The Book of Lies (33 page)

“We’re calling the police right—”

“—all okay! It’s under control!” a voice yelled from the hallway. “Everything’s okay!”

In mid-dial, Pointy Goatee stared past the turnstiles as a set of footsteps grew increasingly louder. But it wasn’t until he saw the badge that he finally took a breath.

“Police! Relax! You’re all safe!” Ellis announced authoritatively, striding through the turnstile and making sure they got a good look at his uniform. “Sir, you can put down the phone, please. I’m here. There’s nothing to worry about.”

The librarian slid the phone back to its cradle, staring at the blood that ran down from Ellis’s nose.

“Thank you,” Ellis said, wiping it away with the back of his thumb as he scanned the library. “Now perhaps you can help with one last thing: I’m wondering if you’ve seen my friends.”

68

T
here was no pain. No burning. She didn’t feel anything. Not at first.

Indeed, as Naomi lay flat on her back, the blood puddle swelling below her, she simply stared up at the bottom of the World War II biplane that was hanging from the ceiling. She was seeing double now. Two. Two biplanes. Lucas . . . her son . . . Lucas would like those.

On her far right, down the hallway, there was screaming and panicking. Then another gunshot.

Naomi didn’t hear it. The world was muffled—her vision narrowed—like sitting in the bottom of a well and looking up, up, up. Wow. Two biplanes. Lucas would like those.

And then . . .

Ow.

On the back of her shoulder. A mosquito bite.

No, not a mosquito bite. It was burning.

“—omi! Nomi, you okay!?” a frantic voice screamed in her ear.

“S-Scotty? Where—? Why’re you yelling at me?”

“I heard a gunshot! You okay!?”

“I’m fine,” she stuttered, trying to raise her head and finally seeing the puddle below her. “I got— Is that my blood?”

“I think you were shot.
Don’t move
, Nomi! I think Ellis shot you.”

“I broke his nose,” she said as the pain in her shoulder sent an electrical fire down her arm. “He pulled— He had another gun. A real one.”

“Don’t move! Ambulance is on the way.”

“No, that’s not . . . aaahh . . .
he shot me
!” she said, gripping her shoulder as tears of pain flooded her eyes. The wound was wet and mushy, pulsing with its own beat. “That’s two hospital visits in twelve hours. How cliché,” she added, her voice wilting. “I—I broke his nose.”

“Nomi, don’t pass out on me.”

She shook her head wildly, refusing to fade. “He’s still . . . Ellis is up the hallway . . . and Cal . . . if he heard the gunshot . . . Cal’s going for his car. The LoJack. Check his car.”

“Already did,” Scotty promised. “He’s still there.”

“Look again,” Naomi grunted, lying on her back and using her heel to shove herself across the floor. A wide streak of blood trailed along from the puddle. But at the wall, she fought hard to sit up straight. Straight. Better to get her head up. And to get a look through the glass doors.

Outside, across the street, Cal’s white rental car flew from the mouth of the parking garage, its tires screaming as it fishtailed to the right and disappeared up the block.

“Knew he’d go for his car,” Naomi whispered, gritting her teeth and fighting to keep her head up.

“Nomi, Cal’s moving! They’re definitely moving!”

“G-Good,” she muttered. “Call in state, federal . . . tell ’em you want helicopters, fighter jets . . . bring damn tanks if they have them. Then call my son. Tell him I’ll be okay.”

69

C
al’s white rental car was moving quickly—not too quickly, no reason to stand out—as it dashed down the final empty stretches of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and headed toward the entrance ramp for I-90 that was up ahead.

Thankfully, there still weren’t any nearby sirens or much traffic. In fact, as the car blew past the empty bus stops in the Siegels’ old neighborhood, it became abundantly clear that it was one of the only cars on the street.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why.

“This is not good.”

Already racing up the on-ramp, the white Pontiac followed the corkscrew and climbed toward the interstate . . .

. . . where a barricade of half a dozen police cars, motorcycles, and unmarked federal vehicles were blocking the way and at least a dozen state troopers and other agents were ducked down with their guns drawn.

“Freeze or we
will
shoot you!” one of them barked through a megaphone.

The rental car screeched to a stop just as a silver-and-blue police helicopter rose straight up, appearing from nowhere.

