All Lies

by Andrew Cunningham

  "Don't open the front door unless you know exactly who's out there," I said, anxious to get to Sabrina.

  "Never do."

  "Yeah, well, it's especially important now." I updated him on Russ's death. "Can you get a message to Mo?"

  "I don't need to, but I will. She can take care of herself."

  "I'm well aware of that," I said, "but these people mean business, and they have guns."

  "I remember. The house still has bullet holes from your last encounter. Do they know where your mother lives?"

  Shit! My mother. Of course they did. They followed me there that first night.

  "I'll call her on my way to the hotel," I said. "Thanks, Seymour."

  "You carrying?"

  "Carrying what?"

  "Carrying. You know. Your gun? You do have a license to carry, remember?"

  "Right." Not counting my initial meeting with Sabrina and my trip to my father's house, I had never actually carried a concealed weapon. Even going to the range, I transported it in in a case. "I feel kind of awkward doing it. You know, like I'm doing something wrong."

  "Sometimes you're a real idiot," he said. "You got the license to be able to carry it for protection. You don't think this qualifies?"

  "I guess it does. I'll go get it."

  "Smart boy. Don't forget to load it."

  I went back up to my apartment and retrieved my gun. I was kind of wishing I had bought something smaller for concealment purposes. I spent ten minutes trying to find the best spot to put it so that it wasn't digging into me, or if it accidently went off, it wouldn't blow off some vital part of my anatomy. I finally decided it was the least uncomfortable in my pants in the small of my back—the same place I put it when I first met Sabrina. Luckily, the chilly weather required a jacket, so the spot would be covered. How did they make it look so easy in the movies?

  Then I called my mother. I had no idea what I was going to say. Thankfully, she made it easy. I told her a shortened version of events, this time without sanitizing it. Of course she was worried for me, but oddly, not as worried as I thought she'd be. I questioned her about that.

  "Del, I've been worried about you for the last ten or fifteen years. You've had nothing in your life. That worried me. Obviously I'm concerned, but I hear a confidence in your voice I've never heard before."

  "Really? And I thought it was fear."

  She chuckled. "Maybe I should be more worried than I am," she continued, "but I have faith in you. What you're involved in is dangerous, for sure, but you're finally living. You have excitement in your life. You've never had that. Anyway, don't worry about me. I was going to visit a friend in England next week. I'll re-book it for tomorrow."

  "Thanks. That'll make me feel better."

  "And Del, remember, you are traveling with a famous author. She's going to bring her publisher a lot of money over the next few years, so they will do anything to keep her safe. One phone call from her and they'll send in the Marines. Use that lifeline if you need to. Stay safe and keep in touch by email. I love you." She hung up.

  Okay, so that was weird. That was nowhere near the reaction I expected. Was my life really so empty before this? Yeah, it was.

  I finally made it to the Weston an hour later. Sabrina greeted me with a hug. Her eyes widened when I took out the gun and laid it on the coffee table.

  "That's ominous," she said.

  "'Ominous' doesn't begin to cover it." We sat on the couch and I related the call from Sorenson. She began to cry. I wasn't sure what reaction I would get from her, but the tears surprised me. I thought they were tears of fear, but once again, I was mistaken. They were for Russ.

  "I couldn't stand the man," she said, wiping her eyes, "but nobody deserves that. We got him into it, and now he's dead. He didn't do anything wrong."

  There was nothing I could say.

  "So what now?" she asked.

  "We're kind of stuck," I said. "We can't move forward until we can narrow down the clue in the picture. At the same time, we can't abandon it, because Guidry is going to keep coming at us. He might need something else from us or he might just want us dead. Either way, he's dangerous."

  "And we can't hand it all over to the police," added Sabrina. "There's nothing they can do with it."

  She looked me in the eyes. "We really have no choice but to take this as far as we can."

  I started to shake my head. I must have had a mournful look on my face.

  "And Del, before you say it, you didn't get me into this. Remember, I came to you."

  Wow, she could read minds, too.

  "Let's switch gears," she said. "Supposedly there is a treasure. What could it be? Gold, silver, jewels?"

