by Sophie Davis
This is the job, I reminded myself.
I wrote the actual address of the townhouse and a fictitious one in Baltimore on a piece of paper, and handed it to Hadley.
“Please, do write,” I said, with a bright smile to hide my regret that any letter she wrote would go unanswered. The thought occurred to me that a transporter could pass along letters between us, though I doubted the syndicate would find that to be an acceptable use of its resources.
Hadley stood and began to gather the luggage. I followed suit. When she moved the briefcase to the tabletop to collect the larger bags below, I took the opening.
“Be careful with that one,” Hadley warned, when my fingers closed around the handle.
“Does it contain your family jewels?” I teased as I lifted it. The briefcase was startlingly heavy, as though containing bricks or gold bars. Momentary worry fluttered through me—a manuscript wouldn’t weigh a fraction of the case’s heft. I eyed the other pieces of luggage.
Hadley scoffed. “No, something much more valuable. Well, more valuable to Ernest, anyhow.” She rolled her eyes. “He cares more about his precious pages making it safely to Germany than he does me.”
I weighed her demeanor and opted against sympathy. She was like Molly, in that regard.
“I’ll guard it with my life,” I said solemnly.
Loaded down with all of the Hemingways’ Germany-bound possessions, Hadley and I set off in search of the correct platform. Molly was still sitting by the café’s entrance, sipping coffee from a small mug. She’d removed her sunglasses, but still wore the hat low, shadowing her face.
“Will you be checking all of the luggage with the porter? Or should this one stay with you, so Ernest can work on the train?” I asked, holding up the briefcase as we passed Molly’s table. My roommate nodded subtly to indicate that she caught my not-so-subtle message.
“Oh, I am sure he wants it in the compartment. And so, we will check it. Then he will have to talk to me.” Her laugh was brittle, and I once again thought about how terribly lonely Hadley’s life must be. I might just inquire about the transporters.
Ernest was waiting for us on the platform. His relief upon seeing the briefcase was palpable.
“That one stays with me,” he told the porter who hurried over with a cart.
No, no, no.
“Really, Ernest,” Hadley implored. “Don’t be silly. You have done nothing but work lately. Once we reach Germany, you will do nothing but work. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a couple of hours without it.”
“I have a deadline, Hadley,” Hemingway protested. “Besides, luggage is always being lost in transit. I cannot afford to lose that briefcase.”
“Sir, I can assure you—” the porter started to say, his frosty tone indicating just how offensive he found Hemingway’s comment.
“It stays with me,” Hemingway said flatly.
The porter loaded the rest of the luggage onto his cart and handed a claim ticket to Hemingway with a curt nod. I had the briefcase clutched tightly in my hands, wracking my brain for a way to prevent it from boarding the train along with Hadley and Ernest.
“Please give your brother my best,” Hemingway said again to me. “If there is anything I can do to help, provide a character reference or the like, you will let us know?”
“Of course, thank you.”
Hemingway gave me a one-armed hug and another kiss on the cheek. Then, to my dismay, he reached for the briefcase. Reluctantly, I let it go. My last hope of obtaining the third piece of Blue’s Canyon evaporated like dew on a hot summer morning.
Swallowing my frustration, I turned to hug Hadley one last time.
The train’s whistle blew a warning.
“I’ll write soon,” Hadley promised as we parted.
Off to the side, Hemingway withdrew a cigarette from his pocket and lit the end. He blew out a long plume of smoke.
“Dammit, this is my last one,” he remarked, to no one in particular. “I am just going to run and buy more.”
“We need to board, Ernest,” Hadley said testily.
“I’ll only be a minute. Here, do not let this out of your sight.” He handed her the briefcase.
Hadley set it down next to her with barely a glance. “I swear, his writing is more intrusive than a mistress. At least I would stand a chance against a mistress.”
