“Nope,” Clint said. “I’m a shrink, not a mind-reader.”
“I’m thinking this might be a classic case of transference.” She wiggled the first two fingers of each hand in the air to make quotation marks around the key word. “As in you’re worried that your boy is the devil’s child.”
It was Clint’s turn to laugh. The idea of Jared as the devil’s anything, Jared who brushed mosquitoes off his arms rather than swatting them, was surreal. He worried about his son, yes, but not that he would ever wind up behind bars and barbed wire, like Jeanette and Ree Dempster and Kitty McDavid and the ticking time-bomb known as Angel Fitzroy. Hell, the kid didn’t even have enough nerve to ask Mary Pak to go to the Spring Dance with him.
“Jared’s fine, and I’m sure your Bobby is, too. How’s that medication doing with your… what do you call them?”
“My blurries. That’s when I can’t see people just right, or hear them just right. It’s all kinds of better since I started the new pills.”
“You’re not just saying that? Because you have to be honest with me, Jeanette. You know what I always say?”
“HPD, honesty pays dividends. And I’m being straight with you. It’s better. I sometimes still get down, though, then I start to drift and the blurries come back.”
“Any exceptions? Anyone who comes through loud and clear even when you’re depressed? And can maybe bootstrap you out of it?”
“Bootstrap! I like that. Yeah, Bobby can. He was five when I came in here. Twelve now. He plays keyboards in a group, can you believe that? And sings!”
“You must be very proud.”
“I am! Yours must be about the same age, right?”
Clint, who knew when one of his ladies was trying to turn the conversation, made a noncommittal noise instead of telling her that Jared was approaching voting age, weird as that seemed to him.
She thumped his shoulder. “Make sure he’s got condoms.”
From the umbrella-shaded guard post near the north wall, an amplified voice blared, “PRISONER! NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!”
Clint tossed the officer a wave (hard to tell because of the loudhailer, but he thought the uni in the lawn chair was that asshole Don Peters) to show all was cool and then said to Jeanette, “Now I’m going to have to discuss this with my therapist.”
She laughed, pleased.
It occurred to Clint, not for the first time, that if circumstances were entirely different, he would have wanted Jeanette Sorley for a friend.
“Hey, Jeanette. You know who Warner Wolf is?”
“Let’s go to the videotape!” she responded promptly, a spot-on imitation. “Why do you ask?”
It was a good question. Why did he ask? What did an old sportscaster have to do with anything? And why should it matter if his pop culture frame of reference (like his physique) was a little out of date?
Another, better question: Why had Lila lied to him?
“Oh,” Clint said, “someone mentioned him. Struck me funny.”
“Yeah, my dad loved him,” Jeanette said.
“Your dad.”
A snatch of “Hey Jude” came from his phone. He looked at the screen and saw his wife’s picture. Lila, who should have been deep in dreamland; Lila, who might or might not remember Warner Wolf; Lila, who had lied.
“I need to take this,” he told Jeanette, “but I’ll keep it brief. You should stroll over there to the garden, pull some weeds, and see if you can remember what you dreamed last night.”
“Little privacy, got it,” she said, and walked toward the garden.
Clint waved toward the north wall again, indicating to the officer that Jeanette’s move was sanctioned, then pushed ACCEPT. “Hey, Lila, what’s going on?” Aware as it came out of his mouth that it was how he had started many a patient conference.
“Oh, the usual,” she said. “Meth lab explosion, double homicide, doer in custody. I collared her strolling up Ball’s Hill pretty much in her altogether.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“Afraid not.”
“Holy shit, are you okay?”
“Running on pure adrenalin, but otherwise fine. I need some help, though.”
She filled in the details. Clint listened, not asking questions. Jeanette was working herself along a row of peas, pulling weeds and singing something cheerful about going uptown to the Harlem River to drown. At the north end of the prison yard, Vanessa Lampley approached Don Peters’s lawn chair, spoke to him, then took the seat as Don trudged toward the admin wing, head down like a kid who has been called to the principal’s office. And if anyone deserved to be called in, it was that bag of guts and waters.
“Clint? Are you still there?”
“Right here. Just thinking.”
“Just thinking,” Lila repeated. “About what?”
“About the process.” The way she pressed him took Clint aback. It almost seemed like she had been mocking him. “In theory it’s possible, but I’d have to check with Janice—”
“Then do it, please. I can be there in twenty minutes. And if Janice needs convincing, convince her. I need help here, Clint.”
“Calm down, I’ll do it. Fear of self-harm is a valid concern.” Jeanette had finished one row and was working her way back toward him along the next. “I’m just saying that ordinarily, you’d take her to St. Terry’s first to get her checked out. Sounds like she whammed her face pretty good.”
“Her face isn’t my immediate concern. She nearly tore one man’s head off, and stuck another guy’s head through a trailer wall. Do you really think I should put her in an exam room with some twenty-five-year-old resident?”
He wanted to ask again if she was all right, but in her current mood she’d go ballistic, because when you were tired and ragged, that’s what you did, lashed out at the person who was safe. Sometimes—often, even—Clint resented having to be the safe one. “Perhaps not.”
Now he could hear street sounds. Lila had left the building. “It’s not just that she’s dangerous, and it’s not just that she’s off her gourd. It’s like—Jared would say, ‘My Spidey Sense is tingling.’ ”
“Maybe when he was seven.”
“I’ve never seen her before in my life, I’d swear to that on a pile of Bibles, but she knows me. She called me by name.”
“If you’re wearing your uniform shirt, and I assume you are, there’s a name tag on your breast pocket.”
“Right, but all it says is NORCROSS. She called me Lila. I have to get off the phone. Just tell me that when I get there with her, the welcome mat will be out.”
“It will be.”
“Thank you.” He heard her clear her throat. “Thank you, honey.”
“You’re welcome, but you have to do something for me. Don’t bring her alone. You’re beat.”
“Reed Barrows will be driving. I’m riding shotgun.”
“Good. Love you.”
There was the sound of a car door opening, probably Lila’s cruiser. “Love you, too,” she said, and clicked off.
Was there a slight hesitation there? No time to think about that now, to pick at it until it turned into something it probably wasn’t, which was just as well.
“Jeanette!” And when she turned to him: “I’m going to have to cut our session short. Something has come up.”