Next to him, in the passenger seat, his dog rumbled and

growled — first at the rain, then at the flashlight, the bobbing and glowing

light-stick in the distance.

“Easy, girl. . . . Good girl,” Ellis whispered, patting his dog’s neck as they

spied the two homeless volunteers shouting at the far end of the little park.

Cal. One of them was named Cal. From this side of the park, it was hard to

hear much. But Ellis heard enough.

“Zero seven eight, zero five, one one two zero,” yelled the ponytailed man.

Ellis pulled out the file folder the Judge’s office had put together and checked

the Social Security number against the one on the pink sheet from Hong

Kong. The driver picking up the Book of Lies: Harper, Lloyd.

Ellis’s amber eyes narrowed as his thick eyebrows drew together. It wasn’t

supposed to be like this.

He’d been following Lloyd for barely ten minutes — following the

simpleminded courier just to make sure the shipment got through. But what

Ellis had seen . . . when the flash of the gun erupted and Lloyd stumbled in

the park . . . No, Lloyd wasn’t simpleminded at all. Lloyd Harper might not’ve

known exactly what was inside, but he knew the value of what he was

carrying. Ellis shouldn’t’ve been so surprised. His own father was a liar, too.

And a far worse trickster.

The dog raised her head, always reading Ellis perfectly.

“I’m okay, girl,” he promised.

Across the dark park, there was a burst of light as the door of the van flew

open. Ellis saw an older man with white hair — No. He had an open, boyish

face and loose-jointed movements. Like a giant marionette out of sync. He

was young. Young with white hair.

Ellis flipped through the pages, still rubbing his thumbnail across the corner of

the file folder. White hair, twenty-eight years old. There it was. Known

relatives. Calvin. Cal.

One of them was named Cal. And the way he was running — the shock and

fear on his face as he came bursting out into the rainy night — Cal knew

exactly whom he’d found.

For a moment, Ellis laughed to himself. Of course. It had to come back to

father and son. Just as it began with Adam and Cain. Just as it was with

Mitchell and Jerry Siegel.

It was the same when he’d first heard the truth about his own family — the

lifelong lie his father had told him. In that instant, Ellis realized how much of

his life was a construct. But Ellis wasn’t sad. He was thrilled. He knew he was

meant for something bigger. No question, that’s why his mother left him the

diary, the softbound journal with the water-stained leather cover.

For over a year he’d been studying the diary’s pages, absorbing the theories

that his grandfather and great-grandfather — both Leadership officers —

spent so many years working on. Throughout the books, his name was

spelled differently — Cayin, Kayin, Kenite — depending on the translation and

where the story originated. But there was no mistaking the world’s first

murderer. Or the first man God forgave — and empowered. The man who

held the secret of God’s true power.

Ellis still remembered — his hands shaking in the estate lawyer’s office — the

first time he read the words his great-grandfather had written during his time

at the Cairo Museum. Ellis had to go find a Bible — check the language

himself. Like most, he’d grown up thinking Cain killed Abel with a stone. But

as he flipped through the pages, speed-reading through chapter 4 of Genesis:

“And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against

Abel his brother, and slew him.” That was all the Bible said. No mentions of

stones or rocks or any sort of weapon.

Time and history added other ideas, filling texts with theories of clubs, sticks,

and wooden staffs. The Zohar, the most important work of the Jewish

Kabbalah movement, insisted that Cain bit Abel’s throat, which led others to

proclaim Cain as the world’s first vampire. And in ancient Egypt,

archaeologists found hieroglyphics depicting a weapon made from an animal’s

jawbone and sharpened teeth.

It was this theory of the jawbone that filled up half the diary. Shakespeare

wrote that Cain’s weapon was a jawbone, featuring it in Hamlet. Rembrandt

depicted the same instrument in one of his portraits, even including Abel’s

dog barking in the background.

But for Ellis’s Cairo-based great-grandfather, the real question was: How did

this obscure theory from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics suddenly become

such a rage in seventeenth-century Europe? For years, there was no logical

explanation — until his great-grandfather read the story of a small group of

Coptic monks who emigrated from Egypt to the north, where they hoped to

hide the small but priceless object they’d stumbled upon. The object from

God Himself.

Then the Leadership took interest. The group was new then. Untested. But

extremely enthusiastic — like Ellis, especially now that he was so close.

There was only one thing in his way.

Across the park, Cal slid on his knees, his flashlight shining into Lloyd

Harper’s terrified face.

A trickster, Ellis decided. Every family had a trickster.

In the passenger seat, Benoni cocked her head, which meant Ellis’s phone

was about to—

The phone vibrated in Ellis’s pocket. Somehow the dog always knew.

“Officer Belasco,” Ellis answered as he readjusted the badge on his uniform.

“You still with the driver — what’s his name again?” the Judge asked.

“Lloyd,” Ellis replied, watching Cal’s father across the park and unable to

shake the feeling that the bleeding old man was far more than just a driver.

“He get the Book yet?”

“Soon. He stopped for some help first,” Ellis said as he eyed just Cal.

In 1900, the Book — one writing called it a “carving,” another an “emblem” —

whatever it was, it was stolen from the Leadership. Ellis’s grandfathers hunted

it for decades, tracing it to father and son. Always father and son. And

tonight, seeing Cal and his dad, Ellis finally understood how near the end was.

All he had to do was wipe out these villains. Then Ellis — for himself, for his

family — would finally be the hero.

