The Book of Lies (28 page)

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 says as she rearranges them. “Instead of the man
reaching
for the flame, maybe he’s tossing something into it.”

“So now they
burned
the book? Then why save any of this?” I ask.

Once again, Serena and I look down at the panels. My father hasn’t taken his eyes off them. And once again, like clockwork, he’s fourteen steps ahead of us.

“It’s not a word puzzle. It’s a visual one,” he says.

“What?”

“Comics are a visual medium. All the panels—they’re pictures, right? Now look at the pictures . . . see what they have in common.”

I stare but see nothing. “What’re you—? You spotted something, didn’t you?”

“A moon,” Serena blurts.

“Exactly. A moon,” my father says. “There’s a moon in each one.”

On the table, I see the moon in the Yowzie panel but nowhere else.

“Like Ellis’s tattoo,” my dad says, now excited. “He had a crescent moon in his tattoo.” But as I continue to stare . . .

“You still don’t see it, do you, Calvin? It’s in every panel—and not just in the sky,” my dad says, finally pointing it out. “Look at the base of the flame . . . the barrel of the gun.”

“Hocus-pocus,” Serena whispers to herself. “How’d you even see that?”

I’m tempted to ask the same, but I know the answer. My father was a painter. To match that restaurant lettering . . . he always had the perfect eye.

“So you think the moon’s the key?” Serena asks.

“Not the key,” he says. “More like the
X.
As in
marks the spot.
”

One by one, he peels each of the wet panels from the table.

“What’re you doing?” I challenge.

“Just watch,” he says as he overlaps the moon in the Yowzie panel with the moon in the King Street one. Thanks to the wetness of the wallpaper, we can practically see through them.

“And that does a big fat nothing,” I point out.

Undeterred, he peels the sopping wet gunshot panel from the table and overlaps that moon with the other ones.

Like before, it’s just a mess of overlapped art.

“So now what?” Serena asks.

It’s the only question that matters, but my dad’s not answering, his eyes dancing from the overlapped art to the final panel, then back to the overlapped art.

“Yowzie,” he blurts.

“What? Is
Yowzie
good?” Serena asks.