The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [14]
I yank the insole. It comes right out, revealing what’s tucked underneath—
“What? Is it bad?” Roosevelt asks as I pull out a folded-up yellow sheet of paper. As I go to unfold it, a small laminated card drops and clicks against the floor. He hid this here instead of in his missing wallet. It’s got a photo of my dad on it. A commercial driver’s license.
“Says here he’s a truck driver—double and triple trailers, plus hazardous materials,” I say, reading from the back of the license.
Clumsily, rushing, I unfold the yellow sheet. At first, it looks like an invoice, but when I spot the familiar letterhead up top— Aw, crap.
He’s lucky they took away my gun.
7
I don’t get it. He’s bringing in a shipment?”
“Not just a shipment. A four-ton metal container—y’know, like those ones you see on the backs of trucks.”
“And that’s bad because . . . ?”
“Have you read this?” I say to Roosevelt, waving the yellow sheet of paper that—
Roosevelt grabs my wrist and shoots me a look, which is when I notice that half the emergency waiting room is staring our way. A cop in the corner, the teenager on crutches . . . and a creepy older man with a moon chin, who’s holding his arm like it’s broken but showing no signs of pain.
Roosevelt quickly stands up, and I follow him outside, under the overhang of the emergency room’s main entrance. The sky’s still black, and the December wind whips under the overhang, sending the yellow sheet fluttering back and forth in my hand like a dragonfly’s wings.
“We call them hold notices,” I explain, reading from the first paragraph. “ ‘. . . wish to inform you that your shipment may experience a short delay. This doesn’t indicate there are any problems with your shipment . . .’ ”
“Doesn’t sound so bad—they’re just saying it’s delayed.”
“That’s only because if they say the word hold, all the drug dealers will run away. That’s also why they say there are no problems.”
“But there are problems?”
“Look at the letterhead on top—U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”
“That’s where you used to work, right?”
“Roosevelt, I’m trying hard to not be paranoid. I really am. But now my long-lost father just happens to be bleeding in the one park that just happens to be on the homeless route of his long abandoned son, who just happens to’ve worked at the one place that just happens to be holding on to the one package that he just happens to be trying to pick up? Forget the designer shoes—that’s a helluva lotta happenstance, with an extra-large order of coincidence.”
“I don’t know. Separated all those years, then bringing you together—sometimes the clichés get it right: The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“Not for me. And not with my—”
“Cal?” a deep voice calls out behind me as the emergency room’s glass doors slide open.
I turn around just as Dr. Paulo Pollack joins us outside. Like most doctors, he’s got the God swagger. I just happen to know this one, which made it easier to call him from the ambulance.
“How’s he doing, Paulo?” I ask.
“He’s fine. Luckily, the bullet didn’t hit anything organwise. Looks like it went in on an angle and got trapped under the skin, right above his liver. In this case, it’s good he had a little bit of chub on him.”
“But you got the bullet out?”
Two years ago, Roosevelt and I picked up a homeless girl who had done so much cocaine, the cartilage between her nostrils deteriorated, and the bridge of her nose collapsed. The girl was Dr. Paulo Pollack’s seventeen-year-old niece. From then on, he’s waited to return the favor.
“One cleaned-off slug at your service,” Paulo says, handing me a small plastic bag with an old copper-jacketed bullet. “You know the rules, Cal—it’s your dad’s property, but if the cops come asking . . .”
“Send ’em my way,” I say, squinting hard at the contents of the bag. The single bullet is squatty,