Tell No Lies (4 page)

“Yeah,” A-Dre said. “I do.”

“Nothing to learn?” Daniel asked.

“No.”

X chimed in again, flicking her chin to indicate A-Dre’s neck tattoo. “Your girl LaRonda gonna say you perfect?”

A-Dre lifted his left shoulder in a partial shrug. Not a firm no.

Progress. But still not much.

Daniel waited, let him breathe, waited for the words to work their way to the surface.

“I had a friend did this counseling shit,” A-Dre said. “Didn’t make it. He’s back inside.”

“Okay,” Daniel said. “So therefore…”

Nothing.

Daniel finished the other half of the equation for him. “So therefore
no one
can make it?”

A flare of anger. “Maybe so. Sittin’ here talking ’bout
choice.
How do you know what it’s like to have your back to the wall? To
do what you need to do
?” The last, a staccato beat of anger. “Look, I get it. I’m the one who planned to bust my bro-bro outta the pen. But no matter what bullshit we spew in here … at the end of the day, I’m still just a criminal to people like you.”

“That’s not how I see you,” Daniel said.

“Is that so?” A sneer. “How you see me?”

“Like I see everyone. As someone who made choices, some good, some shitty.”

“Well, lemme tell you. Bein’ in here? With you? It ain’t gonna change
shit.
I am who I am because they
made
me this way.
Change.
I don’t got the
option
to change. I went to jail because that’s what the system does to people like me.” He crossed his arms and cocked his head. “My only
choice
was Folsom or San Quentin.” He sucked his teeth again and looked away.

Impenetrable. Unreachable. Tuned out.

Daniel scanned the others. They were giving A-Dre and him the floor.

He bit his lip and considered the metal folding chairs, framing a circle much like a wrestling ring. Combatants and rules and timed periods. You hold back, stay light on your feet, gauge your opponent. Do the dance until you see an opening. And then it goes like lightning. You miss your shot, you wind up knocked on your ass, staring at the ceiling, teeth grinding in your skull. Or your opponent lunges first and you use him against himself, finding a point of leverage and leaning hard, locking out a joint, letting him ride his own momentum down.

And sometimes you go for the full-frontal out-and-out attack.

Which of course was higher risk.

And higher reward.

Daniel could feel his heartbeat in the side of his neck, tapping in the fragile artery, a reminder of the stakes should this go awry.
Just once can’t you take the easy way?

He cleared his throat. Leaned forward, elbows on knees, angling his shoulders, a knifepoint posture. His voice low, aggressive. “You pathetic idiot.”

A-Dre stiffened on his chair. Whatever he was expecting, it was not this.

“Letting the world grind you down, huh?” Daniel said. “Nothing your fault. You got your tough-guy marks. Your cheap-ass tattoos.”

The others drew slowly upright on their chairs. They’d never seen Daniel take this tack, but they’d seen plenty of times where it led in other situations.

A-Dre wet his lips. “The fuck you say to me, you white-ass piece of shit?”

The sudden electricity amped up Daniel’s senses, his skin tightening. One of Fang’s shiny sneakers squeaked faintly against the tile. The stale air tasted of rusting pipes, cigarette smoke, the sweet rot of the disintegrating subfloor.

Daniel said, “That spiderweb on your elbow, supposed to show that you got caught in the system, right? You’re too dumb to know it used to be a white-supremacy tat.”

A-Dre jerked to his feet as if pulled by a hook, the chair knocked over by the backs of his legs, rattling the tiles. His shoulders bulged, arms tensed, veins rising. His neck, a wall of cords.

Daniel implored him silently,
Don’t charge me. Have just enough control to let me get to the other side.

He forced a laugh. “A black man wearing an Aryan Brotherhood tattoo. That’s rich.”

A-Dre lunged forward, and for an instant Daniel was sure he’d gambled wrong, that he’d misgauged the man and the session was going to end with blood spatter on the floor. But A-Dre stopped over him, arm jacked to the side, forefinger and thumb hammering the air above Daniel’s head, punctuating each word. He was screaming, lost in rage.

“Motherfucker, you say one more thing! You say one more thing!”

