Sliver of Truth (36 page)

In London, Dylan had asked me,
What if knowing Max Smiley doesn’t bring you any closer to yourself? What if the closer you get to him, the further you get from who you really are?

I didn’t really understand what he meant by that. I was
from
Max,
of
him, and it was clear to me then that only in knowing him could I discover that part of my own mystery. I wasn’t Ben’s daughter, the good girl. I was Max’s little girl, alone on the street after dark, no one to look after me. But as I lay in the dark beside Dylan, my naked body enfolded by his, I wondered something: Maybe it wasn’t the sudden knowledge that I came from Max that had caused me to become unrecognizable to myself. Maybe it was my refusal to let him go. After all, it was only in the chase for him that my life started to come undone.

I had stepped out of my identity to follow Max. I had led people to their deaths; I had fled from federal custody (or so I thought); I’d cut off my long auburn hair and bleached it blond; I’d gone to the Cloisters in the middle of the night at the bidding of a mysterious text message, been abducted and tortured as a result; I’d fled from custody again in London with Dylan, a man I had no reason to trust, and looked on as he later tortured information from a prostitute in the blue room of an after-hours club in the West End, then been arrested in a gaudy show of international law enforcement agencies at an Internet café. With each outrageous action and awful consequence, I further convinced myself that I was less of Ben and more of Max. But really, the doing of it was all mine. It was neither Ben nor Max calling the plays of my life. It wasn’t my adopted mother, Grace, or my biological mother, Teresa Stone. It was me.

The thought of it, as I listened to Dylan’s steady breathing, hollowed me out inside. I think that’s the moment when we all grow up, when we stop blaming our parents for the messes we’ve made out of our lives and start owning the consequences of our actions.

I lay beside Dylan, felt his breath in my hair, his arm curled over my hip and across my abdomen. My head rested on his other arm, his hand dangled off the bed. I watched the thick muscles of his forearm, the square of his hand as he shifted in his sleep. It was the kind of position that felt wonderful now but would wind up causing his muscles to stiffen and his arm to fall asleep. I shifted the weight of my head onto the pillow to spare him that.

I felt stronger suddenly. The thought that I might be more Ridley than Ben or Max was new and liberating. I felt some of my energy returning.

I started to ponder a question that had been bothering me in the periphery of my consciousness: How could Max possibly have known that I’d log into that website using the log-in Dylan had forced out of Angel? And then it occurred to me what I should have realized all along. It was so obvious, I almost laughed. It wasn’t me who’d been chasing Max. He’d been chasing me. When he said, “Ridley, go home,” he didn’t mean my home. He meant his.

20

I rolled over and looked at Dylan. He opened his eyes. I suspected he hadn’t been sleeping any more than I had. Maybe his mind was churning with a million thoughts of his own. I turned on the radio beside the bed and hiked up the volume a little. Not loud enough to arouse suspicion, I hoped.

“I’ve been thinking,” I whispered in his ear.

“What a surprise,” he answered with a slow smile. I was starting to enjoy the shades of his accent.

We got dressed quietly and headed out into the hallway.

“How did he know we’d wind up logging into that website with Angel’s password?” I said when we were outside. “How could he possibly have known?”

“I wondered the same thing. Maybe he knows you that well,” he answered, leaning against the banister.

I shook my head. “Too many variables. There were too many factors involved in my getting to London.” The tile floor was cold beneath my bare feet. I felt chilled and wrapped my arms around myself.

“But maybe you would have wound up there, anyway. Maybe you would have figured out where that club was without my help. Maybe you would have gone to London without the assistance of whoever it was that brought you there.”

He was confirming what I already suspected, but I wanted to play devil’s advocate, to see if I might be wrong.

“But I wouldn’t have tortured the information out of that woman,” I said.

“Maybe she would have given it to you, anyway.”

“Why? How?”

He was silent for a second, kept his eyes on me.

“Because she was meant to tell me? Because he was leaving me clues, luring me there?” I said.

