The Lady Upstairs

by Halley Sutton

  Lou turned on the stool toward me. She blew out her cheeks in a big puff, eyebrows skyrocketing. “Do you blame me for that?”

  “I blame us both.” I signaled the bartender for a drink, whatever was closest, any damn drink he wanted to pour. Behind Lou, a couple moved to the bar next to us. He put his hand on the small of her back and she stepped away. Not a good sign for the date, but still: I’d rather have been him than me at that moment.

  Lou didn’t say anything. She took, finally, a small sip of her drink and said, under her breath, “Shit whiskey.” Wondering, I was pretty sure, if my cold feet about Carrigan weren’t payback for the way things had gone bad all those years ago.

  “Forget it,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t really anybody’s fault.”

  “If you say so.”

  It wasn’t that Carrigan was so similar to the Asshole. They didn’t look much alike, except in that way older white men who paid taxes above a certain bracket all looked a little alike—the style of clothes, the haircut, the cash even men needed to keep up the goods. He hadn’t been a lawyer, but he’d—we’d—worked in an office a few blocks from Carrigan’s. That was pretty much the extent of the similarities, on the face of it.

  But that first one had gone so badly, so quickly. With even fewer red flags than Carrigan.

  After our pie breakfast, Lou had taken me back to her apartment, to shower and change. I had three weeks left on my lease and was getting desperate enough to consider calling my mother, asking her to send me money for a ticket home or a loan—I hadn’t worked out the details yet. I was trying not to think about it. When I thought about it, I imagined her soft exhalation into the phone, a mix of relief and condescending care. Oh, honey, I knew it. Come home. Let me take care of you.

  At that moment, Lou had seemed like a godsend, a temporary balm against everything that had flipped upside down in my world in the last month.

  Especially when she’d come to me after the shower as I was combing my hair, smelling her lemon shampoo on me, a twinkle in her eye, and said: “How bad do you hate this guy? Really. Bad enough to get even?”

  I hadn’t even hesitated. Of course I hadn’t.

  Not two weeks later, Lou was meeting him for drinks, having serendipitously met cute at the bar around the corner from the office where I knew he spent his weekday happy hours. I watched them talk as the happy hours stretched to closing, Lou laughing loud and throaty the way I already liked. One drink multiplied into four, and then she was all over him, kissing the corners of his mouth, squeezing him through his thin pants. I’d laughed out loud from my hiding place outside, I’d been so shocked by what I’d seen and how it made me feel, the pulse between my legs mingling with the power of knowing that together, Lou and I were dangerous.

  It didn’t take much convincing on her part to get him back up to the office—I could picture her whispering into his ear, sibilant as a snake, I can’t stand it, I can’t wait, fill me up, please, please—and I followed them, taking the next elevator, getting off on the floor below and creeping up through the internal stairwell, waiting in the dark to hear what Lou said to him, did to him.

  When she’d finished her work, leaving the Asshole tied up and naked in his boss’s office—the door bolted from the outside; I still remembered where the keys were—we’d leaned against the door stifling our giggles, Lou in her bra and jeans, as we listened to him cry and plead for her to “fucking end this, you sick bitch, not funny anymore, please, somebody, Jesus Christ!”

  Laughed ourselves sick.

  We’d thought we were so clever. We’d thought we were invincible that night.

  Behind Lou in the bar, a mariachi strummed his guitar, serenading a tourist. “I’m sorry,” Lou said, raising her voice above the music. “That wasn’t fair of me. This week’s hell. There’s been a problem with—” Lou stopped herself, her gaze stony again. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

  “What? What problem?” Oh God, I thought, the Lady knew about the money. And now Lou knew what I’d done, too.

  Lou bit her lip, flicked her fingers against her glass, her nails clacking. “Nothing. Nothing to worry you, anyway.” Before I could ask anything else, she rushed on, “But the worst of it is I feel like . . . I guess I feel like . . . lately you’ve been avoiding me. Did I . . . did I do something?”

