Book of Secrets (26 page)

  Amador let out a long sigh on the other end before answering.

  "Sure, Finch," he finally said, "of course, I'll make the call right now and get the shit lined up. But I told you something like this was going to happen, didn't I?"

  "Don't pull that nagging shit on me right now, okay, Amador, I am just not in the mood for it."

  "Alright, alright," he answered, "but I think this thing is already messier than you know."

  "What are you talking about, man?"

  "It was just on the news," Amador answered. "J. Nathan Pierce was found murdered this morning; shot to death in his own home."

There was no hope for sleep after that. I finished up with Amador, giving him the details on the time and place of the meeting, and numbly hung up the phone. Half undressed, I paced back and forth in the motel room for a while, one foot bare and the other booted, before finally stripping down and going through the motions of a listless shower. The water-flow was tepid and weak, but I hardly noticed.

  Back out, I didn't even bother to get dried off before I got dressed again, and grabbed up the Lucite case. I cracked it open, and dropped the heavy book out onto the bed. The silver disk on the cover caught the light, and shifted like mother of pearl when the book was moved. It was set into the leather of the cover, the curved edges overlapped by the material around it. I was able to pry the metal clasps loose, and flipped the book open to the first pages.

  Where was Michelle when I needed her? I couldn't make the writing out at all. It was all little swirls and lines, maybe Greek, but it could have been Klingon shorthand for all I knew. I flipped a few pages ahead, carefully, the delicate pages rustling like dried leaves as I moved them. The handwriting seemed to change every few pages, the types of letters or alphabets changing every few more. The writing was so small and tightly packed that my vision swam just looking at it, and I felt a headache coming on. I flipped to the end of the book and found the last sections written in an alphabet I recognized, at least, though I couldn't make out the words, followed by a bunch of blank pages. This was getting me nowhere. I needed motion, needed to get my feet moving, or I'd burn myself out from all the pent up frustrations.

  Dropping the book back into the Lucite case, I took it into the bathroom and hid it above the ceiling tiles over the toilet, sliding them carefully back into place so that everything looked kosher. I didn't really think anyone was going to track me down just yet; the threats I'd made about burning the thing seeming to have the desired effect, but still it made sense not to take any chances. I stomped into my boots, grabbed up cigarettes, lighter and room key, and was out the door.

   Three old men haunted my steps, two dead and the other just barely alive. Two that shaped my childhood, made me the man I was, and one who had played Roadrunner to my Coyote for months, my very own white whale. All that was over now, I realized, any story long gone. Whatever land swindles or dirty deals Pierce had been mixed up in had somehow paled in comparison to the growing pile of corpses around that damned Lucite-encased book. The publishers of Logion wouldn't be too happy about that, I figured, but I decided I didn't much care. All of this had stopped being about the story a long time ago, for me at least, and now I just wanted the answers. What was this book, and why was it so important to these people? What did this Lucetech outfit have to do with it, and if they were one of the groups at the auction, who were the other people? Who was the voice on the other end of the phone, the ones who had put my mentor in the hospital? And who had been the one to call me in the first place, to put me onto the book's trail?

  I didn't have any of the answers to the questions I'd started with the week before, and now had a few dozen more piled on top. My head was swimming in riddles and mysteries, but one thing kept forcing its way back to the forefront. Tan laying in that hospital bed, barely alive, Pierce full of holes in his spacious and well-appointed home, and my grandfather dead and buried.

  How had my grandfather died? I hadn't asked, and no one had mentioned. I'd assumed it was just old age, just his worn out body finally giving up the race and moving on to greener pastures (or under them). He'd looked so old, one foot in the grave already the last time I'd seen him, that it was a shock he'd made it as long as he did. And when had been the last time I'd seen him? Had it really been over ten years?

It had not been, in retrospect, my most shining hour. To be honest, I'd acted like a spoiled brat, but it was years before I realized it, and by then it was much too late.

