The Lady Upstairs

by Halley Sutton

  I’d never held a gun before. The metal was slick against my palms, which were sweating, and I had the urge to tap the trigger just to make sure it really worked.

  “Put it down,” Lou said, taking another step toward me.

  “Stop it,” I warned, but she moved another step closer. I flinched and gripped the gun with both hands. She put her hands up, but she took another step. Lou’s face was soft again, and if I let myself, I could almost believe that she hadn’t really meant everything she’d said, that she was only scared. I could understand that. Anyone could.

  “Think this through,” she said. “The police will be here any minute. Would you really shoot me?”

  I’d been trying to avoid asking myself that question since I’d grabbed the gun. She didn’t want to go back to the streets. I could still leave tonight, go to Palm Springs without her.

  It wouldn’t take MacLeish more than twenty minutes, tops, to get to her place, less if he was speeding, and at least ten, maybe fifteen had passed since she’d called them. If they got here, it would be her word against mine. A coin toss.

  Except I was holding a gun on her.

  “I don’t want to,” I admitted, and cocked the gun. “So please, Lou, please, get out of my way.”

  She stopped moving, her hands in the air, and bit her lip, a genuine flare of fear in her eyes. I thought about what she must have been like before this life, before she’d started being the Lady. I thought of the picture of Eve Dawes, yanked off the street, scared and alone in a justice system that told her she was trash, that punished her but none of the men who had used her. I wondered if Lou had a similar picture anywhere in her file. That kind heart of hers couldn’t have been entirely faked. It must have made her easy pickings for the world, once upon a time.

  “Did you ever care about me?” I asked, knowing it was stupid. I was wasting time.

  She took one very small step closer, still smiling that little smile. She was too close now—I could smell her. Some of her lemony brightness had faded, and underneath it was a musky, animal smell, a stink. “A little,” she admitted. “I love all my marks, a little.”

  I reared back, my cheeks burning as if she’d slapped me.

  Lou took the opening, throwing herself on me, barreling me backward. I bounced against the bed and twisted off it, Lou’s knee connecting with my stomach and spiking the air out of my lungs. Stunned, I could barely get my arms up to push her away as she clawed at my hair, climbing up me to get to the gun I was still clutching. “You’re not going anywhere,” she huffed into my neck, her breath tickling my ear, and finally I kicked at her, managing to knock her off for a moment, and then she was back, scratching at me, reaching for the gun.

  I let my fingers loose, trying only to throw the gun far enough that I could push her away from me and scramble for the door, but she was too quick, she caught my hand on the way, pinning my arm down and growling as she clutched at it, grabbing the gun from the ground and thumbing back the hammer, trying to hold me down and wriggle it away, both at the same time. But I was bigger than she was, too strong, and I flailed my free arm, trying to get her off me, and my fingers caught the tumbler on the bedside table, showering us both with stinging gin. I only meant to stun her, I only meant to give myself a fighting chance, which was all Lou had ever wanted for herself, too, a chance to take control of her life, but then I was bringing the tumbler down just above her ear and an unholy crack came from the side of her face, that beautiful face I couldn’t stand to look at anymore, crunching against the floor as a thin line of blood ran down from her skull, as she looked up at me, her eyes big with surprise and, oh God, sadness, and her mouth dropped wide and then there was a roaring coming out of her that was worse than anything, worse, even, than the rattle that had come out of Ellen in the back seat of the car, a syrupy herk, herk, as if she’d tried to will oxygen back into her lungs.

  And then I was bringing the tumbler down against her head again because if I didn’t make that sound stop I really was going to go crazy and then it did stop and the only sound in the room was my ragged breathing.

  “Lou?” I whispered, pushing her away from me. She didn’t move. She didn’t make a noise. Oh God, what had I done, I hadn’t meant to do it, I hadn’t really meant to do it. But there was a little voice in my head that disagreed, that had been screaming since I’d seen the suitcase, since I’d heard her say it, I love all my marks, a little, since even, maybe, Ellen.

