“That’s it!” he said, adjusting his laurel. “I want some goddamn answers.”
He raced out into the corridor, determined to corner the rabbit before it got away. He rushed down the seven flights and burst into the lobby. Salma Gundi was checking out a jackal and ferret at the reception desk, the instrumental version of Top of the World still playing in the background. Backing away almost to the entrance, a long line of navy-gray suits was waiting to be served. Louis hitched his toga and went to the reception desk. “Did you see it come in?” he asked.
Salma Gundi looked at him beneath hooded eyes. “If-you’d-be-so-kind-as-to-wait-for-one-moment-sir,” he said, shaking his head in a figure-of-8. “I-shall-be-with-you-shortly.”
The jackal and the ferret glanced at Louis with an impatient look in their eye.
Louis slammed his paw onto the desk. “Damn it! Did you see the white rabbit or not?”
“White-rabbit?” Salma Gundi said. “I-am-afraid-not-sir.”
“Are you sure? It’s got wings. I saw it enter the lobby.”
The jackal and the ferret laughed and shook their heads, then took their receipt from Salma Gundi and headed toward the revolving door. Two rats and a weasel at the front of the line were laughing and snickering. “As-you-can-see-sir-I-am-very-busy,” Salma Gundi said. “Businessmen-are-already-arriving-for-the-AGM-next-week.”
Louis hitched his toga and scanned the lobby once more. The jackal and ferret were almost at the entrance. “You’re definitely sure?” he asked.
“I-can-assure-you-sir-that-if-I-saw-anything-remotely-like-a-white-rabbit-with-wings-I-would-let-you-know.” Salma Gundi then gestured for the rats and weasel to approach the desk. “Now-if-you-don’t-mind-I-must-see-to-my-customers.”
Louis sighed and turned to go back to his room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the jackal and ferret step into the revolving door. Right behind them, to his astonishment, hopped the goddamn rabbit. It seemed to have come out of the luggage room. “There it is!” he said, and pointed.
Salma Gundi looked up from his desk. Everyone else in the lobby turned to the revolving door as well. “I-see-nothing-sir. Absolutely-totally-undeniably-nothing.”
Now every pair of eyes had turned toward Louis. The revolving door was empty.
“Goddamn it!” he said, and darted across the lobby. Still wary of his recent experience with The Tower, he ran outside, nearly colliding with a Limo in the drop-off zone, scanning every which way. The rabbit hadn’t hopped across the street to the crowded piazza, or fluttered to the branches of the Money Tree. It hadn’t hopped to the Happythecary or either of the two Burger Boss restaurants. Nor had it hopped down the street between the dozens of Limos waiting to get to the hotel. The goddamn thing had just disappeared.
He sighed, resigned to giving up on it. Then, as he turned, he saw a large pair of ears sticking in a V above the heads along the sidewalk. It was hopping toward Boulevard 1. “Hey! You! Wait!” he yelled, and scurried after it.
The rabbit continued on regardless. At the boulevard it turned left toward Conduit Number 1. Louis called after it again, and this time it seemed to hear. It looked over its wings, stopped, waited for a second or two, then hopped away.
Surged on, Louis barged through the suit and ties ambling along the sidewalk. He could feel The Tower clawing at the back of his skull, desperate to reconnect with his mind, but he only had eyes for the rabbit. He reached the corner with the boulevard and saw the rabbit hop around a couple of rats arguing outside a newsagent. Continuing to ignore his calls, it then disappeared behind a long line of suits waiting to be served at the Burger Boss.
Hitching his toga, Louis kept his pursuit. The two rats outside the newsagent, he saw as he ran past, were arguing over a lotto ticket. One of them had a Snipe on his back he didn’t have time to read. He bypassed the line for the Burger Boss, running along the boulevard then jumping back onto the sidewalk when a Limo sped by (MY BABY was its number plate) and nearly knocked him over. With every step he took, he could feel the power of The Tower diminishing. It was still powerful, but focusing on the rabbit helped to keep it at bay.
He saw it waiting to cross the next intersection in front of a mini-market. No matter how fast he ran he couldn’t seem to close the gap. He called out again when the rabbit crossed to the other side. It looked back, then hopped on. The goddamned thing’s teasing me, Louis said to himself. It wants me to follow.