I smiled sadly, at a loss for words. A crowd of people was moving in our direction on the platform, talking and laughing with one another. One figure, tall and slim, hung near the back of the group. Her hat was pulled low over her forehead, her sunglasses taking up nearly half of her face. In one hand, she carried a leather briefcase, roughly the size and shape of the one sitting near Hadley’s feet. It wasn’t beat up and scuffed like Ernest’s, but hopefully no one would notice until it was too late.
The train whistle blew a second warning.
“I should go,” Hadley remarked, reaching for the case.
“What about Ernest?” I asked, my voice coming out a little too loud and a little too frantic.
Hadley’s head snapped in my direction at my shrill tone.
“For all I care, he can catch the next train,” she said, attempting to sound blasé.
The crowd of people was nearly upon us. Molly was mere strides of her long legs away.
I grabbed Hadley’s arm when she reached for the briefcase again. Squeezing her hand, I desperately tried to keep her attention focused on me.
“This trip will be good for you,” I reassured her, pitching my voice to be heard over the chatter of the passing crowd. “Being in a foreign country, particularly where you don’t speak the language, has a way of bonding people,” I added, babbling now to hold her gaze.
A young Frenchman tripped, bumping into Hadley and causing her to stumble sideways. I caught Hadley before she could fall.
“Pardon me,” the Frenchman said, flushing with embarrassment.
One of his friends made a joke about his large feet and lack of coordination. The group laughed. After making sure Hadley wasn’t hurt, the young man and his friends moved on.
The train whistle blew a final time. Over Hadley’s head, I saw Hemingway hurrying towards us. I hugged my friend one last time.
“There’s Ernest,” I announced as we drew apart.
Hadley checked over her shoulder. I gave her hand a parting squeeze. Then I melted into the stream of passengers on the platform, without so much as a backward glance.
Guilt sat leaden and solid in my gut. Deceit was nothing new, but the repetition of my moral crimes did not make them any easier to digest.
AS I SLID a pair of dark sunglasses up the bridge of my nose, Molly fell in step beside me on the sidewalk. Ernest Hemingway’s briefcase swung jauntily from her long fingers.
“Cha-ching,” she said, steering me to the curb and extending her arm.
A taxi veered towards us, coming to a stop a couple feet away. Molly opened the back door and gestured me inside.
“Place Louis Lépine, s’il vous plait,” Molly told the driver. She sat back and looked at me expectantly.
“Is it in there?” I asked, gesturing to the briefcase.
“There are definitely papers inside,” she said as we pulled away. My roommate’s eyes were teeming with excitement as she removed the oversized aviators. “I’m talking jackpot, Stass. I’m not sure yet what all is here, but there are hundreds—maybe even thousands—of handwritten pages. Regardless of whether or not Blue’s Canyon is here, Cyrus is going to kiss your feet when he sees what all we got.”
“Will the feet kissing come before or after the ass chewing for you, me, and Gaige jumping without a vortex?”
“Before. Definitely before,” Molly declared. She fell into me as the cab driver swerved particularly hard to the left. He was driving through the streets as though playing Gaige’s favorite video game—Grand Theft 387. Somehow, the driver seemed to be completely in control of the vehicle as he wove in and out of the sparse traffic.
“So i
t was worth the immense shame I’m feeling right now?” I asked Molly, helping her back to her side of the seat.
“More than worth it,” Molly declared, opening up the briefcase in her lap. Sure enough, the suitcase-like compartment was stuffed with papers. Her estimate in the thousands suddenly didn’t seem so outlandish.
“Holy shant,” I breathed.
Molly took a handful of pages from the top, and I did the same. We spent several minutes flipping through them, cataloguing our loot.
A page at the bottom of the section I’d pulled grabbed my attention. The handwriting was different from the others, and completely familiar to me. Filled with hope, I scooped up the next stack from the briefcase. Sure enough, it was also in Andre’s scrawling script.
“The entire thing,” I whispered.
“Did you say something?” Molly asked, looking up from the pages she was reading.
“It’s the whole thing,” I repeated, staring wondrously at my roommate. “Blue’s Canyon—the whole book is here. Including Hemingway’s notes on it.”
Her eyes grew into saucers. “You mean….”