  I pressed a hand to my hammering heart and sat up, staring down at her slumped body. Stupid, stupid. Get out of here. When she wakes up in two minutes, you’ll have missed your shot.

  But I didn’t listen to myself. I turned her over. Lou’s face was frozen, lips parted, the blood seeping slower now but still covering her face. Her open eyes. That perfect porcelain face, lifeless and cracked and red and white.

  It had been the only thing I’d stared at the entire time I’d choked Ellen from the back seat of her own car, Lou’s hands holding Ellen down with all her might, her face like a slice of bone-white china in the moonlight. The entire time, while Ellen had flailed like a fish on a hook, twisting and raking at Lou’s eyes, never quite reaching her, I’d stared at Lou’s face. One, two, three, I’d counted, trying to see if I could match all the pale freckles on Lou’s nose with the count I was keeping up as I willed Ellen into unconsciousness, the seat belt wrapped around my knuckles. Making a mythology of her face as Ellen stopped struggling, until it was really and truly over.

  I straightened up, breathing hard. My hands were shaking and I stared at them, counting to ten over and over in my head. I could hear the light buzzing from the bathroom, like water rushing in my ears.

  I knew it was useless, but I probed under her chin for a pulse. No luck. I stared at her body, numb, the body that not an hour before, I’d been . . . I shook my head. If I let myself think about that, I’d go crazy. I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to go crazy, anyway, but I had to get myself together. I had to think.

  Lou’s body. The police on their way. If I closed my eyes and concentrated, I thought it was possible I could hear the sirens approaching.

  The light buzzing from the bathroom gave me an idea. I gulped down a gag and grabbed Lou’s body under the armpits, dragging her to the bathroom. I set her carefully against the toilet and ran a bath. I didn’t have enough time to fill the tub so I pushed her in with it only halfway full. It wouldn’t fool anyone for long.

  As she slipped into the water, I remembered what she’d told me once, that she couldn’t swim. I pulled her head up, above the water. Some of the blood was already drying and tacky around the split in her skull, but some of it had turned the water pink. I cradled her head in my hands and stared at her. Lou, why did you do it?

  If she’d come with me when I’d first asked, we could have been halfway to Palm Springs by now. I closed my eyes. The slideshow of images of what could have been: holding her hand across the gearshift, a midnight swim. Well, she got that, I thought, and then I started to laugh; it was so horrible and perfect. My ears caught the faint wail of a siren, and I knew I wasn’t imagining it this time.

  If it was Escobar, I was completely fucked. If it was MacLeish, I had options. She’d been drinking. She’d fallen in the bathtub, hit her head. It happened, I knew it did.

  But I wasn’t so sure I wanted options. Jackal was gone, Lou was gone. Ellen. All gone. Was there anything left for me, now, that was better than being locked up? The Lady’s business, for all it had been about taking down bad men, had left so many dead women in its wake. And I was a part of that. Maybe it was better for everyone if they caught me. Maybe that was the only end left, the best end left, for dangerous women like Lou and me.

  I left the bathroom and picked up Lou’s gold lighter from the bedroom floor, where she’d dropped it in our struggle. I wanted something of hers close to me as I did what I knew I had to do. It wasn’t a trophy. It wasn’t that.


  I clicked it with each step back down her stairs, dropping the hammer like a tiny guillotine. I glided my hand over the polished mahogany handrail for the last time. My prints were all over the place anyway.

  I descended the staircase. Through the fogged glass of Lou’s front windows, I could see the pulse of blue and red lights, hear the slap of car doors closing. My breath was tight in my chest, and my hands were cold and soggy with Lou’s pink blood, and dripping red with Ellen’s, even if I was the only one who could see it. Through the window I saw shapes moving closer, two, but I couldn’t tell who they were. MacLeish and Escobar, MacLeish and someone new?

  One of the shapes was close to the door now, and as he raised an arm to knock—the other hand moving to his hip—I took a deep breath and flipped the lock, placing my hands securely on my head in supplication, and then I waited.

