We Know

We Know (aka Trust no One) (2008)

I had to start over. And I gave it my best shot. Make new friends. Build a different life. Cut my bitterness with gratitude for what I still had. I tried to live up to Callie's hopes for me by not spending my life looking over my shoulder. Now and then, when I'd see a dark sedan or hear a voice of a certain timbre, I'd feel a flicker of the old fear, a snake's tongue moving along my spine. At any moment they could pounce on me and throw me in a cell, charge me with a murder I didn't commit.

But they didn't. I got a job helping people who were homeless. I managed to become a part of society, so if I did get hauled off, I could feel like my life had been worth something.

I had finally found calm, or at least my version of it.

And then I awoke one night to see the end of a black rope coiled on my balcony.

Chapter 14

The silence was what told me I had finished talking. I emerged from the stupor of my thoughts as if rousing from a deep sleep, pressed into the present tense by the couch arm in my lower back, the floor beneath my feet, the sensation of nearly unbearable vulnerability, as if I'd been skinned and dangled above salt water.

Induma glanced away, her dark eyes darker than usual. Then she slid down the torn-up couch and embraced me, pressing my cheek to her chest. I couldn't move. We stayed like that a few minutes, and then I raised my hand and put it on her forearm.

She set her other hand on top of mine and said, "I will help you."

She stood and straightened out her clothes. With effort she produced a smile for me. The door thumped to the carpet, and she was gone.

I jolted awake at 2:18. Experience had taught me to lie flat and draw deep breaths, to picture the soothing roll of the ocean. Soon the panic lifted and I came back to my body, safe in the darkness.

Clever, the tricks our minds play on us. The mean-spirited reminders they think we require. Given the past twenty-four hours, it was no surprise that the habit had reasserted itself, but still, the thought of it stung. I'd convinced myself it was behind me. The return to the old pattern seemed proof that I'd failed. My deficiencies had been waiting there all along, hibernating just beneath the surface like a bad memory.

It was ungodly hot, my pillow drenched. My air conditioner was awful. It made a lot of noise and didn't put out much, like a sitcom wife. It didn't help that I kept the windows and sliding glass door closed and locked even on muggy summer nights. I lay on my slashed mattress, restless and miserable.

But comfort doesn't matter. Security matters.

I spoke Frank's name to the darkness as I sometimes did. I knew it was weird-embarrassing, even-but I did it because it was the only thing I had left of him, really. I did it to keep him alive. Now I was doing it out of habit. For years it was the one thing I was sure of. Tonight it didn't feel quite that way.

How were Frank and an old war buddy linked to a rucksack of cash? The bills were new, dated last year, but even so, it didn't mean they weren't merely the latest move in a ploy stretching back to Frank's last months. Frank was a man with secrets, but I'd known him well, better than I'd known anyone except Callie. Whatever his involvement with Charlie, or with whatever had surfaced in the weeks before his murder, he would have acted aboveboard. I tried to convince myself and got mostly there. Mostly.

I was exhausted, yet wide awake. I turned on the TV, my analgesic of choice. Daffy Duck was being stared down by a little mob guy with a big hat. I mouthed the line with him: Okay, duck, no more stallinsee?

It was no use. I got up, dressed, and double-checked the locks and windows. About ten years ago, I realized I wasn't checking for my safety. So why? Compulsion, certainly. Partly out of respect for the dead. I knew my way around this apartment in the dark; I'd walked it with my eyes closed.

After Induma had left, I'd cleaned up, bagging my broken possessions and dumping more down the chute than was necessary. I'd hammered the front door into the jamb with two nails, which I now tested with my thumb. They'd prove at least as effective as the dead bolt had been last night. Cracking the dishwasher, I checked the bundles of hundred-dollar bills that I'd laid beneath the bottom tray. I closed the door, setting a paper clip on the right top corner so it would fall if someone looked in there.

I opened the sliding door, passed through the torn-out screen, and straddled the balcony parapet. The three-story drop was menacing, but the telephone pole was within easy reach, one of the reasons I'd selected the apartment. Liffman's Rules: Always leave yourself a getaway. Timing my lunge, I grabbed the footholds without having to go airborne, then pulled myself across onto the pole. I climbed down and walked to my Ford pickup.

I told myself I wasn't sure where I was going, but of course I knew.