Tell No Lies (34 page)

She smiled. He smiled back. It was good to see her face.

The phone vibrated with another message, but he could see her hands, could see it wasn’t her.

DANIEL BRASHER
.

An unknown caller.

The chill of the garage settled in around his neck. He stared at the screen, waiting for the next message.

ADMIT WHAT YOUV DONE. OR YOU WILL BLEED FOR IT
.

YOU HAV TIL THANKGIVING AT MIDITE
.

He looked across at Dooley. Her expression had changed, a reflection no doubt of his own. As she got out and hustled toward his car, he looked down at the phone, clenched in his hand.

Through a shell-shocked haze, he realized that he was the first target who actually
knew
what he was supposed to admit. Which of course raised a question that the others hadn’t had to consider.

His thumbs were shaking, so it took several tries and two autocorrects to input his reply.
ADMIT TO WHO? WHEN? WHERE?

As expected, the error message popped up in its cheery little thought bubble. Invalid number.

Dooley tapped the window. He unlocked, and she slid into the passenger seat. He handed her the phone. Heard her lips make a slight popping sound. She was on the radio right away, but her words were a blur beneath the hum in his head.

Thanksgiving.

Two days.

Chapter 55

“Cris? You there? Look, I’m sorry to tell you through the door, but the next death threat? It’s directed at me. The deadline’s Thanksgiving at midnight. Leo is safing the entire house now with SFPD—they want to check
everything
because of how it went down with Molly Clarke. They’re starting on the ground floor. But you’ll have to open up soon.”

“Still here. Look … I realized something today. In session. I yammer on about honesty and accountability all the time, but I wasn’t being fully honest with myself. Or with you. And if we can’t do that with each other, then what’s the point, right? If we can’t share
everything.
Including the ugliest, most shameful truths. So.”

“Okay. Here goes.”

“When I thought I was gonna lose you, I felt utterly helpless. And terrified. I couldn’t imagine what the next fifty years would look like without you in them. Or maybe I could and I didn’t think they would be fifty years worth getting through. But more than that, with everything you were going to go through and you being scared and in pain and I couldn’t
do
anything—I couldn’t do a fucking thing to lessen your … your … Sorry. Hang on. Give me a…”

“No matter what I
think
I think about rules and choices—all the sanctimonious bullshit—I would’ve done
anything.
To spare you that. To make you well. And you’re right. I didn’t care how it got done. I just wanted you to be alive. I always thought—
hoped
—that I was different from my mom and, yeah, the people I see in group. But I’m not. Because for your life? I wasn’t thinking about morals and fairness and laws. I would have done whatever I could. And I would again.”

At last the knob turned and Cris filled the slice at the jamb, her face flushed. Then the door pushed open with a creak, and her arms were out and she was pressed tight to him, squeezing his neck, her body warm. He dipped his face into the scent of her.

She squeezed him tighter. “The next death threat? It really came in against you?”

He nodded, their cheeks slick against each other.

“Our situation, it’s reversed now,” she said. “
Your
life at stake. And while you were talking, it hit me…” She swallowed hard. “
I
took a favor from your mom, too, with Leo. I didn’t ask any questions. I just said yes. Because
you
were at risk.” Her breath came hot against his ear, a low whisper. “I realized that I would, too. I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

Chapter 56

They made love in the morning, streamers of hay-colored light escaping the lowered blinds and texturing the rumpled sheets. Cris rose and fell through blocks of semi-shadow, her swollen mouth, her breasts, her arched shoulders sunlit and then lost to vagueness. She leaned on him, palms pressing his shoulders, the fringe of her hair sweeping his throat, every sensation new and heightened as they discovered each other all over again. Her hands left red marks at his chest, his on the slope of her waist. And then they slowed, him looking down at her now, and then slowed more and more, eyes locked, mouths parted, until they were barely moving at all.

They showered together, Cris leaning against his back, arms wrapping him. After they dressed, she said, “I need to see the water.”

Leo agreed to tail them at a safe distance, and they strolled downslope for the marina, holding hands, just another couple out for another stroll on the first blindingly spectacular day in months. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving.

Admit what you’ve done. Or you will bleed for it.

