Vivienne peeked between the slits in her fingers. “Sweet Dali and Da Vinci!” she cried out, as her eyes feasted the explosive smattering of cash that was whirling around the bed. It had that stale scent money always does.
“This is it!” I said. “Rabbit was hiding the money inside the guitar.” I scooped the rest of the money out of the guitar and began piling it neatly into stacks.
I could feel Vivienne’s shadow closing in behind me. “Wait a minute. What are you planning to do with that money?”
“This was strictly an ATM run,” I said.
She pinned one of her spiked heels down onto the bills I had freshly stacked. “I don’t think so. This is Rabbit’s money, and you’re not going anywhere with it.”
“You can’t lecture me about taking Rabbit’s money. You’re a professional burglar.” I licked my finger to help separate some of the bills. “There is no honor among thieves, less so among liars.”
“I am not letting you leave this apartment with that money.”
I sprang to my feet. “Listen, Viv, Rabbit has no use for this money right now. I might as well tell you the awful truth.”
“What awful truth?”
“Our boss shot Rabbit last night.”
Vivienne’s jaw dropped and she sucked in the air around her into a hideous gasp. “You saw somebody shoot Rabbit?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I heard the gunshot and then I saw him lying there.”
“Did you check to see if he was alive?”
“Well. No. Again, not exactly.”
The taut skin on Vivienne’s delicate little nose crinkled. “What kind of person doesn’t check on another person who they suspect has been shot?”
“Up until now, I hadn’t realized my conscious wore a leather cat suit.”
“You’re a terrible person. You don’t even have a conscience.”
“I took care of it. I called the emergency number and reported a gun shot at Motley’s house last night.”
“That was really stupid,” Vivienne said.
“Why?”
“Rabbit told me that his boss has the Parisian police paid off. The police do not respond to police calls, emergency or otherwise, reporting anything from Motley’s address.”
I slapped my hand against my forehead. “That would have been a nice fact to know eight hours ago.”
“That means if Rabbit was shot at your boss’ house, he’s probably still there. I have to go rescue him.”
“That idea is dangerous and stupid.”
“I’m not leaving my little snuggly wuggly wabbit all alone, bleeding to death in some mobster’s house. I’m going to get him.”
“Good luck with that.” I turned my attention back to the process of hedging the money into orderly rows.
“And you’re coming with me.”
“Like hell I am.”
Vivienne crossed her arms and let a nasty little tisk sound cross her lips. “Listen to me, Alice. Wherever this money came from, I know it isn’t yours. It probably belongs to Rabbit’s boss, the big scary one who shoots people.”
“So?” I asked.
“So, I’ll happily march into that mansion and take Rabbit home in exchange for ratting you out.”
I tickled out a laugh. “You have nothing on me. I’m going to grab the money and disappear faster than you can swipe your next painting.”
“Alice,” Vivienne said, “you’re wearing a man’s shirt and hospital scrubs that are at least three sizes too big for you.”
“What’s your point?”
“Obviously you have a boyfriend who works at one of the hospitals in Paris, and you’ve borrowed his clothes. I’ll tell Motley. He’ll track him down and do worse to him than what you did to that guitar.”
Don’t underestimate Vivienne Ting, that’s what I learned right then and there, staring at the pointed toe of her spiked heel an inch away from crushing my finger. I couldn’t stand the thought of violence happening to Ben. “Fine. But if Rabbit is already dead, I’m taking this money.”
“It’s a deal,” Vivienne said. “But if Rabbit is alive, this money is his, fair and square.” She pulled a Hermes purse from the closet and tossed it at me. “You can store the money in this for now.”
I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror fixed inside the closet door. I barely recognized the girl with the disarrayed blond hair and harshly underweight figure who was staring back at me through green eyes lined in raw pink skin. The Hermes purse was stylish on my shoulder. “You have good taste in bags. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about your taste in men.”
“Why are you so down on Rabbit? He’s a good guy.”
