On the other side of the door, Motley finished up his phone call and pushed back his chair from his desk. I didn’t want him to find me standing outside his door, so I shakily placed one foot in front of the other and scampered down the hallway as fast as I could without making a sound. I stumbled into the first room I could duck into, which was the sunroom that hooked off of the main foyer. I folded myself onto a lemon-yellow fainting couch. I tracked the sound of Motley’s footsteps coasting down the hall towards me and braced myself when I heard him approaching just beyond the archway.
“Alice.” He was watching me from the archway. He was peeling an orange and he popped one of the slivers into his mouth. Act casual, I told myself. Don’t claw. Don’t bite. Don’t scream. “I thought I heard you out here.”
“Yes?” I forced a smile as my teeth grinded inside my mouth.
He was popping another orange sliver into his mouth and staring down at my legs, draped over the velveteen surface of the couch. “Are you enjoying the sun?”
“I am.”
“Well, you can enjoy it all you want. I’m going to be leaving, and from the looks of it, I might be traveling for a while. I insist that you stay in my house while I’m gone.”
“Stay here? At your house?”
“Enjoy yourself. Relax. Take plenty of swims in the pool and get some rest here in the sun.”
I feigned a delighted smile as I made the realization that he was probably never coming back. Once he turned over the dynamite stick to the U.S. Government in exchange for total immunity for whatever prison-worthy crime he committed in his past life, he would start a new life. He wouldn’t have to run anymore, and he most certainly wouldn’t need me anymore. He was starting a new life, and I was someone who knew all about this life. That pushed me kicking and screaming into the liability column, big red X’s and all. I knew the reason he was inviting me to stay in his house was so he could save time looking for me when he sent Moonboots McCaffery or Xerxes O’Brien to waste me. I was as good as dead already. What about Rabbit? Did he know? Could I trust him enough to tell him? Or was his name the one signed at the bottom of my death warrant?
I was worried I had gone too long without speaking. I brightened my face. “Wow, Motley, thank you for your generosity. I would love to stay here for a few days. Where are you traveling to?”
“Stateside.” He was tonguing gunk from the orange out between his teeth and it made him all the viler in my eyes. “I got a real sucker congressman who’s bargaining to pay me the farm in exchange for not blowing his cover with what his real Social Security number reveals.”
“That sounds like a brilliant plan.” I gave him that approving, doting smile a young girl gives to inflate the ego of a middle-aged man just before she drops the hacksaw on his neck. I read about the girl who invented the smile once in Sunday school, eons ago; her name was Judith.
I collapsed backwards on the fainting couch and let my hair dangle all around my face like a starburst. My eyes fluttered something whimsical. “When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
I noted to myself that I had exactly twenty-four hours or less to pry the dynamite stick from Motley’s hands, dead or alive. “We should have dinner tonight,” I announced. “A victory dinner. Before you set off for so long a time. We never had a proper celebration for finding the dynamite stick.”
“A celebration is a fine idea. What do you have in mind, Alice?”
I fluttered up from the couch and twirled around him like I was an idyllic prom queen planning my court. “Somewhere downtown, somewhere fancy. We deserve to unwind after all the work we did.” I lifted my hands up to his neck and began arranging his collar straight and stared into his glass-blue eyes. “And to celebrate all the good things coming to us in the future.”
“That would be fine,” he said, reading my eyes from so close a distance. “I’ll call Rabbit and tell him to meet us here. Nine sound okay?”
“Rabbit?” I resentfully repeated. “Do you really think he needs to accompany us?”
“Of course. He is part of our team.”
“Fine. Just make sure you tell him we’re going somewhere nice and to dress decent. A World of Warcraft T-shirt is not exactly proper attire for a Parisian social club.”
Motley laughed and finally released his eyes from mine. “I’ll make a note of it, Alice. I’ll be in my office if you need me.” He treaded back to his office and closed the door again. I waited a moment and then got up and followed so I could press my ear to the door and hear what was going on inside.
