Caught you, didn’t I? Louis grinned. And there’s nowhere to run.
Meeting his gaze, the guinea pig suddenly began to choke on something he had been sucking on. He spluttered and gagged with bulging eyes, bringing his paws to his throat. Nobody seemed to take any notice. The patrons listened politely to the singer (I’m on the… Top of the world, lookin’… down on creation…) and the lizard behind the bar kept wiping glasses. The guinea pig continued to splutter and gag, turning an even deeper shade of crimson. Then suddenly knocking back his chair, he stood in a desperate attempt to dislodge the thing in his throat; but just as Louis was about to slap him on the back, an ice cube exploded from of his mouth and slid across the table. It shot to the other side and slammed into the backrest of the opposite chair, flopping onto the seat. “Louis!” he said, massaging his throat. “To be sure, how did you… What are you doing here?”
“It’s Lewey. Not Lewis. And I could ask you the same question, Frank O’Lynn.”
His face still glowing, Frank O’Lynn scanned the room, then gathered his fallen chair and sat back down. If anybody else had overheard their conversation, they weren’t letting it show. He now began to whisper. “Please, no names here. We prefer to remain anonymous.” He gestured for Louis to sit. “Call me The Partridge.”
Louis dragged over a chair and sat, thinking if he wanted answers he would have to go along with the ridiculous charade of pseudonyms and amateur detectives, at least for the time being. He showed him both notes that told him to rendezvous at the Lounge Lizard, and said, “Did you write this?” The Partridge, as he wanted to be called, glanced at the simple handwriting, deigning not to answer. Louis pressed him again. Eventually, he got a reply, a simple jerk of the head in affirmation. “Save me from what?” he said. “How can I be in danger?”
The guinea pig scratched his snout. “Are you that naïve?”
If Louis didn’t know any better, he sounded almost defiant. “Enlighten me.”
Frank O’Lynn took a moment to respond. “To be sure, Louis,” he said, “like everyone else in this city, you need to be saved from yourself.” Dumbstruck, Louis stared across the table. Frank O’Lynn then leaned forward. “Can I trust you?”
Louis said, “Of course you can.” He didn’t add: You don’t have any goddamn choice.
Frank O’Lynn, though, eyed him with suspicion. “Coming from a guy whose motto in life was: Don’t trust anyone.”
Louis rolled his eyes, wanting nothing more to do with his stupid games. He just wanted answers. “You seem to know a lot about me.”
Frank O’Lynn now leaned back, crossing his arms across his pinstriped tie. “I’ve seen your file. It’s not pleasant reading.”
“What the hell is this, the goddamn inquisition?”
Frank O’Lynn’s eyes shifted from side to side. “Not so loud!” he said, almost hissing. “These walls have ears.”
Louis had to suppress the urge to grab him by the collar and shout: Tell me what in hell is going on or I’ll hand you over to the goddamn authorities right this goddamn minute. Instead, he leaned forward across the table and whispered, “I don’t care if the walls have goddamn penises. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not in any danger from anything, let alone you. Now you better start telling me what’s going on – how you know so much about me – or I’m going to go back up those stairs and make my way to the piazza.” He pointed to the spray can hidden inside Frank O’Lynn’s jacket. “I’m sure someone in The Tower would be very interested in talking to someone who has just graffitied the walls with the logo of an outlawed faction.”
Frank O’Lynn began to redden again, getting brighter and brighter until his face seemed more luminous than the table candles. Louis waited while the blues singer came to the end of her song, but when the answer he wanted wasn’t forthcoming, he threatened to leave straight away. “You’re being set up,” Frank O’Lynn said. He scratched the back of his paw, not looking up.
“By who?”
Frank O’Lynn stopped scratching. Louis didn’t like his smile. “Who do you reckon?”
Louis hadn’t got to know that many yet, and those he did know, Flash Freddy, Smiggins and Santosa, had been nothing but the model of support. He set his jaw. “I don’t believe you. If anyone’s setting me up, it’s you. Or the goddamn White Rabbit.”
