Sliver of Truth

17

It occurred to me as we exited the fat black taxi that I had no idea what we were looking for exactly at this club. I’d found a name scrawled in a matchbook and here we were. That should tell you how lost and desperate we were. The industrial street in London’s West End was nearly deserted. I paid the driver and shut the door, felt something like despair as the car pulled away and was gone.

“What is it?” asked Dylan, sensing my hesitation.

“Nothing. I’m good.”

As we walked together I had the odd feeling that we were making some kind of mistake, as if it was just stubbornness and a lack of good alternatives that had led us here. I felt Dylan’s energy go quiet and watchful as we moved up the street scanning numbers. There were no other clubgoers on the street; I didn’t hear the pulse of music.

A glowing blue light over brushed metal doors was the only indication that we’d found the place. Two men—one black, one white, both big as refrigerators and clad in long black nero jackets and black sunglasses—stood sentry at the door.

“Name,” asked the black guy curtly as we approached. He reached for a clipboard that hung beside him.

I handed him the matchbook in my pocket. “Am I in the right place?”

He pulled what looked to be a pen from his pocket, but it turned out to be a small black light. He shined the beam on the matchbook and another symbol appeared. I craned my neck to see what it was, but he flicked off the light before I could identify it. I was a little surprised when he handed it back to me, stood aside, and opened the door.

“Welcome to the Kiss. The elevator to your left will take you to the VIP room. Just swipe this card in the slot,” he said, handing me a black key card. I took it from him and nodded my thanks. The doors closed behind us and we walked down a long dark corridor lit by more blue lights.

“You’re a pretty cool customer, Ridley Jones,” Dylan whispered as we reached the end of the corridor and swiped the card.

I gave him a weak smile. “We’ll see.”

The elevator took us down instead of up as I expected. When the doors opened, we entered a cavernous space where techno music pulsed and bodies heaved on a gigantic dance floor. There seemed to be no end to it, this sea of scantily clad bodies. I was overwhelmed with the same feeling I had at New York City clubs. My observer’s mind almost couldn’t handle all the input. The tattoos, the body piercing, one woman’s purple contact lenses, another’s raspberry-colored spiked hair. I felt instantly assaulted by the level of detail, started to get this weird zoned-out feeling I get under these circumstances. Dylan took my arm and pulled me close and we moved toward the bar.

“I don’t want to get separated in here,” he yelled in my ear, and even then I could barely make out what he was saying. I wondered if, under different conditions, he’d dance with me, if he’d move that body on the dance floor with as much grace and rhythm as he had in bed. I had a feeling he might. He looked pretty cool with his tousled black hair and dark glasses, the shadow on his jaw. He wore a leather jacket and an FCUK T-shirt I’d bought him in Knightsbridge, a pair of old Levi’s. When we’d first met, I never would have pegged him as being particularly hip, but I guess he was.

“What?” he yelled.

I must have been staring at him. I shook my head.

The bartender’s bottom lip was completely hidden beneath a row of silver hoop piercings. It was absolutely ghastly. I distrust people who pierce themselves in tender places. Isn’t life painful enough? Doesn’t it leave enough scars? He had a shaved head and the tattoo of a black four-leaf clover under his eye.

Dylan leaned over the bar and started yelling something at the bartender. I lost myself watching the crowd. The music was heavy; I could feel it beneath my skin. I remembered back in college when we’d take Ecstasy and go dancing, how the music seemed to pulse through my veins, take me over on some spiritual level. I didn’t do too much experimenting with drugs after that. I found I never liked the feeling of being disconnected from reality. But dancing with Ecstasy altering the pathways in your brain was pretty intense, a memory that club music can always bring back for me. I felt the itch to get out there and mingle with all those bodies in the flashing strobes, to lose myself in the music.

I watched a black woman with razor-straight platinum-blond hair in a patent-leather dress and matching boots rub her fantastic body against an equally gorgeous blonde in a white tunic covered in some gauzy material that got picked up by the fans. The material swept around her like smoke. I watched a badly dressed man with thinning hair and insecurity in his eyes try to pick up a redheaded women who looked profoundly bored and slightly unstable on her feet. I watched a young girl in jeans and a tank top dancing alone, whirling around to no particular beat other than the one she was hearing in her own head. I could see in her glazed-over stare that she was as high as could be.