“Alice.” A voice startled me from behind. I spun around and saw Cleopatra. She was wearing her black wetsuit like she had just returned from a journey on her boat, and her body was bare of all things except for the tight suit, spiked heels, and the key tied around her neck by a velvet string. “What were you doing just now?” she wanted to know.
“Me? I was just going to tell Motley something regarding our dinner plans tonight, but I realized he was on the phone, so I was fixing to leave.”
I attempted to slink by her, but she callously put her leg out and cut me off at the shin with the weight of her studded black high heel shoe. I tripped forward, steadying myself just in time to avoid collapsing.
“You weren’t being nosey, were you, Alice?” She pressed her finger, tipped with a lengthy manicured nail, to my chin.
“Of course not.” I slid my chin free from the painful dig of her nail.
Her eyes went dull, like those of a cat bored with torturing a common mouse, and she gave me a smug look before disappearing into Motley’s office.
Chapter Twenty-seven: The Preparation
I LEFT MOTLEY’S house and went back to my apartment. The entire walk and train ride consisted of anxiety and distraction. Paris blurred by me like an Impressionist rollerball of dizzying colors and jackhammer sounds. When I got inside, my dame-ish neighbor from across the hall was peering out from a crack in her door. She was sipping from a porcelain oriental tea cup with painted dragons. It reminded me of the cups my mentor, David Xad, often used to serve me his richly-steeped black tea. I thought of him and wondered what he would think of me at this moment? Cold shakes. Wet eyes. Fear coiled like snakes inside my stomach. The exact opposite of the confident girl he had trained me to be on top of the Tokyo Sky Tree. The exact opposite of our smooth motto, Kitto Katsu. When I got inside my apartment I went straight to my bed and collapsed into a series of heavy sobs.
I picked up my phone and called the hospital and asked for Ben.
“This better be an emergency, Alice.” He still hadn’t lightened up from his aggravation about my surprise visit that afternoon.
“I just wanted to let you know that something has sprung up and I’m not coming to your place tonight.”
“Is this about what happened today at the hospital? I told you my relationship with that woman you saw me with is strictly professional.”
“No, Ben, it’s not about that.”
“I’m having a hard time figuring you out. Listen, you still have the address to my apartment, so stop by and see me whenever you’re ready to have a grown up relationship. Goodbye, Alice.”
I peeled myself off the bed and went to the kitchen to pick up the plastic bag I had dumped on the kitchen table after thundering through the front door. After leaving Motley’s, I had stopped at the drugstore for hair dye. The color I chose was Sun-Kissed Switchblade, and it was a shade of platinum blond. I brought the bag into the bathroom and set the hair dye on the counter and turned on the sink. Washing the pink out of my hair left every towel I owned speckled with odd pink Rorschach patterns.
When I was done, I walked into my bedroom with a towel wrapped around my wet hair and I pulled through the hangers in my closet searching for the perfect dress. My hands were shaking and my heart was racing and I had trouble focusing on anything other than the fact Motley was in the process of double-crossing me. I plopped down on my bed and decided that while I waited for the color to set i
nto my hair, I would call Skip and let him know he was right about what he had said in the bar’s bathroom about the government trading immunity to whoever could fork over the dynamite stick.
“Skip, here.” A train horn honked somewhere in the distance.
“Skip, it’s Alice,” I said, furling my legs under my body as I snugged into my bed, seeking some kind of lost comfort inside the thread count.
“Let me guess? You’re calling to collect on the information I promised you?”
“If you have it. But more importantly, I wanted to let you know that the stuff you said in that bathroom last night was right. The government did make an offer to someone, and that someone was my boss.”
“And he accepted the offer?”
“Yes, and doing so meant spiking the last nail into my coffin.”
“What do you mean?”
“Now that he’s made the deal, I’m useless to him. Worse than useless, actually. I’m a liability.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“He is planning to eliminate me, Skip. That’s why I have to destroy him first.”
“You’re going to double cross your boss and attempt to take him down? That’s a big deal for such a small girl.”
