Tell No Lies Page 2

  She was trembling there in the semi-dark, thin arms at her sides. Spread across the floor behind her were their secret plans—maps with red circles, schedules gleaned from months of surveillance, confidential files painstakingly collected.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Mouth now,” she said. “Come on, baby.”

  He palmed the back of her head and struck her, a hard tap of the knuckles, enough to split her lip. Her grin gleamed darkly, red filling the spaces, framing her lower teeth. She tasted her lips, her loose gaze radiating a deep, almost sexual ache. “More,” she said. “Give me more.”

  Again.

  This was the really sweet part. The sacrifice. The lengths they were willing to go to.

  The grief had caught up to her now, rushing in with the pain. Tears glittering, feather of blood on her chin, her shoulders shuddering.

  Sheets of fog stirred at the window, ghost raiments forming and re-forming, diffusing the streetlight’s glow. The rumble of a Muni bus down the hill reached them, another hollow stomach, another city beast out to feed.

  She breathed wetly. Her eyes glinted like dimes.

  Overcome, he lowered his arms, and his fingers flexed at his sides, trying to grasp the ungraspable. He looked at the scattered maps and folders, the underlined addresses, the names on printouts. So much work, so much careful planning, years in the making. He tried to draw strength from it all, tried to let it fuel him.

  She hooked his neck with a hand, pressing her forehead to his, the warmth of their sobs mingling.

  “I love you, baby,” she said. “I love her.”

  He nodded, swiped at his cheeks with the worn cuff of his sweater. “Me, too,” he managed.

  Her fingertips touched the blood at her lips, checking. “Then make me hurt for her. Make me feel it.” She pulled away a half step and raised her head regally, bracing.

  Still crying, he drew back his fist.

  Chapter 3

  Quarter to eight and the November sky was already as dark as midnight. For Daniel, navigating the smart car across town felt a bit like driving a shopping cart, but it got great mileage and could ratchet itself into any parking space that might improbably come available. He headed south of Market, weaving through municipal buildings, rusty warehouses, and dilapidated apartments, the worsening neighborhood still a four-star upgrade from the danger zone it used to be. The 22 Fillmore bus, nicknamed the “22-to-Life,” rumbled past, heading even farther south to real high-risk territory.

  Daniel’s workplace loomed ahead. A colossal mausoleum of a building implanted in the mid-seventies, Metro South was as cold and bare-bones functional as an insane asylum or a Soviet ministry office. A subterranean gate rattled open, and then Daniel pulled in to the dungeon of the parking level, complete with sweating concrete walls and flickering fluorescent overheads. He pulled in to his usual spot, then got on the elevator, redolent of industrial cleaner. As the car rose, he drummed his hands against his worn jeans, praying it wouldn’t get stuck again.

  The five-story building housed Probation, Parole, and various related social services. Last year the city had moved about half the occupants north into newer quarters, so now Metro South gave off a condemned-building vibe—empty halls, groaning pipes, loose floor tiles. The only departments remaining were those purposefully left behind. Like the one Daniel belonged to.

  He had a job very few would want. A job that tested his patience, courage, and sometimes his sanity. And yet here he was. No one ever said he didn’t love a challenge.

  The elevator shuddered on its cables. What a far cry from his past life in a penthouse office managing the family portfolios. He vividly remembered Evelyn’s response when he’d told her that he was switching career tracks—to this one in particular.

  * * *

  “Isn’t that just like you. The world at your feet, and you trip over it.” She turns, buries her nose in her gimlet. “A shrink.” She snorts. “Oh, that’s rich. Well, I suppose I gave you plenty of material.”

  He observes the derision in her face; at thirty-five he has learned to regulate his reactions to her. Outwardly at least. Not that it slows her down any.

  “What did I do to you that you have to do the opposite of everything that makes sense?” she asked. “Just once can’t you take the easy way?”

  “Easy’s overrated.”

