Tell No Lies Read online

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in this late. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept soundly at all. But the previous night, after trudging back upstairs and drying off, he’d fallen into bed as if from a great height. All he’d sensed before everything disappeared was the gentle stroke of his wife’s fingertips along his shoulders.

  He staggered down the stairs now, squinting and scratching at his head, his hair apparently standing on end.

  Phone tucked between cheek and shoulder, Cris sat at the counter scowling down at the files arrayed before her as if they were a feast she didn’t want to eat. Her glasses, once again, shoved up into her hair and forgotten. Seeing him, her face lightened, and she said, quickly, “Call you back,” and hung up. “But soft,” she called to him, “what light through yonder stairwell breaks?”

  “Is it really almost noon?”

  “I don’t think that’s what comes next.”

  “Sorry. Can’t muster iambic pentameter just yet.” He paused en route to the coffeepot and kissed her on the head. “How’s your morning?”

  “Bad,” she said. “Though I suppose that’s relative these days, what with Little Yellow Riding Hood and all.”

  “What’s going on?”

  The phone rang, and she looked at caller ID, then back to him apologetically. He gave her a magnanimous sweep of the hand and poured himself a mug.

  “Nyaze,” she said, “what do you got for me?” Then, “No. No. We can’t take the counterproposal to committee on Monday. That gives them too much time to swiftboat it before the vote. We drop it on them late Tuesday, leak something to the Chronicle so it’s online before they finish reading the cover page. ‘Anonymous sources close to the Planning Commission confirm.’ … Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

  He leaned against the sink and sipped from his mug, enjoying the sight of her, the intensity of her words playing the feminine cords in her neck, the blade of her hand accentuating one point and then the next.

  At once Leo was at the top of the stairs behind her, standing motionless, arms at his sides. The man seemed not to approach but to appear, as if transported. The recessed light gave a good waxy shine off his bald head, showing the grooves and contours of his skull. He wore a rain jacket, though the street glowed with sunlight.

  His legs moved at last as he circled to Daniel, giving Cris and her phone voice wide berth. “You slept,” he said. It was not a question.

  “Yes,” Daniel said. “And well. Thanks to you. It’s easier to sleep knowing you’re downstairs.” He gestured toward the window and the street beyond. “No more appearances by the Lady in Yellow last night?”

  Leo didn’t smile, but his lips pressed together slightly with amusement. “Nothing to report.” The accent clipped his words coming and going, another show of efficiency.

  “All clear on the horizon?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  A few fat drops tapped the window, and Daniel watched with amazement as the rain began and quickened into a downpour. Leo zipped his jacket, snapped the top button. His black sneakers were tightly laced, double-knotted.

  “You leaving?” Daniel asked.

  “No. But I won’t be in the house. I want to watch the block.” Leo faded down the stairs.

  “We cannot lose Donahue,” Cristina was saying. “He’s our swing vote. If we lose Donahue, it’s over. Have Wu put it in his ear that if he goes against us in the eleventh hour, he’s gonna have major voter-bloc disappearance in November. We’re talking some X-Files shit.”

  Daniel refilled his coffee and sat on the counter. Cris reached a crescendo, hung up, and made fists in her bangs. She looked at him through the prison bars of her wrists. “You still here?”

  He waved.

  “I bet you wish you married someone less strident,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I hate to sound sexist—”

  “Is that phrase ever followed by anything helpful?”

  “—but you’re very attractive when you’re angry.”

  “Oh?” She had that light going behind her brown eyes now, limning them with yellow. “So that’s gonna be your new sexy-time move from here on out? Make me angry?”

  “Correction: You’re attractive when you’re angry at other people.”

  “I see. How ’bout when I’m angry at you? Not attractive?”

  “Daunting.”

  “Well,” she said, cracking the faintest grin as she returned to her papers, “then don’t piss me off.”

