With a pivot of his wheelchair, he stared up at two men in cheap navy suits and matching Rolex Submariner watches. Definitely Bureau agents.
“Did you send anyone over here?” Scotty asked into the phone.
“What’re you talking about?” Clydene replied.
The agents didn’t say a word.
“Lemme call you back,” Scotty said as he hung up the phone, never taking his eyes off his two new visitors.
“I take it you’re Scotty,” the taller one said as he flashed his credentials. “Agent Randy Aldridge. FBI Counterintelligence Division. You mind me asking your clearance levels?”
“Why would—?”
“I checked the signature on that name check request you put in earlier. You always forge your supervisor’s signature?” Aldridge asked. “Now if I don’t get your levels, I’ll be asking you for your wrists instead,” he said, patting at his handcuffs.
Scotty studied them both. This was why he hated the Bureau. “Top secret with SCI access,” he replied confidently. “So you might as well cozy up and acknowledge that you wanna know as much about our case as we wanna know about whatever it is that made you leave your office and come all the way down here.”
The two agents exchanged a glance. The FBI was definitely a pain in the ass.
“There’s a reason your request didn’t bring back any records,” said the shorter agent, a blond man with close eyes and flat ears. “Even these days, the Bureau has to be careful when it comes to Mikhel Segalovich.”
“Who’s Mikhel Segalovich?”
“That’s his real name,” Agent Aldridge said. “At Ellis Island, he went by Sigalowitz. But here in the U.S., he was known as Mitchell Siegel.”
55
“—ou okay?” a man’s voice echoed. “Can you hear me? . . . You okay?”
Blinking back to consciousness, Naomi was groggy, lost. That stench of ammonia. Smelling salts, she realized as she stared up at the young African-American man standing over her.
From his white uniform, plus the bright overhead lights . . .
“Do you know your name?” the male nurse asked.
“Wh-Where is this?” Naomi asked. She tried turning to the side, but her head . . . It wouldn’t move. She touched her neck. There was a huge plastic collar. Am I paralyzed?
“You’re at Huron Hospital, ma’am. Your friends brought you into our emergency room. Can you move your toes?” the nurse asked. “Do you know your name?”
“Get this offa me!” Naomi shouted, tugging at the Velcro along the collar.
“Ma’am, don’t!” The nurse grabbed Naomi’s arms, then undid the plastic collar and checked the back of her neck. “Can you move your toes?”
Naomi kicked both feet out and tried to sit up, but she was far too dizzy to make it. She touched the back right side of her throbbing skull but felt only the thick gauze pad that was wrapped around her head.
“My purse, my gun . . .” Naomi blurted as she felt herself up. “They took my gun!”
The nurse stepped back, wary.
“Relax—nuhhh—I’m a federal agent,” Naomi said, gripping the metal rail on the gurney and finally sitting up straight. “I need a phone. Have you seen my—?” From her pants pocket, she pulled out her phone and earpiece.
“Lord, didn’t you gimme any painkillers?” she asked as the throbbing got worse.
“You were unconscious,” the nurse began, though before he could finish, Naomi was done dialing, focused now on her earpiece.
“C’mon, Scotty, pick up,” she muttered as it rang in her ear.
“You have a laceration and contusion, ma’am. You need staples to close that up.”
“Fine. Put ’em in.” But all Naomi really cared about was the endless ringing of the phone in her ear. Something was wrong. “Where the hell are you, Scotty?”
56
You left your dad and Serena upstairs?” Roosevelt scolds through my phone. “By themselves?”
“What was I supposed to do? Bring them along all three of us marching arm in arm and completely matching the two white men with a light-skinned black woman APB that I’m sure is now out for us?” I lower my voice as I reach the supermarket’s checkout lane and dump my only items—vinegar and fabric softener—onto the old conveyor belt that rumbles as it rolls.
Behind the counter, an Arab teenager with a cowboy hat belt buckle doesn’t bother to look up at me. In this neighborhood, I understand why. The market is called Star’s Grocery, but with the metal bars across the front windows and the armed-with-a-shotgun African-American man sitting high up in the crow’s-nest seat that overlooks the front of the store, it’s clear how poor the area is. It’s why I picked it. Neighborhoods like this hate calling the cops.
“Cal, this is the time to be smart,” Roosevelt says in my ear. “Whatever your dad has going with Serena, when you leave them alone like this, it’s all going on behind your back—and that’s never good for you.”
“It’s not like that with them. Besides, Serena—she wouldn’t do that.”
“She wouldn’t do that? Oh, fudge me! Don’t tell me you’re falling in like with this girl!”
“What? No. I barely know her. I’ve barely seen her.”
“And you barely recognize your own blind spot for helpless women.”
“She’s not helpless. She was trying to help me.”
“And there it is again—I hear it in your voice, Cal. And I know it’s warming your cocoa to finally have someone looking out for you, but stop picking out her corsage for the prom and instead focus on the fact that she’s the one who hit Naomi in the head.”
“You should’ve seen Serena, though. She felt horrible. She was crying. It was even her idea to drop Naomi at the hospital.”
“And that’s a wonderful thing to do—especially as a way to snake into your save everyone heart. But take some notes here, Cal. I don’t care how calming or pretty Serena is—I don’t care if you shared a little Zen moment with the rabid possum—the only reason she’s around is because of your dad. So if you don’t believe him, you shouldn’t believe her. You can’t just take the Bonnie away from Clyde.”
There’s a loud jingle as the register spouts open, and the cashier hands me my change. “Sorry, no bags,” he says as I pick up my two items and head for the door.
“Trust me, Serena’s not the problem,” I tell Roosevelt as I glance around the empty streets of East Cleveland, duck my chin into my jacket, and head out into the cold. It’s nearly nine p.m. One mission down; one to go.
“I notice you don’t have the same kind words about your dad,” Roosevelt points out. “And then there’s Ellis—and whoever the hell he’s talking to.”
“The Prophet.”
“That’s a stupid name,” Roosevelt says.
“That’s the name he gave.”
“Whatever he calls himself, he’s clearly helping Ellis—and considering how everything’s gone, you need to find out how this Prophet somehow knows, at all times, where the three of you are.”
“He doesn’t know it now.”
“Or for all you know, he—or she—does,” Roosevelt warns.
I freeze midstep, and a chunk of ice slides into my sneaker, nibbling through my sock. “What’re you saying?”
“The whole reason you’re all running around is to track what’s in this old lost comic, right? Jerry Siegel hid something in there, and everyone’s racing to find it. Timothy teamed with Ellis to find it. Ellis teamed with the Prophet to find it. And then . . . by whatever grace of God . . . in the wallpaper, you found it.”