by Brad Meltzer
“. . . thirty-seven . . . thirty-six . . . thirty-five . . .” Ellis said, his voice as serene as ever. “My family first encountered it in Belgium. Conium maculatum. Hemlock.”
“Are you—? You put hemlock—!? You put a poison—are you a fool!? Now you get nothing!” Zhao yelled, fighting hard as he thrashed and crawled toward the door.
In a way, Zhao was right. Shooting him was a gamble. But Ellis knew . . . it’s not a gamble when you know you’ll win. After unscrewing the empty hemlock vial, he replaced it with a vial filled with a cloudy yellow liquid.
“I-Is that the antidote?” Zhao asked. “It is, isn’t it!?”
Ellis stepped back, away from his victim’s reach. “Do you know who Mitchell Siegel is, Zhao?”
“Wh-What’re you talking about?”
“Thirty-one . . . thirty . . . twenty-nine . . . In 1932, a man named Mitchell Siegel was shot in the chest and killed. While mourning the death of his father, his young son Jerry came up with the idea of a bulletproof man that he nicknamed Superman.”
Mid-crawl, Zhao’s feet stopped moving. “M-My—! Wh-What’d you do to my legs!?”
Ellis nodded and stood still. To this day, scientists didn’t know why hemlock poisoning started in the feet and worked up from there.
“Such a dumb idea, right, Zhao—a bulletproof man? But the only reason Superman was born was because a little boy missed his father,” Ellis pointed out. “And the best part? The murder’s still unsolved. In fact, people are still so excited by Superman, they never stop to ask just why Mitchell Siegel was killed—or to even consider that maybe, just maybe, he might’ve done something that made him the bad guy in this story. . . . Twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen . . .”
“I can’t feel my legs!” Zhao sobbed as tears ran down his face.
“You think I’m the bad guy here, but I’m not,” Ellis said, putting away the empty vial, zipping his leather doctor’s case, and smoothing the sheets on the edge of the bed. “I’m the hero, Zhao. You’re the bad guy. You’re the one keeping the Book of Lies from us. Just like Mitchell Siegel kept it from us.”
“P-Please, I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about!”
Ellis crouched down next to Zhao, who was flat on his belly, barely able to catch his breath. “I want my Book. Tell me its final destination.”
“I—I—I told you,” Zhao stuttered. “W-We— It’s going to Panama.”
“And then where?”
“That’s it—Panama . . . ” he repeated, his nose pressed to the carpet, his eyes clenched in pain. “Just . . . the antidote . . .”
“You feel that tightening in your waist?” Ellis asked, looking down and realizing that his shoes could use a new shine. “Your thighs are dead, Zhao. Then it’ll climb to your testicles. Hemlock is what killed Socrates. He narrated his entire death—how it slithered from his waist, to his chest, right up to when his eyes were fixed and dilated.”
“Okay . . . okayokayokay . . . Miami! After Panama . . . they’re . . . it’s going to Miami! In Florida,” Zhao insisted. “The sheet . . . the lading bill . . . it’s . . . I swear . . . it’s in my pocket! Just make it stop!”
Ellis reached into Zhao’s pocket and extracted the sheet of light pink paper that held all the details of the shipment’s arrival.
. . . seven . . . six . . . five . . .
The dog began to growl. She could smell death coming. But Ellis ignored the noise, peacefully reading from the bill of lading: the container’s new tracking number, the receiver’s name (had to be fake)—everything the Leadership needed.
. . . four . . . three . . . two . . .
Still flat on his stomach and now with his mouth wide open, Zhao gave a final hollow gasp that sounded like the last bits of water being sucked down a drain. Ellis’s great-grandfather described the same sound in his diary—right after he mentioned there was no antidote for hemlock poisoning.
. . . one.
Zhao was nice—even kind when they first met at the doctor’s funeral—but the mission was bigger than Zhao. And based on what happened in 1900 with Mitchell Siegel, the mission had enough problems with witnesses.
Zhao’s tongue went limp, and his head slumped forward, sending his forehead against the carpet.
Ellis didn’t notice. He was already on his phone, dialing Judge Wojtowicz’s number.
