Generation of Liars (22 page)

“But Motley –,” I began choking out
my protestation.

“You’re an asset to me, Alice. I
need to protect my assets.”

Being an asset sounded good. Much
better than being a liability. “Of course, Motley. I’ll see you in a few
hours,” I said, looking up over the seat at Rabbit, who was avoiding my eye
contact.

Chapter Seventeen:  The Hallway

W
HEN
WE ARRIVED back in Paris I took a cab from the airport to my apartment to grab
some clothes and makeup to bring over to Motley’s, since I had no idea how long
I would be staying there and thought it best to be prepared. My clothes and
makeup weren’t just gauche accessories. I considered them to be fatigues and
war paint.

As I turned the hallway corner
leading to my apartment, I caught a glimpse of a man standing in front of my
door with his back to me. I could make out his profile, darkly shadowed by
black hair, and the outline of his face was cut by a strong jawline. The man
had one of his hands behind his back, clutching something. When I got closer I
realized it was a bouquet of flowers.

“Ben?” I called out.

He turned to me with a smile. He
was wearing a stylish buttoned shirt and his hair had been freshly moussed.

“Alice.” A shimmer of affection was
in his eyes.

“What are you doing here?”  

“I know it’s late, but my shift at
the hospital ended an hour ago and I wanted to see you. You said you would be
home tonight and I thought we planned on grabbing something to eat. Tai food,
remember?”

“I wasn’t expecting you to just pop
over.”

Ben looked me up and down, taking
in the details of my haggard appearance. “You’re a wreck. You look like you’ve
been mauled by an angry tiger. What happened to you?”

I tried to picture what I looked
like at that moment. I knew it was an amalgam of torn stockings, drippy makeup,
and matted hair. I reached for a quick lie and told him, “I’ve been out
partying with the other flight attendants, celebrating a successful landing.”

“Alice,” he said, looking so sad
and vulnerable standing there with flowers in his hand, “exactly what kind of
partying did you do?”

I wanted so badly at that moment to
invite him inside my apartment, but my mind was on the cab idling for me on the
curb and Motley impatiently waiting for me at his home. “Are those roses for
me?”

“Of course they are. Who else would
they be for? You said that when you got back you would wear a dress and put a
flower in your hair and let me take you on a real date. So I brought you the
flowers for your hair.”

“I can’t go to dinner with you. Not
tonight. I’m really tired.”

“I get it. You aren’t actually
interested in me, are you?” He pushed the flowers into my hands. “It would have
just been easier to tell me up front than to play these games. How could I ever
think you were serious about us having a relationship? All you’re serious about
is playing your cloak and dagger games, dressing up in vixen clothes, and
playing your cards close to your chest, especially with mysterious
alter-identities like Heather Gilmore.”

“Why do you keep dragging that name
into everything? I explained already that Heather Gilmore is not me. I told you
who she was.”

“Yeah, a girl from back home. A
girl whose name you just happen to slug around Paris inside your shoe in some
alchemistic confession note.”

“Ben, please stop.”

“Is it a crime for me to want to
know who you really are? To want to get a straight story before I hand you my
heart?”

“Ben, this conversation isn’t
happening tonight.”

“You’re right, it’s not. It’s never
happening.” He turned to give me one last look. “I was a fool to think you were
ready for a relationship. I thought there was a spark between us when met at
the hospital that night. Then over coffee and in the park, it felt like you and
I were the only two people in Paris, like this whole city was put up with clay
and spray paint by the gods, just so you and I could enjoy it together. I guess
I thought it was the beginning of love. But I was wrong.”

 As he walked away, I started to
call out to him, I mean I opened my mouth to tell him to come back, but the
words never formed because I knew that wasn’t an option. Motley was waiting on
me. It might all be for the better, I would only break Ben’s heart when it came
down to it. I hugged the flowers to my chest and watched him disappear into the
stairwell.

Chapter Eighteen: The Morning After

D
EFINITELY
A TRAIN hit me while I was asleep.

