No Good Deeds

by Laura Lippman

  She'd lisp back, We're from the government, and we're here to help.

  Her father's friends, most of them employed by the city and state and feds, would laugh until they were bent double.

  Jenkins was so frustrated that he didn't trust himself to speak. Dalesio was an inept asshole. If Jenkins had controlled the interview from the start…ut he hadn't wanted to do that. He needed that stubborn bitch to focus on Gabe, wanted her to see him as the enemy. Thing is, good cop–bad cop worked only when the bad cop was good at being the bad cop. He should have left Gabe out of it, worked this exclusively with Bully. But the DEA agent was a little too good at playing bad cop. Plus, verbal wasn't Bully's strength. Poor guy. He'd never really found his niche after they had taken him out of the undercover unit.

  No, the kid had folded, weak and ineffectual. Jenkins had told him repeatedly that they needed to extract the information now, that it was imperative to get her to give it up without going for the actual charge. They didn't want to do this in public. Her lawyer would certainly leak details of an official deal, if only to embarrass them. Sure, Schulian would go for charging Monaghan; she was furious about the way the Youssef case had played out in the press. She'd be happy to throw the full weight of her office toward obtaining the lead. Hell, she might even be proud of Gabe Dalesio, which was all he really cared about, his own career and standing. But then there would be too many players, too many people in the loop. This asshole kept ignoring Jenkins's admonition to keep this close, among the three of them.

  "There are some other leads in the paperwork," Gabe was burbling now, not getting how badly he had screwed up—or else covering for his embarrassment. They had gone for a late lunch at a steak house in the harbor, where the misty weather had held down the usual weekend crowds, and while the place wasn't bad, it made Jenkins wistful for the joints he'd known in New York. Keane's, Peter Luger's. The New York office was considered a bum assignment by most of the agents, but it was the only place Jenkins had wanted to be, and it had outstripped his fantasies. The best way to live in New York was to be rich, of course, but there was a second way to do it—having a job that encouraged people to shower you with perks. Access to restaurants and clubs, forgiving owners who let you slide on checks because you were FBI, you were keeping the city safe.

  Even with those hidden bonuses, it had been a stretch, living—and dressing—to the heights he desired on his government salary. And Betty had been expensive, surprisingly so. She'd been a waitress when they met, making jewelry on the side, seemingly down-to-earth and low-maintenance. But once he was disentangled from his wife and family, Betty's needs grew and grew.

  Then it had all gone to shit in a way he could never imagine. A tip had come into the Bureau about a possible terrorism suspect, a dark-skinned man photographing bridges around New York on a curiously regular schedule, almost like clockwork. Who wouldn't have jumped on the guy, brought him in, hammered away at him? He was a young Egyptian, a college student allegedly, and he claimed he was taking the digital photos for a school project, but Columbia University had never heard of him.

  Turned out the kid went to Columbia College, in Chicago. He was in New York on spring break. Oh, and he was a Christian, too, not a Muslim. Jenkins might have ridden out the private embarrassment of it all, but then the media had gotten it. Once it was public, someone had to take the fall. The Bureau couldn't blame Barry for the investigation itself, which had been totally by the book, but they found a way to discredit him. They started going over his expense reports, questioning every line item. In the end they never found enough to fire him, but they found enough irregularities and missing documentation to send him back to a make-work job in Baltimore. To add insult to injury, his new colleagues treated him like a short-timer, a man of no worth. He was given bullshit duties, things that didn't use 30 percent of his brain. At his lowest he had thought of putting a gun in his mouth a couple of times, but then he met Bully, who'd been even more thoroughly screwed by his bosses—but wasn't so defeated by it. Bully's fury had stoked his own, gotten him to take his tail out from between his legs and reclaim himself.

  "There's the articles of incorporation for her business—"

  The dumb shit was still babbling. Figured. Guy had wilted in front of the old cripple, but now he couldn't shut up. Collins hadn't said a word since he placed his order. Jenkins loved that about Collins, the way he didn't talk unless he had something to say.

  "Look, we have what we need," Jenkins said, cutting the kid off. "Don't get carried away."

