Generation of Liars (34 page)

I walked over to him and kissed
him. I pulled away, but he gripped my shoulders to steady himself to me as he
looked into my eyes. I felt hot tears pooling at the brim and I couldn’t
control them.

“You’re crying. Why?”

“A friend of mine may have died
tonight.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Is it okay if I stay with you for
a few days?”

“Yes, it’s fine for you to stay
here. You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?”

“No. My friend, he was involved in
an accident, and I just got so shaken up by the news I don’t want to be alone
tonight.”

He squeezed me at the ribs. “You
can stay here as long as you need. I’ll be on shift at the hospital most of the
time, but you’re welcome to entertain yourself here while I’m gone.”

I did a sigh of relief. “Thank you,
Ben.” I coiled my waif-like arms around his shoulders, hugging him with
everything I had, and then the words just sort of spilled from my mouth like
shaken marbles. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Alice,” Ben
replied, with his arms wringing my shoulders in the warmest embrace. He broke
away and bent into kiss me and his lips were like velvet brushing up against
mine. He pulled away, a streak of self-consciousness seeming to surge within
him that caused his eyes to drop to the floor. “You look like you’ve been
through a lot, let’s get you to sleep and we can work the rest out later.”

Chapter Thirty-three: The Money

DAYLIGHT BURNED RAW and punishing
over the skin on my eyelids.

I heard Ben leave for work in the
morning and I lay in his bed for a while wondering what had happened to Rabbit
and to Motley.

Both could be dead.

Both could be alive. Looking for me
and really ticked off. My eyes flew open and I realized how hard my heart had
been thumping. I had mistaken the noise for the radiator. If Motley was, in
fact, alive, he wasn’t going to simply let me walk away with the dynamite
stick. He would hunt me down, take the dynamite stick from me, and kill me. The
thought of the dynamite stick haunted me from the linen closet where I had
hidden it the night before. I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to destroy it just
yet in case I needed it as collateral against Motley. If it was gone, he really
had no reason to keep me alive.

I rolled out of bed and padded to
the kitchen. Ben had left some cold coffee sitting in the coffee pot. I snooped
around his kitchen for a nip to add, but the place was dry of any alcohol,
which didn’t surprise me. Ben was so vanilla.
If he only knew what I had
done the night before
. I swallowed the coffee and lit a cigarette on the
stove’s burner. I was pretty sure Ben mentioned I could smoke inside his flat.
Who could remember the small details after such a life or death night?

I considered my options as I smoked
the cigarette, tapping the ashes into my empty coffee cup. Probably the only
person in the world who could help me was Pressley Connard, but I had no idea
where to find him. He had essentially disappeared since I betrayed him in
London. Besides, I reasoned that he was probably back to wanting to shoot me
again after the way I double crossed him. What was I doing thinking of Pressley
in Ben’s home? While wearing Ben’s snuggly sweatshirt? And eating Ben’s
delicious leftover pizza?
He had said I could help myself to whatever was in
the fridge, right?

Three bites in, I knew that the
best thing I could do was get out of Paris. The first obvious problem with that
plan was that I had no money. Motley had been my ATM, and that bank was closed.
Traveling, I reminded myself, costs money. I reached for my second cigarette
and recalled the conversation I had with Rabbit before last night’s dinner.
Rabbit mentioned already cashing his payout check from Motley. I wasn’t sure
how much it was, but I guessed millions. Enough to retire before age twenty
five and disappear. If Rabbit was dead, he wouldn’t need that money. It wasn’t
stealing if I took it now. Besides, if he showed up alive, I would give it back
to him.

A plan was forming in my head and I
was pacing now, my fingers wagging my cigarette in swirling circles, like I was
conducting invisible music. The symphony of the obscene. It felt obscene, what
I was about to do. But I pushed the guilt to the back of my mind.

I had been to Rabbit’s flat a few
times. It was a cute little loft in a limestone-faced building on the other
side of the river. I figured it would be easy to let myself in and just do a
sweep for the money. I wouldn’t get nosey about it. I wasn’t going to invade a
dead man’s privacy. I started to head towards the front door when I felt a cool
draft hit my legs and realized I wasn’t even wearing pants. I couldn’t walk
around Paris like that, so I opened up Ben’s dresser drawers and grabbed a pair
of his hospital scrubs. I climbed inside them and rolled up the bottoms and
tightened the waist string. It was not high fashion, but keeping a low profile
was probably better.

