Generation of Liars (7 page)

“You probably want to get a quick
start on this, so I’ll let you go now, Alice.”

“How generous of you,” I groaned.
“I freaking hate these little games.”

I hung up with Rabbit and set the
phone down on the back stoop, setting my eyes on the coop. I began walking
towards it, my approaching presence causing the chickens inside to go wild. I
carefully lifted the latch on the door, causing the chickens to go nuts,
clucking, and pooling an effort to inflict death by a thousand little pecks. I
could see a black Victorinox briefcase partially buried beneath a pile of wood
chips which had been abundantly defecated on.

I pushed up the latch and stormed
inside, batting away one chicken after another, as feathers whirled into the
air with tornado-strength fervor. My heel landed inside a water bowl, and I
very indelicately flew knees-over-chin onto my back. I grunted, rolled to where
the briefcase was, and lifted it by the handle. I shot up to my feet and
stormed back out the gate, shutting it against the turbulent chatter of the
chickens.

David was leaned up against the
side of the house, watching me with a pious smile on his face.

“Did you really have to watch
that?” I asked. “I’m humiliated.”

“Shame will not advance a cause.”

I trudged towards him, holding the
briefcase. “At least I got it,” I told him. I held the briefcase up; its
sheening surface resonated like black oil in the sun. “Wait, something isn’t
right. There is supposed to be a paper with an address attached to the
briefcase, but I don’t see any paper. Do you think the chickens might have
eaten it? There certainly was enough poop in that coop.”

“If there is supposed to be a paper
attached to the briefcase you seek, but there isn’t a paper attached to the
briefcase in your hands, then wisdom makes it obvious to us that the briefcase
in your hands is not the briefcase you seek.”

“Or the nasty grubbing chickens ate
the note,” I offered alternately.

“But wisdom makes it obvious,” he
began again.

 Not wanting to hear any more
from him, I cut him off with a huff. “Wisdom makes it obvious,” I paused to
exhaust an irked sigh, “that I was set up by my partner to be on the laughing
end of some stupid joke. That’s what this is about, isn’t it David? And they
told you about it too, didn’t they?” I dropped the briefcase onto the dirt and
kicked it so that it barreled onto its edges.

“Is it that you were set up by your
partner, or did you set yourself up?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Alice, you were so busy looking
for the briefcase amidst all the chaos of the chicken coop that you didn’t stop
to consider that there might be an easier answer.”

“What do you mean, David?” I asked
impatiently, wiping the veil of sweat from my forehead.

He pointed back towards the coop,
but not straight at it, a few feet off to the side, where there stood a bird
bath carved into the shape of a Shinto shrine. There was a pristine ivory
briefcase resting over the basin of the bath, which I had overlooked. “Kick the
black one over to me,” David instructed. I kicked it over and he bent down and
popped open the lid to reveal the empty interior. “Think, Alice. Really
challenge yourself.”

“The only reason Motley would send
me to Nebraska’s apartment with a briefcase is if there was money stacked
inside.” I sunk my shoulders and rolled my eyes. “So wisdom would say this
isn’t the briefcase.” David nodded and a simple, satisfied smile pressed itself
onto his lips. I had seen that smile often during our initial training session
three years prior. It meant I was close to enlightenment.

I set onto the grass and lifted the
white briefcase off the Shinto birdbath. The outside surface of the briefcase
was gleaming white, and on the front was taped a piece of white paper with the
address for an apartment building on Avienda Atlantica. When I hefted it by the
handle, it was weighty as money bags. I looked at David. “What was the point of
this?”

“Motley sent you here because not
all your lessons have been learned just yet. I have taught you many moves to
use in a physical battle, but it is the mental battle that will be your
undoing.”

“Motley thinks I’m sloppy, is that
it? And getting shot out of the Eiffel Tower confirmed his worries about me.”

“Alice, he just wanted me to test
you so that you might see where there is room for improvement.”

“Maybe he has a point, but I don’t
like being chided like some silly school girl.” I waved the paper in my hand.
“I better go. I have a meeting with some guy named Benny Nebraska who he hides
out in Rio hacking the bank accounts of A-list movie stars, so it should prove
interesting.”

“It was bliss to see you again,
Alice.”

“Thanks, David. I really loved
seeing you again. It brought back some good memories. Good luck with the
training against that adversary of yours. He doesn’t stand a chance.”

