Generation of Liars (32 page)

The last vestiges of color drained
from Rabbit’s face and his eyelids began to beat rapidly. “You mean if Motley
succeeds, I’m going to have to go back to being Lenny Rabitz?”  

“Geez, Rabbit, did I not just tell
you that I was going to be killed? And all you care about is covering your own
ass?”

“I’m sorry, Alice, you’re right.
This sucks. We can’t let him do this. I don’t want to be Lenny again. Lenny is
a loser. Lenny’s parents hate him. Lenny doesn’t get chicks. Oh, and I don’t
want you to be killed, either.”

 “What are we going to do to
stop this?” I asked, relieved to finally have someone to collaborate with.

“Isn’t it obvious? We take the
dynamite stick away from Motley.” Rabbit’s vigor took me off guard.

“That’s what I was working towards.
The whole drunk-sorority-girl act is to get Motley’s guard down. Then strike.
Maybe seduce him. Maybe kill him. I was just going to play it by ear.”

Rabbit looked out the car window
.
“
Here they come back towards the car. We’ve got to act cool.”

“Just follow my lead.” I slumped
onto the seat and gurgled so that a rivulet of spit trickled out the corners of
my mouth and basted my chin.

Motley slid into the driver’s seat
and Cleopatra climbed in the front seat next to him. “Is she sobering up at
all?” he wanted to know.

“She’s still pretty out there,”
replied Rabbit. “I wouldn’t trust dumping her back at her place. Better take her
back to your house so we can take turns keeping an eye on her.” Motley switched
on classical music and eased into traffic bound for the 18
^th
arrondissement.
I knew he would probably dump me off and let traffic roll over me if Rabbit
wasn’t there.

Once the car was parked in the
garage, Rabbit pretended to drag me out. “I will put her down for the night and
keep an eye on her.”

“You do that,” Motley replied. He
and Cleopatra disappeared inside the house with their arms twisted into each
other’s.

Chapter Twenty-nine: In the Water

R
ABBIT
LAID ME down on Motley’s giant four-post king-size bed.  He kneeled beside
me on the bed and whispered to me, “The dynamite stick is in his office.”

“Are you sure?”

“I saw him stash it inside the top
drawer yesterday, right after he wrote me the check, before I came into the
kitchen and saw you on the computer.”

“How do we get in there and get the
disk without him noticing?”

“Usually he goes into his office
and has a cigar after getting home for the night. I need you to distract him
and get him out of the office. I can take care of the disk.”

Motley’s bedroom door swung open.

Cleopatra swayed in with her back
to us. “I’m just going to draw a bath, Motley dear.” She turned into the room
and her eyes landed on the sight of Rabbit and I tangled on the bed. She shot
us an ornery look and breezed past us and closed herself into the master
bathroom connected to the master suite. We could hear the bathtub’s faucet
roaring like a waterfall on the other side.

“I hate her,” I said.  I lit a
cigarette. My bare legs were crossed over Motley’s golden-embroidered
bedspread.  

I could see sweat piling on the
edge of Rabbit’s hairline. “Are you sure we can’t put this off for a better
time?” he asked.

“No!” I clawed the sheets. “Motley
is leaving for America tomorrow. We have to do this now.”

“I just don’t see how we can do
this without getting caught.”

“I have a plan to lure him out of
his office,” I said. “All I need you to do is just go to his office and pretend
you have to tell him something. But on your way out, you have to make sure you
leave the door open a little. Okay?”

“Leave the door open a little. Got
it.”

“It’s got to be wide enough for him
to see somebody walking by the door from his seat behind the desk.”

Rabbit sprang to his feet. “What
should I say I have to tell him?”

I don’t know,” I said, pulling my
dress up over my head. “Just make something up, thank him for dinner. Oh, and
could you toss me that robe by the door before you leave?”

Rabbit tossed me Motley’s fluffy
white robe, which had an elegant black
M
monogramed on the breast
pocket. I sat on the bed, wrapped inside the robe with my skinny, pale legs
crossed like birch limbs. I took a series of deep, focusing breaths like David
Xad had taught me during our training three years earlier. I would need to be
focused and prepare, just like David, who went as far as exiling himself in Rio
to prepare for battle with an opponent. The biggest opponent of my life so far
was sitting one floor below me and I needed to have my mind in the right place
if I was going to pull this off and walk away alive.

