I am Baaack! Part 13

She pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses and poured them each a double. The glasses were NOT crystal, and the whiskey was NOT Jack Daniels - if the two had been wearing hats, they would NOT have been white.

While Ed poured, Lou pulled up the a corner of the rug to reveal a small cavity. She pulled two handguns from it; they were NOT Glockenspiel 7mm's, but were lethal all the same. She handed one to Lou in exchange for a glass. Both women threw back their shots, checked over their guns, and nodded to each other.

Leaving the apartment quietly, they came up behind Jack, who was apparently listening intently to what was coming in through his earphones. Lou raised her eyebrows at Ed, who nodded, and then whopped Jack right in the left temple with the butt of her gun; he slumped down unconscious, and Lou grabbed the shotgun before it hit the ground. She checked it, finding shells in both chambers. Ed checked Jack's vest, and found six more shells. She then tried to listen on the head-phones, but found she had damaged them when she had hit him with her gun; all she got was static. 'No use crying over spilt milk.'

Lou and Ed knew that all the employee rooms at the Whip and Cuff could be viewed through one-way mirrors from viewing rooms accessible only from the stairway. The mirror was also designed to function as a door if necessary. They descended the stairs to the 16th floor and faced two doorways, one giving access to the regular corridor of the old hotel, the one used by the employees' clients, and one giving access to the corridor that led to the viewing rooms. They took that one; they knew exactly where they were going, as they had viewed Stella's activities many times.

They entered the viewing room, and immediately glanced through the two-way mirror. Stella was truly the bird in a gilded cage. Her room was an over-the-top caricature of erotic feminine decor. Pink satin covered almost everything, and almost everything was rimmed with extravagant black lace. Where there wasn't satin, there was gilded trim around mirrors of every shape and size and locale, so that there was virtually nowhere in the room that a person could not see him or herself from a number of different angles.