The Book of Lies (6 page)

“Yes, Lloyd. For the past
nineteen
years. You left me, remember? And when you went to prison—” My voice cracks, and I curse myself for the weakness. But I’ve earned this answer. “Why didn’t you come back for me?”

Staring over my shoulder, my dad anxiously studies both ends of the U-shaped driveway, then scans the empty sidewalk that runs in front of the hospital. Like he’s worried someone’s watching. “Calvin, is there anything I can possibly say to satisfy that question?”

“That’s not the point. Y-You missed everything in my—” I shake my head. “You missed Aunt Rosey’s funeral.”

I wait for his excuse. He’s too smart to make one. He knows there’s no changing the past. And the way he keeps checking the area, he’s far more worried about the future.

“The doctor told me you drive around and pick up homeless people,” he offers, eyeing the parking garage on our right. “Good for you.”

“Why’s that
good for me
?” I challenge.

“This isn’t a fight, Calvin—”

“Cal.”

“—I just think it’s nice that you help people,” he adds, rechecking the street.

“Oh, so now you like helping people?”

“I’m just saying . . . it’s good to help people.”

“Are you asking me for help, Lloyd?”

For the first time, my father looks directly at me. I know he’s a truck driver. I know about the delivery slip. And I know that whatever it is he’s picking up at the port, he’s not getting that shipment unless he has someone remove the hold notice, a favor that wouldn’t take me more than a single phone call.

“Thank you, but I’m fine,” he tells me, standing slowly from his seat. He’s clearly aching. But as he grips the armrest, I can’t help but stare at his fingers, which are marked by hairy knuckles and crooked pinkies. Just like mine. “Calvin, can we please have the rest of this argument later? With all this pain medication, it’s like everyone’s talking in slow motion.”

I just stare as he limps away. Paulo said he hadn’t given him any pain medication. Just a shot of anesthetic by the wound.

“Hey, Lloyd—you never told me what you do these days. You still painting restaurants?”

“For sure. Lots of painting,” he says, his back still to me.

“That’s great. And you can do it full-time? No odd jobs or anything else to make the rent?”

My father stands up straight and looks back. But in his eyes . . . all I see is panic. Real panic. My father spent eight years in prison. If he’s scared, it’s for something that’s worth being scared about. “Business is really great,” he insists.

“I’m sure it is if you can afford this nice shirt and shoes,” I say, still holding his belongings.

His mouth is open, like he’s ready to say something. It’s as if I have a grip on his scab and I’m slowly pulling it off. That’s it, Lloyd. Tell me what you’re really here for. But instead, he shakes his head slightly, like he’s begging, pleading for me to stay away.

“I—I can handle my own problems, Calvin. Please. . . .”

On our left, an old rumbling car turns into the corner of the hospital’s driveway. The rain glows like a tiny meteor shower in the car’s headlights. “I gotta go,” he says, heading for the car but still scanning the area. Whoever this is, he knows them.

In front of us, a dark green Pontiac Grand Prix pulls up to the emergency room entrance and bucks to a stop right next to me.

“¡Ay, Dios mío!”
a young, fair-skinned black woman with short hair shouts from the driver’s seat.
“¿¡Que paso!?”

“Estoy bien, Serena,”
my dad replies. Serena. When’d my dad learn Spanish?
“Callate,”
he adds. “
No digas nada
, okay?”

Serena’s voice is rushed. She’s scared.
“Pero el cargamento . . . ¿Por favor, yo espero que el cargamento ha sido protegido?”

“¡Escúchame!”
he insists, struggling to stay calm as he turns back to me. “I promise, Calvin,” he tells me as he scoops his clothes and Franceschetti shoes from my arms and slides into the passenger seat of the car. The woman touches my dad’s forearm with the kind of tenderness and affection that comes with a wedding band. She looks about twenty-seven or so. Almost my age.

“I swear, Calvin. I swear I’ll call you,” my dad promises.

The door slams shut, tires howl, and the car disappears—its red taillights zigzagging like twin laser beams into the darkness, and I scream after it, “You don’t have my phone number!”

“What’d he say?” Roosevelt calls out as the emergency doors
whoosh
open and he rushes outside. “He ask for your help with his shipment?”

