DeVille's Contract

by Scott Zarcinas

  Louis was keen to go, but before he went anywhere he wanted to know who was going to find him alternative accommodation. “I can’t live on the goddamn streets,” he said.

  Flash Freddy snapped out of his daze. “The Boss has no further legal obligation to you,” he said, and grabbed his briefcase. “Speak to your PA. That’s his job now.”

  The rat was punching numbers into his calculator and sniggering on the sofa. “Okay. Okay. Leave it to me,” he said. “And give me the hotel receipt. I’ll fix it for you.”

  They followed Santosa and his little helper down the corridor and were halfway to the stairwell when Louis stopped, remembering something he had left behind. He told them to meet him at the Limo, then trotted back for the union card and the unsigned note he was supposed to have destroyed. Whilst slipping them into the inner pocket of his jacket, he felt something else. At first he thought it was the crumpled message with THERE IS NO ESCAPE, but that was still sitting on top of the vanity table. It was another goddamn note. You’re Mr. Popularity today, Louis, he thought as he read. “Do not forget. The Lounge Lizard. When the music stops. Your life is in danger. The White Rabbit will save you. PS. Destroy this note.”

  Louis reread it, wondering what it could mean. Save me from what? He was dead. He had no goddamn life, in the real sense of the word that was. Still, he was curious. He absolutely hated not knowing.

  As he made his way toward the stairwell he thought he heard footsteps coming from behind. He spun to see who was there, but the corridor was empty. He shrugged away the thought, but before he went down the stairwell he glanced over his tail again, chuckling at his edginess. Just because you’re paranoid that you’re being watched, he thought, remembering the lines of an old joke, doesn’t mean that you’re not being watched.

  Downstairs, crossing the lobby, he heard Salma Gundi wishing him all the best and hoping to see him again soon. He ignored him and stepped through the revolving door, thinking that even if it were an eternity before he saw old pizza face again it would be too goddamn soon. Outside in the drop-off zone, Santosa, Tiffany, Flash Freddy and Smiggins were at the Limo watching the chauffeur tinker under the hood. The line of Limos stretched around the piazza, honking at him to get a move on. “We’re going to miss the happy hour,” Santosa said. “Come on. Hurry up.”

  After a few more minutes, the chauffeur tried the ignition. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing happened. “It’s no use, sir,” he said. “I’ve tried everything.”

  Santosa burped long and loud. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Inbuilt obsolescence. I’ll have to call a mechanic.”

  Santosa threw his webbed hands toward the sky-vault and said, “Just what I need. This thing gobbles money like a bottomless bucket.”

  Louis could feel the power of the LeMont logo trying to draw his attention toward the top of The Tower, but felt comfortable enough as long as he remembered to keep thinking of the white rabbit. “I thought you said it’s still under warrantee,” he said.

  The chauffeur shook his head and Smiggins sniggered. Tiffany and Flash Freddy were also smiling. “The warrantee has an inbuilt obsolescence too,” Santosa said, and drew a breath of oxygen from his mask. “Not worth the paper it’s written on.”

  Flash Freddy could see Louis was having difficulty with the concept. “Once the engine breaks down, the warrantee’s sub-clause kicks in.”

  Louis scratched his head. “Meaning?”

  “The warrantee is only good whilst the engine is working.”

  Louis kept scratching his head. “You can only claim reimbursement while the engine still works? Why would anyone do that? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does to the manufacturers,” Flash Freddy said. “It’s called business. Everything you buy is covered the same way.”

  “It isn’t called a ‘working warrantee’ for nothing,” Santosa said, and burped. The chauffeur returned to tinkering with the engine. “Looks like we’re going to miss the happy hour.”

  Louis followed Santosa’s gaze across the piazza beyond the Money Tree. Next to the LeMont Cellular One, a line was already forming outside a pink-gray door. Two large jackals in suits and Egoroids were using whips to control the eager crowd. “Couldn’t we just walk?” he asked.

  “Are you joking? I’m an A-class citizen,” Santosa said.

