The Book of Lies (25 page)

“I can’t leave her!” I tell him.

My dad is silent. From the look on his face, he has no such problem—and as he darts from the room, I’m once again reminded what a stranger he is to me.

“I—I didn’t know who she was. I wouldn’t do that,” Serena insists, and as she kneels down across from me, she reaches over Naomi’s unconscious body and grips my wrist. Her touch is clammy and unsure, but as she holds on, she clenches my wrist until I finally look up at her. “Please—I need to tell you this, Cal. This— I’m not like this. I’d never hurt anyone. I was just—”

“Serena, can we not—?”

“I just wanted to protect you,” she blurts, her voice stronger than ever.

I freeze at the words—the same words I say to every client every day. But for once— I know she’s talking about my dad, too, but— It’s been a long time since someone was protecting
me.

“Did I say something wrong?” she asks, reading my expression.

I shake my head, staring down at her hand on my wrist.

“Cal, move!”
my dad calls from the stairs.

Without another word, Serena helps me lift Naomi fireman style over my shoulder. Naomi’s heavier than she looks, and she looks pretty heavy. I hear the comic getting crushed in my backpack. “Cal, we need to go.”

Serena’s right about that. But as I burst out onto the second-floor landing, I notice that the back bedroom door on my left is now open. It was closed before. For a split second, I peer inside and spot two bodies lying on the bed, their necks bent awkwardly. Mr. and Mrs. Johnsel. Both dead.

“Oh, God,” Serena whimpers, the tears coming fast. But if Ellis is still in the house—

“Go!”
I shout, shoving the hips of Naomi’s unconscious body into Serena’s back. “Hurry!”

The wooden stairs rumble and squeal as we circle down at full speed. Carrying Naomi, I’m off balance, but not by much. As for Serena, she’s the one who needs the missing handrails, looking like she’s about to pass out. She’s too nice for this.

Ahead of us, my dad had a good head start, but as we reach the main floor, he’s just standing there on the last step, still holding the trophy and staring at something in the living room.

“Move!”
I yell.

But I quickly see why he doesn’t.

“I’d like the Book of Lies now,” Ellis announces in full police uniform as he taps the tip of his air gun against his open palm. “And Cal . . . I haven’t forgotten what you did to my dog.”

53

I
don’t even know what a Book of Lies is,” I tell him.

“I know you found it,” Ellis says, calm as ever. He blocks the way out and pushes his copper hair back from his forehead. “In the wallpaper. The rest of the Map.”

“That’s not what you . . . what’d you call it again? A Book of Lies?”

“Now you’re stalling. People stall when they’re scared, Cal. Scared little boys whose mothers get taken away,” he says. “My father cut me with that same blade.”

I look at my father, then over to Ellis. “You know nothing about me.”

“Right. Next time try saying that without your voice cracking,” Ellis says. “Life is a monster, Calvin. Especially when it doesn’t turn out the way you hoped. But that doesn’t mean you can hide from it.”

This time I don’t say a word.

“Exactly,” Ellis adds. “The Prophet said you’d understand that one.”

In front of me, Serena freezes at the word. Next to her, my dad does the same. The Prophet. Who the hell’s he talking about?

“Ellis, listen to me, when you lost your mom—”

“Don’t try sympathy! I’m not one of your homeless pets!”

“No, you’re just one of those normal guys who spends time with someone named
the Prophet
. Does that sound like a rational thought to you?” I say.

“How do you think I knew you were coming back here?” Ellis asks.

This time, I’m the one who freezes. No one—not even Roosevelt—knew we were making this second visit to the house. Besides myself, Naomi, and her assistant, the only people who knew were—

I stare again at Serena. Then my father.

I see her only from behind as Serena wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, her whole body shivering. She sways back and forth, barely able to stand. On her right, my dad barely moves at all. He breathes like a bull—slowly and deeply through gritted teeth—puffing faster and faster with each breath. He’s starting to fume. The way he studies Ellis—chin down, stabbing him with an angry glare—my father’s not the least bit scared. Everyone has their breaking point. And the way his grip tightens around the top of the trophy—

“
You’re done!
” my dad detonates, leaping forward before I even realize he’s moving.

