The Book of Lies Read online

  “Yeah . . . no . . . I didn’t realize that,” I tell him, turning back to the screen.

  “Y’okay?” he says in full midwest accent.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Y’sure? Y’look a little . . . zapped by kryptonite.” He laughs a hiccupy laugh, and for the first time I realize how much more he blinks than the average person.

  “So you’re the curator?” I ask.

  “Welcome to Metropolis!” He beams at me, giving three quick blinks. “Gareth Gelbwaks.”

  “Great, then maybe you can help me with this, Gareth,” I say, going straight for the backpack and pulling out Action Comics in the wax paper—

  Gareth’s eyes go wide, as though I just unveiled the Rosetta Stone. “Th-That’s— Where’d you—?” He swallows hard and blinks half a dozen times. “Maybe we should go back to my office.”

  “That’d be perfect.”

  Within seconds, we weave toward the far right exhibit hall, back past the bathrooms, to an oak door marked, PRIVATE—STAFF ONLY.

  It’s not until he twists the doorknob that I realize I haven’t seen Serena or—

  There’s a rusty squeak as the door swings open, revealing a small conference room, a round meeting table . . . and my father sitting there with his hands in PlastiCuffs.

  “Dad, what’re you—?” I race forward, already realizing I’m too late.

  The door slams behind me, and I finally spot her: the tall Hispanic woman with a cheap haircut and an even cheaper brown dye job.

  “Nice to see you again, Cal,” Naomi says, pointing her gun at me. “Welcome to Metropolis.”

  47

  I—I’m sorry,” the curator apologizes to me. “She said you were armed and wanted. I can’t risk the exhibit—”

  “Stop talking,” Naomi barks at the curator. Over her shoulder, my dad sits there, devastated. Ex-cons know the consequences best. Next to him, attached to the wall, are two TV monitors: One has a view of the front desk, where we bought tickets; the other alternates among security cameras throughout the exhibit. As the screen blinks, I spot Serena still walking through the exhibit. That’s why Naomi didn’t grab her. She was in the restroom when we bought the tickets. They have no idea she’s with us. It’s the only thing going our way.

  Turning to me, Naomi approaches with another set of PlastiCuffs, her gun still pointed at my chest. “Arms out, wrists together,” she insists.

  “Before you—”

  “Wrists together!” she explodes, surprising even me. “You helped him, didn’t you? Did you know he threatened my family?”

  “Wha? Your family?”

  “Cal, I saw Ellis! I saw him waiting outside your place!”

  She yells so loud, the curator can’t stop blinking. Whatever Ellis did, he clearly lit Naomi’s fuse, which means she’s not listening until she gets what she wants.

  I toss the comic book on the conference table and calmly stick out my wrists. “Go ahead—put the cuffs on.”

  She stops, knowing I’m up to something. “Cal . . .”

  “Put the cuffs on,” I repeat. “I’m not fighting.”

  She steps in close and threads both my hands into the open circles of the PlastiCuffs. But she doesn’t pull them tight. “Tell me what happened on Alligator Alley with Timothy,” she adds.

  I glance at my dad, who shakes his head. He still hasn’t said anything. So if Naomi’s asking, that means they haven’t found the body. Good for us. Still, if I tell her Timothy’s dead—or even place us at Alligator Alley—there’s no way we’re not going right back to Miami for questioning. “I spoke to him that night, but that’s the last I—”

  She pulls the zipper as the PlastiCuffs bite my wrists. “Ow! What’re you—!?”

  “You think I’m taking your word for it, Cal? Especially after what you did with Ellis!?”

  “I didn’t do anything with Ellis!”

  “How’d he find my address!? How’d he find where I live!?”

  “Are you—?” I take a breath, knowing that the only way to keep her calm is by leading the way. “Please, Naomi—if I were really trying to kill you, you really think I’d let you put me in these cuffs?”

  For once, she’s silent.

  “Exactly,” I say. “And for all we know, Timothy may be fine.” It’s an awful bluff, but we’re not leaving here without it.

  She shakes her head. “I saw the records. And the video, Cal. I know he helped you take that container from the port.”

