The Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer [69]
“And this is why he took it,” I say, pointing my chin at the comic. “But Naomi, I promise you . . . I swear to you . . . whatever did happen to Timothy, you have to know it was Ellis.”
“I don’t have to know anything.”
“Sure you do! You could’ve stayed in Florida and just called in some local agents here. Instead, you had such a bad feeling about Ellis . . . about everything . . . you came all the way to Cleveland to solve it yourself. We’re in the same exact boat, Naomi—and if you just take a moment instead of dragging everyone off by their PlastiCuffs, you’ll actually find out what the hell’s so important that Ellis wanted this stupid comic book so badly!”
Naomi looks down at the comic, then to my father, then to me.
“Think about it, Naomi: If we really knew what was going on, would we even be here searching for an answer?”
From the table, she picks up the comic and turns to the curator. “You know what this is?”
“Y-Yeah,” he says.
“You know why it’s important?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Tell me.”
48
Let me . . . mmm . . .” The curator pauses, his blinking quickening as he watches Naomi pull the comic from its protective wax-paper sleeve. “Please, don’t— Please, can I help you with that? Please?” he begs, gingerly prying the comic from her hands and lowering it just as softly to the conference table. “I’m sorry, but that’s . . . mmm—” He stares down at the comic like Indiana Jones examining the Ark.
From his desk, he pulls out a pair of tweezers with wide, flat pincers and uses them to turn the first page. “No foxing . . . no color loss . . . pristine,” he whispers as he continues turning pages. The blinking gets five times faster. But the way he’s frantically flipping forward, he’s not reading. It’s more like . . . he’s looking for something.
His face falls as he reaches the last page.
“What? What’s wrong?” Naomi asks, lowering her gun as if that’ll calm him down.
“I just thought— Even androids dream, y’know?”
Naomi cocks an eyebrow. “Are you in the same solar system we are? What’s this have to do with my missing partner?”
“Let him explain—it clearly has something to do with the history,” I plead. Turning to the curator, I add, “You were trying to find something in there, weren’t you?”
Gareth nods at me and uses his pointer finger to wipe a sweat mustache from his top lip. “They didn’t tell you the story, did they?”
“About the comic?”
“No. Not just the comic. To understand this, you need to know . . . mmm . . . do you even know how Superman was created?”
“By the two kids,” Naomi says, pacing behind my dad and still focused on her partner. “Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. We saw the video.”
“I didn’t see the video,” my dad says. “And I didn’t do anything wrong here. I was just driving the truck.”
“Let’s just— Can we please stay on track?” I plead, strangely unnerved as I stare at my dad, who’s gripping his PlastiCuffed hands together to stop them from shaking. Up to this point, he’s been strong: plotting and scheming with an almost preternatural confidence. Yet to see him like this, shrinking in his seat with his head down? No one is who they say they are. But of all the faces my father’s shown, I feel like I’m finally seeing the real Lloyd Harper.
I’m on the opposite side of the room, my hands also cuffed as I stand next to a tall black filing cabinet that’s littered with paper clips. My father won’t look up at me. He can’t. In the attic, Naomi said my dad was afraid of me. But I’m watching the way he stares down at his cuffs. He’s been to prison once. There’s no question what he’s really afraid of.
“They told us the story at the Siegel house,” I finally say. “On some rainy summer night, Jerry was lying awake in bed . . .”
“And as he stared out at the crabapple tree, the idea hits him out of nowhere.” The curator nods, already excited as he sways forward and back in his seat. “Then crack of dawn the next morning, he runs over to his pal Joe’s, who starts drawing, drawing, drawing all day, with Jerry