谎言书：11

“So you don’t think Ellis knows this’s here?” my father asks.
“If he did, you really think he’d’ve driven off with a truck full of plastic
pineapples? Now c’mon — I figure we’ve got an hour on him. Time to see
what’s behind door number two.”
“Y’sure there’s no door number three?” my father moans forty-five minutes
later, up to his knees in the rancid smell of slowly melting frozen shrimp 1.
Back in the day, I’d have half a dozen agents burrow 2 to the center of a 
four-thousand-pound container, send in the dogs, and empty whatever looked
suspicious, all within twenty minutes. I don’t have half a dozen agents. Or
dogs. I have my dad, and all my dad has is a gunshot wound and a bad back.
“Y’okay?” I ask, walking backward and dragging yet another fifty-pound carton 
of shrimp out the back doors of the truck, onto the ledge 3 of the loading dock.
My father nods, nudging the carton with his foot so he doesn’t have to bend
over. But the sun is up — it’s nearly seven a.m., and the warm air is baking us
in the seafood 4 stench — I can see it reflecting off the sweat on his face.
“Halfway through,” I tell him.
With a sharp kick, he sends the newest box toward the maze 5 of cartons that
crowd the left half of the loading area. On a small radio in the corner, he put
on the local Paul and Young Ron morning show. Still, my dad’s not laughing.
From the hospital to being up all night, he’s had it. But as he turns my way,
he suddenly looks oddly . . . proud.
“When’d you start wearing it facing in?” he asks.
“Excuse me?”
“Your watch,” he says, pointing to the inside of my wrist. “You wear it facing
in.” He then lifts his arm so his palm and the face of his own watch are aimed
at me. “Me, too,” he says. “Funny, huh?”
I look down at my watch, then over at his. Both are cheap. Both are digital.
Both have nearly identical thick black bands.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I insist.
“N-No, I know — I just meant—”
“It’s a stupid coincidence, okay, Lloyd? Now can we drop it and finish
unloading the rest of this?”
I squat 6 down and tug 7 another wet box full of shrimp toward my dad. Using his
foot like a broom, he sweeps it along and adds it to the pile.
“You’re right,” he says. “We need to focus on what’s important.”
“Okay, now what?”
“Just gimme a sec,” I say, shoving aside the last box and staring into the
now completely empty container.
“I don’t think we have a sec,” my dad replies as he turns his wrist and stares
down at his watch.
I glance down at my own, ignoring the slight throb 8 of my dog bite. He may be
right. Outside, there’s a siren in the distance. This neighborhood hears them
all the time. But I can still picture Ellis’s blue lights pulsing in the dark. We
don’t have much time.
Of the seventy-six cartons we pulled from the container, all are the same size,
same shape, and, from what we can tell, same weight. And as they melt in
the Florida heat, each one has a slowly growing puddle 9 beneath it.
“You were hoping one of them wouldn’t be packed with ice?” my dad asks.
“Something like that. Anything to save us from opening and digging through
each one.”
“Maybe one of them has a tattooed 10 frozen head in it. Or someone’s brain.”
“A tattooed head?”
“Okay, not a tattooed head. But y’know what I mean — maybe it’s a
different kinda book. Either way — it’s almost nine — time to get out of here,
Calvin.”
“And where you plan on going? To your apartment? To mine? You think those
aren’t the first places Ellis is gonna look? He shot a federal agent, Lloyd! Trust
me, the only way to bargain with this nutbag is if we have his favorite chip.”
My father steps back at the outburst — not at the words, but at who it came
from.
“And stop giving me that my-boy’s-become-a-man look!” I quickly add. “It’s
fifty times past annoying already!”
“I wasn’t looking at you,” he admits. “I was . . . There . . .” he says,
motioning over my shoulder.
I turn around, following his finger to the open doors of the yawning, empty
container.
“Where’s that water go to?” my father asks. Reading my confusion, he points
again. “There. Right along . . .”
