Beautiful Lies

thirty

Anyone who has watched an execution will tell you that it’s an anticlimax. Families of murder victims, after raging for years, waiting through endless trials they hope will bring the killer to justice, death row appeal after death row appeal, finally come to gather in a sterile room. They watch justice behind a sheet of glass. They watch the killer die. All those years they’ve looked to that moment as the time when pain ends and healing begins. They imagine a weight will be lifted from their hearts, that their sleep will be free from the nightmares. But once it’s done, they’ll tell you the pain doesn’t go away. They are not relieved of suffering. Their grief is just as hot and bright as it was the first day, not mitigated in the least by the death of the perpetrator.

Maybe it’s because the concept of punishment is a false one, because through good or evil action everything around us is altered irrevocably. We are changed by the things we experience. The big things, the small things have their impact and can’t be undone. To judge those experiences, to hate the things that have happened to us is to hate who we’ve become because of them. I guess that’s why I didn’t feel angry as we sped in a cab toward Harriman’s office. I was afraid, I was grieved by the things that had happened, but I wasn’t cursing the day I leaped in front of that van to save a little boy. I didn’t hate my father for “flagging” little Jessie Stone, if that’s what he in fact did. I didn’t hate Jake for confronting Max. I couldn’t muster a feeling of righteous indignation. Because it’s like I told you, I believe in balance, in karma. That for every good there is a bad, for every right there is a wrong.

Of course, in that moment I wasn’t thinking of any of that. Every nerve ending was alive with fear for my brother, for my family, for what Alexander Harriman wanted from me. Once again, I found myself in a situation for which I had no frame of reference. I leaned forward in my seat, willing the cab to move faster, the traffic to clear. By the time we were in front of the Central Park West brownstone that housed Alexander Harriman’s office, I was suddenly stuck to the vinyl upholstery with dread.

“It’s okay,” said Jake, paying the driver and nudging me out onto the sidewalk. “If he wanted to hurt you, you’d be dead already.”

I had to admit there was a logic to this, but it didn’t make me feel much better. We rang the buzzer and I wish I could say I was surprised when the skinhead freak opened the door for us. He smiled as he patted Jake down and took the gun at his waist. He didn’t look as scary as he had come to seem in my memory of him. He had stubble on his jaw and his eyes were rimmed with girlishly long lashes. He smelled of cheap, heavy cologne.

“Nice,” the bald man said, turning the weapon in his hand, then removing the magazine and the round in the chamber with two quick maneuvers. He handed the empty gun back to Jake.

He looked at me and smiled that wolfish grin I’d seen once before. “I feel like we know each other,” he said.

“We don’t,” I answered, trying for cold and tough but just sounding like a scared kid. His smile didn’t waver. Do things like this happen to people? I was wondering, feeling that dreamy wobble to my consciousness again.

The last time I’d been in Alexander Harriman’s plush office, I’d been a different person…though it was only a few days ago. Everything looked different to me—the plush carpets, the leather furniture, the portrait of his wife and daughter hanging on the wall over the wet bar. What had once seemed elegant and comforting seemed tainted now.

“I am going to give you something, Ridley, that no one ever has,” said Harriman as we entered the room. His thug for hire left and closed the door behind us, but I imagined he wouldn’t go far.

“And what’s that?”

He was standing, leaning on the edge of his monolithic oak desk with his arms folded across his belly. He was handsome, seemed almost benevolent if you failed to notice the glint of steel in his eyes.

“The truth,” he said, raising his eyebrows and showing us his palms. “I’m going to give both of you the truth.”

“Why bother?” asked Jake. “Why not just get rid of us. It’s not like you haven’t tried.”

“Well,” Harriman said with a placating laugh, “I wasn’t trying to kill you, exactly. Just turn you off. Sometimes these things…You ask someone to do a job for you and they get a little carried away.”