“You’re right.” My lips twisted uncomfortably. “He is a good guy, and a good friend, which makes me feel terribly guilty about leaving him injured there like I did.”
“You were spooked. It happens.” She offered a consolatory pat on my shoulder. “Panic can make us all act a little strange. Except the part about coming here and trying to steal a guy’s money after he’s been shot. That’s just straight up devious.”
“I know.” I shut the closet door and locked away my reflection. “I’m really sorry and I am going to help you save Rabbit. I just hope he’s okay.”
“I hope so too,” Vivienne said. “Because I think I’m in love with him.”
We left the apartment and hailed a cab. “After you.” I swung the door open for Vivienne.
“What’s the plan when we get there?” she asked, wiggling her petite frame onto the seat. The black leotard she wore gave her an abstract poise. She had her long hair, slick as ink, smoothed behind her shoulders; the fading daylight gave a glisten to her eyes, which were dark like henna. Her rope was lying beside her on the passenger seat.
“That depends,” I answered.
“Depends on what?”
“Rabbit isn’t the only person who got hurt last night.”
“Who else was hurt?”
“Motley got run over by a car during our altercation, but I couldn’t tell how serious his injuries were. I mean there’s a fifty-percent chance he’s spread out on a slab in the morgue, or at the very least he is hurt at the hospital.”
“What’s the other fifty percent?”
“That he got away only partially scathed and now he’s pissed as hell and bloodthirsty for revenge.”
“So, if he’s dead, that’s going to make breaking into his house super easy. But if he’s alive, we will both be shot dead on sight.”
“I appreciate the fact that you understand how things work, Viv.”
The cab driver adjusted the rearview mirror and glanced back at the two of us, posed side by side, in the backseat. “Where to?” he asked.
“The 18th arrondissement,” I replied.
“Is that where Motley’s house is?” Vivienne asked.
“Yes. I plan to have the driver let us off a few rows down from his townhome and we can approach the house on foot. Less likely to draw attention.”
“Once we’re in the house, how will we know where to look for Rabbit?”
“That depends on whether or not Motley came back to the house last night. If he didn’t, Rabbit may still be lying on the floor of the office where he was shot.”
“And if he did come home, do you know where he would have taken Rabbit?”
I shut my eyes and pictured the inside of Motley’s house, travelling through the layout of the rooms in my mind’s eye. The expansive marble hallways, crowned walls, and imperial door arches all aligned in my sight. Every twisting turn of the house, the curving limestone walls and snaking floorboard paths, seemed to be leading my imagination down to the wine cellar. I remembered my conversation with Pressley in the wine cellar after he had escaped from a holding cell in the basement. Suddenly my eyes flew open. “I think I know where. Last time Motley needed to lock someone up in the house, he used a small cell beneath the wine cellar.”
“Do you really think Rabbit is caged inside some ghastly
cell?” Vivienne asked. Her ballerina posture was slumping at the unpleasant thought.
“If he’s not dead already.” The words slipping off my tongue sounded more callous than I intended.
Her eyes lowered. The abundant row of dark lashes lining the top of her eyes began to quiver with tears. “He can’t be dead,” she softly insisted. “I love him.”
“I know you do.”
“What do you know about love?” she snapped back. Several dark strands of her silken hair were matted to her cheek by wet tears.
I turned away from her, ashamed, and looked out the window and gazed at the gray stone sidewalk blurring by us. I could see dark roses left on the tombstone at the famous Cimetiére de Montmartre as we passed it. The driver turned onto Motley’s street and I tapped the driver’s headrest. “Here.” The driver stopped the car and I reached into the Hermes bag on my shoulder and pulled out some of the money.
“What are you doing?” Vivienne asked.
“I’m getting money for the cab fare.”
“You can’t use that money. That’s Rabbit’s money, remember?”
“Yeah, but Rabbit might be -.” I cut my sentiment short and lowered my eyes repentantly. “You’re right, I can’t use this money.”