I shake my head, feeling the knots of rage and pain and sadness tighten in my chest. I don’t know who the girl is, or where they’re going, or why they’re in such a rush at two in the morning. But I do know one thing: My father isn’t the only one who learned how to speak Spanish in Miami.

Por favor, yo espero que el cargamento ha sido protegido
, the woman had said. Please tell me you protected the shipment.

My father said he was robbed and shot by some kid with big ears. But I saw the terror in his eyes when I started sniffing around his shipment—like he’s hiding the devil himself in that delivery. For that alone, I should walk away now and leave him to his mess. I should. That’s all he deserves. The problem is, the last time I stood around and did nothing, I lost my mom. I could’ve helped . . . could’ve run forward . . . But I didn’t.

I don’t care how much I hate him. I don’t care how much I’m already kicking myself. I just found my father—please—don’t let me lose him again.

When my father disappeared, I was nine years old and couldn’t do anything about it. Nineteen years make a hell of a difference.

I flick open my cell phone as my brain searches for the number. Fortunately, I’ve got a good memory. So does he. And like Paulo, he knows what he owes me.

“Cal, it’s two-fourteen in the morning,” Special Agent Timothy Balfanz answers on the other line, not even pretending to hide his exhaustion. “Whattya need?”

“Personal favor.”

“Mm I gonna get in trouble?”

“Only if we’re caught. There’s a container at the port I need to get a look at.”

There’s another two-second pause. “When?” Timothy asks.

“How’s right now?”

9

Y
ou should’ve stayed with the father,” the Judge said through Ellis’s phone.

“You’re wrong,” Ellis replied, staring from inside the hospital waiting room and studying Cal, who, through the wide panel of glass, was barely twenty feet away. There were plenty of reasons for Ellis to stay in full police uniform. But none was better than simply hiding in plain sight.

There was a soft
whoosh
as the automatic doors slid open and Roosevelt rushed outside to join Cal. As the doors again slid shut, Ellis could hear Roosevelt’s first question:
“He ask for your help with his shipment?”

The shipment. Now Cal knew about the shipment.

“If Cal starts chasing it . . . ” the Judge began.

“He’s now talking on his phone,” Ellis said without the least bit of panic. “You told me you were tracking his calls.”

“Hold on, it usually takes a minute.” The Judge paused a moment. “Here we go—and people say the courts have no power anymore—pen register is picking up an outgoing call to a Timothy Balfanz. I’ll wager it’s an old fellow agent.”

Ellis didn’t say a word. He knew Cal was smart. Smart enough to know that Lloyd Harper was a liar. And that the only real truth would come from ripping open Lloyd’s shipment. It was no different a century ago with Mitchell Siegel. No different than with Ellis’s own dad. No different than with Adam and Cain. It was the first truth in the Book of Lies: In the chosen families, the son was always far more dangerous than the father.

“Ellis, if Cal grabs it first—”

“If Cal grabs the Book, it’ll be our greatest day,” Ellis said, never losing sight of his new target and following fearlessly as Cal ran toward his beat-up white van.

Even with his badge, Ellis knew better than to risk being spotted on federal property. That’s the reason he’d followed Lloyd to begin with. But with Cal now making calls—with the shipment and the Siegels’ fabled prize about to be returned—it was going to be a great day indeed.

10

Y
ou’re not being smart,” Roosevelt says through my cell phone.

“It’s not a question of smart,” I tell him as I pull the van into the empty parking lot that sits in front of the Port of Miami’s main administration building, a stumpy glass mess stolen straight from 1972. There’re a few cars in front—one . . . two . . . all three of them Ford Crown Vics. Nothing changes. Unmarked feds.

“It’s not safe, either, Cal,” Roosevelt insists.

He’s right. That’s why I left him at home.

With a twist of the wheel, I weave through the dark lot and the dozens of spots marked
OFFICIAL USE ONLY
. I got fired from official use over four years ago. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still have a way in.

“Cal, if you get in trouble—”

“You’re the first person I’ll call from jail,” I say, heading to the back of the lot, where I steer good ol’ White House into a corner spot underneath a crooked palmetto tree.