Behind him, the blues singer thanked the audience and then restarted the only song that anyone seemed to know. A strand of long hair fell in front of the guinea pig’s face, which he flicked away before replying. “To be sure, you’re almost right. The White Rabbit isn’t setting you up. I am, with a little help from a fat toad. It’s an old scam. I’m surprised you’ve fallen for it so easily.”
Louis felt a surge of anger flood through him. “Santosa? How?”
Frank O’Lynn eyed him, assessing whether or not to go ahead and spill everything. “We call it The Hot Potato. Whoever’s holding it, gets burned.” He had the look of someone who didn’t care what happened next. He wasn’t even bothering to whisper. “We’ve been scamming newbies for thousands of years. Works every time. We’ve made a fortune from it.”
Louis ground his teeth and clenched his paws. This guy has a goddamn nerve, doesn’t he?
“We usually take it in turns to pretend which partner is sending the company into bankruptcy,” Frank O’Lynn continued. “The other partner pretends he’s desperate to buy the other out before it’s too late, but that he doesn’t have the ready cash to do it. Enter the fall guy. The newbie. He tries for a bank loan but is rejected, being new to the city and without any capital earnings behind him. I presume you’re at that stage now.”
Louis nodded, a perfunctory jerk of the head. “You could say I was considering my options.”
“Thought as much. Anyway, the next step involves arranging a third-party loan from an anonymous source. It’s done hastily, as if out of the blue, to meet the deadline of the buyout. All the while, however, the newbie is unaware that the benefactor is no third party at all, but the partner that’s lured him into the deal and pretended to have no available cash. The partner being bought out simply sits on the money upon receipt of it, but the newbie is now holding a massive debt he can’t pay off. Not at the interest he’s being charged, anyway.” Frank O’Lynn paused for a moment, then said, “Do you see where this is going?”
Louis snorted, his claws digging painfully into the pads of both paws. Goddamn right he could see where this was going. “The newbie is left holding the hot potato,” he said.
“To be sure. A debt he can’t pay off, especially with the further slump in sales, which the previous partners had declined, or were unwilling, to arrest. The newbie tries to hold out for as long as he can. Sometimes it’s a couple of years, usually no more than several months. But the debt gets too big to handle. He often tries to put the company into liquidation. But because The Boss is the controlling shareholder and has power of veto, the newbie is faced with only one real option: to sellout for whatever he’s offered. Miraculously, the first partner suddenly frees up some cash and is able to soften the fall, but not by much. The newbie gets virtually nothing back for his investment. He is only free of the company, but not of the debt, which is of no concern to the partners. They’ve passed on the hot potato and can now pump the profits of the cheap buyout back into the company and look for another newbie to do it all again.”
Frank O’Lynn paused to take a sip of water. “Don’t look so glum, Louis. It’s not personal. It’s business. To be sure, the only way to make money is to take it off someone else. Everyone does it. This time, it just happened to be you.”
Louis remained silent for a while, letting his anger cool. His pride had been assaulted, worse than when Mary Callaghan told him to beat it after he had asked her to the prom. Ah, petite Mary Callaghan, the first girl who had set his hormones blazing. The first girl whose mocking laugh had made him want to crawl into the gutter and suffocate in his own humiliation. That had been bad. This was worse. Back at school he
was young and naïve, completely forgivable, but at his age he should have known better. Blinded with adolescent lust was one thing. Blinded with greed for a quick buck was another. He had jumped straight in without so much as a clue as to what was happening and broken his own motto, never trust anyone. He was damn lucky to have gotten away unscathed. Still, it left a taste in his mouth more goddamn bitter than if he had crunched a whole bottle of Kwel-Amities.
“The Boss actually goes along with this?” he said.
“Who do you think thought of it first? He wrote the constitution on which LeMont was founded. It’s based on three guiding principles: Uniformity, Conformity and Control. What better way to achieve this than to send his employees into the abyss of debt the moment they arrive?”
