The Book of Lies Page 16

  “It thinks we’re food!”

  “Will you stop, it doesn’t—”

  There’s another sound behind us—skrrch-skrrch-skrrch. At first, I almost missed it. But as I turn around and check the rafters, I see what the possum’s really after: the small straw-and-leaf nest that sits just above our heads. Two tiny shadows peek out. Aw, crap. “She wants her babies.”

  “Babies!? Where!?” Serena shouts, wriggling wildly as if an army of millipedes were crawling underneath her skin. She tries to run, but she can’t. The possum’s directly above the hole in the attic floor. “Nuuuh! Cal, you have to do something!”

  “Wait, what happened to facing life’s challenges and your nice big speech?”

  “That had nothing to do with giant cannibalistic rats that just escaped from Middle Earth! Look at those mucous eyes! Please, Cal! I’m serious!”

  I laugh again, but I hear that tone in her voice. Next to me, her whole body’s shaking. Her eyes well with tears. Even Superman has kryptonite. We all have our weaknesses.

  “What the hell’s wrong up there?” my dad calls from below.

  “Zombie possums. They want our brains,” I yell back.

  My dad pauses a moment. “Serena doesn’t like possums.”

  Next to me, Serena grabs my arm, clutching it against her chest. It’s the absolute opposite of her usual guru Zen confidence, and I hate to say it, but there’s something strangely reassuring in knowing she can flip out just as easily as the rest of us.

  “Do your breathing,” my dad calls out from below.

  It doesn’t help. She grips my arm even tighter, unable to move toward the possum.

  “Serena, it won’t attack us,” I promise.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes. I do.” I go back to my old hostage training. Give them calm and they’ll find calm. I keep my voice slow and steady. “Let’s just . . . keep . . . going.”

  She’s still shaking. “Cal, I can’t do this! Uhhh, it’s so— Look at it! If it pounces—”

  “It’s not pouncing, okay? It’s just a protective mother.”

  “Those’re the worst kind!” she says, shutting her eyes and refusing even to look.

  I take a small step forward, and the possum raises its rear end like it’s about to leap.

  “What’s it doing!?” Serena asks, her head buried in my shoulder.

  “Nothing,” I reply, taking yet another baby step.

  Hunched over, we’re less than four feet from the hole. The possum hisses again, baring its teeth.

  “Cal . . .”

  “It’s just watching its kids,” I lie as Serena again freezes. I try to tug her forward, but she won’t budge. “Serena, as long as her kids are safe, she won’t do anything.”

  With her eyes shut, Serena nods but doesn’t move.

  “Serena,” my dad calls out, “find your center—”

  “Dad, enough already!” I yell.

  I can slow my speech and make more reassurances, but instead, I flex the arm that Serena’s gripping and take her hand in my own.

  “Serena, you take three baby steps and we’re outta here.”

  Still holding Serena’s hand, I take another step. Her grip goes from vise, to clinging, to— She takes the smallest of mini-steps. It still counts.

  “There you go,” I say as we finally move forward.

  “You lied about the distance, didn’t you?” Serena asks. “It’s more than three steps.”

  “Not anymore,” I tell her.

  She ducks down quickly, knowing the possum must be close. She’s right.

  Up above, perched on the edge of the rafter, the possum peers straight down at us. Its pointy nose doesn’t move, not a single sniff—and its milky eye looks more yellow thanks to the light shining up from below.

  Two hands appear through the hole in the floor. “Serena,” my dad calls out, “I’m here.”

  We fidget and fumble—my dad guiding her ankles to the ladder, me still holding one of her hands—as we help her squeeze back through the rabbit hole.

  She sinks slowly, like she’s being sucked down a bright well. There’s a metal clink: her foot hitting the ladder. I’m on my knees, reaching down into the hole as she finally opens her eyes and looks up at me.

  “When we tell this story,” she warns, “it ends with me killing the possum with a rock.”

  “Of course—your marksmanship alone . . . plus your deft hand and strong will—”

  “Don’t oversell it, Cal. Now let’s get outta here. I need to throw up.”