“Tell me about it. So, since tonight is going to be risky for me, maybe you should tell me any information you dug up about Heather now, in case you don’t hear from me again.”
“Wow, Alice, you really think there’s a chance he’s going to off you?”
“The situation is hopeless.”
“You know, that sounds nothing like the girl who bullied me in that rank bathroom last night.”
“I suppose I have lost a little bit of my edge.”
“I mean, the girl I met, she wasn’t the type that goes down without a fight. She was the type to go down in a blaze of freaking glory, and confetti, and pyrotechnics. We’re talking a Friday night at Madison Square Garden kind of blowout. If she really thought it was the end, that girl, she would be plotting to go out with a bang loud enough to rock China.”
I stiffened up against the soft tide of my down comforter and lumpy pillows covering the bed. “You’re right. I guess I’ve let myself get so hopeless over the situation that my sense of power has gotten a bit anemic.”
“Well, with due regard, this is a pretty heavy situation.”
“It feels pretty heavy.” My eyes wandered to the night table, where the piece of paper which contained my secret was folded. “Listen, I have to backtrack to my original thought. What did you dig up about Heather?”
“Right, the infamous Heather Gilmore. Well, not as infamous as you led me to believe.”
“What do you mean?”
“You told me I was going to be uncovering blood and intrigue.”
I sprang up, my knees kicking my pillow so that it tottered to the ground. “You mean you didn’t?”
“No, not in the least. Just some mundane local headlines. The only Heather Gilmore I could find made the local paper a couple times this year when one of her rug rats won a toddler spelling bee.”
“Rug rats?”
“As in, children.”
“No, that can’t be the person I’m looking for. The person I’m looking for would have made the news for a very different reason. Plus, there’s no way she would have children. Did you find anything else?”
“Yeah, a couple other tidbits, but they are mostly spelling bee related.”
“Were any of the points you pulled up related to a death?”
“No, Alice, no mention of a death.”
I sunk my head back onto my pillow. “Then it must be a different person named Heather Gilmore. The Heather Gilmore I’m looking for is definitely dead.”
“What I’ve got here, it’s mostly suburban housewife news. The Heather Gilmore I’m pulling up has a boring enough life, that between you and me, she might as well be dead. Are you sure you don’t want to hear the rest? Like I said, its local stuff, mostly.”
“There’s no point. It’s not who I’m looking for. Thanks anyway.”
“Alright, Alice, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to provide what you were looking for.”
“That’s okay, Skip. I couldn’t find it in any of the local papers or by searching Google either. Maybe the school covered it up.”
“Covered what up, Alice?”
“Oh, sorry, nothing,” I said distractedly, already on the other side of my flat, lighting a cigarette over the stove burner without remembering walking there. “Goodbye, Skip.”
“Goodbye, Alice. Hey, take care of yourself, alright?”
I placed the phone down on the arm of the sofa and softly parted the curtains away from the windows. The sun’s yellow splinters were low and scattered like the runny yoke of a cracked egg, and the white ghosting shadow of the moon was entering the sky. It was getting late. I needed to hurry. I uncloaked my hair from the towel and used a blow dryer to thicken it into large, unstoppable curls. When I was finished, it was huge and blond and there was no escaping its power. I pinned one side back with a glittery turquoise butterfly clip. I looked good, I assured myself. Blond suited me. Mostly I had dyed it blond because I wanted to catch Motley off guard. Change things up. Blond made me brave.
Partly, I had been planning to do it ever since I saw Ms. Clairol herself hugging Ben at the hospital. Maybe the gentleman preferred blondes. I wanted him to prefer me. If I even managed to survive the night and see him again.
I slipped into a body-hugging blue velvet dress that I had selected from my closet. I hadn’t worn it since a harrowing experience in Monte Carlo with a gangster who decided to use information on the dynamite stick as collateral on a roulette table. It was hell to zip up, but it looked great on me. I did smudgy black eyeliner and a nude lip. The last thing I did was step into a pair of silver stilettos and tuck the confession note inside one of them.
