Tell No Lies (30 page)

“There was a scene,” Dooley said. “And guess which security guard escorted mother and child off hospital premises? Jack Holley.”

“What…?” Daniel had to clear his throat and try again. “What happened to her? Francisca?”

“There’s a morgue record in the database,” Dooley said. “January seventh, 2010.”

Something curdled in his stomach, a sickness spreading up through his chest, out into his limbs. “Where was she treated?”

“We’re still digging,” O’Malley said. “But as you know, medical records are tough. We’ll pull subpoenas, start serving every clinic and hospital in the city, but it could be a slog. You saw the crappy job Viviana Olvera did filling out that one form. These people are happy to take advantage of the system, but they don’t like being
in
it.”

Dooley pushed back in her seat. “He’s right. Mom’s illegal and broke. Dad’s MIA. Records of the kid are gonna be sketchy at best.”

Daniel’s voice, so hoarse he was having trouble getting words out: “That’s why she was the easiest one to drop.”

He pictured the woman in the yellow slicker, braving rain and traffic, pointing up at him and Cris in their bedroom. Viviana Olvera. A grieving mother.

Dooley stood, concerned. “What’s going on, Daniel? Do you know something about this?”

Already he was running back to the bathroom, his gorge rising.

Chapter 45

Occupying the nineteenth floor of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the storied Top of the Mark held a unique place in San Francisco lore. With its Art Deco flair and wraparound views of the city, the venerable sky lounge attracted rich tourists, pedigreed locals, and the occasional young couple willing to pay a cover charge for dim lights and fussy waitstaff. Many a merger had been lubricated here by offerings from the famed hundred-martini menu and more than a few engagement rings passed across the starched periwinkle tablecloths. John Barrymore had once brought his pet monkey here, the story went, to show him the view. The lounge was a sentimental favorite of not just simians but the Ladies Who Cocktail as well.

True to James’s tip, Daniel found his mother there on an upholstered settee, facing the span of jetliner windows as if she were piloting the whole building in for landing on the choppy night waters of the Bay. A coiffed friend of hers whom Daniel half recognized sat in a club chair, two gimlets pinning down the roundtop to the side. Daniel said, “I need to speak to you alone.”

“Darling, I—”

“Now.”

Stiffly, the other woman rose, fingertips adjusting her necklace and conveying offense at the same time, and then Daniel and Evelyn were alone. Evelyn sipped her gimlet, returned to the view. “That was forceful. Perhaps you should sit down.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yes, you seem perfectly in control.”

“The closed medical trial Cristina was in at UCSF, the one that saved her life. A child was bumped out at the last minute.” He paused, almost afraid to continue. “Did you do it?”

“Maybe you should sit down.”

“I don’t
need
to sit down.”

A waiter came over, hands clasped, all impeccable decorum and curated blond hair. Most anywhere else in the city, you could glance around and feel like you were at the UN, but up here on the nineteenth floor, the clientele and staff were, save for the Hispanic barbacks, tennis-club white. “Is everything all right, Mrs. Brasher?”

“He’s my son.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you, sir.”

Daniel sensed the waiter’s retreat. He kept his stare on the side of his mother’s face; Evelyn craned her neck for no man.

“I called Bill Emerald,” she said. “You remember Bill. Head of development for the hospital?”

Daniel tamped down a surge of impatience that threatened to explode out of him. “And…?”

“He told me that the trial was full. That he could get someone bumped.”

His voice was shaking. “What did you say?”

“Do it.”

“Just …
do it
?”

“Of course,” Evelyn said. “It’s what you wanted.” She granted him a brief glance. “I really think you should sit down, Daniel.”

He sat.

They looked out at the tycoon view, the night-lit towers of Grace Cathedral, the shiny Bentleys at the Pacific-Union Club across the street. To the north, the rotating beam from Alcatraz pierced the fog, an alien probe taking the measure of the land.

“That’s
not
what I asked for,” he said.

“You came to me for my help. You said, ‘I’ve never asked you for anything in my life. I’m asking you to help me save her.’”

