Sliver of Truth (37 page)

“I know it is. But it’s the same, too. Lies are lies. Your parents probably thought they had to lie to protect you, too. They made a lot of mistakes, but they loved you.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure I’d heard anyone defend my parents before. I was grateful to him for doing it, even though he was probably just trying to make me feel better. I flipped on the lights in Max’s bedroom and walked over to the shelves. The little piece of pottery I’d made for him a lifetime ago sat where I’d left it. I lifted it, and for a split second I thought I’d hallucinated the keyhole I’d seen there. But there it was. I pulled the key from my pocket and slid it in, gave it a turn.

The whole shelf lifted slowly about six inches, revealing a drawer. I stood and looked at it. Inside there was a thick manila envelope. I took a second to observe the irony of it, since all of this began with a similar package. I reached for it, then hesitated, weighing my options. Every nerve ending in my body tingled; every instinct told me to walk away. But you know me better than that.

“What are you waiting for?”

I thought Dylan’s voice sounded strange, so I turned to look at him. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at something behind me and reaching for my arm. I spun around to see two dark forms standing in the bedroom doorway. I looked back at Dylan and expected to see him draw his weapon; instead he grabbed me and pulled me close, then stepped in front of me.

“They took my gun,” he whispered. I deduced that the FBI had taken his weapon when they’d fired him. Bad news.

“Well, Miss Jones, what
are
you waiting for?”

When the first man stepped into the light, I took a step back in surprise. It was Dutch, the doorman. He’d lost his spiffy outfit and stood before me clad in black, a nasty-looking gun in his hand. I didn’t recognize the man he was with, but he didn’t look like a very nice person, with a thick, heavy brow, deep-set dark eyes, and a nasty scar that ran from his ear to his mouth. He also held a gun. It didn’t seem fair. I was starting to wish I hadn’t been so quick to dump the CIA. I was betting that they had
plenty
of guns.

“Dutch, I don’t understand,” I said lamely.

“Of course you don’t,” he answered, not unkindly.

It was hard to be afraid of him. I’d known him since I was a child. I remembered being down in the basement one day as a teenager looking through Max’s storage space for an old skateboard of Ace’s (I’d later break my wrist on the sidewalk in front of Max’s building, getting both of us in big trouble with my parents). It was late-ish, maybe around ten or something, and I bumped into Dutch down there; there was a locker and changing room where the doormen could shower and change into their street clothes. He was all dressed up in a silver lamé shirt and black slacks, his hair slicked back. I think he was getting ready to go clubbing. I was shocked to see him as a person with a life outside the building, since I’d never seen him anywhere else. I remember that he looked a little embarrassed. It must have been the shiny disco shirt—but it was the eighties, after all.

“Good night, Miss Jones,” he’d said with his usual light bow in my direction.

“Good night, Dutch,” I’d answered, biting the inside of my cheek hard so that I wouldn’t laugh. He left the basement quickly.

Back in the apartment, I told Max all about it, dissolving into childish giggles.

“There’s more to everyone than meets the eye,” he said with a small smile. “Remember that, kid.”

Now his words seemed ominous, almost prophetic.

“Miss Jones, you and your friend will need to put your hands where I can see them.”

He was so polite, even now. There was still that practiced kindness in his face, like a lace shroud over metal. My chest started to feel tight and my arms tingled with adrenaline. Dylan’s face was as still as granite.

“And turn around please,” he said as we complied.

“I have to say,” he went on as he bound our hands with some type of thick plastic cinch, “you made this easier than it might have been by losing your entourage.”

“Dutch,” I said, hating the shake I heard in my voice. “What are you
doing
?”

“Never mind,” he said softly. There was an explosion of white pain. And then there was nothing.

I woke up on my belly, my arms bound behind me, my cheekbone being knocked repeatedly against the corrugated metal floor of a moving vehicle. Dylan was beside me in a similar situation but he still seemed to be unconscious. A thin line of blood trailed from a nasty cut in his lip. It looked as if it would need several stitches—that is, if we didn’t both die tonight.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that my head felt as if it was on the business end of a jackhammer. I wondered how much abuse a body could endure before it just gave out. For someone who’d never been touched in anger, never even been spanked as a child, I’d certainly had a rude introduction to violence in recent years.

