No Good Deeds Part 20

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 a.s.sumed 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 naive 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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 b.i.t.c.h'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 with her father's business. The liquor license had been pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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.

"I know Lloyd," Charlotte Curtis said, her voice ever so cautious. "He's a sweet kid, underneath it all."

"And is there another kid he hangs with, round, a little heavyset, but very quick and light on his feet?" Tess still remembered how speedily and casually the boy had moved after piercing Whitney's tire.

"Dub."

"Dub?" Tess was thrown by the name's redneck vibe.

"Short for Dubnium, an element. His mother liked chemistry when she was in high school." Charlotte Curtis sighed. "Unfortunately, his mother likes chemicals, too. She's in the wind. But Dub is some kind of genius. Seriously. He's not only doing well in school, he's managing to evade the Department of Social Services, which is determined to put him and his siblings in foster care and collect his mother's public a.s.sistance before she can get to it. No one can find Dub if he doesn't want to be found."

The warning registered only as a challenge to Tess. "No one official," she countered. "But you can, can't you? I bet you know where he is."

"If I knew where he lived, I'd be obligated to do something about it, wouldn't I?"

"Would you? Do you believe that Dub would be better off in DSS custody?"

Tess felt Charlotte Curtis taking her measure, putting her on some metaphysical scale that weighed and evaluated every bit of her-brain, heart, soul. The woman said at last, "I can't swear to where he is. He moves a lot. Last I heard, they had a place over on Collington. Look for a red tag on the lower portion of the plywood that covers the door."

"Tag?"

"Graffiti mark. Dub has an open-door policy for other kids who need a place to stay, Lloyd among them. But he doesn't give out the address, just the block, because he and his mother are always tussling over the benefits. Dub gets the card, she reports it stolen, he changes the PIN code somehow, has the replacement card sent to him care of...Well, let's just say he has a regular address he can use. High school is easy for Dub after five years of trying to outthink his mother."

Tess got to the rowhouse on Collington before school was out, giving her time to explore it. The house was boarded up, with No Trespa.s.sing signs stapled to the wooden surfaces, but there was a red squiggle in the lower-right-hand corner, and the plywood over the door swung open easily.

Her stomach lurched a little at the conditions inside-pallets on the floor, no running water, dim even in the afternoon because of the boarded-over windows. Even as a flophouse, it was far from adequate. Charlotte had confided in Tess that the church allowed Dub and his siblings to use their bathroom in the mornings, and the children then relied on the facilities in the branch library the rest of the time. In fact, that was where they spent each afternoon throughout the cold-weather months. Would they stay outside, now that dusk came later and the air was almost warm? Tess waited in her car, certain she would recognize him by his walk.

Not long after five, Tess saw a trio coming down the block, a heavyset teenager and two younger children. Yes, that was the silhouette she remembered, the same light-footed Jackie Gleason grace. She waited until they slipped into the house, then followed about five minutes later.

"s.h.i.t," Dub said.

"I'm not DSS," Tess a.s.sured him. "Just a friend of Lloyd Jupiter's. He's in trouble."

"Don't know any Lloyd."

"So it's just a coincidence that you puncture tires and Lloyd comes along five minutes later, ready to change them?"

Dub didn't make the mistake of speaking when surprised.

"I saw you, Dub. Week before last. You and Lloyd pulled the scam over on Mount Street. Old Mercedes station wagon. Only Lloyd didn't show up for a while, did he? And when he did, I bet he had a story about how he didn't make any money, but he had bags of cookies, maybe some leftover carryout. Am I right?"

"Them cookies were good," the little girl said wistfully. She looked about eight, and she wore her hair in a timeless style-three poufy plaits, sectioned off as precisely as city blocks, fastened with plastic barrettes at the ends. Tess marveled at the care that had been taken with the little girl's hair. The boy, slightly taller, was spick-and-span as well, although his trousers were a tad too short. She hoped kids no longer got teased for wearing high-waters.

"I haven't seen Lloyd for a while," Dub said. "I don't know where he is."

"That makes two of us. But did he come to you after Le'andro Watkins was killed? Did he tell you he feared for his life?"

Dub felt in the pocket of his jacket and took out three limp bills, dollars that looked as if they had been dug out of a trash can or a gutter, and perhaps they had. "Go down to the corner store, buy yourselves a treat," he instructed the younger ones. His voice was gentle, yet the tone defied them to argue back. "Whatever you want."

The boy grabbed the bills and bolted, the girl at his heels. "You've got to share," she said. "Dub, tell him he's got to go halves."

"Be nice, Terrell," he said. "You know you have to look after Tourmaline when I'm not around." He waited until the plywood door swung back into place before he spoke to Tess again. "They don't need to know everything I do. Besides, I stay away from that side of things. Lloyd and me, we run a few low-risk games, when there's time and opportunity."