“It’s possible, isn’t it? Starting with the photos, then the phone calls, the incident in his apartment where you thought you could smell his cologne, that someone had used the shower. The matchbook you found. Then the text message.”

“You think he sent that message?” I guess I thought so, too.

He shrugged. “Who else?”

No one else. Max had been reaching out to me from beyond the grave, drawing me closer to him. It must have killed him (no pun intended) to know I’d discovered he was my father, to wonder what else I might be discovering about him. He would have wanted his chance to talk to me, to make me understand.

“Love,” Dylan said, echoing our first conversation. “He loves you.”

I wondered if that was true. Could someone like Max really love in the truest sense of the word? If he really loved me, wouldn’t he have let me be, rather than drag me into all of this? Love lets go; it doesn’t hold on with a death grip. It doesn’t drag you down into the grave with it.

I took the key from my pocket and showed it to him.

“I think I know what this key unlocks,” I said.

“What?”

Lunchtime at Five Roses Pizza in the East Village is a bustle of students and cops and other East Village dwellers looking for the best slice of pizza in the city. Those of you who have been with me from the beginning know that this is where it all started, that it was out in front of this pizzeria, the ground floor of the building where I lived at the time, that I leapt into traffic to save a little boy.

I walked in the front door and barely heard the little bell that announced my arrival over the din of diners eating meatball Parmesan heros, calzones dripping with sauce and cheese, and Zelda’s special Sicilian slices. The aromas of garlic and warm crust and tomatoes made my stomach growl.

Zelda, the cranky owner of the place, manned the counter, moving with grace and speed between the huge ovens and the old cash register. She’d helped me once before. In all the years I’d lived there, we’d never had a conversation that didn’t involve my rent or my order of two slices and a soda. Then one day when I was in a desperate situation, she helped me escape the police. I wouldn’t be surprised now if she threw me out of the place when she saw me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she helped me again.

When it was my turn, she regarded me without interest, as if she still saw me every day.

“TwoslicesandaCoke?” she said, her heavily accented words all running together into one unintelligible mumble.

“No, Zelda.”

She wiped her hands on her apron and placed them on her hips. She gave me a look that made me think of my mother. “You in trouble again?”

I’m not sure how she knew that. But she actually seemed as if she might care for half a second. I heard someone behind me sigh and start to grumble about the holdup.

“Because I don’t want no trouble. You know that.”

I leaned into her and lowered my voice. “I just want to use the bathroom.”

She looked at me skeptically, then gave me a quick nod. We both knew I didn’t have to use the bathroom, but she leaned over and lifted up the counter for me to go behind.

“Thanks, Zelda,” I said as I moved past her, over the rubber-mesh grating on the floor and through the kitchen, where huge vats of sauce simmered on the stove tops and a legion of stromboli baked in an oven. I really wished I had time for lunch.

“You know where it is,” she called to me, following me with her eyes.

I waved to tell her I did. She shook her head as I exited into the hallway and went out into the courtyard. Zelda’s three dogs greeted me noisily, jumping enthusiastically, and I smelled the aroma of pastry wafting out from the ventilation system of Veniero’s on Eleventh Street. I moved toward the doors in the ground and pulled one of them open, walked down the stairs that led to the basement, and closed the door behind me, leaving the dogs baying mournfully in my wake. I was in the storage space where Zelda kept all of her supplies—olive oil, crates of garlic, flour—lining shelves that seemed to go on forever. It was dark and I didn’t bother to flip on the light. I felt my way along the wall until I found what I was looking for. It was a doorway that led to a tunnel. This tunnel ran behind the buildings to the north of Five Roses and let out onto Eleventh Street. I unbolted the door and paused at the yawning darkness before me. I remembered it was a long tunnel, dark and cold. I felt along the wall for a light switch and instead found a flashlight on a hook. I took it and turned it on, shone it into the darkness. The beam was dim and weak, flickering in a threat to go dark just seconds after I turned it on. It was so quiet.