*   
*    *

A chill had enveloped the city
overnight. Paris had been overtaken by the cold and gray look of winter’s
cradle. The bare trees were dry as kindling.

I welcomed the stale heat as I
plowed through the turnstile doors that led into the lobby of Rabbit’s building.
The flooring was resplendent jade and a trim of velvet carpeting lined the
walls above the Florentine baseboards. A mint-green fainting couch decorated
the lobby, and a girl who was dressed for Pigalle was draped over its plush
surface like a napping kitten. I pressed the button to call the elevator cable
down to the lobby. My eyes followed the descending numbers as it scuttled down
like a comet.  

There was a tap at my shoulder. The
fingers were bony and cold as death.

My spine bucked. My eyes tightened
shut.

“Can I help you, young lady?” The
voice in my ear was devilish. The breath in my ear was as hot and stale as the
inside of a crypt.

I slowly turned around just as the
elevator doors split open in front of me. “I’m visiting a tenant of the
building,” I announced.

“Which tenant?” the man at my
shoulder inquired. He was a different doorman than the one I had seen in the
past. His features reminded me of a pigeon; a nose discolored by veins and skin
that was gray and green around the eyes. He pressed the button so that the
doors snapped shut.

“Rabbit is who I’m visiting. He is
an associate of mine.”

“Mr. Rabbit usually lets me know
when he’s expecting a guest.”

“Yes, I know, but Rabbit isn’t in
his flat right now.”

“If he’s not in there, then why
would you be visiting his apartment?”

“I’m Rabbit’s girlfriend. I need to
get in because I’m a -.” I stalled for a moment.

“You’re a what?”

“I’m an ER doctor and I left my
pager in his bed last night.” I pinched the excess fabric off Ben’s scrub pants
over my thigh. “It was a wild night.” I grinned. The old man’s eyes, tented
under bushy eyebrows, were now throbbing with imagination.

His hand jutted out, intentionally
skimming the skin on my arm, and he pressed the button on the elevator. “Go on
up,” he told me.

Once I got upstairs to Rabbit’s
door, picking the lock was cake. But once I stepped inside Rabbit’s flat I had
to hesitate for a moment because it felt like a violation of sacred space to be
in there. Since Rabbit might be dead and all, and since it was my fault. I
looked around and noticed that Rabbit’s flat was neat and ordered, with
everything in its place. It was a sign of Rabbit’s well-organized mind and his
astute perfectionism. He even had a little toaster oven in his kitchen and you
could tell he cleaned the crumb tray regularly. “Oh Rabbit,” I said into the
air, “I hope they have crumb trays in heaven.” My eyes got wet. I sucked the
tears back and wiped my eyes clean and got to searching for the money.

I tried to imagine where Rabbit
would stash the money.

Rabbit was reasonable. He was
methodical. He would hide the money somewhere that made sense, but not enough
sense that someone could figure it out. I began my search in the bedroom. The
bed was carefully made. I used a knife from the kitchen to gut the mattress.
Just stuffing and coils. I ruffled through his dresser drawers. Just clothing.
I moved to the office. The room contained at least seven different
high-powered, government-grade laptops and at least six of them were paused on
a game of World of Warcraft or Guitar Hero. I opened every last desk drawer,
but the money was nowhere to be found. In a final fit of desperation, I bolted
into the bathroom and lifted the lid of the toilet tank. Of course, there was
nothing there but a chalky blue tablet. I told myself I would check one last
place before giving up and going back to Ben’s flat. I threw back the curtain
around the bathtub.

There wasn’t any money in the tub,
but the shower faucet had fresh drops of water beading down the spout. One
clear, flat drop trailed down the length of the faucet and thudded onto the
porcelain tub.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

I stepped back. Could it be that
Rabbit was actually alive and that he had somehow gotten back to his apartment
and freshly taken a shower?

I heard a creek echoing over the
floorboards in the hallway.

Was it really Rabbit?

Or had the creepy doorman with the
pigeon face let himself in?