He got to the intersection and stopped to wait for a Limo to pass before he crossed. Far in the distance, directly down the boulevard, he could make out the gray cliffs from which he had emerged earlier that day. The rabbit seemed to be leading him back to Conduit Number 1. But for what purpose? There was nothing but endless miles of tunnels and the Chambers of Eternity. It was the last place he wanted to return.
“Hey, Louis!” he heard someone call, then a long croaking burp. “Get in!”
He turned to see the Grand Pooh-Bah’s Limo outside a betting agency. Santosa was winding down the window and telling him to hurry up and stop dawdling. Louis was hesitant. The rabbit, he saw, had stopped further down the boulevard and was looking back at him. “Come on!” Santosa said. “I’m late for my meeting.”
Louis figured it would be a cold day in hell before he followed the rabbit to the maze of tunnels inside the cliff. Shuddering at the thought, he hitched his toga and trotted to the Limo. The chauffeur had stepped out and was holding the door open for him, but before he hopped in he looked down the boulevard one last time.
The rabbit was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Operation White Rabbit
SANTOSA burped long and loud as Louis sat on the opposite seat that backed the chauffeur, as he had done previously, grimacing at the overwhelming stench of horseshit. Tiffany Tidbits reached for the open bottle of bubbly cow juice that was sitting in the ice cooler next to the mini-bar and poured him a glass, briefly meeting his gaze. Though increasingly sick of the taste, he accepted the glass. He heard the chauffeur start the engine, then felt the Limo accelerating down the street and turn a corner.
“Thought it was you,” Santosa said over the hiss of oxygen from his mask. “Don’t know any other weasel dressed in toga.”
“Only goddamn clothes I have,” Louis said.
“Tell your PA to get you a suit. Once you sign the contract, you’ll have to dress properly you know. Your image is the most important thing.” Santosa burped again. “What were you doing on the boulevard?”
Louis hitched his toga and sipped his champagne, grimacing at the sourness. “I was chasing the…” he began, then stopped. “I was… uh… just chasing time. Having a look around. That sort of thing.” He shifted in his seat. “How’d the meeting go, by the way?”
“Haven’t had it yet. Can’t find the building. We’ve been driving around for ages.”
Outside, the Limo passed a Burger Boss and mobile communications store. At first Louis thought they were driving down the boulevard, then realized his mistake. The street had only two lanes and he figured they must be on one that cut across it. At the next 24-hour mini-market, they turned left onto another six-lane boulevard; except he couldn’t be sure if it was the same one he had been chasing the rabbit down, or another one all together.
“Chauffeur’s completely lost,” Santosa said, looking out the window. A Happythecary went by and then another Burger Boss. “I keep telling him to take the same route every time. Same roads. Same turns. Never change. It’s the only way to get around this city. But he never listens to me. If there wasn’t such a shortage of chauffeurs, I’d sack him.”
“Where are we now?” Louis asked.
The Limo passed LeMont Cellular One on both sides of the street. “Boulevard 3, I think. Can’t tell for sure.”
They turned right at the next 24-hour mini-market, then right once more at the one after. Louis sipped his champagne as they passed another newsagent. Now they seemed to be heading away from The Tower along yet another completely different
boulevard. After a few more turns they were heading back toward the piazza, and believe it or not he reckoned he was beginning to get a feel of where he was. Initially, he had assumed the streets of LeMont were like Manhattan, a grid pattern, but now he was getting the idea the layout was more like a giant cartwheel, with every boulevard running from the rim of cliffs like spokes toward the hub at the center, the Tower Piazza. The other image, that of a giant spider web, he pushed to the back of his mind.
“I think we’re on Boulevard 9,” Santosa said, drawing a breath of oxygen from his mask.
They had just passed an outlet of Route 666. Louis was beginning to think they would be driving around in circles until the goddamn cows came home, when the Limo came to a sudden halt. To his utter bemusement, they had stopped at the piazza on the opposite side to the hotel. “About time,” Santosa said. “Come with me. I think you might enjoy this.”