“Anyway,” he went on with a dismissive wave of his hand, “I’m going to tell you what you both want to know, and then I’m going to insist that it stays here, between us. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I believe it’s the only way to get you to stop nosing around, short of actually killing you.”

“And why would we agree to this?” asked Jake.

“The knowledge of consequences. Ridley, if your brother turned up on an East Village sidewalk tomorrow, dead from an overdose, can you think of anyone who would be surprised? If your friend here disappeared without a trace, who—other than you—would miss him? Would you like me to go on or do you get the point?”

I got the point like a blow to the solar plexus. I nodded to communicate that.

“Where’s my brother?” I asked him.

“He’s quite a bit safer than he was when we found him. Sit down, Ridley. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you’ll be reunited with Ace.”

I sunk into the leather sofa, more because I felt like I couldn’t hold my own body weight than out of an urge to obey Harriman. Jake stayed by the door.

“What I am going to give you,” he said dramatically, “is what they call in law enforcement ‘the fruits from a poisonous tree.’ You’ll have the knowledge you seek, but you won’t be able to use it to bring justice—just as if it had been obtained in an illegal search and seizure. Your questions will be answered, but you’ll have to be content with that. Shall I continue?”

I thought about it for a second. Maybe, even after all of this, I didn’t want to know. What would I do with the knowledge if I couldn’t share it, couldn’t pursue it, couldn’t endeavor to put wrong things right? Maybe I was better off not ever knowing what had happened to all of us. But I nodded my assent.

“Max was a crusader. He saw a wrong, a system that was failing, and he sought to correct it. But reforming a government system is slow work indeed, and in the meantime, children were dying. Children were being abused, neglected, fucked up in a hundred different ways by people who neither loved them nor wanted them or didn’t know what to do with them even if they did. Meanwhile, other couples were desperately seeking children, unable to conceive for whatever reasons, on long waiting lists for adoptions. Through his foundation, Max encountered many of these people, knew their desperation, knew what loving, affluent homes they could offer needy children. He was deeply frustrated by that knowledge, seeing these people as wasted resources.

“Max conceived of a way to help these kids, and he convinced others to help them as well. He called his endeavor Project Rescue.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Harriman as he pushed himself off the edge of his desk and began pacing the floor like a trial lawyer giving his closing arguments. Jake stayed by the door and kept his eyes on the older man as well. His face was a mask; I couldn’t even imagine what he was thinking.

“Project Rescue had two different facets. One was the group lobbying to pass the Safe Haven Law in New York State, which would allow mothers to abandon their children to places like hospitals, clinics, fire departments, whatever, no questions asked. Those children were absorbed into the child welfare system…totally above board. But the other was a more nebulous function, whereby cooperating medical staff at clinics that serviced the poorer communities were able to anonymously notify Project Rescue about certain children who were being abused and neglected. Many of these physicians and nurses did so quite innocently, thinking that Project Rescue had some special pull with the government agencies that investigated child abuse cases.”

“But in fact,” interrupted Jake, “they were marking them as children in need of rescue.”

“That’s right,” said Harriman. “Now, while the concept behind Project Rescue was quite noble, the execution was a little less so. Someone actually had to remove the children from their homes. And this was something with which your uncle was not eager to be involved.”

“And that’s where some of your other clients came in handy,” said Jake.

“Very good, Mr. Jacobsen.”

“What?” I said. “I don’t get it. What do you mean, other clients?”

Harriman gave me the kind of smile one might deliver to a slow student who, in spite of her best efforts, was still very behind in class. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the kind of people I deal with on a daily basis.”

“So…what?” I said, disgusted. “You brokered some kind of deal between Project Rescue and the Mob?”

Harriman cringed dramatically. “Please, Ridley. I said no such thing. And if I were you, I’d never say that again.”

I stared at him, deciding that he was a monster, utterly without morality. He cleared his throat, then continued on. “For a while things went quite smoothly. Physicians and nurses were reporting abuse to Project Rescue. Removals were ‘hired out.’ Children were going to good homes; no one with clean hands was involved directly with anything questionable. And money was being made. A lot of it.”

