Tell No Lies (14 page)

Scattered laughs.

“I mean with the scar and the ink, especially the neck tattoos, people see you and they know to be careful,” Daniel said.

“Thass right.”

“If I didn’t know you, I’d probably think you’re a dangerous guy.”

“You’re some white guy with a degree who can’t dress for shit. Why should I care what you think?”

“You want to get by in the world easier, right? In the world are a lot of white guys who dress just as shitty as I do.”

“I don’t know ’bout
that,
” X said. Big Mac chuckled, and they bumped fists.

“I’d like you to try being more open,” Daniel told A-Dre. “And it starts with how you hold your body.”

A-Dre shrugged and finally uncrossed his arms, letting them dangle awkwardly. That circular scar on his biceps came visible.

Big Mac gestured at the shiny patch of skin. “How’d you get that?”

“When I was twelve, my stepdad burned me with his cigar.”

“That’s bigger than a cigar,” Martin said.

“I burned over the hole with a frying pan.”

Lil looked shocked. “Why?”

“Ain’t nuthin that nigga do I can’t do better.”

Everyone took a moment with that one.

A-Dre crossed his arms again. “This is stupid.”

“You’re unhappy about being viewed as a criminal,” Daniel said. “You’re in trouble with the law. You want to control yourself better. But most of what we say seems to be useless to you. Why is that?”

“I got a
code.
Men don’t walk away from a fight. Men don’t back down. And they sure as shit don’t share in some bullshit group.”

“That code’s gonna wind your ass back up in the pen,” Martin said.

“Or get you killed,” Big Mac added.

A-Dre bobbed his head. “I ain’t afraid to die. I
never
been afraid to die.”

“Are there any parts of your code you’d consider letting go of?” Daniel asked.

“No.”

“Are your choices getting you what you want?”

A-Dre bounced forward angrily in his chair. “Maybe not. But at least I fuck up my
own
self. No one tells me first. No one—” He caught himself.

“What?” Daniel said.
“What?”

A-Dre rolled his lips over his teeth, bit down. “No one can tell me I ain’t good enough.”

“Because you always prove it first,” Daniel said. “From the minute they see you.”

“I can’t do shit ’bout how people see me.”

“I have,” Big Mac said. “Am I better than you?”

A-Dre stared at him. Didn’t answer. He was sweating, a sheen covering his arms and face, even the LaRonda tattoo.

“Am I better than you?”
Big Mac’s voice boomed off the walls.

“No. You ain’t better than me.”

“Then you can ‘do shit’ about it, too.”

A glimmer appeared in A-Dre’s eyes as he processed this, and then the scowl returned. “We done?” He got up and started to swagger to his regular seat.

“Not quite yet,” Daniel said.

They all waited as A-Dre retraced his steps, radiating contempt.

“Why do you fight?” Daniel asked him once he’d again settled into the hot seat.

“I like it.”

“Why?”

“It’s fun. And I’m good at it.”

The others laughed.

“I won every fight I been in,” A-Dre said. Given his breadth and jutting muscles, this was easy to believe. “You ever fight, Counselor?”

“I was a wrestler—”

Daniel was cut off by assorted hoots.

“A
wrestler
!”

“—rules and shit—”

“—them little bathing-suit thingies—”

It took Daniel a few moments to steer the room back on track. “What are the
good
things about fighting?” he asked A-Dre.

A-Dre hesitated, so Lil jumped in. “Nothing.”

“No,” Daniel said. “Not
nothing.
Don’t give me the shit you think I want to hear. What’s good about it?”

“At least you’re
doing
something,” A-Dre said. “Not just taking it.”

“Okay. What else?”

“Gets you respect. Gets you girls. Gets you
stuff
you can take from people. Gets ’em to do what you want.”

Daniel got up and starting writing the pros on the left side of the chalkboard:
“Respect. Power. Sexual partners. Control. Money.”

He tossed down the chalk, dusted his hands. “Okay, great. Now let’s talk about what happened after.”

“Like what?”

“Like what happened next. For you, for the people around you.”

X piped up. “Your sis LaRonda.”

“You shut your mouth ’bout LaRonda.”

