When Lafferty came back, he brought with him a glass of water and MacLeish, looking unhappy but resolute. I tried to make eye contact with the detective, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes, instead stood behind his boss and smoothed his salt-and-pepper hair, brushing up the bristles of it, over and over.
Lafferty set the water down very delicately, as though he were worried about it splashing my face, a new form of police brutality. “Your boss,” he prompted. Neither one of them went for the tape recorder.
I hesitated, unsure where to start.
“Give it up,” Lafferty said. “Why are you protecting her? We know what happened. She gave you the order to kill Ellen once Klein was dead, didn’t she, Jo? Couldn’t have those loose ends around. Had to make sure that everything stayed on the up-and-up for your little staffing agency. So she told you to kill Ellen Howard, and stage the bodies to look like a murder-suicide. And this is the woman you’re protecting, Jo? The woman who made you a murderer?”
I didn’t like the way he kept saying my name. I didn’t like the shape of it on his tongue. It was a tactic I’d used before, a way to instill comradeship, build trust in the person across from you. I didn’t like it one bit.
“She didn’t make me a murderer,” I snapped, “because I didn’t kill anybody.” And I wished, so badly, that were true.
“It doesn’t matter,” MacLeish said wearily. “Don’t you get that? It doesn’t matter if you did or not. It looks an awful lot like you might have. It looks enough like that that you should start talking.”
“This is what I have,” I said, gesturing at the photographs, the proof of our blackmail. “And I’ve met her. Peroxided hair and a blue tattoo on her wrist. Her name is . . . Rita. Rita Palmer.” The name came out of me before I’d fully given it permission, and I coughed, almost in shock, after I said it. Self-preservation was a more powerful reflex than I thought. I tapped the phone bill. “Her phone number for you, too.”
Lafferty leaned forward and studied the pictures. MacLeish jotted something in his notebook. After a moment, and without a word between the two of them, he grabbed the phone bill and left the room.
“Where’s he going?” I half stood up out of the chair, craning my head after him. Lafferty put a hand on my shoulder, pushed me back into my chair, not roughly.
Unlike his former partner, Lafferty hadn’t taken notes of anything that I’d said. I had the feeling that all this information was more useful to him on a personal level. But now, Lafferty stretched out a hand and pressed the record button on the machine. “And how does the business work?”
I summarized for him our work—that the names came from the Lady, hired by someone, we didn’t know who, or picked by her as the occasion dictated. That they were always men, rich men, usually rich and despicable men, and that it was my job to find the girls who would most appeal to them, who would help me leave a trail that we could use. That most often we let them pay for the photographs, but that occasionally—and, I suspected, most closely associated with those names most personal to the Lady—we sent them to the paper. Or the man’s boss. Or his wife.
MacLeish came back in, threw two photographs down on the desk.
“Is that her?” he asked.
I blinked a few times, staring at the picture on top, a mug shot. She was younger than when I’d met her, but rougher, too, her skin worse, her eye makeup thick and cakey and leaking down her face. A woman who had seen too much. But it was her, the Lady Upstairs. I bit my lip, and then, before I could second-guess myself: “Yes, that’s her. That’s the Lady.”
Lafferty and MacLeish exchanged a glance. Finally, MacLeish said, almost gently, “No, it isn’t.”
“She isn’t anyone named Rita Palmer,” Lafferty added, pushing the second photo forward. Another mug shot of the Lady, but this one with the words LOS ANGELES, PROSTITUTION, DAWES, EVE across the bottom. “She’s another lackey, like you, brings us the money every month. We’ve tailed her before, has a nice house in the Hollywood Hills—not the nicest part. But she ain’t your boss, kid. She’s answered these questions, too. And more convincingly, I might add.”
I reached for the water to wash the acid and bile out of my mouth, then thought about my fingerprints on the glass, the DNA from my lips on its rim. Two red lip prints like a smoking fucking gun. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to keep from shivering. It wasn’t working.
“You’re wrong,” I said.
MacLeish shook his head. “The phone number tracks back to Eve Lowenstein, née Dawes.”