“You’re telling me he’s nothing but a glorified slum lord?” Louis said. “That’s how he runs his corporation? No wonder things don’t work around here.”
“You said it, not me.”
Louis drew a deep breath. “I just want to know one thing. Why me? I’m innocent. What have I ever done to you, or The Boss for that matter?”
Frank O’Lynn threw his head back and laughed. It was loud enough to put the singer off her guard (… there’s a plee-zant sense of happiness for me…). Even the lizard behind the bar glanced over. “You’re a scream, to be sure,” he said, “and, I might say, a trifle slow. No one is innocent in LeMont. That’s why we’re here, all of us. Old friends and acquaintances. We chose to be here.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Louis said. “I was given no choice. I was alive at my desk one minute, the next thing I know I was here in this goddamn weasel suit. I’ve never met you or Santosa or his little helper before. Not even Flash Freddy or Smiggins for that matter. How could we be old friends?”
“Have you really forgotten everything?” Frank O’Lynn said. “Then again, I guess that’s what they’re counting on. To be sure, Louis, you’re stuck deeper than you know.”
Louis ignored the smug expression on the guinea pig’s face. “Why are you telling me if you’re in on it?”
Frank O’Lynn sighed and scratched his ear again. “I’ve had enough. I want out. Nothing changes in this city. It’s the same thing, day in, day out. There’s no hope. Worse, nobody wants to change. Sure, they might complain about it, but deep down all they want to do is maintain the status quo. Everyone’s so scared of missing out they won’t do anything to improve the situation. I honestly can’t see how this city is going to turn around for the better. There’s no future here for me. For anyone, for that matter. The Boss has them right under his claw. And you know what? Nobody cares. As long as they have their pills and burgers, they think they’ve got everything they want.”
His confession confirmed the initial assumption Louis had had at the meeting in room 1706. Moreover, thinking of the backstabbing Pooh-Bah and his little helper only stoked his anger further. Hells bells, to think he had nearly bankrupted himself before he had even settled into his job and found a place to live. God help him when he saw that fat toad again; he had better hope there wasn’t a free whip in the vicinity when he did.
Frank O’Lynn was now staring distantly at the stage over Louis’ shoulder. “No, Louis, I want out. There’s only one problem…”
He didn’t finish, cut short by shouting at the top of the stairs. Louis spun to see what was going on, just as an upturned table crashed to the floor. The music suddenly stopped midway through the chorus as the pianist’s claws arrested on the keys, craning his wrinkly face above. The singer also looked up, still holding the microphone to her lips. The lizard behind the bar tossed his towel to one side and ducked down out of sight. Everyone else in the room was frozen to their seats. “Peelers! Peelers!” the jackal yelled from the entrance.
The Partridge snapped out of his shock. “Come on! We’ve got to go. The Secret Police are here.”
There were more scuffles and grunts from the top of the stairs. Although fighting a losing battle, the jackal managed to shout another warning down to the patrons.
“What’ll we do?” Louis said, scanning the room for an exit he might have overlooked. “There’s nowhere to go.”
Unbelievably, the weasel sitting two tables over near the stage vanished into thin air. Here one second, gone the next. He even made a small popping sound as he left, like the Pop! of a cork from a bottle of Imperial Brut. At first Louis figured he must have dived under the table, but when the old ferret at the piano popped into thin air too, followed immediately by the blues singer, he knew something weird was going on.
At that moment, two rats came storming down the stairs. One of them had a Lucky Lotto card poking from the pocket of his suit. “Nobody leave!” the rat said, taking two steps at a time. His partner was close at his heels. “This is a raid!”
“I don’t believe it,” Louis said. He watched the remaining patrons vanish into thin air, Pop! Pop! Pop! like muffled firecrackers going off on New Year’s Eve. The tumbler another rat had been holding to his lips remained motionless in the air for the briefest of seconds before it fell onto the table and cracked in half. Frank O’Lynn then reached over the table and grabbed his paw. “Close your eyes!” he said. “Quickly!”