“They were selling the children?” I asked, my disgust and horror mounting.

Harriman shrugged. “This was an expensive operation. And not everyone was involved for the ‘good of the children,’ if you know what I mean.”

He was so level, so unemotional about it all, it was hard to believe the things he was saying. He was telling me that Max colluded with organized crime to abduct children from their homes and families and sell them to strangers. Wealthy, important strangers. I thought of those foundation dinners glittering with star power, and I wondered how many of those people had bought their children from Project Rescue.

“The most important thing to your uncle was that no one got hurt. So when Teresa Stone was killed during the removal of her child, Jessie, Max was furious. At this point, he wanted to close down the operation, but by then it was bigger than him. The people involved were making a lot of money and no one was eager to give that up.”

Harriman sat down across from me, poured three glasses of water from a tray that held a sweating crystal pitcher and matching glasses. “You look a little pale.” He held out a glass to me but I didn’t take it from him. He placed it back on the tray.

“Max was afraid then that they’d created something he could no longer control. And he was right.”

“How many children were there?” asked Jake, moving to stand behind me.

Harriman shook his head. “There’s no way to know,” he said with a laugh. “I mean, it’s not like anyone kept a log.”

Jake looked like a statue, cold, paralyzed by anger. I wasn’t sure he could open his mouth again if he wanted to. “What happened to Jake?” I asked. “We know his mother abandoned him and then went back for him. We know he was abducted. How did he wind up back in the system?”

Harriman showed me his palms. “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that. All I can say is that people who think they can buy children probably don’t have a crisis of conscience when it comes to returning their merchandise. I mean, think about all those people who buy purebred puppies and bring them to the pound when they bark too much or shit on the carpet.”

I cringed at the comparison. But Harriman was right about something. It shouldn’t be as easy to get a child as it is to get a puppy. I looked over at Jake. His face was pale, his mouth a thin line. Anger was coming off him in waves.

“So you think I was ‘removed’ by Project Rescue from my home because Dr. Jones thought I was being abused, but the family I was sold to decided I was too much trouble and then abandoned me at a Project Rescue site?”

“It’s possible,” said Harriman, looking at Jake. “I’m sorry, son. I really don’t know. There’s just no way to know these things.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me that my father was a part of this? That he knew?”

“I don’t know if your father knew about the other side of Project Rescue.”

“He was the doctor to all four of those missing children, Ridley,” Jake said gently. He came to sit beside me, put a hand on my leg.

“Fine. But that doesn’t mean he was the one who ‘flagged’ the children. It could have been anyone at that clinic. Any nurse or any other doctor.”

Jake looked at me sadly. “Then how did he wind up with you?”

We all sat there silent for a second. Then I turned to look at Harriman again. “Am I Jessie Stone?”

He looked at me, and I thought I saw the glimmer of compassion in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “You are. And I only know this because your case was special.”

“Special how?”

“I have an agreement with Ben and Grace, Ridley. You need to speak to them.”

“Are you telling me that my parents bought me?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that, Ridley. You need to talk with Ben and Grace.”

“But I’m asking you,” I said.

I thought about the man I had always thought was my father. I knew his face, his hands, the feel of his arms around me so well. I thought that I came from that place, that his skin was my skin. But he bought me, like a house or a new car. Our family, everything about it a false front, pretty from the outside, hollow and empty at its core.

“What about Ace?”

“Ace,” Harriman said slowly. “Ace is not a Project Rescue baby.”

“What? I don’t understand. I thought…”

“Again, Ridley, you’ll have to discuss that with Ben and Grace.” I noticed he never referred to them as my parents.

I didn’t know how to feel. I was floating, suspended in the air, wondering what the ground was going to feel like when I hit it hard, when the reality of this situation brought me down.

“Is it still happening?” asked Jake, breaking my thoughts.