Dylan handed me a beer and pointed to a narrow staircase that led to a velvet curtain.

“Angel!” he yelled.

I nodded and we headed that way.

LIFE IS LIKE this weird puzzle, you know? You have some of the pieces before you even know where they belong. I thought about that as we ascended the staircase, how I’d found this matchbook in Max’s apartment with a stranger’s name scrawled inside, never imagining that it would lead me to a London club with a rogue FBI agent, both of us searching for the same but totally different things, both of our lives a tangled mess we kept tripping over. If I’d really been watching the signs, I’d have known that there was no good way out of this scenario, that only bad things could happen from here on out. But I was still naive enough to believe that somehow everything was going to be okay.

Behind the thick velvet curtain, it was quieter.

“This is the VIP room,” said Dylan. “The bartender told me we’ll find Angel here.”

Beside another large brushed-chrome doorway waited a slot just like the one by the elevator. A red light turned green as I swiped the card, and a heavy click told us the door was open. We pushed inside.

It was as peaceful here as it had been loud downstairs. A light strain of jazz floated on the smoky air. A wide-open space, topped by a cavernous ceiling, was lined with long low tables and cushions on the floor. There were several tiny gathering areas, cozy booths with cocktail tables at their center. Some of them had sheer curtains drawn; forms moved and whispered behind them. The room was lit only by candles on the tables, on the walls, and in gigantic wrought-iron candelabras and chandeliers chained from the ceiling. It was at once Gothic and utterly modern. Behind one of the curtains, a woman laughed and it sounded like ice cubes in a glass. It would have been a cool place to hang out if my life didn’t suck so much.

We slid into one of the curtained areas and sat close together on the plush velvet seat.

“Someone will come to us,” he whispered. As I moved in closer to him, he dropped his arm easily around my shoulders. I tried to imagine us on a date. I tried to imagine us without all the awful things that had happened between us and around us. But I couldn’t. I know, I was being pathetic, a total girl. I needed to focus, so I did.

After a time, a thin young man clad entirely in black, wearing black eyeliner and black lipstick, moved into our booth.

“We’re here to see Angel,” I told him when he asked for our drink order.

He raised his eyebrows at me. “Angel?” he said.

I nodded and he gave me a strange smile, looked back and forth between me and Dylan.

“As you like,” he said, speaking with a slight lisp. “Can I tell her who’s asking for her?”

I hesitated, looked at Dylan.

“Tell her it’s Max,” he interjected quickly.

The man nodded and walked off. I stared at Dylan and he shrugged.

“You have a better idea?” he wanted to know.

I didn’t answer him, just sipped on the Guinness he’d handed me downstairs. It was dark and savory, a little on the strong side. I wasn’t much of a beer drinker in general, but it wasn’t bad, actually, and the slight buzz it was already giving me felt good, helped me to relax.

After a while another man, this one more along the lines of the bouncers outside, came and escorted us down a corridor. He was stocky and stern looking, and his long black coat swept the ground as we walked past a row of doors, almost to the end of the hallway. I felt my mouth grow dry and adrenaline start to surge. I thought about the long hallways, the key-card doors, the elevator we’d have to pass through in order to get out of this place. I started to feel trapped. I wondered if we were making a terrible mistake. But it felt too late to say anything. This was our last lead. After this, I didn’t know what would happen.

He opened the last door for us and we walked inside. Then he closed it behind us. It was pretty obvious what Angel did for a living. We stood in a dimly lit room dominated by a huge bed on the right. To the left there was a small sitting area. There was something cheap and seedy about the space. I guess I would have expected lots of velvet and candles, plush pillows and music, but that was just my writer’s brain adding details, looking for atmosphere. Or the naive Ridley imaging assignations and adding romance where there was only a business transaction. This space was utilitarian. People who came here wanted one thing and they wanted it raw.

I looked at Dylan’s face but it was blank. Behind his glasses, I couldn’t see his eyes. I wanted to leave but I heard another door open and I knew it was too late.

She entered the room from behind a velvet curtain and then swept it open with an expansive sweep of her arms.

