谎言书：10
时间：2017-02-17 05:13:47
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He shakes his head before I can argue. “I’m not proud of it, y’know?
But once you have that excon label on your neck — You don’t know
what it’s like to be judged like that.”
I think back to the days after they took my gun and badge. Even the
secretaries from the office were instructed to hang up when I called.
“Okay, first we need to get out of here,” I say. As we run across the road
and back to my van, I scan the ground, the road, even under the van itself.
Timothy. His body’s gone.
“Y’think he’s still alive?” my dad asks.
I pause a moment. Then I picture that bubble of blood in Timothy’s neck.
“I don’t think so.”
“Maybe Ellis took the body with him.”
“Maybe,” I say. But to set all this up — to bring my van out here just to
make us look like the
killers1 . . . to leave no witnesses . . . I cross around to
the passenger side of the White House. Down the tall grass of the
embankment, there’s another canal that runs parallel to the road. When we
were hiding on the other side . . . There was another splash.
“Gator food,” my father says, pointing over the fence.
“That’s what I would do.”
I wait for him to ask why, but to’ve abandoned me this long, my dad’s got
plenty of heartless in him. He doesn’t need help developing the picture: Ellis
is a cop. He did his homework. My dad’s a convicted murderer . . . I’m a
disgraced agent . . . There’s no question who’s the easiest to blame for this.
And why he asked my dad to hand him Timothy’s gun.
“He’s got my prints on one of the weapons,” my father says.
“You think he didn’t drive my van all around the port, making sure the
eyesin-the-sky got a good look? Ten seconds’ worth of homework before
ICE realizes I’m the one who snuck into the port with Timothy. . . .”
“On behalf of a shipment that’s tied to your father,” my dad adds.
Which brings us right back to the gun. We’re both silent as it all
seeps2 in.
Forget what happened with Mom. Ellis just has to point his cop finger our
way. Once they hear we killed a federal agent — we’re repeat
offenders3. They
don’t make bags small enough that’ll carry our
remains4.
“We should follow the truck,” my dad suggests, looking out toward the dark
road. “He didn’t have that much of a lead.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I reply.
“Maybe? The only way to prove what actually happened is by finding what’s
really in that—”
I turn away. That’s all he needs.
“You know what’s in that truck, don’t you, Calvin?”
18
“Stay, girl. . . . That’s my girl,” Ellis said to Benoni, adding a quick scratch
between the dog’s ears. In the passenger seat of the truck, Benoni was
breathing calmly now — but with her ears pinned back and her eyes narrow
and intently
fixed5 out the window, it was clear she was just simmering.
After setting the odometer back to zero, Ellis grabbed an old pair of bolt
cutters from the toolbox behind his seat, shoved open the driver’s door, and
climbed down from the cab of the truck. He was still annoyed that he’d let Cal
get away, but when he’d heard Benoni cry like that — the way she was
shaking on the ground — family had to come first.
Most important, as he glanced around the empty rest stop and walked around
to the back of the truck, he had what he wanted. And thanks to his police
uniform, surprise was most definitely on his side. Especially with Timothy. But
that was the benefit of taking on a partner — there was always someone else
to blame things on. As his grandfather wrote, the mission was bigger than a
single man. Finally, after the headache in China and Hong Kong and Panama
He dialed quickly on his cell, then pinched the phone between his chin and
shoulder and lifted the bolt cutters to the metal seal that looked like a silver
bolt at the back of the rust-colored container. The phone rang in his ear . . .
once . . . twice . . . He knew the time — it was six a.m. in Michigan — but this
was victory.
There was a loud cunk as the bolt cutters bit down and snapped the seal.
“Judge Wojtowicz’s line,” a female voice answered. “You need him to sign a
warrant?”
“No warrants. This is a personal call. For Felix,” Ellis said, knowing that using
the Judge’s first name would speed things up. With a twist of the thin metal
bars on the back of the container, Ellis unlocked the double doors.
He knew how he got to this moment. His grandfathers — in their commitment
to the Leadership — began the quest. For all Ellis knew, his mother had
searched, too. But the research had survived only because of the waterstained
diary.
The word Schetsboek was embossed in faded gold on the front. Dutch for
“Sketchbook.”
Flipping7 through it that first time, Ellis had stopped on a page
dated February 16, 1922, on a passage about the
covenants9 between God
and man. In the story of Noah, God made a rainbow as a sign of His
covenant8. With Abraham, God’s sign was a circumcision. And with Moses, the
sign was the
engraving10 on the tablets. But covenants could also be between
people. That’s what the diary was, Ellis realized. He’d been so focused on the
Cain part — on the
tattoo11 and the dog — he’d nearly missed it. The diary was
his true sign. His covenant. The promise from his mother. And the way, over a
century later, surrounded by cricket songs, he finally found the Book that was
more powerful than death itself.
“Who may I say is calling?” the woman asked through Ellis’s phone.
“He’ll know,” Ellis said as he
tugged12 on the back doors of the truck. There
was a
rusty13 howl as the metal doors swung wide open, clanging against their
respective sides of the truck. Surprised by his own excitement, Ellis was up
on his tiptoes, peering through the mist of—
It was supposed to be cold. And smell like
shrimp14. Why didn’t it smell like—?