Louis asked, “Where are we going?”
“The Tower, of course. Where else would we schedule a meeting?”
Louis set his champagne flute on top of the mini-bar, for the moment taken aback. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? I don’t want to jeopardize you in any way. Legally I mean. I’m not technically an employee yet. I haven’t signed the contract.”
“Just a formality. You’ll be signing it soon. Now hurry up and get out.”
Sanotsa’s little helper pushed the wheelchair toward The Tower with Louis closely following, his gaze fixed to the ground away from the alpha-omega logo. Concentrating on the image of the winged rabbit helped to douse some of the dread whelming in his mind. As they crossed the edge of the piazza, Santosa gave him a brief rundown of the situation he was facing. Louis had to promise to keep everything he saw or heard strictly to himself; they were at a very delicate stage of the negotiations and Santosa didn’t want any third parties getting involved. “I’m in the process of buying my partner out,” he whispered, then softly burped. The stench of horseshit, to Louis’ revulsion, was no less potent. “Heard of Ties & Scarves?”
Louis said he had seen a few stores along the boulevard but had never been inside.
Santosa drew a breath of oxygen and went on. He held twenty-five percent of the company stocks, his partner twenty-four percent, and, as with all other subsidiaries of LeMont International Enterprises, The Boss held a controlling interest of fifty-one percent. Ties & Scarves, with its monopoly of the accessory market, should have been a profitable company, but things had been going downhill for the last five or six hundred years. Problem was, his partner had let things slide. His mind just wasn’t focused anymore. When they first started the company he had been on top of his game, a good partner to have on board, a real whiz with taxation, but then things started happening. He stopped turning up for work. He wouldn’t attend board meetings. He practically gave the staff free reign to do whatever they wanted in regards to price fixing and union membership, which was simply unheard of, and Santosa couldn’t remember the last time he had seen an end of financial year tax report. The partner had simply shut up shop and stopped communicating with him and everyone else. The Boss, as Louis could imagine, was more than a little concerned with the decline in business.
Approaching The Tower, Santosa drew another breath of oxygen. He suspected something else was going on. There were whispers his partner had been seen in taverns conversing with members of the White Rabbit Freedom Fighters. Santosa had no choice. He had to prevent his good name being dragged through the mud, even if the rumors proved unfounded. The financial consequences were too dire to contemplate. “This is not the first time I’ve tried to buy him out,” he said.
They had now reached the steps to the main entrance. The power of The Tower was staggering, its attack relentless, clawing and scratching the top of Louis’ skull, sapping his energy by the second. He could feel his knees buckling under its force, and did all he could to concentrate on the image of the white rabbit. It was a tough ask, but hallucination or not, Mrs. Big Ears With Wings was proving a damned mighty antidote to the mind-hold.
“Two years ago we negotiated a price for his share in the company,” Santosa said. “Then after months of negotiations, the night before we were due to sign the agreement, he rang me up and demanded that I sell my share. Can you believe it? He said what was good enough for me was good enough for him!”
Louis helped Tiffany lift Santosa to the top of the steps, fixing his eyes in front of him and whispering, “White Rabbit. White Rabbit. White Rabbit.” As a consequence, he almost missed what the toad was saying.
“What I need from you,” Santosa said as Louis and Tiffany lowered the wheelchair at the entrance, “is to be an independent arbitrator. Of course you’re not, you’re on my side, but my partner can’t know that. Let him think you’re observing proceedings for The Boss. Otherwise he’ll stall and make it as difficult as he can. The company won’t survive for much longer the way it’s going and I’ve invested too much money to let that happen. I’ll tell him I’ve had enough and that I’m happy to buy him out at a reasonable price. He has to think you’re independent, even leaning to his side. Then we’ll take him for everything he’s got.”
“White Rabbit,” Louis said.
“What?” Santosa said, and burped.
Louis stared down at the Grand Pooh-Bah, suddenly realizing what had just slipped out. “Uh… Operation White Rabbit. The army and police always name their operations. We’ll name ours too. It’ll be our codeword for future correspondence.”
Santosa was thoughtful for a moment, then smiled and burped. “Good thinking. I like the irony. Operation White Rabbit it is.”