  "I'm just saying that there's still more ways to get at her."

  "We had her," Jenkins said. "The point was trying to get her to tell us today, to keep this from turning into some huge public deal. That's why I told you not to go after the reporters, because that would have been all over the newspapers the minute you even questioned them."

  "Well, what about the information that Bully developed?" Collins frowned at Gabe's use of his nickname, but the kid was too insensitive to notice. "What do we know about the dead kid, Le'andro, his known associates? Why not jack up Bennie Tep, lean on him?"

  "Brilliant," Collins said, and Gabe beamed, not hearing the sarcasm.

  "We go to Bennie, we alert him that we know he's involved," Jenkins said. He was no longer trying to disguise his exasperation. In fact, he was amping it up, hoping that the kid would finally understand how badly he had screwed up. "He'll kill half of East Baltimore rather than risk being linked to the murder of a federal prosecutor."

  "But he's such a small-timer in the scheme of things, and you said he's always tried to avoid violence—"

  "He's small by design. Like a boutique, you know? He keeps his business close in order to reduce risk. He doesn't like to kill, but he will if he has to."

  "Oh," Gabe said, getting it at last, or seeming to. "Well, there's nothing hard and fast about the timeline. We can wait to bring her back in. If anything, it will probably make her even jumpier. Sword of Damocles and all that."

  "Sword of damn what?" Jenkins asked. He was a college boy, too, but that one got by him.

  "He was a man who sat under a sword, hanging by a thread," Collins said. Gabe, the poor sap, couldn't hide how impressed he was. Bad form. Bully wouldn't forgive him that.

  "You learn that in college?" Gabe asked.

  "High school. Dunbar."

  "Right—you were a Poet." Fuck, the kid was teasing Bully now, making "poet" sound like "faggot." But Collins wouldn't even waste a look on the guy.

  Crow's body was completely disoriented. He had stayed up until 3:00 A.M., which was the new 4:00 A.M., then gotten up at the new 10:00 A.M., which was the old 9:00 A.M. Drinking three PBRs on a practically empty stomach hadn't helped matters much. He should probably grab a meal before heading back. Or maybe stay here, get a good night's sleep, rather than risk nodding off at the wheel. Was he honoring his body's needs or postponing the reunion with Tess, who would be full of questions he couldn't answer? He felt foolish, running away to protect Lloyd only to lose him in a Salisbury nightclub. Some protector he'd turned out to be.

  A dusty gray minivan was idling in one of the spaces on the side street along FunWorld. For one stupid, panicky moment, Crow worried that the authorities had caught up with him. But he was pretty sure no law-enforcement agency used minivans.

  "Mr. Crow?" a woman called from the car.

  "Just Crow," a familiar voice corrected. "He's not a mister."

  "I found Lloyd hitchhiking this morning, and he said he lived here. But I didn't want to leave him until I saw a grown-up." The driver, a full-faced black woman with a serious Sunday hat—a tall, golden straw concoction that deserved to be called a crown—looked him up and down. "I guess you count."

  The side door slid open, and Lloyd climbed out of the minivan, at once sheepish and defiant. "Where were you last night, man? You left me."

  "I left—" But Crow saw that insisting on this technical point might cost him something larger. "I'm sorry. I went to buy new ce
ll phones. It didn't occur to me that you would be looking for me before closing."

  "We fed him a good lunch," the woman said. "My, he does have an appetite."

  "And he smells!" a little girl's voice called from within the depths of the minivan, provoking peals of childish laughter. Crow thought the insult would throw Lloyd into his worst defensive posture, that he might ball up his fists or say something inexcusably obscene. But he just mock-scowled and said, "Not as bad as you, Shavonda Grace," which earned another round of delighted giggles.

  "Looks like you made some friends," Crow said after the woman at the wheel—Mrs. Anderson, he had learned, of Dagsboro—made a three-point turn and headed back to the highway.

  "Naw. More like acquaintances."

  "Acquaintances can become friends."

  "If you say so."