“Out of the vehicle! You’re under arrest!”
a speaker in the helicopter blasted from the sky as the ground agents swarmed the rental car, guns still drawn. Within seconds, they tore open all four doors, searching for Cal and his father.

But the only person inside was the light-skinned black woman sitting behind the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry. I give up,” Serena said as she held up her hands in surrender.

“Out!”
yelled one of the state troopers, yanking her from the car.

“Whattya mean, they’re gone?” a female voice squawked through a nearby walkie-talkie. “Christ on a crutch, don’t you see what he—?
Get someone back to that parking garage! Now!
”

“Is that Naomi? Is she okay?” Serena asked, meaning every word.

“Let me be honest with you,” the state trooper said as he clamped handcuffs around Serena’s wrists. “You’ve got far bigger things you need to be worrying about.”

70

I
t was easy for us to swipe the librarian’s keys. It was even easier to find the librarian’s car (parked right in front, best spot at the library, and hopefully won’t be missed until the end of the day) and zip away in the opposite direction from Serena. The early bird gets the worm, but the smart bird is the one who knows the value of a good distraction. Still, as I grab yet another glance in the rearview, only the fool bird would think we were home free.

“Will you relax? They have no idea where we are,” my father tweet-tweets from the passenger seat as we follow I-80 out of the city. We’ve been driving for nearly forty minutes, and it’s scary how fast billboards and morning traffic have given way to farmland and pristine forests. From the passing signs, we’re deep in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is dotted with pine trees and layered in fine white snow imported directly from a Christmas card.

“We shouldn’t have left Serena like that,” I tell him.

“I thought you didn’t trust her.”

“That’s not—” I cut myself off. “I trust her.”

“Why? Because you kissed her, or because she offered to run interference with Naomi?”

I again look in the rearview. There’s no one in sight. “You’re still mad about the kiss, aren’t you?”

My father laughs to himself, staring straight out the front window. “I was never in this for a kiss, Calvin.”

It’s a beautiful response. Plus it deflects from Serena and the kiss and all the other heavy baggage we’ve been trying to hide in our respective overheads. In fact, when you add in the huge frozen lake and the snow-misted trees on our left, it’s damn near the perfect father-son moment.

“Lloyd, are you the Prophet?” I blurt.

“Pardon?”

“It’s not an attack. I just need to— Everywhere we’ve been— everything that’s happened—you’re never surprised. When we found the coffin, you went right for the comic. When we got here, you knew how to find the Siegel house. When we got to the Siegel house, you knew how to find that hole in the wallpaper.”

“And that makes me the enemy?”

I bite my lower lip and take one of Serena’s deep, cleansing breaths. It doesn’t help. “I heard you talking, Lloyd. You were whispering outside the museum . . . then again back at the motel room. Every time we go somewhere, you disappear for a few minutes, and then right after that—ka-pow—Ellis somehow magically knows where we are.”

“I’d never do that to you.”

“Then who were you talking to?”

“Calvin, I don’t even have a phone.”

“Cal. I’m Cal. And that wasn’t the question. Who. Were. You. Talking. To?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Aw, jeez, I knew this was—”

“Your mom,” he says softly. “I was talking to— I was talking to Mom.”

“W-Wha?”

“Sometimes—I don’t know—when things get hard . . .” He stops and turns to me. “You don’t talk to her sometimes?”

My thumbnail picks at the cruise control buttons on the steering wheel. I see him looking at me, but this time I’m the one staring straight ahead. Beads of sweat rise up, filling my brow. “Sometimes,” I whisper. “Usually on her birthday. And sometimes on mine.”

“See, no—don’t save it for birthdays. She’s there, Calvin. I believe it. You talk, and she’s there. She’ll always be there for you.”

The car rumbles across a tall bridge that overlooks one of the most breathtaking and deepest valleys I’ve ever seen, with just the tops of the pine trees peeking through the snow. I usually hate heights. The falls are too long.

“How is she?” I finally ask.

“I don’t—?”

“Mom. You speak to her, right? How is she?”

My father thinks about this one. He turns away, pretending to stare out his passenger window. But I see his watery eyes—and his smile—in the reflection. “She’s better.”