  Louis snorted, keeping his thoughts to himself. He had no time for this goddamn nonsense. He had a rendezvous to keep and didn’t give two hoots whether or not anyone else was coming. In fact, he kind of hoped the others would stay. They were starting to get on his nerves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Un-Happy Hour

  THEY waited for over an hour to get into the Lounge Lizard before the jackals on the door let them through. All, that was, except for Louis. He had no membership card.

  The others flashed their gold membership cards at the jackals, who eyed them suspiciously before nodding and letting them pass. Music blared out of the club through the open doors. Someone at a piano was banging out Top of the World, joined by a chorus of happy club members singing at the top of their voice: And the only explanation I can fiiiiind…

  “What’ll I do?” Louis asked Flash Freddy over the din. “Can’t you get me in?”

  Flash Freddy turned and shrugged. “Sorry, no can do,” he said. Then he was through the entrance after the others, disappearing into the mass of bodies and smoke behind the closing doors.

  Louis tried his luck with the jackals. “Come on, let me in guys. I’m new in town. It’s happy hour.” Plus, he was about to add, he had a rendezvous he desperately wanted to keep. He had to get inside. He had to meet whoever it was that could tell him more about the white rabbit.

  “Look, how much will it take to let me in?” he asked the closest jackal.

  The jackal didn’t answer, preferring to eye him with scorn through his Egoroids. Louis felt really small.

  “C’mon. How much do you want?” Louis said, hoping like hell Flash Freddy would lend him the money. “I’m good for it. Just let me in and I’ll get the cash for you.”

  The jackals laughed and threatened him with the whip if he didn’t step back. “Go on! Get moving,” said the closet jackal.

  Louis opened his mouth to protest, but the jackal stepped forward and pushed him backwards. Louis tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and stumbled, landing with a thud on his tail. A jolt of pain ripped up his spine.

  “You haven’t heard the last of this,” he said, standing and dusting himself off. “You better have a good goddamn lawyer.”

  The jackals laughed again, allowing a weasel and another rat into the club. Music blared out briefly as the doors opened then closed. Louis thought of trying to push his way past the jackals, then thought better of it.

  He hung his head to the sky-vault, fighting the urge to tug out all his whiskers. He had no money, no place to stay, not even a goddamn Aspirin to ease his throbbing tail.

  Worse, he had missed his rendezvous.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A Slice of Luck

  WHILE he wondered what the hell he was going to do next, Louis felt The Tower logo ambushing his mind and thoughts. He’d expected the onslaught, though he still hadn’t quite got used to the speed with which it attacked. Nevertheless, he knew he could hold it off with thoughts of the white rabbit, which now had become an automatic, subconscious reflex. He wished he could block out the stench of horseshit with such ease.

  With a rare stroke of fortune, he saw Santosa’s stretch Limo parked three cars down. The chauffeur had the hood up and was tinkering with the engine. He got inside to wait for the others, thinking a nap was well and truly overdue. The back seat was more than long enough for his body, and although the ridges poked into his back and hips and his tail got in the way, he managed to find a comfortable position to relax. Almost at once, he could feel the weight of his eyelids pressing down. The last few days had taken a toll he wasn’t entirely prepared for. How many days had he
been awake? A week? A month? It felt like a goddamn eternity, and he doubted Flash Freddy’s words of assurance: there was no way in hell he would ever get used to having no shuteye.

  Giving in to the heaviness of his eyelids was easy. Soon he was floating in a black-gray swirl of mist, welcoming the lightness and freedom found only at the utter depths of sleep. The serenity was short lived, to his horror, as the mist thickened into a claustrophobic fog that pressed him from all sides, then condensed and flooded the Limo with gallons of thick sticky fluid. It was like goddamn barbeque sauce, and he began to flounder, flailing his arms and legs. As his head went under, the liquid slosh kept congealing, as if it were now freezing into quicksand. He struggled against its grip, lost, unable to see, his energy sapping with every second. Within seconds it had solidified, like water turning to ice, crushing him in suspended animation. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t…

  “Goddamn it!” he yelled, wrenching himself out of the nightmare.

  He heard footsteps and opened his eyes. The chauffeur’s face peered through the passenger window. “Are you all right, sir? I heard you scream.”

  Louis shuddered, gathering his senses, then nodded.

  “It’s better if you don’t sleep,” the chauffeur said. “They’ll only get worse.”

