“Are you—? You put hemlock—!? You put a poison—are you a fool!? Now you get nothing!” Zhao yelled, fighting hard as he thrashed and crawled toward the door.
In a way, Zhao was right. Shooting him was a gamble. But Ellis knew . . . it’s not a gamble when you know you’ll win. After unscrewing the empty hemlock vial, he replaced it with a vial filled with a cloudy yellow liquid.
“I-Is that the antidote?” Zhao asked. “It is, isn’t it!?”
Ellis stepped back, away from his victim’s reach. “Do you know who Mitchell Siegel is, Zhao?”
“Wh-What’re you talking about?”
“Thirty-one . . . thirty . . . twenty-nine . . . In 1932, a man named Mitchell Siegel was shot in the chest and killed. While mourning the death of his father, his young son Jerry came up with the idea of a bulletproof man that he nicknamed Superman.”
Mid-crawl, Zhao’s feet stopped moving. “M-My—! Wh-What’d you do to my legs!?”
Ellis nodded and stood still. To this day, scientists didn’t know why hemlock poisoning started in the feet and worked up from there.
“Such a dumb idea, right, Zhao—a bulletproof man? But the only reason Superman was born was because a little boy missed his father,” Ellis pointed out. “And the best part? The murder’s still unsolved. In fact, people are still so excited by Superman, they never stop to ask just why Mitchell Siegel was killed—or to even consider that maybe, just maybe, he might’ve done something that made him the bad guy in this story. . . . Twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen . . .”
“I can’t feel my legs!” Zhao sobbed as tears ran down his face.
“You think I’m the bad guy here, but I’m not,” Ellis said, putting away the empty vial, zipping his leather doctor’s case, and smoothing the sheets on the edge of the bed. “I’m the hero, Zhao. You’re the bad guy. You’re the one keeping the Book of Lies from us. Just like Mitchell Siegel kept it from us.”
“P-Please, I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about!”
Ellis crouched down next to Zhao, who was flat on his belly, barely able to catch his breath. “I want my Book. Tell me its final destination.”
“I—I—I told you,” Zhao stuttered. “W-We— It’s going to Panama.”
“And then where?”
“That’s it—Panama . . . ” he repeated, his nose pressed to the carpet, his eyes clenched in pain. “Just . . . the antidote . . .”
“You feel that tightening in your waist?” Ellis asked, looking down and realizing that his shoes could use a new shine. “Your thighs are dead, Zhao. Then it’ll climb to your testicles. Hemlock is what killed Socrates. He narrated his entire death—how it slithered from his waist, to his chest, right up to when his eyes were fixed and dilated.”
“Okay . . . okayokayokay . . . Miami! After Panama . . . they’re . . . it’s going to Miami! In Florida,” Zhao insisted. “The sheet . . . the lading bill . . . it’s . . . I swear . . . it’s in my pocket! Just make it stop!”
Ellis reached into Zhao’s pocket and extracted the sheet of light pink paper that held all the details of the shipment’s arrival.
. . . seven . . . six . . . five . . .
The dog began to growl. She could smell death coming. But Ellis ignored the noise, peacefully reading from the bill of lading: the container’s new tracking number, the receiver’s name (had to be fake)—everything the Leadership needed.
. . . four . . . three . . . two . . .
Still flat on his stomach and now with his mouth wide open, Zhao gave a final hollow gasp that sounded like the last bits of water being sucked down a drain. Ellis’s great-grandfather described the same sound in his diary—right after he mentioned there was no antidote for hemlock poisoning.
. . . one.
Zhao was nice—even kind when they first met at the doctor’s funeral—but the mission was bigger than Zhao. And based on what happened in 1900 with Mitchell Siegel, the mission had enough problems with witnesses.
Zhao’s tongue went limp, and his head slumped forward, sending his forehead against the carpet.
Ellis didn’t notice. He was already on his phone, dialing Judge Wojtowicz’s number.
“I told you not to call me here, Eddie,” answered an older man with a soft, crackly voice.
“Ellis. I’m called Ellis now,” he replied, never losing his composure. He spread out his left hand, admiring the tattoo.
“It’s five in the morning here, Ellis. What do you want?”
Ellis smiled—truly smiled—turning his full attention to the phone. “What I want is for you to remember just where you were when I found you, Judge. Your group—your Leadership—your dream was old and dead. Is that how you pictured your final years? Just another discarded, cobwebbed old man sitting in his cramped Michigan apartment and wondering why his glory days weren’t more glorious? You’re not even a footnote in history, Judge. Not even an asterisk. But if you want, I can put you back there. Maybe one day you’ll be a parenthesis.”
“My family has been in the Leadership since—”
“Don’t embarrass yourself, Judge. Family names don’t get you into Harvard anymore; what makes you think they’ll get you in here?”
There was a long pause on the line. “I appreciate your helping us with this, Ellis,” the Judge finally offered. Clearing his throat, he added, “You’re close to finding the Book, aren’t you?”
“And about to get even closer,” Ellis said, glancing at the pink bill of lading and studying the container’s new tracking details: when it left the port, when it’d arrive in Miami, even the truck driver who was responsible for the pickup.
HARPER, LLOYD.
“C’mon, Benoni,” he murmured to the dog.
He knew it was an odd name. Benoni. But according to the diaries, that was the name of Abel’s watchdog—the dog that was eventually given to Cain—and the only witness to the world’s first murder.
“You’re in for a treat, girl,” he said as he stepped over Zhao’s dead body and led the dog out into the hallway. “This time of year, the weather is gorgeous in Florida.”
As the dog ran ahead, Ellis never lost sight of her. He knew his history. Only with Benoni would he find the Book of Lies and solve the true mystery of the world’s greatest villain.
2
Two weeks later
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
My name is Cal Harper.
This is the second most important day of my life.
“Remove heem,” the manager of the French bistro calls out behind us.
“S-Sorry, Cal,” my client Alberto apologizes, his body shaking as I hook his arm around my neck and help him hobble back toward our van. From the stench on his breath, Alberto’s been drinking hard. From his fresh split lip, plus the tear in his ratty T-shirt, he’s been fighting, too. In his left hand, he clutches the dented, rusty RC Cola can that he carries everywhere.
Welcome to Fort Lauderdale beach. Just another day in paradise.
“You planning on helping here?” I call to Roosevelt, who’s reclining in the passenger seat of our dumpy white van.
“Ah’m mentoring,” Roosevelt calls back in a thick Tennessee drawl, nodding a hello to Alberto, who offers a gray-toothed smile in return.
“No, you’re sitting on your rear while I do all the work,” I point out.