“I have no knowledge of any such enterprise. As far as I know, it ended when Project Rescue stopped participating.”

“How can we believe that?” I said, feeling a strange desperation. “You said yourself it had grown beyond Max.”

“It’s not my concern what you believe, Ridley,” he said, standing, his voice going cold. “All that concerns me is that you keep your fucking mouth shut. Don’t make me fail in my promise to Max. Don’t make me silence you.”

Jake got up and walked toward Harriman and I pulled at his hand. But he shook me off and in the next second his powerful fist connected with Harriman’s jaw. Harriman issued a kind of “Oof,” and stumbled back. I thought he would fall but he caught himself against the edge of his desk. I jumped up and grabbed Jake’s arm before he could go after him again.

“Stop it. There’s no point,” I said, but he didn’t look at me, kept his eyes on Harriman. Coolly, Harriman pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the blood that made a line down his jaw.

“Feel better now?” he asked Jake. “I’m going to do you a favor and not hold that against you. You’ve had a rough time.” I felt Jake tense, as if he was going to throw another punch, but I held on to him tight.

“There are no guarantees in this life, kids. Loved or not loved, abused or cherished, adored or neglected…We don’t choose what happens to us, we only choose how we react to it. Jake, you’ve had it rough. Ridley, you’ve had it pretty good. But you’re both here, alive and healthy. And you’ve found each other. Make the most of it. It’s more than a lot of people have.”

There was a Ridley who wanted to lie down on the couch and sob. There was a Ridley who wanted to throw herself at Alexander Harriman and pummel him with all the strength of her anger and her sorrow. There was a Ridley who wanted to run from this man and never think of him or what he’d told her ever again. There was a Ridley who wanted to go to the police and the media and fuck the consequences to her, to Ace, to her parents, to Jake, and to all the Project Rescue babies out there living their beautiful lies.

He was right about all this information seeming like the fruits from a poisonous tree. What could we do with any of it? I felt dead inside. I searched for more questions for him, knowing that this was the last chance I would ever have to ask them. But I couldn’t think of one.

“My father would never be a part of something like this. Never.”

I looked at Jake. More than anything, I wanted him to believe that. But I looked in his face and saw that he didn’t.

Harriman shrugged. “It would be hard to convince the authorities of that, given his position, all the work he did for the legitimate arm of Project Rescue, his relationship to Max, and his possession of you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. The word possession threw me.

Finally I managed, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Max is gone. If this comes out, someone is going to have to answer for Project Rescue. You’re the only link between the criminal and legitimate arms of Project Rescue. What do you think that will mean for your father? To his career? To all the good he’s tried to do in his life? It’ll ruin him, at the very least.”

I was numb. I looked at Jake, who seemed to have softened a little, as if an acceptance that he might never know the full story had washed over him and given him some small peace. He came and sat beside me. I moved in close to him and he pulled me into his arms. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to him.

“It’s all right,” he said into my hair. “It’s okay. Let’s get out of here.”

“Where’s my brother?” I said, remembering with a start.

Harriman walked to a door toward the back of his office and opened it. In it there was a large conference table and several desks. On a long leather couch lay my brother. He wasn’t beaten or bound, just completely passed out. He was pale except for his eyes, which had blue canyons beneath them. He was sprawled there, an arm draping on the floor. He looked like a corpse.

“His girlfriend put up more of a fight than he did,” said Harriman. “Today he winds up on my couch. Tomorrow it’s an alley on the Lower East Side. Today he’s alive. Tomorrow…up to you.”

I wish I could tell you that something miraculous happened here, that by some tremendous act of heroism we were able to outwit Alexander Harriman. I wish I could tell you that the cavalry came in and we were all saved and justice was done. But all we could do was pull Ace to his feet and drag him toward the door.