  * * *

  After procrastinating most of the afternoon, he finally got to his run. He started on a downhill, practically tumbling along the slope of Scott Street to Union, where he paused at the crosswalk. The business of Pacific Heights living took place here—banks and bars, restaurant crowds spilling onto sidewalks, mothers with toned arms shoving twin-size sport strollers into boutiques. On a normal week, he and Cris ran errands on Union or slurped oysters at Café des Amis. Watching the current of people out enjoying a lazy Saturday brought to mind just how off course the last week had set him. The orderly procession of commerce, leisure, and luxury now seemed surreal.

  The light changed, and he kept on. Up ahead, a forest of sailboat masts crowded Yacht Harbor, the sun polishing the hulls with a postcard gleam. He veered east at the Marina Green, where hippie drummers banged away, lending an inadvertent sound track to a corps of elders enacting tai chi forms with factory-floor precision. Two beautiful Chinese women practiced the fan dance, their movements chopped to a stop-action film by a team of bicyclists zipping past in Italian racing suits, school-bus-yellow Speedos stretched torso-high. The sun winked off the impenetrable windows of the overlooking Mediterranean houses. Easy to forget that most of the marina rested atop a bed of landfill, composed in part of debris from the great quake of 1906. The Loma Prieta rumble, which cracked the earth and paused a World Series in ’89, had served as a brusque reminder to the neighborhood denizens. Yet even seven collapsed buildings, sixty-three condemned structures, and four fires had only put the party on hold. That was San Francisco, keeping about her fun, setting up those deck chairs as icebergs loomed ahead. It was a kind of denial, sure, but wasn’t everyone guilty of a bit of the same? A week ago Daniel, too, had considered the foundation solid. And now there seemed to be fissures everywhere he looked.

  His thoughts stewed, turning toxic, and he ran harder to escape. But his footsteps pounded out names against the pavement: Marisol Vargas. Kyle Lane. Molly Clarke.

  He ran the curves of the water’s edge, hitting the rim of Aquatic Park. A sand-castle competition was in full florid swing, a six-foot palace with more towers than Red Square rising above the field, seeming to transcend its materials. A pod of Dolphin Club swimmers emerged from the ice-gray waters, teeth chattering, skin pale.

  Martin. Big Mac. Xochitl.

  As he neared the dividing line of Hyde Street, the salt-tinged air wafted over the barks of sea lions who’d taken up residence suddenly and inexplicably at Pier 39 after the last big earthquake. Up ahead a fire-hose torrent of tourists washed through Fisherman’s Wharf, the Place Where Locals Dared Not Tread. A shift of the wind brought the stench of the fish brokers’ wares, and Daniel put his back to the pier and ran hard for home.

  Lil. Fang. A-Dre.

  He let the burn overtake his muscles, sweat coating his body as he legged his way back along the waterfront, then upslope toward the house. It wasn’t until he double-locked the front door behind him that he realized he’d altered his run today not for the scenery.

  He’d done it because there were enough witnesses along the route to deter an attack.

  Chapter 38

  Daniel dripped sweat up the stairs to the kitchen and knocked back two glasses of water. Cris came partway down the stairs from the bedroom, ducking to bring him into sight. Her hair was taken up in a ponytail, and she clenched a pencil in her teeth; she’d been working all day. For once he
r glasses were on her face where they were supposed to be.

  She released a breath. “Just you?”

  “Just me.”

  “Where’s Leo?”

  “Watching the block.”

  “Yeah,” she said, turning to head back up. “That sounds like Leo.”

  His cell phone rattled on the countertop, and he picked up.

  A woman’s voice said, “Your guy is a psycho.”

  “Wait,” he said, pulling the phone away to look at caller ID. The name—SUE POSADA—was out of context here, so it took a beat for him to place it. The occupational therapist to whom he’d referred Walter Fang for his dyslexia.

  When he put the phone back to his ear, Sue was in full swing. “—tried to get him going with some diagnostic reading exercises, but he was totally shut down.”

