Free A Patent Lie by Paul Goldstein Page A

drinking beer and working on his hunting and fishing gear, but the man knew every spider-filled corner of the place. The living and dining rooms were hopeless: the sofa and easy chairs, covered in stiff transparent plastic, were impenetrable and the cabinet with his mother's collection of porcelain figurines was mostly glass. The two small dressers in the boys' bedroom were the first place his father would look. It seemed odd to Seeley that a house so filled with secrets should have no hiding places.
    When Seeley opened the pickle jar and carefully shook the coins and currency onto the table, Lenny misunderstood. “Take the jar! You can have it! Just get rid of the thing.”
    On his own forays into his father's bedroom dresser, Seeley had examined the revolver more than once. The grip and barrel now appeared shorter than he remembered and, in proportion, the trigger and guard seemed outsized. For some reason that difference now underlined for him the weapon's deadliness. He pressed open the cylinder and, one by one, inserted the six loose cartridges. The smooth movement of the parts—he clicked the cylinder back into place—was almost comforting in its precision. He quickly covered the bottom of the jar with coins, placed the revolver in the center of them, and distributed the rest of the money on top of the revolver and around it. He screwed the top back onto the jar. The hard black crumbs he gathered up from the bedcover and dropped in the wastebasket. Even if his father were to look there, drunk as he was by the time he got home, he would not connect them to the missing gun.
    Seeley examined the jar doubtfully before returning it to its corner in the closet. “I'll toss the gun on the way to school tomorrow.”
    Leonard said, “Maybe he won't come home.”
    That was Lenny's fantasy, but Seeley had his own version. At around this time, the U. S. Justice Department had, with much publicity, initiated the prosecution in nearby Cleveland of a local autoworker for fraudulently entering the United States by failing to disclose that he had been an SS guard at two death camps in Poland. It took no great forensic leap for Seeley at age fifteen to conclude that Lothar Seelig, also an autoworker and immigrant, had himself been an SS camp guard. Surely the brass key in the carved box would unlock the incriminating evidence. Some day, like the Cleveland autoworker, neither of the two madmen would come home.
    One sitcom had replaced another on the television when a slamming door shook the house. Seeley's mother must have come into the kitchen because his father's ancient tirade—booming, guttural, unforgiving—at once filled the house with its complaint of incompetence and betrayal. The sentences had lost their meaning long ago, but the fact that the words were English, not German, momentarily loosened the knot in Seeley's chest. When his father spoke English in the house it meant that his drinking had not yet carried him past the last edge of decency.
    There was a heavy
thump
and again the house shook. From experience Seeley knew that his father had hurled his mother against a kitchen wall. Her cry, if there was one, was drowned out by the television. There was a long silence before the heavy boots staggered down the hallway, stopping at the closed door behind which, Seeley on his bed, and his brother at the card table, neither breathed nor moved. The boots turned into his parents' bedroom. Lenny started shaking and, though terrified himself, Seeley was astonished to discover, peeking out from some corner of his soul, a spark of mischief, even glee, anticipating the roar of the dumb, confounded beast pawing through drawers of socks and underwear as he discovered that his gun was gone.
    Drawers opened and slammed shut in the next room. Then, as Seeley expected, the mindless, anguished cry.
Wo ist es? Wo ist mein Revolver?
    The door to the boys' room swung open—the latch had broken long ago—and the massive figure, all chest and