The Book of Lies

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 in place, while a thin band of copper 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 wiping his hand on his pants.

“What? Something’s on there?”

He holds up his open palm, which is dotted with small black flecks of dirt. Fresh soil. I look back at the coffin. Most of it’s wiped clean, but you can still see chunks 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 there?”

“You think there’s a body inside?”

There’s a loud chirp as my phone shrieks through the warehouse. 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 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.

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, 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 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. If I only have the bullet, unless it’s a rare gun, which’ll leave signature grooves 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 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, 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, 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.”

“Who’s Mitchell Siegel?”

My dad turns to me as I say the name, but not for long. He turns back to the coffin and starts circling it, trying to figure out how to get it open.

“You didn’t look him up?” I ask.

“Of course I looked him up. Deer farts, remember? So according to this, Mitchell Siegel is just a normal 1930s average Joe. Lived in Cleveland for years . . . ran a tailor shop . . . had a nice family.”

“Why’d he get killed?”

“No one knows. Death certificate says two men came in and stole some clothes.”

“He was killed for clothes?”

“It was the Depression—I have no idea. Like I said, the case is unsolved. Just a bullet in this guy from this gun. Just like your dad.”

“Yeah,” I say as my father grips the lid at the top corner of the coffin and tries to lift it open. It doesn’t budge. He tries the bottom corner. Same thing. I went to my first funeral when I was nine years old. With our clientele, Roosevelt and I went to lots more. Even I know coffins are locked with a key.

“Oh, and in case you needed even more news of the odd: This guy Mitchell? He’s the father of Jerry Siegel.”

“Am I supposed to know that name?”

“Jerry Siegel. The writer who created Superman.”

“Like Clark Kent Superman? As in ‘faster than a speeding bullet’?”

“Apparently his dad wasn’t. Bullet hit Mitchell square in the chest,” Benny says. “Kinda kooky, though, huh? The gun that shoots your dad is the same one that shot the dad of Superman’s creator?” He lowers his voice, doing a bad Vincent Price. “Two mysteries, nearly eighty years apart. You not hearing that Twilight Zone music?”

“Yeah, that’s very—” Across from me, my dad reaches into his pocket, pulls out what looks like a small L-wrench, and slides it into a small hole at the upper half of the casket. Is that—? Son of a bitch. He’s got a key.

“Benny, I gotta go,” I say, and slap my phone shut.

I rush toward my dad, whose back is still to me. Outside, the multiple sirens in the distance go suddenly silent, which is even worse. “Where’d you get that?” I shout.

He doesn’t turn around.

“Lloyd, I’m talking to you! Where’d you get that key!?”

Still no response.

There’s a loud thunk as he twists the metal key. The bolt in the coffin slides and unlocks.

When my dad first saw the coffin, he was definitely scared. But the way his hands crawl like tarantulas across the side—as fast as they’re moving—now he’s excited. Digging his fingers into the lip of the casket, he lets out the smallest of grunts.

With that, the coffin opens.