On our left, an old rumbling car turns into the corner of the hospital’s driveway. The rain glows like a tiny meteor shower in the car’s headlights. “I gotta go,” he says, heading for the car but still scanning the area. Whoever this is, he knows them.
In front of us, a dark green Pontiac Grand Prix pulls up to the emergency room entrance and bucks to a stop right next to me.
“¡Ay, Dios mío!” a young, fair-skinned black woman with short hair shouts from the driver’s seat. “¿¡Que paso!?”
“Estoy bien, Serena,” my dad replies. Serena. When’d my dad learn Spanish? “Callate,” he adds. “No digas nada, okay?”
Serena’s voice is rushed. She’s scared. “Pero el cargamento . . . ¿Por favor, yo espero que el cargamento ha sido protegido?”
“¡Escúchame!” he insists, struggling to stay calm as he turns back to me. “I promise, Calvin,” he tells me as he scoops his clothes and Franceschetti shoes from my arms and slides into the passenger seat of the car. The woman touches my dad’s forearm with the kind of tenderness and affection that comes with a wedding band. She looks about twenty-seven or so. Almost my age.
“I swear, Calvin. I swear I’ll call you,” my dad promises.
The door slams shut, tires howl, and the car disappears—its red taillights zigzagging like twin laser beams into the darkness, and I scream after it, “You don’t have my phone number!”
“What’d he say?” Roosevelt calls out as the emergency doors whoosh open and he rushes outside. “He ask for your help with his shipment?”
I shake my head, feeling the knots of rage and pain and sadness tighten in my chest. I don’t know who the girl is, or where they’re going, or why they’re in such a rush at two in the morning. But I do know one thing: My father isn’t the only one who learned how to speak Spanish in Miami.
Por favor, yo espero que el cargamento ha sido protegido, the woman had said. Please tell me you protected the shipment.
My father said he was robbed and shot by some kid with big ears. But I saw the terror in his eyes when I started sniffing around his shipment—like he’s hiding the devil himself in that delivery. For that alone, I should walk away now and leave him to his mess. I should. That’s all he deserves. The problem is, the last time I stood around and did nothing, I lost my mom. I could’ve helped . . . could’ve run forward . . . But I didn’t.
I don’t care how much I hate him. I don’t care how much I’m already kicking myself. I just found my father—please—don’t let me lose him again.
When my father disappeared, I was nine years old and couldn’t do anything about it. Nineteen years make a hell of a difference.
I flick open my cell phone as my brain searches for the number. Fortunately, I’ve got a good memory. So does he. And like Paulo, he knows what he owes me.
“Cal, it’s two-fourteen in the morning,” Special Agent Timothy Balfanz answers on the other line, not even pretending to hide his exhaustion. “Whattya need?”
“Personal favor.”
“Mm I gonna get in trouble?”
“Only if we’re caught. There’s a container at the port I need to get a look at.”
There’s another two-second pause. “When?” Timothy asks.
“How’s right now?”
9
You should’ve stayed with the father,” the Judge said through Ellis’s phone.
“You’re wrong,” Ellis replied, staring from inside the hospital waiting room and studying Cal, who, through the wide panel of glass, was barely twenty feet away. There were plenty of reasons for Ellis to stay in full police uniform. But none was better than simply hiding in plain sight.
There was a soft whoosh as the automatic doors slid open and Roosevelt rushed outside to join Cal. As the doors again slid shut, Ellis could hear Roosevelt’s first question: “He ask for your help with his shipment?”
The shipment. Now Cal knew about the shipment.
“If Cal starts chasing it . . . ” the Judge began.
“He’s now talking on his phone,” Ellis said without the least bit of panic. “You told me you were tracking his calls.”
“Hold on, it usually takes a minute.” The Judge paused a moment. “Here we go—and people say the courts have no power anymore—pen register is picking up an outgoing call to a Timothy Balfanz. I’ll wager it’s an old fellow agent.”
Ellis didn’t say a word. He knew Cal was smart. Smart enough to know that Lloyd Harper was a liar. And that the only real truth would come from ripping open Lloyd’s shipment. It was no different a century ago with Mitchell Siegel. No different than with Ellis’s own dad. No different than with Adam and Cain. It was the first truth in the Book of Lies: In the chosen families, the son was always far more dangerous than the father.
“Ellis, if Cal grabs it first—”
“If Cal grabs the Book, it’ll be our greatest day,” Ellis said, never losing sight of his new target and following fearlessly as Cal ran toward his beat-up white van.
Even with his badge, Ellis knew better than to risk being spotted on federal property. That’s the reason he’d followed Lloyd to begin with. But with Cal now making calls—with the shipment and the Siegels’ fabled prize about to be returned—it was going to be a great day indeed.
10
You’re not being smart,” Roosevelt says through my cell phone.
“It’s not a question of smart,” I tell him as I pull the van into the empty parking lot that sits in front of the Port of Miami’s main administration building, a stumpy glass mess stolen straight from 1972. There’re a few cars in front—one . . . two . . . all three of them Ford Crown Vics. Nothing changes. Unmarked feds.
“It’s not safe, either, Cal,” Roosevelt insists.
He’s right. That’s why I left him at home.
With a twist of the wheel, I weave through the dark lot and the dozens of spots marked OFFICIAL USE ONLY. I got fired from official use over four years ago. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still have a way in.
“Cal, if you get in trouble—”
“You’re the first person I’ll call from jail,” I say, heading to the back of the lot, where I steer good ol’ White House into a corner spot underneath a crooked palmetto tree.
I hear him seething on the other end. “Lemme just say one last thing, and then I promise I’ll stop.”
“You won’t stop.”
“You’re right. I won’t,” he admits. “But before you trash your professional career for the second time, just think for a moment: If your father is setting you up—if this is all one big production number—then you’re doing exactly what he wants you to do.”
“Roosevelt, why didn’t you marry Christine? Or Wendy? Or that woman you went to visit in Chicago? You tie the knot and you know they’ll take you off whatever blackball list your name is on. But you don’t, right? And why? Because some fights are too important.”
“That’s fine—and a beautiful change of subject—but if you keep letting your nine-year-old, little hurt self make all your decisions in this situation, you’re not just gonna get yourself in trouble—you’re gonna get yourself killed.”
A burst of light ricochets off my rearview mirror. I look back as a white Crown Vic closes in from behind. There’s a slight screech, then a muted thunk as his front bumper kisses the back of mine and adds yet another scratch to the rear of the White House. Same jackass trick we used to do when we were rookies.