“Eve Dawes,” Lafferty said. “Arrested her, oh, six or seven years ago, working a street corner downtown. She’s an ex–working girl your Lady turned out. There must be someone in her life she doesn’t want knowing about her past.” I thought of that yacht of a diamond ring, and Lafferty went on: “I imagine that’s how your boss keeps her ferrying cash. If you don’t believe me, look her up yourself. She’s not hard to trace. And she’s not your boss.”
She wasn’t the Lady. Or maybe she was, and she was a better liar than I. But the police seemed so sure and that was what mattered—they had to believe I’d given them the Lady, and they didn’t. Maybe there was a Rita Palmer and Lou hadn’t lied to me, but I sure as hell hadn’t found her. Maybe she’d made the name up completely. Christ. I was back to square one. I hadn’t given them anything they could use. My new life with Lou was slipping away, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I shook my head, and once I’d started I couldn’t stop. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, my teeth chattering. None of it made any sense. “That’s her, that’s the Lady, that’s her.”
“Aw, she doesn’t know anything,” MacLeish said to Lafferty.
“For her sake,” Lafferty said, “I hope that’s not true.” Like I wasn’t even in the room with them. He leaned across the table and switched off the recorder once again, and told me to stand up.
“What—what are you—”
“Stand up,” Lafferty ordered. “Turn around.”
“Are you arresting me?” I cried. “Because I can’t give you my boss’s name?” I’d gotten so close. But it wasn’t enough.
Lafferty stood up, and I clutched the side of my chair with both hands, trying frantically to make eye contact with MacLeish. “Wait,” I said, “wait, please.” I took a deep breath. One last gamble, Jo. Nothing left to lose now.
“Give it up, Jo,” Lafferty said. “You have nothing left to bargain with.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. “Give me twenty-four more hours,” I said. I had to get out of that room. I would’ve said anything. “I can bring you—I can bring you fifty grand. And I’ll tell you everything that happened with Ellen and Klein. Everything. I swear. And I’ll . . . I’ll try to find her for you. Please. I can find out more.”
Lafferty and MacLeish exchanged another glance, and I could see how they’d been partners once, that it was like a dance, or the lyrics to a song—once they’d learned it, they’d never quite forgotten.
“So now you do know something about it,” Lafferty said. “Convenient. How do we know you won’t skip?”
“You were right,” I blurted out. “The Lady wanted Ellen dead. Trust me, I want her held accountable for that as much as you do. You’ll never be able to find her without me, she’s too well-connected, she’s too smart. But if you give me one more day . . .”
Lafferty looked at me, his eyebrows raised. Wanting me to know he doubted me even as he was thinking it over. But MacLeish was the one who broke the silence first.
“Come on, boss,” MacLeish said quietly, ever the good cop. The harder role to play. “We can give her twenty-four hours, can’t we?”
Lafferty nodded, his gray eyes never leaving me. “You’re lucky my detective wants that money,” he said, pretending like MacLeish had changed his mind, like this wasn’t a part they were both playing. “But this is a one-time de
al, you hear me? If you don’t come back in twenty-four hours with fifty large and a name, you’re on the hook for the Klein/Howard murders.” He gave his old partner one last look and then turned on his heel. When he got to the door, he turned around and said to me, “I overestimated. You’re not that pretty. You’ll do the full twenty-five.”
I stood up on legs that didn’t feel fully solid, and moved toward the door of the interrogation room. MacLeish kept a sympathetic eye on me, then said, softly, “Come on, kid. Don’t make us book you.”
I shook my head over and over. There were too many things that didn’t fit. Too many pieces of a puzzle I’d gotten some glance at but couldn’t put together. But nothing made any sense; nothing led anywhere that would help me. I was out of time and out of clues.
To my horror, real tears came to my eyes, and I covered my face. MacLeish handed me a handkerchief, which I waved away. He kept it under my nose until I took it, dabbed at my face, and handed it back to him, stained with mascara. I sniffled and said, trying to get myself back together, “The bribe is for you? Not Lafferty?”
