Tell No Lies Read online

  Forging his way north, Daniel sliced through Alamo Square, its picket row of pastel Victorians basking in the first pink-tinged rays of the new day. Beyond their fanciful gingerbread gables rose the green copper dome of City Hall, where ousted Catholic and local sandlotter-made-good Joe DiMaggio said I do to Marilyn and where, a couple of decades later, five hollow-point bullets cut down Harvey Milk in the corridors of power. So much glory and shame. So much beauty and horror. A city that burned to the ground six times before its first decade flamed out yet rose from the ashes again and again, a boxer who wouldn’t stay down.

  He let his imagination soar across the rooftops to the Tenderloin, where dealers in saggy pants palmed Baggies into skeletal hands and tranny hookers batted improbable eyelashes and held cigarettes to their smeared lips, smoking off the night’s work. Mere blocks to yet another ecosystem—capitalism-clean Union Square on perennial high polish, ornate Christmas displays already gleaming in the vast picture windows, Neiman and Chanel, Saks and the ghost of I. Magnin. Coppola shot the conversation in The Conversation here, but even his surveillance camera couldn’t capture the dead-end alley where Miles Archer met his fictional demise or the Palace Hotel, where President Harding was felled by an enlarged heart or a poisonous wife.

  A Peter Pan drift took Daniel to Russian Hill with its manic slalom descents, its vertiginous tumble over the brink of Filbert, its manicured floral gardens cupping the curves of Lombard, the second-crookedest street in the city. Steve McQueen’s Mustang scorched these slopes in the world’s greatest car chase, the fleeing Charger losing an unlikely six hubcaps in the process.

  Then on to North Beach in all its gaudy Italian glory. There perched City Lights Bookstore, where Ginsberg howled, the wedged façade gazing nobly across the intersection at the world’s first topless bar, if the historical plaque is to be believed. Carol Doda bared her double-D Twin Peaks here at the Condor Club, a skip from Green Street where Philo T. Farnsworth lived up to his madcap inventor’s name and conjured into existence the world’s first TV. And overseeing all this squalid, soaring history, the fluted column of Coit Tower, the candle stuck in the cupcake of Telegraph Hill.

  All those tales of the city. All those separate lives. Misfits and dreamers, transplants and immigrants, victims and outlaws, packed full of hidden fears and sordid impulses, inflated fantasies and rageful desires. They’d come heeding the siren’s call, seeking haven, to this sanctuary city thrust into a swirl of ever-shifting tides and mist. A peninsula draped over seven hills, twinkling and glorious, with jutting heights and precipitous drops, a labyrinthine fog-veiled confusion of one-ways and narrow alleys, shadow and light. A microcosm of the human psyche in all its splendor and horror, its seething, brilliant, hideous capabilities.

  So many places to hide. So many ways to disappear. All those masks, imagined and real.

  And, beneath one of them, a killer.

  Chapter 25

  As Daniel neared home, the morning light was still thin, the streets suffused with a straw-colored glow. Any reasonable human would be in bed. This category, of course, excluded Ted and Danika Shea, who were on yoga mats on their front porch, doing sun salutations. Ted glanced up from Downward Dog and beamed a wholesome smile in Daniel’s direction. Daniel summoned a weak grin and turned into his driveway.

  The alarm chirped quietly when Daniel entered the house, and he punched in the code, then rearmed it. In a stupor, he kicked off his shoes and moved quietly upstairs. The sight of the man sitting at the kitchen island, facing away, brought him up short. The stocky form and broad, bowed shoulders, the smooth dome of the skull glistening beneath the muted overhead lights. Motionless.

  Daniel froze with one foot above the floorboards until recognition clicked.

  Leo Rizk. Sitting still enough to be carved from marble. A pistol remained within reach, a few inches from his right hand.

  For a moment Daniel wondered if the man was dead, but then Rizk’s shoulder shifted and his head tilted slightly as he brought something to his lips. Daniel drew nearer, noticing the bottle of Blanton’s and a second poured glass across from Leo.

