The Book of Lies (32 page)

“And this map here,” I say, leaning both elbows on the table and scanning a small yellowed foldout entitled
Official Vest Pocket Street Guide of Cleveland.
“This is from 1932, right?”

“Thirty-one or thirty-two,” the librarian says, nodding as Serena reads over my shoulder. She knows what I’m looking for: This is exactly what Jerry Siegel’s hometown looked like when his father was shot. But according to the map, still no 184 King Street.

“Maybe it’s not an address,” Serena says.

“What else would it be?” my father asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s someone’s name. Martin Luther King. Larry King. A famous King.”

“King James,” the librarian blurts.

“Y’mean like the Bible?” I ask.

“Actually, I was talking about LeBron,” the librarian laughs. We all stare at him blankly. “Y’know, in basketball? The Cavs?” We still stare. “You’re not from Ohio, are you?” he asks.

“Wait . . . go back to the Bible,” my father says. “There’s a section called Kings, right? Maybe the numbers . . .”

“184 King Street,” Serena says, quickly hopping aboard. “Kings, chapter 18, verse 4.”

“Or chapter 1, verse 84,” my father says, his voice already quickening. He searches around, glancing at the rows of books. “You got a Bible handy?” he asks the librarian.

The librarian grins. “You kidding? We got three thousand of ’em.”

As Pointy Goatee goes to fish one from the reference desk, there’s a metal
kuh-kuunk
behind us. I jump at the sound. Through the turnstile, a young, petite woman with a round face unzips her long, dirty-white winter coat and reveals stylish pink reading glasses around her neck.

“Jacobs left the door open again?” she asks in a southern accent that’s well past annoyed.

“They’re with me,” Pointy Goatee calls out, approaching the woman and giving her a quick kiss. “My wife,” he explains, turning our way as she hands him one of the two coffees she’s carrying.

My dad and Serena force hello smiles. I don’t. It’s nearly nine a.m. If Naomi’s doing her job, our faces are minutes away from showing up on the local morning news. We’ve already been here too long.

“Take a breath,” Serena says, still standing behind me and scratching my shoulder. My father works hard pretending not to notice.

“Okay, so 1 Kings, chapter 18, verse 4,” the librarian announces as he puts his reading glasses to use. “
Obadiah took a hundred prophets, and hid them fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water
. That sound like anything familiar?”

I look at my father. He’s looking at Serena. The word
Prophet
, plus a
cave,
where Mitchell Siegel supposedly found the Book of Truth. There’s no ignoring the coincidence. But even with that, it still means nothing.

“I don’t think that’s it,” my father says, trying hard to keep it calm. But he’s right. Just another dead end.

“What y’all working on, anyway?” Pink Glasses asks as she approaches the table, warming her hands around her cup of coffee.

“184 King Street. Mean anything important to you?” her husband asks.

“I know King
Avenue
,” she says.

“Nope. King Street.”

She shakes her head. “It’s funny, though—almost sounds like the vault.”

We all turn toward her. “What vault?” I ask.

“Our vault—for our rare book collection,” she begins.

“Y’know, I never thought of those,” her husband interrupts. “That’s not a bad—”

“Just let her say it!” my father insists. I shoot him a look to cool down.

“It’s not— These days, we’re on the Library of Congress system,” she explains, “but in the early 1900s, back before Dewey decimal was widely accepted, we used to file rare book collections under the names of big donors.”

“This was way before everyone wanted their name on a brass plaque,” her husband points out.

“Exactly. So when the Silver family donated all their correspondence with President Garfield, they got a whole section in the rare book room with call numbers
1.0.0
Silv . . .
1.0.1
Silv . . .
1.0.2
Silv. Paula and Mark Cook got
1.0.0
Cook. And I think—I could be wrong—but I think the Kingston family, when they donated the glass windows at the front of the building, got a section starting with
1.0.0
King.”

“So there very well could be a
1.8.4
King as a call number in your collection,” my father says.

“Only way to find is to seek,” her husband replies, pushing back from the table, heading behind the reference desk, and flicking on a computer terminal marked “Internal Catalog.” On our right, the turnstile again
kuh-kuunk
s as the first library visitor—a bald man with Buddy Holly glasses—arrives.