That’s how I felt when I woke up in
Motley’s guest bedroom the next morning. When I first opened my eyes, I didn’t
even remember how I had come to be lying on a plush mattress, enthroned in
1000-thread count sheets, which smelled like freshly dew-kissed linen. I
stretched my arms out into the air and slowly began to recall how I had come in
late and gone straight to bed without even seeing Motley. I rolled over in the
bed and felt something crunch beneath me.

I pulled the sheet down and saw
Ben’s roses, now crushed, lying next to me. I had fallen asleep beside them.
“Oh, geez,” I said, scooping up the dismembered petals in my hand. I decided to
go down to the kitchen and hunt down a vase and some fresh water to resuscitate
them. I climbed off the bed and peeked out the door of the guest bedroom, into
the hallway. Everything seemed quiet, so I padded down the giant spiral
staircase and walked past the main foyer towards the kitchen. The morning sun
was casting a warm haze throughout the hallways of the vast estate. Motley’s
house was as big as a castle and it was decorated like a museum, full of
sculptures of Greek gods and brass lions, and abstract art, with plaster and
pillars galore. It was a freestanding townhome that was in the 18
^th
arrondissement of Paris, a ritzy and historical quadrant of Montmartre that was
untouched by the Seine, or by the seeping sleaze of neighboring Place Pigalle.

When I got to the kitchen, Rabbit
was already seated at the marble-topped breakfast bar, sipping coffee out of a
cup from Motley’s collection of bone-white china. I zipped past him to grab a
vase from a cupboard. I filled the vase with tap water from the sink and
carefully set the flowers inside it. I sat down at the breakfast bar and placed
the vase down on the counter in between myself and Rabbit so that it blocked
out his face.

“Good morning, Alice,” Rabbit said.
I rolled my eyes and tightly pursed my lips. Rabbit grabbed a new cup, poured
coffee into it, and pushed it down the counter towards me.

I clutched it in my hands and
puffed my nose before taking a sip. “Should I sniff this for engine fluid?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, you aren’t exactly
very trustworthy, and you definitely have it out for me.” I pulled over the
carton of creamer and brass sugar bowl.

“Alice, I want to apologize. I
shouldn’t have freaked out when I saw you kiss that government guy. Motley
explained the whole thing to me. You were just working an angle when you made
out with Pressley. I get it now.”

“I suppose I’m willing to forgive
your rush to judgment and brash overreaction.” I pushed the vase out of the way
to glower at him. I quickly drank my coffee and got up from my seat to dump the
empty cup into the sink. I leaned back against the deep farmhouse sink that had
never bathed a single dish. I decided Rabbit was at least worthy of talking
business with. “So, should we do some digging on our Olympic outlaw, Ophelia Le
Fur?”

“I don’t think there’s much to
discuss. Short of asking her why she wants the dynamite stick, we don’t have
much of a lead on her motive than what we’ve already speculated. I’m not sure
why
she wants it even matters, we just have to focus on getting it before she
does.”

“What I’m wondering is, how did she
find that college kid, Jamie?  And how did she know we would be at the
library in Brussels?”

“You think someone fed her the
information?”

“Rabbit, all we know about her is
that she married some guy and dropped out of the public eye after being
stripped of her medal.”

“So?”

“What if who she married is the key
to why she wants the stick?”

“I’m not really seeing a
connection,” Rabbit said, with his long, bony fingers scratching his crown of
fleecy hair.

“Have you ever seen a photo of
Motley’s ex-wife?”

“His ex-wife? The one he is
bloodthirsty for? Alice, I think I know where you’re going with this and I
don’t like it.”

“Answer the question, Rabbit. Have
you ever seen her?”

“No, never. He hates his ex-wife so
much, it’s not like he travels around with her picture in his wallet.”

“I’ve never seen what she looks
like either. She could be anyone.” I perked an eyebrow. “Even a six-foot tall
Olympian blonde.”

“Are you suggesting what I think
you’re suggesting?”

“Think about it, Rabbit, if Ophelia
Le Fur is Motley’s begrudging ex-wife, it explains why Cleopatra arrived on the
scene, too.

“How so?”

“He could just be using Cleopatra
to get back at his ex-wife. His wife comes back into his life, and he brings a
seductive woman onboard to rub it in her face and make her jealous. It makes
sense.”

