The Book of Lies

58

Try it now.”

“I thought it needed to soak,” I tell my dad.

“Try it now,” he repeats as all three of us hunch like Macbeth’s witches, our foreheads almost touching, over the plastic motel ice bucket that sits on the round Formica table. Inside the bucket, a single comic book panel stares back at us, floating for nearly forty minutes in the soapy, pungent mixture of warm water, vinegar, and fabric softener. The panel is an unpublished work by the creators of Superman, which makes it irreplaceable. But if Ellis is right, it’s what’s glued behind it that makes it priceless.

“Any luck?” my father asks as I dip both hands into the bucket and try to peel away the layers of wallpaper. It’s like trying to unpeel two stuck stamps. The liquid makes it slippery—it gives just slightly—but it’s not there yet.

“Don’t rip it,” my father warns.

“I’m not. I was—” I shoot him a look. “You’re the one who said, Try it now.”

“Let’s all just find a moment,” Serena pleads, doing her usual push for quiet and calm. “If Jerry Siegel really had Cain’s book—this Book of Lies—let’s just worry about finding it, yes?”

She points her nose at the ice bucket, where I stare down at the submerged panel.

No question, that’s what the newspaper boy’s arm is covering. The Book of Lies. But I’m not believing anything until I’ve seen the rest of the panels.

“Try it now,” my father says for the third time.

With my hand in the bucket, I rub the corner of the wallpaper between my thumb and pointer finger. It’s mushy now, sliding away from the panel underneath. With a pinch, I peel back the top layer slowly, like a stubborn Band-Aid.

The wallpaper tears slightly, but not much. I pinch the opposite corner and start peeling the other way. The longer the wallpaper sits in the water, the more the glue dissolves and the easier it becomes.

“Can you see anything?” my father asks, almost butting foreheads with me.

Actually, I can.

And just like that—with a final tug of the Band-Aid—it’s done.

The top panel—with the newspaper boy running from the bullets—is completely free, revealing a second panel underneath.

A gunshot.

“It’s just like the curator said,” my father points out as we all stare into the ice bucket. “In this first Superman story—Jerry Siegel put his dad’s real killer in it.”

“Can you feel how many more panels there are?” Serena asks.

I’m already peeling away the next layer, which shows the newspaper boy running toward a building. I have to squint to read it, but— “There’s an address. . . .”

“184 King Street. Is that where Mitchell Siegel was shot?” my father asks. “We need a map.”

“I can try on my phone,” Serena offers.

“I threw your phone away,” my dad says.

“What?”

“In the house—when you hit Naomi—Cal screamed your name,” my dad explains. “The moment Naomi wakes up, she’ll be looking for you. I tossed it on the way over here. Sorry—we’ll buy you a new one when all this is done.”

I nod in agreement. For once, he’s got it right.

Turning back to the panels, I peel the final one away. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a face or a name. If Jerry really did put his father’s killer in here, we need to know who we’re up against—and how they got this Book of Lies.

But as the final panel of wallpaper gives way, all we’re left with is . . .

“That’s it? A man in some cave?” my dad asks as I slap the final piece of wet wallpaper against the table. “That’s no murderer.”

“Maybe that’s a clue,” I point out.

“It’s not the newspaper boy anymore. This guy’s older. Could that be part of it?” Serena asks.

“Maybe that’s where it started,” I add, already rearranging the panels. “The Cain book is supposedly ancient, right? Maybe they found it in a cave or something. Maybe that 184 King Street building is where the killer tried to hide. Something like— Something like this.”

“How does that make sense?” Serena asks. “It doesn’t even read right.”

“It’s not right,” my dad insists. “If all we’re supposed to get is the address and some random cave, then why include the close-up of the gun and the dodging bullet panels? What’d the curator say? When this story got rejected, Siegel or Shuster supposedly tore the whole thing to shreds. But of those shreds, these four panels, for some reason, got saved. That isn’t happening without a good reason.”

“Maybe it’s like the KKK thing,” Serena suggests. Reading our confusion, she reaches for a pamphlet on Superman history that she pulled from the museum gift shop. “In here. It’s . . . here,” she says, flipping to the page. “In the late 1940s, as a way to destabilize the Ku Klux Klan and make them think they were being infiltrated, the Superman radio show was covertly given the secret passwords that the Klan used to call and organize meetings. They were aired as part of the broadcast. Regular listeners had no idea. But the Klan knew. From there, they started infighting, looking for the snitch. The show hid it right in front of everyone.”

“Meaning what?” I ask. “Jerry Siegel hid it in front of everyone, too?”

We all look down at the panels. There are worse ideas.

“What about the first letters of the captions,” Serena says. “L . . . U . . . T . . . H . . . E . . . If there was an R, it’d spell Luther. Lex Luther.”

“I think Luthor has an o, not an e,” I point out. “But if you rearrange the letters: Let Uh . . . Tel Uh . . .”

“It doesn’t spell anything,” my dad says.

“Maybe it’s the whole text. Luckily he sees a torch,” I read from the first line.

For the next ten minutes, we rearrange the letters, coming up with such insights as “A Churches Likely Toes,” “A Checklist Holey Ruse,” and “Holy Accuser Heels Kit.” From the map we got at the car rental place, the search for 184 King Street is just as fruitful. There’s a King Avenue. But in all of Cleveland . . . all of Cuyahoga County . . . there’s not a single King Street.