  I felt a rush of guilt strong enough to knock the worry out of my head. Before anything else, Lou had always been there for me. “Of course not.” I reached a hand forward, hovered it over her own. Lou didn’t move, and I pulled it back. “I’ve been distracted. By Klein, Ellen.” I held up a hand as Lou started to say something, but I shook my head. If I closed my eyes, I could see Ellen’s teary face, pink feathers clinging to her goopy lip gloss, peering over her shoulder at me for one last affirmation I wouldn’t give before trudging up the stairs of her apartment. I sipped on my melting margarita. I was sure as hell not ready to talk about her yet. “Trust me. She’s fine. She’ll be fine. Thursday will be golden. She could win a goddamn Oscar for what she’ll do.”

  “Okay,” Lou said, a small smile breaking through the thundercloud of her face. “I can’t wait to see those pictures. Tell Jackal to turn the video over.” She took a deep breath, pushed her bourbon away. “And then we can celebrate. With a real drink.”

  “Let me buy you a drink now,” I said. “To make up for being so late.”

  Lou shook her head, biting her lip. There was a glow in her eyes now. “I’m done paying for drinks.” She rolled her shoulders and took a languid look around the bar. She spotted them, the same couple I’d noticed earlier and flicked her eyes at me. A challenge. A game we’d played before.

  “Batter up,” she said, and leaned forward and tapped my arm. Tag, you’re it. The spot burned through my sleeve. I had to keep myself from rubbing it.

  Lou told me she didn’t keep score, but that was bullshit. I was currently up three drinks on her, but it had taken the nearly three years I’d known her to get there.

  He was still talking to the woman, but his eyes found me, gave me an appreciative once-over—if I were a kinder woman, I’d tap his date on the shoulder and tell her to keep moving, her first instincts had been right. Instead, I smiled. Looked away, looked back. Smiled again.

  But Lou was faster. She was out of her chair and bumping him from behind before I’d moved. This time, she wasn’t letting me win.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, all big eyes and innocence. She hadn’t even given me thirty seconds to make a move. Her fingers lingered on his sleeve and she flashed his date a sympathetic smile. “Did I spill your drink?”

  The man was looking like he didn’t know where to look. Trapped between panicked and amused and not sure if he could believe his own good luck. I could almost see the wheels spinning in his head, the mental calculations of how many of us, and where, and when, and whose legs pressed against his face, his waist, his hips . . .

  “My friend is a little clumsy,” I said, and his attention bounced back to me, a tennis match between women. His previously bored date sure looked interested now. You could almost call us matchmakers, Lou and me. “You should make her buy you both a round to make up for it. First dates aren’t cheap.”

  “It’s not a—” The woman started but then cleared her throat and stared daggers at the two of us. “How did you know it was our first date?”

  I shrugged and winked. “A lucky guess. I’m good at reading bodies.” I hid a chuckle in a cough. “Body language, I mean.”

  And then he was stuck, volleying between the three of us, taking an extralong glance at the forty-five-degree angle I’d given him down my top. Lou had a little smile on her face and she was shaking her head at me: You amateur. But it was working. He took a look at his date, who’d stepped closer to him, and then at Lou absentmindedly stroking the material of his tie like she wasn’t even
trying to do it.

  “No need,” he said. “Why don’t you two join us. What can I get you?”

  We would stay for two drinks slipped onto his tab, just long enough for the bartender to get comfortable putting our beverages under his name. By that time, he’d be slurring and she’d be as possessive as if she actually liked him. And because we’d picked a couple on a date, there was little risk he’d demand repayment, monetary or otherwise.

  The date excused herself to go to the restroom, and her absence emboldened him. He leaned into Lou, shrugging his weight onto her shoulders and draping a hand across her knee. Without losing a beat, Lou clutched my chin, her fingers drink-chilled, drawing me in for a kiss. It wasn’t a regular part of our routine, and I could feel my heart skid as her nails scraped lightly against my jaw. Her lips were soft like lips and her tongue slid in between my teeth. She was selling it more than I was. I kept my hands to myself and my eyes closed and tried not to think of anything. After a few moments, she uncorked her mouth from mine with a pleasant little pop, and smiled at the man, who was watching the two of us, slack-jawed.

