there’s a body inside?”
There’s a loud chirp as my phone shrieks through the warehouse. It’s nearly ten a.m. and we still haven’t slept. Caller ID tells me who it is. If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t pick up.
“Cal here,” I answer.
“Good time, bad time?” a fast-talking man with a deep baritone asks through my cell as yet another siren yet again gets louder.
I watch my father wrap a page of old newspaper around the pull bar on the coffin, which is only half sticking out through the hole in the fake wall. My dad tugs hard, but he can’t do it alone. Pinching the phone with my shoulder, I race next to him, grip the other pull bar along the side, and pull as hard as I can.
“No . . .
ruhhhh
. . . perfect time,” I say into the phone, feeling every hour of my exhaustion.
No surprise, Benny laughs.
Two years ago, Benny Ocala came tearing out of the local Seminole Indian reservation, searching for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted grandfather, who had wandered, literally, off the reservation. Roosevelt and I found the old man in a Pembroke Pines front yard, sitting in a kiddie pool with his socks on. Today, Benny’s the Seminole tribe’s very own chief of police. His own sovereign nation. Which explains why, when I left the hospital earlier tonight, I drove the extra six miles to give Benny the bullet that the doctor pulled outta my dad.
“Please tell me you were able to trace it,” I say with another tug. The casket rolls to the right, shedding bits of dirt along the floor as we angle it through the open hole.
“We’re Indians, Cal. My ancestors traced deer farts.”
I’m tempted to point out he went to Tulane and drives a Camry, but I’m far too focused on the yellow and white papers pasted to the coffin. I can’t read the writing—it’s either Chinese or Japanese—but there’s no mistaking the small crosses at the bottom of each page. Across the top of one of the pages it says, in English, “Ecclesiastes.” These are Bible pages. Is that what Ellis meant by a
book
?
“This is a bad one, isn’t it?” Benny asks, suddenly serious.
I stand up straight, letting go of the coffin. “What’d the trace say?” I ask.
“That’s the thing, Cal—bullets aren’t like fingerprints. If I only have the bullet, unless it’s a rare gun, which’ll leave signature grooves on th—”
“Benny, I hate
CSI.
I don’t wanna learn.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t wanna call up that woman with the fangy teeth who runs the computer room at the Broward Sheriff’s Office, and then pretend to flirt with her just so she’ll do me a favor and run a bullet through the ATF database and their experts there.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“Can’t help it—I’m a sucker for a girl with a snaggletooth,” Benny teases as my dad continues his tug-of-war with the coffin. “The point is,” he adds, “your bullet was fired by a rare gun. Really rare: a Walther from 1930. Apparently, it was made as a prototype for the military—Russian army in this case—then discarded. Only something like twenty ever existed.”
He stops for a moment.
“Benny, why’re you giving me the dramatic pause?”
“It’s just odd, Cal. Guns like this—they don’t show up a lot. Out of the grillions of guns out there, well . . . that gun’s only been used once—
one time
—apparently during some unsolved murder in Cleveland, Ohio.”
Cleveland. That was the area code from my dad’s phone call. I look at my father, who’s now shimmying the coffin back and forth, trying to angle it through the open hole. As I pace through the empty container, he gives it one final pull, which frees the casket from its hiding spot.
“When was the murder in Cleveland?” I ask.
“Now you’re seeing the problem, Cal. The last time we know that gun was fired was back in 1932,” Benny explains. “In fact, if this is right, it’s the same gun that killed some guy named Mitchell Siegel.”
“Who’s Mitchell Siegel?”
My
There’s a loud chirp as my phone shrieks through the warehouse. It’s nearly ten a.m. and we still haven’t slept. Caller ID tells me who it is. If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t pick up.
“Cal here,” I answer.
“Good time, bad time?” a fast-talking man with a deep baritone asks through my cell as yet another siren yet again gets louder.
I watch my father wrap a page of old newspaper around the pull bar on the coffin, which is only half sticking out through the hole in the fake wall. My dad tugs hard, but he can’t do it alone. Pinching the phone with my shoulder, I race next to him, grip the other pull bar along the side, and pull as hard as I can.
“No . . .
ruhhhh
. . . perfect time,” I say into the phone, feeling every hour of my exhaustion.
No surprise, Benny laughs.
Two years ago, Benny Ocala came tearing out of the local Seminole Indian reservation, searching for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted grandfather, who had wandered, literally, off the reservation. Roosevelt and I found the old man in a Pembroke Pines front yard, sitting in a kiddie pool with his socks on. Today, Benny’s the Seminole tribe’s very own chief of police. His own sovereign nation. Which explains why, when I left the hospital earlier tonight, I drove the extra six miles to give Benny the bullet that the doctor pulled outta my dad.
“Please tell me you were able to trace it,” I say with another tug. The casket rolls to the right, shedding bits of dirt along the floor as we angle it through the open hole.
“We’re Indians, Cal. My ancestors traced deer farts.”
I’m tempted to point out he went to Tulane and drives a Camry, but I’m far too focused on the yellow and white papers pasted to the coffin. I can’t read the writing—it’s either Chinese or Japanese—but there’s no mistaking the small crosses at the bottom of each page. Across the top of one of the pages it says, in English, “Ecclesiastes.” These are Bible pages. Is that what Ellis meant by a
book
?
“This is a bad one, isn’t it?” Benny asks, suddenly serious.
I stand up straight, letting go of the coffin. “What’d the trace say?” I ask.
“That’s the thing, Cal—bullets aren’t like fingerprints. If I only have the bullet, unless it’s a rare gun, which’ll leave signature grooves on th—”
“Benny, I hate
CSI.
I don’t wanna learn.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t wanna call up that woman with the fangy teeth who runs the computer room at the Broward Sheriff’s Office, and then pretend to flirt with her just so she’ll do me a favor and run a bullet through the ATF database and their experts there.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“Can’t help it—I’m a sucker for a girl with a snaggletooth,” Benny teases as my dad continues his tug-of-war with the coffin. “The point is,” he adds, “your bullet was fired by a rare gun. Really rare: a Walther from 1930. Apparently, it was made as a prototype for the military—Russian army in this case—then discarded. Only something like twenty ever existed.”
He stops for a moment.
“Benny, why’re you giving me the dramatic pause?”
“It’s just odd, Cal. Guns like this—they don’t show up a lot. Out of the grillions of guns out there, well . . . that gun’s only been used once—
one time
—apparently during some unsolved murder in Cleveland, Ohio.”
Cleveland. That was the area code from my dad’s phone call. I look at my father, who’s now shimmying the coffin back and forth, trying to angle it through the open hole. As I pace through the empty container, he gives it one final pull, which frees the casket from its hiding spot.
“When was the murder in Cleveland?” I ask.
“Now you’re seeing the problem, Cal. The last time we know that gun was fired was back in 1932,” Benny explains. “In fact, if this is right, it’s the same gun that killed some guy named Mitchell Siegel.”
“Who’s Mitchell Siegel?”
My
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