  She lets go of my hand, and as my cheeks lift, I realize that it’s the first time in the past twenty-four hours that I’m actually smiling. And that Serena’s smiling back at me.

  “Y’know, that’s the second time you saved me today,” she teases. “I owe you, Superman.”

  “Must be the house,” I tease back. It’s nothing more than sharing a stupid joke. But, man . . . it feels good to share something.

  “You’re just like him, aren’t you?” she calls up at me.

  “Who?” I ask, assuming she’s talking about my father.

  “Andrew. My brother,” she says. “He was protective, too—and the walls he kept around himself . . . just like with you, they’re too tall,” she explains. “But that’s why you brought me, isn’t it? To help you lower them.”

  I’m about to remind her that we brought her only because we couldn’t leave her at the airport.

  But I don’t.

  “Cal, we really should get her to a hotel,” my dad interrupts, helping her down the ladder. “It’s not safe for her to run around like this.”

  “You think?” I ask. “When she’s with us, we can at least—”

  “What the french toast? What’d I tell you ’bout letting people in my roof?” a female voice calls out, making the word roof rhyme with hoof.

  Taking off the backpack and squeezing down through the hole, I spot Mrs. Johnsel coming up the stairs.

  “Possums are back,” her husband says, calm as ever.

  “I told you that. You said it was rain.” She then looks up at me. She’s not mad, just confused. “I thought they just wanted to see the bedroom?”

  “They got an attic copy,” Johnsel says.

  “A whut?”

  I hop off the ladder and unzip the backpack. “We were hoping to find some more details about this,” I say, pulling out the wax-paper sleeve with the Superman comic inside.

  She studies the translucent cover and the typewritten address. “You should go to the museum. They got one just like it.” Looking down at the white dust all over the floor, she adds, “This better not be asbestos.”

  “Wait. There’s a Superman museum?” I ask.

  “This should be the museum,” Mrs. Johnsel says, bending down and picking up the small bits of plaster and rocks that’re scattered across the landing. “Can you believe the city of Cleveland wouldn’t give us a plaque to put out front? Superman was born here! Not even a plaque!”

  “Um . . . you were saying about the museum,” my father jumps in.

  “It’s just an exhibit—Maltz Jewish Museum. By the temple over on Richmond,” Mrs. Johnsel explains. “I think you’d like it. They have one of those attic copies. Plus they got all sorts of biblical stuff, too.” She turns casually to her husband. “We got prayer group before dinner. Don’t think of being late.”

  45

  He parked the rental car around back to stay out of sight.

  “You stay here, girl,” Ellis said, giving Benoni a strong stroke along her ears. He kept the car running to make sure she’d be warm, but even with the window cracked, the dog’s breath puffed like smoke in the Cleveland air. “Relax, girl. This won’t take long.”

  He walked calmly up the snow-covered alley, sticking to the far left side as he marched toward the front steps of the run-down house. There were lights on inside. Someone was definitely home.

  In his pocket, he felt for the jet injector and released the cap from th
e nozzle. The only reason he’d gotten this far was by not leaving witnesses. And as he knew in his heart, this was a war that had lasted over a hundred years. There must be casualties. “It’s cold here,” he whispered into his phone.

  “You’re still better waiting outside,” the Prophet said on the other line. “Let Cal do the legwork. He’ll have it soon. And when he does—”

  “I don’t believe in Calvin. I believe in myself,” Ellis insisted, staring at his breath in the night air. “And I believe Cain’s Book was a test. Just as today, it’s a test for me.”

  “Then it’s a test you’ll fail. Because if you make a scene and the cops come— The last thing we need is for Cal to run. If he runs—and I’m learning this myself—you will not get what you want, do you understand? You should see him right now—born investigator. And the way this is headed, I think we’re finally on to something good.”