“Yeah,” I replied, sitting back in the seat and staring out the window as the streets of Paris flew by.
Emotions were sailing through me with a speed that rivaled the racing cab. Though I felt relief at completing the run, I couldn’t help but think about how much easier the entire thing would’ve been if we’d just gone to Hemingway initially. I found it difficult to regret a single night spent chatting people up, our trips to Closerie des Lilas, or the visit to Shakespeare and company. Not only did Gaige and I have fun, but they’d all been incredible experiences. And I’d met Charles. And befriended Hadley. And Gertrude Stein. And Ernest freaking Hemingway.
“There was no way of knowing that he’d have the whole thing,” Molly said, patting my hand.
“I know,” I replied piteously.
“Don’t worry, I have just the thing to cheer you up,” Molly promised, holding up the pages in her hand. “There’s also what looks like a full draft of another of Hemingway’s novels, one I’d never heard of. Juvenalia?”
“Never heard of it,” I said, eyeing the title page.
With a heavy sigh, I grabbed another stack of papers from the briefcase.
We spent the next ten minutes trying to make sense of it all. In total, there seemed to be bits and pieces of at least three of Hemingway’s other unpublished works, plus carbons of several more. When I came across a carbon copy of another title page, my heart stopped. It was The Sun Also Rises. Written in Hemingway’s hand.
The briefcase was a veritable gold mine. Grabbing Molly’s arm, I shoved the page in front of her face. Our excited screeching drew the attention of the driver. I couldn’t even imagine what he was thinking of us as we filled his backseat with loose papers and squealed like schoolgirls.
“You know,” Molly started, once she’d completed her seated version of our happy dance. “If we weren’t honest, upstanding members of a crime syndicate, we could sell these ourselves on the black market. Think about the dough we’d get. Yachts, mansions, deluxe electric transpo vehicles. Ooh, or an island of your very own! Stassi Island. It has a nice ring, right? Or Stolly Island? Mossi Island?”
I rolled my eyes. “We wouldn’t live long enough to spend all that money. Cyrus would hunt us down and pull the trigger before you could say, ‘Three of everything in each color, please’.”
Molly let out a breathy laugh. “True. But he’s going to make bank on this loot. Which means you will, too. You’d better….”
“Um, not just me,” I pointed out. We were only a minute or so from the préfecture, so I began gathering up the papers and putting them carefully back in the treasure chest. “You and Gaige get equal shares, obvs.”
I finished packing up the pages, only half-listening to her protests about the division of wealth. It wasn’t like any of us were hurting financially, or that we couldn’t afford to buy pretty much anything we desired—okay, maybe not an island, but almost anything else—so my exhilaration wasn’t actually about the money. I was far more excited to tell Gaige that we’d successfully completed the run. And Cyrus, too.
As the driver pulled to a stop in front of the préfecture, I checked the briefcase clasps for the third time while Molly paid our cab fare. Stepping onto the sidewalk, I paused to take a long look at the building. It had been the bane of my existence for weeks. And now it was to be our salvation.
All the elation drained out of me in an instant. It was replaced with fear, dread, and a modicum of hope. We were about to commit the most insane heist of my career. Quite possible the most insane heist ever.
“You ready to do this?” Molly asked, looking just as worried as I felt.
“No,” I replied simply.
We stood there for several minutes, just staring at the building. The reality of our plan was staring us in the face and weighing heavily in my mind.
“Lock it up?” Molly finally asked, her voice wavering.
“Lock it up,” I repeated quietly.
The phrase lacked even a trace of conviction.
WAITING IN THE near-empty reception area of the préfecture was agonizing. We’d given our names and signed the visitors’ log, and then there was nothing to do but sit and stew until eleven o’clock. The seconds ticked by at an impossibly slow pace. Uniformed officers passed in both directions, some dragging cuffed perps and others consoling distraught victims.
“A watched pot never boils,” mumbled Molly, when she noticed me checking the clock on the wall for the umpteenth time. It appeared to be stuck at 10:51.