  "I don't know what they produce in Brazil," I said. "We can look it up. He referred to it as a fortune, so it has to be something tangible that they could determine was valuable."

  "So gold, silver or jewels certainly fit the bill."

  "Maybe."

  "What about an icon of some kind?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know, like some ancient religious artifact. Isn't South America famous for them?"

  Something clicked in my head. The words 'South America' set it off. Sabrina sensed it and went silent, giving me the time to process it. And then it hit me. I might have been looking at one of the clues that very first day, the day I went to my father's house.

  I shook my head in wonder. Could my family get any more confusing? "All this time," I said, "I've been under the illusion that my father knew very little about this. And yet, he was the one who hid the book and the bag in the boxes in his attic. Why would he hide them so carefully if he didn't know? So it's obvious that he had to know at least a part of the story. He realized that there was danger associated with it."

  "And?" Sabrina was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  "He was working on a book for about ten years—at least, that's what I thought. I saw all the notes on his laptop. I just assumed inertia kept him from making much progress. But maybe it wasn't a book at all. Maybe he was looking into the same thing we are, just from a different angle. I think he knew—to some degree, anyway—what the treasure was. I think he also knew it was somewhere in South America."

  She was still waiting.

  "He was doing research on South America."

  "On what aspect? Brazil? Treasure? Religious artifacts?"

  "Um, I have no idea. I just know it was on South America."

  "It's a big place."

  "I get that. You have to understand my relationship with my father. We never talked about anything of substance. He would ask the safe questions like 'How's work' or 'How's school' or 'Do you have a girlfriend'. And he shared nothing about his life at all. Once, about five years ago I asked him—more just for something to say—if he was getting anything published. I was remembering how he published articles when I was young. At that time he said he was working on a book about South America. That's it. He never elaborated."

  When I went through his stuff, I found the notes on his laptop—just a single file labeled 'Book Notes." I opened it and saw South America mentioned a few times, so I closed it and went on to other things."

  "It's certainly worth checking out," said Sabrina. "Who knows? All these years your father may have been researching the treasure right under your nose."

  Chapter 22

  We had to solve the mystery. This one act of … of what? Stupidity? Greed? One act, committed so many years ago, was now in its fourth generation. That was three generations too many. It had to stop, and it was up to me to end it. My great-grandfather died because of it; my grandfather died because of it; my father died … well, my father died because he couldn't keep it in his pants, but he was responsible for keeping the whole thing going. He could have destroyed all the material and it would be over now. But no, he couldn't do that. And now, two more people were dead, and my life and Sabrina's life were in jeopardy.

  It was too late in the day to go across the state to my fat
her's house, so we stayed in and ordered room service. The good thing, at least as far as we knew, was that Guidry's people didn't know Sabrina's name, so we felt pretty anonymous in the hotel.

  We tried to have a nice romantic night, but finally gave up. Sabrina's publicist called four times, and she couldn't ignore him this time. He was putting the finishing touches on her book tour, and there were too many time-critical issues to be taken care of. So I played with my new phone until boredom set in. I finally fell asleep fully clothed, on top of the bed. I had a vague memory of Sabrina taking my pants off at some point and pulling the covers over me. I think she even whispered "sorry," but I guess our adventures out west wore me out more than I knew.

  I woke up refreshed, but disturbed. In those early morning minutes, when dead sleep had ended, but I wasn't quite awake, my interaction with Seymour the day before took over my brain. What was it that disturbed me? It was related to his comment about the bullet holes in the side of the house, that much I knew, but it wasn't connecting. It was what finally woke me up—that and the fact that I had to pee.

  When I got back from the bathroom, Sabrina was awake.

  "Sorry again about last night. I … what's wrong? Are you mad at me?"

  I looked at her in surprise, then realized I must've had a scowl on my face. I got rid of the scowl and sat next to her on the bed. "God, no," I said, and kissed her lightly on the lips. "How could I be mad at you for anything?"

  She relaxed. "You had such a strange face when you came out of the bathroom. Everything go okay in there?"