  His date came back from the bathroom, but he couldn’t stop staring at Lou, breathing like he’d run a marathon, and I knew her: she wouldn’t be the first one to look away, either. I grabbed hold of Lou’s hand and we excused ourselves back to our table, her hot giggle breaths drifting over my shoulder, my neck. We made a good team.

  The trick was in keeping an eye on the date. By the time they started to make restless movements—she’d gone to the bathroom twice now; he was sobering up for the 405 with glass after glass of water—we’d finished seven or eight margaritas. It was a challenge we’d issued to each other silently, to see how long we could last before we chickened out and left. We’d been caught only a few times before, but this was the real game, not the free drinks: which one of us could stand the heat longest.

  Lou and I slipped out seconds ahead of him closing the tab, cutting it close, the reckless pounding in my chest a building volcano that spewed into guffaws as we tumbled out of the bar to the shower of expletives from behind us, the outrage at his racked-up bill following us into the street.

  We put a little distance between us and him, taking the long way back to our cars. I waited to see if she would invite me to follow her, feeling a little foolish, not wanting to say goodbye. Lou stepped closer, hooking her arm in mine. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was, which was that it might be the last con we’d ever run together.

  At her car, she turned to me and said, “Truce?”

  I shook my head. “No need. Never any fight.”

  She smiled back at me with her soft pink lips. “You have my lipstick on your teeth.” She leaned over and rubbed it away with her thumb. I didn’t move. Or breathe. Then she said, “I’ll think about what you said about Carrigan. I mean it. I know you have the best interests of us all at heart. I know you’d do anything for the Lady. For me.”

  I thought of Ellen’s dark eyes, slick with tears, her red mouth open and trembling. Still in that pink party dress, shaking in her seat. Things I’d said to her that even I had never said to another living, breathing human before. But then I thought of the money that the Lady might already know was missing, and Lou’s big hurt eyes, roaming over the bar as she wondered where I’d been, why I was avoiding her, and knew I’d say those things all over again if I had to. I’d go to the end of the world to keep that expression from Lou’s face. If I had to.

  “I would, Lou. Really, I would.”

  Chapter 13

  I’d noticed it in the Seven Galbi parking lot in the morning: brown Crown Vic, a lumpy cow of a car, no lights and no stickers, but there was no hiding that cop shape and sheen. I glanced through the window. No one inside. Nothing on the passenger seat. Could’ve simply been parked there—the lot was almost always empty in the morning—while the owner interviewed suspects or looted a doughnut shop. No need to jump the gun. Not every cop in this city is looking for you, Jo. Get it together. If it was still there at lunchtime, I would start to worry.

  “Is there a Crown Vic parked outside?” I asked Jackal as soon as he dragged himself into the office. Not quite lunchtime, but still plenty to worry about. I leaned in his doorway and watched him ignore me from behind his computer screen, giving me the chance to stare at him. I can’t say it wasn’t an effective ploy on his part—he was so handsome. Damn him. I glanced around his office, looking for the contraband photos. I’d warned him that, even if I wasn’t going to say anything, he needed to get rid of them: couldn’t afford any chances for Lou to notice them. We both knew where her loyalties lay. I wasn’t sure if he’d taken my advice, or if he even intended to.

  Jackal didn’t look up. “Don’t know. Didn’t check.”

  “Some private eye you’d be,” I said, “with all those keen observational powers.”

  He made a big show of tearing himself away from whatever he was working on and stared at me. Those dark green eyes fringed by lashes a mile long. Money eyes. “You look tired,” he said finally. “You didn’t call me last night.”

  “There’s that silver tongue that charms all the ladies.”