For a moment, we just sit there, listening to the
dmm dmm dmm
as the car’s tires churn across the long bridge.

“Y’know, I pushed her,” my dad eventually says, still staring out his window. “On that final night—the lawyers said I just tapped her . . . that she slipped on the mayo—but I pushed her. I remember pushing her. Hard.”

I nod, more to myself. “I know. I saw it,” I tell him. Below us, there’s a frozen waterfall—long, captured shards of ice frozen in midfall. Like they’ll never hit bottom. “Still didn’t mean you had to run away.”

“Sure it did.”

I pause at this, for the first time wondering if he might be right. “Even still . . . if I hadn’t walked in—if she hadn’t turned to me—I’m the only reason she didn’t see it coming.”

The
dmm dmm dmm
flattens and disappears as we leave the bridge. The world has never been more silent.

“Calvin, she forgives you,” my dad insists.

They’re just words—stupid, empty words—but the tears quickly well in my eyes.

“I—I know,” I say, wiping them away. “She forgives you, too.”

He tightens his jaw, unable to face me. His reflection in the passenger window nods a thank-you. He’s fighting to hold it together.

“So you really talk to her that much?” I ask.

“Cal, when Jerry Siegel died in 1996, half his ashes were put in a copper urn, and the rest were put in a hollowed-out set of fake books with all of Jerry’s creations on the spine—Superman, Clark Kent, Lois Lane—which his wife is saving for whenever Cleveland decides to take that synagogue’s exhibit and build a proper Superman museum. That way he can be with his fans forever.”

“Who told you that?”

“It was in the pamphlet Serena got from the exhibit. The point is, as death gets closer—it’s no different than this Book of Truth—what’s so wrong with wanting someone you love to live forever?”

Following the curves in the road, I tug the wheel to the right, sending both my dad and myself leaning to the left. For the first time since we’ve been together, I’ve got no reason to argue.

Within ten minutes, we’re out of the park as the powdered pine trees are once again replaced by fast-food signs, empty rest stops, and far too many billboards for local massage parlors. The neighborhood’s sinking quickly.

My dad doesn’t care. He’s still lost in thought and wiping his eyes. But even that fades as we leave the exit and the local two-lane road eventually reveals our destination: a four-story slablike brick building filled with hundreds of narrow, vertically slit windows.

Of course there’s no welcome sign. They don’t welcome anyone at the Ohio State Penitentiary. But that doesn’t mean they can keep us out.

71

I
f you really missed us that bad, you coulda just sent us a card,” the young nurse said to Naomi as he cut away the dead gray skin from the bullet wound in her shoulder.

“That’s funny,” Naomi replied, using her free hand to dial a number on her phone. “You should be on
M
*
A
*
S
*
H.
”

“What’s
M
*
A
*
S
*
H
?” the nurse asked.

Naomi looked up, staring at him. “Oh, God—you’re not even twenty, are you?”

The sharp ring of Naomi’s phone interrupted the exchange.

“Scotty?” she answered.

“Nope. Becky,” replied a woman with a cigarette-scarred voice. “Becky Alter.”

“I don’t know any Becky Alters.”

“From C3.”

“I don’t know what that is, either.
Ow!
” she hissed, pulling away from the nurse’s dabbing Q-tips.

“Sorry,” the nurse whispered. “It needs to be cleaned.”

“It can wait two minutes,” Naomi shot back, shooing the nurse out of the small curtained exam room. “Go Google
M
*
A
*
S
*
H
. It’ll make you smarter.”

“C3—Cyber Crimes Center,” Becky explained. “I do computer forensics here at ICE. I was at your birthday party.”

“Of course, of course,” Naomi said, eyeing her wet, open wound, which was now burning from whatever cleaning ointment the nurse had put on it. Naomi was nauseated just looking at it and took a seat on the gurney to steady her stomach. “You have dark hair.”

“I’m blond,” Becky said. “Don’t fret. I just came for free cake,” she added with all the sensitivity of someone who does computer forensics. “Leastways . . . I just finished picking through those files you asked for.”

“I asked for files?”

“The ones Scotty sent—through HUD—Service Point homeless records for a Calvin Harper: all the people he picked up during the last year.”

“No—of course,” she said, remembering the database entries from Cal’s laptop. “What took so long?”