No Good Deeds

by Laura Lippman

  "You happen to hear the name?" she asked after a hard swallow.

  "Something Italian."

  "Dalesio?"

  "Yeah, like the restaurant. Dalesio. You know the guy?"

  31

  Live and learn, Jenkins thought. Gail Schulian wasn't going to make the same mistake that her predecessor had, calling press conferences and vowing to avenge the death of Gabe Dalesio. She was playing this as close to the vest as possible. Here it was almost four o'clock, and the name hadn't been released to the public yet. As far as the general population knew, the Canton carjacking was just some unlucky civilian.

  Collins had done as he'd been told, gone to the bosses and spoken about his drink with a dead man. He said Dalesio had been working on some leads in the Youssef case, but it was all about trying to get the female PI to give up her source, nothing inherently dangerous.

  Collins had reported the details back via cell phone, although even that made Jenkins nervous. Just their luck, some hobbyist with a scanner would pick up their conversation. But whatever Collins was, he was disciplined, and while an eavesdropper might wonder why he felt the need to relate all this to Jenkins, there was nothing in the content of their conversation to cause trouble. Yes, Collins had been a most satisfactory protégé all around.

  Until he murdered Gabe Dalesio.

  Killing Youssef had been bad enough, but necessary. The whole beauty of Jenkins's scheme was that it was low-risk, a fed's version of playing stickup man. They were stealing money from a drug dealer, and a mediocre drug dealer at that, one who was unlikely to be a target but had the old-school arrogance to think he might be. It was a scheme Jenkins had dreamed up and polished while in exile in Woodlawn, waiting for retirement and contemplating suicide. The thing was, such a scheme required a collaborator. A defense attorney had seemed the likely go-between, and Jenkins couldn't stomach the thought of that. Then he had met Mike Collins, another former wonder boy covered in shame. As an East Sider with contacts on the ground, Bully could do what few other feds could: go straight to the source. Collins hashed out the deal, told Bennie Tep that he was coming up on wiretaps but that Collins could hold him harmless for a monthly fee. It was like selling real estate on the moon; the only way that Bennie Tep could prove they weren't protecting him was if he got arrested by the feds, and that was never going to happen.

  How had Youssef figured it out? That bugged Jenkins to this day, because if Youssef could figure it out, someone else could as well. He was such a smarmy bastard, cutting himself in when he hadn't done any of the work. But okay, Jenkins was fine with giving him a cut, letting him collect a little Bennie Tep money, too. It didn't even cost him and Bully anything; Mike just told Bennie that they had to bring an AUSA in to guarantee his protection, so the monthly fee went up. No, it was okay when Youssef wanted in.

  It was when he wanted out that things came to a head, and the fact that he wanted to do it because he had a kid on the way just made Jenkins more nervous. Once Youssef opted out, it would be all too easy for him to turn on them if the shit ever came down. But Jenkins had smiled and shook the young man's hand, told him there were no hard feelings, congratulated him on his soon-to-be-born son, and let him go his own way, thinking everything was peachy.

  Bennie hadn't wanted any part in killing Youssef; that would be a death-penalty crime, and he was too cautious for that. But he let Mike have one of his low-level kids set it up. Le'andro wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree, but he had faked his way through his part. He got in touch with Youssef, claimed to know something about a Pakistani who was funneling money into local drug gangs, asking questions about weapons and dirty bombs. The night before Thanksgiving was supposed to be Youssef's big score, a meeting with someone close to the Paki, arranged by Le'andro. He had headed downtown, thinking he was on his way to being a hero.

  He hadn't died heroically. He had given up the ATM number readily enough, thinking it might save his life, but the punishment had just begun. Make it look personal, Jenkins had impressed on his protégé. Make it look angry. Truth be told, Collins had succeeded a little too well at that part. In the end, when they were parked along the Patapsco in the state park, Jenkins had turned away, not wanting to see what Collins was capable of.

  But it had gone according to plan, except for the moment that Youssef tried to get away by wading across the river. Collins had caught him on the other side, and he didn't have to make it look angry then, because he was. Funny, that unplanned contingency had worked for them, too, sending the case into Howard County, where the detectives had even less experience handling homicide than Baltimore County did.