  He looked from the tumbler to the back of Leo’s head to the tumbler. “Expecting someone?”

  “You,” Leo said.

  “I thought guys like you always faced the door.”

  “Don’t have to.”

  Over Leo’s shoulder Daniel noted the faint mirror image of the room in the broad windows opposite. The bottle had been positioned near the counter’s edge so that one sliver of reflection captured the top of the stairs.

  Daniel circled the island and sat. Two fingers of golden liquid were in the bottom of the tumbler. He let the smoke fill his throat, warm his stomach. “Where’s Cris?”

  “Upstairs. Fell asleep. She tried to stay awake, but once she knew you were okay…” Leo brought the glass to his lips.

  Daniel considered the faceted globe of the bottle. His favorite bourbon, neat, how he preferred it. They hadn’t restocked Blanton’s in the bar since killing the last bottle after a dinner party last month. He couldn’t even recall Leo’s having brought a bag with him, and yet here he was, wearing fresh clothes, sipping Kentucky single-barrel. They’d given him the code to the alarm and a set of keys, but Daniel wasn’t sure when he’d left the house.

  “One drink,” Leo said. “Every four hours.”

  “I don’t mind,” Daniel said.

  Leo removed his watch and polished the face fastidiously on his shirt. His nails neatly clipped. No sign of stubble on his shaved head. The gun looked well oiled, the barrel pointed at the refrigerator. Not a fingerprint on it.

  “Thank you,” Daniel said. “For being here.”

  “It’s my job. I’m paid well for it.” The skin of his face was mostly smooth, but parenthetical lines around his mouth and crinkles at his temples showed his age and seemed, in the dim light of the kitchen, to be code for wisdom.

  “Thank you anyway.”

  Leo knuckled his nose, which showed surprising give. A thin rosary-bead bracelet dangled from his left wrist. He noted Daniel’s gaze. “Maronite Christians trace their ancestry back to the invading Europeans during the Crusades. Warriors from the start.”

  “Your people.”

  “My people.”

  Daniel got up and walked to the window. The sun still barely a notion to the east. The fog thick as soup, muffling the glow, leaching the color from the sky. All his group members were out there, probably sound asleep beneath the sheets. Except for one. Daniel pictured Kyle Lane’s ponytail, the soft face and thin frame of a man seemingly not suited to violence. He was somewhere out there, too, alive or dead, sipping a mai tai or clinging to life with knife slits leaking beneath either eye.

  “This fucking city,” Daniel said. “This fucking fog.”

  “They say the fog was so intense that explorers missed the Bay the first few go-rounds,” Leo said. “Sailed right past the entrance. And these were men, presumably, who noticed shit.”

  Daniel turned back to him.

  “It’s not a city that gives up its secrets easily.” Leo finished his whiskey, and the empty glass clicked down on the counter. His steady gaze unsettled Daniel. “What’s worrying you?”

  “The killer’s probably in my group. But I don’t know who to suspect.”

  “Then you’ll start suspecting everyone.”

  “Is that how it works?” The question was half rhetorical; Daniel didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. He tried for something more specific. “How do you keep hold of what matters to you if you suspect everyone?”

  “Until your life is at stake,” Leo said, “you don’t know what matters to you.”

  Daniel wanted to protest but held his tongue, letting the thought settle.

  Leo flicked his head, a nearly imperceptible gesture. “What happened to your eye?”

  “I got kicked in the face.”

  “I’ve had those nights.”

  “You’ve dealt with situations like thi
s,” Daniel said. “On a lot of continents.”

  Leo’s mouth stretched, still a straight line and yet somehow a smile. “That’s right.”

  “Protecting folks?”

  “I’ve played some defense. I’ve played some offense.”

  “Offense,” Daniel repeated, trying on the word.

  “Yes. To people who have done things I wish I could still call unimaginable.”

  “And when you find who’s to blame—”

  “Blame?” Leo used the blade of his hand to nudge the empty glass back into its condensation ring. “Blame doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean, blame doesn’t matter?”

