Generation of Liars (11 page)

Being caught is nothing for a liar.
We get caught all the time. Par for the fib-filled course. But here’s the rule
to live by: keep lying. Keep spinning the web. Use charm. Use flattery. Use
your grandma under a bus. Whatever. It. Takes.

“
Well
?” I asked, all
confidence, and enhancing the arch of my shoulders in a ballerina-esque manner.
“Since you’re in charge, what does a girl need to do to get on your list?” I
did a flirty smile, and if I had the ability to make my eyes twinkle like they
do in the movies, I would have used it at that moment.

Etienne smiled back, which I
considered a good sign. He smoothly lifted his hand to my face, brushing his
fingers against my chin, and tried to lift my mask.

I pushed his hand back and smiled
coyly. “Uh-uh,” I told him, my finger wagging, “you have to earn a peek.”

Etienne’s eyes, cold as steel,
lingered on me, and I held my breath, waiting for him to reach his conclusion
about what to do with the girl with green eyes in the tan trench coat caught
crashing his party.

When he opened his mouth to speak,
his thin lips parted, and when he smiled before delivering his verdict, they
rolled above his red, wet gums. “How about I keep you as my own personal guest
of honor?”

“That sounds good,” I told him.
“Now that I’ve been fully vetted and approved by the man in charge himself,
tell me, what does the guest of honor have to do around here to get a decent
drink in her hand?”

“Forget the crap they’re serving
the guests, I’ll take you to my cigar room, where you can sip from my personal
stock.” Etienne synchronized his eyes to mine, and with an instructive nod, he
indicated the staircase.

“Lead the way,” I prompted. He
hooked my hand and led me up the silky steps, and when I got half-way up, I
turned my head and gave Rabbit the most antagonistic look I could manage. The
chattering of voices and rub of violin strings from the party fell away as we
approached the top of the stairs.

At the apex of the staircase, the
second floor opened up to a broad hallway, lined with heavy wooden doors that
resembled medieval passageways. “This one,” Etienne instructed, pushing open
the door to his cigar room and nudging me inside.

The cigar room was glamorized by
imperial leather couches and several trophy deer heads on the wall. I walked
immediately towards a large bay window and parted the cinematic curtains that
draped borders around it in order to peek outside. Silver spotlights
illuminated the gardens below, pampering the cigar room with a stunning view of
the Seine.

“That view is breathtaking,” I
swooned.  

Etienne pulled out two crystal cups
from a Louis XIV style mahogany hutch with glass panels. He wanted to know,
“What will it be?”

“Absinthe, if you have it,” I
replied, sliding onto his leather couch. “With an extra sugar cube.”

He hurriedly poured two drinks and
chopped a cigar. He carried them over to me and I swiftly sipped my absinthe as
though the drink in my stomach would make Etienne’s overflowing chin and
corpulent physique more tolerable.

“So,” Etienne initiated, taking the
first sweet inhale of his cigar as he stretched over the sofa like a playful
tomcat, “when I add your name to the guest list for my next party, what name
will I write down?”

I thumbed the edges of the belt on
my trench coat and told him, “Nadine. Nadine Blye.”

I rationalized to myself that it
wasn’t a total lie. I was Nadine Blye,
sometimes
. Or at least I had a
passport that said so. She was a physicist, and six months earlier I had
purchased a fake identity under her name from Wally, with an accompanying fake
PhD from Princeton and a passport stamped for Russia. I had needed it for one
of Motley’s jobs.

“A pleasure to meet you, Nadine,”
Etienne purred, the way a rich old man with a pretty young thing in his cigar
room tends to purr. “Tell me, what brought you to my party?”

“Refill my glass and I’ll tell
you,” I teased, shaking my empty cup at him. I had just felt the vibration of
my phone from inside my pocket, altering me to a new text message, so I needed
Etienne to turn his head so I could read what it said.

Etienne got up from his chair and I
peeked and saw a message from Rabbit. The text said,
New intel…the possible
dynamite stick isn’t in the house, might be on his yacht…look outside.

