“So you don’t think Ellis knows this’s here?” my father asks.

“If he did, you really think he’d’ve driven off with a truck full of plastic

pineapples? Now c’mon — I figure we’ve got an hour on him. Time to see

what’s behind door number two.”

“Y’sure there’s no door number three?” my father moans forty-five minutes

later, up to his knees in the rancid smell of slowly melting frozen shrimp.

Back in the day, I’d have half a dozen agents burrow to the center of a 

four-thousand-pound container, send in the dogs, and empty whatever looked

suspicious, all within twenty minutes. I don’t have half a dozen agents. Or

dogs. I have my dad, and all my dad has is a gunshot wound and a bad back.

“Y’okay?” I ask, walking backward and dragging yet another fifty-pound carton 

of shrimp out the back doors of the truck, onto the ledge of the loading dock.

My father nods, nudging the carton with his foot so he doesn’t have to bend

over. But the sun is up — it’s nearly seven a.m., and the warm air is baking us

in the seafood stench — I can see it reflecting off the sweat on his face.

“Halfway through,” I tell him.

With a sharp kick, he sends the newest box toward the maze of cartons that

crowd the left half of the loading area. On a small radio in the corner, he put

on the local Paul and Young Ron morning show. Still, my dad’s not laughing.

From the hospital to being up all night, he’s had it. But as he turns my way,

he suddenly looks oddly . . . proud.

“When’d you start wearing it facing in?” he asks.

“Excuse me?”

“Your watch,” he says, pointing to the inside of my wrist. “You wear it facing

in.” He then lifts his arm so his palm and the face of his own watch are aimed

at me. “Me, too,” he says. “Funny, huh?”

I look down at my watch, then over at his. Both are cheap. Both are digital.

Both have nearly identical thick black bands.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I insist.

“N-No, I know — I just meant—”

“It’s a stupid coincidence, okay, Lloyd? Now can we drop it and finish

unloading the rest of this?”

I squat down and tug another wet box full of shrimp toward my dad. Using his

foot like a broom, he sweeps it along and adds it to the pile.

“You’re right,” he says. “We need to focus on what’s important.”

“Okay, now what?”

“Just gimme a sec,” I say, shoving aside the last box and staring into the

now completely empty container.

“I don’t think we have a sec,” my dad replies as he turns his wrist and stares

down at his watch.

I glance down at my own, ignoring the slight throb of my dog bite. He may be

right. Outside, there’s a siren in the distance. This neighborhood hears them

all the time. But I can still picture Ellis’s blue lights pulsing in the dark. We

don’t have much time.

Of the seventy-six cartons we pulled from the container, all are the same size,

same shape, and, from what we can tell, same weight. And as they melt in

the Florida heat, each one has a slowly growing puddle beneath it.

“You were hoping one of them wouldn’t be packed with ice?” my dad asks.

“Something like that. Anything to save us from opening and digging through

each one.”

“Maybe one of them has a tattooed frozen head in it. Or someone’s brain.”

“A tattooed head?”

“Okay, not a tattooed head. But y’know what I mean — maybe it’s a

different kinda book. Either way — it’s almost nine — time to get out of here,

Calvin.”

“And where you plan on going? To your apartment? To mine? You think those

aren’t the first places Ellis is gonna look? He shot a federal agent, Lloyd! Trust

me, the only way to bargain with this nutbag is if we have his favorite chip.”

My father steps back at the outburst — not at the words, but at who it came

from.

“And stop giving me that my-boy’s-become-a-man look!” I quickly add. “It’s

fifty times past annoying already!”

“I wasn’t looking at you,” he admits. “I was . . . There . . .” he says,

motioning over my shoulder.

I turn around, following his finger to the open doors of the yawning, empty

container.

“Where’s that water go to?” my father asks. Reading my confusion, he points

again. “There. Right along . . .”

I crane my head and finally see it: on the floor of the container, in the very

back. To the untrained eye, it’s another of the many thin puddles from the

now melted ice. Something you’d never look twice at. Unless you happen to

notice that the puddle is somehow running and disappearing underneath the

container’s back wall.