“
Kitto Katsu
, Alice,” David
said, bending at the waist to bow to me.

I carried the briefcase to the
curb, where my taxi was still idling, and when I got inside I relayed the
address on Avenida Atlantica to the driver. I couldn’t wait to meet Mr.
Hollywood-hustler, Benny Nebraska. I looked down at the ivory briefcase
next to me and guessed there was a cool million inside.

*   
*    *

The driver pulled up to Benny
Nebraska’s apartment building. It was nearly tall enough to be a skyscraper; a
new construction with gargantuan windows at every floor level of the stucco
monstrosity. I crossed the lobby and shot up sixteen stories in the elevator
and knocked on Benny Nebraska’s door. When the door cracked open, a tall, lanky
kid with greasy hair slicked behind his ears and a baggy T-shirt draped over
his bony physique was standing there. His sheet-white skin looked as though it
had never seen the hot Rio sun.

"Are you Nebraska?" I
asked. My snub-nose revolver was already pointed at the soft spot between his
eyes.

He looked me up and down like I was
a present from his steam punk geek dreams. "I’m Nebraska. Who’s
asking?"

"Oh honey, I'm asking, and
you're telling." I forced him backwards into the room with the threat of
my revolver and closed the door behind us. "How’s the search for the
dynamite stick coming along?”

"Crap.” His eyes widened into
saucers as he took in the threat of my gun pushed into his face. “How do you
know about that?"

"Everybody knows about it.
Well, everybody who’s anybody.” I wagged the gun. “I’m a friend of Motley’s.”

A look of recognition washed over
his face. “Motley sent you? Why didn’t you say so earlier? Is he going to pay
up for the information?”

“Listen, I'm going to make this
real easy. I confiscate your computer and all the information contained inside
in exchange for a couple acres of green, then you forget I was ever here."
I threw the briefcase down and popped the locks open to reveal neatly stacked
rows of five-hundred-dollar bills.

“Whoa. Nice green.”

"So, deal?"

"Not so fast. I put a lot of
work into tracking the disk. It took time away from siphoning money from Tom
Cruise’s Swiss accounts. I’m not so sure I want to just hand all my goodies
over to you."

"I put a lot of work into
digging chicken crap to give you this money. Take it.”

"Okay, fine, there’s always
Paris Hilton’s checking account to leach from before fiscal year-end." He
sank into his computer chair and pulled the briefcase onto his lap and began
counting the money with a quenched smile on his face. 

I ripped his laptop cord from the
wall. “What digital jewels did you find for us? Will my boss find this worth
his trouble?”

Nebraska briefly looked up from
leafing through the rows of cash. "The last time the disk was used was a
university computer lab in Brussels. I have the IP address stashed on that
laptop there. The IP address belongs to the university, so technically
thousands of students could have logged on from the machine.”

“Give me that external hard drive
and that pile of disks too.” I was pointing to the items on his cluttered desk.

He handed me the rest of what was
on his desk and I got back outside to the curb, where my taxi was waiting. The
splintering sun was bouncing a blinding reflection off the cab windows as I
swung the car door open.

“Congratulations,” a voice beckoned
from the backseat of the taxi. “You didn’t get shot this time, Alice.”

“How did you get inside my cab?” I
scooted into the seat with my arms full of Benny Nebraska’s electronics,
rubbing over the bony white knuckles of my unexpected travelling companion as
he clenched the cloth seat. “You are such a brat, Rabbit.”

“Motley wanted me to make sure you
got through this job without incident,” Rabbit replied.

“Where to?” the driver asked in
shoddy, rehearsed English.

I turned to Rabbit. “You’re the man
who seems to know the plan. Tell the cabby what wondrous location we are headed
to next.”

“The airport,” Rabbit told the
driver. I let a stealthy smile form on my lips, since I was happy to be getting
out of Rio. Rabbit’s eyes feasted on the tangle of computer components between
us on the seat. “What information did Nebraska give you?”

“It looks like the last person to
have the dynamite stick may have been a student inside a computer lab at a
university in Brussels.”

"We’re getting closer. I can
practically taste that thumb drive on my lips.”

“So, are we headed back to Paris or
is the airport just a transfer station to some remote penal colony Motley plans
to stash me away?”