Vivienne reached into her purse and unfurled a row of bills. She slapped them into the driver’s hand and turbulently climbed out. I slid across the length of the backseat to follow her.
“Vivienne, I’m sorry,” I called out to her.
“What is it with you, Alice?” She spun around and came at me with her finger stabbing into my chest. “Were you really so sure Rabbit is dead, so confident that money is already yours, that you were going to use it to pay cab fare?”
“I don’t know. I guess I have just been living my life heartlessly for so long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to act with decency.”
“You shouldn’t have left Rabbit like you did.” Her small hands were wiping tears away from her eyes. “Not to mention stealing his money.”
“You’re completely right. I was just so scared and I thought that money was my only way to get away and be safe.”
The cab driver sped away from the curb and Vivienne and I stood with a patch of emerald grass between us and a black sky dotted with star glitter above us. “How did you become so selfish?”
My shame-stung eyes could only look down at the grass. “Have you ever kept a secret? I mean a really bad secret.”
“Of course I have. I am a professional thief.”
“But you’ve only ever stolen, right? I’m talking about something worse. A secret so terrible, so wrenching, that the mere thought of it could trigger an unimaginable dread that chokes the life from you and fills every moment with trembling anxiety.”
She was doing her best to keep up the look of cold antipathy on her face, but her eyes peeked over at me mercifully. “What about you? Have you ever kept a secret like that, Alice?”
“I’ve been haunted by a secret like that for three years and I’ve sacrificed everything to keep it preserved. I’ve let it choke me from the inside out. I know there’s no excusing what I’ve done to Rabbit, but it’s not that I act selfishly to protect myself, but to protect this secret, which has manifested a life of its own.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“I did something unforgivable, Vivienne. Truly unforgivable. I had the perfect life and I screwed it all up, all because I made one stupid mistake in a split second. I mean, it didn’t feel perfect at the time. But at least I had a family, a place to call home. Now look at me. Cavorting around Paris looking for potential corpses with stolen money on my back. Keeping a secret, it changes you.”
“It sounds like your secret has been holding you hostage.”
“It has been, but not for long, not after tonight.” I straightened my shoulders and took a breath that seemed to chase away my insecurity. “Let’s go and rescue Rabbit.” We looked onto the road, which stretched out before us in a slight uphill curve. The expansive properties sat on narrow lawns that were tightly connected. The graceful lawns were bedizened with sculpted Venus de Milos or stone lions. “Over there,” I said. I was pointing to a cardinal red roof, its apex jabbing the peaceful sky like a red hot poker. “That’s Motley’s house.”
Her heightened eyebrows let me know she was impressed. “He does well for himself.
I guided her towards the jaws of a gate that blocked the driveway next door to Motley’s house. The scene of Motley’s accident the night before. The gates were shaped like an oversized pair of harps, which lead to a palatial house hidden behind trestles of shrubbery and ivory stalking all down its brick facade. “We can get a peek from here.”
We squeezed through the gaps in the fence’s large crossbars. I noticed a splattering of russet-colored blood that had been crusted onto the gate by a day’s worth of bold sun. “We can get a good view of Motley’s house from the side of the yard,” I told her. We cautiously walked across the stretch of front lawn to a row of shrubs, beyond which there was a clear view of Motley’s house.
Vivienne kneeled down in the grass and parted the shrubs to sneak a glance. “So does this Motley guy collect cars? Or else he’s having some kind of party.”
“Why?” I was on my knees, trying to peek through the keyhole spaces in the fronds of a shrub. I saw that the length of Motley’s driveway was queued with cars.
“Crap. What day is it?”
“Thursday. Why?”
“That’s the night Motley hosts poker once a week.” I turned and sunk down into the dirt on my ass with my back turned away from the view of Motley’s property.
“Do you think that means he’s inside the house now?”
“Either he’s in there or the Thursday night poker tribe showed up on schedule without knowing their host already cashed his chips in at the big poker table in the sky.”
“Do you think it’s safe to poke around the house looking for Rabbit with all those people inside?”