Daniel kept his seat, fighting every instinct in his body that was telling him to rise, to protect himself. He kept the pitch of his voice the same, not escalating but not backing down, maintaining direct, hostile eye contact. “You just broke three rules,” he said, “in ten seconds. Look at you. Your heart’s racing. Clenched fists, raised voice. Your jaw’s tight. You like feeling this way?”

“Course I don’t fucking like it. You’re making me—”

Daniel pounced. “That’s right. I’m
making
you.
I
did this to you. All this. You know why? Because I’m
smarter
than you.
Better
than you. You’re a puppet. I’m controlling your voice, your heartbeat, your muscles—”

“No one controls me!” A-Dre yelled. “It’s my body. I act how
I
want to act.”

“No,” Daniel said. “I made you pop up off your chair and stomp over here, swearing and yelling. Admit it.
I
did this to you, didn’t I?
Didn’t I!
”

A-Dre drew back a fist. It loomed there, behind his ear, quivering. Lil gave a little cry. Daniel looked up at the cocked fist, the bulging arm, the whole room hanging by a thread.

“Bullshit!”
A-Dre screamed. “
I
did.
I did it myself.
”

The words rang off the hard walls. A-Dre’s face shifted as the words bounced back off the echo. Registering them for the first time.

No sound in the room. A frozen tableau—six bodies on chairs and one figure standing. A-Dre’s chest heaved and fell, heaved and fell.

“You’re right,” Daniel said. “Which means you can change it.”

All the air seemed to go out of A-Dre, the puffed-up chest deflating, the straining muscles suddenly lax and shuddering as if of their own volition. He lowered his arm, shuffled two steps back, and sat.

“Welcome to group,” Daniel said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Chapter 5

“Daniel Brasher, don’t you run away from me!”

Session had ended, and the members finished filing out, mixing with a group of sullen teens from the juvie group up the hall. Daniel turned with a smile as Kendra Richardson, a mountain of a woman, ambled up the corridor after him, bracelets jangling about her wrists. The corridor emptied out, doors banging, elevator dinging, leaving them alone with the faint hiss of the heating vents.

Setting his satchel briefcase at his feet, he gave his program director a hug, disappearing into that delightful blend of Ed Hardy perfume and cinnamon gum.

“Did you sign your termination agreement?” she asked. Then, off his blank expression, “Look, baby, I’m happy if you
don’t.
”

“What termination agreement?”

“The one that went out to you last month.”

“Went out to me where?”

She drew back her head. “Where you think? Your work box, here.”

“You mean they
haven’t
been forwarding my mail to my house?”

She fluttered a hand at him. “That whole mess again? Remind me the problem?”

They’d been over it half a dozen times. The mail room in the bowels of the building had never been upgraded, the employee boxes no more than a bank of creaky wooden cubbyholes, each with a sedimentary layering of brittle, flaking labels—the remnants of workers past. Daniel had landed a box near the top, just beneath the outgoing-mail cubby, which was labeled
OUTG IN MAIL
. Which meant that folks accidentally shoved their mail into his box all the time. Which in turn had led him to make multiple requests that all his mail be forwarded to his house so he’d no longer have to sort through his colleagues’ mail or the painstakingly addressed letters of various parolees just to get the occasional departmental notice. Kendra’s administrative assistant was supposed to check his box to make sure everything was being appropriately routed, though she rarely showed interest in tasks aside from applying makeup and conducting cell-phone conversations at high volume.

“The problem is,” he said, “that the only mail I get here is other people’s.”

“We’ll get it straightened out. Just in time for you to head off to your fancy-pants private practice and forget all about us.” She flipped her chin sharply away in mock offense. Kendra ran the perennially understaffed department like a benevolent matriarchy; affection and guilt were rarely in short supply.

He said, “First of all, I could
never
forget the woman who gave me my first break in the field”—a slight softening of her rigid neck—“and second, I’m still here another couple of months. Don’t go writing my obituary yet.”

He’d been steadily downsizing his workload so it would be a smooth transition for the program when he left. At one time he’d been juggling four groups, but he’d concluded three as the members graduated out. Kendra had begged him to stay on with this last group, though they’d need to phase in another therapist to see the members to the finish line. He’d have to tell them soon that he was leaving, give them time to adjust.

