No Good Deeds

by Laura Lippman

  He crept out of the half-ass room they had stuck him in and paused in the hallway, listening. The dogs were his main concern, especially the Doberman. The big, rat-looking dog didn't seem so much a threat, not unless it got close enough to breathe on you. Dog's breath was nasty. He waited, his lies ready—just going to the bathroom, needed a drink of water—but nothing happened. No boards creaking, no long toenails clattering on the wooden floors, no lights coming on.

  Time to go.

  Part of his brain warned him to do just that, only that. Go. Just get away from these people, put some distance between him and them, and hope he never saw them again. In the most paranoid part of his brain, he had almost persuaded himself that he'd been set up, that the woman had sent her whipped boyfriend to go looking for him and drag him back here, knowing what he'd done. But naw, that couldn't be. It was just his usual shitty-ass luck, the life of Lloyd. Try to make a buck, nothing more, end up with this gungho dude and his detective girlfriend, who seemed to know something that nobody was supposed to know. Why wouldn't she stop saying that name? Youssef. Youuuuuuuuuuuuussefffffffff. Like she could read his mind. No, the smart thing was to get out.

  Thing was, he had come over the threshold with plans, and Lloyd always fell in love with his own plans. If he pictured himself doing something or having something, no matter how small, he had to try to follow through. There had been a poem in school about how bad that was, putting off a dream. Lloyd had allowed this guy to bring him here because he thought there would be something in it for him, and he had been clocking stuff from the moment he got inside the house, calculating what he could carry, what he could sell. In his head he had already made fifty, a hundred dollars easy.

  He retreated into the study and surveyed the portable goods available to him. It was some trifling shit. The jewelry would be in the bedroom, obviously off-limits now. He should have sneaked back there earlier. No, never mind, the woman didn't look like someone who went in for good stuff, judging by her watch and the small gold hoops in her ears. But there was the laptop and a digital camera. Also some DVDs, although they didn't look like the kind that would generate much cash. They all had the same title. He sounded it out silently: Cri-ter-ion Collection. Wasn't that the guy who wrote the book about the dinosaurs? Lloyd had liked that book, even better than the movie, because the book didn't let anyone off the hook. The mad-scientist dude was pecked to death by his own little monsters, while the movie made out that he was some white-bearded Santa Claus guy. Villains needed to be punished proper, in Lloyd's opinion, although he didn't always agree with the movies on who the villains were. Like, Spider-Man 2. That octopus dude had a right to be pissed.

  No, wait: "Criterion Collection" must be the company that made these DVDs. The real titles were for sure bizarre. Yojimbo. Rashomon. Ran. Ran from what? They were in black and white, too, which meant they weren't worth carrying out of here. Too bad, because they looked kind of interesting, like old-fashioned kung fu movies. Throne of Blood. That one he had to take, even if he didn't have a DVD player his own self. Dub did.

  There was a big jar of change, but it was too large to carry, and fishing out the quarters would make too much noise. The other electronics were all too big, too, and not at all up-to-date. No flat screen, no plasma, just a shitty-ass Sony no more than nineteen inches, although it would still bring a little something. Then again, he was taking the Lexus, so he could carry more. But he had to travel part of the way on foot, at the end. So this was all he was going to get, one armful's worth.

  At the last minute, he opened up a little box he had spied on her desk, a blue oval with a horned horse painted on it, to see if jewelry might be hidden in it. Unicorn, that was what you called it. Not horned horse, unicorn, and this unicorn was hiding a stash of weed. They had weed. Fuckin' hypocrites, like all grown-ups. Okay, not exactly, it wasn't as if they had been in his face, wagging fingers, saying no-no-no like his mama, who used to say yes an awful lot, pre-Murray. She was clean now, which should have been good, but it wasn't somehow. Man, it pissed Lloyd off for reasons he couldn't quite explain even to himself, this stash tucked away in a painted box. He pocketed the box, then headed out into the hall, laptop under his arm.

  The big dog, the scary one, had nosed its way out of the couple's bedroom and was now staring at him. Lloyd froze in place, petrified. He hated dogs. He expected this one to start barking and growling, giving him up. He began working on a story. But the dog just regarded him with sad, judging eyes, not unlike his mama's. Oh, Lloyd, the dog seemed to say. Stupid Lloyd. Bad Lloyd.