“Yeah, yeah. I know,” I grumbled. “It’s a compulsion.”
I glanced around. Only the desk sergeant was there, engrossed in the morning newspaper.
“Besides,” I continued in a low voice, “it gives me something to do. Otherwise, I’ll just keep thinking of all the things that could go wrong. I mean what if those bandage thingies don’t work? It’s not like we tested them. Or what if there are more guards down there than normal? Or what if it’s packed with prisoners? We only have so much memory modification serum. We can’t dose a crowd. Or what if the pipe doesn’t actually have water? What if—”
“Stassi, stop,” Molly cut me off. She rested a comforting hand on my arm. “Yes, all of those things could happen. Or they could not happen. We did our due diligence and devised a plan that allows for as many complications as possible. All we can do now is hope for the best.”
“I don’t like leaving things up to fate,” I replied. “I like to be in control.”
“I know, I know,” she soothed. “But I’d say fate’s been on our side today.”
Molly gestured to the briefcase in her lap.
“Ms. Prince? Ms. Ringwald?” The intake officer’s voice made us both jump.
As he stared at us expectantly, I wondered if he was about to declare that Hemingway had reported the theft, slap cuffs on us, and then take us down to join Gaige in the jail. Perhaps taking our stolen treasure trove to the police headquarters wasn’t the best idea. My roommate was probably considering the same possibility, because her snowy complexion had turned ashen.
“I can take you down now,” the officer prompted, speaking slowly as if we were lacking mental faculties. Not surprising, since Molly and I were staring at him with identical shocked expressions, as though we’d suddenly woke to find ourselves in the police station without any knowledge of how or why we’d come.
“Yes, of course, thank you,” Molly said, regaining her composure before I did.
My roommate nudged me hard in the ribs, and we both stood. My palms were suddenly slick with sweat. My head spun from the influx of adrenaline that instantly began coursing through my veins. It was go-time.
“This way, please,” the man continued, still speaking in that drawn-out and deliberate tone. He pointed to the door only two feet away marked “Les Visiteurs”, as if it weren’t glaringly obvious where we were going.
�
��Ringwald? Really?” I whispered, rolling my eyes at Molly as we followed the officer down a dimly lit hallway. We turned several times, heading into the depths of the station.
She shrugged, covering a terse smile. “Why not?”
“Excellent logic,” I quietly declared.
Once we reached the basement level, the uniform led us through three sets of locked doors. He used a different metal key from his massive key ring on each, relocking the doors behind us. Watching the station’s careful security precautions in action, I couldn’t help but think how futile his efforts would prove to be.
When the guard opened the third and final door, the smell of body odor and human waste assaulted my senses. I took a deep breath through my mouth and passed through the doorway, getting my first look at the Parisian jail.
An uneven stone walkway that was coated in a thick layer of slime and grime divided the two sides of the holding area, flanked by metal bars down the entire length in either direction. The same metal bars divided the long space into cubes that were ten feet square, according to the plans we’d studied. Each cell contained two cots, a metal toilet, and a sink.
Still breathing through my mouth, I trailed the guard and Molly down the dim corridor. My eyes darted back and forth as we passed cells, inventorying the space and its occupants. Without warning, a face appeared a foot to my right, pressed against the bars. I scrambled away. The mug belonged to an older man, with a scraggly salt and pepper beard and wild mane of frizzy hair. A broad toothless grin spread across his features, the expression bordering on maniacal. He wore an undershirt that had probably once been white, but was now a disturbing shade of dirty dishwater, and black trousers meant for a man three times his size.
“Hey, Billy,” Molly said as we passed.
The man’s grin became impossibly wider.
“Back again, is you?” he shouted in a thick cockney accent. I winced at the volume of his voice, which was entirely unnecessary given our proximity. “Bring me a present this time?”
A scuffle of feet drew my attention to the last cell closest to the wall—Gaige’s cell. My partner’s strong fingers wrapped around the bars, and I caught a glimpse of his nose and unkempt hair.