“It’s frowned on for police chiefs to take bribes,” MacLeish said. “That’s how people get fired. It’s how people lose stripes.”
“What?”
“Works out better this way for us both,” MacLeish said. “Even if I had to take a hit for it. Still a better paycheck. But I tell you what, it stings when you realize your old partner calls your shots.” MacLeish shook his head, his forehead creasing in anger. “That one takes some getting used to.”
My scalp tingled, some shadowy glimmer of an idea pressing at my brain, but I couldn’t think; I couldn’t touch it. I didn’t say anything but got up on rubbery legs and made for the door. MacLeish touched my arm as I passed. “The chief’s a reasonable man, I promise you that,” he said. “Find a way to give him what he wants, and I promise it’ll be okay. I only want to help you, kid. Give him the money and a name and then be a good friend to yourself and get out of this line of work.”
Instead of saying anything, I nodded in his general direction and stepped back out into the station. I could barely see a foot in front of my face, but I clocked Escobar watching me all the way out. I wondered if he’d be thrilled to see me in cuffs or disappointed that he hadn’t been the one to do it.
Lafferty was waiting for me by the door. He wasn’t done with me yet. As I passed by him, he called after me, “Any information you get—any way you get it—is appreciated. Remember that, Jo,” and that froze me in my tracks for a moment, trying to process the ramifications of it, but then I squared my shoulders. They were letting me leave. I had one more chance, and I had to use it.
I had to be Jo for a few hours longer.
Chapter 30
Silver sky again. Hot night air blowing through the window of my car, which I’d unrolled halfway to Lou’s house. While I’d been inside the station, the sun had gone down. The moon lounged like an actress getting ready for her close-up, and the stars bit little holes into the blanket around her.
Lou had left me a message, but I hadn’t gotten it until I’d left the interrogation room. There had been no reception there, as though they’d encased the place in concrete. Nowhere for the signal to land.
When I called, she said she needed to see me. She said it was urgent. She said please.
I needed to see her, too.
I zoomed through the streets away from the police station, being very careful not to think my thoughts. Above me, the gray-green palm trees zipped by like silver streamers guiding my way. I was going too fast or the cars in front of me were too slow, and I had to pull into the other lane to pass, nearly kissing the bumper of the car in front, the pop of the headlights like small explosions that blinded me even as I pulled back into the blue twilight of my own lane.
I kept checking the rearview. I couldn’t see any headlights that kept after me. But I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t shake the feeling that MacLeish or Escobar would be keeping tabs on me for the full twenty-four hours until I brought them the cash.
There was no way they were getting that money.
I parked the car in Lou’s driveway, in front of a bed of fat, white hydrangea globes. Lou’s small bungalow was immaculately manicured, with miles of quality turf rolling up to the front door. The grass looked like it had been cut with the precision of nail clippers. In the middle of the lawn, a small cherub puked water into the bowl at his feet.
Lou pulled the door open, hip leaning against the jamb. Her fingertips were painted a bright vermilion nearly identical to my now-flaky power lipstick. Her dark red hair was damp and curled around her shoulders. Sometime not too long before, she’d taken a shower and slung on a slinky black kimono, which hugged her in all the interesting places. Lou’s face cracked into a smile, as though she hadn’t spit my tongue out of her mouth and stormed off the last time I’d seen her, and she reached in for a hug.
“Hi,” Lou said, her voice breathy and shy. “Come in. Have a drink.”
I stared at her. Her voice on my machine had sounded desperate, wounded. And then there had been that kiss. And even though she didn’t know it, I was a marked woman living on borrowed time. “I guess,” I said. It was as good a place to start as any.
“Come in, come in,” Lou said, guiding me inside so we could get down to the business of drinking. She steered me to the kitchen, where, on the island, she’d already placed a bottle of Hendrick’s, uncapped, and two tumblers made of thick purple glass that shined in the moonlight beside it. A lime wedge, lying belly up, between the two.