Inside, Santosa bribed the rat at the security desk to sign Louis in as a guest, then went to the elevators. All five of them were out of order. “What’s going on?” Santosa said. “I’m late enough as it is.” Tiffany and Louis had no choice but to carry him up the seventeen flights of stairs to Conference Room 1706. Just before they entered, Santosa whispered, “Ready?” To which Louis nodded. Then Santosa stopped and said, “Oh, and don’t get too close. Not unless you want to catch fleas.”
That’s all I goddamn need, Louis mused. “I’ll keep my distance.”
Santosa’s partner, who Louis first mistook for another rat in a navy-gray suit, was waiting impatiently for them at the head of the table. Following Santosa across the room, Louis soon realized his error; the guy was a guinea pig. Tiffany wheeled Santosa to the opposite end of the table, then sat down and prepared to take minutes. “Frank O’Lynn, this is Louis DeVille,” Santosa said. “The Boss’ advocate.”
“It’s Lewey. Not Lewis. Like Hewey, Dewey and Lewey,” Louis said, and went to shake Frank O’Lynn’s paw. Then, suddenly remembering Santosa’s warning, stopped and quickly took a politically neutral seat between the two partners.
“You… you work for The Boss?” Frank O’Lynn said. Louis picked up the Irish twang immediately. It was like he was singing a ditty, sharp and tuneful, like a bird twittering at the break of dawn. He glanced outside the window to the piazza below, then scratched his face and said, “I… I didn’t know The Boss wanted to be a part of the negotiations. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
Frank O’Lynn eyed Louis with suspicion. “To be sure, this isn’t correct protocol.”
“Do you have a copy?” Santosa said, to which his partner blushed and shook his head. “Then I’ll let you tell The Boss you don’t want him meddling.”
Frank O’Lynn blushed even deeper and went silent. Though still tinged with the grayness that seemed to seep into everything in LeMont, the redness of his cheeks was the brightest color Louis had seen since waking up in front of the Mirror of Truth. The guinea pig was glowing like a stoplight. Goddamn pathetic. Operation White Rabbit was going to be easier than he thought. Maybe he could have a bit of fun at the same time as helping Santosa with the takeover. Maybe he could make a bit of a profit on the side.
The meeting then began in earnest. Santosa didn’t mince
his words. “I want a clean split,” he said. Frank O’Lynn demurred, thinking they could patch things up, although Louis sensed he was simply holding out for as much as he could. They thrashed things out for over an hour when, out of the blue, he felt the chair beneath him begin to tremble. It wobbled and shook as though he were driving a truck over bumpy ground. Then the table began to vibrate; and he could have sworn the room had started to sway. He wasn’t in a truck! He was in an airplane flying through a goddamn tornado. He grabbed the table to steady himself, shouting over the racket, “What the hell’s going on?”
Oblivious to his unease, Santosa and Frank O’Lynn continued negotiating while Tiffany kept taking notes. He had to shout again.
Santosa looked at him with an expression of Why look so worried? He burped and said, “Excavations. It happens all the time. You’ll get used to it.”
Louis hitched his toga, unconvinced. He only relaxed when the walls stopped shaking and the room swayed to a standstill, but it was some time before he recovered enough to give his opinion on the matters at hand. “Excuse me for interrupting,” he said, “but I think we’re going around in circles here. It’s obvious to me that there’s been a complete breakdown in communication between the two of you. Neither of you has any trust of the other. If this goes on for much longer, there’ll be no company left to sell. One of you has to let go, otherwise both of you will be holding onto a share of absolutely-totally-undeniably nothing.”
Frank O’Lynn blushed and Santosa burped. “What are you suggesting?”
“One of you has to sell to let the other partner save the company. It’s the only way. That way you both come out of it with something and The Boss doesn’t lose his investment.”
“I’ll… I’ll sell,” Frank O’Lynn said, his gaze fixed to the tabletop.
“What? Like last time?” Santosa said. His partner blushed even brighter. “We’ve been down this road before. I’m not doing it again. I won’t go through months of negotiations and then have you turn around and demand I sell my share of the company.”
DeVille's Contract Page 14