Stumbling backward, Ellis is clearly unprepared. My father’s not fast, but at six foot two, he plows forward like a falling tree. With one hand, he grips Ellis’s shoulder; with the other, he swings the trophy as if it’s the hammer of Thor.

The impact is frightening. Ellis’s jaw is rocked sideways with a gob of flying red spit as the marble base of the trophy slams into the side of his mouth. I was wrong before. When my dad hit Naomi, he was holding back. He’s not holding back anymore.

Ellis tries lifting his gun, but my dad’s momentum, his size—he’s just smothering. Pressing his forearm like a billy club across Ellis’s neck, my father sends Ellis crashing backward into the wall as the shelves of needlepoints and religious candles tumble from their nests. But Ellis was a cop. He knows how to fight back.

Gripping my dad by his lapels, Ellis spins to the right, twirling my father as though they’re ballroom dancing and slamming him backward into the wall. On impact, another shelf of needlepoints and candles tumbles and bounces across the floor.

I go to put Naomi down, but there’s no need. My father’s doing just fine.

Ellis thinks he has the upper hand, but within seconds his eyes go wide, and I realize my dad just kneed him in the nuts. This isn’t a burst of raw rage. This is a prison fight. And with Ellis in his police uniform—I swear my dad’s smiling. It’s already over.

For the past two days, I’ve known my father was hiding something. But as I watch him now—his lip curled in a snarl—I finally see what he was really trying to contain.

“We’re finished,” he whispers to Ellis.

With a final ballroom spin, my father flings Ellis to the right, not even realizing as he sends him whipping backward toward the double-hung window in the hall.

“The glass!” I call out.

He doesn’t hear. Or care.

For a moment, the large glass pane crackles like ice in warm water, and with the full impact of Ellis’s back, shards of glass explode outward like fireworks, sucking Ellis into the wide black hole created by his own weight. As he crashes out the window and disappears, a nasty winter wind leaps inside and swirls through the hall. We hear a thud outside.

Still holding Naomi over my shoulder, I rush to the window, which overlooks the concrete driveway on the west side of the house. Like a bloody snow angel, Ellis is flat on his back, the right side of his face covered with cuts and scrapes. He’s gasping—the wind knocked out of him—but already struggling to his feet. On my far left, at the end of the driveway, Benoni is bucking wildly in the backseat of Ellis’s rental car, her barks muffled by the windows.

Behind me, Serena is bawling, her arms curled around herself.

“Y-You still have the comic strip?” my father asks, putting a hand on my shoulder.

I spin around and look him straight in the eye. My father looks exhausted, his mouth open, his breathing heavy again. For a moment, I wonder if it’s all an act, but the way he’s cupping his waist . . . I look down and see blood soaking through his shirt. His bullet wound has reopened. Outside, Ellis is almost up, reaching for his gun. We’re in no shape for a second round.

“C’mon,” I tell him, motioning us to the front door. “We need to go.”

54

H
i, Clydene—I’m looking for Special Agent Guggenheim,” Scotty said into his headset.

“And who may I say is calling?” Clydene asked.

“Agent Naomi Molina from ICE would like to talk with him.”

“And is Agent Molina on the phone right now?”

Scotty rolled his eyes and rolled back slightly in his wheelchair. The FBI was always such a pain in the ass. “I have her waiting on hold,” he said.

“Then can you put her on, so that way Agent Guggenheim won’t be waiting when
he
gets on?”

Rolling forward and leaning both elbows on the desk of his small cubicle, Scotty reached for a small red egg of Silly Putty and cracked it open. It didn’t have the smell he loved when he was a kid, but as he tweezed it from the egg and squeezed it in his fist, it was still the best stress relief around.

“Clydene, you show me your boss, I’ll show you mine,” Scotty said.

“That’s fine,” Clydene agreed, “as long as this is a real call from your actual boss and not just you calling for the third time today, pretending to have her when you actually don’t.” She paused for a long breath. “We’re all in this together, Scotty, but Guggenheim’s still the number three guy here. He doesn’t talk to assistants.”

Scotty kneaded the Silly Putty with his middle finger. For the past ten minutes, he’d been dialing Naomi on the other line. She still wasn’t picking up. But as he’d learned when he’d first started—when he’d first met Timothy—some things had to be done without the boss.

“Clydene, I’m gonna say this slowly so you understand it,” Scotty began. But before he could finish, he looked up and noticed the two tall shadows that were now standing over his cubicle.