I hear him seething on the other end. “Lemme just say one last thing, and then I promise I’ll stop.”

“You won’t stop.”

“You’re right. I won’t,” he admits. “But before you trash your professional career for the
second
time, just think for a moment: If your father
is
setting you up—if this
is
all one big production number—then you’re doing exactly what he wants you to do.”

“Roosevelt, why didn’t you marry Christine? Or Wendy? Or that woman you went to visit in Chicago? You tie the knot and you
know
they’ll take you off whatever blackball list your name is on. But you don’t, right? And why? Because some fights are too important.”

“That’s fine—and a beautiful change of subject—but if you keep letting your nine-year-old, little hurt self make all your decisions in this situation, you’re not just gonna get yourself in trouble—you’re gonna get yourself
killed
.”

A burst of light ricochets off my rearview mirror. I look back as a white Crown Vic closes in from behind. There’s a slight screech, then a muted
thunk
as his front bumper kisses the back of mine and adds yet another scratch to the rear of the White House. Same jackass trick we used to do when we were rookies.

I wait for him to get out of the car, but he stays put. I get the message. This is
his
hometown. Forget my few years here. Tonight I’m just a guest.

“Roosevelt, I’ll call you back.”

Hopping out of the van, I put on a Homeland Security baseball cap, squint through the light rain, and then walk over to the passenger side of his car. It’s nearly three in the morning, when everyone in the world looks like crap—except Timothy, who, as I open the door, has a crisp white button-down and a perfect side part in his just trimmed brown hair.

“You’re sweating,” Timothy says, reading me perfectly as always.

I’ve known him since my very first days on the job—before we got promoted to agent (him first, of course, then me)—when we were both lower-level Customs inspectors who spent every day X-raying containers filled with everything from bananas to buzz saws to belt buckles. Even back then, when I’d be dripping in the Miami sun, his shirt didn’t have a wrinkle, which is probably why, when all the bad went down and I tipped off Miss Deirdre, even though he was right there next to me, Timothy never tumbled. He should’ve—he was always the bigger outlaw, and that night he had his own Miss Deirdre as well. But I don’t resent him for it. I told him I’d never tattle. And tonight, that’s the only reason he’s risking his job for me.

“Cal, if anyone finds out I’m bringing you inside—” He holsters the threat and reaches for a new one. “Is this really that important?”

“Would I ask if it wasn’t?”

He stays silent. He knows it isn’t just about finding some shipment. I’m searching for something far bigger than that.

Timothy’s blue lights—the movable siren that sits on his dash—remind me of the consequences. I expect him to give me the weary glare. Instead, he tosses me an expired copy of his own ICE agent credentials. After 9/11, security at our nation’s ports got better. But it didn’t get that much better.

“We all set?” I ask.

“The hold is gone, if that’s what you’re asking.” Reading the panic in my reaction, he adds, “What? You said you wanted it cleared so you could check it outside.”

“I also said I wanted to get a look first,” I tell him, ripping open his car door. “I bet he’s already on his way.”

I look up at the tall light poles that peek out above the port’s nearby container storage yard. On top of each pole, there’s a small videocamera, along with chemical sniffers and shotgun microphones. Those are new.

“Don’t panic just yet,” he says.

I hop in, he hits the gas, and we head straight for my latest federal crime.

11

I
t was nearly four in the morning as Lloyd Harper flashed his ID and pulled the tractor truck with the long empty trailer through the main gate at the Port of Miami. Sure, he was tired—his side ached as the anesthetic wore off—but he knew what was at stake. When he got the e-mail notification that the hold was off, well, some rewards were better than cash.

He’d been at this long enough to know that juicy worms usually had a hidden hook. And he’d lived in Miami long enough to know that if he got caught, the payback would be unforgiving. But what the doctor said tonight: the pains he’d been having in his shoulders and chest, plus the way his hands started shaking over the past few years . . . He’d lost his wife, lost his family, in prison they took his dignity—life had already taken so much from him. Was it really so bad to try to get something back?

With a tap of the gas and a sharp right turn, Lloyd headed for the open metal fence of the shipping yard, where dozens of forty-foot metal containers were piled up on top of one another—rusted rectangular monoliths, each one as long as a train car.