The Book of Lies

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 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 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 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 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 of excitement to hit, which was when she applied 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 Alley 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 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 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. 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 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. “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 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 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.”