I could see the back of Dutch’s head in the passenger seat. The other man was driving. I was scared, yes. Of course. But I was suddenly really, really angry, too. I started struggling against the binding on my hands and found out too late that it only made them tighter. Very painful.

“Dutch,” I said loudly, “what are you doing?” I couldn’t come up with a better question.

He didn’t answer me, didn’t even turn around. This made me even angrier.

“Help!” I started screaming when the van paused at a light. “Help us!”

It was pointless, I knew. No one was going to hear me. But I figured it was worth a try. I kept screaming.

“Miss Jones,” said Dutch calmly, turning around after a few minutes of this and putting his gun to Dylan’s head. “Please shut the fuck up. You’re giving me a headache.”

Seeing Dylan so helpless, I shut up immediately.

“I thought you worked for Max,” I said weakly.

“Once upon a time, yes,” he said. “Since his
demise,
the pay hasn’t been as good. Others are offering more.”

“You sold him out,” I said, trying to sound indignant.

He gave me a pitying look. “Haven’t we all?”

“I haven’t sold out anyone,” I said.

He just smiled at me and for a split second I saw him for what he was: a stone-cold killer. I wondered what this man had been for Max. Bodyguard? Hired gun? Maybe both. I asked him. The fact that he answered me didn’t bode well for my future.

“I cleaned up his messes. It was ugly work, I’ll tell you. Your father didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Not that way.”

I looked over at Dylan. His eyes were open now and he was watching me. He shook his head at me, the best he could.

“No more questions,” he whispered. I saw the wisdom in his warning but we were far beyond that. Unless the CIA was able to figure out what had happened to me, I had a feeling things were going to end badly.

“That’s good advice from your friend,” said Dutch.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Dylan.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

But it was.

The van pulled into a large, cavernous space; a heavy metal door shut behind us. We were assisted from the back of the van and walked up a flight of metal stairs, through a thick door and into what appeared to be some kind of abandoned factory or warehouse floor. The space was dark around the edges, boxes piled high, graffiti on the walls. Some light filtered in through high windows so filthy they were nearly blacked out by grime. Our footfalls echoed, bouncing off the walls and high ceilings. There was a strong odor of mold and dust. I felt my sinuses start to swell.

I tried to think of where we could be. There were old sweatshops in the East Village, in Tribeca (though most of those had been converted into trendy lofts). The Meatpacking District was a possibility. I couldn’t be sure; I was totally disoriented. I wasn’t even sure how long we’d been driving. I figured we couldn’t be farther than the outer boroughs or possibly Jersey. The space seemed so solid, so remote, it felt as if we might as well be on the moon. I listened for street noise and heard only silence. If we died here, I wondered, how long would it be before they found our bodies? The thought made me feel sick for Ben and the words he’d left me with. I imagined what it would be like for him if I disappeared and was never found. Or if my body turned up in the East River. I felt more guilty than I did afraid for my own life at that moment. And I realized that Dylan had been right. My parents made terrible mistakes but they did love me. That counted for something. It counted for more than I’d realized.

We were made uncomfortable in twin metal chairs against the far wall of the space. I hated that they hadn’t bothered to conceal their identities in any way. It was really such a bad sign. Dylan and I locked eyes as they bound our legs to the chairs. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he didn’t look scared. He looked . . . patient.

“What are you doing, Dutch? What do you want?” I asked as his associate finished lashing me to the chair with, I thought, unnecessary roughness.

He looked at me coolly. “I want what everyone wants, Miss Jones. I want Max Smiley.”

I issued a sigh. “Well, I’ll tell you what I tell everyone else. I don’t know where he is.”