Reaching up and pulling
frantically15, Ellis yanked the nearest box to the
ground. His breathing started to quicken as he ripped it open. Pineapples.
Plastic pineapples. He pulled out another box. Fake. They were all fake. Like
the government uses when they—
Damn.
They switched it. Switched the
bloody16 trucks.
“I’m paging him now, sir,” the secretary announced.
“Paging?” Ellis asked. He looked at the phone. “Don’t page him. Leave him
be.” Shutting his cell phone, Ellis stood there a second. Just stood there, eyes
closed. A rat-tt-tat drumbeat — rat-tt-tat, rat-tt-tat — hammered at the back
high-pitched scream rushing in his ears. Anger. All he had was anger now.
People didn’t understand what a life’s worth of holding back and hiding could
do.
He wouldn’t hold back anymore.
He knew who’d done this. Timothy. Timothy and the other one. The one who
hurt Benoni. Cal.
Cal caused this. Cal and his damn father. But Ellis had it wrong before. Lloyd
wasn’t the only trickster. Cal was one, too. To switch the trucks — to steal
what was inside — Cal hadn’t just stumbled into this. He’d planned it. Stolen
it. And now Cal had the Book of Lies. He had what Ellis had waited a lifetime
to find.
But the one thing Cal didn’t have? A good enough head start.
Ellis looked down at his tattoo. With the Book, Cain
unleashed21 murder into
the world. That was nothing compared to what Ellis would
unleash20 on Cal
Harper.
19
“Do you know what’s in the truck or don’t you?” my dad asks.
I
stomp22 my feet to shake off the excess water, then open the door to my van,
“Whoa, whoa — hold on,” my dad says, climbing into the passenger seat. “I
saw him take the truck and drive off with—”
“He didn’t take anything.”
Landing with a squish in the passenger seat, my father looks at me, then out
at the empty road, then back at me. “No, I saw it — container number
601174-7. I checked the numbers myself. There’s no way you could’ve
unloaded it that fast. And when I drove it out, you were following right behi
—”
I close my eyes and picture the black numbers on the side of the forty-foot
rust-colored container: 601174-7. At three in the morning, in the dark, it’s
amazing what you can do with some black electrical tape.
“The numbers. You switched them, didn’t you?” my dad
blurts25. “That
container Ellis just drove off with—”
“Is filled with three thousand pounds of plastic pineapples, courtesy of the
controlled delivery sting operations that Customs keeps prepared for just such
an occasion.”
Starting the van and noticing the exposed wires that Ellis used to hot-wire
ignore the blue pulsing
swirls28 as Timothy’s unmarked car fades behind us. Up
above, the purple-and-orange sunrise cracks a hairline
fissure29 through the
black sky. The water from my clothes soaks my seat and
puddles30 at my
crotch. But as I look in the rearview mirror, it still hasn’t washed off the
flecks31of Timothy’s blood that’re sprayed across my cheek.
“You think this book — whatever it is — you think maybe there could be
something good in it? Y’know, like, maybe we’re finally getting some good
luck?” my father asks.
I turn to my dad, who’s eyeing the steering wheel and — Is he studying my
hands? He turns away fast, but there’s no mistaking that gleam in his eyes.
He’s anxious, but also . . . it’s almost like he’s enjoying himself.
“Lloyd, let me be clear here. There’s nothing good about this. The shipment .
. . the shooting . . . everything. It’s rotten, okay? And once something’s
rotten, it can never be good again.”
Surprised by my own outburst, I sit there silently, my chest rising and falling
far too rapidly. I’m not stupid. I know all the emotional reasons I went
chasing after my dad instead of just writing him off after the hospital. I still
believe in those reasons. But that doesn’t mean I believe him.
“Cal, I promise you, I have no idea what book Ellis is after, or what’s inside
that container.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I shoot back. “We’re about to get our answer.”
20
“Here?” my father asks, looking inside the dark
doorway32. Our clothes were
soaked from the water, but he’s still fidgeting with the spare dry T-shirt and
jeans I always keep stored in the van. “Y’sure?”
I nod, holding open the door with no doorknob and thankful that the punchcode
lock is still so easy to jimmy. Inside the old
warehouse33, the walls are
bare and peeling, while each corner hosts a small hill of
crumpled34 newspapers
and garbage. Up high, the few horizontal windows are shattered. And the sign
out front carries the spray-painted love note “LO” (a gang-inspired tag that
means “Latinos Only” just in case anyone misses the welcome mat).
But as I flick a switch and the
fluorescent35 lights blink to life, they reveal what
we’re really after: the navy blue container with black tracking number
601174-7 painted across its back. Beached like a metal whale, it rests its tail
against the narrow loading dock that runs along the back of the room.
“You sure it’s safe?” my father asks,
racing36 for the container.
He’s missing the point. The warehouse may be decorated in modern
dungeon37,
but that’s the goal. Hidden under layers of fake
corporate38 names, this place is
owned by the U.S. government.
We — They. They own them all around the city: fake
warehouses39 that ICE,
Customs, and the FBI can use for whatever sting operations they happen to
be running. When Timothy offered to have the container delivered here, I
thought he was doing me a favor. All he was really doing — once he
presumably got rid of me and my dad — was swiping it for himself.
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