“Well, the usuals that I know about, Moonboots McCafferty and Xerxes O’Brien, each weigh about a ton. But luckily they’re dumb as bricks. Doesn’t make them any less scary or able to crush us like mice, but outsmarting them is a possibility.
“How will we ever get to Rabbit?” Vivienne nervously chewed the color from her lips.
“Maybe we can wait and come back after the poker game is over.”
“If Rabbit has been shot, we really don’t have any time to waste. Every second could count. There has to be a way.”
I perked an eyebrow at her. “How are you at poker?”
“Terrible,” she said.
My eyes scanned her up and down. “But you’re wearing a leather cat suit so that won’t matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“What if we send you inside to distract the guys while I slink into the cellar and rescue Rabbit?”
“How can I just show up unannounced?”
“I think that outfit you have on announces you just fine.”
“Okay, I’ll try it. For Rabbit’s sake.”
“Alright,” I led into the plan, “once they let you in the front door, just make sure it is unlocked behind you, that way I can sneak inside after you. While you have them preoccupied inside the poker room, I will search for Rabbit.”
“Let’s do it.” Vivienne rose to her feet and brushed the pine needles from her ass. I climbed to my feet and hoisted the bag of money on my shoulder. Her ropes brushed my hands. “Here,” she said, “you better hold this for me.” I coiled the rope and stuffed it into the money bag.
Chapter Thirty-five: Motley’s House
WE CUT THROUGH where the yards intersected and we treaded delicately onto Motley’s property. When we reached the door, I slipped behind the ornately-pared shrubbery that lined the porch like the Queen’s bushy guards at Buckingham Palace. I watched as Vivienne embarked upon the stately marble steps. She jabbed the doorbell with her dainty finger, offsetting a system of chimes that could be heard reverb
erating throughout the walls of the house.
The door creaked open.
“Yes?” I wasn’t Motley’s voice. Too gruff, with the bristle of cheap cigars and drugstore gin soaked into it. I recognized it as Moonboots McCafferty.
“Hello,” Vivienne said. The voice she used was much swankier than I had heard her use thus far. “My name is Vivienne Ting. I’m here to take my chances with you boys at the poker table.”
“In order to play you need a nice pair of dice,” Moonboots rebuffed. A not-so-subtle pause followed. “I can see that you have a nice pair of dice. So come on in.” The door widened and I heard the sound of Vivienne’s high heels scuffing as she entered. I waited for the locks to unlock from the inside. I took a deep breath and crept up onto the marble steps. I opened the door smoothly as not to make a sound.
When I stepped into the foyer, I could hear voices reverberating throughout the walls of the house. I could make out Vivienne’s voice and several male voices I didn’t recognize. Laughter and hooting. Vivienne was doing something right.
I tiptoed down the hallway and descended to the lower level of the house. I hesitated when I got to the raucous noise of the poker room. I pushed my cheek into the door frame, allowing one eye to break through and meet Vivienne’s.
She didn’t miss a beat. She quickly spun her attention away from the door and called out to everyone that surrounded her. “Hey boys, wanna see a trick?” All eyes were on her. She crouched down on the ground, and then, springing up by the push of her ankles, she grappled the giant Samurai sword from the wall. Poised and confident, she unsheathed it, drawing her arm out across the entire length, and she sliced the air theatrically. It was a mesmerizing thing to see, the power and swiftness of her small frame as she commanded the bulky sword.
Everyone was focused on Vivienne. Their backs were shunning the door. I took the chance to slither by. I balanced myself on the points of my toes, silently skating past. Once I made it past the door undetected, I hurriedly scampered past the pool room. The chlorine had kept the water clear, but there was a slick of Motley’s blood on the cement from the night before. Two burnt-out cigars sat on the perimeter. I threw open the door to the wine cellar. I never saw the chamber opening where Pressley had escaped out from, but I knew there was a manhole somewhere in the floor.
Generation of Liars Page 27