Beneath the trench coat, she wears nothing except a pair of “barely there” sheer thigh-high stockings. She runs a hand over her knee and up to the top of her left thigh-high, pulling it up a little as she waits.
Closing her eyes she listens intently.
She didn’t used to be Stella Dauphine. Born Carla Stellos, she changed her name after a year in New Orleans. After seeing a late-night movie on TV – A Streetcar Named Desire - and after parking her car on Dauphine Street, she decided on the change. She felt more like a Stella Dauphine every day.
Her eyes snap open a heartbeat after she hears a distinct metallic click at the back door. The door creaks open. Standing at the foot of the bed, Stella picks up her Beretta, unfastens the trench coat, her gun hidden in the folds of the coat as she waits.
She feels a slight breath of summer air flow into the room and hears a voice sigh and then light footsteps moving toward the bedroom. A figure steps into the doorway.
The light flashes on.
Gordon Urquhart’s there, a neat.22 Bersa in his hand.
Stella opens the trench coat and lets it fall off her shoulders.
As Gordon looks down at her naked body, Stella squeezes off a round, which strikes Gordon on the right side of his chest. He’s stunned, so stunned he drops his gun. Gordon’s mouth opens as he stumbles into the room, falling against the chest of drawers. Blood seeps through the fingers of his right hand, which he’s pressed against his wound.
“You shot me!”
“Kick your gun over here.”
Gordon’s face is ashen. He blinks at her, looks at his chest and stammers, “You shot me!
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll shoot you again.” Stella’s mouth is set in a grim, determined slit. “Now kick the gun.”
Gordon swings his foot and the gun slides across the hardwood floor. Stella steps forward and kicks it back under Gordon’s bed.
The big man is breathing hard now. Blood has saturated his shirt.
“I think you hit an artery,” he says weakly.
“Then we don’t have much time, do we?”
“For what?”
Stella points her chin at the bed. “Sit, before you collapse.”
Gordon moves to the bed and sits.
Stella moves to the doorway between the bedroom and kitchen, the Beretta still trained on Gordon.
“So,” she says. “Where is it?”
He looks at her as if he hasn’t the foggiest idea.
“Mr Happer told me to give you ten seconds to come up with the money you took off Smutt.” Stella narrows her eyes. “One. Two. Three -”
“I gave him the 400.”
“Four. Five. Six -”
Gordon raises his head and says, “Go ahead and shoot me. There’s no money.”
“Seven. Eight. Nine -”
“If I had it, you think I’d be dumb enough to have it on me? I spotted your Chevy as soon as I left the Governor Nicholls Wharf.”
Stella squeezes off another round, which knocks the lamp off the end table next to the bed.
“Dammit!” Gordon groans in pain. “I don’t have any more money. Smutt blew it all.”
Stella brushes her hair away from her face with her right hand and tells him, “Mr Happer doesn’t believe you and I don’t believe you.”
Gordon clears his throat and says, “Mr Happer and me go back a long way, lady. He knows better.”
A cold smile crosses Stella’s thin lips. “I’ll just whack you and toss the place. I’ll still get my fee.”
“This is crazy. I tell you, there’s no more money.”
Stella aims the Beretta with both hands again, this time at Gordon’s face. She says, “So you and the old man go back a ways, huh? Well, I’m the one he calls when things go badly. And you’re as bad as they come.”
Gordon nods at her. “I seen you around. I know all about you. And you got me all wrong, lady.”
Stella watches his eyes closely as she says, “When Smutt left the Fairgrounds, he went straight to his parole-officer’s house and paid the man off. Three grand. Stiff payoff, but Smutt figured it was worth it. Then he went to two restaurants, gorged himself. Then dropped some cash at the betting parlour on Rampart.”
She watches Gordon’s pupils. A pinprick of recognition comes to them as soon as she says the words, “Six grand. He had about six grand left. You took it off him.”
“No way.”
Stella fires again, into Gordon’s belly, and he howls.
“That’s it.” Stella’s smile broadens. “Keep denying it.”
“I don’t have it!” Gordon slumps backward.
Stella levels her weapon, aiming at Gordon’s forehead. She pauses, giving him one last chance.
“I don’t!” He screams.
She squeezes off a round that strikes Gordon in the forehead. Stepping forward, she puts two more in his head before he falls back on his bed. For good measure she empties the Beretta’s magazine, putting two more in the side of the man’s head.
She picks up all eight casings and slips them into the pocket of her coat. She leaves his Bersa under the bed. Let the police match it to the Smutt murder. Then, slowly and methodically, she tosses the place.
An hour later, she finds the 6,000 in the flour container on Gordon’s kitchen counter. The giveaway – what man has fresh flour in a container?
Mr Happer, sitting back in his captain’s chair, bats his eyes at the TV as Peter Ustinov taps out an S-O-S on his bathroom wall, a large cobra poised and ready to strike the rotund detective. Stella, standing at the desk’s edge in the trench coat outfit from last night, recognizes the scene and waits for David Niven to rush in with his sword to impale the snake.
When the scene’s tension dies, Mr Happer turns his deep-set eyes to Stella and says, “OK. You got the money?” Stella shakes her head.
Mr Happer’s eyes grow wide. “It wasn’t there?”
“I tore the place apart. If he had it, he stashed it.”
“Dammit!” Mr Happer slaps a skeletonic hand on his desk. He picks up the remote control and pauses his movie. His black eyes leer at Stella’s eyes as if he can get the truth just by staring. She bites her lower lip, reaches down, and unfastens her coat. She opens it slowly as Happer’s gaze moves down her body.
Stella lets the coat fall to the floor and stands there naked except for the thigh-high stockings, which give her long legs the silky look. Rolling her hips, Stella sits on the edge of the desk. Mr Happer stares at her body as if mesmerized. It takes a long minute for his gaze to rise to her eyes.
“You sure you tossed the place right?”
Stella nods.
Mr Happer picks up the remote and looks back at the TV. The riverboat is moored now, against the bank of the wide Nile River.
“Well, the word’ll get out. Make it easier later on,” Happer says. “That’s what the big boys do.”
Stella climbs off the desk and picks up her coat. As she closes it, she looks at the old man. Mr Happer turns those black eyes to her and says, “You sure you tossed the place right?”
She’s ready, her face perfectly posed. “I’m sure.”
“OK.” Mr Happer looks back at the TV and mouths the words as Peter Ustinov speaks. Without looking, he opens his centre desk drawer and withdraws an envelope. He slides it over to Stella, who picks it up and puts it in her purse.
“Good work,” Mr Happer says.
“Thanks.” Stella turns and leaves him with his Ustinov and David Niven and riverboat floating down the Nile.
On her way down the stairs she looks at the dark Mississippi water and whispers a message to the dead Gordon, “So you and Mr Happer go back a long way. Well, we go back a longer way.”