"Like a snow day," Tess said, remembering that school had been canceled the day that Crow and Lloyd first met. "But on Wednesday-"

"That day with the Mercedes? Staff-development day at the school, so they let us out two hours early. But I always told Lloyd that I would draw the line at anything to do with Bennie Tep."

"Bennie Tep?"

"He's the drug dealer that Le'andro worked for. Lloyd, too, for a while, but Bennie got no use for Lloyd. Says he lacks focus, can't be trusted to do even small things right. But Le'andro liked Lloyd, if only because Lloyd was fool enough to think that Le'andro was someone worth looking up to. He let him hang around, threw him some little things he didn't want to do."

"Things like using an ATM card in a very precise way, at a very precise time?"

Dub didn't answer, so Tess continued. "That's practically public record at this point. Lloyd's admitted as much to me. It was in the newspaper a week ago Sunday, only without Lloyd's name attached. Which is probably the reason that Le'andro was killed-because Lloyd pretended he was the only one in on the scam."

"Yeah, okay. Back last fall, Lloyd bragged on how they put one over on this guy big-time-that he tried to double-cross Lloyd, but Lloyd triple-crossed him."

"They? You mean Le'andro and Lloyd fooled this guy Bennie?"

"No, not Bennie. Lloyd wouldn't never have f.u.c.ked with Bennie. This guy, you know, he wasn't gonna to be around ongoing. I think he was from out of town. So Lloyd thought he could put a few extra things on the card. What was the guy gonna do? And, sure enough, we-he-didn't catch no flak over it. No one ever came around, asked what was up, told him he had done wrong. If anything, Lloyd wished he'd held that card a little longer, charged a little more."

Of course, that would have created a longer, more detailed trail for investigators in the Youssef murder. Which meant, Tess realized, that Lloyd really didn't have any idea at the time how radioactive that ATM card was, how much trouble it could cause.

"So Lloyd told you about this?"

"Yeah."

"Did he have any details about the guy who hired Le'andro?"

"Naw. He didn't know him."

"But did Le'andro mention a name, say where he was from? Any new sc.r.a.p of information would help, maybe keep the police from trying to charge Lloyd with being an accomplice."

Dub thought. "Lloyd said the man drove a punk-a.s.s car. Some s.h.i.tty Chevy, like a Malibu or something. Said thieving wasn't what it used to be if a player like this had to drive something that raggedy."

"But I thought he never met the guy."

"He didn't."

"So how could he know what he drove?"

"Maybe Le'andro told him."

Tess tried to work this through. Lloyd hadn't met the man who hired Le'andro, but he knew the make of his car. Had Lloyd been lying all along? Was Dub lying now, intent on shielding his friend? But then if the man who gave the ATM card to Le'andro had met Lloyd, knew who he was or at least what he looked like, why hadn't he killed them both once the story got out?

"Lloyd ever mention Gregory Youssef to you?"

"Who?"

"It's been on the front page of the papers just this past week-"

Dub's blank look persuaded her to abandon the story before she began it. She was talking to a homeless seventeen-year-old, a kid who was trying to go to school, keep his family together, and stay one step ahead of whatever forces-his mother, the Department of Social Services-would break them up. Dub had heard Lloyd's side of things, nothing more.

"Look, is there anything I can do for you?"

He looked wary. "Naw. We fine."

"I mean money, groceries. I know you don't want DSS in your life, but there's got to be a better way to keep your family together."

"We'll be okay. I got one more year of high school, then I'll get a scholarship, go to community college part-time, work the rest. When I'm eighteen, I can pet.i.tion for custody of Terrell and Tourmaline, official like, and I won't have to fight my mom for theirses checks anymore. Then I'll get those two through. Long as we show up for school and don't cause trouble, no one needs to know anything about us."

"What do you use for a mailing address?"

Dub smiled as if he found Tess naive. By his standards, she was.

"How much do you and Lloyd get for the tire trick?"

Dub shrugged as if he had no idea what she was referencing, although he had already admitted his role. He might not have been born this cagey, but life had schooled him as well as the Baltimore city school system, probably better.

"Twenty? Forty?" Tess took three twenties from her wallet. "The way I see it, my household has thwarted you twice." When he didn't reach for the money, she added, "I pay for information all the time. You earned this, same as anyone. No special treatment, no handout."

"I didn't tell you much," he said, his fingers closing over the bills.

"You know, I can find odd jobs for you," she said. "My office isn't two miles from here, and my aunt has a bookstore nearby. Between us, there are lots of little jobs, things that would work around your school schedule. And my aunt's store stays open late. She'd let you hang there until closing-"

"We fine," he repeated.

27.

Back in her car, Tess checked her watch. Almost six, but that was early in high-powered-lawyer land. The secretaries and receptionists might have gone home, but she was betting that a young comer such as Wilma Youssef was still at her desk-depending on her day-care situation.