Lisa Unger - Sliver Of Truth

I thought about the time line of his story. It seemed credible enough under the circumstances. It was still hard for me to believe that this was my life now, that I’d wound up with him here at all. And while I didn’t totally trust this man, I didn’t fear him, either. And these days, that was something.

“Okay, so where’s the rest of the FBI? If you really do work for them, why isn’t there anyone to help us?”

“Because-don’t you get it? I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be behind a desk listening to your phone calls. I’m not supposed to be out here with you.”

“Unsupported?” I asked, using the word he’d used.

He nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “What now?”

He pressed his mouth into a tight line, and glanced at the fire for a second, then back at me.

“I’m open to suggestions,” he said.

“Great.”

“IF YOU REALLY let life take you, if you release control and stop clinging to sameness, you can’t imagine the places you’ll end up. But most people don’t do that. Most people get this death grip on what they know, and the only thing that loosens their grasp is some kind of tragedy. They live in the same town they grew up in, go to the same schools their parents went to, get a job that makes a decent living, find someone they think they love, marry and have children, take the same vacation every year. Maybe they get restless, someone has an affair, there’s divorce. But it will just be the same boring life with the next person. Unless something awful happens-death, house fire, natural disaster. Then people start looking around, thinking, Is this all? Maybe there’s another way to live.”

Max always ranted like this when he was drinking. He was hung up on the concept of “normal” people and how sad they were. He felt that most people were just zombies, sleepwalking through their lives, and would just die without ever leaving even a footprint on the planet. Max was a titan, a shooting star. In his lifetime he was responsible for the erection of thousands of buildings, countless charitable works in countries all over the world. He put at least ten kids that I knew of through college with the scholarship he established in his mother’s name in Detroit. He had to live a big life. That was his normal.

I think most people are just trying to be happy, and that most of their actions, however misguided, are in line with that goal. Most people just want to feel they belong somewhere, want to be loved, and want to feel they’re important to someone. If you really examine all the wrongheaded and messed-up things they do, they can most often be traced back to that basic desire. The abusers, the addicted, the cruel and unpleasant, the manipulators-these are just people who started this quest for happiness in the basement of their lives. Someone communicated to them through word or deed that they were undeserving, so they think they have to claw their way there over the backs of others, leaving scars and creating damage. Of course, they only create more misery for themselves and others.

Even the psychopaths and sociopaths in this world who commit the most heinous possible acts against innocent victims are in this quest for happiness. But their ideas are twisted and black; these people were wired wrong. Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it’s the absence of something.

Was Max an evil man? I still didn’t know. If I’d looked closer, I might have seen signs that told me yes, as Ace did. But I was in his thrall completely. If the series of events that shook the foundation of my life hadn’t occurred, I may never have asked who he really was. I may have lived on in ignorance. A part of me-a big part of me-wishes I’d taken Nick Smiley’s advice; I should have let the dead lie.

I looked down at the file in my lap, trying to reconcile the snapshots in front of me. They were of a man who looked different in every picture; they spanned decades. Max, maybe in his thirties at the time, slimmer than I’d known him, in a white shirt and khakis, exiting a black Mercedes near an abandoned stadium in Sierra Leone, flanked by two men armed with machine guns. Max sporting a full beard, sitting in a Paris café among a group of men, his hand resting on a fat manilla envelope, a wolfish grin on his face. Max shaking hands with a dark-skinned man wearing black robes and a turban. There were numerous shots like these, all vague, taken from a distance. Clandestine meetings around the world in empty fields and parking lots, boatyards and abandoned warehouses. Lots of guns and dangerous-looking men.

The Max Smiley I knew was an internationally renowned real-estate developer, whose business called for international travel. He built luxury condos in Rio, hotels in Hawaii, high-rises in Singapore. He golfed with senators and went deep-sea fishing with Saudi princes. There were always shades of gray in Max’s business, yes, always whispers about whom exactly he conducted his business with. Then the Project Rescue scandal revealed that Max had dealings with organized crime, through his lawyer Alexander Harriman. The FBI starting digging deep into Max’s banking history, though he was legally dead.

“We found hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts.” Dylan’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “And that’s just what we could trace. How much else is out there in accounts I couldn’t link to him or his business or his various ‘charities,’ I couldn’t even begin to guess.”

I put the file on the table and lay down on the couch. I don’t know how long we’d been talking. I should have been resting but sleep didn’t seem like an option. My body was beyond fatigued but my mind was restless.

“And I take it that this money didn’t come from real-estate development.”

“No. Legitimately, Max Smiley was a rich man, making several million a year in pure personal profit. This money came from other dealings. We started watching some of the accounts. There was activity-withdrawals and deposits.”

“That’s what made you think he might still be alive?”

He nodded. “Then our investigation got blocked.”

“By whom?”

“By the CIA. ”

“Why?”

“They told us our surveillance conflicted with an ongoing investigation. We were asked to stand down. Or told to.”

“These men in the photographs, these meetings-what kind of business was he conducting?”

He came over and sat on the floor beside me, took the file from where I’d left it, and pulled a snapshot from the pile.

“These men are affiliated with the Albanian Mafia.”

“How did he know them?” I said. My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was thin and distant. Black thoughts were blooming in my mind. I thought of the Project Rescue babies. I had to wonder how much more there was to it all than I had even imagined. Dylan ran down the list of other men in the photographs. Known terrorists, men associated with the Russian, Italian, and Italian-American Mafia.

“So whatever his dealings were with these people, this is why the CIA is still looking for him.”

“I think so.”

I wondered if he was being vague on purpose, if he was stalling. I asked him as much.

“Like I told you, my investigation was blocked. I still don’t know what Max was doing with these men. Here,” he said, pulling out another snapshot that seemed more recent. “These men are CIA operatives. This meeting took place just a month before he died.”

“CIA,” I repeated.

“They could have been undercover. He most likely didn’t know who he was really with. Their investigation started long before ours did.”

“So Myra Lyall could have stumbled onto any of these dealings-whatever they were. Any one of these people could be responsible for her death. For Sarah Duvall, for Grant Webster. Any one of them could have taken me in the park, come after me in the hospital.”