The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [31]
“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