Generation of Liars (37 page)

“It’s only a matter of time until
one of those guys wonders what’s taking me so long powdering my nose,” Vivienne
added.

“Rabbit, how do we get you up and
out of there?” I asked.

“You have to pop the grate off the
manhole and then I have to climb up, but it’s going to be tough since I’m
working off a foot that has been shot.”

I popped the grate and threw down
the rope I had stuffed inside the money purse. Rabbit grabbed a hold of it and
began the climb. He only made it a few inches before his face flashed into a
wince of pain and he stopped, tumbling back to the bottom. “I can’t do it,” he
whined, “not with my foot like this.”

“Great,” I moaned. “How are we ever
going to get him up?”

“I have an idea,” Vivienne said.
She grabbed the reins of the rope from my hand and pulled them up from the
hole. “I’ll lasso Rabbit up. Just like one of my paintings.”

“It could work,” I said.

Vivienne grandiosely swung the rope
over her shoulders. The tail of it whipped through the air, skimming a loud
whooshing sound over our heads, and then there was an apocalyptical clattering
behind us as a row of wine bottles crashed to the floor.

The aftermath was a graveyard of
smashed glass and a red puddle of wine seeping from the wreckage and trickling
to our feet. “Damn,” Vivienne cried. “I guess I overshot my aim.”

“Do you think anyone heard that?”

“I don’t know,” Vivienne said.

“We need to get out of here fast,”
I commanded.

“I’m trying,” Rabbit wailed.

I bent down over the hole and
dropped the rope again. “Pull yourself up as much as you can and I will pull
you up the rest of the way!” Rabbit tightened the rope around his waist and
began thumping upwards, grunting with every step. Vivienne held my feet down
while I stretched my torso down into the hole to meet hands. I pulled his body
upwards with every bit of vigor and bowel-clenching strength I could manage.
“Almost there,” I encouraged, as his head crowned the top of the hole and I
drew a strengthening breath and heaved him up. Rabbit toppled over me. We were
sprawled next to each other, catching our breath, and I suddenly realized that
my arm felt lighter.

“Rabbit?” I called out.

“Yeah, Alice?”

“Do you have my bag?”

“Bag?” he asked.

“The bag that was slung over my
shoulder.”

He was panting and wiping the sweat
from his face with his back flat against the floor. “Alice, who cares about
some stupid purse right now.”

“Crap.” I rolled to my feet. I
peered down into the hole, straining my eyes until there, in the dimly lit
abyss, I spotted a glint of light bouncing from the bag’s silver buckle. “Damn
it. It must have slid off when I pulled you up.”

“It’s just a bag,” Rabbit said.

“No it’s not
just a bag
,” I
stammered. “If you knew what was in that bag you wouldn’t think so either.”

“It’s no big deal,” Vivienne moved
in, her voice intentionally soothing. “One of us can just climb back down the
hole and carry it up, it’s not that far.”

“Are you volunteering?” I asked
Vivienne.

Vivienne didn’t have a chance to
answer. The door to the wine cellar crashed open just then. A splinter of
halogen light poured in from the hallway and a monstrous silhouette rushed
towards us. As light cut against the giant body to reveal a man’s face, I saw
the distinctive stalwart jaw and broad shoulders that belonged to Motley. His
neck was packed over in bandages and he had a lightning bolt cut down his neck.
One of his arms was nested in a tightly-wound sling and the other was balancing
a gun on its trigger finger. He shot a stray from the gun and it ricocheted off
a cask of wine, causing unwieldy sprays of red vintage to shoot across the
cellar like punctured arteries.

“I guess someone
did
hear
that,” Vivienne said. She was helping Rabbit hobble upright.

“Alice, you worthless tramp,”
Motley taunted, “you can’t run from me.”

“Oh yeah? What do you call this?” I
was already in motion.

Rabbit and Vivienne managed to
clear off into the distance and Motley seemed more interested in trailing me
than he did them. I could hear him huffing and puffing behind me as I scribbled
towards the door.

“I used the dynamite stick to find
your real name,” Motley shouted.

The words were a slaying arrow that
slowed me down. The echo of him calling my true name, Margaux, the night
before, jarred my brain like a sinister lullaby.

“What did you say?” I gritted the
words out somehow, even though my breath had been knocked from my lungs.