  Did Lloyd mean to imply that Crow was more acquaintance than friend? It didn't matter. His actions undercut his cruel adolescent words. He had come back here. On his own, free to choose, he had directed Mrs. Anderson to bring him here. Perhaps he trusted Crow after all.

  MONDAY

  26

  Tess woke up about 7:00 A.M., her head fogged from restless dreams. They hadn't been real dreams, more a state between consciousness and unconsciousness in which her mind was stuck in a single groove, like a car spinning its tires in the sand. Crow's secret account, Crow's secret account, Crow's secret account. The fact nagged at her not only in its own right but because it was pointing her somewhere else. She did the only thing she knew to clear her head, the thing she would have done anyway on any weekday morning from mid-March to Thanksgiving. She went to the boathouse.

  Unlike the college crews and the local rowing club, a self-employed and solitary sculler such as Tess had the luxury of going out a little later, which allowed her to avoid the traffic jams during the peak times on the rickety docks. And while the middle branch of the Patapsco was far from pastoral, it provided the serenity and isolation she needed to think. Or not think, as the case might be. Here her brain could empty itself, sit still while her body did all the thinking. Tess had tried many things to reach that in-the-moment state that some call Zen—yoga, wine, bad television. But it was only on the water that her busy mind surrendered.

  Tess's body was pretty smart, as it turned out. Today her leg and arm and back muscles went through their paces with great gusto. By the time she was heading to the dock in a nonstop power piece, she had the detail that had been nagging at her.

  Tess wasn't the only woman who shared her life with a man who had a secret account. Gregory Youssef had left behind a safe-deposit box. Was there something to that? Should she try to persuade Wilma to open it before Tess gave up Lloyd?

  Her mind moved in time with the oars, thinking of other things she could do before she had to knuckle under to the feds. They had identified the young man, Le'andro Watkins, killed in Lloyd's stead but didn't seem interested in pursuing that lead. Tess could follow and even endorse that logic. Such an inquiry might end up alerting the killer that he had missed the real target, which could make Lloyd all the more vulnerable. The only thing Lloyd had going for him right now was that Youssef's killer assumed he was dead. That and the fact that only five people—Tess, Crow, Whitney, Feeney, and Marcy—knew who Lloyd was.

  Or was that six? This thought came to her as she was running the hose over her shell. There was at least one other person Lloyd trusted to the extent that they shared a scam and split the cash. Tess might not know the boy's name or whereabouts, but she did know what he looked like and how he might be found. She would locate him first, then surprise Wilma in her lair, much as Wilma had caught Tess off guard in a place where she had expected to be free from questioning.

  After another morning of painting, Crow and Lloyd used their lunch break to go to the library, check out the Books on Tape that Crow had returned just yesterday, already back in circulation at this small and efficient branch. Crow seized the opportunity to check the Internet as well, curious in spite of himself to read the accounts of Opening Day. Given his mother's Boston roots, he had been raised a Red Sox fan. It was, he reflected now, excellent preparation for being in a relationship with Tess—frustrating, infuriating, heartbreaking, exhilarating. But the Sox had persevered.

  After a mere eighty-seven years, a voice in his head reminded him as he closed the computer's browser.

  He and Lloyd continued to the FedEx box, dropping Tess's new phone in the mail to her. It would arrive tomorrow morning, and Crow could call her then.

  And tell her what? The long-term flaws in his plan became more apparent every day. Lloyd still didn't want to go back to Baltimore if it meant talking to authorities. When Crow had fled with him, he'd hoped there might be another break in the case, making Lloyd a moot topic. He saw now that an arrest in Youssef's murder wouldn't make Lloyd any less interesting to the various law-enforcement types. If someone was charged, Lloyd would still be expected to testify—and still face the street justice meted out to those who cooperated with the police. Crow had been naïve to think that time would buy Lloyd anything but more grief.

  He found himself wishing that Tess were here to argue with him, boss him, tell him to do things differently. But for once he was on his own, without Tess second-guessing him.

  Funny, it was what he had always thought he wanted.

