Simply Lies

Chapter 57

The place was dark and it stayed dark.

Clarisse slowly took the Zippo containing the thumb drive from her pocket. She put it inside her jeans and then slipped it into her underwear, and finally secreted it inside herself. It hurt, but it might not hurt as much as what was about to come.

“Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

She observed movement to her right, a shadow only slightly darker than the dark.

“Up close and personal time,” said the voice. “And you know the who.” The shadow did not move. It didn’t have to. Clarisse indeed knew who it was.

“Mind telling me how you did it?”

The shadow moved closer. “Yes, I do mind. I don’t want you to reverse engineer. You were always damn good at that, better than me.”

“What do you want?” asked Clarisse.

“Obvious, right?”

“Not to me. I thought we had done the communication thing and knew where we stood.”

“Really? I’m disappointed. You were always quick on the uptake. You live by your wits. You falling down on the job now?”

“We had an arrangement, did we not?” said Clarisse.

“Maybe you thought we had one.”

“You going rogue?”

“I was born rogue. I thought we all were.”

Clarisse shook her head. “No, not born, made. You know that.”

“Maybe.”

“BD?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“Why?” asked Clarisse.

“Why not?”

“You broke the rule on that one,” said Clarisse.

“I make my own rules now. Have for years.”

“Still, you didn’t have to do it. You just needed his ID for the van to take my mother.”

“There are things you never knew. Things I protected you from.”

“He was sweet. He was kind. He didn’t deserve that. He loved comic books!”

“He loved lots of ‘things,’ not just comic books.”

“You’re lying,” snapped Clarisse.

“Just you saying it doesn’t make it so, babycakes.”

The person came into the feeble light filtering in from outside, but she still remained largely a shadow. Then she took one more step forward and could be seen fairly clearly.

The woman had changed. Greatly.

“You don’t look good,” said Clarisse.

“You, on the other hand, look amazing. Good enough to eat, babycakes, even with the dopey wig and plebian clothes. Plebian? Have I educated myself over the years or what?”

“ ‘Babycakes’ was your nickname, not mine,” retorted Clarisse.

“It would have been yours, but for me,” she said quietly, moving still closer.

Clarisse looked for a weapon on her person, even as her hand slipped inside her pocket. “Something I was always grateful for,” she said, her fingers closing around the cylinder of pepper spray in her pocket.

“Well, then start appreciating me again. We were all each other had for a long time. And from what I’ve seen that hasn’t changed. Tell me if I’m wrong. Are you married? Do you have kids? A significant other?” She smiled. “I know you’ve got nobody.”

“I had Mommy. But you have her now.”

“Mommy is just fine, never better. She’s costing me a mint in Ensure, though, but it’ll take more than that to keep her alive. She, like me, doesn’t look so good.”

“She’s had a rough life.”

“She just sat there and stared at that rough life consuming all of us. Same as my bitch of a mother.”

“I told you what I was going to do,” said Clarisse. “So I don’t know why you’re here. And I don’t know how you found me here.”

“You think you’re the only one checking out the Feds? I was on the day cleaning shift for a month and scoping out the night shift when the time came. What a treasure trove of shit that was. And then I found you.”

“I thought you’d picked up my trail on the cleaning crew at the Creative Engineering building in North Carolina.”

“I did, but I picked you up back there, too. Wasn’t hard.”

“What was it? What gave me away?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you. It was the swagger. Change the hair, face, clothes, body, but you can’t change the way you walk. At least not to me.”

“But, really, how could you be sure?”

“I’ll tell you,” she purred. “No one else on the cleaning crew went to pick up a Zippo from behind a bush off the smoking exit.”

“Great minds,” said Clarisse, her fingers gripping the pepper spray.

“So did you find what you were looking for?”

“Maybe. Does it matter to you?”

“It all matters to me, babycakes. Where’s the stash you found?”

“In a safe place.”

She grabbed Clarisse’s crotch. “Down there, right? Same old hiding place. You need a new location, babycakes.” She let go.

Clarisse drew a quick breath. Deflect and counterattack. “ ‘Do as I say’? Why use that?”

“It was his mantra. Did you forget?”

“I can’t forget any of that.”

“There you go, then. Seemed fitting, after all.”

“Where is Dougie?” asked Clarisse.

“No idea.”

“You’re lying. He was always loyal to you. Did anything you wanted.”

“If you don’t want to believe me, don’t. By the way, you gonna pull that thing you’re holding in your pocket and try and hurt me with it? Go on and try. It might be fun.”

“I was certainly thinking about it.”

“Well, think about this instead.”

Clarisse felt the tip of the knife bite into her neck. She felt the drop of blood freed from her body. It meandered down her long neck like a skier on fluffy snow. “Is that the knife you used to kill Bruce?”

“No, you’re special. This one is even sharper.”

“You kill me, no treasure.”

“Maybe I have enough money.”

“Nobody has enough money.”

She made one more small nick, her hand wielding the blade like a surgeon. “Tomorrow is promised to no one, but I’m promising it to you, babycakes.”

And then she was gone.

Clarisse locked the door, hurried to the bathroom, and checked her wounds. They were precise cuts, as close together as snake fangs.

Or a vampire’s mark.

And all done in the dark. Impressive.

She cleaned them, bandaged them.

And then threw up.