The Book of Lies

20

Here?” my father asks, looking inside the dark doorway. Our clothes were soaked from the water, but he’s still fidgeting with the spare dry T-shirt and jeans I always keep stored in the van. “Y’sure?”

I nod, holding open the door with no doorknob and thankful that the punch-code lock is still so easy to jimmy. Inside the old warehouse, the walls are bare and peeling, while each corner hosts a small hill of crumpled newspapers and garbage. Up high, the few horizontal windows are shattered. And the sign out front carries the spray-painted love note “LO” (a gang-inspired tag that means “Latinos Only” just in case anyone misses the welcome mat).

But as I flick a switch and the fluorescent lights blink to life, they reveal what we’re really after: the navy blue container with black tracking number 601174-7 painted across its back. Beached like a metal whale, it rests its tail against the narrow loading dock that runs along the back of the room.

“You sure it’s safe?” my father asks, racing for the container.

He’s missing the point. The warehouse may be decorated in modern dungeon, but that’s the goal. Hidden under layers of fake corporate names, this place is owned by the U.S. government.

We— They. They own them all around the city: fake warehouses that ICE, Customs, and the FBI can use for whatever sting operations they happen to be running. When Timothy offered to have the container delivered here, I thought he was doing me a favor. All he was really doing—once he presumably got rid of me and my dad—was swiping it for himself.

“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.

Back in the day, I’d have half a dozen agents burrow 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 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 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 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 down and tug 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 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 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 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 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 the container’s back wall.

I’ve seen this magic trick before: bad guys adding fake floors and ceilings in the hopes of smuggling 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 in my van. He rams it like a shovel 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 it open. “It’s screwed into the—”

“Lemme try,” I say.

He pushes again. It doesn’t budge.

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, 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 my foot and pull harder. The siren howls toward us.

Krrrk.

The wood gives way and there’s a loud snap, sending me falling backward. As I crash on my ass, 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, like a second face: one that was good, one that was evil. Naturally, the prosecutor pounced on it, saying my dad was the one with the alter ego: Lloyd the Saintly Defendant and Lloyd the Reckless Killer.

Three minutes ago, my dad was winded and hobbling. Suddenly, he’s gripping the right side of the thin wooden wall, prying and bending it open and thrilled to find his treasure. One man. Two faces.

“This is it! Grab it here!” he says, tugging 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.