It was slow going, but Daniel finally got A-Dre to list some consequences of the fights, which Daniel summarized on the other side of the board:
“Fired from job. Arrested. Jail stint. Broke up with girlfriend.”

Big Mac snickered as the list grew. “Yep, you sure won all them fights, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did. I got some blowback, sure. But look at all the shit I got first.” A-Dre flared a hand at the scrawled list on the left side of the board. “
Respect.
Power. Shorties. Bling.”

“How many of those things did you have six months later?” Daniel asked.

A-Dre waved off the question. “Six months later I was in prison.”

Daniel set the chalk down in the tray. Asked again, “How many of those things did you have six months later?”

A-Dre’s eyes darted back and forth across the chalkboard, annoyed, and then came a softening of his face. He laced his fingers, stared down at his hands.

“None,” he said.

Chapter 20

When Big Mac took center chair after the break, he sat silently for a few moments, squeezing the grip strengthener. “I had a setback this morning. I can’t be there for my fucking kids because I’m out there working to feed them, right? My daughter’s got asthma. My boy needs books for school. Christmas is coming up, and … I don’t make enough as a waste collector.”

“Dude,” X said, “you a
trashman.
”

“X, the title on my fucking paycheck is—”

“Refuse Procurement,” X said. “Know what we call that on Earth?”

“Shut the hell up, X,” Martin said. “Let the man talk.”

Big Mac took a deep breath, his broad shoulders settling again. “We’re always tight. Gas bill, groceries, cell phone—”

“Car always breaking down,” Martin said.

“’
Zactly.
And my wife, I don’t ask much of her. Just stay off my back, cook, and clean.”

“That’s
all
you want out of her?” Lil asked. “You want to be married to a cleaning lady?”

“Hey, fuck off,” X said. “I
am
a cleaning lady.”

Daniel kept his attention on Big Mac. “Go on.”

Clank-clank. Clank-clank.
Then, “So she’s on me this morning, right? First thing, over the Cap’n Crunch. About the holidays coming up. Get a promotion. It’s that easy, right? Like I can just
get
a promotion. And I … uh, put my fist through the wall. And she’s still going on. So I put my hands on her. Openhanded, but still. And the kids, they’re scared of me. I can see it. They’re too polite, you know. Even though I’ve never hit ’em—I’ve
never
touched them. They’re too polite to me, and they clear the fucking table and go into their room until their mom can drive them to school. And I go in there, and they’re sitting on their beds like”—his voice caught—“like they don’t know what to do. And I try to say I’m sorry, and they just say, ‘It’s okay, Dad, it’s okay,’ like they just want me to leave them alone. Which they do. Want me to just leave. And they don’t know I’m really sorry. They don’t know I’m really sorry.”

X’s breath hitched in her chest, and Daniel glanced across at her. Big Mac’s story had captured her complete focus; it was the first time Daniel had seen her let down her guard. No one else noticed her reaction.

“Look,” Big Mac said, “I didn’t even
have
a dad. My old man left when I was eight, my mom checked out when I was fourteen, so my kids are one better, but still. This ain’t how you think it’ll go, right? When you’re in the hospital holding them in that swaddle, kissing those tiny feet. You don’t hope for them sitting there on their beds staring at you scared like they wished you were gone already. I’m worn down and short-tempered from working for my kids, and then they’re scared of me because I’m worn down and short-tempered.”

“They should understand,” X said. “They should
understand
why you did what you did.”

Again Daniel noted her quiet sincerity—something about Big Mac’s interaction with his kids had struck her deep—but he didn’t want to halt the room’s momentum by switching to focus on her right now.

“—my wife,” Big Mac was saying. “I love her, but fuck. Riding me, trying to piss me off.”

“Is there another explanation?” Daniel asked. “Besides her trying to piss you off?”

“Maybe
she’s
tired, too,” Lil said. “Or as scared about money as you are.”

“I tell her all the time what I’m doing for the family.”

“What else do you tell her?” Daniel asked.

Big Mac studied his large, rough hands. “I love her, okay? She knows that. I don’t have to say it. She can tell by what I do, how I work to support her.”

“So you
never
tell her you love her?” Lil asked.