“Maybe we still have the order of the panels wrong. Maybe the one with the torch is last, not first,” Serena says as she rearranges them. “Instead of the man reaching for the flame, maybe he’s tossing something into it.”

“So now they burned the book? Then why save any of this?” I ask.

Once again, Serena and I look down at the panels. My father hasn’t taken his eyes off them. And once again, like clockwork, he’s fourteen steps ahead of us.

“It’s not a word puzzle. It’s a visual one,” he says.

“What?”

“Comics are a visual medium. All the panels—they’re pictures, right? Now look at the pictures . . . see what they have in common.”

I stare but see nothing. “What’re you—? You spotted something, didn’t you?”

“A moon,” Serena blurts.

“Exactly. A moon,” my father says. “There’s a moon in each one.”

On the table, I see the moon in the Yowzie panel but nowhere else.

“Like Ellis’s tattoo,” my dad says, now excited. “He had a crescent moon in his tattoo.” But as I continue to stare . . .

“You still don’t see it, do you, Calvin? It’s in every panel—and not just in the sky,” my dad says, finally pointing it out. “Look at the base of the flame . . . the barrel of the gun.”

“Hocus-pocus,” Serena whispers to herself. “How’d you even see that?”

I’m tempted to ask the same, but I know the answer. My father was a painter. To match that restaurant lettering . . . he always had the perfect eye.

“So you think the moon’s the key?” Serena asks.

“Not the key,” he says. “More like the X. As in marks the spot.”

One by one, he peels each of the wet panels from the table.

“What’re you doing?” I challenge.

“Just watch,” he says as he overlaps the moon in the Yowzie panel with the moon in the King Street one. Thanks to the wetness of the wallpaper, we can practically see through them.

“And that does a big fat nothing,” I point out.

Undeterred, he peels the sopping wet gunshot panel from the table and overlaps that moon with the other ones.

Like before, it’s just a mess of overlapped art.

“So now what?” Serena asks.

It’s the only question that matters, but my dad’s not answering, his eyes dancing from the overlapped art to the final panel, then back to the overlapped art.

“Yowzie,” he blurts.

“What? Is Yowzie good?” Serena asks.

“I don’t believe it,” he adds as his voice picks up speed. He’s not scared anymore. He’s excited. “Those sneaky sons of bitches—when you match up the moons . . . It’s like you said—just like they did with the KKK.”

He peels the final wet panel—the one with the man and the torch—from the table, then lowers it toward the others, overlapping its moon with the rest. “Hidden in front of everyone.”

I study the panels again but still come up empty.

“You really don’t see it?” he asks.

I stare again. It’s still a mess. “Lloyd, tell me what the hell I’m looking at. Is it something in the middle or—”

“Not the middle. On the outside. Wait, lemme . . .” From his front pocket, my dad pulls out a cocktail napkin—looks like it’s from a bar—and covers the center panel. On the napkin is the handwritten note “GATH 601174-7.” The container number from the original shipment. But that’s not what he cares about. “Here,” my father says as he presses the napkin into place. “How ’bout now?”

His fingers race as he traces the outer edges of each panel. “We just— We had it wrong. It’s not a Book of Lies at all. It’s a Book of— Book of—”

“Truth,” Serena and I mutter simultaneously as we study the outer panels and read clockwise.

“Book of Truth,” I repeat. “That’s great, but— I don’t— What’s that even mean?”

“It means here’s how the panels are supposed to be,” he says, still excited.

“I thought it was supposed to have who killed Jerry’s dad,” Serena points out.

“Maybe it’s not,” I say. “Maybe it’s something else.”

“Do we even know what a Book of Truth is?” Serena asks.

“I think . . . that’s what some people call the Bible, isn’t it?” my dad says, rotating the napkin and still fiddling with the letters that show up in the overlap.

“T-H-U-L-E,” my father spells out, pressing his finger on the H as it seeps through the wet napkin. “Who’s Thule?” he asks, his voice much slower, as though he’s confused. “Or maybe Theul or . . . Uleth?”

“Maybe that’s the killer’s name,” Serena points out.

“Maybe it’s someone Jerry knew,” my dad adds.

“Or maybe the curator had it wrong,” I say.

But as all three of us sit there, crowded around the table and lost amid what feels like another dead end, my father freezes.

“I don’t think the curator had it wrong,” he announces. His voice is still flying, but as he motions to the art, his mouth falls open and he shakes his head. Forget excitement. He’s back to fear. “Oh, God. This is— Serena, this is bad.”

Like before, he’s staring down at the panels. But with all our sitting around, the water has now soaked through the napkin that covers them. Like before, he’s the only one who sees it.

“What? What’re you looking at?” she asks.

“Their symbol . . . it’s their symbol. . . .”

“Whose symbol?” I ask, scanning each of the outer panels. “The KKK?”

“Worse.”

“Who’s worse?”

My father points back to the moon, but it’s not until he slaps his palm against the art—like he’s swatting a fly—that the water fully seeps through the napkin and I finally see what he’s talking about. It’s not just the letters on the flaps. It’s the picture that’s created when you line up the images underneath.

A flush of blood buzzes my ears. A sharp burn ignites inside my chest, as if there’s someone curled inside my rib cage trying to kick his way out.

The curator had it only partly right. Jerry Siegel didn’t know the exact person who killed his dad. But that didn’t mean he didn’t know who the killer worked for. Or who we’re now up against.

Even in 1932, there was no mistaking a swastika.