There were details of Lou everywhere in the house, but nothing that told you anything. On the mantel in the living room sat several pictures of Lou smiling openmouthed with people who had her same coloring, close enough to pass as family. One sad photograph of a little girl, hands folded beneath her chin like an angel. I didn’t want to know where she’d gotten that one. Unlike me, and unlike Jackal, Lou wanted her place to pass for a home.
But every single piece of furniture was exactly the same age. If you took the books down from the bookshelf, you’d notice that all of the spines were uncracked. Most of them were expensive, shiny-jacketed hardbound copies or else rare auction pieces. Each cheap frame on the mantel had come from the same store, and not a single one was chipped. Almost all of the pictures of Lou, the little girl notwithstanding, were of the same age, too.
“Are we celebrating?” I sat down at the table, my hands trembling in my lap. I took a sip to steady myself. The gin wasn’t particularly chilled. She must have had it out, waiting for me, for some time. “I don’t feel much like celebrating.”
Lou watched me as I sipped. “I know these last few weeks have been hell,” she said, “and the last time we spoke, it ended poorly. But I have missed you so much.”
I looked down at the drink. In the fluorescent light, I could see the slight cast of blue prismed in the gin. Blue gin, blue fleur-de-lis, blue corpse, blue Lou. I threw back the rest of my gin. I was searching so hard for an angle, and I had nothing but round edges. Nothing left, nothing left.
“I spent the day with a few old friends of yours. Lafferty and MacLeish.” My voice caught, and I coughed, trying to hide it.
Lou put her drink down. Her face was so white I could’ve counted her freckles if I wanted. She chewed on her upper lip as she worked it out. “You wouldn’t be here if you’d been booked for murder.”
I laughed bitterly. “They didn’t book me.” I stared at the table. I couldn’t get the words out.
“Jo,” Lou said, a mask sliding over her face, her eyes a big blank. Keeping herself shuttered to me. “What did you tell them?”
I laughed again, rubbing my eyes. I wanted all that gin in my veins. I didn’t want to have to think about anything else for a long, long time. Thinking, and doing, had gotten me nowhere anyway. Ellen, Carrigan—none of it would matter, in the end. Lou would hate me. There was no
way she wouldn’t hate me.
So I told her. Everything. Starting with Ellen at the St. Leo and finding the cash from the Lady—or Eve fucking Dawes—and holding it for her. Well, meaning to hold it for Lou. Slipping Ellen the bribe from the police. I didn’t have any other option. I hadn’t known what was going to happen. I told her everything about Carrigan and Jackal’s help—I didn’t figure it would hurt, now that he’d skipped town. I told her I had one last shot to give the cops the cash from Carrigan and the Lady’s name or else I’d be on the hook for the murders. And after everything, that money was mine—ours. Our only option was to go. Now. It was only a matter of time before the Lady knew I had turned on her, before the cops came for us.
Lou’s eyes popped when I mentioned Carrigan, but I pushed on, telling her how I’d gotten the money from him, $75K (even then, it was hard not to feel a little proud of it, and I checked Lou’s face to see if she was proud of me, too, maybe a little, underneath everything), which would be more than enough for us to run away together.
“And, Lou,” I said, finally. “I know.”
Lou’s eyes turned wary. “You know?”
“About Lafferty. Mr. Alibi.” Lou’s face shifted, almost relieved, and I went on, “It was a smart move. But don’t you get it? He won’t help you now. Not anymore.”
Lou’s mouth opened and then closed. She nodded. “Of course, you’re right. That’s over.” She stared at me for a moment and then she said, her voice hushed, “You took Mitch Carrigan.” I couldn’t tell if she was proud or angry. “You really did it?”
“I know,” I said quickly. “I wanted to do it with you, Lou, but it was my mess to fix.”
Lou nodded, not looking at me. “Did you tell the police . . . I mean, did you mention Rita Palmer’s name?” Lou nibbled on a fingernail, her gin untouched in front of her. She didn’t like gin, I remembered, had told me once it tasted like Christmas tree piss.
The Lady Upstairs Page 25