Alexander Harriman was right about something else. I’m not sure how he knew me so well. The knowledge of consequences was a powerful deterrent. Even if he hadn’t threatened Ace’s life, was I really prepared to bring this down on my father? Was I prepared to ask him to pay for what he might or might not have done? Was I strong enough to expose Project Rescue? Righteous enough? In that moment, the answer to all those questions was no.

Remember how we started this, though, talking about the little things. How they can affect the course of our lives more profoundly than any of the major decisions we make. More than where you went to college, more than who you married…or didn’t, more than what you chose to do with your life. In this case, it was that cell phone.

As I hesitated in the cab on arriving at Harriman’s office, I did something silly and desperate, something straight out of the movies. Just me being a dork again. I pressed the call button on my phone and stuck it in my pocket. I knew it would call the last person who’d called me, Detective Salvo. I didn’t know if it would work, if he’d be able to hear anything or if he’d be able to use it to figure out our location. It was just the last-ditch effort of a frightened person way out of her league. It turned out not to be so silly after all.

In the bits and pieces of conversation he was able to pick up through the fabric of my jacket, some of the foggy places in his investigation started to come clear. And as Jake and I emerged from Harriman’s office onto Central Park West, Ace unconscious between us, the street was a sea of squad cars. Detective Salvo stood waiting on the sidewalk, leaning against his unmarked Caprice.

“Ms. Jones, Mr. Jacobsen, good to see you both healthy. Who’s your friend?”

“He’s my brother,” I answered defensively. He was, after all, and always would be, blood or no blood.

He nodded. “Mr. Jacobsen, I’m going to ask you to place your weapon on the ground and kick it out of your reach, please. Then place your hands on your head.”

Jake did as he was told, while I held the bulk of Ace’s weight. Two paramedics emerged from an ambulance that I hadn’t noticed when we first stepped out into the night. I released Ace to them and they placed him on the gurney.

“Is he hurt?” one of them asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “I don’t know. He’s high, I think.”

I looked down at my brother and just felt so sad for him. Then I glanced up to see Detective Salvo watching me. “Rough couple of days, Ridley,” he said quietly.

“How did you find us?” I asked.

He held up his cell phone. “Nice work,” he said. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

I shook my head.

“You two need to come with me,” he said. “We have a lot of talking to do.”

“Are you arresting us?” asked Jake.

“Not at the moment. But it’s in your best interest, I think, to cooperate. Otherwise I can do that. I’ll charge you with the murder of Christian Luna, Mr. Jacobsen. And Ridley, I’ll charge you with aiding and abetting. Shall I read you your rights?”

I looked at Jake and shook my head. “We’ll come with you,” I said.

“Good thinking,” said Detective Salvo.

“How much of that did you hear?” I asked, realizing suddenly what I’d done by making that call.

“Enough,” he said as he led me to his car, Jake right behind us.

“Then you know I can’t tell you anything.”

“I heard enough that you don’t have to,” he said.

I thought, If Detective Salvo knows everything I’m not supposed to tell the police, then what’s going to happen to Ace, to my parents? I stopped walking then. I felt as if I had lead in my chest, thinking about my brother who wasn’t my brother and my parents who weren’t my parents and what was going to happen to all of us because of the choices I made. I thought about my uncle Max and what he’d tried to do…and what he’d done instead. I thought about him dying, knowing the horrible consequences of his good intentions. None of it could be undone. Justice would not be served. Where was the balance I had always believed in? And then, just for a second, I did wish I had never stepped in front of that van. With all my heart and soul, I wished for ignorance again.

I was suddenly having trouble taking in air and all I could hear was my own labored breathing. I heard Jake say something. Detective Salvo’s voice sounded worried and far away. There was a light show of stars in front of my eyes, white noise in my brain, and then everything tilted and went black.

I regained consciousness for a second in the back of an ambulance, my head pounding. I reached up to touch it and felt a bandage. My fingers came back damp with blood. Jake was there. Detective Salvo, too.

“What happened?” I said. But I didn’t stay awake long enough to hear the answer.