“I told you not to call me here, Eddie,” answered an older man with a soft, crackly voice.
“Ellis. I’m called Ellis now,” he replied, never losing his composure. He spread out his left hand, admiring the tattoo.
“It’s five in the morning here, Ellis. What do you want?”
Ellis smiled—truly smiled—turning his full attention to the phone. “What I want is for you to remember just where you were when I found you, Judge. Your group—your Leadership—your dream was old and dead. Is that how you pictured your final years? Just another discarded, cobwebbed old man sitting in his cramped Michigan apartment and wondering why his glory days weren’t more glorious? You’re not even a footnote in history, Judge. Not even an asterisk. But if you want, I can put you back there. Maybe one day you’ll be a parenthesis.”
“My family has been in the Leadership since—”
“Don’t embarrass yourself, Judge. Family names don’t get you into Harvard anymore; what makes you think they’ll get you in here?”
There was a long pause on the line. “I appreciate your helping us with this, Ellis,” the Judge finally offered. Clearing his throat, he added, “You’re close to finding the Book, aren’t you?”
“And about to get even closer,” Ellis said, glancing at the pink bill of lading and studying the container’s new tracking details: when it left the port, when it’d arrive in Miami, even the truck driver who was responsible for the pickup.
HARPER, LLOYD.
“C’mon, Benoni,” he murmured to the dog.
He knew it was an odd name. Benoni. But according to the diaries, that was the name of Abel’s watchdog—the dog that was eventually given to Cain—and the only witness to the world’s first murder.
“You’re in for a treat, girl,” he said as he stepped over Zhao’s dead body and led the dog out into the hallway. “This time of year, the weather is gorgeous in Florida.”
As the dog ran ahead, Ellis never lost sight of her. He knew his history. Only with Benoni would he find the Book of Lies and solve the true mystery of the world’s greatest villain.
2
Two weeks later
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
My name is Cal Harper.
This is the second most important day of my life.
“Remove heem,” the manager of the French bistro calls out behind us.
“S-Sorry, Cal,” my client Alberto apologizes, his body shaking as I hook his arm around my neck and help him hobble back toward our van. From the stench on his breath, Alberto’s been drinking hard. From his fresh split lip, plus the tear in his ratty T-shirt, he’s been fighting, too. In his left hand, he clutches the dented, rusty RC Cola can that he carries everywhere.
Welcome to Fort Lauderdale beach. Just another day in paradise.
“You planning on helping here?” I call to Roosevelt, who’s reclining in the passenger seat of our dumpy white van.
“Ah’m mentoring,” Roosevelt calls back in a thick Tennessee drawl, nodding a hello to Alberto, who offers a gray-toothed smile in return.
“No, you’re sitting on your rear while I do all the work,” I point out.
“Whattya think mentoring is?” Roosevelt asks, lumbering out like an old mountain cat and slowly tugging open the side door of the van, a 1991 GMC Safari that another client christened “the White House.” (Roosevelt and Calvin in the same place? It’s downright presidential.)
“You got him?” I ask.
“Isn’t that why God put me on this planet?” Roosevelt says, his dyed-black, aging-hippie ponytail flapping in the salty ocean breeze. At forty-two, Roosevelt’s old enough to know b
etter than the ponytail, but we all have our weaknesses. “Man, Alberto, you reek.”
To the few passing tourists still walking the beach, we probably look like mobsters. But our job’s far more dangerous than that.
“Listen, thanks for calling us instead of the cops,” I tell the restaurant manager, a middle-aged guy who looks like a ferret.
“I’m no schmuck,” he laughs, dropping his French accent. “Cops would take two hours. You take the trash out fast.”
He offers a handshake, and as I reach to take it, I spot a hundred-dollar bill in his palm. I pull back as if he’s offering a coiled snake.
“Just our way of saying thanks,” he adds, reaching out again for the handshake.
I don’t shake back. “Listen,” I insist, stepping toward him. It’s clear I’m not the most imposing figure—I slouch and have a shambling walk that’s all arms and legs and big hands—but I do have most of my dad’s height. Nearly six feet when I stand up straight. And the only time I do that is when I’m pissed. Like now. “Do you understand what I do?” I ask, my thick Adam’s apple pumping with each syllable.
