No one who knew him could truly say they knew him.
Sure, they knew his name, but as it was later revealed, most everybody who thought they knew his name only knew a name he had given them, and at last count the name he gave had 41 variations.
No one seemed to even be in agreement on where he came from, or what ethnicity he was.
He had light skin, but coal black eyes, and his accent puzzled everyone.
His accent seemed to vary from day to day, and sometimes even from conversation to conversation.
There were those who swore he had to be of western European origin, perhaps Portuguese.
There was a consensus that he must have come to the eastern United States when he was in his early teens, and that learning English from people in either Vermont or Maine, coupled with how he had learned to pronounce English words in his native tongue, is where the untraceable accent came about.
Of course, that was all speculation.
While a few people had actually ventured to ask him questions about his background directly (which were never answered directly), most people considered that rude and never engaged in what they considered untoward behavior.
Of course stories about him sprung up almost daily. He was said to be a war criminal in hiding, or perhaps a former mobster in the Witness Protection Program. Some even bandied about the idea that he was the son of an oil-rich Middle Eastern Sheik who had been banished for a offense so damning that he had been forced to relocate to the States and never return to his homeland.
Unbeknownst to everyone, there was a hint of truth in a few of the stories.
Just a hint. The truth, the whole truth, was so fantastic that no one who discovered it would ever believe it. It was just that improbable, that implausible.
The truth was...well, it'll have to wait until I get back, there's someone at the door.
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