  The dog didn't try to keep him from going, though. Again, just like his mama.

  The alarm system in the house was no problem. He had made it a point to watch that Crow dude disarm it when they came in, so he punched in the code now, taking it off instant, then grabbed a set of keys from the hooks by the door and sailed into the cold night. It was creepy here, almost like country, super silent and darker than any night he had ever seen, even when he was out at Hickey, not that you were given a lot of chances to stare at the night sky when you were locked up.

  Shit. Another car, a real piece-of-shit thing, was blocking the Lexus. He hadn't counted on that, another car being in back of the one he wanted, but yeah, she had to drive something home. Worse, it was a stick, which was weak, unless it was a Maserati or something like that. Lloyd didn't know how to drive stick. He'd just have to make it out on foot.

  Still, again—it was so hard to abandon his beautiful plan, having already spent the money he planned to make five times over. The house was on a little rise. Maybe he could roll the hooptie out into the street by releasing the parking brake, then come back for the Lexus and head out the other end. What did he care if the Volvo blocked the bottom part? It was a weird-ass street, narrow as an alley. The houses on the opposite side, the ones whose backyards came up to the edge, were big and fancy, but the houses on this side were nothing great. Where the fuck was he anyway? He hoped he could find his way home from here. He had tried to pick out landmarks on the drive here, and he was pretty sure he could work his way back to Cold Spring Lane, which meant he could find Green-mount and then home, but he couldn't swear which direction he needed to go. The dude had all but kidnapped him, forced him to come here. All he was doing was freeing himself, like a slave escaping the plantation.

  He opened the door of the Lexus to stash the goods, and it shrieked. Fuck, that was alarmed, too, and the piercing sound filled the night. He had forgotten about the car alarm. He'd have to take the Volvo now, make a quick getaway. He'd driven stick on a video game at ESPN Zone. How different could it be? But while he managed to get the engine to turn over, release the parking brake, and roll back, the car stalled out as soon as he tried to put it in a forward gear. As he struggled with the gears, gravity took over, and he found himself rolling backward, faster and faster. At first he continued trying to start the car, then realized he might be better off applying the brake. But nothing happened, no matter how hard he pressed—shit, that wasn't the brake. The brake was in the middle. He slammed both feet down on it hard and triumphantly brought the car to a stop in the middle of the cross street at the foot of the drive.

  He sat there no more than a second, breathing hard from the rush of it all, trying to gather his thoughts, which weren't at their sharpest. Go back? No. What, then? Get away. Go. Run. But even as he fumbled with the Volvo's door, a huge old boat of a car appeared out of nowhere, bearing down on him. It was enormous, the biggest car-car that Lloyd had ever seen, almost as long as a limo, and strangely noiseless, but maybe his hearing was off—or stunned from the alarm on the Lexus. No, he could hear his own breath, he just couldn't hear the approaching car's engine. It was like a ghost car, drifting toward him, showing no sign of stopping. Slowly, gracefully, it rolled, rolled, rolled—and struck the Volvo smack in the side.

  Lloyd hit the steering wheel with a jolt, but the Volvo was an older model, with no airbag to slow him down. Ribs smarting, he jumped from the car, eve
n as an old man—a very real red-faced, flesh-and-blood old man—emerged from the ghost car and began yelling at him.

  Lloyd didn't wait to hear what the man was screaming or to offer the opinion that it was the old man's fault for not braking to avoid the stalled Volvo, or at least trying to steer around it. The guy clearly had had time to avoid the collision, but Lloyd had no intention of pursuing that argument. No, Lloyd ran, heading up the hill beyond the ghost car, although he had a vague feeling that Cold Spring Lane and the city he knew was the other way. He ran through the midnight-quiet streets of this strange neighborhood, wondering how long a black man could run here without being noticed and, inevitably, arrested.

  He reached what appeared to be a main street, slowing down to a fast walk, his lungs on fire. He would still be regarded with suspicion here, but he wasn't quite as out of place. There were bus stops and shit, so he could always say that's where he was headed if anyone pulled him over.

