Tell No Lies (22 page)

Lil lifted her pale face and said, “Right now.”

*   *   *

In the wake of the fight and Martin’s torn-open confession, Daniel called for a break. As the members headed noisily up the hall to the vending machines, he stayed in the room, satchel briefcase at his feet, the exhaustion of the past five days landing on him like a heavy blanket.

He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. The chirp of a sneaker on tile jarred him upright. Fang, standing over him. He started, and Fang stepped back.

“Sorry, Counselor.” Fang shoved his hands into his pockets. “I was just … ah, ah, checking if you were really asleep.”

A sudden image grabbed Daniel—Fang flying at him, leading with a military knife. Fang shifted on his feet, and Daniel flinched a little. Fang looked at him, puzzled.

Daniel covered with a cough. “That’s okay,” he said, though his heart was working double time. “Guess I’m a bit jumpy.”

His satchel briefcase on the floor was unsnapped. He hadn’t left it that way, had he?

“What?” Fang asked.

“Did you want something?”

“Huh?”

“My bag, you just opened it.” Daniel left it somewhere between a question and a statement.

Fang studied him. “Nah,” he said. “I just walked in.”

The others returned, shoving and joking, then halted, taking note of the mini-standoff. X broke the tension. “It time for Fang to do a spelling bee?”

Even Fang laughed a bit as they found their seats.

Daniel tore his glare from Fang and exhaled slowly, trying to let go of his suspicion. “Now, X,” he said. “It’s time for you to read the letter you wrote from the perspective of the girl you assaulted.”

“Oh. Right.” X collapsed into the center chair and gave a pert smile. With her little-girl dimples and thin front braids pinned in the back, she looked angelic. In another world and zip code, she could’ve been a Catholic school girl. She snapped her gum. Tapped her chest. Then she lifted her doodle-covered notepad from her lap and cleared her throat theatrically.

“My name is Raped Girl. I’m sad I was raped. Too bad I wanted to join the gang, ’cuz them’s the rules. Love, Raped Girl.”

She set down her notepad and smiled again.

“You’re wasting our time,” Lil said.

“You’re a fine one to talk, Whiny McBitch’n’Moan.”

Martin leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “You got all the words for everyone else, don’t you?”

“Yep,” X said. “Sure do.”

“Last session you mentioned your daughter, who you gave up to foster care,” Daniel said. “You want to talk about that?”

“What’s to talk about? I had to make a choice, so I made a choice. No biggie.”

“We ask for honesty in here,” Daniel said. “That’s the deal.”

X shrugged him off.

Daniel said. “Okay, let’s move on to A-Dre.”

X looked taken aback. “You ain’t gonna argue with me? Ask me ’bout poor Raped Girl some more?”

“No,” Daniel said. “I’m not gonna ask you about Sophie again today.”

Hurt flickered across X’s face so quickly he would have missed it if he’d blinked, replaced by her standard mask of wry annoyance. She relinquished the center chair angrily and flopped down in her usual spot.

A-Dre sauntered over, turned the chair around, and sat backward in it, elbows on the metal rail. “What we gonna talk about?”

“Have you thought about what we went over last time?” Daniel asked. “The pros and cons we listed on the board? The ramifications of committing violence?” His last words were a bit heavy-handed, but intentionally so; he was trying to pry something free about the murders.

A-Dre gave an ostensibly straight answer. “Little bit.”

“And?”

“That’s just who I am.”

“A fighter.”

“A
gangsta
. No choice when people piss me off. Look at Big Mac tonight. See, that’s just how we are.”

“How about Lil? If someone pissed her off, would she hit him?”

“No, she’d shrivel up or some shit.”

X giggled, and Lil said, faintly, “Thanks.”

Daniel pressed. “So it’s a choice you’re making, right? You make one choice, Lil might make another.” Nothing. “Pretend I’m someone who insults you on the street. What could you do instead of punch me?”

A-Dre made a gun with his hand and fired it at Daniel’s head. “Pow.”

Titters.

In light of the week’s violence, the gesture chilled Daniel. “You like that?” he asked. “Playing killer?”

A-Dre looked taken aback by Daniel’s tone. “Shit, I’m just fuckin’ around. But what the hell am I
supposed
to do when someone pisses me off?”