“Aw, jeez, you’re gonna give me some self-important speech now, aren’t ya?”
“No speech. We take the homeless back to shelters—”
“And what? If you accept a tip it’ll make it less of a good deed? I respect that. I do. But c’mon, be fair to yourself,” he says, motioning to my faded black T-shirt, which is barely tucked in. “What’re ya, thirty years old with that baby face? You’re wearing secondhand sneakers and sweatpants. To work. When was the last time you got a haircut? And c’mon . . . your van . . .”
I glance back at the van’s peeling tinted windows and the swarm of rust along the back fender, then down at my decade-old sweatpants and my checkerboard Vans sneakers.
“Take the money, kid. If you don’t use it for yourself, at least help your organization.”
I shake my head. “You called my client trash.”
To my surprise, he doesn’t get defensive. Or mad. “You’re right—I’m sorry,” he says, still holding out the money. “Let this be my apology. Please. Don’t make it the end of the world.”
I stare at my sweatpants, calculating all of the underwear and socks I could buy for our clients with an extra hundred dollars.
“C’mon, bro . . . even Bob Dylan did an iPod commercial.”
“And once again, making the world safe for people who eat croque-monsieurs,” I say, yanking open the door of the van and climbing back behind the wheel.
“What the fudge, Cal? You didn’t take the money, did you?” Roosevelt asks with a sigh as he reaches into the brown bag on his lap and cracks open a pistachio shell. “Why you so stubborn?”
“Same reason you say dumb crap like ‘What the fudge.’ ”
“That’s different.”
“It’s not different,” I shoot back, looking down at the van’s closed ashtray. With a tug, I pull it open, spot the dozens of discarded pistachio shells he’s stuffed inside, and dump them in the empty Burger King bag between us. Roosevelt cracks another shell and leans for the ashtray. I shake the Burger King bag in front of him instead. “You were a minister, so you don’t like to curse—I get it, Roosevelt. But it’s a choice you make on principle.”
“You were a minister?” Alberto blurts from the backseat, barely picking his head up from the RC soda can with the plastic wrap on top. It took nearly six different pickups before Alberto told me that’s where he keeps his father’s ashes. I used to think he was nuts. I still do. But I appreciate the logic. I’m what my parents left behind. I understand not wanting to do the same to someone else. “I thought you were some special agent who got arrested . . .”
Twisting the ignition and hitting the gas, I don’t say a word.
“That was Cal,” Roosevelt points out as we take off down A1A, and his ponytail flaps behind him. “And we’ve talked about my ministry, Alberto.”
Alberto pauses a moment. “You’re a minister?”
“He was,” I offer. “Ask him why he left.”
“Ask Cal why he got fired,” Roosevelt says in that calm, folksy drawl that filled the church pews every Sunday and immediately has Alberto looking my way. “Losing his badge . . . y’know that’s what turned his hair white?” Roosevelt adds, pointing at my full head of thick silver hair, which is such a scraggly mess it almost covers the birthmark near my left eye.
“Nuh-uh,” Alberto says. “You didn’t get that from your momma or daddy?”
I click my front teeth together, staring out at the closed tourist T-shirt shops that line the beach. The only thing I got from my parents was a light blue government form with the charges against my father.
The prosecutor was smart: He went for manslaughter instead of murder . . . painted a picture of this six-foot-two monster purposely shoving a small, defenseless young mom . . . then for the final spit-shine added in my father yelling, “That’s it—you’re done!” (Testimony courtesy of every neighbor with an adjoining wall.)
My dad got eight years at Glades Correction Institution. The state of Florida gave me six minutes to say good-bye. I remember the room smelled like spearmint gum and hairspray. Life is filled with trapdoors. I happened to swan dive through mine when I was nine years old. That was the last time I ever saw Dad. I don’t blame him anymore, even though when he got out, he could’ve— I don’t blame him anymore.