“I don’t know, Alice. You’re really
reaching.”

“But think about how much Motley
hates his ex-wife.”

“You mean with the passion of a
thousand fiery suns beating down on a million volcanoes on the hottest day of
the year at the equator?”

“And based on our brief encounters
with that wicked blonde, wouldn’t you say she would certainly be one to illicit
such deep feelings of hatred?”

“If she really is Motley’s ex-wife,
you think she just wants to get her hands on the dynamite stick as some sort of
lover’s revenge to irritate Motley? And what about the guy she married, Dr.
Coke? Do you think it’s Motley’s real name?”

“Dr. Coke could be a second
husband, after her divorce from Motley. Or it could be Motley’s real name. I
mean, don’t you find it strange that Motley hasn’t even bothered to investigate
who she is, despite the fact that she’s kicking our butts?”

“I think Motley has bigger fish on
his plate at the moment than some cumbersome Barbie with a stun gun.”

“I would call a person who keeps
scooping us a pretty big fish. I am going to find out how she keeps doing it.”

Rabbit poured himself another cup
of coffee. “As interested as I am in unclogging this little mystery, it turns
out we have to put that adventure on the backburner for right now.”

“Why is that?”

“Bigger fish. We had an interesting
night last night after you fell asleep.”

I walked back to the breakfast
counter and pretended to rearrange the flowers inside the vase. “What exactly
does an
interesting
night entail?”

A creepy grin pinned his cheeks up
and he announced, as though a coach boasting a touchdown, “We got Pressley
Connard.”

“Got him?” A jump ridged through my
bones, so that my elbow involuntarily jutted into the flower vase, knocking it
over, shattering the glass, and unleashing a cascade of water all down the side
of the counter and onto the floor. I cupped my fingers to my mouth and looked
down at the mess.

Rabbit tossed a dish towel to me.
“Yeah, Motley had Moonboots McCafferty and Xerxes O’Brien grab him after I
spotted him busting down Avenue of the Americas holding those empty acid
flasks. They cornered him a block from the Cibix building. You won’t have to
worry about sucking face with that loser anymore. Motley has more
precise
ways of extracting information.”

“Where is he keeping him?” I asked,
dropping to my knees, pretending to be busy soaking up the water so that he
couldn’t see the panic on my face.

“Somewhere safe, but don’t worry
about it.”

“Don’t worry?” I mouthed it
silently while crouched and hidden behind the breakfast counter. At that
moment, I wanted to stab Rabbit, cram his warm guts inside a pita pocket, and
serve it up with a pickle on one of Motley’s bone-white china plates. “Well,” I
said, “Motley would be stupid to cage a government agent in New York City. I
mean if Pressley’s friends at the CIA start looking for him and manage to trace
the breadcrumbs back to Motley, it’s going to be a headache.”

“There isn’t going to be any
headache in New York because Motley flew him into Paris.” Rabbit pulled a vase
from the cabinet where the fine china was kept and bent down to hand it to me.

“He’s in Paris?” I desperately
tried to mask the spike of excitement in my voice. “What does Motley plan on
doing with him?” I gathered the flowers in my hand and began blindly poking
them into the new vase.

“I’m not sure. Probably get
information from him and then kill him. If he hasn’t done both of those things
already.”

I gripped the leg on one of the
breakfast chairs and steadied to my feet. “I need to shower and get some clean
clothes on. You know, before Motley wakes up and sticks me with a job. We do
have some free time today, right?”

“For now.” Rabbit reached for a
cereal box. “Until something else pops up.” As the last syllable floated from
his lips, Rabbit’s cell phone chirped.

“Perfect timing,” I noted.

“Hello,” Rabbit answered. I tried
to look occupied with refilling my coffee cup as I eavesdropped. “You’re
kidding? I’m on my way.” I was so distracted with trying to listen in to his
conversation that I poured the coffee creamer into the flower vase before
realizing my mistake at the half-full mark. “That was Motley,” Rabbit announced
when he hung up.

“You mean Motley isn’t upstairs
sleeping?”

“No, he left early this morning.
Turns out capturing Pressley Connard worked. Pressley knows where thee dynamite
stick is.”