  I didn’t have to wait very long.

  What had been our biggest rule? Oh, Lou, if you didn’t believe you taught me anything, believe this: I won’t make the same mistake twice.

  Chapter 32

  The alarm went off: 6 p.m. Officially time for a drink. I was proud of myself; I’d been managing to wait longer and longer every night. It was even dark now.

  I poured myself a little bourbon from the bottle that I kept under the sink in what had been Jackal’s office and dropped two sweating ice cubes into it. The heat had cooled but hadn’t left completely, even as we’d passed Thanksgiving and Christmas was on the horizon. Not that I had anyone to buy gifts for this year.

  I read the paper as I sipped. Nothing fickler than a daily newspaper. There’d been a stir when Joel Klein was arrested on suspicion of his father’s and mistress’s murders. Multiple witnesses, among them a certain leading man, had reported a loud altercation between Junior and Ellen at a cemetery party just a day before the bodies were found. And while he’d never be convicted—money like that never was—it was a terrible marvel to realize that, in the end, Ellen had created the perfect cover for me. For us.

  It would’ve made Lou laugh. Maybe she was laughing, wherever she was now.

  A few days before Joel Klein was arrested, one of the local papers, not even the Times, dedicated a thumb’s width of space to the decease of a local woman, née Rita Palmer, at her home.

  It made it worse, almost, that the name hadn’t been a lie. It made me wonder what else might have been true. But I’d never get those answers, so I pushed it away.

  The deceased was found in her bathtub, with an injury to the head that had been sustained after a night of drinking. Investigating police officers said there was no sign of foul play, and the death was being investigated strictly as an accident.

  That was all. That was all the article said. Nobody mentioned Ellen’s suitcase. Nobody mentioned it because it would never be found. MacLeish had been thorough in his favor, erasing all signs of me from the house. I tried not to think of what he’d done to stage her so well. Had he undressed her, lit a candle, splashed gin in the bathtub? No one else knew she hated it. Jo, be human. In the end, no justice for Ellen, no justice for Lou.

  The day after that notice appeared, I’d called Lou’s phone carrier and asked that any calls that came to her phone, either cell or home, be redirected to my number. I explained the situation—a friend of mine had committed suicide, and I had no way of getting in touch with her family. But I wanted them to hear the news from a friendly voice before anyone else. It had taken all of three minutes to connect.

  As the days went by and no one called, I felt a sadness deeper than any I’d known even when Ellen died, when I first realized what I was capable of. Lou had no one. Only me. And she hadn’t even wanted that. She’d preferred being alone to my company, at the last. And unlike Ellen’s death, her demise had inspired no speculation, no court reporters banging down her mother’s door. Only me. I supposed, in a way, that made her finally mine.

  I’d gotten everything I wanted, hadn’t I. In the end. I stood up and poured myself another drink.

  I’d kept coming into the office because there wasn’t much else I could think of to do. I was waiting, but I didn’t know for what. I’d moved Lou’s chair out of her office—it had a better cushion than mine—and I’d flipped through her desk, looking for anything with my name on it. I’d found nothing, which should’ve been a relief but wasn’t. I did find dozens of pictures of a younger Eve Dawes with six or seven different men. Staring at them, I understood why she’d kept ferrying Lou’s bribes to the police in order to keep them secret. They were truly lurid, but it was the look on her face she’d want to protect, I thought. The blankness in her eyes that made you wonder. It didn’t square with the woman she was trying to be now. It must have seemed worth the price of acting as an extra layer between Lou and the police. To keep being used by Lou.

  The phone rang when I was on my second glass of bourbon. On the other end, a voice I’d never expected to hear again. “You must really not be scared of me,” Carrigan said. “You didn’t even bother to change your phone number.”

  “I was sorry to hear about the election,” I said. I was a little surprised to find I meant it. “But at least you know I had nothing to do with it.”

  There was a pained pause, and then Carrigan said, tightly, “Thanks. I don’t dwell in the past.”

  “And yet here you are,” I said, “calling me.”