“I know your Social Security
number. I know your real name. It’s Margaux Fix. You have nowhere to run. If
you go back home I can find you.”

“You can’t hurt me.”

“I can hurt you, and your family.
Your family that lives on Francis Terrace. You’re from Connecticut, right
outside the city, not from the Midwest like you told me.”

The air in my throat seemed to dry
out. I could see Vivienne and Rabbit running ahead of me, the keyhole of light
from the hallway turned them into blurry shadows in the distance. I swiped a
row of bottles from their perch and the sound of glass cascaded down like the
rings of unruly bells. “Break your face on some glass, old man,” I snarled.

The shavings of light from the
hallways grew larger as I approached the door. The broken bottles were enough
to have slowed Motley down while I broke through the other side of the door. I
was still holding Vivienne’s rope and I used it to tie off the door handle to
one of the light fixtures in the hallway. I knew it wouldn’t hold Motley back
for long, but it might give me enough time to get out of the house.

I followed the red streaking trail
of blood, which Rabbit’s injured foot had left behind as he and Vivienne ran. I
bolted past the poker room, which was surging with uproarious laughter, and the
guys inside were all too drunk to notice anything. I lurched out the front door
and saw Rabbit standing on the front lawn without Vivienne.

“Where’s Vivienne?” I called out.

“She sprinted down to the main road
to hail a taxi to come pick me up. I couldn’t make it much farther on this
foot.”

I shook my head and let the sting
of hot, prickly tears fill my eyes. “I didn’t get the bag.”

“Come on, Alice,” Rabbit said,
rubbing the toe of his serrated, blood-soaked sneaker, “it’s only a bag.”

“Rabbit, please don’t be mad.” I
was trying to conjure up a method to break the news of his lost money to him
gently. “I went to your apartment to get your payout from Motley.”

“Alice! How could you steal from
me?”

“No, it’s not like that. I wasn’t
stealing. I thought you were dead.”

“So you were planning to take money
from a dead guy? After you’re the one who got him shot in the first place!
Beautiful Alice, that’s freaking beautiful.” The skin on Rabbit’s face turned
as white as a sheet. His eyes pulsed open and his drooping lips muttered the
petrified words, “My money was in that bag that fell into the hole, wasn’t it?”

“I’m so sorry, Rabbit.”

“Really low, Alice.”

“I’ll get that money back to you. I
promise.”

“Liars have a funny way with
promises.”

A taxi screeched to the curb and
Vivienne flung the door open. “Get in, now.” We slid into the backseat and
Rabbit sat stiff beside me. Hot, angry breaths fumed from his nostrils. 

“You should get your foot looked at
by somebody,” I told Rabbit. “Since going to the hospital is probably going to
draw the wrong kind of attention, I know a doctor who is pretty good.”

Chapter Thirty-six: Extraction

B
EN
SWUNG OPEN the door to his apartment, noticeably riled by the impatient
knocking. I was standing in the hallway with my clothes and hair soaked in red
wine.

“Alice!” Ben gasped. “What on Earth
happened to you? You smell like a cabaret house.”

“Wine tour,” I answered.

“A wine tour?” He was skeptical and
angry. “Tell me what on earth you were really doing splashing around in wine
late at night.”

“Please, Ben, don’t yell. You will
embarrass me in front of the company.”

“You brought company?” He was
straining to peek into the hallway. Rabbit and Vivienne each gave him a shy
grin and a wave.

“My friend, Rabbit, has been shot
and he needs help,” I explained.

“Shot?”

“Can you please help him?”

“Alice, that’s what hospitals are
for. I mean, I was in the middle of cooking dinner after a long shift for
goodness’ sake. What the hell kind of name is Rabbit, anyway?”

“Can you please just take a break
from cooking and help a man who has been attacked? You’re a doctor. You have to
help. Didn’t you take an oath for this kind of thing?”

 Ben was opening his mouth to
say something to contradict me when Rabbit stepped forward. “Listen,” he said
demurely, “if we are causing trouble, we can just go someplace else and have my
foot looked at.”

Ben shook his head, embarrassed by
his misanthropic attitude. “No, I’m sorry. I would never turn away an injured
person. I’ve just been caught off guard by the situation. Please come in.”

Ben stepped into the hallway,
allowing Rabbit and Vivienne to slip through the doorway. Ben led me out into
the hallway and eased the door shut behind us. “Want to tell me what you and
your friends were doing when someone got shot?”