  “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 w
ith 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 making suggestions over his shoulder. By the time the sun goes down, these two poor kids from Cleveland have created Superman, one of the greatest heroes the world will ever know. Beautiful story, right?”

  “So what’s the problem?” Naomi asks.

  “The problem is, it’s a beautiful story, but it’s not the full story.”

  Even my father sits up straight.

  “What, so now they didn’t create Superman?” I ask.

  “Oh no, they created him. But Jerry was never a fool. He knew the story of the young seventeen-year-old whiz kids was too good to pass up. So what they never told anyone was that Action Comics Number 1—the first appearance of Superman—was actually their third attempt.” Reading the confusion on all our faces, the curator explains, “In late 1932, Jerry Siegel wrote a short sci-fi story called The Reign of the Super-Man. It also had a few drawings by Joe Shuster—but what’s important is in this story, the so-called Superman was actually the bad guy—an out-of-control villain who couldn’t be stopped. That was their first try.”

  “What was the other?” Naomi asks, clearly starting to see the value of pulling apart the past.

  “Mmm . . .” The curator nods. “The other attempt was simply called The Superman. But when it got rejected by all the comic publishers, Jerry or Joe—depends who you ask—got so upset, he destroyed all the pages. Ripped them up, never to be seen again.”

  “Then how does anyone even know it existed?”

  “Jerry spoke about it in later interviews. Then sometime in the 1940s or 50s, a copy of the cover showed up. . . . Wait, I should—” He crosses back to his desk, rifles through a small volcano of files, and pulls out— “Here . . .

  “They found this—just this cover—in some publisher’s desk,” Gareth explains. “To this day, it’s the only finished page that exists. One inked page. And that’s where the search began.”

  He says the words as if it all makes sense. But from the silence in the room, we’re all still lost.

  “You have ten seconds to relate this to my case,” Naomi threatens.

  “Don’t you see?” the curator asks. “Think of the timing: Prior to 1932, young Jerry Siegel spends his time writing silly comic strips for his high school newspaper. Then magically, in 1932, he comes up with three different versions for a so-called Superman. Think for a second: What else happened in the summer of 1932?”

  “His father died,” my dad whispers, holding his wound from the same gun.

  “Mmm . . . you see it now, don’t you?” the curator asks with a grin. His eyes are no longer blinking. “On June second, 1932, Jerry’s father, Mitchell Siegel, was found facedown in the back of his small haberdashery as a puddle of blood seeped toward the door. There were two bullets in his chest, and all the money was gone from his cash register. Now think of the impact on his youngest son, Jerry. It’s plain as day—just look at the cover,” he insists, his voice picking up speed. “When Superman first appeared, he didn’t have X-ray vision or all the neat superpowers. In fact, he couldn’t even fly. But y’know what power he did have? He was bulletproof. Unable to be shot. And that’s why Superman was created: He’s not some American Messiah or some modern version of Moses or Jesus or whoever else historians like to trot out—Superman is the result of a meek little Clark Kent named Jerry Siegel wishing and praying and aching for his murdered father to be bulletproof so he doesn’t have to be alone.”

  As he says the words, I close my eyes. When my mom first died, I used to have a recurring dream of squirrels running into my mouth and stealing my teeth. My CASA caseworker at the time whipped up this spectacularly maudlin theory that the dream represented my own powerlessness in preventing my mom’s death. I hate neat responses like that. But that doesn’t mean they’re not right.

  Blinking back to reality, I stare down at the table. All I see is . . .

  “You see it, don’t you? In the picture,” the curator adds. “His dad died in a robbery at gunpoint. That’s the moment that stayed with Jerry forever.”

  I try to pretend I don’t understand . . . that I’ve never replayed my parents’ fight in the kitchen . . . when I walked in and . . . God, if I hadn’t walked in . . . if my mom hadn’t turned my way . . . I still see her—those angry eyes—staring right at me as she fell toward the open drawer. I’ve pictured all the ways to save her . . .

  . . . and on the worst days, on birthdays, I’ve talked to her out loud, and asked her questions, and cried and laughed and sobbed at her imagined responses, especially the ones where she hints that she forgives me. Jerry Siegel had it right. We all live best in our own imaginations.

  “Cal, you wanna sit?” my dad asks. “You look green.”