I’ve seen this magic trick before: bad guys adding fake floors and ceilings in

the hopes of smuggling something in.

My father kicks one of the shrimp boxes and sends it slamming into the back

wall. There’s a hollow echo. No question, there’s something behind there.

Within thirty seconds, my dad’s got the handle from the jack in my van. He

rams it like a shovel at the bottom right corner of the back wall, where there’s

a small gap at the floor. After wedging it in place, he grabs the handle, pushes

down with all his weight, and tries to pry it open. “It’s screwed into the—”

“Lemme try,” I say.

He pushes again. It doesn’t budge.

Outside, the siren keeps getting louder. As if it’s coming right at us.

“Lloyd!”

“I’m trying, it’s just — I can’t . . .” he blurts, clearly upset as he lets go, and

I take over. The computer said he’s fifty-two years old. At this moment, the

way he looks away and scratches his beard . . . he looks north of sixty.With 

both hands gripping the handle, I wedge one foot against the wall, lean backward, 

and pull down as hard as I can. The wood is cheap, but it barely gives.

I reset my foot and pull harder. The siren howls toward us.

The wood gives way and there’s a loud snap, sending me falling backward. As

I crash on my ass, two screws tumble and ping along the metal floor, freeing

the bottom right corner of the wall.

“Now here!” my dad blurts, pointing to the next set of screws on the far right

side of the wall. They’re at waist height and, with the makeshift crowbar, easy

to get at, but all I’m focused on is the unnerving excitement in my dad’s voice.

“C’mon, Cal — we got it!” he says as I put my weight into it and another

hunk of wood is pulled away from the screws. Years ago during my father’s

trial, his lawyer argued that the true cause of my mother’s death was her

mental instability — he said she had an alter ego, like a second face: one that

was good, one that was evil. Naturally, the prosecutor pounced on it, saying

my dad was the one with the alter ego: Lloyd the Saintly Defendant and Lloyd

the Reckless Killer.

Three minutes ago, my dad was winded and hobbling. Suddenly, he’s gripping

the right side of the thin wooden wall, prying and bending it open and thrilled

to find his treasure. One man. Two faces.

“This is it! Grab it here!” he says, tugging the right side of the thin wall,

which has now lost enough screws that the harder we pull, the more it curves

toward us. I try to see what’s behind it — some kind of box with its long side

running against the true back wall — but with the shadow of the wood, it’s

too dark to see. “Keep pulling!” my father says, still cheerleading as the wood

finally begins to crack. “Uno . . . dos . . .”

With a final awkward semi-karate move, my father kicks the wood panel,

which snaps on impact and sends us both stumbling back. As the last

splinters of particleboard somersault through the morning sun, we both stare

at what my dad was really transporting — the true object of Ellis’s desire.

That’s not just a box.

It’s a coffin.

21

“It’s a casket,” my father stutters.

“I know what it is. Is it—? Is someone in it?”

He doesn’t move, still staring at the dark wood box as another siren begins to

scream in the distance. It’s only a matter of time till one’s headed here.

In front of us, it’s definitely a coffin, though it’s oddly rounded at the edges.

Along the top, yellow and white papers are pasted randomly in place, while a

thin band of copper piping runs along the bottom. To be honest, I thought my

dad was bullshitting when he said he didn’t know what was in the truck, but

from the confusion on his face, this is news to him.

“Help me get it out,” my dad says, rushing forward and grabbing one of the

wooden handles at the head of the casket. “Yuuuh!” he yells, leaping back

and frantically wiping his hand on his pants.

“What? Something’s on there?”

He holds up his open palm, which is dotted with small black flecks of dirt.

Fresh soil. I look back at the coffin. Most of it’s wiped clean, but you can still

see chunks of soil caked in the edges of the trim.

“Someone dug this out of the ground,” I say.

“Before Panama, the sheet said it was in Hong Kong,” my dad says. “Do they

have rounded coffins there?”

“You think 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.”