Daniel took a moment to refocus. “First thing I try to do is nothing. Breathe. Calm my body down.”

“Yeah, right. You mean change everything ’bout who I am? That shit is hard.”

“Not as hard as
not
changing who you are,” Daniel said. “Jail time. Money for lawyers. Screwing over the people who count on you. Not exactly an easy path you’ve taken.”

A-Dre chewed his lip. “You all think I’m a dumb-ass gangsta.”

“Do you want to ask us?”

“I know what you’ll say.”

“Do you want to ask us?” Daniel repeated.

“Well,” A-Dre said, “don’t you?”

Various nos and uh-uhs from Fang, X, Lil, and Martin. A-Dre looked legitimately surprised by this.

Daniel got in a question quickly, taking advantage of his lowered guard. “What would have to happen for you to say that violence has been a problem for you?”

A-Dre sat for an uncomfortably long time. Then he said, “I don’t want all that. Anymore.” He waved a hand at the board, and Daniel realized he was referring to the list of cons he’d written up there last session, still there in faded chalk. “But I walk from a fight, fools gonna laugh up in my face. My
friends’ll
laugh up in my face.”

“Then you need new friends,” Martin said.

“Shit.” A-Dre sucked his teeth. “Where’m I gonna make new friends?”

“You have some,” Lil said. “Right in here.”

“Friends?
Us?
” A-Dre guffawed. “You fools
have
to be here. We’re all fake in here.”

“Bull
shit,
” X hissed, her sudden vehemence catching everyone by surprise. She jabbed a finger at the door. “It’s all fake out
there.
”

She seemed to realize that she’d parted the curtains on her private thoughts, and just as abruptly she withdrew back into herself. Head lowered, sketching on her pad. She’d been different the past two sessions, something blooming in her, striking chords, tugging at memories. Daniel looked over, but she refused to raise her eyes, so he turned back to A-Dre.

“You might be surprised and find that people in your life
wouldn’t
laugh at you if you walked away from a fight,” he said. “You might even find people who’d be relieved.”

“Like who?” A-Dre said.

“Your mom, maybe,” Fang said.

Martin gestured at A-Dre’s neck tattoo. “Or LaRonda.”

“LaRonda’s
dead,
” A-Dre said.

At this, even X snapped to attention. Everyone took a beat to catch up to this news.

Daniel knew to proceed carefully. “How would she feel about all the stuff we’re discussing?”

“Dunno. I don’t remember her.”

“You don’t…” Daniel caught his breath. “Do you remember anything about her?”

“She was just a baby,” A-Dre said. “She was my stepdaddy’s baby girl. And I was five. We was in the tub, and Momz went to answer the phone and left us.
She
went to answer the phone.
She
did. I was five. I didn’t know to pay attention.”

X’s mouth had come slightly ajar. The others—spellbound.

A-Dre’s eyes were glassy. “She told my stepdaddy I did it.”

“How’d that go?” Martin asked.

A-Dre shoved his sleeve up and showed the burn scar, giving the room a fierce glare. “Like this.” He swallowed. Licked his lips. “Now that I’m old, it gets harder to think about.”

“Old?” Fang said. “You’re twenty-
four.
”

“Yeah,” A-Dre said, “but I always figured I’d be dead by now. So I wouldn’t have to live with what I done.”

A wail echoed back off the tile and bare walls. Unrecognizable.

It took a moment for Daniel to orient himself, to source the sound. It was X, leaning over, hugging her stomach. Silent now.

“X?” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Do you—”

“No!”

From the hall Daniel heard the tapping of heels and too late realized that they’d run over the session’s end. The door swung open, the admin receptionist entering, blowing on her fingernails. “Kendra say she needs your termination agreement.”

One step from the threshold, she lifted her head, her forehead wrinkling.

The room had turned into a still life.

Daniel unclenched his jaw. “We are in session.”

She lowered her hand. Smacked her gum. Still confused. “Kendra said session ended fifteen minutes ago.”

“Does it
look
like session ended fifteen minutes ago?”

She scanned the room, read the faces of the members, and withdrew gingerly.

“
Termination
agreement?” Lil said bitterly.

A glow of heat started beneath Daniel’s skin.

“Where are you … ah, ah, where you going?” Fang asked.