  Looking back, Jenkins regretted all the thinking and conniving. The overreaching, really. He knew better. The shrewder you tried to be, the greater the likelihood that something would trip you up. The E-ZPass, for example. That little discrepancy had brought Dalesio into the investigation, and they would have been better off without him in the long run. Better off without his death for sure. And he should have known not to rely on some street kid like Le'andro. Why had he handed the ATM card off to someone else, who then screwed it all up? What had he told the other kid, if anything? Maybe they could stop now, play the odds that this other kid didn't know anything that could implicate Bully, much less Jenkins. But if the kid dragged Bennie Tep into this, he'd sell them out in a minute. Well, sell Collins out. Bennie Tep didn't know Jenkins existed. No, it couldn't be risked. They had to plug this last leak.

  But they had a plausible reason now. Collins was going to go to Delaware and find this kid, assuming Dalesio was right about where they were. Collins was going to finish the job that his new best friend wouldn't be able to do, being shot down and all in the prime of his young life. They were going to find the source—no, the accomplice, which would explain why he was so desperate to evade them—and whose fault would it be if the kid pulled a gun on them, refused to be taken alive?

  The only question was whether they should leave tonight or tomorrow morning. Tomorrow, he was thinking. Sick days all around. As the afternoon wore on, he started blowing his nose, talking a little raspier than usual, complaining about the pollen. He even sneezed a couple of times, not that a single one of his so-called colleagues said so much as gesundheit or bless you. Well, fuck you guys, too.

  Tess hadn't realized how lucky she'd been, getting Tull on her first try that morning. Despite her multiple urgent voice mails and pages, even with the "911" code appended, it was almost seven before he got back to her. It was hard, competing with the murder of an assistant U.S. attorney—even when you had what might be relevant information. Tull sounded weary and stressed, the end of his day still distant.

  "There's this DEA agent, Mike Collins—"

  "We've talked to Mike Collins," he said. "He had a drink with Dalesio in Canton, said good-bye to him in front of the bar, and headed out. He told his boss, and his boss told him to come talk to us. And yes, we know that Gabe Dalesio was pressing you on the Youssef murder."

  "Tull, Collins is the killer. There was no carjacking. This is what this guy does. He makes murders look like, well, other murders. A carjacking in this case. I think he also did Youssef and that street kid I was asking you about, Le'andro Watkins. See? He plays with the stereotypes of homicide, makes us see what we expect to see."

  "Tess, I know they've been leaning on you, but this is beyond paranoid."

  "But he could have done it, right? He was with him right before."

  "Sure, if we're talking about the mere physics of the situation. As a problem of time and space, it's possible. But why in hell would a DEA agent kill this guy, much less the other two?"

  It was an excellent question. Tess pondered the stray bits of information she had gathered—the money in Youssef's account, the death of a teenager who worked for a drug dealer, a teenager whose name that Collins knew, a teenager who was connected to Youssef's ATM card. She felt like she was working a monochromatic jigsaw puzzle. The pieces fit theoretically, but trying to piece them togeth
er could make you go blind. Or mad.

  "Would you pull him in for questioning tomorrow, hold him on that pretext until I make some…um, arrangements?"

  "Not without a lot more information."

  "I'm sure that Collins killed Dalesio, Martin." The use of his first name, which Tull loathed, was almost a code between them, a sign that Tess was as serious as she ever got. "Maybe because Dalesio figured something out that he wasn't supposed to know."

  "Is this insight coming from your elusive source?" There was an unmistakable edge to Tull's voice. He was a loyal friend, but he couldn't possibly approve of Tess's refusal to cooperate with a homicide investigation.

  "Mike Collins is one of three feds who's spent a lot of time in the past ten days trying to get that information out of me. Dalesio was one of the others, and the third is an FBI agent, Barry Jenkins."

  "I knew Barry Jenkins on his first pass through Baltimore. He's a good guy."

  "Okay, sure." Tess had no desire to argue this point. It was Collins she feared, not Jenkins, who was probably in the dark as well. She assumed that photo of Whitman had been meant for him, or someone else familiar with Collins's life story. "But keep all this in mind, Tull. If anything happens—to me, to Crow, to our…um, friend—remember this conversation, okay? Remember that I tried to tell you."