“Here you go,” Etienne said,
handing me my drink. I took it from him and plunged it to my lips until it was
drained. I set the empty glass down and popped off the sofa to my feet, raising
my arms up over my head. The lamplight next to the sofa bathed my figure in
spotlight and I began dancing.

“Are you in the mood to dance,
Nadine?” Etienne asked.

“Mmmhmm,” I answered, letting my
body swivel, carefully timing my dance steps so that I traced my way over to
the window. I parted the curtains again, twisting myself around them like
glossy bed sheets as I danced, and I got a peek at Etienne’s yacht parked out
there.

“But I would much rather dance on
your big boat.”

“My boat?”

“Yeah.” I nodded out the window
towards the dock. “Isn’t that yours?”

The way his eyes followed my
shoulders as they pulled back and forth, I knew he was considering it. He
jumped to his feet and grabbed a set of keys from inside his desk, and he
grabbed the bottle of Le Tourment Vert
absinthe my drinks had been
poured from.

“Let’s go,” Etienne said. I let him
lead me back down the staircase and we passed through the main foyer again.
Rabbit was standing exactly where I had left him, except now there was a skinny
girl in a geisha mask and a black spandex dress latched onto his arm. He was so
enamored with nuzzling into her shiny black hair that he didn’t notice the
nasty look I transmitted to him as I passed by. This was not the time to be
picking up honeys.

Quickly paced, we took the main
foyer to a private library that had large glass double doors that led out to
the waterfront. Etienne threw open the doors. “After you, Nadine.”

I walked outside and a rush of cold
air hit my bare legs. “Is it this one?” There was a pristine white yacht parked
along the dock, its details were made mysterious by the river’s leaping
shadows.

Etienne tugged open the cabin
doors. “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable, Nadine.”

“Certainly,” I said, letting a
lingering stare cross between us.

The inside of the yacht was
cramped, even though it had been redecorated for amenities like a big-screen
television and a massage table. My eyes scanned around for the dynamite stick
as I sat down on the plush sofa which took up a good portion of the den.

The coffee table, pulled up next to
the legs of the sofa, had a black laptop resting on it. Aside from that,
nothing else looked promising for the likelihood of concealing the disk.

“Are you comfortable, Nadine?”
Etienne eased beside me on the sofa and latched his arm around my shoulders. I
was a pretty good liar, but it’s tricky to fib your way out of cramped space
with a gross dude who is all up on you, and Etienne was all up on me in a
matter of seconds. His lips aligned themselves to mine and he kissed me with a
perverse suction.

I shrugged myself free. “I’m
thirsty again.”

“Let me see your face,” he said.

“Soon,” I replied.

“Now.” His hand tugged at my mask
and I swatted his fingers away from my face.

“I said
soon
. Be patient.”

“I want to see your face. Take off
that mask.” Something about his hot breath and the way the rocking boat made
the tartare come back up to my throat caused me to snap. I clawed the length of
Etienne’s cheek with my nails. “Nadine? What the hell is this?” He wiped the
blood away from his cheek where I had raked his skin.

“Where’s the thumb drive?” I asked,
sliding my snub-nose revolver out of the pocket on my trench coat.

“What thumb drive? What are you
talking about, you screwy little bitch? Are you trying to rob me?”

“You know what thumb drive I’m
talking about,” I hollered, lifting the revolver and directing its nose to the
middle of his forehead. “The dynamite stick.”

Etienne probably had two-hundred
pounds on me, so when he lunged at me instead of answering my question, it
knocked me to the floor. The revolver flew out of my hand and spun across the
floor, farther than either of us could grasp for it. Etienne pinned me down by
each wrist and collapsed on my chest with his full weight.

“Who sent you here?” he asked. “Who
do you work for?”

“I work for myself,” I growled.

“Do you want money? Is that it? Or
were you sent here to kill me by one of my competitors?”

“I came here for the dynamite
stick.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Don’t play dumb.” I hiked my foot
up so that the sharply pointed toe of my shoe struck the tender root of his
spine.

“Don’t take me for a fool,” he
barked. He forcefully shoved the crown of my head against the leg of the coffee
table, shaking the table so that the bottle of absinthe thundered to the floor
an inch away from my head.

