谎言书：12

“Who’s Mitchell Siegel?”
My dad turns to me as I say the name, but not for long. He turns back to the
coffin 2 and starts circling it, trying to figure out how to get it open.
“You didn’t look him up?” I ask.
“Of course I looked him up. Deer farts, remember? So according to this,
Mitchell Siegel is just a normal 1930s average Joe. Lived in Cleveland for
years . . . ran a tailor shop . . . had a nice family.”
“Why’d he get killed?”
“No one knows. Death certificate says two men came in and stole some
clothes.”
“He was killed for clothes?”
“It was the Depression — I have no idea. Like I said, the case is unsolved.
Just a bullet in this guy from this gun. Just like your dad.”
“Yeah,” I say as my father grips the lid at the top corner of the coffin and
tries to lift it open. It doesn’t budge 3. He tries the bottom corner. Same thing.
I went to my first funeral when I was nine years old. With our clientele,
Roosevelt and I went to lots more. Even I know coffins 4 are locked with a key.
“Oh, and in case you needed even more news of the odd: This guy Mitchell?
He’s the father of Jerry Siegel.”
“Am I supposed to know that name?”
“Jerry Siegel. The writer who created Superman.”
“Like Clark Kent Superman? As in ‘faster than a speeding bullet’?”
“Apparently 5 his dad wasn’t. Bullet hit Mitchell square in the chest,” Benny
says. “Kinda kooky, though, huh? The gun that shoots your dad is the same
one that shot the dad of Superman’s creator?” He lowers his voice, doing a
bad Vincent Price. “Two mysteries, nearly eighty years apart. You not hearing
that Twilight 6 Zone music?”
“Yeah, that’s very—” Across from me, my dad reaches into his pocket, pulls
out what looks like a small L-wrench, and slides it into a small hole at the
upper half of the casket. Is that—? Son of a bitch. He’s got a key.
“Benny, I gotta go,” I say, and slap my phone shut.
I rush toward my dad, whose back is still to me. Outside, the multiple sirens
in the distance go suddenly silent, which is even worse. “Where’d you get
that?” I shout.
He doesn’t turn around.
“Lloyd, I’m talking to you! Where’d you get that key!?”
Still no response.
There’s a loud thunk as he twists the metal key. The bolt in the coffin slides
and unlocks.
When my dad first saw the coffin, he was definitely scared. But the way his
hands crawl like tarantulas across the side — as fast as they’re moving — now
he’s excited. Digging his fingers into the lip of the casket, he lets out the
smallest of grunts 7.
With that, the coffin opens.
22
“Hold on . . . I’m booting up now,” Special Agent Naomi Molina said,
reaching down to turn on her home computer while working hard not to spill
her oatmeal across her keyboard. It was harder than it looked. But like any
Jewban (Jewish mom, Cuban dad), finding balance was everything for her.
It started when Naomi was eleven years old, which was when she discovered
her first calling, sports (over Dad’s screaming, “Cuban girls should only wear
dresses!”). Taller than all the prepubescent boys, young Naomi was an all-star
catcher two years in a row.
“Jeez, Nomi, whatcha on, a Speak and Spell there?” Scotty teased through
the phone, laughing his snorty laugh.
“Scotty . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up,” Naomi said through a mouthful of oatmeal as she flipped 8 through
the files she’d been faxed this morning. She had known something was wrong
when Timothy didn’t report in last night. She’d been working with him at ICE
for nearly two years now. Timothy always reported in.
When Naomi was sixteen and fully 9 hugging her wild side, she started working
at her dad’s repo shop, translating insurance documents from Spanish to
English. And when her father died a few years later, that’s when she found
her second calling.
“What kinda oatmeal?” Scotty asked. “No . . . lemme guess: cinnamon,
brown sugar.”
Naomi stayed silent and swallowed another spoonful, hating that at thirty-four
years old, she’d become that predictable.
She was eighteen when she went out on her first repo job, breaking into an
old orange Camaro with an ease that would’ve made her dad proud. That was
the next five years of her life: cars, boats, motorcycles, Jet Skis, even a plane
once — she could find and break into anything. It was dangerous, though.
And that was always the problem with the repo business: lots of headache, no
stability, and it always attracted the worst employees — sleeping all day and
working all night makes for a tough crew to manage. But Naomi managed it
— even loved it — until the parties went too late and the drinking was too
much.
She saw it in her boyfriend first, when he started with the heavier drugs.
Then with her friend Denise, who called her up one morning and in a heroin 10
rush said, “Nomi, I can’t handle Lucas. My head’s not on straight and — and
— and — I’m thinking of — I don’t wanna hurt my boy!” she’d sobbed 11 about
her son. “Please, Nomi — I’m dropping him off now — I need you to take him!
Just for — I need to get better!” Lucas was two at the time. Today he was
eight. He’d been with Naomi every day in between.
Every life has forks in its road. And sometimes, the tines of that fork stab
deep. A year later, her repo business was sold, her boyfriend was long gone,
and Naomi Molina was back to translating documents for a local insurance
company. It took three months for the itch 1 of excitement to hit, which was
when she applied 12 for a job at Customs, eventually getting promoted to her
third calling: as a special agent at ICE.
For nearly two years, she’d been working with Timothy, which is why she got
the report about his abandoned car being found on Alligator 13 Alley 14 this
morning. But in total, all it took was four short years for an impatient, plus-size,
single girl with a splash of purple hair to be magically transformed into
an impatient plus-fluffy-size single mom with a L’Oréal medium-maple dye job
and an eight-year-old son who refused to learn how to tie his shoes.
“Mom,” young Lucas asked as he entered the living room, “can you—?”