Chapter Twenty-eight: The Dinner
I TOOK A taxi to Motley’s house and let myself in through the front door. Rabbit was already inside when I entered the marble foyer beneath the crystalline chandelier.
He looked me up and down. “Wow Alice, putting on the ritz tonight, aren’t you? You look nice.”
I wondered to myself if he meant nice for a dead person. “Thanks, Rabbit.” Or did he even know? He might have also taken a nasty slide into the liability column. A shame too, since red X’s totally clashed with what he had on, which was a blue and white striped dress shirt, topped with a navy blue blazer with gold buttons.
“Motley said this little celebration was your idea.”
I fussed with my dress in the gold baroque mirror in the front hall, pulling at the fabric to straighten the puckers and bumps. “It was my idea. I thought it would be nice for us to celebrate as a group. A little colleague-to-colleague bonding time.” I pretended to be separating my eyelashes with my mascara wand, but really I was looking past my reflection to sneak glances at Rabbit and try measuring his face for reactions.
“I guess I could use a little time to unwind. We did work our asses off.” Rabbit shook out his neck and jerked his tie looser.
I turned away from the mirror and patted shoulders with him and my hands reached up to take over command of straightening his neck tie. “And we have so much work coming up on the horizon.” I secured the knot at the nape of his neck, pulling it to bring him even closer to me. “You and I are going to be busy jetting off to the States, bribing big names and scaring Washington elite and Hollywood stars speechless. It’s going to be tiring.” I aggressively cinched the knot on his tie. “But it will all be worth it once we destroy the dynamite stick once and for all.”
“I don’t think that’s in my future.” He squirmed free and jerked his tie loose. I let some space creep between us and swallowed the hard lump that had sprung inside my throat. I wondered if he had caught on to Motley’s sinister plan. This was something, I told myself. This was a good something. We could band together and take Motley down. But then he said something th
at shattered all hope of that. “I resigned today.”
“You what?” I blew out an express of exasperated air because I had the sensation of being sucker-punched in the gut. “Resigned? How?”
“I took a buyout from Motley and I’m out of the game. I’m tired. I’ve lived enough for five lifetimes already and I just want my share of the cash up front so I can go off and do my own thing.” He faced himself in the mirror and adjusted the knot on his tie back to the way he liked it. “So I guess in addition to celebrating, this is like my farewell dinner too.”
“Is that what you were doing at Motley’s house this afternoon? Getting your money?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t do this.”
Rabbit blinked, and his small, brown eyes burrowed into me as the crookedness of his nose scrunched up. “Why not?”
“Because we’re a team.”
“Alice, don’t be ridiculous. You have made it very clear in the past how you feel about me. You hate me. Besides, it’s done. I cashed the check this afternoon.”
I was about to say something else, but Motley appeared in the doorway and I had to stuff my words and force a tight smile. Motley was dressed in a sharp tan suit with a Burberry tie and enough cologne dabbed into his corners to drown a fish. He had Cleopatra on his arm and she was wearing a maroon dress drizzled in sequins and crushed velvet gloves hiding everything up to her elbows. A pair of diamonds dragged on her ears and the key tied to a velvet string that she always wore was dangling from her neck.
“Ready to roll, guys?” Motley asked, fastening a jewel-crusted cufflink.
I sucked back the web of bile that was coagulating in my throat. “Lead the way, boss.”
The four of us shuffled into Motley’s black Bentley. Cleopatra was sitting beside me in the car and there was a vanilla scent infused into her well-moisturized skin. She crossed her legs stiffly beneath her tight dress. I eased into my seat and stretched my lips into an obtuse smile. “Look at us. The three musketeers out for one last ride on the old horse. Oh, and Cleopatra too, of course.” I knew I was embarrassing myself, but my nerves had gone haywire. The only way I could think to shut my mouth was to sew it up with the bottle of champagne stocked in the ice bucket in the backseat. “Cheers,” I blithered. I raised the bottle to nobody in particular before plunging it to my lips. I quickly became a runaway train of misplaced giggles and slurred proclamations.
Generation of Liars Page 23