“Gaaah,” Roosevelt shouts, his ruddy features burning bright. “You shoulda taken that restaurant money.”
“Roosevelt, the only reason he was offering that cash was so when he goes home tonight, he doesn’t feel nearly as guilty for sweeping away the homeless guy that he thought was bad for his fake French bistro business. Go pray . . . or send an e-mail to heaven . . . or do whatever you do to let your God weigh in, but I’m telling you: We’re here to help those who need it—not to give fudging penance.”
His lips purse at my use of the G-word. Roosevelt’ll joke about anything—his long hair, his obsession with early chubby Janet Jackson (so much better than the later thinner model), even his love of “Yo Momma’s So Fat” jokes as a tool for changing the subject during an awkward social situation—but he’ll never joke about God.
Staring out the side window, Roosevelt’s now the one clicking his teeth. “Making it a crusade doesn’t make it right,” he says, speaking slowly so I feel every word.
“It’s not a crusade.”
“Really? Then I suppose when you leave this job every night, your life is filled with a slew of outside interests: like that kindergarten teacher I tried to set you up with. Oh, wait—that’s right—you never called her.”
“I called her. She had to run,” I say, gripping the steering wheel and searching the passing side streets for possible clients.
“That’s why you set up a date! To make time so you can talk, or eat, or do something besides riding past mile after mile of gorgeous beach and spending all that time checking every alley for a homeless person!”
I look straight ahead as Roosevelt cracks another pistachio and tosses the shell in the bag. I never had an older brother, but if I did, I bet he’d torture me with the exact same silence.
“I know you can’t turn it off, Cal—and I love you for that—but it’s unhealthy. You need something . . . a hobby—”
“I have lots of hobbies.”
“Name one.”
“Don’t start.” I think a moment. “Watching cop shows on TV.”
“That’s just so you can point out inconsistencies. Name a real form of entertainment. What was the last movie you saw? Or better yet—” He grabs the notebook-size steel case that’s wedged between my seat and the center console. My laptop.
“Here we go,” he says, flipping open the computer and clicking the History button in my browser. “Seeing the Web sites someone goes to, it’s like looking at the furniture arrangement of their mind.”
On-screen, the list isn’t long.
“SmartSunGuide.com?” he as
ks.
“That’s a good site.”
“No, that’s where you get Florida traffic reports and the public CCTV cameras—to spot homeless clients who’re sleeping under an overpass.”
“So?”
“And this one: ConstructionJournal.com. Lemme guess: up-to-the-minute building permits, so you can find all the new construction sites.”
“That’s where our clients tend to sleep.”
“Cal, you not seeing the picture here? No interests, no news, no sports, hell, not even any porn. You’re a damn walrus,” Roosevelt insists, cracking another pistachio. “When it’s walking on land, walruses are the most lumbering, awkward creatures God ever gave us. But the moment it enters the water, that sucker is quicksilver. Fwoooo,” he says, slicing his hand through the air like a ski jump. “Same with you, Cal. When you’re working with clients, you’re in the water—fwoooo—just quicksilver. The problem is, all you wanna do is stay underwater. And even the walrus knows if it doesn’t come up for air, it’s gonna die.”
“That’s a very inspiring and far too visual analogy. But I know who I am, and I like who I am, and when it comes to ass-face restaurant managers who treat money as some green-colored rosary, well, no offense, but I’m not for sale. And we should never let our clients be, either.”
He rolls his eyes, letting us both calm down. “Can you be more predictable?” he asks.
“I was trying to be complex.”
“Complex woulda been if you had taken the guy’s money, given it to Alberto, and then told him to go back and use it to eat at the restaurant.”
I glance over at him. The pastor in him won’t let up. Not until I get the message. As I try to save whoever’s out there, he still thinks he needs to save me. I know he misses his parish, but he’s wrong about this one. It’s not a crusade. Or an obsession. I could leave this job tomorrow. Or the next night. Or the night after that. Tonight, though, isn’t that night.
“I’m still not for sale,” I tell him. “And you of all people shouldn’t be, either.”
Roosevelt leans back in his reclined seat and lets out a hearty laugh. “Yo momma’s so fat—”