  It was a long and miserable walk in the night air, with slippery patches of ice underfoot. The sounds of sirens in the distance made him jumpy. By luck, and luck alone, he managed to find his way back to Cold Spring, which took him to the Light Rail station. Here, at least, he wouldn't look out of place.

  Stomping his feet in the cold, waiting for the train to come, he couldn't help feeling…well, angry. It pissed him off, having to leave that laptop and digital camera behind. He wanted someone to blame for his troubles, and he decided it was all that woman's fault. She would probably make a big stink, too, even though he had left her stuff behind and it wasn't his fault that old car had rammed him. The dude—the dude, he would want to let it go, but the woman was tougher. She had a mean streak. He'd been stupid. No, he'd been greedy, which was worse. Can't ever leave well enough alone, was the way his mother put it, and maybe she was right. But at the time Lloyd had just thought of it as getting a little bonus, of making up for the bad luck that seemed to dog him everywhere. He had the worst fucking luck.

  Gregory Youssef. It had been a name to him, a name and four numbers, nothing more. He hadn't thought about that caper for months. Favor done, opportunity lost, just another day in the life of Lloyd Jupiter, the can't-win-for-losingest loser to ever come out of East Baltimore. Shit. Shit.

  He hadn't known until tonight that the killed lawyer had been that guy, that the name he had buried in his memory was of any concern to anyone other than the guy himself. Did that make him an accessory? No, but it meant he had been played.

  He was so fucked.

  The train hissed into the station. He didn't have a ticket, but he was counting on getting a few stops down before the conductor caught up to him and threw him off. As it turned out, he made it to Howard Street before anyone approached him, and he was able to run, avoiding the citation.

  It was so cold he didn't even try to get back to the East Side, just went to the downtown parking garage where the homeless men slept on the steam grates. He hadn't been there for a while, but he remembered that it was around the corner from that weird-ass orange, blue, and yellow statue.

  He was too late for the sandwich run, which some church group did about 10:00 P.M., and the best spots were taken, but he still found himself a manhole cover with some hot air coming up. You got kind of damp sleeping that way, but it was warm and safe. Relatively. He took his coat off and bunched it under his head to make a pillow, and his body's exhaustion overwhelmed his mind's jumpy agitation, pulling him into sleep almost immediately. He dreamed about horses, Corvettes, and pork chops.

  When he woke up at dawn, his jacket looked as if he had chewed on it, just a little bit. He went out into the day, blinking, almost expecting to find some cops just outside the garage.

  But there was no one waiting for him, absolutely no one at all.

  TUESDAY

  8

  "What do you mean, Crow won't press charges?"

  Whitney Talbot's voice, never demure, was like a ship's horn when she was surprised or outraged. It sliced through the midday din of Matthew's, which, admittedly, was not difficult to do. The sixty-year-old restaurant took up only the front half of an old rowhouse, and there were few diners at this time of day.

  Still, even in a place used to voluble and excitable customers, Whitney attracted attention. She always did. Tess, who had known her since college, had decided having Whitney as a friend was like traveling around Baltimore with a white Siberian tiger. Seldom dull, always the center of attention, but also a little unpredictable.

  "Lloyd has a jacket—" Tess began, shaking hot pepper flakes over the traditional tomato pie. Whitney was having the house specialty, a crab pie, but shellfish-averse Tess never risked contact with the local delicacy. Unless she was desperate to leave a social occasion early. Then a little anaphylactic shock was just the ticket.

  "A jacket? Did he steal that, too?"

  "A record. He's already been in Hickey for auto theft. Crow doesn't want to bring charges because he'll almost certainly end up back inside. And maybe not as a juvenile this time."

  "But even if he's not a car thief, he's still guilty of leaving the scene of an accident, right? And you have to tell police who he is, or you're liable."

  "Crow gave them a fake name," Tess said, still feeling sheepish for letting that bit of deception fly. "Bob Smith. No one batted an eye, even when Crow helpfully added, ‘That's Bob with one o.'"

  "Isn't it illegal to lie to cops?"