  Ellis slapped the phone shut and looked up at the bright blue-and-red house. The Prophet may’ve been right about coming to Cleveland, but the Prophet didn’t care about the destiny that Ellis’s mother laid out for him. The Prophet didn’t care about the Leadership and his family’s dream. The Prophet just wanted the Book. The birthright. The Judge warned him as much. And for all the Judge’s faults, he was right about this: The Prophet wasn’t Leadership. And as long as that was true, the Prophet wasn’t on their side. In the end, Ellis knew it was no different than with Timothy, Zhao, or even Cal. Only one of them could get what he wanted.

  Lumbering up the front steps, he put his foot in each of the shallow snow footprints left by Cal. There were other footprints, too. One of them small. Like a woman’s. With two hard raps, Ellis banged on the front door. A handwritten sign in the window said, “Superman’s House!!!”

  “Easy . . . easy,” a man called from inside. With a thunk and a twist, the door swung open, and Mr. Johnsel studied Ellis for a full five seconds. But Ellis knew that look. All the man saw was the uniform. And the badge. “Whatsda problem, Officer?”

  “No problem at all,” Ellis said, forcing a sickly grin. He should’ve come here sooner. The last known location of the Book of Lies.

  46

  How many?” an older woman with a doughy face asks at the front desk of the museum.

  “Three,” I tell her.

  She stares, confused, seeing only me. Over my shoulder, the front door to the museum opens and my dad steps inside. It was his idea: waiting in the car to see if anyone followed. But as the door opens, for a moment, I could’ve sworn he was talking to someone out there. “All clear,” he announces to me.

  The woman’s still confused. “You said three?”

  “We have— In the bathroom,” I explain, pointing behind me at the ladies’ room.

  “Welcome to Metropolis,” the doughy woman says with a far too high level of joy as she hands me the tickets. “Though remember, we’re only open till five.”

  I look at my watch. Less than fifteen minutes.

  “C’mon, Serena!” I call out, heading past the restroom just as the door swings open.

  Surprised to see me so close, she jumps back, stuffing something into her purse.

  “Who were you talking to?” I ask.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your phone. Sorry,” I add as I point with my chin, “it looked like . . . in your purse . . . you were putting back your phone.”

  She stares straight at me for barely a second. It’s a helluva long second. “Just checking messages,” she finally replies, calm as ever. Reading my expression, she adds, “You believe me, right?”

  I’m lied to every single day by most of my clients. But as I look at her . . . “I believe you, Serena.”

  “Don’t use the phone anymore, okay?” my father barks, so clearly pissed that the woman at the ticket desk looks our way.

  “Okay, everybody lose the claws,” I say. “We’re all tired . . . we’ve got twelve minutes till closing . . . Let’s just be—”

  “Faster than a speeding bullet!” a baritone voice announces behind us.

  “See, now that’s just horrible,” Serena says, rolling her eyes as we turn toward the official entrance of the exhibit.

  Beneath the tall glass windows and across the long rectangular Jerusalem stone lobby, a six-foot-tall statue of Superman holds a giant Earth over his head. On the Earth, there’s a little red flag stuck into Cleveland with a note that says, “Birthplace of Superman!”

  “More powerful than a locomotive!”

  And more annoying with each passing second.

  I race toward the exhibit. “Let’s just get what we came for.”

  From what I can tell, the main exhibit hall of the Maltz Museum is set up like a long rectangle—the back half of it dedicated to Jewish artifacts, the front half to the Superman display, which is split into half a dozen smaller rooms. It doesn’t take long to divide them up. I don’t like it. But with closing hour quickly approaching, the only way we’re finding the attic copy they have here is with some speed. On my far left, my father took the room labeled “Superman in the ’60s”; on my right, Serena took “Superman Today”; and I very purposely staked my claim in the main central exhibit: “Origins of the Superman.”

  Like any other museum, it has stark white walls lined with Lucite cases of all shapes and sizes, holding everything from old photographs and pencil sketches, to copies of Nietzsche’s mention of the Übermensch and Hitler’s demand for the master race, to 1940s Superman movie posters, action figures, jigsaw puzzles, baseball cards, Colorforms sets, cereal boxes, and every other product that you can possibly put a giant red-and-yellow S on. But, amazingly, there’s not a single comic book.