“Is that concern in your voice?” the Judge asked.

“Not at all.” Ellis scratched Benoni’s nose, barely even hearing the

ambulance siren that approached behind them. “Lloyd Harper can bring as

many dogs as he wants into this fight. It won’t take much to put ’em down.”

6

“You’re gonna feel a sting,” the nurse says, wheeling my dad into one of the

emergency exam rooms. As she’s about to pull the curtain shut, she turns

back to me and stops. “Only relatives from here. You related?”

I freeze at the question. She doesn’t have time for indecision.

“Waiting room’s back there,” she says, whipping the curtain shut like a

magician’s cape.

Sleepwalking toward the L-shaped hub of pink plastic waiting room chairs, I’m

still clutching the mound of my dad’s crumpled belongings — his bloody shirt,

pants, and shoes — that the EMTs cut off him. A digital clock on the wall tells

me it’s 1:34 a.m. To Roo-sevelt’s credit, as I slump down in the seat next to

him, he doesn’t say a word for at least four or five seconds.

“Cal, if he’s really your dad—”

“He’s my dad.”

“Then you should go back there.”

I start to stand up, then again sit back down.

I’ve waited nineteen years to see my dad. Nineteen years being mad he’s

gone. But to hop out of my chair and peek behind that curtain and reenter his

life . . . “What if he doesn’t want me back?” I whisper.

Smart enough to not answer, Roosevelt quickly shows me why, after he raised

his own hell in high school, he was such a great Methodist minister. Sure, he

still had his rebellious side — with a few too many Iron Maiden quotes in his

sermons — but the way he breathed life into Scripture and related to people,

everyone loved that pastor with the ponytail.

The only problem came when church leaders told Roosevelt they didn’t like

the fact that he wasn’t married. In the wake of all the church pedophile cases,

it didn’t reflect well that even though he was from one of the wealthiest

families in town, at nearly forty years old, he was still single. Roosevelt

pleaded, explaining that he hadn’t found anyone he loved. His family tried to

help by throwing around their financial weight. But in rural Tennessee —

where a handsome, unmarried, thirty-eight-year-old man can mean only one

thing — his church refused to budge. “If you want to be queer, don’t do it

here,” said the message that was spray-painted on the hood of his car. And

Roosevelt had his first personal heartbreak.

Which is why he empathizes so well with mine.

“Cal, when you were little, you ever watch The Ten Commandments?”

“This gonna be another sermon?”

“Boy, you think you’re the only one who likes saving people?” he teases,

though I know it’s no joke. No matter how happy he is, Roosevelt would kill to

have his old parish back. It’s not ego; it’s just his mission. He’ll never say it,

but I know that’s the reason he took this job. And though I bet his family

could easily buy him a new church, well, it’s the same reason he won’t buy us

a new van. Some battles you have to fight by yourself. “Think about the

Moses story, Cal: Little baby gets dropped in a basket, then grows up thinking

he’s Egyptian royalty — until his past comes kickin’ at the door and reveals to

him his true purpose.”

“That mean I’m getting the long beard and the sandals?”

“We all hate something about our past, Cal. That’s why we run from it, or

compensate for it, or even fill our van with homeless people. But when

something like this happens — when your dad shows up — maybe there is a

bigger purpose. ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good.’ Genesis

50:20.”

（Or when Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt, Joseph later recounted that what his brothers intended for evil, God intended for good (Gen 50:20). 

或者，当约瑟的弟兄把他买到埃及为奴，约瑟之后回顾说，虽然他的兄弟是出于邪恶的心想要害他，但是上帝的意思却是好的（创50：20）。

 

Staring down at the pointy tips of my dad’s shoes in my hand, I don’t say a

word. When my mom worked in the hospital, she used to lecture us about the

importance of good shoes. As a cleaning lady, it was the one personal item

she could see in every room. Fancy clothes were replaced by hospital gowns,

but under every bed . . . Show me someone’s shoes, and I’ll show you their

lives.

Thanks to that ridiculous mantra, my dad used to always have one pair of

shiny black lawyer shoes (even though he was a painter) and a pair of tan

cordovans (which my mom was convinced meant you were rich).

Today, in my lap, he’s got black loafers. And not the cheap kind with the

tough leather and the seams coming undone. These are nice — buffed and

narrow at the toes; Italian leather soles.

I read the label inside.

“What’s wrong?” Roosevelt asks.

“These are Franceschettis.”

He cocks an eyebrow and looks for himself. He’s the one from money. He

knows what it means.

“Franceschettis are expensive, aren’t they?” I ask.

“Four hundred bucks a pair.”

“What about his shirt?” I ask, showing him the label on my dad’s bloody silk

shirt. Michael Kors. “Is Michael Kors good?”

“Plenty good. As in three-hundred-bucks-a-pop good.”

“On a guy we found on a homeless call,” I point out.

“Maybe they were donated. We get designer clothes all the time.”

I look at the bottom of the shoes. The leather soles barely have a scuff on

them. Brand new. Confused, I once again start to stand up, then quickly sit

back down.

When I was little and we had company coming over, my father would buy

cheap Scotch at the neighborhood liquor store and pour it into a Johnnie

Walker Black Label bottle. He did the same when he first started painting

signs at restaurants, pouring discount remainder paint into the Benjamin

Moore cans he’d have me fish from the hardware store’s trash. My mother

used to tease him, calling it his little CIA trick. He never laughed at the joke.

For him, appearances mattered.