“There’s no point.”

“Why not?” Daniel asked.

Silence. Then, “She’s just gonna leave anyway.” His turtle eyes blinked. “Her. The kids. Might as well get it over with.”

“How you know she’s gonna leave?” A-Dre asked. His first question about another group member, that tiny initial step into the circle.

Big Mac took a breath, his vast chest expanding. “
Everyone
leaves,” he said.

Daniel let the sentence linger. Then he said, “But you don’t want them to. You want to be with your family.”

“Everyone leaves,” Big Mac repeated. “I learned that young.”

“If you learned it,” Daniel said, “that means you can
unlearn
it.”

“But it’s what happens.”

“Okay.” Daniel held up his hands, slowing things down, putting together the emotional equation. “If everyone leaves, then how do you treat them?” A blank stare. He tried again. “You’ve decided that everyone close to you is gonna leave. So what
else
have you decided about how to act toward them?”

Big Mac rasped his palm across an unshaven cheek. “Don’t trust anyone,” he answered. “Don’t let anyone close.”

“If you lived with someone who didn’t trust you and never let you get close, what would
you
do?”

Big Mac swallowed once, hard. The pink rims of his eyes sagged.
“Leave,”
he said.

*   *   *

They spent the rest of the session untangling Big Mac’s beliefs, pulling at loose strings and seeing what came unwound. X remained withdrawn, lost in thought. She didn’t speak at all, not even a single wisecrack, an aberration of mammoth proportions.

As the group readied to go, Daniel remembered Lyle Kane’s approaching deadline, now two hours away. The return to cold reality was bracing, and he felt another rush of gratitude for the warmth they’d created in the room.

He cleared his throat. “I just want to tell you that you’ve been a real bright spot for me in the past couple of days. The courage you show in here, it’s … inspiring, really.”

Big Mac smiled broadly. “Look at Counselor getting all Hallmark on us.”

“I know,” Daniel said. “Lapse in judgment.”

X gathered her schoolbooks quickly and was the first to head out. She paused with one hand grasping the jamb, seemingly on the verge of a classic “doorway moment”—dropping a revelation at the end of a session when there’s no time left for scrutiny. She turned only slightly, showing them her profile. The others were still talking and collecting their things, but Daniel watched her, rapt.

“I had a baby when I was seventeen,” X said.

The room went silent, the group members freeze-framed in their various positions.

“Gave her up when I went to the Hall,” X continued. “She’s lost in foster care somewhere.” Still she refused to face the room fully. “She’d be two today.”

Before anyone could reply, X had vanished.

*   *   *

After the others dispersed and Fang headed to the garage to retrieve his employment form, Daniel took a moment alone to tilt his head back and breathe in the silence. He found himself itching to call Inspector Dooley to see if she’d made headway in locating Lyle Kane, but he resisted; she was no doubt stressed enough, watching the clock as anxiously as he was and bracing for bad news. In the quiet room, he felt the weight of every passing second.

Fang returned nervously holding a coffee-stained piece of paper, like a report card. Reluctantly, he relinquished it, and Daniel took a look.

It struck him immediately that Fang was dyslexic, the scribbled lines calling to mind the death-threat letters and putting a charge into Daniel’s chest. But as he’d seen before, the handwriting was quite different, a wide, undisciplined scrawl.

He settled his nerves and worked with Fang to gather information for a referral, watching him write, examining his pencil grip, and taking a history. Though he did his best to push thoughts of Lyle Kane aside, the countdown to midnight pervaded everything like the deep thrumming of a plucked string. Finally he saw Fang off and headed to the common office on the second floor to leave a message for Sue Posada, an occupational therapist he’d met at a continuing-education course. It wasn’t easy to find people in that field who would work closely with violent offenders, but he and Sue went back a ways, and she trusted his referrals.

Waiting for her office voice mail to pick up, he tapped his pen against the top page of Fang’s handwriting sample—
I went to the park tobay.

His mouth went dry.

He stared at the word. No longer heard the ringing of the line. Though there was no air-conditioning vent overhead, the room felt suddenly arctic.

He squeezed his eyes shut, forced that unsettling handwriting to inhabit the darkness behind his lids.