Sliver Of Truth

Or the harsh conversations between Max and my mother. She disapproved of the parade of anonymous women through Max’s life, resented bitterly their presence in her home and social life. They argued about it, but only when they thought my father was out of earshot. I wondered now why she cared. In the anger of their tones, was there something more? Intimacy? Jealousy?

I thought about those women. Who were they? All I remember was that they all seemed to be blondes, all in high heels, beautiful and distant, with something cheap about them. Were they call girls? Maybe some of them were. I didn’t really know. I never knew their names, never saw any of them more than once. What did that say about Max? I could have started making connections here: the picture Nick Smiley had painted of Max, the accusations of matricide, how Max had never had a serious relationship with a woman. But I didn’t. Not yet.

Max was not a handsome man. His skin was sallow and pockmarked from the acne he’d suffered as a teenager. His dark hair was thinning. He was big, awkward with his size. But he had a magnetic charisma that drew people to him like metallic dust. And, of course, there was his outrageous wealth. This drew people as well. But even though he was always surrounded by people, he carried an aura of aloneness. In fact, he was the loneliest man I’ve ever known. Maybe because he had so many secrets to hide.

After being dropped off at my apartment, I lay on the couch in the dark and searched my memories again for Max, for moments when I might have glimpsed the man and not my creation of him. But I couldn’t get past the myth, the one to which I had been clinging. When I was a kid, I used to bring my face up close to the television screen and try to look beyond its edges. I was sure there was more to see. But there was nothing, just the two-dimensional image. Now I tried to look beyond the borders of my memory. There was nothing there.

I tried not to think about Esme and how she’d died. I remembered what Jake had said, about how scared she’d been. I’d seen the fear, too. It seemed she’d had good reason to be afraid. Who had killed her and why, I couldn’t begin to imagine. I recalled the last words we’d said to each other.

I’ll keep swinging until I know all the answers, I told her.

You do and you’ll wind up like that New York Times reporter, she’d answered.

The memory was ugly and I cringed inside thinking of it.

I PERIODICALLY PICKED up the phone and dialed Jake’s cell, got his voice mail, and left a message or hung up. I tried not to think about the blood on his floor or what kind of trouble he might be in, or if he was hurt…or worse. Otherwise, my panic and helplessness were like something alive in my chest.

I called Ace.

“Took you long enough to get back to me,” he said by way of answering the phone, presumably having seen my number on his caller ID. Or maybe I was the only person who ever called him. He was living on the Upper West Side near Lincoln Center in a one-bedroom apartment looking out over the Hudson. It was pretty nice, though sparsely decorated with just a couch, desk, computer, and television in the living room, a bed and dresser in the bedroom. He claimed he was trying to write a novel, a claim that annoyed me to no end for reasons I can’t explain.

“I’ve got things going on, Ace,” I said, maybe more harshly than he deserved. “The whole world doesn’t revolve around you.”

“Christ,” he said. “What’s your problem?”

I unloaded. I told him everything that had happened over the last few days, everything I’d learned, everything I’d found, about my trip to Detroit, about Esme, about Jake missing. I even told him about the text message in spite of its ominous warning. When I was done I went silent, waited for him to make some sarcastic comment, tell me to move on, or claim that I was losing it completely. He didn’t say anything right away. I listened to him breathing.

“Ace, are you even listening?”

Sometimes he’d channel-surf when he was talking to me, or I’d hear him tapping on his keyboard, engaged in an online chat during our conversation. But God forbid I’d get a call on the other line while he was talking, or if he got the sense I wasn’t giving him my full attention. He’d flip out. I know; he’s kind of an asshole.

“I’m listening,” he said. He sounded strange and grave.

I paused. “Did you ever get the sense that Max was someone…else?” I asked. “Did you ever see anything in him that would make you think there was something wrong with him? Like really wrong with him?”

He let go of a sigh, or maybe he was exhaling smoke-even though he’d given up cigarettes as part of his detox after rehab.

“Well,” he said softly, “I never saw him the way you saw him.”

I didn’t say anything; I could tell he was collecting his thoughts.