  “Wait. When?”

  “He left just now. Hang on, lemme check the hall.” Some rustling, and then she came back on the line. “I started seeing clients on Saturdays since so many work, but the place is quiet here on weekends. I don’t scare easily, as you know.”

  “I know. What’d he do?”

  “Nothing. That was the problem. He did nothing. I tried to talk to him, but he just sat there silently and glared at me. He’s a big guy, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “Well, something’s not right with him. He scared me. I thought he was gonna … I don’t know. The building is empty today, like I said. And he just sat there with this dead gaze locked on me. Wouldn’t answer questions, nothing. I asked him to go, and he wouldn’t, so I got up calmly and locked myself in my office. I was about to call 911 when I heard him walk out.”

  “I’m sorry that it—”

  “I don’t usually work with violent offenders,” she said. “I’ve made exceptions for you in the past. But you know what? Don’t send me any more referrals.”

  Before he could answer, she’d hung up.

  He crossed to the couch and sat with his feet up on the glass coffee table. Was there anyone in the group he could trust this week? Martin and Lil, both missing his business card. A-Dre with his avowed love of fighting. X at turns shut down and volatile. Big Mac’s explosion in the elevator. And now Fang, showing an aggressive side in an unexpected context.

  This was the problem with finding a suspect in a pool of violent offenders.

  Past Daniel’s sneaker on the coffee table sat the termination agreement he’d promised Kendra several times over. He stared at it, then leaned forward, finished filling it out, and signed. He’d just set down the pen when he became aware of Cris standing over him, her arms crossed.

  “Okay, mi vida,” she said, “I’ve been cooped up too long. I’m officially stir crazy.”

  “And you want…?”

  “Peking duck.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now. I need it. In my belly.”

  He glanced at his watch. “The best Chinese is in the Avenues or the Peninsula, and we’re gonna hit rush hour.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “It’s San Francisco,” he reminded her. “At dinnertime.”

  “We could get to Chinatown in ten minutes.”

  “There is no passable Chinese food in Chinatown.”

  “A rich irony,” she said. “But sad for my belly.”

  “I’ll make you something here?”

  “Nothing else will do,” she proclaimed.

  He gave her a wry look and returned his gaze to the termination agreement. Her face appeared suddenly up close, horizontal, angling in front of the paperwork. “Peeking duck!” she said.

  Covering his amusement, he rose. She stalked him up the stairs, taking Elmer Fudd steps and freezing when he turned around. She pretended to hide behind the door as he stripped and got into the shower. The steam had just reached a copious murk when she stuck her head through the glass door and said, “PEEKING DUCK!”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll drive you to the Richmond.”

  Her face withdrew. “Wait,” he heard her say. “There is that new place in Chinatown.”

  “Right,” he said, stepping out and reaching for his towel. “The one. From that article.”

  “The weekly paper—”

  “That had whatsherhead on the cover?”

  “That’s the one.” She rubbed lotion into her hands. “I think they’re by that corner.”

  “Next door to the joint with the guy with the mole.”

  “Then it’s settled.” She scrabbled at the doorknob with lotion-slick hands, finally gaining purchase. The door swung open, and she grinned in triumph. “Peking duck shall be mine.”

  * * *

  They left the smart car in an overpriced lot beneath Portsmouth Square, so named because in pre-landfill days water used to lap against its border. The park now felt as landlocked as a midwestern state, six blocks of high-rises obscuring the view of the Bay. For good reason the square was referred to as Chinatown’s living room; old folks milled on benches, bickering, smoking pipes, and playing Chinese chess, on welcome break from their tiny rented rooms.

