The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [57]
“Or their hiding place,” my dad says without turning back to either of us.
“Whatever it is, they wanted that address on the comic,” Serena points out. “They thought your dad had it. Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . you think that’s why Mitchell Siegel got shot eighty years ago, too?”
“Perfect, just perfect,” I continue. “So what Timothy and Ellis and everyone else—what they’re really all after is the long-lost, barely believable Mark of Cain, which is somehow on a Superman comic from some crappy neighborhood in Cleveland?”
“I’m not saying it exists,” Roosevelt’s voice goes on as we reach the exit for Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. “You asked about Ellis’s tattoo; I’m telling you what it stands for. And when you look at what the Bible says about the Mark—‘The Lord set a mark upon Cain, that whoever found him should not kill him.’ Look at the last part there—‘should not kill him.’ The images in Ellis’s tattoo, those are God’s gifts to Cain: things that’re gonna protect him from all the wild beasts in the wilderness.”
“Y’mean like weapons?” my dad asks.
“Or a dog,” Roosevelt says. “Named Benoni.”
Everyone is silent as I tug the wheel to the right, and we all sway to the left, curving around the exit. At the red light, it’s no different from the Martin Luther King Jr. street at home: Even with the darkness, it’s clear we’re in a rough neighborhood. Within a few quick turns, nearly all the businesses are either burnt out or boarded up. On each corner, there’s some kid in a thick winter coat bouncing in place to find some warmth. Not one of them gets on the passing buses. I work in these neighborhoods every day. I know drug dealers when I see them.
“You still there?” Roosevelt asks.
“You were saying about the dog,” I reply as Serena and my dad glance out their respective windows. Both of them sit up straight. Like they know we’re close. “That from Bible college, too?”
“Nah, that was Google,” Roosevelt says. “Benoni was apparently Abel’s dog, then when Abel got killed, God supposedly gave the dog to Cain as protection.”
“Okay, so Ellis renamed his dog,” I say. “Big deal.”
“Maybe it ain’t just the dog,” Roosevelt says. “Most people are taught Cain wandered through the Land of Nod for seven generations. But another interpretation says that God’s gift—that no one should kill Cain—was literal. That God let him live forever.”
“You mean Ellis thinks he’s Cain?” Serena asks.
Next to me, my dad’s now mesmerized by our surroundings, staring out the window. “I think it’s the next right,” he blurts. When I look at him, he adds, “I saw it on the map.”
“It’s only been a few hours. I gotta do more research,” Roosevelt says. “But for a book like the Bible, where nearly every major figure’s death is pointed out—Noah lived for X years; Moses lived for Y—the Bible is completely, and almost strangely, silent about the death of Cain.”
“This is it—Kimberly Avenue,” my dad blurts as I turn onto the narrow block that’s lined with small, beaten two-story houses and barely any cars. It’s one thing to be in a bad neighborhood; it’s another to be in an abandoned one.
“Do people live here?” Serena asks as the car bangs through one of the street’s ice-filled potholes. On both sides of the block, the sidewalks are barely plowed. I check the windows and front porches of every house we pass. It’s only four-thirty. There’s not a person in sight.
“Roosevelt, can we deal with the rest of the nutty Cain stuff later?” I ask.
“You’re missing what I said, Cal. Ellis thinks he has God on his side. Take it from the former pastor: The true believers are the ones who’ll burn you the worst,” he says. “Though what all this has to do with an address on a comic book, now you’re out of my biblical league.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” I say as we reach the middle of the