But admit it
where
? Was he supposed to announce it to the city? A press conference seemed ridiculous. Dooley kept the idea on the table, reminding him that they had until midnight tomorrow to weigh options. “Don’t worry,” she’d said with a smirk. “He hasn’t killed anyone early yet.” Cris had halfheartedly raised the idea of leaving town, hopping on a plane for somewhere, though they both knew that wouldn’t happen. Dooley needed his help, they had Leo at the house, and besides, fleeing the investigation and his group seemed so craven. Plus at
some
point, he’d have to come home and face what needed to be faced.

He tried to force himself into the present. After all, this stroll could be his last. He and Cris didn’t speak; they just walked beneath the cloudless sky and felt the sun doing its best against the biting breeze. All was right with the rest of the world. Labradoodles pranced by on designer leashes. Boy-men zipped past on scooters and mountain bikes, messenger bags slung over their shoulders. The Palace of Fine Arts made Cris beam every time it appeared, so unexpected and anachronistic across from the overpriced homes of Baker Street. It was young for a Roman ruin, the last man standing from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibit, San Francisco’s post-earthquake, “We’re still standing” bash. The mirror surface of the fronting lagoon doubled the frieze-intensive octagonal dome, the effect breathtaking beneath the canopy of flawless blue.

They picked their way up a narrow spit of land past the Golden Gate Yacht Club right to the water’s edge, where in a stroke of quirky genius, a master stonemason had installed a wave-activated acoustic organ sculpture. Dr. Seuss tubes, wound through Lego blocks of granite from a demolished gold-rush cemetery, gave off an intestinal gurgling that was nothing short of hypnotic. Daniel and Cris sat on an icy slab, looked out at the choppy gray, and listened as the world’s largest seashell sounded off.

Kite surfers were out in force, skipping across the water like evolved life-forms. Beyond rose the craggy outline of the Rock, where the Birdman kept no birds, Machine Gun Kelly did perfect time, and Al Capone languished, his brain a syphilitic stew. To the west, at the base of that lionized suspension bridge, jutted Fort Point, where dripping-wet Kim Novak had lolled weakly in Jimmy Stewart’s rescuing arms, faking it.

Everyone’s got a con, a pinch of deceit, a green light at the end of the dock. And a dream, however grand or modest. A way they want it to be and an angle to get there.

Daniel thought of Francisca Olvera’s heart giving out, of a positive pregnancy test resting on a silver platter, of a death threat rendered on the screen of his cell phone. All the terror and loss and vulnerability of the past week rose up, threatening to overwhelm him. He closed his eyes and listened to the pipes and water, a horn section in the round. The whale song vibrated through him, and for a moment he felt without limits, without boundaries, held in the vast belly of the sea itself.

Cris’s hand loosened in his, letting go for the first time since they’d stepped out into the city together. She gently grasped his wrist, repositioned his fingers. Tugging up her shirt, she placed his spread palm over her navel.

Feeling the heat rising through his wife’s body, he realized just how modest his own dreams had become.

Chapter 57

Later in the day, Daniel was eating a sandwich over the sink when Cris flew down the stairs from the bedroom, flipping her cell phone closed against her chin. “We have to go. Can you— Leo? Can you come with us?” She was grabbing keys, a sweater, swinging the shot put of her purse over an arm. “I need you both to—”

Daniel caught her at the shoulders as she rounded the kitchen island. “What happened?”

She stopped, lips trembling. “The planning commission vote came in. They’re taking the building.”

*   *   *

With clapboard siding and fresh yellow-and-brown paint, the projects in Western Addition look surprisingly upscale, like dormitories or military housing. Three stories, town-house-connected. Residents out on the stoops and curbs, talking and pointing across the street where moving vans and beater trucks had assembled before the much larger apartment complex Cris had spent the past eighteen months fighting to protect. For once, rival gangs were present within eyeshot of each other, though they kept to opposite sides of the street. The Knock Out Posse, who owned these blocks, moved freely, but the few Sureños who’d made their way up from South Van Ness with their blue kerchiefs, do-rags, and Dallas Cowboys jerseys, minded their curb. Maybe they had relatives getting kicked out, or maybe they were just here for the street theater—the trail of tears leading out the laid-back double doors of the lobby. Families with hastily packed cardboard boxes, an elderly black man gesticulating angrily with a cane, arguments in various languages, and a few universal sobs. A scattering of bored cops were out, along with a few men in suits bearing important-looking papers on clipboards. Not a single reporter.

