The Book of Lies

30

Silent on the phone, I leave my father and Serena by the floral sofas as I keep scanning the area for cameras. The only good news is, it takes a solid six minutes to track my cell. Plenty of time to find out who I’m up against.

“Sorry, not ringing my bells,” I tell the woman, hoping she’ll give me her last name.

“Naomi Molina.”

Naomi Molina . . . Naomi . . . Naomi . . . If I knew her, it wasn’t well. Still, the name . . . “Oh, wait—you’re the one who adopted that kid—the lesbian, right?” It’s an old cop trick: riling her to see what she blurts.

“C’mon, Cal. The big-boned female agent who’s also a lesbo? Isn’t that a bit overdone?” she flings back. “No thanks, but I like mine straight up, no twist. But yes, I came aboard right as you were fired.”

“I wasn’t fired,” I shoot back, already regretting it. I should’ve seen it: riling me to see what I blurt.

“Oh, that’s right—you took the far more honorable resign-on-your-own-and-avoid-the-indictment. Let me ask: Were you really in love with Miss Deirdre or was that just the story you saved for Internal Affairs?”

Once again, I stay silent. Across from me, Serena motions for my dad to join her on one of the floral sofas. He doesn’t hesitate. And as they face each other—their knees almost touching—she whispers something to him and he smiles with a strange, newfound calm. From the body language alone, she knows him well.

“Aw, that bump old bruises, Cal?” Naomi asks in my ear. “Now you know how we felt when we heard you were kissing one of your CIs and putting your fellow agents at risk.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Deirdre was your informant, Cal! You were supposed to pay her a few hundred bucks for tips on shipments! Instead, you were sleeping with her and buying her sappy poetry books for her birthday!”

“I never slept with her.”

“No, you did something far more ridiculous: You fell in love, didn’t you? And then when you heard we were raiding a South Beach steakhouse that she was gonna be at, you whispered in her ear and told her to stay away.”

“I had a right to protect my informant!”

“Then you should’ve done it like everyone else: let her get swept up and then pull strings from the inside!” Naomi shouts at full blast. “But to tip her in advance in some pathetic come-on: You have any idea how many of our guys could’ve gotten killed, racing into a raid where everyone knew they were coming?”

“No one got killed.”

“Only because she ratted you out for the scumbag you are! But that’s the true justice, isn’t it? Here you are fighting to keep this dear, defenseless woman safe, and she runs back to headquarters, says she got tipped off by an agent, and offers you up as long as she gets citizenship for the rest of her family. Man, that must’ve stung, huh, Cal? Almost as bad as doing a favor for . . . I don’t know, your own father, and then realizing you’re suddenly the one holding the smoking gun.”

On the sofa, Serena scratches my dad’s back as I stand there, silent. I remember my mom scratching his back when he had a tough day at work.

“I thought for sure you’d nibble at that one,” Naomi tells me.

“Then you remember me as stupid.”

“Actually, I remember you as a stubborn idealist. But I got your psych profile right here, Cal. Every few years, we get a new candidate who takes the job to right some wrong in his past—and then becomes so obsessed with saving people, he starts letting the job substitute for his entire life. That’s your problem, Cal. You’re Sisyphus. You just don’t know it,” she says. “But if I’m reading that wrong . . . yee-haw . . . life must be going pretty beautifully for you these days, huh?”

In front of me, Serena continues her back-scratch, doing her best to calm my dad down. Maybe she is here just to help him. But the way my dad watches her and stares at her—even the way he laughs extra hard at whatever she’s saying—I don’t know what Serena thinks of him, but he clearly would love to have his hands on her.

“Things are just stunning here, thanks.”

“Wonderful. Then let’s do the rest of this face-to-face. You wouldn’t mind coming over for a quick chat, would you?”

Another cop trick: Offer something easy—if I run, she knows I’m guilty. Still, I need to know whether she’s working on hunches or facts. “Happy to, Naomi. Just tell me what we’d be chatting about.”

“Oh, you know—silly little details like why we haven’t heard from Timothy since last night, and what his abandoned car was doing on Alligator Alley. . . . Or to really put a pin in your balloon: how yours was the last call on his cell, and how your van is on every camera in the port at three in the morning, and how the one shipment Timothy was fiddling with just happens to be the one that was picked up by your ex-con dad. Not the prettiest picture that’s being painted here, Cal. Now you wanna tell me what’s really going on, or would you rather fast-forward eight months and tell it to a jury? I’m sure they’ll take your side—I mean, who wouldn’t trust a disgraced agent and his convict father?”

On the floral couch, my dad and Serena both look up at me. I stay where I am, trying to keep my own calm. Between Ellis the killer cop and Naomi the overdetermined agent, I feel another trapdoor ready to open beneath my feet. The only thing keeping it shut is, from what I can tell, they still haven’t found Timothy’s body. As long as that’s true, I may be suspicious, but I’m not a murder suspect.

“Cal, y’know that part in The Fugitive where Harrison Ford says he didn’t kill his wife?” Naomi asks.

“Y’mean when Tommy Lee Jones tells him, ‘I don’t care’?”

“Exactly. But here’s the thing: Despite what you think, I do care. Especially about my partner. Now I know you’ve gotta be exhausted—that’s the only reason you made the mistake of getting on the phone with me, right? So if you tell me what you and Timothy were really up to out there, you know I can save you so many kinds of headache.”

It’s a perfect offer, delivered with perfect pitch. But every story needs a bad guy, and once Ellis comes racing in, pointing his cop finger at me—

“This is a TSA security announcement,” the PA system blares from above. I snap the phone shut, praying she didn’t— Oh, my crap! Of course she did! Her whole maudlin speech—just a stall so she could figure out where I— Dammit, that was rookie of me!

“We need to get out of here,” I shout to my dad. “Feds are on their way!”