I crane my head and finally see it: on the floor of the container, in the very
back. To the untrained eye, it’s another of the many thin puddles 11 from the
now melted ice. Something you’d never look twice at. Unless you happen to
notice that the puddle is somehow running and disappearing underneath 12 the
container’s back wall.
I’ve seen this magic trick before: bad guys adding fake floors and ceilings in
the hopes of smuggling 13 something in.
My father kicks one of the shrimp boxes and sends it slamming into the back
wall. There’s a hollow echo. No question, there’s something behind there.
Within thirty seconds, my dad’s got the handle from the jack 14 in my van. He
rams 15 it like a shovel 16 at the bottom right corner of the back wall, where there’s
a small gap at the floor. After wedging it in place, he grabs the handle, pushes
down with all his weight, and tries to pry 17 it open. “It’s screwed into the—”
“Lemme try,” I say.
He pushes again. It doesn’t budge 18.
Outside, the siren keeps getting louder. As if it’s coming right at us.
“Lloyd!”
“I’m trying, it’s just — I can’t . . .” he blurts 19, clearly upset as he lets go, and
I take over. The computer said he’s fifty-two years old. At this moment, the
way he looks away and scratches his beard . . . he looks north of sixty.With 
both hands gripping the handle, I wedge one foot against the wall, lean backward, 
and pull down as hard as I can. The wood is cheap, but it barely gives.
I reset 20 my foot and pull harder. The siren howls toward us.
The wood gives way and there’s a loud snap, sending me falling backward. As
I crash on my ass 21, two screws tumble and ping along the metal floor, freeing
the bottom right corner of the wall.
“Now here!” my dad blurts, pointing to the next set of screws on the far right
side of the wall. They’re at waist height and, with the makeshift crowbar, easy
to get at, but all I’m focused on is the unnerving excitement in my dad’s voice.
“C’mon, Cal — we got it!” he says as I put my weight into it and another
hunk of wood is pulled away from the screws. Years ago during my father’s
trial, his lawyer argued that the true cause of my mother’s death was her
mental instability — he said she had an alter ego 22, like a second face: one that
was good, one that was evil. Naturally, the prosecutor 23 pounced 24 on it, saying
my dad was the one with the alter ego: Lloyd the Saintly Defendant 25 and Lloyd
the Reckless Killer 26.
Three minutes ago, my dad was winded and hobbling. Suddenly, he’s gripping
the right side of the thin wooden wall, prying 27 and bending it open and thrilled
to find his treasure. One man. Two faces.
“This is it! Grab it here!” he says, tugging 28 the right side of the thin wall,
which has now lost enough screws that the harder we pull, the more it curves
toward us. I try to see what’s behind it — some kind of box with its long side
running against the true back wall — but with the shadow of the wood, it’s
too dark to see. “Keep pulling!” my father says, still cheerleading as the wood
finally begins to crack. “Uno . . . dos . . .”
With a final awkward semi-karate move, my father kicks the wood panel,
which snaps on impact and sends us both stumbling back. As the last
splinters of particleboard somersault through the morning sun, we both stare
at what my dad was really transporting — the true object of Ellis’s desire.
That’s not just a box.
It’s a coffin 29.
21
“It’s a casket,” my father stutters.
“I know what it is. Is it—? Is someone in it?”
He doesn’t move, still staring at the dark wood box as another siren begins to
scream in the distance. It’s only a matter of time till one’s headed here.
In front of us, it’s definitely a coffin, though it’s oddly rounded at the edges.
Along the top, yellow and white papers are pasted randomly 30 in place, while a
thin band of copper 31 piping runs along the bottom. To be honest, I thought my
dad was bullshitting when he said he didn’t know what was in the truck, but
from the confusion on his face, this is news to him.
“Help me get it out,” my dad says, rushing forward and grabbing one of the
wooden handles at the head of the casket. “Yuuuh!” he yells, leaping back
and frantically 32 wiping his hand on his pants.
“What? Something’s on there?”
He holds up his open palm, which is dotted with small black flecks 33 of dirt.