I slid off the bed and tiptoed to
the hallway with my silver high heel shoes dangling from my fingers. I couldn’t
leave them behind since my confession was hidden inside. This was the time for
last wills and testaments.

I slinked down the staircase,
allowing the robe to drape from my shoulders and the belt to drag behind me
like an alluring tail. I slowly sauntered by Motley’s office. The door was open
a slice, just like I had instructed Rabbit to do, and when I cut my eyes to the
side, I caught Motley watching me through the opening. Just when I had gotten
past the door he called out, “Alice.”

I trolled backwards. “Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

I presented myself in the doorway.
“I was feeling much better. I thought I might go for a swim. Remember, you told
me the other day when you invited me to stay here that I should take full
advantage of the pool.”

“I’m happy to see you’ve regained
your sprightly nature, Alice. Drunk and sloppy doesn’t become you.”

“I’ll be in the pool if you need
me.” I said it like an invitation, backing up gracefully and rolling my
shoulders into an arch to make the robe reveal a greater portion of my back. I
padded down the hall and took in the view of the calm-watered turquoise pool. A
stack of towels and guest swimsuits were neatly piled on the pool’s perimeter.
I helped myself to a black swimsuit, dropping the robe to my ankles and sliding
into the stretchy apparatus of the bikini. I placed my high heels down beside
the rim of the pool. I entered the water waist deep and fanned my arms out
around me to create a set of rings that rippled to the other end of the pool.
The water was perfect; warm and still.

The heavy pool-room door creaked
open and I looked up just in time to see Motley cut a long shadow over the
pool’s white cement outline.

“The water is just right,” I
enticed. “Why don’t you come in?”

Chapter Thirty: Diamond Skin

H
IS
EYES WERE skimming the length of the pool. “I’ll be right back, Alice. I’ll get
my swimsuit.”

That or a gun. I was prepared for
either.

When Motley came back, he was
wearing black swim trunks and he was holding two fat cigars and a Zippo
lighter. He squatted beside the pool and I swam to the ledge and put my elbows
up on the rim and let him put a very pricey Romeo Y Julieta in my mouth and
light it.

“What about Cleopatra?” I asked.

“She can wait.” Motley took a few
puffs of his cigar and then he laid it down on the tile and dived into the
water.

“Here
fishy
,
fishy
,”
I said, splashing around him. There was a feeling of tangible adrenaline in the
air. I felt like if my skin touched Motley’s we would both spark off like
electric eels.

“Alice, I’m not entirely sure you
have sobered up.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You still don’t quite seem
yourself.” He perked an eyebrow. “It’s like your mind is elsewhere, busy
plotting something.”

I took a lingering puff of the
cigar and then placed it down on the damp cement. “Did Rabbit leave? Because I
was plotting to have some time alone with you.”

“Nothing nefarious, I hope.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.” I opened my arms up around me and floated onto my back. I did long,
elegant strokes with my arms out like angel wings. But I was an avenging angel.

 Motley put his hand out in
the water to stop me and pull me in towards him. “Are you sure, Alice?” He got
close enough to lap the beads of water off my nose with his smoke-drenched
tongue. “Because betrayal can be such a mood killer.”

“And what mood is that?” I brushed
up close to him and pressed my shoulders so that they aligned with his. Our
lips brushed. Kissing him made my stomach turn. He grabbed my waist and his
hands crept down around the band of my bikini bottoms. He reached up and
grabbed my face. His eyes gazed into mine and I bit my lip. His eyes were bluer
than the pool water. I tasted the chlorine dripping down my face and into my
mouth. He pushed his lips to mine and gave me a kiss that sucked all the air
out of me, then he pulled his lips away with my skull still in his hands and he
pushed my head down as hard as he could and dunked me.

The pressure of it felt like
whiplash.

I screamed underwater and kicked up
bubbles.