In the hallway of a busy hospital, young people in green scrubs rushed back and forth. I could hear a voice over the intercom, smell bandages and disinfectant. Jake was holding my hand, looking at me. He looked so worried. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“You passed out,” he said. “I didn’t catch you in time and you hit your head on the sidewalk hard. You have a…”

But then he faded away.

When I woke up again it was dark and quiet. I could hear the soft beeping of a heart monitor and it took me a second to realize that it was my heart being monitored. Scratchy, sterile-smelling sheets, hard mattress, metal guardrail. Light shone in from beneath the door, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw a form sitting in a chair across from me. I’d recognize him anywhere.

“Dad?”

“Ridley,” he answered, getting up quickly and walking over to me. “How are you, lullaby?”

“My head hurts.”

He placed a gentle hand on my forehead. “I bet,” he said.

“What happened?”

“You passed out, and before anyone could catch you, you hit your head on the sidewalk. Gave yourself a nasty concussion and lost a lot of blood.”

I tried to remember falling and, in doing so, all the events of the day came back to me in a rush: the diner windows exploding in a shower of glass, the church, finding Ace missing, Alexander Harriman’s office.

“Dad,” I said, releasing a sob. “So many lies.”

My father sighed and pulled a chair over to the bed. He sat heavily and rested his head on one hand. When he lifted his face to me again, I could see that he’d been crying. The sight of it frightened me. The face I’d always looked to for comfort was shattered.

“Dad. Who am I?” I tried to sit up and realized by the warbling of the room that it wasn’t going to happen.

He shook his head slowly. “You’re Ridley. You’re my Ridley. You’ll always be that.”

There was truth in this that I recognized. But it wasn’t the whole truth and we both knew it. “No more lies, Dad.”

“It’s not a lie,” he said, nearly yelling. “You couldn’t be any more my daughter.”

I knew if he could, he’d try to pull his cloak of denial over us both. But it was no use. It didn’t fit anymore. I’d outgrown it.

“I am Ridley, Dad. But I wasn’t always Ridley. Once I was Jessie Amelia Stone, daughter of Teresa Stone. A woman now dead because of Project Rescue.”

He looked at me blankly for a second. There were lines around his eyes I hadn’t seen before. The skin on his hands looked dry and papery. They were the hands of an old man. He rested his head in them.

“No,” he said through his fingers.

“Did you know, Dad? Did you know what they were doing?”

He shook his head vigorously. “No,” he said firmly. “I told you everything I knew about Project Rescue. If they did what that detective thinks they did, I had no idea. You know me, Ridley. You know I would never do that. Don’t you?”

I didn’t know if I could believe him. That was the worst thing about all of this. There was no one I could trust. Everyone had an agenda, good or bad, a reason to hide the truth from me.

“Then how did you wind up with me, Dad? If you didn’t know, how did I become Ridley Jones?”

He looked at me with profound sadness. It mimicked perfectly the expression I’d seen on Max’s face the night my father closed the study door on him.

The door to my hospital room pushed open then and in came my mother. She looked stronger than my father, more reserved. Her eyes were dry and she wore a faint, sad smile on her face. I didn’t know how long she had been listening and I didn’t know how much she knew to begin with. I looked at her and thought of the butterfly at Union Square. She came to stand by my bed and put a cool, dry hand to my head, as if in some motherly instinct to check my temperature.

“It’s time, Ben. Ridley’s right. No more lies.” She kept her eyes on my face but I couldn’t read her expression. All I could think was how different she was from me. There was nothing of my face in hers.

“No, Grace. We made a promise,” he almost whispered.

“Max is dead,” my mother said harshly, the word dead like a stone that she threw. My father looked startled by her tone. “I don’t want to keep this secret anymore. It’s caused too much damage already. If we’d have been honest from the beginning, Ridley would never have been vulnerable to this kind of nightmare in the first place.”

My father seemed to sink down in his chair. He shook his head slowly.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said.