  "Just dandy. No, the face was me pondering a dilemma. It was something Seymour said to me yesterday when he was telling me why I was an idiot for not carrying my gun. He referred to the people who tried to kill me outside my house."

  "And?"

  "And why? When the thugs burst into our room in Wahoo, they weren't there to kill us. They wanted the painting. When the morons in the alley in Fairfield jumped us, they were looking for information. So why did they suddenly go from trying to kill us, to trying to pump us for information?"

  "Not the same people?" She said it almost without thinking, as if it was the logical response. And then she realized what she had said and stared at me. "If we follow that a step further," the wheels were turning now, "who actually killed Izzy? We've assumed Guidry killed her after getting the information he needed, but maybe it wasn't Guidry at all."

  "So there could be a third party involved?"

  "It's not even worth asking who," said Sabrina. "But I guess it means we have to be even more vigilant than we already are."

  "Is that even possible?" I asked.

  A text came in from my mother telling me that her flight was boarding and warning me to be careful.

  I wished her well and assured her we would be. Like I would say to my mother, "No, I won't be careful, but thank you."

  We had breakfast in our room and got ready to leave.

  "When you travel, do you usually eat in your room?" I asked.

  "Always, unless I'm meeting someone. Is that a window into my life?"

  "A picture window. Am I helping any with the trust thing?"

  "Well, like I said before, I trust you."

  "That's a good start. Only seven billion more people to go."

  "Piece of cake."

  *****

  We arrived at my father's house around noon.

  "Nice," said Sabrina. "It feels like an academic neighborhood."

  "A lot of faculty and staff from the various colleges in the area live here. It's quiet."

  "Could you live here?"

  "No. Too many memories of a broken childhood. I'll sell it when the time is right."

  "You're happier living in a third floor apartment in East Boston than here?" she asked incredulously.

  "Says something about the memories, doesn't it?"

  "What if you weren't living in it alone?" she asked.

  I looked at her. Was it an invitation? She had turned bright red. It was a feeler.

  "I suppose that could change things."

  I left it at that. Sabrina had just taken a giant leap forward. If I put too much attention on it, she might retreat. By positively acknowledging her veiled suggestion, but not taking it any further, it would give her the comfort of having taken a step without an actual commitment.

  Everything was as I left it from my last visit, my father's laptop still sitting on his desk. We took off our jackets and Sabrina threw them on the couch in his office. How often had that couch been used for grade-raising purposes? I picked up the jackets and put them on a chair in the corner. Sabrina gave me a questioning look.

  "Trust me. And I don't suggest sitting on it, either." She nodded in understanding. I pulled a comfortable chair over to the desk, next to the office chair. We both sat and I opened the laptop.

  I found the folder marked "Book Notes" and opened it. As I knew from my previous foray into his computer, the folder only contained one file. I guess he never felt the need to divide his research into topics.

  It was a hodgepodge of his own notes interspersed with pasted articles. It was one of the reasons I hadn't spent too much time looking through it. Frankly, it was boring. My initial impressions from when I first looked at it were definitely wrong though. This was not research for a book. Sabrina saw that immediately.

  "A book has a certain feel to it," she said. "Even in the research stage, you have a sense of where the book is going. I don't mean you have the story figured out. Heck, I never know where my books are going. I just let the characters take the story. What I mean is, if you were to look at my early notes, you might not know exactly what the story is about, but you know that it's a story. You might mention a character's name or a piece of dialogue that you want to stick in it. If it was meant to be nonfiction, you'd sense a theme. This has none of that. It's just a hodgepodge of downloaded articles—or parts of articles. Also, if it was a book, there would be more than one file. You'd have separate files for dialogue, research, characters, etc. Not one big file."

  His early notes seemed be generally about South America, but there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason. We read on … and on. His notes seemed endless, but they led nowhere. He jumped from topic to topic: idols, religious artifacts, jewels. Although he never used the term treasure, his notes intimated that it was where he was going. And then there was an abrupt switch. He stopped his research on South America and changed to Russia, pre-revolution.