  “I’d like to engage your services,” Carrigan said.

  “I don’t fuck for money.”

  “Since when?” he fired back. “Anyway, that’s not what I meant. I’d like to employ all of your services. I assume you’re still . . . in business?”

  It was a good question.

  I’d gotten lucky. MacLeish, not Lafferty or Escobar, had been the one to pull open Lou’s door that night. When he saw me, soaked and shivering, he’d shouted to his partner to phone it in, a 10-16. Whoever it was trudged back to the car, and MacLeish shut the door and looked at me, those droopy hangdog eyes, and said: “We’ll have five minutes, tops. Go out the back. Where is she?”

  That’s how long it took us to reach a new understanding.

  Later that night, MacLeish had called me from a number that showed up on my phone as Unlisted. He hadn’t bothered with pleasantries.

  “The chief wanted me to pass something along,” MacLeish said.

  “Yeah?” I thumbed Lou’s lighter, back and forth, back and forth. Trying to place my fingertips right over the dulled fingerprints I could catch in the light. If I pressed hard enough, maybe I could feel them pressing back.

  “Said if you had a moment, he’d love an in-person meeting with the Lady. A few details to iron out.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said, wondering how much Lafferty minded his partner covering up his girlfriend’s murder. “But there’s no Lady anymore. You fished her out of a bathtub tonight.”

  “Chief thought you might say that,” MacLeish said. “Told me to tell you, if that changes, he’d appreciate a call.”

  “I can’t imagine,” I said, closing my eyes as I said it, “what you owe him now. On my behalf.”

  MacLeish sighed. “The chief’s not a sentimental man, I’ll say that much. But it wasn’t painless. And Jo”—and his voice got deeper as he said it—“one day I will collect.”

  I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. That was the problem of some future woman. Who knew who she’d turn out to be, what she could handle.

  Another pause. A longer one. “Give the chief a call if the Lady’s ever back in business.”

  “All right,” I said, and hung up before he could press it again. I flipped the lighter, dropping the hammer again and again. It really was a pretty thing. All cheap Art Deco imitation gold and black enamel, nothing of value but pretty all the same. It was almost enough to make a woman consider taking up smoking.

  The irony wasn’t lost on me, that I’d sold out our sisterhood to a man, to a
cop. That in the end, I’d chosen to put my life in his hands, the way I’d once laid everything at Lou’s feet. One day, there would be a heavy price tag. I knew that. Nothing is free—not kindness, not friendship. Certainly not favors. The implications unfurled before me, unending and evil. Maybe I’d spent too much time with Jackal, I thought, because I’d learned to gamble. Someday, I’d hear from MacLeish again.

  I hadn’t expected to hear from Carrigan first.

  “What exactly did you have in mind?” I asked him.

  “You know what it takes to win elections these days?”

  “Money,” I guessed. It was a pretty safe guess. It was true for most things that had to be won.

  “Money,” he confirmed. “Money my lovely little wife’s family didn’t feel comfortable sharing. So now that my political aspirations have been, so to speak, doused in gasoline and lit on fire, I’ve turned my mind to other things. I don’t think I was well suited for office anyway. Too many public appearances, too many babies to kiss.”

  “We charge by the hour and that counts for phone calls, too,” I reminded him.

  “My father-in-law,” Carrigan clarified, “told me he couldn’t support my campaign because he had something grander in mind for me than public service. Said I was the son he’d never had, that he’d turn the business over to me someday. All bullshit. He won’t retire before he dies. Unless someone forces him to do it. I’d like to speed his timeline up, a little.”

  “You could just ride it out. Law office no longer fulfilling?” I was doodling on my notepad, not taking notes the way Lou had trained me to. Instead, I’d doodled a constellation of stars—or freckles—and I was working my way between them, connecting everything together.

  Carrigan cleared his throat on the other end of the phone. “No one has come right out and said it to my face, but I know they’re happy I lost the election. You know my firm never even bothered to put up a poster? Not one single poster,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice. “That’s reason enough for me.”