“Max,” she said, soft and sultry. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

She wore a wide smile that faded almost immediately when she saw us. She would have been stunning, this Asian woman with long, thick tresses of dark black hair, the impossibly slim lines of her body. The memory of beauty resided in her fine features. But she looked used and tired. She looked broken. I thought of the women and girls abducted and sold into sexual slavery I’d read about in the articles in Jake’s file. I wondered if she’d been one of those girls once, and if this was what you looked like ten, fifteen years later. The thought made me sad.

“Who are you?” she asked.

I saw her start to move backward toward the curtain, but Dylan was on her before she could get far. He grabbed her quickly and spun her around roughly, putting his hand around her mouth. She struggled against him, then she froze. It took me a second to realize that he had his gun to her back. I didn’t even know he’d brought it with him. My stomach hollowed out.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut,” he said to her, his voice low and menacing. He moved her over to the chair and sat her down heavily.

“Dylan,” I said. I barely recognized him suddenly.

He ignored me. “How?” he asked her, wrapping his hand around her throat and pointing the gun to her temple. “How have you been trying to reach him?”

She released an awful gurgling noise and clawed at the hand he had on her neck. I saw that she’d drawn blood from him but he didn’t flinch.

“How?” I didn’t even recognize his voice. It was more of a growl.

He released his grip on her just slightly and she drew a harsh, rasping breath. She looked at him with pleading eyes and I moved to put a hand on his shoulder.

“I can’t tell you,” she said. Tears welled in her eyes and ran down her face, horrible black rivers of mascara. “He’ll kill me.”

“Die now. Die later. Your choice.”

Her eyes met mine and I felt a horrible clenching in my gut—guilt, fear, pain. What were we doing?

“Dylan, stop it,” I said.

“Ridley,” he said, turning to me, “stay out of this.”

I backed away from him and stood by the door. I was useless, totally out of my league. I had no frame of reference for dealing with a situation like this. How had I imagined this encounter would go? I didn’t know.

“I’m going to give you one more second and then I’m going to snap your neck, do you understand me?”

I froze. Would he really kill this woman if she didn’t tell us what we wanted to know? I didn’t think so, but he was convincing as hell. Maybe that was part of being successful in a matter like this. I saw her nod and I was flooded with relief. He released his grip on her throat. She coughed and let out a little sob.

“I can only leave messages for him on the Internet,” she said, her voice hoarse. “There’s a website.”

“Give me the address, your log-in, and password,” he said. He looked at me and I quickly produced a pen and paper from my pocket and handed them to her. (Well, I am a writer. We don’t go very many places without those things.) She scribbled on the paper for a second and then handed it to me. I wasn’t surprised to see the address that I had by now memorized. Her log-in was angellove, her password serendipity.

“How do you know him?” I asked. “Who is he to you?”

She looked at me as if I were a moron, began massaging her neck where Dylan had grabbed her.

I tried to imagine Max in a place like this. I couldn’t picture it, no matter how hard I tried. So much about the things I’d learned about Max just didn’t compute with my memories. I realized I was staring at her and she turned away from my gaze. Dylan took the paper from my hand, glanced at it and then back at her.

“If you’re lying, I swear to God, I’ll find you,” he said.

The way he looked, the way his voice sounded, I didn’t even know him.

She shook her head, gave him a little laugh. “I’m already dead.”

He moved into her quickly and hit her hard on the back of the head. She crumpled like a marionette with her strings cut, slumped into the chair. He turned and must have seen the horror on my face because it stopped him in his tracks.

“She’s not dead, Ridley,” he said. His accent was heavier than I’d ever heard it. “I just need her to be quiet for a few minutes so we can get out of here.”

I went over to her and felt her throat. I was relieved to feel her pulse beneath my fingers. Dylan grabbed my arm and we walked out of the Kiss as if nothing had happened.

We hopped into a cab outside the club and asked the cabbie to take us to an Internet café. He talked the whole way about the subway bombings just a few months earlier and about the “fucking Arabs” and “fucking Americans” and how they were fucking up the whole world. I barely heard him as I stared out the window, watched the buildings race by. I kept stealing glances at Dylan, who’d taken his dark glasses off and kept stealing glances back at me.