  In the corner of the wide room, a bright red Superman cape hides the entrance to what looks like a separate part of the exhibit. I’ll bite.

  As I pull aside the cape and step inside, the darkness tells me it’s just a small theater. The curved, blue-carpeted benches look like they can seat ten or so people, and on the far left wall, a flat-screen TV announces:

  “Up in the sky! Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”

  From the crackling of the recording and the clapping of the crowd, it’s an old radio show. But on-screen, it’s a black-and-white photo of young Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster. Most people in 1940s photos look like they’re somehow older than you. But to see these two . . . these kids dressed in shirts and ties . . . one of them sitting at an old typewriter (I’m guessing Jerry), the other leaning over him with a pencil behind his ear (Joe, the artist)—they can’t be outta high school.

  “Yes, it’s Superman. Young America’s stalwart idol,” the radio announcer says as a montage of more family photos appears on-screen, along with a caption that says: “Audio from Town Hall Tonight with Fred Allen (1940).”

  “Hey, listen!” a little boy’s voice interrupts. “A new Action Comics just came out, and boy, has it got a swell adventure of Superman in it!” he says as the radio audience cheers.

  On the flat screen, there’s another photo, this one of Action Comics #-1—just like the one in my backpack.

  “Our guest tonight is the man who originated Superman. He’s Mr. Jerry Siegel. Good evening, Mr. Siegel,” the announcer says.

  “Good evening, Fred,” a nasal voice replies, and for the first time—even after walking through his house and his bedroom and his attic . . . even after seeing his photo . . . to actually hear his anxious, squeaky voice—Jerry Siegel is suddenly alive, whispering to me from the dead.

  “So you are the man behind Superman, Mr. Siegel?”

  “No, I’m just one of the men, Fred. I write the situations and the dialogue, and the strip is drawn by my collaborator, Joe Shuster.”

  With each question, the announcer revs up his voice, hoping to draw Jerry out. This kid just created Superman! But with each response, Jerry’s voice—it’s not just that he sounds so wonderfully geeky (though he does)—but to hear his uncomfortable stutter and stammering . . . It’s just— This boy— We
expect him to be Superman.

  But he’s just Clark Kent.

  “Well, you seem . . . seem rather young to be the instigator of this highly successful feature, Mr. Siegel. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  As Jerry says the words, images from more old comic books fill the screen. Shots of Superman in World War II: his chest out as he literally punches a German U-boat . . . then him walking arm in arm, centered between an army soldier and a navy sailor. The next image is a shot of the planet Krypton, then one of a baby in a blue blanket being placed in a 1940s version of a rocket ship.

  “And how long have you and Mr. Shuster been working on your high-voltage Robin Hood?” the announcer asks as the montage continues.

  As the red rocket lifts off, a glass window in the ship shows the baby crying inside, while off to the left of the panel, Mom and Dad appear in profile as they both crane their necks up and calmly wave good-bye to their only child. There’s a single tear skiing down the cheek of the mother.

  “We started about eight years ago, but Superman has been in print only the past two years,” Jerry says.

  “Well, what caused the delay? Cirrhosis of the batteries?”

  “No, Fred. It took us six years to sell Superman. He was turned down by almost every comic editor in the country.”

  The audience laughs hysterically at that one, while on-screen, the camera slowly pulls in on just the crying baby swaddled in the bright blue blanket. Baby Superman, rocketing to the planet Earth. The camera then shifts left, pulling in on the doomed parents . . . then back to the crying baby . . . then back to the parents. The camera’s so close on their profiles, you can see the tiny pink halftone dots that color their faces—and as it pulls even closer—on the mom’s nose and eyes and tears—

  “It’s a bit heavy-handed, no?” a voice asks behind me.

  I turn around to find a short, muscular man in a too tight business suit. The name tag on his lapel tells me he’s the Curator; the way he stands across from me—drifting into my personal space—tells me he’s also a real-deal comic book fan. “It’s really hard with these exhibits,” he explains. “But people forget: At the core of it, Superman is an orphan story.”