  She smiles humorlessly, then orients herself toward a more pleasing view. Her sitting-room window looks across the curved cliffs rimming Baker Beach. In the distance a hang glider leaps free of the earth and soars, dangling from rainbow wings, a dot against the choppy expanse of the Pacific. “We’ve all had hobbies. When I danced for Balanchine as a young woman, I never lost sight of my real responsibilities. And now with your father gone and you the last one.” She takes a silent sip, as if her nerves need settling. But Evelyn’s nerves never need settling. “This is because of her, isn’t it? The illness.”

  “Yes, but in a good way. It’s what I want. I’ve been lucky. I’ve made plenty of money—”

  “With the job I handed you.” The jeer seems not up to Evelyn’s standards, and sure enough her face registers a flicker of regret. Her insults are generally less trifling, better constructed. She turns to the window, her steel-gray hair fastened in a chignon. “You are built for your job. This is what we do. This family has weathered the Great Quake, two world wars, Black Monday, Black Friday—hell, a Black Each Day of the Week—and now you want what? To leave? Forge your own way in the world?” The last, tinged with mockery.

  “Yes.”

  She turns, that silhouette, framed against the double-paned glass, still striking. “You’ll never make it.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  She touches her lips to the rim of her cocktail glass as if to nibble it. “Because I couldn’t.”

  He shows himself out. He is at his car when he hears dress shoes crunching the quartz stone of the circular driveway behind him; James is too well mannered to call out. Before James has to say anything, Daniel nods, sighs heavily, and heads back inside.

  There has been a set change. Evelyn is sitting on the velvet couch in the sunroom, flipping through a magazine. “You know, Daniel, I’ve been thinking. Maybe this is a good thing. All this talk about helping others. You and Constanza—”

  “Cristina.”

  “—have been so vocal about good works and charity that it’s made me consider my own blessed lot in life. Long look in the mirror, et cetera.” A smile creases her face, stopping well short of her eyes. “In fact, you’ve inspired me to bequeath my estate, my entire estate, to the arts. A museum. Perhaps the opera house. Isn’t that something you’d approve of?”

  Now, that, he thinks, is an Evelyn-grade assault.

  At last her smile is genuine. His mouth has gone to sand, and he feels the familiar fury burning through his veins, but then he blinks and sees her with a moment of pristine clarity, as if a filter had been changed on his camera lens. He sees her as if she were just another seventy-six-year-old lady, sitting next to him at a play or getting off a bus from the Midwest, a petulant woman-child full of flaws and scars who wants to take her toys and go home. He breathes out and feels the tightness in his chest release, if only slightly.

  “Yes, Mom,” he says. “Great idea.”

  * * *

  The elevator heaved to a stomach-jolting stop in the lobby, and Daniel passed through the metal-detector checkpoint, dropping his keys into a plastic dish. He rode another elevator to the third floor and stepped out into the corridor. For three years he’d walked these halls, ridden that Clorox elevator. In a few months, he’d be moving on. As he braced himself and headed for the meeting room, it struck him just how much he’d miss all this.

  He could already hear the group milling around beyond the corner. Rowdy laughter. A sharp curse. The threat of violence, coursing like the sound of a timpani beneath the murmurs.

  His adrenaline flared, a distinct pulse in the blood. Deep breath. Gather yourself.


  Here we go.

  Chapter 4

  “How the hell,” A-Dre said, giving Daniel a once-over, “could someone like you help me?”

  Anton Andre Powell answered only to “A-Dre” when he answered at all. He’d been sullen in last week’s intake session, but his high IQ and quick emotions had convinced Daniel to take a gamble on him for group. Now A-Dre slouched in his chair before the others, wearing a stained wife-beater, arms crossed, his dark skin lit with tattoos. Flames up his forearms, “LaRonda” written in an Old English font on the side of his neck, prison-ink spiderweb clutching his elbow. A circular burn scar the diameter of a softball marred his left biceps, the skin shiny and bottle-cap-crimped at the edges.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Daniel said. “Want to stay and find out?”

  “What choice I got?” A-Dre sneered.

  “There are always choices.”