  Louis sat up, rubbing his throat. “What will?”

  “The nightmares. They’ll drive you insane. That’s why nobody sleeps.”

  Louis took his paw from his throat to his throbbing temples. Hells bells, he hadn’t felt this bad since his last hangover at the GRN Christmas party. “Got anything to help? An Eezie-Peezie or something?” The chauffeur shook his head and apologized. “Thought as much,” Louis said. Nothing changes around here. Ain’t that the truth. “I’ll work something out. I’m okay now.”

  Louis tried to shake off the lingering nightmare as the chauffeur went back to tinkering under the hood. He decided to get out and clear his head while the others were still inside the club. He still had fifty dollars and Aldo Fiddler’s union card in his pocket. Maybe he could check out the Happythecary for some EZPZs, anything in fact to get rid of this god-awful headache. Just as he reached for the handle, the two jackals from the Lounge Lizard opened the door and ejected a guinea pig onto the sidewalk. Like Louis before, the guinea pig picked himself off the ground and dusted his suit. Unlike Louis, he never said a word. No threats of retaliation. No words of legal advice. He just picked up the pad of Snipes that had fallen out of his pocket, scratched his face, then ambled across the street toward the piazza.

  From his own inner pocket, Louis removed the Snipe that had been left for him at the bar. He reread it, glanced at the guinea pig, and licked his lips. Who’s watching who, now? His head suddenly felt a whole lot clearer.

  Slipping out of the Limo, he followed the guinea pig across the piazza to the other side. Several times he lost sight of the quarry behind the crowd of money worshippers, but once he was around the Money Tree it was a hell of a lot easier to keep track of him. The guy didn’t suspect a goddamn thing as he weaved around the boulder that had recently embedded itself in the street outside The Tower. He then made his way down Boulevard 10, essentially the direct continuation of Boulevard 1. More Burger Boss’s, more Route 666’s, more LeMont Cellular One’s, betting agencies and outlet stores; the sequence just went on and on. As he followed, Louis ensured that he maintained a reasonable distance back. At first he tried to keep to shadows, then realized that there weren’t any. He glanced up at the low-lying sky-vault. No goddamn sun!

  The guinea pig was now approaching an intersection. He didn’t continue along the boulevard as Louis thought he might, instead turning left at the 24-hour mini-market down a two-lane side street. At Boulevard 11 he turned right, then left again, then right down Boulevard 12 past the Burger Boss and video store. Just when Louis thought his zig-zagging route was becoming predictable, the guinea pig suddenly stopped outside a branch of LeMont Newsagents on Boulevard 13 and scanned around. Louis had just turned the corner and had to dart behind the side of the mini-market to hide from view. After a second or two, he sidled against the wall and glanced around the corner. The guinea pig had removed a white spray can from his inner pocket and was shaking it vigorously. Suddenly, something alerted him, and he stashed the can under the flap of his jacket. A Limo had turned onto the street and was heading toward him.

  Louis stepped back as the Limo approached (SPUNKY, its number plate read) and turned the corner, obscuring his view of the guinea pig. When he looked back, the guinea pig was gone. In his place, on the wall of the newsagent, were the letters: WRFF. Two rats in suits leaving the newsagent didn’t even notice the new graffiti, too busy quarreling over whose turn it was to scratch the Lucky Lotto card they had just bought. One had a Snipe on his back: I BELIEVE IN GOD!

  Fearing that he had lost his quarry, Louis darted across the boulevard, dodging past the squabbling rats and around the corner. There, to his relief, several entrances down the empty side street, he saw the guinea pig approach an innocuous looking door. Louis pressed himself against the wall of the mini-market while the guinea pig knocked some kind of code: Knock-knock-knock. Pause. Knock-knock. Pause. Knock.

  The cover to a small viewing hole slid open. The guinea pig then flashed his union card and mumbled something out of earshot, presumably a password. At that moment, the two rats that had exited the newsagent came around the corner, still quarreling over the Lotto card. They didn’t even notice Louis pressing himself against the wall. “It’s my turn!” the rat with the Snipe said. “You did it last time.”

  “That’s because I paid for it!” the other rat said.

