more than he needed to, strictly speaking. Finally, Carrigan folded the envelope in half twice, not carefully, the bump of the USB drive visible through the paper, and shoved the entire packet into his briefcase. I wasn’t sorry to see them go.
When Carrigan looked up, he caught my eye and glared at me. “Why are you staring?”
“You look different with your clothes on.”
“Fuck you,” he said. “You don’t have to enjoy it so much.” He studied me for a second. “There wasn’t even really an abusive ex-boyfriend, was there?”
I ignored him. “I ordered champagne for the occasion. Well, it’s sparkling wine, not champagne. But it’ll do. I’ll even buy.”
“I might as well order the bottle then,” he snapped, “if you’re paying with my money.”
“Whatever you want.” I could afford to be generous.
In the end, he settled on a ginger ale. I was surprised he’d even bothered to order a drink. I’d expected him to drop the money and bail, threaten to hunt me down, make me pay. Instead, he studied the menu like we were on a date, glaring at the cream-colored card. Once his order had been taken, he rubbed his hands across his face. “How did you ever get mixed up in something like this?”
“I would’ve expected you, of all people, to know.”
The waitress brought my champagne in a little saucer, and I held it up to the candle in the center of our table, flickering through a red glass votive. I twirled the golden juice back and forth, admired the slim line of my wrist and my long nails, now painted blue, in the light. I took a sip. It stuck in my mouth like honey.
“The hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean,” I said, “when did you find out your wife’s last name?”
“Jesus H., you miserable—”
“First date? Third date? Before you got her number?”
Carrigan was silent for a long time. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Of course not. I only used you for a week, not your whole life. Do me a favor, stop pretending that last name is a burden to you.”
Carrigan’s mouth opened, and whatever he was going to say was going to be nasty, delightfully so, but I held up a hand.
“Besides,” I said, taking another sip of the sparkling wine, letting the bubbles fill my mouth and float all the way to my nose, “you should be grateful. Now you get to feel angry instead of feeling guilty.”
Carrigan’s face was very sour. “You took a helluva chance I didn’t turn you over to the police.”
“Not really. But if you like, I can pretend to be scared of you. You seem to want it so bad.”
“I won’t forget about this,” Carrigan said, trying to make it a threat as he stood up from the table. He threw down a few dollars. The edge of one caught the lip of my champagne saucer, and I left it dangling there as I took another sip, smiling up at him. If he was trying to make me feel cheap, it didn’t work. Nothing could.
“No,” I said, “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“You really would’ve used those photographs? With your face all over them? You really would’ve sent them to the paper?”
He was looking for a moment of softness from me, some trace of the woman he thought he’d been fucking.
“What do you think?” I said.
The last I saw of him was the line of his shoulders moving for the door. Back to the wife. Maybe this would be a lesson for him. Maybe he’d learn not to go sniffing after strange women to feel like a hero. Maybe he’d go back to that strong wife of his and appreciate her more now. Or maybe he’d learned nothing at all.
I stayed at the bar for another drink or two, watching the clientele get sloshed and then soaked. This time tomorrow, Jackal would be on his way to his new life—whatever that was.
Before I’d left to meet Carrigan, Jackal had suggested one last goodbye drink. I’d told him no, I’d drop the money off in the morning—“What, a lovers’ goodbye? You must be thinking of some other woman”—but now I found myself dialing Jackal’s number. “I changed my mind. I do want that drink.”
“You always do.”
“Meet me at my place? Bring something.”
There was a pause. “You don’t want to go anywhere?”
“Not gin,” I said. “Something expensive. Come soon.” I hung up.
* * *
When Jackal rang my doorbell, he was carrying two nice bottles of pinot noir and an overstuffed file folder of the photographs. “I know you don’t drink white,” he said.
“Good boy,” I said, tucking the prints under my arm. Jackal made a face. I found us two glasses, and then changed my mind, uncorking them both and handing him one of the bottles. He sat down on my couch and started to drink. I put his cut on the table, and he counted it there, his mouth moving with the numbers.
I flipped through the photographs while Jackal drank. I had to admit, he was more than competent at his job: I recognized a judge with a girl who looked underage but wasn’t, a famous tennis player with a woman old enough to be his grandmother, and pictures of Lou from every angle, sometimes with the girls, sometimes waiting in the lobby of the hotel, plenty of her in the office. But no pictures of me.
“I’m not in any of these,” I said. Jackal didn’t say anything. When I looked over, his eyes were closed and his head was slumped against the back seat of the couch. “Jackal. Where are the photographs with me in them?”
“There aren’t any.”
“What?” I sat up. “Are you trying to pull something on me here? Come back in two months, looking for another score when you blow through this cash?”
Jackal crooked one eye open. “Jesus Christ, Jo,” he said. “There aren’t any of you because I deleted them. From the SIM card, anywhere. Nothing to tie you to the business. In case.”
“In case what?”
“In case you changed your mind,” he clarified. “If you wanted to come with me. Or even if you changed your mind one day without me.” He put a hand over his eyes.
“Oh,” I said, not sure what to say. I stared at the photographs in my lap. “That’s . . . well. Thank you. I don’t need it, but . . . thank you.”
Jackal shrugged, eyes still closed.
“When will you leave?” I asked him, reaching out and touching his thigh. Even now, drinking red from a bottle on my couch, Jackal was dressed in a nice button-down shirt, slacks, dress shoes. If I hadn’t seen differently myself, I would believe that’s what he slept in.
“Tonight,” he said, and then took another slug from the bottle. He patted the couch next to him, and I scooched closer, putting my feet into his lap.
“That soon,” I said.
“Are you asking me to spend the night?” He popped my right heel out of the shoe, began to massage my foot before sliding the stiletto all the way off.
“No,” I said, “I am not.”
Jackal uncased my other foot, and I beat
time on his thighs with my toes. There was a scar in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger on his left hand, and I pressed the ball of my foot into it, feeling for scar tissue, feeling for the story it would give up. I tilted my face to kiss him, and Jackal gave me a light peck, not trying to start anything. I sank back into the couch.
“Where will you go?” I asked him.
“Somewhere that isn’t here,” he said, pushing my feet off his lap. I hadn’t expected him to tell me. I didn’t really want to know. “It’s not that much money.”
I wondered if he was reassuring himself that the Lady wouldn’t bother to track him down for a measly fifteen grand she never needed to know about, or if he was disappointed that we hadn’t gotten more.
“Relax,” I said. “She’ll never know about it.”
“Did he give you any trouble?”
“He wanted to,” I said. “But no, no trouble. If I’d known it was going to be that easy, I would’ve suggested independent work years ago.”
“With Lou,” Jackal said.
I took a drink. I didn’t deny it. “If I’d known it was that easy.”
Jackal stared at his bottle. He stared at it for a long time, twirling it in his hands, the scar jumping and flexing. He kept it up so long I began to get uncomfortable, wondering what wheels could be turning in his brain, not liking having that question about him.
“I’m not going to ask you about it,” he said. “I want you to remember that after I leave, that I never asked you.”
“What could you possibly have to ask me about Lou?”
The Lady Upstairs Page 23