  "I don't get it," I finally said. "What just happened?"

  "He's stuck."

  "In what way?"

  "He's brainstorming with himself," she said. "It's like when I get writer's block. Sometimes I will just jot things down, hoping it will get me going again. Your father was in the same spot we are. Well, not as far along as we are, but just as stuck. He suspected that the answer was in South America, but he hadn't pinpointed where. I'm not quite sure why he jumped over to Russia."

  "How did he even know that South America played a part in this?" I asked.

  "Deduction, I guess. He knew your great-grandfather was thrown out of South America and was trying to find a connection."

  "Doesn't look like he found it."

  "We're not done with it yet."

  Truer words were never spoken. The breakthrough came twenty minutes later. I was in the bathroom when Sabrina yelled out, "Found something!"

  I zipped up and quickly washed my hands.

  "What did you find?" I asked as I took my seat next to her.

  "It's not what I found, but what your father found. Look." She pointed to a line on the page.

  "Did Mikey die? His body was never found."

  "Where did that come from?" I asked.

  "He must have found something. There's more." She was almost jumping in her seat with excitement. "But not much. It's interesting though."

  "Why didn't Mikey go back for it?"

  "In Fordlandia?"

  It ended there.

  "What the heck is Fordlandi
a?" I asked. "What?"

  Sabrina was laughing.

  "Do you know something I don't?"

  "No," she answered, wiping her eyes. "It's just funny. We’ve been sitting here for almost three hours, and the answer comes on the last page. If your father figured it out, wouldn't it have been nice of him to delete the rest of the notes? No, instead, he makes us slog through pages and pages of nonsense. Two keystrokes would have saved us three hours of agony.

  "Well, he was a Honeycutt," I offered.

  "Obviously." She was looking at me with a funny expression.

  "What?"

  "You don't see it?"

  "See what?"

  "I can wait." Oh, she was having fun with this. I was missing something obvious and she was going to torture me until I found it. I looked back at the computer screen.

  It was obvious. So obvious.

  "Fordlandia," I finally said. "Lando Ford."

  "The picture was only part of the clue," she said. "The artist's name was the other."

  "But what does Fordlandia mean?"

  She was way ahead of me. She was Googling it.

  When the result came on the screen, the answer became clear.

  "We're going to Brazil," Sabrina said.

  Chapter 23

  Fordlandia. A fascinating story that somehow they neglected to mention in history class. It was too bad, really, because a story like that was so much more interesting than most of the snooze material I was taught.

  We spent the next couple of hours immersing ourselves in the history of Fordlandia through the many articles that had been written on the subject.

  It was the brainchild of Henry Ford. Built in 1928 on the banks of the Rio Tapajós river, Ford bought up 3900 square miles of remote Amazon rainforest with the idea that he would produce his own rubber for his car tires. Whether the idea was a good one or not was questionable, but it really didn't matter, because the execution made it all moot. It was a poorly thought out and mismanaged plan from the very beginning.

  Besides being clueless about growing and caring for rubber trees, whoever was in charge of the project knew nothing about culture and the cultural differences between Americans and the native rainforest Brazilians. In an attempt to make the American workers' home so far away from home seem more familiar, they modeled the town after a contemporary U.S. town, completely mimicking U.S. life. They paved the streets and constructed houses that you would see in the heart of middle America—with running water, sewage lines, and street lights. Lawns were mowed and flowers planted. They provided the workers with the food—hamburgers, hot dogs, and such—that they were used to. They held dances and barbeques, church services, and ice cream socials. The familiar life, if you were an American, that is. Many of the workers, however, were locals, not used to eating such rich fare or having to conform to American life. But it was a requirement. Ford also banned alcohol, loose women, gambling, and other vices from the town—even in the privacy of their own homes. The natural result was the establishment of a community—nicknamed the Island of Innocence—eight miles upriver that promoted all of the missing vices. Needless to say, Fordlandia was a complete failure in every respect. In addition to the collapsing business, crime ran rampant throughout the town, and the local workers revolted in 1930. Although the revolt was quashed, the conflicts continued to the very end.