  When it came to his house, his car, and himself, Gabe Dalesio was neither neat nor messy. He sometimes went too long without a haircut or didn't notice his shoes needed a shine. The remains of his latest Starbucks Americano often sloshed around for days in his Acura's cup holder. But where his actual work was concerned, he had systems upon systems upon systems. One of his trademarks, as he thought of it, was his use of a sketchbook, the largest one he could find, and a set of color-coded pens and Post-its. He had first started using this method when he was tracking money in drug and RICO cases. But now he deployed his colored pens in an attempt to figure out how everyone in Tess Monaghan's life interacted—and to gain back Jenkins's faith and trust. Look for the person or place with the most overlaps, Gabe decided, and he could figure out where they had stashed the source.

  The boyfriend should be the key. He worked for Patrick Monaghan, and his sudden absence was simply too convenient. Plus, he had a pocketful of cash, based on the deposit slip for the hundred and fifty thou, which meant he could go for days without using an ATM or a credit card. Gabe wished he could get a wiretap for the Monaghan telephone, but he knew he couldn't meet the standard, not yet. Down the road, maybe, but Jenkins didn't have the patience for such maneuvers. Gabe riffled his papers, looking for the yellow Post-its. Yellow—the color for cowards—was the boyfriend.

  The boyfriend's family was dull, which is to say that they were everything they appeared to be, a university professor and a sculptor, living the proper academia-social life in Charlottesville. Where had their son gotten his money, then? Tax filings should provide leads, but those weren't due for another two weeks. What would Gabe do if he had a pile of cash like that? Just what he was doing, he realized. He loved his job.

  The Monaghans and the Weinsteins, now, they were more promising. Steeped in local politics, and local politics always had a nut of corruption. Clearly, the more he leaned on her father, the more they got to her. That was when she had wavered in the interview, when they threatened her father. The Monaghans were green, the Weinsteins were purple. There had to be something to play with in those two worlds.

  He hadn't missed Jenkins's exasperation and disappointment yesterday. Gabe was just self-aware enough to realize how clueless Jenkins and Collins thought he was. He knew that they blamed him for screwing up this latest round. But what could he do, once the old guy sussed out that they were taking an unauthorized flier on this?

  The yellow path wasn't leading him anywhere. But he had put a pink Post-it on the liquor license, the Monaghan bitch's color. Why had he flagged this anyway? She wasn't listed anywhere on the license, and she didn't appear to have anything to do wi
th her father's business. The liquor license had been passed from Ed Keyes to Patrick Monaghan, so green was the only flag that should be flying here.

  Keyes. That was the name of her detective agency. Keyes Investigations, Inc. He had thought it was some stupid local reference, as in Francis Scott Key, "The Star-Spangled Banner." It was the name of the owner. Yes, there it was on the corporation papers. Keyes. Keyes. Key!

  He crumpled a paper cup, the only nonessential piece of paper in his office, and sent it sailing into his wastebasket. It bounced off the rim, teetered, then fell in. Gabe Dalesio. He shoots, he scores.

  Tess called Health Care for the Homeless, figuring the agency would have a ready list of the soup kitchens open on Mondays. There were fewer than ten, led by Our Daily Bread. The huge soup kitchen in the heart of downtown served every day, with almost a thousand people passing through its line. But she had a hunch that the young man she was searching for would stick closer to home. There was a small church-run program over on the East Side, which started serving at three to accommodate schoolkids. Lloyd hadn't gone to school, but his friend might. And it was over in that part of town, on a Monday, that Crow had met Lloyd.

  Holy Redeemer's director didn't bother masking her hostility to Tess and her mission. "Our kitchen is a haven," said Charlotte Curtis, a short, compact black woman with graying braids. "I don't want any of our guests to feel as if we've betrayed them. It's part of the reason I don't take federal or state money. I don't want anyone thinking they have a right to my records."

  "I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble," Tess said. "Sort of the opposite. I've been trying to help a kid named Lloyd Jupiter."

  It felt strange to say his name, given how fiercely she had concentrated on not saying it for the past week. But this woman was so protective of her clients that Tess couldn't imagine her cooperating with the authorities.