  “It doesn’t have to charm when it’s skilled at other things,” he said, a small smile quirking one side of his mouth.

  He’d honed some talents in the workplace, for sure. “Have you ever thought of retiring? From the Lady’s line of work. How would you go about it?”

  “Are you trying to make an honest man out of me?”

  I smirked, laughing despite myself. “Never. I just wondered if you’d heard Lou talking about that before. Retirement.”

  “Tired of the game?” Jackal squinted at me. “Or tired of the whole outfit? We could make a great team, you know. You could get back in touch with the marks, then I’d lay it on them . . .”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t touching his side business with a ten-foot pole. “Has anyone done it before?” Watching him. Maybe he didn’t know what the Lady had done to his ex, either.

  Jackal shrugged, looking bored. “Dunno.”

  He wasn’t that good an actor. I picked at a splinter in the wood grain of his doorway. “What time are you heading to the St. Leo tomorrow?”

  Jackal rolled his eyes. “Two thirty. As soon as the cleaners have finished. I’ll set up the room, then wait. I won’t even get up to take a piss. I’ll wait with my eyes glued to the screen for the world’s oldest show. You know all the years I’ve been doing this, it’s almost not even interesting anymore?” Jackal shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. “I guess after long enough, even screwing can be boring. Even tits.”

  “Send me a picture of the room as soon as you get there.” Usually, I’d wait in the lobby to make sure Ellen and Klein were on schedule. But I knew I’d check the room more than once during the wait, to make sure Jackal was where he was supposed to be. “And then one every thirty minutes, so I know you’re still there.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Never,” I said. No window in Jackal’s room. I couldn’t even check if the car was still there. I plucked at the splinter, pulling out a small chunk of his door. “I bet that goddamn car hasn’t moved an inch.”

  “What do you care? It’s not like they’re here to talk to you.”

  I shook my head. I had to check or else I would go crazy, coming up with fantasies of the blues storming the office, demanding their money. Asking for Lou, asking for the Lady. I didn’t need that today of all days. Like Jackal, I should be thinking only about Klein. “You’re right. They’re not here to talk to me.”

  Jackal stared at my face again. Lou would have known I was lying. Jackal might have. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. “I’ll be there this time, Jo. Trust me.”

  “If I believed every man who told me to trust him, I’d be pregnant,” I snapped.

  I stomped to the front windows and hooked a finger ove
r one of the slats of the blinds, pulling it down so butter-yellow sunshine briefly blinded me. The car hadn’t moved. But I could see the outline of a body behind the steering wheel, a hand dangling from the now-opened window. I caught my breath and looked back at Jackal’s door. Still open, but he hadn’t gotten up from the desk. Lou wasn’t in yet—I wasn’t sure when she would be. I chewed my lip, watching the car. As long as he stayed put, I wouldn’t go down there. Nothing good will come of talking to him, Jo, I thought, even as I imagined Lou pulling into the lot, stopping to chat with him.

  As I watched, convincing myself to stay where I was, the door opened and a salt-and-pepper squarehead climbed out of the car, glaring into the sunlight and looking around the strip mall, searching for something. With his eyes behind sunglasses, I couldn’t see what he was looking for, but he found something he liked and nodded once to himself, heading for the staircase that led up to our office.

  The Korean barbecue was in full swing, and the smoke from the tasty beef stung my eyes as I rushed down the stairs. I could only make excuses, promise the money by next week, hope that would buy me enough time to get the money from Klein. If everything went smoothly, of course. Between the sting tomorrow and setting up the money drop, there were still so many pieces that could go wrong.

  I headed the man off at the bottom of the staircase, gripping both sides of the railing so I didn’t slip a heel and go flying down into him. His expression didn’t change as I stopped on the step above the lot, so that I was a touch taller than him.

  “Can I help you?”

  He didn’t say anything. Thick around the jowls, neck like the trunk of a tree. His white button-down rolled up to expose a not-too-nice watch. I’d bet he’d been a cop since birth.