I clawed the skin on his abdomen
and tried to fight my way back up. I kicked him at the knees, but it only made
him push down harder. The chlorine was stabbing my eyes and the pressure in my
lungs was erupting. I struggled until my body went limp, just a floating rag
doll beneath him.
Was this it? Was I meant to die here, embalmed in chlorine?

In my foggy, lack-of-oxygen state,
I saw my mentor David Xad’s face down there in the water with me. My hair, like
the leaves of a blond lotus flower, circled all around me as I concentrated on
the breathing technique David Xad had taught me in the Java Sea
three
years earlier. He had set me adrift on a raft with a paper lantern an hour
before a storm was to plow in. I had gone under the salty waves, cold and heavy
against my body, and every time I was overtaken, I closed my eyes and seized my
diaphragm to stop the water from entering my body. The warm chlorinated pool
that surrounded me now took on the smell of the wild salt and stinging algae of
the Java Sea as I recalled those breathing techniques.

Motley loosened his grip on my neck
and pushed my slack body away from him. I bobbed like driftwood.

He turned around to reach for one
of the cigars, smoldering like sacrificial incense on the rim of the pool, and
took in a soothing inhale of smoke. I popped up out of the water and punched
the back of his head forward so that his forehead bashed into the hard cement
rim. The blood showed up immediately, polluting the water like spilled red ink.
I rushed up out of the pool and scooped up my high heels and turned back to
look at the scene. The reflection of Motley’s pale body fractured the surface
of the water; he was motionless and the water’s shadows made him appear larger
and more bloated than he was. He looked like a day-old corpse. But I wasn’t
sure if he was dead. He would either drown right there with the cigar smoke
still in his lungs or he would get up out of the pool and find me and kill me.
I ran for the door. I caught a reflection of myself as I breezed by the doors;
my lips were steel blue and my skin was as colorless as diamonds. I was shaking
and dripping water all the way to Motley’s office. I locked the door shut
behind me and did big, heaving breaths.

Rabbit wasn’t in the office like I
expected.

There was a steady and urgent
rapping at the door. “Who’s there?” I called out.

“Alice, let me in.” It was hard to
tell through the muffle of the thick oak door, but it sounded like Rabbit.

I undid the lock and Rabbit rushed
past me, huffing to catch his breath. “Look in the desk!”

We rushed over to the large
mahogany desk, its legs like antiquated pillars holding up a herculean slab of
wood and drawers. I coiled my hand around the drawer’s knob and noticed some of
Motley’s blood underneath my fingernails. “Motley might dead, Rabbit,” I said
as I shivered. “There was so much blood in that pool.” I pulled the drawer
open, but the only things inside were some papers and a gun. Vigorously, I
pulled out the rest of the drawers, each containing items just as useless.
“It’s not in here,” I cried out.

Rabbit’s bony fingers raked his
scalp. “It has to be in here someplace.”

I collapsed into the chair behind
the desk. “What if it’s not? What are we going to do?” My toes knocked
something under the desk and I peeked and saw a black briefcase tucked away.

“This must be the briefcase he is
planning to take on his trip.” Rabbit crawled under my legs and dragged the
black briefcase out onto the carpet. “It’s locked,” he said, spanking his hand
against it.

“Do you know how to unlock it?” The
chlorine in my throat made every word feel like a sword I was spitting up.

Rabbit vigorously rolled his
fingers over the locks, trying any combination he could think of. “Come on,
come on,” he lullabied to the briefcase in the smooth, romantic way he always
talked to gadgets.

“Crap. I knew something was going
to go wrong.”

“It’s okay, don’t panic, I do the
algorithms for Motley’s lock combo choices. It’s got to be one I know, one I
invented.”

I looked over at him, his teensy
brown eyes focused on the lock, heavy breaths entering through his hooked nose
and blowing out past his arched lips. It was then that I noticed the red
lipstick smeared at the corner of his lips.

“Where were you?” I asked, backing
away from him.

“What?” he asked.

“Just now, when I was busy with
Motley in the pool room, where were you? Why weren’t you in Motley’s office
when I got here? I mean, you said you would be waiting here.” I took a few more
steps backwards away from him. “How could I have beaten you back to Motley’s
office?”

“I was upstairs. Cleopatra started
looking around for Motley so I had to distract her.”