Tell No Lies (25 page)

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?”

“Well, when I was sick, you said you wanted to do stuff that
matters.
”

He set his napkin on his plate. “Private practice
matters.
”

“Of course it does,” she said. “But does it matter to
you
?”

“It’s not like I’m becoming a baby-seal clubber.”

“True,” she said. “And I’ve heard that positions in the seal-clubbing industry are highly competitive. But you’re not answering the question,
mi vida.
”

Two busboys swept in like piranhas, picking the table clean.

When the busboys left, Cristina took his hand. “Let me make something clear. I don’t care if you’re a private shrink or a portfolio manager or a doula, as long as you wake up every morning feeling alive.”

“Doula?”

“Okay, maybe that’d be a little unsettling. But you have a—and I know the term is overused—a
gift
for doing what you do. And part of that has to do with the people you work with. Do you think it’ll be the same if you’re dealing with the kind of folks who can afford private practice?”

“Maybe I’ll make more headway with
them.
” Wielding a chopstick, he poked at a few stray pieces of rice on his plate. “I’ve been doing this for … what? Three years? And sometimes I don’t know how effective I am. The recidivism rate sucks. Maybe Dooley’s right. Maybe some people you can’t get through to.”

“Some people you can’t,” Cris said. “How ’bout the others?”

“They make gains in session, and then one thing sets them off six months, a year later, and they’re right back where they started.” He rubbed at a stain in the tablecloth. “I’d be lying to say there aren’t days where I wonder what the hell I’m doing.”

She watched him for a while, then said, “You didn’t used to.”

“Maybe the shine’s worn off. When I first started running groups, it was so exciting. The adrenaline. But then it turned into … real life.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Real life’s hard and unglamorous and a lotta work. It’s about hanging in and fighting the right fights and taking two steps forward and sometimes three steps back. But maybe some fights are worth fighting even if you’re not gonna win them. Because that
one
time you make a difference, however small…”

When he looked up, something at the periphery of his vision, beyond her face, caught his attention. His focus sharpened. Past the length of the restaurant, through the pinned-back kitchen door, in a stairwell leading down into blackness, an oval seemed to float a few feet above the floor.

A shadowed face?

Disembodied.

As if someone were standing several stairs down, head almost level with the floor. Any trace of neck or torso blended into the gloom.

In the kitchen, steam hissed from a fryer, obscuring Daniel’s view. He’d gone rigid in his chair. Vaguely, he sensed Cris’s hand on his arm, her concerned bearing, the movements of her mouth.

As the mist cleared, a burst of flame erupted from a pan, throwing a flicker of light into the dark of the stairwell.

Enough for Daniel to discern part of the black sweatshirt that had turned the body invisible. And suspended above, the familiar neoprene mask wrapping the head, smoothing it to menacing perfection.

Chapter 39

The featureless head peered, it seemed, directly back at Daniel from across the restaurant. Like a fencing mask—all focus and yet utterly empty.

A chef crossed between stoves, his legs momentarily blocking Daniel’s view, and when he’d passed, the stairwell was empty.

Daniel’s thighs banged the table as he leapt up, making the dishes jump. He shouted back at Cris—
“He’s here! Call Dooley!”
—and then he was hurtling toward the kitchen. A waiter wheeled out of the way, miraculously keeping a tray of beer bottles aloft. Daniel barreled through the kitchen, dodging elbows and complaints, and into the dark stairs.

There had to be another exit down there. If he could just follow, see where the killer was headed.

Ten or so crumbling concrete steps dropped into a disused room split by support beams. Reaching the bottom, Daniel slapped at a light switch to no avail, the crunch of glass beneath his shoes indicating that the bulb had been strategically broken.

With a quick sweep, he took in the space. Storage boxes, cobwebs, an industrial freezer laboring audibly in the near corner. Stagnant air, earthy and damp. Way on the other side, a sheet of light fell through a barely open door and stretched across the dusty floor, carrying with it the changing colors of the street above—bobbing red lanterns, oscillating neon.

He kept one foot on the bottom step, ensuring a clear retreat route in case of attack. Jerking in a few breaths, he tried to adjust to the shifting glow, the patterns mapping across the ceiling, the stairs, his own face. Not only was it disorienting, but it acted as camouflage, blurring the surfaces, melding box with beam, beam with wall. Everything seemingly inanimate and yet alive with movement. He figured that the man had fled through the door opposite.