“But I
never
knew that someone would have to be…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

“You asked me to get it done. So I got it done. What did you
think
would happen?”

“I thought they’d make room for her.”

“There’s only so much room, Daniel. You knew that.”

“I
didn’t
know that. I did not.”

“Then why did you come to
me
?”

“Because you…”

Evelyn nursed her drink. “That’s right. Because I know people. Who are beholden to me. For favors. Do you have
any
idea how much money we have given—
generationally
—to that medical center? You must. There is an auditorium at that hospital with our family name stamped on it. Our money poured the foundations for half the institutions in this city. You grew up between our box at the opera house and Director’s Circle dinners for SFMOMA. And you claim not to know how this works?”

He sat, leaden and speechless, part of the chair.

“Everyone has a price,” Evelyn said. “Yours was the life of your fiancée.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I
never
knew.”

Evelyn touched the rim to her lips. A delicate sip. “Did you tell her?”

“What?”

“That you were going to come to me for help. Did. You. Tell. Her?” She waited patiently.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

It wasn’t quite a rhetorical question, but it was clear that no answer would be required. When he’d gone to his mother for help, he hadn’t known the contours of the course of action she would take, but he’d known that Cristina would not like the shape of it. So he’d kept it from her.

And, in some manner, he’d kept it from himself.

Evelyn finished her drink. The waiter appeared to ask if she wanted another and she said, “Please.” It arrived sometime later, and she rested her hand on the elegant glass stem but did not lift it from the table.

Daniel said, “So you did it just to lord it over me? To show me what a hypocrite I am?”

She shifted in the chair, rearing slowly, shoulders squaring to him. “Is that
really
what you think?”

“I don’t know what I think,” he said. “Why did you do it?”

“I did it because no matter how shitty a mother I am and have been, you’re still my son. And when you came to me, broken and devastated and lost, I would have done
anything
to take away your pain.”

He rose, his legs numb beneath him all the way to the elevator. The car sank down and down, and then he was out onto the street. The city looked just the same, of course.

It was as it had always been.

Chapter 46

The ring of Daniel’s phone interrupted his stupor at the wheel. He’d called Dooley and given her the bones of the revelation, and from what she’d heard in his voice, she must have known he was in no shape to flesh it out at the moment. Then it had been ten silent minutes bumping over the hills of the city toward home, his dread mounting as he neared the conversation to come.

And now the ring, shrill as a scream in the confines of his car.

A voice, lined with annoyance and concern: “Where
are
you?”

Kendra Richardson. His boss.

A panicked glance at the clock showed 8:24
P.M.
It was, he realized, Monday night. Session—long-forgotten session—was supposed to have started almost a half hour ago.

“Got a group here waiting,” she continued. “Or did you forget?”

“I’m not … I can’t … I can’t come in.”

“Look, I know there was a gaffe last session. After how things ended, your timing to not show up isn’t exactly ideal.”

“Move it to tomorrow night. I’ll be there then. Tell them for me.”

“You know how essential consistency is.”

“Kendra. You have to take my word for it. I
cannot
do this right now.”

“You’ve never pushed a session.”

“I need to tonight.”

He hung up and turned onto his street. The block was throbbing—a valet in front of Ted and Danika Shea’s and several attendants waiting with champagne glasses on silver trays. Nearing his house, he slowed. A parked car blocked his driveway, and he felt his agitation and self-rage bubble over. He screeched to a stop and climbed out.

“Take your car, sir?”

“No—I need you to move that SUV.”

“I’m so sorry. Is that your residence? I think that’s a VIP guest of the Sheas. She parked there before we showed up, so we don’t have the keys.”

