My Ex's Father Is the Mafia King I Am Court-Ordered to Evaluate, and I Am the Reason He Is in the Cell novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Steel Table

In session two Kostas asks only whether his son is eating, says aloud in front of the guard what her voice does to him, and Fay notices he never calls Niko by name.

The second session started at ten the next Thursday, and I came armed with a checklist.

I had told myself all week that he would be ordinary.

A competency evaluation has a shape, and I had run it forty-one times.

Does he understand the charges, does he understand who is who in the courtroom, can he help his lawyer.

The guard locked the door behind me and went to the window onto the corridor.

He was the young one with the dry cough, and he kept his eyes on the clock.

Kostas Drakos sat exactly as I had left him.

Orange jumpsuit, hands flat on the table, the left one slightly curled.

"Dr. Hennessy," he said.

"Mr. Drakos," I said.

I sat down and laid out the consent sheet with a pen on top of it.

"This is a standard form," I said. "It says you understand that what you tell me goes into a report for the court."

"I understand it," he said.

"Then initial here."

I slid the sheet across.

He did not pick up the pen.

"May I ask you something first?"

"You may ask," I said.

"Is my son eating?"

I had prepared for threats and for charm and for a lawyer's script.

I had not prepared for that.

"I wouldn't know," I said. "I haven't spoken to Niko in eleven months."

He took that in without any change in his face.

"He was thin at Christmas," he said. "His aunt sends him food and he does not eat it."

"Mr. Drakos, I'm not here to carry messages," I said.

"No."

"Please initial the form."

He took the pen then.

I watched the scarred hand hold it with the thumb and two fingers in a small stiff reach.

He wrote a K and a D in clean square capitals.

The pen was still between his fingers when I reached for the page.

My hand closed on the edge and brushed his wrist.

I meant to pull away, and I did not do it fast enough.

His wrist was warm and dry, with a pulse in it, slow and level.

For a moment my fingertips lay right on that pulse.

I felt it in my own throat.

Neither of us moved.

Then I took the sheet and the contact was gone.

I wrote the time on my folder with a hand that was not quite mine.

"Do you know why you're here?" I asked.

"The court wishes to know whether I understand what is happening to me," he said.

"And do you?"

"I am charged with the killing of a man on Eastern Avenue and with the books of my family's business," he said. "I understand it as well as anyone in this building."

"What is the prosecutor's role?" I asked.

"To say I did it," he said.

"And your lawyer's?"

"To say I did not."

"And the judge's?" I said.

"To decide who is more tired," he said.

I almost smiled.

I turned it into a cough, and he saw it.

One corner of his mouth moved, and it was gone at once.

The guard was still watching the clock.

"Can you tell me what you remember of the night of the killing?" I asked.

"That is a question for my lawyer," he said.

"It's a question the court has asked."

"Then the court may ask my lawyer."

He tilted his head.

"I am not afraid of your question, Doctor. I would rather answer a different one."

"Which one?" I said.

"What your voice does to me."

I said nothing.

He spoke quietly and evenly, and to the guard at the glass it sounded like a prisoner answering a doctor.

"Eleven months in a building where every voice is a shout or a lie," he said. "Then the door opens, and you say 'Mr. Drakos' as if I were a man you meant to be fair to."

"That isn't a clinical observation," I said.

"No. It is a fact about me."

His eyes did not leave my face.

"I have thought about your mouth every day since the court sent me your name."

The heat went up my neck so fast that I felt it in my ears.

I looked down at my page and wrote: affect, calm.

The pen caught in the paper and tore a ragged line through the word.

"I'll note that you've gone off topic," I said.

"Please do," he said.

"I'll note that you made a personal remark to your evaluator."

"Yes. Write it down, and I will sign it."

I put the pen down.

Outside the glass, the guard coughed and checked the clock.

I picked the pen up again and wrote nothing.

"What do you want from this evaluation?" I said.

"I want you to ask me the right question," he said.

"Which is?"

"You will know it when you get there."

"Is Niko in danger?" I asked.

I did not know why I asked it.

It came up from the part of me that had loved him.

"My son," Kostas said, "is a good boy."

He said it in the present tense, flat, with no pride in it.

I wrote it down, because I wrote everything down.

Then my pen stopped, because I was looking at the page.

He had said my son twice in an hour.

In two years at his table, I had heard him say Niko's name a hundred times.

He said it with a rough softness, over a sleeping dog or an uneaten plate.

He had not said it once today.

"Time," the guard said, and the door buzzed.

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