  Daniel and Cris held hands, taking a circuitous route to the restaurant, their own little walking tradition. First they cut down to Bush so they could enter Chinatown properly through Dragon’s Gate, which set the mood. The stone lion dogs on the arch were supposed to give protection against evil spirits, and Daniel figured he could use all the help he could get right now. An elderly lady with a quadripod cane accosted them with fluorescent yellow flyers—“Dim sum half off! Dim sum half off!” Cris couldn’t stop laughing as he tried to shake the old lady loose, and he was finally cowed into taking a leaflet.

  They cut up from the touristy thoroughfare of Grant to Stockton Street, where the residents actually shopped, and found the place from the article with whatsherhead on the cover by the corner next to the joint with the guy with the mole. Behind a padded swinging door, a bustling circus revealed itself, carts flying to and fro, lobsters balancing in wall tanks, a steam-spewing purgatorial kitchen ejecting waiters balancing overburdened trays.

  Within moments Daniel and Cris were whisked to a table, where they confronted each other, breathless from the rush and heady with the smells. Cris snapped her chopsticks apart and rubbed them together to shed the splinters, a cartoon simulation of eagerness. He ordered an Anchor Steam and pointed at various appetizers on the menu, written in traditional Chinese. Each arrived as a surprise.

  Preemptively, Cris palmed a few Maalox into her mouth. The radiation treatment had burned her esophagus, so she suffered from bouts of heartburn, exacerbated by spicy food. She eyed a hot mustard dish longingly. Licked a dab off her pinkie finger and closed her eyes into the pleasure of it before a cough caught her off guard. Eyes watering, she sipped some water.

  “A Mexican who can’t eat spicy food,” she said. “I am a disgrace to my people.”

  Despite the jest, her look of chagrin made him take her hand across the table.

  The waiter came back, bearing a noodle dish that Daniel had not yet encountered. When he mime-ordered the Peking duck, Cris all but levitated off her chair with excitement.

  “Do you know,” she asked once the waiter had departed, “how old macaws live to?”

  “Why, are we gonna eat one of them, too?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Uh, no. I don’t know how old macaws live to.”

  “Sixty years,” she said. “Some make it to eighty if you take care of them well. People have to make provisions for them in their wills.” She poked at a dumpling, and he waited to see what she was getting at. “Remember Mrs. Gao?”

  “Five-generation Chinese-Filipino family in your building? The great-great-aunt in the cupboard?”

  “The very one. She has a macaw she brought over from Manila when she moved here as a young woman. And with everything going on with the building, she’s worried sick over it. I guess they don’t like change. Macaws.”

  “Or maybe,” Daniel
offered, “it gives Mrs. Gao somewhere to put her fear about getting evicted.”

  “Yeah, Shrinky Dink? Or maybe she just loves that bird.”

  “Or that.”

  Cris set down her chopsticks. “I’m really worried that I’m going to fail them all. They really might close this building, Daniel.”

  “Can we … help?”

  “We can’t buy our way out of this.”

  “Why not?”

  “First of all”—a tiny smile—“we don’t have enough. At least this branch of the family doesn’t. I knew I should’ve married your mother.” She held up a hand. “I know. Bad visual.”

  “Hideous,” Daniel said. “And second?”

  “That’s what they do. The other guys. They just throw money and throw money until everyone’s so worn down that they get what they want.”

  “It’s how the world works.”

  “I know. I keep waiting to get used to it. But I can’t. Which makes me naïve, I suppose. Or stupid. Or crazy.”

  They ate for a time in silence, and then the Peking duck arrived, coasting in on a savory airstream. Cris dug in, fingers and teeth, her mouth stained with a Joker grin.

  “This is a few blocks from your new office,” she said when she came up for air. “We can meet here for lunch.” She read his face. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  She decimated a napkin. “Never an acceptable answer.”

  “Sorry. I just thought I was ready to get out of Metro South, shift into private practice…”

  “But you’re not?”

  “Not as ready as I thought.”

  “So why do it?” She waited, but he had no answer close at hand. “It’s not the money. We don’t need more things.”

  “Clearly,” he said.

  “Is it because…”

  “What?”