  A-Dre sucked his teeth, glaring at the five other group members. The three men, like A-Dre, were large and bulky and loose on their chairs, fingers laced behind necks, spread arms, sprawling legs, taking up as much space as possible. Power postures. Daniel always sat everyone in a circle with no table between them so he could observe each member’s body language and take note of these peacock displays. X was stretched out like the men, while Lil hugged her stomach, crossed her legs, and hunched forward, an “I’m not here” pose.

  The spacious room felt almost industrial; even with the stacks of chairs and shoved-aside desks along the perimeter, there remained plenty of empty tile around their little circle. A set of large windows dominated the north wall, able to be cranked open barely a few inches. Very little fresh air to dilute the smell of damp concrete and floor wax.

  A-Dre eyed the old-fashioned chalkboard and its three powdery words: REASON AND REHABILITATION. “What you gonna teach me ’bout choices?”

  Daniel said, “Nothing you don’t want to learn.”

  A-Dre weighed this, his face fixed and scornful, older than his twenty-four years. He’d kept apart from the others as they’d shuffled in, ignoring them as they joked about past members who’d completed the group and moved on. The Good Old Days routine always reemerged when someone new cycled in, a way for established members to band together in the face of disruption.

  Daniel had sat A-Dre with his back to the door, the position a tough-guy shot caller would least want to take. Keep him off center, break up his usual approach, change his perspective. The guy had certainly earned his stripes in the system. A few years back, he’d been nabbed on possession with intent, and the arresting officer had found in his pockets an unregistered gun and hastily scribbled plans to break his older brother out of prison. He and big bro had been reunited after all.

  Daniel turned to the circle. “Why don’t you go around, introduce yourselves to A-Dre, tell him why you’re here, what you hope to get out of group, maybe offer some advice.”

  The predictable tape delay. Blinking. Someone coughed. Daniel let the silence govern.

  “I’ll go,” Big Mac finally said, slinging a boot up to rest on the broad shelf of his knee. In one hand he clanked a grip strengthener, bringing swollen knuckles into view. “I got a wife and two kids to take care of, and I’ve had trouble with the economy, holding down a job—though right now I got a good gig as a waste collector.”

  X mouthed, Garbage man, but Big Mac didn’t notice.

  “Good gig except when I’m smashing my damn fingers between the barrels.” He gestured at the bruised back of his hand. “Anyway, I been in for some short stints, year here, four years there, but still. Four years when you have kids…” He shook his head. “That stretch … well, I’d been outta work a long time and things were … thin. So I tried to hit an armored truck.”

  For the first time, A-Dre perked up. “Just you?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t take on the truck. I’m stupid, but not that stupid. I caught the transport guard in an elevator, pulled on him. But there were more waiting at the ground floor, and it was gonna go bad, so…” A shrug. “No one got hurt.” He wiped his mouth. “I’m here ’cuz I’m forty-five years old and I don’t want to go back to prison no more.” A couple nervous clasps of the hand strengthener—clank-clank. “Group don’t guarantee that life won’t suck or that you’ll get everything you want when you want it. It’s fucking hard in here. You will have setbacks. Like the counselor says, change don’t come overnight. Sometimes it don’t come at all. But you show up. That’s what you do. You show up.”

  All eyes shifted to Walter Fang, who realized with evident discomfort that he was next. His gym-strong body was slouched in his chair, the ragged cuffs of his sweater pushed up past muscular forearms. He sat with his coat in his lap, ready to split, eyeing the door when he wasn’t eyeing his watch; he generally entered the room slow and left fast. Bright yellow Pumas matched the piping on his tracksuit pants. His hair, gelled and impeccably spiked, gleamed wetly under the sterile, blue-tinged lighting.

  “I got busted for assault with … ah, ah, intent to kill. The dude shot my cousin. I got him in Portsmouth Square and broke his jaw. And his cheek. And his arm. And his knee. And then I got caught. I was drunk so I didn’t run away when the cops came. I do bad when I drink. I try not to go to the strip club because I spend money and I … ah, ah, drink there. And if I drink, I miss group, and if I miss group, I go back inside, so … ah, ah, no strip clubs. It’s been three months, and at the end of every month I don’t go to the strip club, I buy myself … ah, ah, ah—”

  He was stuck, so Daniel helped finish the thought. “He buys himself a new pair of sneakers.”