Daniel charged toward the side gate, past the officious staff—“Kir royale? Crémant d’Alsace?”—and into the crowded backyard. Aside from a spotlit cube of metal the size of an industrial dryer, the yard was mood dim, and Daniel had a hard time locating either host. From all sides he was assailed with gourmet-hipster fare wielded and announced with great aplomb—short-rib sliders, sustainable sea bass on risotto crackers, endive spoons smeared with lemon-herb goat cheese. Nostrils quivered over chilled Napa Valley whites. The conversations pressed in on him, about what people
weren’t
eating and wearing, what
wasn’t
cage-free or grass-fed or sweatshop-stitched. He pushed past a stocky gentleman announcing through a full mouth that he’d been working on opening his navel chakra, and he spotted Danika across the way, waving her arms like a well-heeled carnival barker, the event about to commence. A hush fell over the yard as a sculptor wearing strategically torn jeans threw a switch, and the large metal cube crumpled in on itself with, Daniel had to admit, some majesty. But the pointlessness arrested him. He knew that it was his own self-loathing turned inside out and vomited on everything around him, but he couldn’t help himself.

Ted was shaking hands and clutching elbows as if he’d actually accomplished something himself, and Daniel neared, calling across the bobbing heads, “Ted.
Ted!
I need a car moved so I can—”

“You made it!” Ted shouted, parting a circle to fold Daniel into its embrace. “Daniel’s a smart guy, used to work in finance—let’s ask
him.
” He shoulder-squeezed a lanky-haired man at his side. “Wes here runs a Web site on social and environmental awareness, and he’s started a boycott on gas stations that import from the Middle East. Until
all
our troops are home—”

“Look, Ted, there’s a car blocking my driveway—”

“Come
on,
Daniel. Take a second. This is important. You
must
see the value in a boycott like that.” Ted’s face was alcohol-flushed, and Danika had appeared at his side. The discussion was public now, and there were stakes. “I mean, isn’t it a wonderful—”

“—valets don’t have the keys—”

“—hit Shell and Exxon and Chevron where it hurts? In the pocketbook?”

“—emergency, really need to get home and talk to Cris—”

“If we can get
enough
people to—”

“It won’t matter!”
Daniel said.

The others reeled back a little. Ted came at him, patting the air, all strong chin and hopeful diplomacy. “Let’s just calm down here.”

“You’re already calm,” Daniel said. “I’m the one who’s worked up.”

“What
possible
objection could you have to a Web site that—”

“Because it’s
naïve,
Ted. It doesn’t
matter
if you boycott the Middle East for gasoline. Where are you gonna import from?
Nigeria?
With their great environmental and human-rights record? So you’ll boycott Chevron until they …
what?
Bring in crude from Russia that’s really Iraqi oil sold through Baltic middlemen? It’s a
global commodity.
Where you gas up your fucking flex-fuel Honda isn’t gonna change anything.”

At some point the string quartet had silenced, ceding the stage of the backyard to Daniel’s rant. The people nearest wilted; those farther away stood on tiptoe.

The lanky-haired man shook his head in disgust. “You object to social awareness?”

“No. I object to social awareness as
wardrobe.
”

“Then
what
?” Danika said. “We do nothing about anything? Is that your plan?”

“We admit,” Daniel said wearily, “that we’re all full of
shit.
”

“No,” some brave soul in the back called out. “Just you.”

“Really?” Daniel spun, gesturing at the party. “You’re here to watch the air get
sucked out of a metal cube.
How many LED lightbulbs to offset that energy expenditure? That’s what we do, though. Buy conflict-free diamonds and eat net-free tuna and feed our guilt with
righteousness.
Who are we kidding anyway? Ourselves? Each other? Half our focus goes into consuming and the other half into making that consumption look principled.”

It was true, sure, or at least a version of true, but the truth could be used like a baseball bat. There was a sweetness in yielding to his anger this way. A
relief.
He was swinging that bat, smashing up the scenery, and he didn’t want to stop.

Color rouged Danika’s cheeks. “Not
us,
” she said. “We have been extremely—”

“Danika. You recycle your tinfoil and fly to Europe three times a year. You and Ted and your three au courant children have a carbon footprint the size of
Godzilla’s.
It’s
inherent.
We want to be good people and do good things, but we also like our
lives.
And we want what’s best for ourselves and people we love, and no matter how hard we try, there’s no unhooking that from the rest of the planet.”