I felt something warm trickle down
from my hairline and I couldn’t tell if it was sweat, blood, or absinthe. The
muscles in each of our bodies were clenched so tight, each of our grips so
unrelenting, that we were tied in place by the other’s tangling limbs.

“Irresistible force meets immovable
object,” I grunted out.

“I’m about to move your immovable
ass right into the bottom of the Seine.” I could tell by the shortness of
breath he demonstrated when he said it that he was beginning to tire out. I
jerked a hand out from under his clawed grasp and frantically patted the floor
around me, feeling for the bottle of absinthe. Finally, my hand made contact
with the blockish contours of the bottle. I wrapped my fist around the neck and
raised it to the side of Etienne’s head.

I saw his eyes bulge in the split
second before his reflexes could register the impending blow, and I crashed the
bottle down against his cheek. The weight of his body suddenly fell down limply
on top of me. I let the bottle sputter from my hand and I slid out from under
Etienne. I dusted the front of my coat with my hands and bent down to pick up
my revolver, stepping over his body on my way to the bedroom.

Looking down at Etienne, his eyes
shut tight, his cheeks rosy like a seraphim, and a rhythmic wheezing coming
from his lips, he almost looked peaceful. I knew he would regain consciousness
in a matter of minutes, with anything but peace on his mind. I had to be quick.

Chapter Six: The Goons Face

I
T
TURNED OUT that the disk was onboard the yacht like Rabbit suspected. I found
it in the master suite, lying in plain sight on the dresser. It was the size of
a stick of gum. I grabbed it, and was in the process of shoving it inside the
pocket of my trench coat when I felt the presence of someone else in the room.
I looked up into the mirror above the dresser and saw the reflection of one of
Etienne’s masked goons standing behind me. He was blocking the door.

I hurdled myself onto the bed, and
with an energetic jump, I used the springs of the mattress to catapult myself
into the air and deliver a violent kick into the goon’s stomach. I noticed he
was much skinnier than the other goons inside the party.

The goon doubled over, staggering
to stay on his feet. I rushed to the glass French doors that led outside. They
shuddered against the violent breeze as I ran to the yacht’s ledge. I peered
into the dark waters below and the smell of rotted fish from the Seine cut my
nose. I could either jump into the water or risk facing the goon again. I
realized that diving into the water would destroy the thumb drive and I could
never confirm if it was truly the dynamite stick.

The doors to the deck crashed open
behind me and the goon staggered towards me. I knew I would never be fast
enough to run away from him, so I ran straight towards him, clawing and
kicking, with one hand reaching inside my pocket for my revolver. With my
exposed hand, I strode my fingers across his face and struck the corner of his
mask. The mask flew off his face and spun into the air before being fetched by
an upsweep of wind and disappearing into the dark waters that surrounded us.

“You?” I gasped at the now
bare-faced assailant.

“Surprised?” he asked.

“I can’t believe you followed me
here, you jerk.” I dropped the gun back into my pocket.

“Better get used to it,” he said.
“I’m going to be a step behind you until we work this thing out.”

“Get over yourself, Pressley.”

“Give me the disk in your pocket. I
am confiscating it under the authority of the United States Government.”

“I don’t believe you were on the
guest list for this party.”

“Well, we could ask the host,
except that you left him unconscious on the floor of his yacht, lying next to a
drained absinthe bottle.”

A spray of blinding light sliced
onto the deck from somewhere out on the water. I shielded my hand over my eyes
and saw something driving towards us in the water.

“What the hell is that?” Pressley
asked.

“I’m not sure,” I answered.

As the light grew closer, it
dissipated over the water, and I was able to identify it as the fog light fixed
to the helm of an approaching motorboat. I saw Cleopatra’s unmistakable red
hair flapping against the wind as she commanded the vehicle. I could make out
the sight of Rabbit leaning over the edge of the boat, waving for my attention.

“Looks like my ride is here.” I ran
over to the edge of the yacht and hoisted a leg onto the ledge. “Sorry, but
I’ve got to blow this shindig early. I was never much for masquerade balls. I
like showing my face when I lie.”