  "Don't be so melodramatic, Tess. You're talking about a DEA agent and a longtime FBI guy. They don't go around killing civilians, much less assistant U.S. attorneys. Hell, the DEA and the FBI don't even work together under normal circumstances. They got no use for each other."

  "If you say so. But if I bring…my source to you, can you offer true protection? Can you guarantee anyone's safety?"

  Tull paused, all the answer Tess needed. "It's hard, Tess. Put aside your whole conspiracy theory. This kid is afraid because he's double-crossed a drug dealer, right? Unless he's got family someplace well outside Baltimore, unless he's willing to stay off the streets, I'd be a liar if I promised anything."

  "That's what I thought. What if I can bring you proof that Collins is connected to all of this?"

  "Whatta you got?"

  "I'll tell you in an hour."

  32

  The police had come and gone at Gabe Dalesio's rental house, which was what Tess was counting on. If time hadn't been at a premium, she would have hunted down the landlord and talked her way in, used one of her official-looking ID cards. "Death inspector" for the state medical examiner's office was good. So was any kind of public-utility business card, which allowed her to claim reports of a gas or carbon monoxide leak. But it was past 7:30 P.M., and she didn't want to waste time trying to track down the registered owner of this property on Hanover Street. Even if she did find the landlord, he could turn out to be an out-of-town investor who used a local property-management firm. More time wasted.

  And with the sky still light, thanks to daylight savings time, breaking and entering wasn't the best option. So Tess decided to go straight at it, knocking on a neighbor's door and asking if he had a spare key.

  "I'm a friend of Gabe's family…."

  "From Jersey?"

  "Yes." It was amazing, the information that people would plant in a well-timed pause, then give one credit for knowing. "They want me to go into the apartment, make sure certain things are there. The police"—she wiggled her fingers—"don't always leave things as they found them."

  "I saw the cops. They wouldn't tell me anything, but…it's him, right? The guy killed in Canton?"

  The neighbor was in his late twenties or early thirties, an aging frat-boy type with a paunch. His shock at his neighbor's death had been dulled by a beer-bred complacency. Again, perfect for Tess's needs. An older, more vigilant neighbor would have been inclined toward hard-nosed skepticism, while a young woman would have been outside her charm range. This was her optimum demographic for manipulation. Tess nodded, eyes downcast.

  "The thing is, Gabe had my keys, but he never gave me his. He was kinda paranoid."

  Shit. "Darn."

  "But you know what? I bet you could get into his place via the roof."

  "The roof?"

  "We both got decks. You go up through mine and cross over. It's no big deal. We do it all the time. You hear about those barge parties people have on lakes? We have, like, roof parties running most of the block."

  Rooftop decks were a divisive feature in South Baltimore, beloved by the newcomers, decried by the preservationists. Suddenly Tess was all for them. Her new best friend led her through a house notable only for the smell of mildewing laundry and the large-screen televisions in at least three of the rooms she glimpsed. Once on his deck, he seemed prepared to follow her over the railing and into Gabe's house, but she persuaded him that it would be better if she were alone, in case any official authority questioned her presence there. "I'm a friend of the family, but if I take someone else in with me, I become just another burglar."

  He sent her off with a cheerful, vigorous wave, as if she was going on an ocean voyage, and Tess clambered from his deck to Gabe's. The door was locked, but flimsy. Not so flimsy, however, that she could force it with her weight. She was about to summon help from her new best friend when she saw the window overlooking the deck. There was the tiniest gap at the bottom, which meant it wasn't locked. She knocked out the screen, lifted the sash, and climbed into what proved to be Gabe's home office.

  His desk was covered with stacks and stacks of paper, but orderly. Her eyes fell first on a notebook, its lined pages covered with the same sentence over and over again: I will be a Supreme Court justice. I will be a Supreme Court justice. He had been writing this up to twenty times a day for months, apparently, the poor dumb mook. Her gaze then fell upon her own name, on a chart: T. Monaghan. There was also P. Monaghan, J. Monaghan, K. Monaghan (Kitty had not taken Tyner's last name upon marriage, bless her). E. Ransome—that was Crow, of course. Each name had been inked in a different color. If she hadn't been the target, she would have studied and admired this impeccable organization. Tess had thought she was pretty good at charting and delineating her projects, but Gabe Dalesio made her look like a rank amateur.

