The Book of Lies

“Totems. A sacred family object.”

“. . . he kept one of the totems for himself?”

“It took years for the Thules to figure it out—especially with the second name change at Ellis Island,” the FBI agent named Aldridge explained. “Their Leadership is patient, though. In their eyes, they’d already waited centuries, so what was a few more decades? And once they realized Mitchell was alive—and that we were hiding him—according to the files, we lost a half dozen agents as they tightened their noose.”

“You seem pretty interested in all this for just an assistant, though,” the other agent added. “I’m surprised Agent Molina had you making these calls instead of calling herself.”

“It’s been a crazy day,” Scotty replied as his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He knew it was Naomi. But he wasn’t picking up just yet. “Who were these Thule guys, anyway?” he asked the agents.

Agent Aldridge shook his head. “It’s not the who they were that you have to worry about. It’s who the Thules became.”

58

Try it now.”

“I thought it needed to soak,” I tell my dad.

“Try it now,” he repeats as all three of us hunch like Macbeth’s witches, our foreheads almost touching, over the plastic motel ice bucket that sits on the round Formica table. Inside the bucket, a single comic book panel stares back at us, floating for nearly forty minutes in the soapy, pungent mixture of warm water, vinegar, and fabric softener. The panel is an unpublished work by the creators of Superman, which makes it irreplaceable. But if Ellis is right, it’s what’s glued behind it that makes it priceless.

“Any luck?” my father asks as I dip both hands into the bucket and try to peel away the layers of wallpaper. It’s like trying to unpeel two stuck stamps. The liquid makes it slippery—it gives just slightly—but it’s not there yet.

“Don’t rip it,” my father warns.

“I’m not. I was—” I shoot him a look. “You’re the one who said, Try it now.”

“Let’s all just find a moment,” Serena pleads, doing her usual push for quiet and calm. “If Jerry Siegel really had Cain’s book—this Book of Lies—let’s just worry about finding it, yes?”

She points her nose at the ice bucket, where I stare down at the submerged panel.

No question, that’s what the newspaper boy’s arm is covering. The Book of Lies. But I’m not believing anything until I’ve seen the rest of the panels.

“Try it now,” my father says for the third time.

With my hand in the bucket, I rub the corner of the wallpaper between my thumb and pointer finger. It’s mushy now, sliding away from the panel underneath. With a pinch, I peel back the top layer slowly, like a stubborn Band-Aid.

The wallpaper tears slightly, but not much. I pinch the opposite corner and start peeling the other way. The longer the wallpaper sits in the water, the more the glue dissolves and the easier it becomes.

“Can you see anything?” my father asks, almost butting foreheads with me.

Actually, I can.

And just like that—with a final tug of the Band-Aid—it’s done.

The top panel—with the newspaper boy running from the bullets—is completely free, revealing a second panel underneath.

A gunshot.

“It’s just like the curator said,” my father points out as we all stare into the ice bucket. “In this first Superman story—Jerry Siegel put his dad’s real killer in it.”

“Can you feel how many more panels there are?” Serena asks.

I’m already peeling away the next layer, which shows the newspaper boy running toward a building. I have to squint to read it, but— “There’s an address. . . .”

“184 King Street. Is that where Mitchell Siegel was shot?” my father asks. “We need a map.”

“I can try on my phone,” Serena offers.

“I threw your phone away,” my dad says.

“What?”

“In the house—when you hit Naomi—Cal screamed your name,” my dad explains. “The moment Naomi wakes up, she’ll be looking for you. I tossed it on the way over here. Sorry—we’ll buy you a new one when all this is done.”

I nod in agreement. For once, he’s got it right.

Turning back to the panels, I peel the final one away. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a face or a name. If Jerry really did put his father’s killer in here, we need to know who we’re up against—and how they got this Book of Lies.

But as the final panel of wallpaper gives way, all we’re left with is . . .

“That’s it? A man in some cave?” my dad asks as I slap the final piece of wet wallpaper against the table. “That’s no murderer.”

“Maybe that’s a clue,” I point out.

“It’s not the newspaper boy anymore. This guy’s older. Could that be part of it?” Serena asks.

“Maybe that’s where it started,” I add, already rearranging the panels. “The Cain book is supposedly ancient, right? Maybe they found it in a cave or something. Maybe that 184 King Street building is where the killer tried to hide. Something like— Something like this.”

“How does that make sense?” Serena asks. “It doesn’t even read right.”

“It’s not right,” my dad insists. “If all we’re supposed to get is the address and some random cave, then why include the close-up of the gun and the dodging bullet panels? What’d the curator say? When this story got rejected, Siegel or Shuster supposedly tore the whole thing to shreds. But of those shreds, these four panels, for some reason, got saved. That isn’t happening without a good reason.”

“Maybe it’s like the KKK thing,” Serena suggests. Reading our confusion, she reaches for a pamphlet on Superman history that she pulled from the museum gift shop. “In here. It’s . . . here,” she says, flipping to the page. “In the late 1940s, as a way to destabilize the Ku Klux Klan and make them think they were being infiltrated, the Superman radio show was covertly given the secret passwords that the Klan used to call and organize meetings. They were aired as part of the broadcast. Regular listeners had no idea. But the Klan knew. From there, they started infighting, looking for the snitch. The show hid it right in front of everyone.”

“Meaning what?” I ask. “Jerry Siegel hid it in front of everyone, too?”

We all look down at the panels. There are worse ideas.

“What about the first letters of the captions,” Serena says. “L . . . U . . . T . . . H . . . E . . . If there was an R, it’d spell Luther. Lex Luther.”

“I think Luthor has an o, not an e,” I point out. “But if you rearrange the letters: Let Uh . . . Tel Uh . . .”

“It doesn’t spell anything,” my dad says.

“Maybe it’s the whole text. Luckily he sees a torch,” I read from the first line.

For the next ten minutes, we rearrange the letters, coming up with such insights as “A Churches Likely Toes,” “A Checklist Holey Ruse,” and “Holy Accuser Heels Kit.” From the map we got at the car rental place, the search for 184 King Street is just as fruitful. There’s a King Avenue. But in all of Cleveland . . . all of Cuyahoga County . . . there’s not a single King Street.

“Maybe we still have the order of the panels wrong. Maybe the one with the torch is last, not first,” Serena