“You wanted basketball shoes, tie them yourself,” Naomi threatened, still
poring over the reports as her computer finally began to boot up. “Otherwise,
wear the Velcro ones.”
“Didja try teaching him using two bows?” Scotty asked through the phone in
his heavy Bronx accent.
“Scotty . . .” Naomi shot back.
“Yeah?”
“You have kids?”
“Nope.”
“It shows. Two bows is harder. And the more frustrating 15 it gets, the more
he’ll cry, and the more I’ll be forced to consider abandoning this life with
nothing more than the clothes on my back and a bag of mint Milanos.”
“That’s funny, Naomi — but I seen your office and the way you taped all
those photos around the edge of your monitor. Whattya got, forty, fifty pics
there? Everyone knows whatcha think about that boy.”
Again, she stayed silent. At least once a year, Naomi’s mother would call and
not-so-subtly hint about how her daughter’s life — how everything from the
repo business, to the adopted son, to the filthy 16 law enforcement job — how
everything somehow found her. But Naomi knew that when it came to this
life, she was the one who found it.
That was always Naomi’s specialty 17. Finding things. That’s what her dad taught
her — from repossessed cars, to bad guys on the job . . . to finding what
happened to her partner, Timothy, when he left the Port of Miami at four a.m.
and drove out to Alligator Alley. Where the hell could he be?
On-screen, she opened the e-mail from Scotty and clicked on the embedded 18
link. The video footage started playing in front of her.
“Okay, I got it — this’s from last night?” she asked as she looked at a shot of
the roof of the H-shaped warehouse 19. “Those pole cameras still don’t do
color?”
“Just watch.”
Sure enough, a white Crown Vic pulled up into the corner of the screen. But
for a full two minutes, no one got out. Timothy must’ve been talking to
someone. “How’s the audio?” Naomi asked.
“Poor. Keep watching. . . .”
The passenger door flew open, and a man with a baseball hat jumped out,
then got back in the car. A minute later, Baseball Hat stepped out again,
followed by Timothy, who got out on the driver’s side and quickly checked
over his own shoulder. No question, they were worried about something.
“And that’s the best we got?” Naomi asked. “Sixty-million dollars’ worth of
increased surveillance, and we’re outdone by a . . .” She hit the pause button
and squinted 20 at the screen. “Is that a Homeland Security baseball cap?”
“There’s lots of cameras. We’re collecting all the footage now.”
“What about Timothy’s cell phone?”
“Nothing to trace, which means it’s either smashed, underground, or
underwater. I’m telling you, it’s ugly, Naomi. They’re combing the canals, but
it’s been five hours since—”
“Mom, can I wear flip-flops?” Lucas asked, walking into the living room with
them already on his feet.
Naomi turned, her eyes filled with fire. “You are not wearing flip-flops, y’hear
me!?” But even as the words left her lips, she caught her breath, cursed the
existence of winter break, and brushed her medium-maple brown hair back
behind her ear. “That’s — It’s fine. Flip-flops are fine.”
“Naomi, you okay?” Scotty asked through the phone.
“Yeah, I’m — I’m just doing the preliminaries for my son’s future therapy.”
With a deep breath, she added, “Tell me you at least have Timothy’s phone
records.”
“Sending them right now. Apparently, he didn’t place a call all night — but at
two-fourteen a.m., he did get one from a guy named Calvin Harper.”
Gazing at the computer screen, Naomi studied the frozen black-and-white
image of the blurry 21 man with the baseball cap.
Cal.
One of their own. Smart enough to know about the cameras. Of course it was
Cal.
“Don’t worry. I can definitely find him,” Naomi called out as she tossed her
cell phone to her son. “Lucas, call Nana. Tell her I need her to come over
earlier.”
23
“Don’t touch it!” I call out. “It’s evidence!”
“Evidence?” my dad asks, shaking his head. “You’re not a cop anymore, Cal.
Screw evidence. From here on in, we need to figure out how to stay alive —
and near as I can tell, it’s by finding out what’s really going on and nabbing
whatever’s in here.”
He motions down at the open, white-velvet-lined casket, where a dead Asian
man with black hair and surprisingly dark skin lies, arms crossed over his
chest. He’s slightly off center, a result of all the shaking and tugging 22 we did to
get the coffin out.
Best of all, he has firm skin, lots of makeup 23, and not a bit of smell. He’s been
embalmed 24. But it’s his fine pin-striped suit, Yale tie, and pristine 25 manicure
that tells me he’s from money.
“Okay, enough already,” I growl 26 at my dad. “What the eff is going on?”
Down on his knees and ignoring the question, he squints 27 into the coffin like
he’s searching for a lost contact lens.
“Lloyd . . .”
“Help me open the other side,” he says, his voice racing 28. With a shove, he
flips 29 open the lower lid, revealing the interior at the foot end of the casket.
It’s cluttered 31 like the back of an old junk drawer: a silver key ring, some dead
flowers, a dark wooden rosary, half a dozen family photos, a broken comb
(which I think is a tradition in China), a bottle of perfume, a stethoscope
(maybe a doctor), and even a full set of clothes wrapped and tied neatly 32 in a
blue bow. Accompaniments for the afterlife.
I go for the photos, trying to figure out who this dead guy is. My father goes
for the clutter 30. He pushes aside the flowers and digs underneath 33 the pile of
perfectly 34 folded clothes. He’s searching for something, and as fast as he’s
moving — he already knows it’s there.
At the bottom of the interior chamber 35 of the coffin, there’s a flat white
package the size of a FedEx delivery envelope wrapped in what looks like an
oversize Ziploc bag.
My father yanks it out. There’s a zigzagging 36 smile on his face.