  “Everyone’s to blame. No one’s to blame. So—there is no blame. Only people who have to be killed.”

  He slid silently off his barstool, lifted the gun from the counter, and drifted down the stairs. Daniel stood for a time looking at the two empty glasses before heading up to bed.

  * * *

  “Someone in your group?” Cristina said.

  Despite her tousled hair and sleep shirt falling Flashdance style off one shoulder, she was eminently alert, having bounced awake at Daniel’s entrance and squeezed him hard enough to make his ribs ache. After checking his bloodshot eye meticulously under the strong light of the bathroom, she’d returned to the bed, where she sat bolt upright in a coil of sheets as he paced to and fro.

  “Seems to be,” he said.

  “I guess now we know how the killer ID’d you so quickly, knew your phone number to text you that picture of yourself.” Her words came fast, a relentless, uncharacteristic chatter. “But don’t other people have your business cards? Like past group members?”

  “Not with the cell-phone number crossed out and my new one written on the back. Remember, I just switched a few weeks ago—”

  “Right. ’Cuz AT&T sucks.”

  “—and I only wrote down my new cell for the group. That card came from one of them.”

  “But still. It’s not a lock that one of them is the killer. One of your group members could’ve given your card to someone else. Or someone could’ve taken it from them.” Before he even thought to raise an objection, she waved him off. “I know, I know, Occam’s razor and all that. I’m just saying, the card isn’t airtight evidence that one of your group members is the killer. It’s just very damn likely.” Her speech was high, pressured, one of her hands twisting in the other.

  He paused. “Honey?”

  Her head swiveled over. “What?”

  “I’m okay now.”

  She stared at him a moment, and then a breath shuddered out of her. He walked to the edge of the bed and put his arms around her.

  “We’ve both worked with a lot of dangerous people,” she said into his chest. “But this is insanity.”

  As he eased in beside her and leaned against the headboard, his back tightened, a reminder of the fall from the gate.

  Cris noticed his grimace and took his hand in both of hers. “Need me to get you Advil?”

  “I don’t know. Think it’ll make me feel better?”

  “It’ll make me feel better.”

  “Okay, then.”

  She scrambled off the mattress, and he heard her clanking around in the medicine cabinet. “So assuming it is someone from your group, how can you not tell who it is? You see them three times a week.”

  Daniel pictured Martin, A-Dre, Big Mac, and Fang. Four large men with more or less the same build. “They’re all big guys. Roughly the same height. The killer wears these loose-fitting black sweats, so it’s hard to tell his exact shape. And it’s not like I’ve gotten a clear look. He’s always busy running or kicking me in the face.”

  “How about that woman in the rain? Could she be from your group?”

  He closed his eyes. Saw the blurry outline in the downslanting rain. That lifted finger, pointing at him. Frozen with purpose, even as a car screeched within inches of her. The raised hood hiding the face, just as the oversize rain slicker disguised her frame.

  “Yes,” he said. “She could.”

  “Six group members, six suspects,” Cristina said.

  “That sounds about right.”

  She came back, palming off the little round pills and handing him a cup of water. “What’s Dooley doing about all this?”

  “Right now? Having each group member’s residence searched by a parole officer. With cops standing by.”

  “Because a parole officer doesn’t require a warrant.”

  “Right. Can search a parolee’s place anywhere, anytime.”

  Morning leaked around the edges of the blinds, pale lines stretching across the floorboards. Soon it would be time to start the day. A late-morning meeting with Dooley to set a game plan before the next group session. Come tomorrow night he was supposed to be back in that circle, looking at those six faces, an arm’s length away. He thought about how safe it felt right now, here in their bed, the whole world blocked out beyond the drawn blinds. “Dread” didn’t seem a strong enough word for the ball of twisted metal in his stomach.

  “What are you gonna do tomorrow night?” she asked. “About your group?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you work with them and suspect them at the same time?” she asked.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  They watched the sunbeams’ relentless creep along the floorboards, ushering in the threats of a new day.