He walked over closer to me and held up his slim mobile phone, not unlike the one issued to me by the CIA. He used the camera in his phone to take what I’m sure was a very unflattering picture of me. He handed the phone to the other man, who proceeded to set up a laptop on a makeshift table, a plank resting across two plastic crates. He used an old paint bucket to make a seat for himself.

“It was you,” I said. “You put that matchbook there. You made the apartment smell like him. You ran the shower.”

“As per my instructions,” he said with a deferential nod.

“Your instructions from whom?”

“From Max,” he said, as though he was stating the obvious.

“Then why don’t you know where he is?”

I could see the red glow from the computer screen shining on the face of Dutch’s partner.

“Are you sending him a picture so that he’ll come for me? Because he won’t,” I said. I knew I should be keeping my mouth shut, but I just couldn’t stop talking. Maybe it was nerves. “Who are you working for now? That freak Boris Hammacher?”

Turning to look at me, Dutch had the same expression he always had: cool, observing, disinterested.

“Miss Jones, I’m only going to ask you one more time to shut the fuck up.”

“He’s gone. No one’s ever going to find him. Not me. Not the CIA. And certainly not a sorry fuck like you,” I said. What was wrong with me?

His expression didn’t change at all as he lifted his gun and shot Dylan in the leg. Dylan issued a sound, a cry of pain and surprise so terrible and primal, I’ll never forget it. I felt as if I was going to crawl out of my skin with rage and sheer terror. I know I was screaming, too. But I can’t remember what I said. I struggled pointlessly against my bindings.

“Please, Miss Jones, please be quiet,” Dutch said, his tone measured and polite. He didn’t have to tell me that he’d continue shooting until I was. I looked at Dylan, tried to shift my chair over toward him. His face was pale, his expression a grimace of pain. I looked at the wound in his leg and saw that it was bleeding heavily but not gushing. I prayed that the shot had missed a major artery.

“Dylan,” I said, sobs wracking my whole body.

He didn’t say anything. His eyes had a faraway look and I wondered if he was slipping into shock. I was pretty much hysterical at this point.

The man at the computer connected the phone with a USB cable and set to tapping away at the keyboard.

“Done,” he said after a moment.

Dutch walked over to Dylan and took the belt from his pants. He wrapped the belt above Dylan’s wound and tightened it hard. Dylan issued a low moan; his head lolled to the side.

“We’ll keep your friend alive awhile to assure your continued cooperation,” Dutch said as he moved away from us.

The two men left us alone with the glowing red computer screen. The door slammed heavily after their exit.

“Dylan,” I said. “Dylan, answer me.”

He only issued a low groan. I was able to shuffle my chair over until I was just inches from him. I could hear him breathing.

“I’m okay, Ridley,” he said.

He didn’t say anything else for a while. I was alone with my thoughts for hours as I worked and twisted my wrists and ankles in their bindings, as the light filtering in through the dirty windows faded to black.

21

When I look back on some of the mistakes I’ve made in all this, I think probably dropping that phone in the tunnel beneath Five Roses had the direst consequences. Like I said, at the time I probably couldn’t have even said why I did it. I told myself it was the only way to Max, that he’d never fall into such an obvious trap as the one the CIA had set. But I wonder if that was really the reason. I wonder if, on some level, I was suicidal.

I don’t mean that in the truest sense. I wasn’t looking for a bottle of sleeping pills or a dive off the Brooklyn Bridge. But maybe I was looking for a death of self. Maybe I was looking to burn Ridley Jones to the ground, in order to see what might rise from the ashes. It never occurred to me that there might not be a resurrection. That dead was dead.

In the dark warehouse, with Dylan’s breathing the only sound in my ears, I could see how the next few hours would play out with sickening clarity. I knew in a while they’d come to get us. We’d be taken somewhere desolate in the back of that van. When we reached our destination, we’d be killed. There was simply no other way for things to go. Once they had Max, or if he didn’t come for me, they’d have no use for us, and we’d make the awkward shift from assets to liabilities.

“They’re going to kill us,” I told Dylan, who’d been conscious and lucid for a while.

“Probably,” he agreed. “You’re bleeding. Stop struggling.”