With a pivot of his wheelchair, he stared up at two men in cheap navy suits and matching Rolex Submariner watches. Definitely Bureau agents.

“Did you send anyone over here?” Scotty asked into the phone.

“What’re you talking about?” Clydene replied.

The agents didn’t say a word.

“Lemme call you back,” Scotty said as he hung up the phone, never taking his eyes off his two new visitors.

“I take it you’re Scotty,” the taller one said as he flashed his credentials. “Agent Randy Aldridge. FBI Counterintelligence Division. You mind me asking your clearance levels?”

“Why would—?”

“I checked the signature on that name check request you put in earlier. You always forge your supervisor’s signature?” Aldridge asked. “Now if I don’t get your levels, I’ll be asking you for your wrists instead,” he said, patting at his handcuffs.

Scotty studied them both. This was why he hated the Bureau. “Top secret with SCI access,” he replied confidently. “So you might as well cozy up and acknowledge that you wanna know as much about our case as we wanna know about whatever it is that made you leave your office and come all the way down here.”

The two agents exchanged a glance. The FBI was definitely a pain in the ass.

“There’s a reason your request didn’t bring back any records,” said the shorter agent, a blond man with close eyes and flat ears. “Even these days, the Bureau has to be careful when it comes to Mikhel Segalovich.”

“Who’s Mikhel Segalovich?”

“That’s his real name,” Agent Aldridge said. “At Ellis Island, he went by Sigalowitz. But here in the U.S., he was known as Mitchell Siegel.”

55

“—ou okay?” a man’s voice echoed. “Can you hear me? . . . You okay?”

Blinking back to consciousness, Naomi was groggy, lost. That stench of ammonia. Smelling salts, she realized as she stared up at the young African-American man standing over her.

From his white uniform, plus the bright overhead lights . . .

“Do you know your name?” the male nurse asked.

“Wh-Where is this?” Naomi asked. She tried turning to the side, but her head . . . It wouldn’t move. She touched her neck. There was a huge plastic collar.
Am I paralyzed?

“You’re at Huron Hospital, ma’am. Your friends brought you into our emergency room. Can you move your toes?” the nurse asked. “Do you know your name?”

“Get this offa me!” Naomi shouted, tugging at the Velcro along the collar.

“Ma’am, don’t!” The nurse grabbed Naomi’s arms, then undid the plastic collar and checked the back of her neck. “Can you move your toes?”

Naomi kicked both feet out and tried to sit up, but she was far too dizzy to make it. She touched the back right side of her throbbing skull but felt only the thick gauze pad that was wrapped around her head.

“My purse, my gun . . .” Naomi blurted as she felt herself up. “They took my gun!”

The nurse stepped back, wary.

“Relax—nuhhh—I’m a federal agent,” Naomi said, gripping the metal rail on the gurney and finally sitting up straight. “I need a phone. Have you seen my—?” From her pants pocket, she pulled out her phone and earpiece.

“Lord, didn’t you gimme any painkillers?” she asked as the throbbing got worse.

“You were unconscious,” the nurse began, though before he could finish, Naomi was done dialing, focused now on her earpiece.

“C’mon, Scotty, pick up,” she muttered as it rang in her ear.

“You have a laceration and contusion, ma’am. You need staples to close that up.”

“Fine. Put ’em in.” But all Naomi really cared about was the endless ringing of the phone in her ear. Something was wrong. “Where the hell are you, Scotty?”

56

Y
ou left your dad and Serena upstairs?” Roosevelt scolds through my phone. “By themselves?”

“What was I supposed to do? Bring them along all three of us marching arm in arm and completely matching the
two white men with a light-skinned black woman
APB that I’m sure is now out for us?” I lower my voice as I reach the supermarket’s checkout lane and dump my only items—vinegar and fabric softener—onto the old conveyor belt that rumbles as it rolls.

Behind the counter, an Arab teenager with a cowboy hat belt buckle doesn’t bother to look up at me. In this neighborhood, I understand why. The market is called Star’s Grocery, but with the metal bars across the front windows and the armed-with-a-shotgun African-American man sitting high up in the crow’s-nest seat that overlooks the front of the store, it’s clear how poor the area is. It’s why I picked it. Neighborhoods like this hate calling the cops.