“Rabbit got into a fight at one of
the bars in Pigalle. It isn’t his usual crowd. He’s a dork from an Ivy League
school. He said the wrong thing to the wrong person. It was no big deal.”

“What about the girl in the leather
leotard? Did he pick her up in Pigalle too?”

“Don’t be nasty, Ben. Vivienne is
Rabbit’s girlfriend and she is a perfectly respectable woman.”

“I don’t like you bringing this
kind of trouble to my doorstep, Alice. I’m a doctor at one of the largest
hospitals in Paris. I have a reputation to protect in the community.”

“Let’s just go and help him. I
promise nobody will ever find out, and your status in the community will remain
spotlessly intact.”

I followed Ben back inside. He went
to the stove and turned off the burner where a pan of chicken had been
simmering. He gestured for Rabbit to take a seat at the breakfast counter. “Why
don’t you ease onto a stool so I can take a look at your wound?”

Rabbit hopped onto a stool and
kicked the bloody, serrated sneaker off his left foot. “Can you believe I got
mugged right in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral?”

Ben stooped down to get eye to eye
with the bullet hole in Rabbit’s foot. “Mugged in front of Notre Dame, you
say?” He passed a glare to me. “What are the odds?”

“Beats me,” I said coyly.

Rabbit made an awkward, nervous
sound which I couldn’t tell was a laugh or a cough. “Does it look bad?”

“Infection has begun to set in. I
need to get the bullet out now or you will lose everything up to your ankle,”
Ben replied. “Alice, go into the cupboard and grab me a mixing bowl.”

I went to the cupboards and dug out
a glass mixing bowl. “Will this do?” Ben nodded and I scampered over to hand it
to him. He set it down on the floor.

“What’s the bowl for?” Vivienne
asked. Her long acrylic nails were nervously tapping the countertop.

“It’s going to catch the bullet
after I extract it from his flesh,” Ben answered.  He was cupping Rabbit’s
heel in his hand. “Alice, go into the bathroom and open the linen closet. Look
on the second shelf. There should be a green first aid kit. Bring it to me.”

“The linen closet?” I asked, with
my tongue going dry as cotton. I wondered how closely Ben kept stock of the
items inside the closet, since that was where I had hidden the dynamite stick.

“Yes. The linen closet.” His
eyebrows were twisted over his eyes as he inspected the wound from all angles.
“Would you please hurry?”

I shot to the bathroom and took a
deep breath before flinging the pantry door open. My eyes scanned the spot
behind the towels where I had hidden the dynamite stick inside a box of
bandages. It was still nested inside, undisturbed. I roved the shelf above it
and whisked the first aid kit by the handle. I rushed to Ben’s side and set it
down beside him.

Ben opened the lid and busily
assessed all of the products inside. “One more thing, Alice. Go into the
bedroom and open my top drawer, feel around with your hands underneath where my
boxers are folded.”

“Is this really appropriate?”
Rabbit asked.

“Yes,” Ben replied, “it is
extremely appropriate. You’ll see why in a moment.”

I headed to the bedroom and did as
Ben ordered. My hands grappled over the pile of boxers until I felt something
hard protruding beneath them. I pulled up a bottle of whiskey and held it out
in front of me. “Even Ben keeps dirty little secrets,” I whispered.

“Did you find it?” Ben called out
as I rounded the doorway.

“Sure did,” I hooted, “and I think
you have some explaining to do.”

Humor wasn’t on Ben’s agenda. “Give
the whiskey to Rabbit,” he ordered. “He’s the one who will need it.”

“I will?” Rabbit quivered.

“I am going to pull a bullet out of
your foot using nothing but a pair of tweezers and a glass mixing bowl, trust
me, you’re going to need whiskey.”

“But you’re a doctor!” Rabbit
exclaimed. “Don’t you have any real painkillers?”

“I am a doctor, not a drug dealer.
What do you think I do? Just pocket prescription drugs from the hospital and
bring them home for every gunshot victim my girlfriend drags in?”

“I suppose not. Hand me that
bottle,” Rabbit insisted. I put it in his hands and he unscrewed the cap and
took a swig, swiping the back of his palm over his lips when he finished.

“Bloody hell!” Ben yelled. “Take
more than that. I don’t want to hear you scream like a little baby.”