  "Sort of. But with no real injuries, the cops aren't exactly making this a priority. And Crow told them the truth when he said he didn't know how to find our houseguest again. You know what's really embarrassing? I think the cops thought it was some kind of kinky pickup. Two white suburbanites cruising for decadent thrills, bringing home a young hustler and getting metaphorically screwed instead. They've probably opened a pervert file on us."

  If Whitney's voice was loud, then her laugh was a borderline bray. "It sounds like the damage was pretty minor," she said at last. "Other than that done to your reputations with Northern District, I mean. You said the other guy had nothing more than a crumpled bumper, and the Volvo's such a junker you can't really damage it."

  "Yeah, but he's claiming the impossible-to-pin-down soft-tissue injury. Worse yet, the responding cops let him go without administering a Breathalyzer. Believe me, he would have flunked. You could smell the gin on him ten feet away. Everyone in the neighborhood knows about Mr. Parrish. He goes over to the Swallow at the Hollow, then literally coasts home, sliding down Oakdale and then making the turn toward his house on Wilmslow. He rationalizes that it's not driving drunk if his foot isn't on the accelerator and the engine is off. Just coasting drunk."

  "Well, it's not like Crow has any money. Can't get blood from a stone."

  "If Parrish has a cagey lawyer, they might go after me—through my homeowner's or the umbrella policy I carry for the business. And my carrier won't be so blasé about accepting Crow's bogus Bob Smith story. They could refuse to cover me, and even a small settlement would wipe me out right now."

  Whitney didn't laugh at this. Despite being born rich—or perhaps because of it—Whitney took money very seriously.

  "Then Crow's being an idiot. This kid doesn't deserve his nobility. You took him into your home, fed him, gave him shelter, and how did he reward you? By trying to steal from you and wrecking Crow's car. You've got to convince Crow to tell the truth and press charges."

  Tess sighed and focused on her pizza, but even a Matthew's tomato pie could not soothe her. With Crow this morning, she had taken Whitney's side of the argument. She had, in fact, been far more shrill and unkind. The past twelve hours had been a series of shocks—the jolt of the Lexus's alarm, the cold air that hit them as they raced outside with only jackets and boots added to their nightclothes, the dogs trotting excitedly behind. The scene at the bottom of the hill, with Mr. Parrish stalking around his car in inebriated indignation, saying some terribly racist things about what and whom he never thought he would see in Roland Park. It was Mr. Parrish's
diatribe, as much as anything else, that had hoisted Crow with his sanctimonious petard. By the time the police arrived, he was adamant that Lloyd—well, Bob—was their guest and that he had implicit permission to use Crow's car. And the fact was, Mr. Parrish's mammoth Buick had struck the Volvo so far back along the midsection that Tess was inclined to agree with Crow: Lloyd was stalled in the street at the moment of impact, so Mr. Parrish was to blame for the collision. After all, the one thing that they hadn't heard that night was the Volvo's engine, and it was a noisy, raucous car, audible for blocks.

  Even so, Crow shouldn't have given the police a false name for Lloyd. That had been rash, a mistake that was sure to come back and haunt them. The boy was still liable for leaving the scene of an accident, although, given the small stakes—no real injuries, the minor damage to Mr. Parrish's car—Tess doubted that the police would spend a lot of time trying to find and arrest him. And the insurance companies wouldn't be much interested in him either. Lloyd had no figurative pockets, shallow or deep, under any name, so Crow's carrier couldn't transfer the fiduciary responsibility to him. Yet Mr. Parrish would collect nothing if the case were treated like the theft that it was. No, as long as Crow claimed that Lloyd had his permission to use the car, Crow would be on the hook for everything. Tess's only hope was that Mr. Parrish's insurance company, once it ferreted out how few assets Crow had, would give up.

  Tess worked a lot with insurance companies. The industry's very aversion to paying out large sums had generated several small ones for her over the years, so she would never stoop to gross generalizations where agents and actuaries were concerned. She hated to think what another Tess Monaghan might do if presented with such a case. She would make short work of the assignment, getting Mr. Parrish a nice little check and never caring what happened to the irresponsible driver on the other side of the equation.