The Book of Lies (5 page)

“This gonna be another sermon?”

“Boy, you think you’re the only one who likes saving people?” he teases, though I know it’s no joke. No matter how happy he is, Roosevelt would kill to have his old parish back. It’s not ego; it’s just his mission. He’ll never say it, but I know that’s the reason he took this job. And though I bet his family could easily buy him a new church, well, it’s the same reason he won’t buy us a new van. Some battles you have to fight by yourself. “Think about the Moses story, Cal: Little baby gets dropped in a basket, then grows up thinking he’s Egyptian royalty—until his past comes kickin’ at the door and reveals to him his true purpose.”

“That mean I’m getting the long beard and the sandals?”

“We all hate something about our past, Cal. That’s why we run from it, or compensate for it, or even fill our van with homeless people. But when something like this happens—when your dad shows up—maybe there
is
a bigger purpose. ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good.’ Genesis 50:20.”

Staring down at the pointy tips of my dad’s shoes in my hand, I don’t say a word. When my mom worked in the hospital, she used to lecture us about the importance of good shoes. As a cleaning lady, it was the one personal item she could see in every room. Fancy clothes were replaced by hospital gowns, but under every bed . . .
Show me someone’s shoes, and I’ll show you their lives.

Thanks to that ridiculous mantra, my dad used to always have one pair of shiny black lawyer shoes (even though he was a painter) and a pair of tan cordovans (which my mom was convinced meant you were rich).

Today, in my lap, he’s got black loafers. And not the cheap kind with the tough leather and the seams coming undone. These are nice—buffed and narrow at the toes; Italian leather soles.

I read the label inside.

“What’s wrong?” Roosevelt asks.

“These are Franceschettis.”

He cocks an eyebrow and looks for himself. He’s the one from money. He knows what it means.

“Franceschettis are expensive, aren’t they?” I ask.

“Four hundred bucks a pair.”

“What about his shirt?” I ask, showing him the label on my dad’s bloody silk shirt. Michael Kors. “Is Michael Kors good?”

“Plenty good. As in three-hundred-bucks-a-pop good.”

“On a guy we found on a homeless call,” I point out.

“Maybe they were donated. We get designer clothes all the time.”

I look at the bottom of the shoes. The leather soles barely have a scuff on them. Brand new. Confused, I once again start to stand up, then quickly sit back down.

When I was little and we had company coming over, my father would buy cheap Scotch at the neighborhood liquor store and pour it into a Johnnie Walker Black Label bottle. He did the same when he first started painting signs at restaurants, pouring discount remainder paint into the Benjamin Moore cans he’d have me fish from the hardware store’s trash. My mother used to tease him, calling it his little CIA trick. He never laughed at the joke. For him, appearances mattered.

“Did he say anything in the ambulance?” Roosevelt asks, eyeing the other people in the waiting area. A teenager on crutches stares our way.

“Not much,” I say, lowering my voice. “He told the medics he was coming out of that dump bar on Third Street when some Hispanic kid with big ears pulled a gun and asked for his wallet. When he refused, the kid took the wallet, pulled the trigger, shoved him into a red Jeep Cherokee, and dumped him in the park where we found him.”

“Okay, so that’s a story. He’s
not
homeless. He just got robbed.”

I shake my head, still staring at the shirt’s snazzy black label. “People with three-hundred-dollar shirts and four-hundred-dollar shoes don’t go into low-life bars on Third.”

“What’re you talking about? This is
Florida
. We got stupid rich people
everywhere
. Besides, even if he’s out of place, doesn’t mean he’s out to—” Roosevelt cuts himself off, watching me carefully. “Oh, you think this is like Miss Deirdre, don’t you? No,
no
, boy. This is
not
Miss Deirdre.”

I’ve known Roosevelt for nearly six years. I first met him back when I was an ICE agent (which is just the cooler-sounding acronym for the U.S. government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement). I guarded the ports, stopped terrorist and drug shipments from coming in, and, at least during my first two years, confiscated shipments of fake Sony TVs and counterfeit Levi’s jeans. Until I opened myself up, helped someone I shouldn’t have, and in one horrible moment got fired from my job and plummeted through the second trapdoor in my life.