“Private practice,” Daniel said quietly.

The wind made itself known against the thick panes. Outside, blackness.

“So we’re not even your real patients,” Martin said. “Are we? We’re a
hobby.
”

“You were
never
a hobby.”

“You said your side of the deal is you’d be here,” A-Dre said. “Three nights a week, rain or shine. ’Member that? Or was that just some bullshit? Before you go back to your real life?”

Martin stood to leave, and the others followed suit. “Like Big Mac said.
Everyone leaves.
”

It was not lost upon Daniel that Martin was pissed off enough to quote the man he’d come to blows with earlier in the evening.

“I’m going to transition out,” he said, “but not before a new counselor is in place who…”

Too late. He’d lost them.

X was last to rise. “Everyone’s gotta be honest up in here,” she said. “But
you.
”

As they shuffled out, Daniel pictured the new office, floating above California Street. Plush carpets and gleaming fixtures, that twenty-third-floor view of the Bay Bridge, shrouded in wisps of fog. He tilted his head back, took in the sagging ceiling tiles.

Everyone leaves.

Losers walk.

Chapter 33

Daniel gathered his briefcase and paused in the still of the room, regarding the ring of empty chairs and breathing in the smells of Metro South. For safety’s sake he knew he should get out of the building while there were still footsteps tapping through the halls. And yet it took him a moment to get moving.

He headed out into the desolate hall, cell phone in hand, ready to speed-dial Dooley if he were jumped by a masked, knife-wielding maniac. But the way was clear. The elevator arrived—empty—and he leaned against the rear wall, closed his eyes, and exhaled.

The doors banged back apart violently, and his eyes flew open to see Big Mac shouldering into the car, flushed with anger.

As Big Mac advanced, Daniel put his own shoulders to the wall, spread his stance, ready to charge or deflect. He tapped the screen of his iPhone but couldn’t risk a glance down to see if the call had gone through.

The elevator doors slid shut, and Big Mac leaned in, his sheer size evident as he all but blotted out the flickering overhead lights. Wrestling background or not, Daniel didn’t stand a chance against him if the situation ignited. He angled the phone, let his eyes dart to the screen:
CALL FAILED
. Of course—no reception here in the elevator. But had it rung through once, alerting Dooley before the line dropped?

He looked up into Big Mac’s face. “What do you want?” he asked.

“You shut me down in there.” Big Mac’s hand twitched in his jacket pocket, and Daniel pictured that wicked-looking military blade there, just beneath the fabric.

The elevator whirred its descent.

Big Mac’s hand pulled free, clenching a mint green paper of thick stock, which Daniel identified on a slight delay—an attendance card. “I need you to sign this.”

Daniel released a slow exhale through his teeth. Not quite relief, not yet.

“I don’t get this signed,” Big Mac said, “it puts me one step away from fucked.”

“You know the rules.”

“You saw Martin in there. He instigated it.”

“Martin took accountability for his part. He apologized and sat down.”

“So I’ll take accountability now. I apologize. And I need you to sign this.”

They hit the ground floor, the doors opened, but Big Mac stayed there, blocking his exit.

“Mac,” Daniel said. “Get out of my way.”

Big Mac punched the wall, the boom echoing up the shaft.

“Mr. Brasher?” A voice carried in from the lobby. “Are you all right?”

Angelberto.

The janitor paused from his work and lifted the mop from the bucket, resting the wooden handle horizontally across his thighs. The move was not overtly threatening, but the positioning made clear he was ready to use the shaft as a weapon. His considerable muscles shifted as he adjusted his grip and widened his stance.

Big Mac turned, and Daniel used the opportunity to slide past him. Aside from the three of them, the lobby was empty, the surrounding halls unlit.

Big Mac stepped free of the elevator, read the situation, and his shoulders sagged a bit. “Oh, come
on,
” he said. “Am I pissed off? Sure. But, hell, it’s not like that.”

Wounded, he backpedaled toward the front doors, and it was only then that Daniel noticed Dooley lurking in the darkness at the edge of the far hall, watching. He gave her the faintest signal, his fingers fanning to the side—
Let me handle it
—and she withdrew, fading from sight. Big Mac caught the gesture and shot a quizzical glance in that direction, but there was nothing there anymore except the shadows.