  After the first summer I'd spent in New Orleans with Tan, when I'd just turned fourteen, I was forced to return home to San Antonio to finish out high school. Tan, who seemed to have no ethical problem training me in the art of cat burglary, balked at harboring a runaway. So it was back to the house on Crescent Row, back to breakfasts in the kitchen with Patrick and Maria, and the stony silences and occasional outbursts from my grandfather.

  Still, things had changed at my grandfather's house after that summer. I'd left off the training regimen the old man had drilled us with all those years, and the old man left off forcing me to follow it. I still worked out, running and doing free weights, but only because they were the sorts of skills Tan had insisted were vital to a burglar's success. I did well enough in school, too, I suppose, again following Tan's advice. Tan had taken a more holistic approach to the art of crime than most, I guess you could say, and considered the uncultured thief little better than a cutpurse. A true thief, he always said, had to be an artist as well as a craftsman, and that demanded literacy and an appreciation for the finer things. I swallowed it all, naturally, considering how impressionable I was and how impressive Tan had seemed.

  My grandfather only mentioned my summer away once, a short while after my return. I'd just shown up a few days before school was to begin that semester, looking no worse for wear, and went back up to my room. Maria, for her part, couldn't stop fawning over me and scolding me mercilessly, by turns, while Patrick was a little jealous of my little adventure, which he'd been afraid to come along on, and more than a little worried about how the old man might react. At the dinner table that night, my grandfather hadn't said a word about it, just demanded I pass him the green beans and that was that. I was home.

  It was a week into the school year when, on my way up to my bedroom after school, the old man called me into his study. He was sitting behind his big desk, the piles of papers and books that only grew larger and taller with every passing year almost hiding him from view, while I stood waiting, my backpack in hand, shuffling my feet. I was scowling, I'm sure, offended at this interruption in my daily routine.

  "There are roads," the old man finally said, his hands folded on the desktop in front of him, "paths a man must choose to walk down. The road we walk is what defines who we are, how we see the world, and how the world sees us. Every man should be free to choose his own path, free to choose the person he will be. That is, unfortunately, not always the way of things. There are forces in this world which conspire to restrict our choices, or unduly influence us one way or other. These forces are the very face of evil. In my experience, all that is good and true is a natural extension of individual liberty, and anything impinging on that liberty is an aspect of evil. There comes a time for some of us when the struggle against these forces, the attempt to eliminate these figurative 'road blocks,' not for ourselves alone but for others, becomes the highest calling. To insure the liberty of others – their freedom of choice – becomes the path that we walk, and defines who we will be."

  I must have pulled some face, or else rolled my eyes at the length of his oration, because the old man shot out of his chair, slamming his bony hands against the desktop.

  "Understand," he barked, "that everything I have done is for your own good. I chose the path I walk long before you were born, long before your mother was born, and I will walk it until the day I die, though slower now and with less strength. It is anathema to my very existence to force a way of life on you or your brother, to choose for you the life you will lead. I have only presented you with options and equipped you with the skills I think you will need, so that when the time comes you will be able to choose wisely, with open eyes and an open mind. For me that choice came early in life, and for others it comes much later. For you…"

  He paused, rubbing his spotted hands over his wide forehead, sighing.

  "I don't know what you will someday face," the old man continued, "but I know that most likely I will not be there with you. The choice you will make, the choice your brother will make, those belong to you. Your choices, in the end, are the only things that are truly yours. When you decide, try to remember the things I have taught you. Maybe then I will still be with you, at least in part."

  He stopped and stood staring at me, his expression surprisingly tender. When he hadn't spoken for a while, I shifted uncomfortably, slinging my backpack over my shoulder.

  "Am I dismissed?" I snarled. I sounded nastier than I'd intended, and regretted it almost immediately. I tensed, expecting reprisal.

  "Yes," the old man said wearily, slumping back into his chair. He waved a hand towards the open door. "Go on, get out." He propped an elbow on the armrest of the chair, his face shielded behind his hand.