Fresh soil. I look back at the coffin. Most of it’s wiped clean, but you can still
see chunks 34 of soil caked in the edges of the trim.
“Someone dug this out of the ground,” I say.
“Before Panama, the sheet said it was in Hong Kong,” my dad says. “Do they
have rounded coffins 35 there?”
“You think there’s a body inside?”
There’s a loud chirp 36 as my phone shrieks 37 through the warehouse 38. It’s nearly
ten a.m. and we still haven’t slept. Caller ID tells me who it is. If it were
anyone else, I wouldn’t pick up.
“Cal here,” I answer.
“Good time, bad time?” a fast-talking man with a deep baritone asks through
my cell as yet another siren yet again gets louder.
I watch my father wrap a page of old newspaper around the pull bar on the
coffin, which is only half sticking out through the hole in the fake wall. My dad
tugs 39 hard, but he can’t do it alone. Pinching the phone with my shoulder, I
race next to him, grip the other pull bar along the side, and pull as hard as I
can.
“No . . . ruhhhh . . . perfect time,” I say into the phone, feeling every hour of
my exhaustion 40.
No surprise, Benny laughs.
Two years ago, Benny Ocala came tearing out of the local Seminole Indian
reservation, searching for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted grandfather, who had
wandered, literally 41, off the reservation. Roosevelt and I found the old man in
a Pembroke Pines front yard, sitting in a kiddie pool with his socks on. Today,
Benny’s the Seminole tribe’s very own chief of police. His own sovereign
nation. Which explains why, when I left the hospital earlier tonight, I drove
the extra six miles to give Benny the bullet that the doctor pulled outta my dad.
“Please tell me you were able to trace it,” I say with another tug. The casket
rolls to the right, shedding bits of dirt along the floor as we angle it through
the open hole.
“We’re Indians, Cal. My ancestors traced deer farts.”
I’m tempted 42 to point out he went to Tulane and drives a Camry, but I’m far
too focused on the yellow and white papers pasted to the coffin. I can’t read
the writing — it’s either Chinese or Japanese — but there’s no mistaking the
small crosses at the bottom of each page. Across the top of one of the pages
it says, in English, “Ecclesiastes.” These are Bible pages. Is that what Ellis
meant by a book?
“This is a bad one, isn’t it?” Benny asks, suddenly serious.
I stand up straight, letting go of the coffin. “What’d the trace say?” I ask.
“That’s the thing, Cal — bullets aren’t like fingerprints 43. If I only have the
bullet, unless it’s a rare gun, which’ll leave signature grooves 44 on th—”
“Benny, I hate CSI. I don’t wanna learn.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t wanna call up that woman with the fangy teeth who runs
the computer room at the Broward Sheriff’s Office, and then pretend to flirt 45
with her just so she’ll do me a favor and run a bullet through the ATF
database and their experts there.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“Can’t help it — I’m a sucker for a girl with a snaggletooth,” Benny teases as
my dad continues his tug-of-war with the coffin. “The point is,” he adds, “your
bullet was fired by a rare gun. Really rare: a Walther from 1930. Apparently 46,
it was made as a prototype for the military — Russian army in this case —
then discarded. Only something like twenty ever existed.”
He stops for a moment.
“Benny, why’re you giving me the dramatic pause?”
“It’s just odd, Cal. Guns like this — they don’t show up a lot. Out of the
grillions of guns out there, well . . . that gun’s only been used once — one
time — apparently during some unsolved murder in Cleveland, Ohio.”
Cleveland. That was the area code from my dad’s phone call. I look at my
father, who’s now shimmying the coffin back and forth 47, trying to angle it
through the open hole. As I pace through the empty container, he gives it one
final pull, which frees the casket from its hiding spot.
“When was the murder in Cleveland?” I ask.
“Now you’re seeing the problem, Cal. The last time we know that gun was
fired was back in 1932,” Benny explains. “In fact, if this is right, it’s the same
gun that killed some guy named Mitchell Siegel.”