  The first rat made a grab for the card, but the other one wouldn’t let go. After a brief tug of war it tore in two, sending both rats sprawling backward in a heap of legs and tails.

  “Now you’ve done it!” the second rat said, staring at his broken half. “It’s useless.”

  “Don’t blame me! It was my turn.”

  Getting up, the second rat growled “Bahhh!” and flung the torn section to the ground. He then stormed back around the corner, his companion close at his heels, still whining and pleading his case.

  Louis waited until the coast was clear, then went to the entrance where he had last seen the guinea pig. Along with the absence of a shadow, the green-gray door had no number. He raised his paw, now suddenly caught between two minds. The guinea pig had given himself away with that little cameo outside the newsagent. What did he have to gain by associating himself with an outlaw? Goddamn trouble, that’s what, and he had seen first hand what they did to lawbreakers in this city. Crucifixion was just the start. Not that he had a problem with it. If you broke the law, you deserved everything you damn well got. He just didn’t like the thought that entering this door could get him nailed to a cross or shoved into the burning flames at the end of Conduit Number 1.

  Then again, Louis, he thought, his paw still raised, if you want to find out what the hell is going on, you’ll have to take a risk. If you turn around now, you’ll never know.

  Louis knew he couldn’t spend the rest of eternity justifying the visions of the white rabbit as some kind of delusional symptom of Post Traumatic Death Syndrome if there was any chance at all the white rabbit really existed. Wasn’t that a goddamn laugh? He was either mad and was seeing things that weren’t there, or he would condemn himself to an eternity of madness not knowing the truth. Mad if he knocked. Mad if he didn’t.

  “What the hell!” he muttered, and banged the secret sequence. Knock-knock-knock. Pause. Knock-knock. Pause. Knock. He didn’t even have time to lower his paw before the viewing hole slid open and two menacing eyes glared out. He could tell straight away they belonged to a jackal, and he wasted no time in showing the union card he had found as proof of identification. “Password!” the jackal said.

  Louis said the first thing that came to mind. “White Rabbit.”

  The viewing hole slid shut, then a bolt turned and th
e door opened. Louis sighed and stepped inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  White Rabbit Freedom Fighters

  THE jackal filled up most of the tiny entrance, towering over Louis as he signed the guest registry as Aldo Fiddler. As an afterthought, he counted out twenty single dollar bills and slipped them into the jackal’s huge paw, then squeezed between him and the table to get to the staircase. Directly below from a gaping dark hole, the stench of horseshit wafted up the stairs like halitosis from the pit of an ulcerated stomach. He could also hear what he first mistook as gargling noises, a muffled female voice backed by a piano, which turned out to be nothing other than a melancholic version of Top of the World (was there any other kind of goddamn version?).

  Clinging to the wall for support, Louis followed the stairs to the bottom, emerging into a small chamber beneath the level of the street. There seemed to be no other way in or out. No windows, no other doors, just a dark little grotto illuminated with flickering gray candles. The music was coming from the stage directly adjacent, where the flat-back piano was shoved into the recess beneath the stairs like a worn piece of furniture no one knew what to do with.

  “Goddamn blues bar,” Louis muttered. “Just what I need right now.”

  The singer, another goddamn rat, held the microphone to her mouth (…And the only explanation I can fiiiiind…) and rested her paw on the frail shoulder of the pianist, undoubtedly the most ancient ferret Louis had ever seen. Hunched on the stool, his smile revealed several missing teeth and a crooked snout that had obviously been on the wrong end of a drunken fist. His wrinkled face was dominated by two huge orbs that could probably see no further than the bony claws tapping the keys in front of him.

  He remained on the bottom step for the moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. He could see no booths, just several rudimentary tables with chairs for two or three, most of which were empty. He counted only five patrons in the whole place, all of them alone, plus the lizard wiping glasses behind the bar along the opposite wall. It didn’t take long to locate his quarry in the far corner. Scratching a fleabite on his ear and staring into a tumbler of iced water, the guinea pig appeared to be the only one who hadn’t seen him enter. Louis went up to the table and dropped the Snipe with I’M WATCHING YOU on top of it, snapping him out of his train of thoughts. The guinea pig glanced at it, then slowly wandered up the contours of Louis’ suit, his face beginning to glow bright red.