“Morning, June. Morning, Mike,” he calls out, headed to the magazine section. Serena shoots me a look. Time is, most definitely, not on our side.

“Is there any way we can speed this up?” I ask.

Behind the desk, the husband is clicking at the keyboard and humming the theme to
Jeopardy!

“Junebug, how is it possible to always be right?” he announces as a wide smile takes his face. “There most definitely is a King collection. And when you put in
1.8.4
as the call number . . .” He studies the screen. “Oh, that’s curious. . . .”

“What?”
I blurt as the turnstile delivers yet another visitor.

“Back then, they used to keep such meticulous records for the rare books. Anyway, it was filed with the Kingston family because they had a spectacular Russian book collection. But when you look at the actual path of ownership . . .” He turns to us, and his gold cross sways from his neck. “According to these records,
1.8.4
King was a book donated by someone named Jerry Siegel.”

65

W
here’sthevault? Isthebooktherenow? Canwegoseeit?” my dad, Serena, and I all ask simultaneously.

The husband and wife librarians look at each other. “Pretty important case you’re working on, huh?” the husband asks.

“Y’all are law enforcement?” the wife adds, suddenly excited. “Ooh, is this gonna be on the news?”

“Can we just see the book?” I plead.

“Sure, let me just—” The husband reads from the screen. “It’s a big one, too. Nearly six hundred pages.”

“What is it,
Moby-Dick
?” my father asks.

“No—but back to your Scripture—it
is
a Bible. A Hebrew one. Published 1875 by M. R. Romma. Says here ‘Russian.’ Poor condition. This book took a hell of a beating.”

“His father’s Bible,” I whisper to myself.

“You think this is
it
?” Serena asks, referring to Cain’s murder weapon.

“If it is—and he thought people were after it—maybe he donated it here to keep it safe,” I say as Serena nods.

“I’m confused,” says the wife librarian. “Why would someone be after a Bible?”

“We’re not exactly sure yet,” my father interrupts, doing his best to downplay. We’ve already got enough competition.

“Oh, and this is great,” the husband adds. “Says here the donor claimed the book was bound in . . . ready for this? . . . human skin.”

“Barf,” Serena says.

“I’ve heard of that,” his wife adds. “There was a seminar on it at the ALA last year. Back in the seventeenth century, they used to bind private anatomy books with skin,” she explains. “People are more twisted than people think.”

“Regardless, according to this, our reference team back then said that if it was anything, it was sheepskin or just cheap leather. They probably put it in Special Collections just to keep him happy.” Turning to us, he adds, “Everyone thinks their old books came straight from Gutenberg’s press. But if you tell ’em otherwise, they won’t donate the next year.”

Serena again tosses them a polite grin. But as my dad and I exchange glances, it’s clear what he’s thinking. According to the legends, Cain killed Abel with a book. According to the FBI, Jerry’s father had it. Whatever’s inside this skin book, it can’t be just a Russian Bible.

There’s a noise on our left. The turnstile again hiccups, and a new library visitor passes by us at the reference desk, heading for the microfiche room. None of us says a word until he leaves.

“We’d like to see the book now,” my dad insists.

“Yeah . . . no . . . that’s the pickle, isn’t it?” the husband replies, scanning the screen. “From what I can tell, it’s no longer part of our collection.”

“Someone checked it out?” Serena asks.

“Kinda.”

“What’s
kinda
?” I ask.

The librarian pauses, rechecking the screen. I lean my chest against the tall reference desk, squinting to read. He’s got the cursor on a text box that says:

DEACCESSIONED

7/27/98

“Deaccessioned?” my father asks. To my surprise, he’s back behind the reference desk, reading over the shoulder of the librarian. He’s swaying in place, even more nervous than the night I first found him. It’s not just from the computer. He’s now got a full view of the security monitors and cameras that overlook the various entrances to the building. He can see who’s coming.

“It means you gave it away, doesn’t it?” Serena asks, just as anxious.