Rabbit pulled out two tickets for a
nonstop flight from Galeão International Airport to Charles de Gaul Airport and
waved them in front of my nose. “Purely Paris,” he said.

“I get the window seat,” I told
him.

*   
*    *

I snapped my seatbelt as the plane
bounced around for takeoff. "It’s a good sign that Motley is letting me
come back to Paris, right?"

"That’s assuming I didn't
ignore his orders to kill you and dump your body somewhere in the jungles of
South America.”

"Ha. Ha." I laid my legs
out over the length of two seats. "I'm serious. The little mental exercise
with David was a point well taken, but I'm glad to go back. I just hope I don’t
run into Pressley Connard in Paris. I still can’t fathom how he’s involved with
hunting the dynamite stick. If I know anything about him, he would have been at
the front of the line for re-registering after the attack. He’d probably submit
to a colonoscopy for the sake authenticity. He always had that patriotic
do-gooder thing going on. I can’t believe I ever found that type
attractive."

"There are twelve million
people in Paris, it’s doubtful you will run into him. Besides, you changed your
hair so he might not recognize you even if he did see you." Rabbit had his
laptop open and was running some type of computer model for Motely based on
what he had lifted from Benny Nebraska’s hard drive.

When we landed in Paris, Motley had
a black car with tinted windows waiting outside the airport to pick us up. The
scruffy Russian driver told us he had orders to drop us off at the dock at
Porta de la Tournelle
,
which was where our next point of contact would
pick us up.

I turned to Rabbit. “Do you know
anything about this?”

Rabbit shrugged his shoulders. “I
haven’t heard a peep from Motley since before I landed in Rio.”

“I hate being shuffled around like
cargo. Why does he always have to be so mysterious
like this?”

Chapter Four: The Mannequin

A
FTER
THE DRIVER dropped us off, Rabbit and I stood hemming by the water as the
shrill cries of seagulls and clanking anchors inundated our jet-lagged senses
on the barren dock. I threw my cigarette stub into the Seine like a wishing
stone and perked up when I saw a motorboat skidding to a stop alongside the
riverbank.

Rabbit straightened to his feet.
“That must be our point of contact approaching,” he said.

The watercraft came to a stop and I
got a look at the person behind the wheel. It was a woman, impossibly thin,
impossibly tall, and with a fiery mane of red hair. Her nimble figure leaned
over the side of the boat to wave us onboard and I noticed that she had a key
tied around her neck by a black velvet string.

“This must be a joke,” I announced.
“Who the hell is
she
?”  

"Are you our point of
contact?" Rabbit called out to the woman, but I wasn’t sure if he was
talking to her or directly to her slithery black wetsuit.

"My name is Cleopatra,” the
mystery woman announced in a breathy Australian accent. “Motley sent me to pick
you up. Come aboard.”

Rabbit was clearly captivated by
the sensuous red-headed creature. “Looks like this is it. Come on, Alice.” He
clambered onto the boat and waved his arm to beckon me to follow him.

“No way, Rabbit,” I protested. “I
am not about to get kidnapped by some broad who looks like a prop from a James
Bond flick.”

“I can assure you,” Cleopatra cut
in, “that Motley sent me. If you don’t believe me go ahead and call him
yourself and ask him.” Aside from the long, untamable red hair, her other
standout features were her ivory skin and eyes that were drawn out in black
eyeliner like an Egyptian goddess’. I had never seen her before, and I found
myself hoping she wasn’t brought in as my replacement since I messed up the Eiffel
Tower job.

“Fine,” I told Rabbit as I
reluctantly hopped onboard, “but you’re taking the fall for this if it turns
out she’s an Interpol agent.”

Cleopatra chugged the motor and we
took off. As the boat cruised along the Seine, I looked at the banks of the
city, colonized by verandas and skyscraper hotels. It was just before sundown
and the waterway was aligned with the hazy twinkling lights of Paris, as
concise as stars. The ride smoothed along for what felt like a short time until
Cleopatra abruptly cut the engine. We were stopped on the waterside of an
aerial and stately building with little balconies at every window. She let go
of the wheel and started coming towards me. She had a spray of salty water on
her skin and her eyes were a fawn color that made them nearly impossible to
glance away from. “Alice,” she said, “that building over there is your new
apartment building.”