  “I’m great,” I insist, realizing I’m now leaning against the filing cabinet. I go to stand up straight. No. Leaning’s just fine. And I’m not the only one.

  Across from me, Naomi looks exhausted as she hooks her armpit over the top of a cubicle like a crutch. I was so lost in my own pity parade, I almost forgot. Her son. Her son the orphan. The moment she sees me watching, she stands up straight. I offer a nod of understanding. She turns away, kicking herself for giving even that tiniest piece of her puzzle.

  “So this stuff with Jerry’s dad’s murder—you were saying there was some kinda search?” Naomi asks.

  “Yup-yup . . . that’s where the weird gets weirder,” the curator says. “In the weeks after Mitchell Siegel’s shooting, there was no police report filed, no investigation opened, no search for any suspects. Even worse, despite the two bullets in the dad’s chest, the story that’s told throughout the Siegel family is that Mitchell died of a heart attack. Even today, Jerry’s widow and daughter say that Jerry told them his dad had a heart attack from the robbery. And even worse than all that, in the fifty years since that day . . . in the thousands—literally thousands—of interviews where they asked Jerry where he got the idea for his bulletproof Superman, he never—never once—says it was from his dad. Never even mentions his dad in a single interview!”

  “Maybe Jerry just wanted his privacy.”

  “I agree,” the curator says. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t need someplace to deal with it. Just look at the original stories: The first character Jerry created after his dad’s death wasn’t Superman. Instead, Jerry was obsessed with the bad guys, focusing his entire tale around a villain. It was the same in Action Comics,” he adds, waving his hand over the pristine comic book. “Have you even read it? Superman doesn’t fight aliens and monsters in here. He goes to Washington, D.C., and fights corruption in government and foreign spies. In fact, when you look at the Cleveland newspaper the day after his dad is killed—if you want to see what Jerry was looking at the day after he lost his father—there’s an op-ed saying that we don’t need vigilantes anymore, and it’s written by a man named Luther, spelled er instead of or.”

  “Okay, so wait,” Naomi challenges. “Now we’re supposed to believe all the bad guys in comic books are real?”

  “No, you’re missing it,” the curator says, waving the single photocopy of Jerry Siegel’s early Superman endeavor. “All the bad guys aren’t real. But in Jerry’s case, one of them might be.”

  49

  Okay, let me be as nice as I can about this,” Naomi begins. “Um . . . did you make all this crap up?”

  “This isn’t theory. This is history,” the curator insist
s. “And it’s a search for one of the greatest lost books in the world—a story that eventually gave birth to one of society’s most recognized heroes.”

  “And also involves kryptonite as a major plot element,” Naomi chides. “No offense, but I’ve got bigger worries than solving an eighty-year-old murder.”

  “I’m not the only one who believes it. Now I don’t know if they hid it in the art or just in the story—but there’s a reason those original Superman pages are still missing. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s what Jerry put in there.”

  “He put his dad’s killer?” I ask.

  “He had to deal with it somewhere,” the curator repeats.

  “So he put his dad’s killer in the pages of a comic book?”

  “Y’know where he got the name Lois Lane from? Lola Lane, one of Jerry’s favorite actresses. Y’know where he got Clark Kent from? His favorite actor, Clark Gable, combined with his brother-in-law’s name, Kent Taylor. All writers steal from their own lives. Why can’t the same be true here?”

  “But to say he hid some secret message about his own father’s death—”

  “Why else would he tear up and supposedly destroy that original art?” the curator asks.

  “Maybe Joe was embarrassed by the art. You said they were devastated by the rejections.”

  “Jerry spent years getting rejections on his short stories—he submitted and got rejected by every sci-fi fanzine on the planet. And when it came to Superman, he kept and preserved every single rejection letter they got—they reprinted them in Famous First Edition years ago. So even if Joe Shuster ripped all the art apart—even if he thought the work was embarrassing or amateurish—you really think a pack rat like Jerry didn’t save the pieces? His father had been murdered—for all we know, right in front of his eyes—this is where all his inspiration came from.”

  “Says who?” Naomi challenges. “A bunch of fanboy psychologists who—no offense—are just a little too obsessed with their favorite superhero?”