“Cal, what happened with Miss Deirdre—”

“Can we please go back to my father’s shoes?”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. I know you, Cal. And I know it’s easier to drive around with a van full of strangers where there’s no risk of any emotional investment, but just because you got burned once by letting your guard down doesn’t mean it’ll be the same here. Not everyone you care about will eventually screw you.”

Back during my leap from grace, every newspaper reporter, community leader, and government colleague took me
out
of their Rolodex. Roosevelt, when he heard the story, invited me in. For that alone, I love him like a brother. And while he knows what it’s like to be excommunicated from your kingdom, unlike Roosevelt, I’m no longer waiting for someone to bring me back inside.

Within a minute, I’ve combed through my dad’s shirt and pants pockets. All it gives me is some spare change and a few tabs of nicotine gum. No secrets. Nothing revealing. That is, until I toss the shirt and pants into the plastic chair on my left and get my first good look inside his other shoe. I notice a tiny yellow triangle peeking out from inside. It’s no bigger than the corner of a stamp, but the way it’s tucked in there catches my eye, as if it’s hidden under the leather.

I yank the insole. It comes right out, revealing what’s tucked underneath—

“What? Is it bad?” Roosevelt asks as I pull out a folded-up yellow sheet of paper. As I go to unfold it, a small laminated card drops and clicks against the floor. He hid this here instead of in his missing wallet. It’s got a photo of my dad on it. A commercial driver’s license.

“Says here he’s a truck driver—double and triple trailers, plus hazardous materials,” I say, reading from the back of the license.

Clumsily, rushing, I unfold the yellow sheet. At first, it looks like an invoice, but when I spot the familiar letterhead up top— Aw, crap.

He’s lucky they took away my gun.

7

I
don’t get it. He’s bringing in a shipment?”

“Not just a shipment. A four-ton metal container—y’know, like those ones you see on the backs of trucks.”

“And that’s bad because . . . ?”

“Have you
read
this?” I say to Roosevelt, waving the yellow sheet of paper that—

Roosevelt grabs my wrist and shoots me a look, which is when I notice that half the emergency waiting room is staring our way. A cop in the corner, the teenager on crutches . . . and a creepy older man with a moon chin, who’s holding his arm like it’s broken but showing no signs of pain.

Roosevelt quickly stands up, and I follow him outside, under the overhang of the emergency room’s main entrance. The sky’s still black, and the December wind whips under the overhang, sending the yellow sheet fluttering back and forth in my hand like a dragonfly’s wings.

“We call them
hold notices
,” I explain, reading from the first paragraph. “ ‘. . . wish to inform you that your shipment may experience a short delay. This doesn’t indicate there are any problems with your shipment . . .’ ”

“Doesn’t sound so bad—they’re just saying it’s delayed.”

“That’s only because if they say the word
hold
, all the drug dealers will run away. That’s also why they say
there are no problems.
”

“But there are problems?”

“Look at the letterhead on top—U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”

“That’s where you used to work, right?”

“Roosevelt, I’m trying hard to not be paranoid. I really am. But now my long-lost father just
happens
to be bleeding in the one park that just
happens
to be on the homeless route of his long abandoned son, who just
happens
to’ve worked at the one place that just
happens
to be holding on to the one package that he just
happens
to be trying to pick up? Forget the designer shoes—that’s a helluva lotta happenstance, with an extra-large order of coincidence.”

“I don’t know. Separated all those years, then bringing you together—sometimes the clichés get it right: The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“Not for me. And not with my—”

“Cal?” a deep voice calls out behind me as the emergency room’s glass doors slide open.

I turn around just as Dr. Paulo Pollack joins us outside. Like most doctors, he’s got the God swagger. I just happen to know this one, which made it easier to call him from the ambulance.

“How’s he doing, Paulo?” I ask.

“He’s fine. Luckily, the bullet didn’t hit anything organwise. Looks like it went in on an angle and got trapped under the skin, right above his liver. In this case, it’s good he had a little bit of chub on him.”

“But you got the bullet out?”

Two years ago, Roosevelt and I picked up a homeless girl who had done so much cocaine, the cartilage between her nostrils deteriorated, and the bridge of her nose collapsed. The girl was Dr. Paulo Pollack’s seventeen-year-old niece. From then on, he’s waited to return the favor.