My head whipped towards the door.
What I saw was not what I expected. It was Rabbit’s shiny metal toaster, and it
was about to smash down over my face. The last sight to cross my vision were my
own terrified eyes, distorted into imagery of a funhouse mural by the curvature
of the toaster, just before it knocked me unconscious.  

Chapter Thirty-four: Ropes

T
HE
NEXT TIME I opened my eyes I woke up hogtied in the bathtub. My head was
throbbing and there was a faint cyclone of dizzy stars rimming my eyes. The
toaster oven was sitting in the sink. I blinked the stars away and turned
towards the dark, looming figure who was watching me from the doorway.

There was a petite girl in a black
leather leotard and black spiked high heels, and her hands were hugging her
slim hips in a way that announced she was very unhappy. She was watching me.
She had long, pin-straight black hair, and a figure you’re either born with or
you die trying to get. She reminded me of a cartoon character from a Japanese
anime movie. I surveyed her glistening, henna-toned eyes and the nasty grin on
her stark red lips.

“So, are you ready to talk?” she
asked.

“Who are you? Where’s Rabbit?”

She had been the kitten-esque girl
who was propped on the mint-green fainting couch in the lobby, I now
recognized.

“Why are you looking for Rabbit?”
she wanted to know.

“Because he’s my partner.”

“Partner?”

“We work together.”

The exaggerated arches of her thin
eyebrows collapsed as she narrowed her eyes on me. “Not because you’re noodling
him?”

“Noodling?”

“Don’t play dumb, I think you know
what I mean.”

“Don’t be gross,” I said. “I
wouldn’t noodle Rabbit for the last pasta on the planet.”

“Are you sure?” Her smooth, dark
eyes examined me. “I heard you tell the doorman you were Rabbit’s girlfriend.”

“I was just using that line to get
inside. What does it matter to you who I noodle? Especially if it’s dweeby
Rabbit.”

“Maybe I don’t like catching some
blond bimbo creeping around my boyfriend’s place.”

“I’m sorry, you will have to
forgive me since I just got clocked in the head with a toaster, potentially
suffering brain damage, but I thought I heard you refer to Rabbit as your
boyfriend.”

“Rabbit
is
my boyfriend. He
didn’t come home last night. I thought maybe he was cheating on me, and then
you show up in his bathtub.”

“I had no idea Rabbit was hiding a
girlfriend. Frankly, I didn’t know the nerd had it in him.”

“Are you really just his partner
from work?”

“Yes.”

She let her face relax for a
second. Everything on her face looked porcelain and painted. “Rabbit did
mention a girl with kooky hair from work.”

“First, I get tied up, and then I
get insulted,” I muttered. “Unbelievable!”

She perked one of her
dramatically-tweezed eyebrows. “So, if you’re his work partner, does that mean
you know where he is?”

“No,” I said, twisting my lips as I
lied. “I came here because I’m looking for him too. Maybe if you untie me we
can work on finding him together.”

“I guess,” she said. “But don’t try
anything funny.” She kneeled beside the tub and undid the ropes.

“My name is Alice.”

“I’m Vivienne Ting,” she said.
“I’ve never met anyone Rabbit works with before. He’s a little secretive about
work. Whines often about his boss, though. But I guess that’s common.”

“Yeah, we tend not to talk about
work outside of work, it’s not exactly a sit-by-the-water-cooler-and-chat kind
of job we do.” 

“I totally understand.” Her thick
eyelashes fluttered like graceful black moths. “I’m in a, shall we say,
creative, line of work myself.”

“I’ve never seen you around
Pigalle,” I said.

“Pigalle? Don’t be insulting, I
didn’t mean
that
industry.”

“Sorry, I just assumed based on the
whole leather and heels ensemble you’ve got going on. What industry do you work
in?”

“Burglaries.”

My eyes surveyed all ninety pounds
of her lithe body and breakable features. “You’re a burglar?”

“I’m not a common thief or
anything. My specialty is my uncanny ability to lift masterpieces from art
galleries around Europe with nary a trace of fingerprints.”

“That sounds like quite a talent.”

Vivienne reached down for the rope
she had used to tie me up. Now she was using it to lasso the toilet paper
dispenser straight off the wall with one seamless tug. “It’s my trick. I have a
very gentle touch. I can lift paintings down from the wall without leaving a
fingerprint.”