I took the cell phone Jake had given me and dropped it on the floor. Dylan suspected that it had some kind of tracking device they could use to follow my movements around the city. I was hoping they’d think I was just having a long, leisurely lunch at Five Roses, and that by the time they’d figured it out, it would be too late.

Why did I do this? I’d made a deal with the CIA and good sense would have dictated that I keep it. At the time, I probably couldn’t have told you why I didn’t. I have more insight into my actions now. But that afternoon, I was just overcome with the feeling that if I didn’t get away from them, I’d never be able to find Max. He’d know they were watching me. He’d know to stay away. I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t walk into an obvious trap. Alone, I might have a chance to find him. What would happen then, I didn’t know.

I hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel. The looming blackness got the better of me for a second and the air felt electric with bad possibilities. I thought about turning around and going back the way I’d come in, rather than face that pitch black, but I finally steeled myself and ran, the low light of the flashlight illuminating only a foot or two in front and around me. I breathed easier when the beam fell on the metal door at the end of the tunnel. I reached for the bolt and found it stuck. My breathing started to become labored as I tried and failed to unlock it. I felt the blackness of the tunnel closing in on me, and for a second I thought of screaming, unable to face the tunnel again to return to the basement. Finally it gave way and I burst onto the street.

I was disoriented by the bright light of the outdoors. A woman looked at me strangely as she moved quickly past on Rollerblades. I let the door shut behind me and turned back to look at it. There was no knob or handle on the outside. I wouldn’t have been able to open it again if I wanted to. I felt a twist of guilt and fear in my belly at what I’d just done, at what I was about to do.

I met Dylan at the Union Square subway station at the bottom of the Food Emporium entrance on Fourteenth Street. We took the train to Max’s apartment building. Dutch let us up with his eternal cool and impartial gaze. What must he think of me? I wondered, not for the first time, as we stepped into the elevator and he gave me a nod. What did he think I did in Max’s apartment? But his face, as always, was a mask. I would have more luck figuring out the gargoyles that loomed above the entryway to the building.

Inside Max’s apartment, I turned and looked at Dylan, blocking his entry with a palm to his chest.

“Before we go any further, I have to know what your agenda is when it comes to this. Why are you helping me?”

He shrugged, gave a slow shake of his head. “I have no secrets from you, Ridley. I’ve always been honest about what I want from Max. I just want him to answer for the things he’s done, same as you. I told you: I don’t want revenge. And I want to protect you, make sure you don’t get hurt. That’s it. I promise you.”

He reached for my hand and I remembered a time when I’d held Jake’s hand like that. I felt my stomach clench at the memory. I nodded. I believed him. But we all know that doesn’t mean anything.

We walked down the hallway, which was lined with framed photographs of my family and me. Jake was the one who pointed out to me that the whole apartment was more or less a shrine to me, that I was the center of all the photographs. I saw Dylan scanning the walls and remembered he’d said the same thing. I was embarrassed now by what seemed to me a gallery of lies—pretty pictures featuring the smiling faces of people whose foundation was rotten and on the verge of buckling. My mother and father were liars; my brother was a drug addict returned to the streets once again (I hadn’t even had time to think about this yet); my uncle was really my father. And he was a murderer and a criminal so terrible that he was being pursued by law enforcement agencies around the world. And yet there we were, attractive people laughing, having birthday parties, dance recitals, trips to the zoo. There I was on Max’s shoulders, in Ben’s arms, being fed by my mother, trying to make myself invisible behind a tree while Ace looked for me in a game of hide-and-seek. All my beautiful lies.

I said as much to Dylan.

“No,” he said as we moved into Max’s bedroom. “Not all lies. There’s as much truth there as there is deceit.”

It made me think of what my father said about Max, that the man we knew was as true as his dark side. I wasn’t sure I was buying it.

“I didn’t know who my parents really were until after they were dead,” he said in my silence. “It didn’t make them any less of who they were to me.”

“They lied about their jobs, probably because they had to, probably to protect you. It’s different.”