After promising Kendra that he’d dig out his termination agreement, he found the back stairs and descended to the mail room. He checked his watch; the hallway chat had put him behind for his already late-night dinner with Cristina, so he quickened his pace. The lights were on motion sensors to save money for the city, the corridors illuminating in swaths as he hurried forward. Sure enough, his mail cubby was stuffed with mail, so he stretched his satchel briefcase open and raked the envelopes in. He’d sort them out at home, bring back what wasn’t his on Wednesday.

Sliding out a last stack of mail, he caught a splinter in his knuckle, and then the lights went out on him. He leaned back, balancing the briefcase on one knee and waving a hand to catch the sensor. He had to laugh a bit at himself. What a contrast with the new office suite he was checking out in the morning. Sleek marble and plush carpet and electricity that stayed on when you flipped the switch. After three years of blood and sweat, heartache and small triumphs, maybe he was finally ready to make it easy on himself.

*   *   *

He reset the burglar alarm behind him and headed up the stairs, which gleamed with Lemon Pledge—Cris’s doing. Now and then they’d hire a cleaning lady, but every time they brought in someone regular, Cris would wind up tidying the place beforehand, making the woman lunch, and advising her son about college loans. Quickly, the convenience turned into a second job. She laughed about it—what a joke, you hear the one about the overzealous Pacific Heights housewife?—but at the end of the day, she preferred that the Brashers clean their own damn house.

She waited upstairs at the kitchen island, sitting over a glass of wine and a sliced loaf of Boudin sourdough, her hair up so a fan of caramel skin showed at her back collar. She turned at his footsteps, chin to shoulder. “Chicken reheating in the oven,
mi vida.
Five minutes.”

He drew near, kissed her between the shoulder blades. “How was your day?”

Her head shook ever so slightly, and then she gave a faint sniffle. The heel of her hand rose to her cheek, and a spot of wet tapped the glossy photo on the counter in front of her. A birth announcement from a childhood friend. It showed a newborn swaddled in a blue hospital blanket, eyes no more than seams in a wrinkled face.

Daniel slid beside Cris, put his arms around both shoulders, and kissed her head as she wiped at her tears.

“Wow,” she said. “Talk about self-centered. I should just be happy for them. I
am
happy for them, but I should
just
be.”

He adopted his best commercial voice-over tone.
“Guilt: When feeling bad’s not enough.”

She laughed a little, hit his arm gently. “Okay, okay. You know what’ll make me feel better? Sending a gift.” She reached for her silver laptop, across by the prep sink. “Babyregister-dot-com. I’m sure they have my credit card on file by now.”

He waited, watching her.

“I’m okay.” She kissed him, a peck pushing his face away. “I’m fine. Two minutes. Chicken.”

He walked over to the living-room couch and dumped out his briefcase on the glass coffee table. Flyers and envelopes and junk mail. Sifting through the mess, he searched for the form—no, the “termination agreement.” Who named these things? Last week he’d been stuck on hold with a “listening-care associate,” which was enough to make him want to—

Finally. A clasp envelope in the distinctive gray of the department.

The timer dinged, and Cris clapped her Mac shut and padded to the oven.

He pinched up the metal clasps, ran a finger beneath the flap, and slid free a single sheet. At first he couldn’t register what he was reading—the uneven scratch of the handwriting, the pencil-scraped letters cramped, then spaced, on the unlined white page—but the words came clear, one by one, and his heart did something funny against his ribs. The air had gone suddenly frigid, prickling the hairs at the base of his neck. He blinked hard and looked again, this time the sentences rushing at him.

admit what youv done. or you will bleed for it.

Chapter 6

“Uh, hon?” Daniel’s eyes, still fixed on the cramped handwriting.

Hoisting the roasting pan, Cris replied with a faint noise in the back of her throat. Then he heard metal thunk against Caesarstone, and she seemed to have levitated to his side, oven mitt on his back; his face must have mirrored the shock vibrating his insides.

She read over his shoulder. “Is that a joke?”

“Doesn’t feel like one.”

“‘Admit what you’ve done,’” she read. “What are you supposed to have done?”