  Chapter 26

  Daniel’s sweat-drenched shirt clung to him as he picked up the pace, running into the slope, the burn in his thighs intensifying. He’d still not slept—not a wink—each restless minute a razor blade nicking at him, fraying his nerves a strand at a time. He rose with finality around 7:00 A.M., some compulsion driving him to pound the stress from his body with a jog. His hip ached—last night’s fall had brought up a plum-colored bruise the shape of Australia—and his temple throbbed, but there was something soothing about the pain and his ability to persevere in the face of it.

  Passing a cascade of bougainvillea accenting an overblown Tudor, he heard footsteps behind him. A steady tap-tap-tap at first. And then quickening.

  Without slowing, he pretended to scratch his cheek, risking a glimpse behind him. A half block back, a husky guy with his hood raised, a tapering band of perspiration marking the front of a gray sweatshirt. The hood covered his face, but his build looked familiar enough to redline Daniel’s pulse.

  Daniel forgot the pain, his legs finding an extra charge as he strained to listen for the footsteps. Twenty yards behind him? The windows of the mansions flashed brightly, forming a sporadic mirror by which he could gauge the guy’s distance back. The man powered forward, big legs like pistons. An intersection left Daniel reflectionless, and when the row of windows resumed, the man had drawn within fifteen yards.

  Up ahead loomed the promise of the Lyon Street Steps, but they were isolated against the edge of the forest, the stairs empty save for fallen eucalyptus leaves. No potential witnesses. A final façade of windows would provide Daniel a last glimpse, and then he’d be trapped in the cul-de-sac or funneled onto the narrow stairs, neither situation ideal for taking a stand.

  The pounding footsteps, louder now, closing the distance. All but sprinting, Daniel gained the vantage of the final bay window, his own reflection surging into sight first, the pavement behind him brought into painstaking view with each shuddering step.

  The hooded man just five yards back now.

  The man’s arms stopped pumping, and he shoved a hand into the pouch pocket of his sweatshirt, grabbing for something.

  Daniel’s shirt felt cold and clammy against his flesh. His lungs screamed. His legs strained, carrying him past the window, his pursuer’s reflection wiped from view just as the hand started to emerge.

  Steps pounding up on him.

  Daniel waited, listening, timing himself.

  He pivoted sharply, lowered a shoulder, and bulled into the man, a collision of bone and muscle. The guy grunted and tumbl
ed back, arms flinging wide as he struck pavement, the hood falling away to reveal a clean-shaven, youthful face. His hand, yanked free of the pocket, gripped an iPod, which had come unplugged from the headset. The tinny speaker issued forth the assured drone of a financial guru dictating an audiobook—“magnified losses in derivative trading can be attenuated by”—until the young man grabbed the iPod and thumbed it off. “What the hell, dude?”

  Immediately Daniel pegged him as a business-school student or first-year analyst with one of the investment banks. A wave of chagrin. “I’m sorry.” He was breathing hard enough that his shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t see you. I was just turning around, forgot something at home—”

  The guy stood up, brushing himself off, glaring. “Do you even live around here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know who my fucking parents are?”

  Daniel couldn’t help but laugh.

  He started for home, leaving the guy’s complaints behind. The tension hadn’t left his body yet, all those fight-or-flight hormones washing through him, heightening his focus, tightening his muscles. Five blocks away his heart still felt lodged in the base of his throat, tattooing an SOS alert.

  Chapter 27

  Outside Golden Boy Pizza in North Beach, Daniel found Theresa angling a folded slice of Sicilian into her mouth.

  “Do you have news?” he asked. He could hear the pressure in his own voice, the anxiety right at the brim.

  Without slowing, she held up a just-a-minute finger and continued, the operation resembling nothing so much as an I-beam being delivered into a high-rise. A pungent smell wafted across the sidewalk.

  He gave her some chewing time. “What is that?”

  “Clam garlic pizza,” she said proudly, through pouched cheeks. “Just don’t try ’n’ kiss me and nobody gets hurt.”