“That’s part of running a library,” the husband explains, taking off his glasses. “Even with our offsite storage, there’s only so many copies of
Harry Potter
we need.”

“This isn’t
Harry Potter
—it’s a Russian Bible from the turn of the century,” my dad says. “How many of those can you possibly have?”

“Around here? You know how big the Jewish population used to be in this area? When those generations die, where do you think the kids give all their books? I told you, we’ve got thousands of Bibles. So if we had this old Russian one and then someone brought in a brand-new one, or even a few similar ones . . . Every year we have to pare down the collection. And it sounds like this copy was already in terrible condition.”

“So you destroyed it?” Serena asks in clear panic.

“Destroyed? We’re a historical society—no, never destroy,” he explains. “Old books get donated: to hospitals, churches, we used to do this big event with one of the local nursing homes.”

“Is there any record where this one went?” I ask.

He pauses to think about it, his fingertips flicking his goatee. “Y’know, that’s a fair question. Sometimes these older entries—especially the ones that used to be in the card catalog . . .” His fingers tap at the keyboard, and a new window opens on-screen.

He leans in to read it. “Ahh, yeah—that makes sense for a book like this, and that’s just when it opened.”

“Please just tell us where the book is now,” my father demands, still eyeing the views from the security cameras.

“You have to understand, most places won’t accept old Bibles. But there’s one place that goes through them like holy water.” With a kick of his foot, the librarian rolls backward in his chair and let’s us see the destination for ourselves.

O.S.P.

“I don’t get it,” I say.

“Trust me, you don’t want to,” the librarian warns. “But your Jerry Siegel book? From what it says here, in 1998, it became the official property of the Ohio State Penitentiary.”

“It’s in a prison?” Serena asks.

I wait for my father’s reaction, but he’s far too busy staring at the security monitors—and the familiar brown-haired woman who’s just appeared on-screen. Naomi’s here. Right outside the building.

66

W
atching from the far corner of the parking garage, even Ellis had to admit he was impressed. From the moment Naomi spotted Cal’s rental car, she didn’t waste a second—popping its locks, sliding inside, and picking through the interior with the speed of a veteran thief.

From what she was saying to Scotty, it was the small, foldout rental car map that gave them away. There was a tiny black dot—from the point of a pen—on the library across the street. The Historical Society. No question, Cal’s destination.

Naomi went racing down the nearby stairwell, not once checking behind her, so it was easy for Ellis to follow. That was the problem with being desperate. It always made you sloppy.

And now, as Ellis reached the bottom steps and the cold spun like a tornado up the stairwell, Naomi was halfway across the street. Approaching the Historical Society building, she paused and looked up. Cameras, Ellis realized.

Naomi didn’t care. With a tug of the glass doors, she disappeared inside. Ellis waited a moment, then stepped out casually across the snow-lined street. No reason to run, he reasoned as he pulled out the jet injector. Everyone was finally in the same place. Both Cal and Naomi . . . he still owed them for what they did to Benoni.

Climbing the few front steps, Ellis kept his head down as he passed the camera, then gave his own sharp tug to the front glass door, which swung open and revealed a burst of heated air, dozens of antique cars, and—

The punch hit Ellis in the throat, nearly taking his head off. He stumbled back, falling to one knee. The next shot came from a kick, cracking him in the knuckles and sending his jet injector crashing to the marble floor, the vial of hemlock spilling everywhere.

“You think I’m a schmuck!?”
Naomi exploded, her arm cocked back as she rushed forward and again swung down in full fury.

Ellis could taste the sour-sweet blood bubble at the back of his throat. He was still down on one knee. But this time he was ready.

And so was Naomi.

They each hit hard. With a thunderclap, a single shot rang out, booming and vibrating through the marble hallways.

Then it was over.

67

W
as that a gunshot?” Pointy Goatee asked.

“Call the police,” his wife snapped.

“It was a gunshot, wasn’t it?”

“Just call them! Now!”

There was a loud scream in the distance, echoing down the long hallway.

“Now!”
she insisted as her husband darted to the phone at the reference desk.

“Was that an explosion?” asked one of the library visitors, sticking his head out of the microfiche room.