Daniel coasted through the crowd, practically nudging folks aside with the front bumper, Cris at the window like a dog frantic to escape. Leo throttled behind them in his tank of a Ford Bronco. Parking was a mess, so Daniel let Cris out and kept on with Leo. By a miracle they found meters close to each other a block over. A quarter bought a whopping seven minutes, and Daniel was broke at fourteen minutes. Leo palmed him some spare change to max out the meter, and they jogged back to find Cris.

She was sitting on the crowded curb across the street, arms resting on her knees, staring despondently at the ongoing eviction. Leo lingered nearby as Daniel lowered himself beside her. They watched, Cris wiping her cheeks at intervals.

Even the gang members looked melancholy. “Way of the mothafuckin’ world,” one remarked sagely, and Cris said, “Stow it, Rags.”

At the base of the telephone pole beside them was a streetside altar—flowers, a mini–teddy bear, and a photo of a young teenage girl with long lashes and soulful brown eyes, wearing a confirmation dress. The wooden pole was still pitted from where the bullets had been dug out. The unacceptable, right here, every day.

Cris interrupted his thoughts. “This used to be the
Fillmore.
Not just ‘the Fillmore.’” She lifted her arm, pointed southeast. “The Church of John Coltrane was over there. The devout brought instruments, sat in with the band. For three decades they fed the homeless. Then the landlord doubled the rent. Gone. And right here”—she jerked her head north—“the old Winterland Arena. All those psychedelic light shows. Hendrix played there, ’member? The Doors, Zeppelin, the Dead. The night they closed, Bill Graham rode onstage on a giant joint. Today … apartments. And now the apartments are going, and I protest
that.
Maybe I
am
stuck in the past. Maybe your mom’s right. Dot-com was just the latest gold rush. And now the
new
new economy, Web 2.0.” Her hand circled, tracing a rising spiral before falling limply to her lap. “This is how it’s always been, and this is how it’ll always be, and I need to just grow the fuck up.”

An elderly Filipino woman exited the complex and made halting progress across the street, heedless of honking cars. An antique birdcage swung at her side. Various family members trailed, holding lamps, trash cans, suitcases with broken clasps. The woman was steered toward a rusted car, but she demurred, veering off to sit at the edge of a planter, the birdcage on her thighs. She mumbled through the bars to the white macaw as her family members pleaded and gestured.

Releasing a sigh, Cris rose. She and Daniel walked over and cut through the cadre of frustrated family members. Cris leaned down, tried for eye contact. “Hello, Mrs. Gao.”

The woman didn’t lift her gaze. She kept mumbling in Tagalog. A disinterested grown-granddaughter type translated. “She say Dinky does not like change.”

Cris stared at Mrs. Gao helplessly as she continued to mumble.

“She say Dinky has delicate stomach.” The granddaughter chewed her gum, half listening, then chewed it some more. “Dinky is too old to move. Dinky will die of heartsickness.”

Mrs. Gao finally raised her sagging eyes to Cris, her lips still moving.

The granddaughter examined a chipped fingernail. “She say, ‘Why can’t you do anything?’”

*   *   *

Cris finally left for home with Leo, Daniel staying behind to help the Gaos load up a succession of vehicles that appeared, one after another, with roof racks embellished by ingenious bungee-cord configurations. Given Cris’s pregnancy, he didn’t want her hauling boxes up and down the stairs.

He thought about how lovely it would be to be alive when the baby was born.

Too late he noticed the parking-enforcement officer patrolling in a tiny wheelbarrow of a vehicle, even more ridiculous than his own smart car. He set the final suitcase on the curb and ran, digging in his pockets for the change Leo had given him.

He spotted the ticket on his windshield and cursed. But when his gaze lowered, all petty aggravation evaporated. In his palm were a few quarters, spit-polished and brand-new.