The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [32]
Three minutes ago, my dad was winded and hobbling. Suddenly, he’s gripping the right side of the thin wooden wall, prying and bending it open and thrilled to find his treasure. One man. Two faces.
“This is it! Grab it here!” he says, tugging the right side of the thin wall, which has now lost enough screws that the harder we pull, the more it curves toward us. I try to see what’s behind it—some kind of box with its long side running against the true back wall—but with the shadow of the wood, it’s too dark to see. “Keep pulling!” my father says, still cheerleading as the wood finally begins to crack. “Uno . . . dos . . .”
With a final awkward semi-karate move, my father kicks the wood panel, which snaps on impact and sends us both stumbling back. As the last splinters of particleboard somersault through the morning sun, we both stare at what my dad was really transporting—the true object of Ellis’s desire.
That’s not just a box.
It’s a coffin.
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