“Did you think she was just going to give us the information?” he asked finally.

I shrugged and shook my head. “Would you have killed her if she hadn’t?” I whispered.

“Of course not,” he said, incredulous. “No.”

“So you were just playing the tough guy?”

“Yes,” he said, frowning at me.

“It was pretty convincing.”

He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have worked if it hadn’t been.”

We were silent for a second. Then he said, “I guess I keep forgetting.”

“What?”

“That you don’t know me as well as I know you.”

I looked over at him and saw that the nail marks Angel had left looked raw and painful. I didn’t know what to say. He was right, and it reminded me how inorganic this relationship was, how it had started under a veil of lies and existed in a crucible of danger and uncertainty. Our only social encounters consisted of a murder in a dark hospital room and the menacing of a prostitute in an after-hours club on the West End of London. I wondered if we had anything in common other than our shared obsession with my father. I wondered if we’d ever have a chance to find out.

SOME OF US are lost and some of us are found. I think that’s really the difference Max had observed. Some people don’t have that many questions and lack that belly of fire when it comes to their encounters with the world. They’re content in their predictable lives, where everything that lies before them is like a rerun of Jeopardy. They already know the answers and how the game will end. They don’t have the urge to travel or to ask the questions that boggle the mind: Who am I? Why am I here? Is this all there is? Instead there’s a certainty about themselves and the world around them. They work. They go to church. They take care of their families. They know their beliefs are correct; they know that anything different is wrong or bad.

Others of us are lost. We’re forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don’t recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might one day solve, if only we collect enough pieces. The idea that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread.

I was filled with this dread as we hovered over the computer screen in the back of the twenty-four-hour Internet café. It was nearly four A.M. and I felt as if we were the only two people in London. We entered the address into the browser and the red screen popped up. I tabbed for the windows and entered Angel’s log-in and password. A small window opened in the center of the screen. I watched as the same streaming video piece I’d seen at Jake’s place started. It was broad daylight in the video, so I knew that it wasn’t a live feed. I found myself leaning in closer. Then, from the right of the screen, a man moved into the frame. He moved slowly, with the help of a cane. His motion was unsteady and the other people on the street seemed to race by him. He wore a long brown coat and a brimmed tweed cap. Then he stopped and turned.

He was thin and ghostly pale, as if something was eating him alive inside. He was not the man I knew. He was someone shelled out and broken. He lifted his eyes to the camera, which must have been somewhere across the street. He moved his mouth but I couldn’t hear what he was saying, just like in my dreams. Even as changed as he was, there was no mistaking who I was looking at. It was Max. My father.

I felt this terrible ache inside that I suppose had always been there, that had been driving me all this time. This ache was the reason for everything I had done, every mistake I had made, every reckless and careless action since Dylan first approached me on the street. I had wrecked my whole life to fill the empty space inside me that was the dark shadow of my father. I needed something that I still believed only he could give me. And I’d almost destroyed myself to get it.

“What’s he saying?” Dylan asked.

The video was on some kind of a loop. It came to an abrupt stop and then replayed Max walking slowly across the street, turning and saying something as he faced the camera. The whole thing lasted maybe ten seconds.

I watched it replay several times, zooming in on his mouth. After the fourth time, I knew. I leaned back in my chair.

“What?” Dylan asked me. “What is he saying?”

I looked up at Dylan. “He’s saying, ‘Ridley, go home.’”

THEY DESCENDED ON us then, maybe realizing that it was the end of the road, that my pathetic little leads had led me as far as I could go. They entered from the front of the café and from the back. They shined their lights in the windows beside us. They entered with guns drawn, wearing body armor and making lots of noise. Overkill, if you ask me. But I just sat staring at the screen, watching Max, put my hands on my head, felt the spiky strands of my strange hair. Dylan, standing beside me, did the same. Two men patted him down and took his gun.

I wasn’t surprised to see Inspector Madeline Ellsinore when she came through the door. She had her eyes on me; in them I imagined I saw empathy.

In fact, I wasn’t even surprised to see Jake or the black bulletproof vest he wore over his clothes, the gun in his hand.