Louis instinctively drew away. He watched the first rat leap from the fourth step onto the floor, then point to him and Frank O’Lynn. “There they are! Don’t let them get away!”
Frank O’Lynn grabbed his paw again. Louis tried to pull it back, but the guinea pig wasn’t letting go. “Close your eyes! Just do it!”
Louis hesitated, stunned with the speed at which the peelers were attacking. Both rats were now sprinting across the floor, maneuvering around and jumping over the tables to get at them. He heard Frank O’Lynn tell him for the last time to close his eyes and complied immediately, just as the first rat leaped over the nearest table, claws outstretched, mouth gaping. He instinctively shrank back and yelped, scrunching his eyes as tightly as he could, fully expecting the force of the rat to hurl him against the back wall.
It didn’t happen. Instead, he heard a Pop! and felt the briefest rush of breeze ruffle the fur on his head. Then silence, and the horrible sensation he was floating in mist. Just like his nightmare.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Fires of Oblivion
“IT’S safe now,” Louis heard Frank O’Lynn say. “The peelers can’t get you here.”
Tentatively, he opened his eyes and withdrew his paw from Frank O’Lynn’s grasp, recognizing instantly where he was. Barely a second had zipped by since he had cringed from the peeler’s gaping jaw, barely a second to gather his wits that were spilling about like M&M’s from the box. How the hell then, in that short space of time, had Frank O’Lynn transported him more than fifty miles to the end of Conduit Number 1? But he had, no goddamn denying it. They were standing near the wall and bright white light was glaring through the golden archway. HEREBY LIES THE END OF THE WORLD. TRAVELERS PASS AT THEIR PERIL. What’s more, gathered around in front of them was another whip-yielding crowd of rats, weasels, lizards and ferrets, presumably waiting for another newbie to arrive. Most were popping pills or slipping on a pair of Egoroids, many sneezing and coughing or scratching at fleabites. To his relief, the bell at the top of the arch was motionless and silent, at least for the moment.
“Are you sure the peelers haven’t followed us here?” he asked.
Frank O’Lynn nodded and said, “Quite sure.”
Louis could still feel the buzzing aftereffects of the near escape. “I… I must have brought them to your club. I’m sorry. They must have seen me enter.”
“To be sure, what’s done is done,” Frank O’Lynn said. “They probably had me under surveillance, as it was. Someone must have tipped them off.”
Louis scanned the crowd. “What happened to your colleagues? Where’d they go?”
“They Popped randomly all over the city, to wherever came to mind. No place in particular. We’ll regroup. To be sure, it’s not th
e first time we’ve been raided…”
Frank O’Lynn was cut short by something he had just seen over Louis’ shoulder.
Louis spun. Trailing the Grand Pooh-Bah like three ducklings behind its mother (Hewey, Dewey and Lewey?) were Tiffany Tidbits, Flash Freddy and Smiggins. “Out of my way!” Santosa said, wheeling himself through the crowd. “Out of my way! This is official business!”
Louis gasped and stepped back, pressing himself against the wall. He wasn’t yet ready to deal with the fat toad and his little helper. He also wasn’t sure how deep the lizard and sniggering rat had been in the whole Hot Potato scam either. As far as he was concerned, better to assume that everyone was guilty. Even Tiffany.
“Don’t worry,” Frank O’Lynn said. “Nobody can see or hear us. For the time being anyway. Popping makes us invisible until we… uh, Pop back into relative reality.”
Louis watched Santosa push through the crowd to the front. He passed right in front of him and didn’t even blink, as did the others. Amazing, considering that he and The Partridge could still see each other as easily as they had before they Popped. “How long do we remain like this?” he asked. Oddly enough, this was the first time since he died that he actually felt like a ghost. “Shouldn’t we hide before we rematerialize in front of everyone and get arrested?”
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