  The color scheme was mirrored, she realized, in the Post-its fluttering like banners from various stacks of paper. She glanced back to the chart—Crow was yellow. There were at least a dozen yellow flags, and the first one she grabbed was a statement from a brokerage firm up in Towson. A million dollars. More than a million dollars, invested in a mutual fund whose acronym meant nothing to Tess. For a moment she was swamped with doubt and fear. Where could this money have come from? But it was a legal account, not a secret safe-deposit box. And the feds hadn't bothered to taunt her with this information. Crow's money wasn't the issue, not as far as they were concerned.

  She needed to be systematic, logical. She pulled every piece of paper with a yellow Post-it, even those with other colors attached. Here was her father's liquor license, which had been triple-flagged in yellow, pink, and green, and scored with exclamation marks. A name had been circled in those three colors as well, Ed Keyes. Tess had never known that Keyes held the Point's license before it was transferred to her father, but she wasn't surprised. Spike had not been much of one for legalities, much less the kind of sucking up that helped a man get a liquor license. Other yellows held brief dossiers on Crow's parents, but no excited punctuation.

  She searched for another triple flag and found the articles of incorporation for her business. How could this be of interest? Were they so desperate for leverage on her that they had hoped to find she was operating without a proper license?

  Another multicolored circle, another series of !!!—next to Ed Keyes's name.

  An interesting overlap, but why would it matter to Gabe Dalesio unless Ed was a crook, and Tess, although she had never met her nominal partner, doubted that. Her Uncle Spike had sworn by the former cop's loyalty, his reliability.

  Uncle Spike. Crow, working in Spike's old bar, might have called the old man for help in getting out of town. And
Spike could have sent him to Ed, his old reliable. Did that mean Crow was with Ed, or simply that Ed had helped him hide somewhere else? That would explain the exclamation marks, which appeared nowhere else in Gabe Dalesio's notes.

  Tess took out her cell and a business card she had saved despite being sure that she would never use it.

  "I'm ready to meet," she told Barry Jenkins. "I'm ready to talk, to tell you everything. But it has to be tonight."

  "Really?" he said. "I guess that can be arranged."

  "And it has to be in public. A restaurant or a bar."

  "Just name the place and the time."

  "My dad's bar on Franklintown Road. Ten-thirty."

  "That's kind of late for an old man. Can we do this tomorrow?"

  "No." She modulated her voice. "Tonight. Tonight or I'll let the Beacon-Light have it first."

  "I thought they were more intent on protecting the source than you are."

  "I have his permission to go public if I think it's necessary to protect his safety."

  "His, huh? You must be ready to identify him, throwing the big secret of his gender around."

  "Ten-thirty," she said. "All of you—Collins and Dalesio." She was just a citizen. There was no reason she would know that Dalesio was dead.

  "I can't guarantee anyone but myself."

  "All of you or it's no deal."

  "Ten-thirty, your father's bar."

  She hung up, satisfied she had the only thing that mattered—a head start. She began trying to call Crow as soon as she was on the highway, then continued at ten-minute intervals, only to be bounced into voice mail every time.

  Crow was falling asleep on the sofa while Lloyd was trying to coax something watchable out of the black-and-white television that Ed had bequeathed to them. After clicking back and forth between the Delmarva Peninsula's two channels, he gave up in disgust, popping in one of the videos they had checked out from the library, The Hot Rock. Tired as he was, Crow found himself drawn into the film, an old favorite. He loved the shambling, low-key quality of seventies films, the small stakes, the human scale. True, Redford was all wrong for Dortmunder, but his miscasting didn't hurt the film. Thinking of Westlake made Crow think of The Grifters. Would Lloyd like that? Should Lloyd like that? Wasn't John Cusack's character named Lloyd? No, it was Roy. Would Lloyd appreciate Grosse Point Blank? Crow's brain was soup tonight.