  Fang nodded and slumped back down in his chair. A-Dre crossed his arms and looked bored.

  “’Kay. My name is Xochitl.” She drew it out: So-Chee. “But everyone calls me X. This is my seat. Don’t take my fucking seat. Let’s see. Advice. Use the stairs. They don’t break down twice a week.” She laughed, showing gleaming white teeth. With long, loose waves of dark hair drawn back by two thin front braids, she would have been beautiful if she weren’t so busy looking tough. “I’m workin’ on my GED—Counselor here got me into a program.” She knocked the binder in her lap, overflowing with her intricate sketches of bejeweled female warriors and elf queens. “I’m only nineteen, so I’m not that far behind if you think about it. I’m gonna be a comic artist and have my own reality TV show and shit, Droppin’ with X, with hot tubs and—”

  “X,” Daniel said.

  “Okay, okay. I got all the boo-hoo childhood shit, too. Runnin’ drugs in my underwear by the time I was five. Had a sick mom I had to support, so I was dealing by the time I was ten. She died, and then I ran away, joined a gang.”

  “Where you did…?” Daniel prompted.

  She flashed that youthful smile again. “Gang shit.”

  Big Mac gestured at A-Dre. “Tell the man what you got charged for.”

  X glowered at the room. “Rape. We jumped new girls into the gang, you know. With a stick. Five of us. One to hold down each limb and one to, ya know? It’s what was done. Like I said, there were five of us, but I took the fall.”

  Across the circle, Lil shook her head faintly in disgust.

  A-Dre had barely bothered to make eye contact with anyone. He cast an irritated glance over his shoulder, checking the door.

  “Okay, Martin?” Daniel said.

  Martin shifted in his chair, his broad shoulders rolling like the flanks of a bear. He wore black J. J. Abrams glasses that in another zip code would be hipster cool and was prone to flannel—today was an olive-and-black plaid. Tucked behind his left ear was a single bent cigarette.

  “My lady was dying,” Martin said. “Skin cancer. It just drilled down and … ate her. By the end her skin, it was”—his hand hovered around his face and neck, trembling—“patches. The treatments were serious dollar, wiped us out. But the cancer, it didn’t care when we ran outta jack. So I knocked off a coupla grocery stores. Bunch of tills, in and out.” With a trace of pride, he added, “Took ’em a month to catch
me.” His faint accent was generic urban, indistinct enough to resist any clear ethnic association. “I only got six years, ’cuz I didn’t hurt no one, got knocked to three for good behavior. I was almost forty when I got out with nothing to get out for. My lady, she died when I was inside. She was the purest thing I ever knew.” He bent his head, brown scalp shining through the throwback buzz cut. His worn shoes showed Magic Marker where he’d touched them up. “Best thing about group is you can’t con a con man. We know when we’re fulla shit. And we can learn from each other’s mistakes.”

  Lil giggled nervously. “I guess it’s just me. My turn.” She averted her eyes, biting her lips, adjusting her clothes—always a flurry of movement and discomfort. “I was kind of a lookout or driver sorta for my husband, who robbed banks, and he’s … um, he’s in jail. The robberies, they were always his plan, not mine.”

  “You’ll learn quick,” X told A-Dre. “Nothing’s ever her fucking fault.”

  Daniel looked at Lil to see if she’d stick up for herself, but she just offered A-Dre a weak smile, then shoved at her stringy brown hair, inadvertently showing a flash of bruised cheek. If history was a guide, that bruised cheek would not be discussed.

  “I, um, was never on my own, really, until now, and so he was all I knew, and so if he said jump, I said how high, and if he said park here and wear a mask, I’d say Zorro or Batman?” Another nervous titter. “And Daniel’s been helping me sort of figure out why I might need to look at all that, I guess. I have to remember I’m shooting for progress, not perfection, because sometimes progress is, um … slow.”

  An awkward silence, broken of course by X. “Come on, Counselor,” she said. “Give him the speech now.”

  In group therapy the rules were essential. In criminal group therapy, the rules could be life and death.