“One cleaned-off slug at your service,” Paulo says, handing me a small plastic bag with an old copper-jacketed bullet. “You know the rules, Cal—it’s your dad’s property, but if the cops come asking . . .”

“Send ’em my way,” I say, squinting hard at the contents of the bag. The single bullet is squatty, with shallow grooves that twist left along the bottom half. I don’t recognize the make and model, but it’s definitely got a unique shape. Won’t be hard to find out.

“When he came in, I could touch his stomach and feel the bullet right under his skin,” Paulo points out. “But when I made the incision—and this is with no pain medication, just some anesthetic by the wound—but even as I tweezed it out, your dad grunted once, but never cried in pain.”

“All those years in prison. He’s lived through worse,” I say.

Roosevelt stares me down. So does the doctor. It’s so damn easy to judge. But as Paulo knows from his niece, no matter how much you want someone back in your life, sometimes it’s the letting-them-back-in part that hurts the most.

“So how long you keeping him for?” I ask.

“
Keeping
him?” Paulo asks. “You watch too many cop shows. I sliced it out, gave him his grand total of five stitches, and let him borrow some hospital scrubs so he wouldn’t have to wear his own blood home. You should be careful, though—he’s overweight, high blood pressure, and although he won’t admit to any chest pains, he’s got the beginnings of myocardial ischemia. Wherever he’s going next, he needs to watch his heart. Otherwise, he’s yours.”

Just behind the doctor’s shoulder, there’s a hushed electric
whoosh
. But it’s not until he steps aside that I spot the tall man with the grassy green eyes and the twisted Irish nose. Dressed in a fresh pair of blue hospital scrubs, my father climbs out of his required wheelchair ride. And shuffles directly toward us.

8

R
oosevelt cuts in front of me and motions back to the yellow sheet in my hand. I stuff it back in my dad’s shoe and cover it up with his bloody silk shirt and pants.

Like kids watching fireworks, Roosevelt and I crane our necks up. My dad’s six foot two. In all the carrying and rushing from the ambulance, this is the first moment he looks it. He’s got a face that reminds me of an egg, made wider at the bottom by his gray-speckled beard, which is trimmed and neat. For a second, it looks like the pain in his side is too much. But when he sees us watching, he takes a deep breath, brushes his fine gray hair from his forehead, and squares his shoulders into a near perfect stance. No question, appearances still matter.

“Cal, I’m inside if you need anything,” Paulo says, and quickly excuses himself.

Roosevelt stays right where he is. By my side.

My father clears his throat, taking a long look at Roo-sevelt, but Roosevelt doesn’t take the hint. I expect my dad to get annoyed . . . maybe even lose his temper the way he used to. But all he does is glance back toward the emergency room and scratch his knuckles against his beard. By his side, his left hand is clenched in a tight fist. Whatever he’s holding in, he’s fighting hard with it.

“I’ll be fine,” I whisper to Roosevelt, motioning him inside. There’s no mentoring with this one.

“I . . . uh . . . I’ll be inside pretending to get coffee,” Roosevelt announces as he heads back through the sliding doors.

We stand silently outside the emergency room entrance. On both sides of the overhang, the rain continues its prickly tap dance. My father lowers himself onto a metal bench and looks my way. I’ve practiced this moment for years. How, depending on the mood I was in, I’d tell him off, or ask him questions, or even embrace him in the inevitable swell of tears and regret that would follow my ruthless verbal assault. But as I sit down next to him, the only thing I notice is the gold U.S. Navy military ring on his right hand. As far as I know, he was never in the military. And as much as I try to make eye contact, he won’t stop staring at the pile of designer clothes and shoes I’m still holding.

“Calvin—”

“Cal,” I correct him. “I go by Cal now.”

“Yeah . . . no . . . I . . . Here’s the thing, Cal—” He cuts himself off. “I’m glad you’re the one who found me.”

It’s a perfect line, delivered with as much polish and determination as my own preplanned speech. The only problem is, it doesn’t answer the only question that matters.

“Where the hell have you been?” I blurt.

“Y’mean with the park? I told you: I was at the bar, then got jumped . . .” He studies me, reading my anger all too well. “Ah. You mean for the past few years.”