  I left, quickly, and stomped up to my room. It would be the last time the old man spoke more than a few sentences to me in a row, though he tried that one last time.

It was the night of graduation, years later, and I was ready to go. I'd written back and forth to Tan, since that summer, planning out when I would come back and what I would do once I got there. Tan had been giving me little exercises to do, summer study before the first day of school, a list of books and articles as long as my arm to study up on. I'd passed my senior finals, perhaps not with flying colors but passed nonetheless, and I was done with high school. The things I felt I couldn't live without I'd packed in one suitcase and two small backpacks; everything else I just considered dead weight. I had a bus ticket in my pocket for a six o'clock Greyhound for New Orleans. By the next day, I'd be back at Tan's, on my way to a life of cat burglary.

  I made one more pass around my room, making sure I hadn't forgotten anything, slung the backpacks one over each shoulder, and hefted up the suitcase. Turning out the lights one last time, I was out in the hall and down the stairs, ready to roll.

  Patrick was at the kitchen table with Maria, eating a quick bite before heading over to the high school for the ceremony. One look at me and they both knew what I had planned, though I hadn't breathed a word of it yet.

  Patrick was spit and polish in his crisp new white shirt and silk tie, his hair trimmed and styled. We maybe hadn't been as close the previous few years as we'd been as kids, but we still got along fine, and I couldn't help but think I'd miss seeing him around every now and again. From the pained look on his face that he was trying hard to hide, I got the impression he felt the same way too.

  Maria, for her part, wouldn't make eye contact with me, but chased peas around her china plate with a spoon and muttered to herself under her breath. I think she'd been expecting something like this every day since I got back that summer, years before, and now that the moment had arrived she'd lost faith in all of her rehearsed responses.

  We made with some painfully small talk, each of us taking for granted that this would be the last time we'd see each other for some time to come, but none of us brave enough to say anything of substance. Patrick made some offhand remark about a party planned for the post-graduation festivities and Maria scolded him a bit, reminding him that he wasn't to stay out too late, not to drink and drive, and all of the expected remonstrations due an eighteen year-old boy on graduation night. Patrick didn't bother giving me too many details about the plans, and Maria didn't waste a breath trying to scold me. I was leaving the house, and leaving along with it the right to take part in those sorts of discussions.

  Finally, I said something along the lines of "Well, gotta go," and made the circuit of the table, if a bit reluctantly. Kissing Maria on the cheek, her fingers digging into the flesh of my arms as though she might still keep me from leaving if she could somehow keep me immobile. Shaking hands with Patrick, awkwardly, thinking that it was the adult thing to do, but uncomfortable and not knowing when to stop, feeling that there were things I should have been saying but wasn't.

  I was all set to go, and then grandfather appeared in the doorway. He had a package under one arm, about a foot square, wrapped in black paper with a silver ribbon, and a long thin box wrapped in the same style in his other hand.

  "Where…?" the old man began awkwardly, looking me over, taking in my luggage and then the expressions on the faces of Maria and Patrick. "I had thought…" He broke off and straightened up, composing himself. "I have hired a car, as I thought we would take in a meal on the town after the ceremony this evening."

  "I have some stuff to do," Patrick answered weakly, "but I can put it off a little while."

  "Good," my grandfather answered, not taking his eyes off me. "These are for you," he indicated the packages with a nod of his head, "but I had hoped to present them to you on our return from dinner." He paused, a pregnant silence hanging in the air as he waited for me to answer, and finally added in a voice that sounded almost wounded, "I've had them wrapped."

  I was having trouble meeting the old man's gaze, but he wouldn't stop looking, and wouldn't stop waiting for me to answer. Finally, I couldn't take it any longer.

  "I don't need your stupid shit!" I shouted. "I don't need it, and I don't need you! I've had to put up with it all this time, and now I'm leaving, and there's not a fucking thing you can do about it."