No Good Deeds Part 22

"I don't know," Wilma said. "Honestly."

Tess pulled up each pack of bills, to make sure there was nothing left in the box.

"What are you looking for?" Wilma asked, her voice at once bitter and teary. It was clear that this secret cache, if not exactly what she had feared all along, was also anything but an innocuous discovery. "Waiting for hope to fly out? I don't think she's here."

"A note. But I guess that would be too easy, right? A nice and neat confession about what he was into."

"To write something like that, he would have to believe he was in imminent danger. And the one thing I'm sure about the last time I saw Greg alive is that he was buoyant, happy. In fact, he was happier in the weeks before his death than he'd been in a long time. He went into a horrible mope around the time I got pregnant. At the time I thought it was money woes-"

"Could be. Maybe this was a sudden windfall, and that's why he cheered up. He was in ant.i.terrorism, right? This would be chump change to some of those Saudis." Tess was studying the log-Greg had last visited the bank in September. The account had been opened in August year before last, and he had been here monthly, through July. Then-nothing.

"Maybe." Wilma's eyes were on the money, but she wasn't seeing it. She was trapped in her own thoughts. "Only, we bought the house last winter. I found out I was pregnant in March, and he was irritable from then on. I worried that he felt trapped in a way he hadn't before. But come fall his bad mood vanished. On Halloween, when the kids came to the door, he was just so into it. He said to me, "I can't wait until our little boy does that." Something changed over the summer."

The employees' doughnut buzz was fading fast, and Tess thought it would be best to put the drawer back in place, continue their conversation elsewhere. At the last minute, she grabbed the Xeroxed photograph, stashing it in her pocket.

She steered Wilma to the Silver Diner, not even fifty yards up the highway. It was an ersatz diner, the kind of faux-fifties place that Tess didn't normally condone, but it was the best bet for breakfast in these parts.

"Think back to Greg's work," Tess said. "Was there anyone he might have blackmailed?"

"No. The terrorism unit was having virtually no luck. Truth is, Greg was kind of floundering since the transfer. He was brought on for PR, a suitable face to put before the cameras. The dirty little secret about the FBI's ant.i.terrorism work is that there is no work. Until, well, there is again. Get me?"

Tess did, but she didn't want to think about it.

"What about his earlier cases, the drug stuff he did?"

"He was known for being a hard-liner and getting convictions. In fact, he was contemptuous of his colleagues who couldn't nail suspects no matter how close they got. So who would pay him off? He got the federal death penalty for that one group of gang members."

Wilma said the last with great pride, reminding Tess that the two of them did not see eye to eye on many things. Tess opposed the death penalty in theory, and it pained her that she had taken another man's life so readily. But she was learning to hold her tongue and her opinions. She and Wilma weren't here to become BFFs.

"In the terrorism unit-was there anything he said about his work that centered on a single individual? They might not have been making arrests, but they still could have been up on wiretaps, monitoring someone. A wealthy Saudi Arabian might have paid money to know what his unit was doing, skimpy as it was."

Wilma shook her head. "I'm telling you, all he did was speak of their incompetence and the futility of the whole operation."

"So why did he volunteer for it in the first place?"

"I'm not sure. He'd been working a few things with a guy named Mike Collins, but he said Collins couldn't bring him anything good since he stopped working undercover. You have to understand-the way the office is set up, the AUSA's are often dependent on agents to bring them good cases."

"But he must have known other agents."

"He liked Mike best and thought he'd gotten a raw deal. Do you know him?"

"Yeah, I know him." Tess decided not to share that she wasn't his biggest fan.

"Greg really admired him. An authentic Horatio Alger story, up from the streets, basketball star at Langston Hughes."

"Dunbar," Tess corrected absently. She dug the photocopy out of her pocket, stared at the old man in the hat.

"Whatever."

"He talked about Mike a lot?"

"I don't know if I'd say "a lot." Enough that I knew he resented the agency's treatment of him."

"Wilma-"

"What?"

"Did you ever have a crush on a guy?"

"Sometimes." Wilma's tone was smug, as if to suggest she was far more familiar with being an object of crushes, not a holder of them.

"So when you were obsessed with some guy, didn't you say his name over and over, whenever you could, bring him up in the most irrelevant conversations, just to have the thrill of saying his name?"

Wilma blushed her furious blush. "Greg was not queer for Mike Collins."

"No, but they might have shared a secret that they would be even more desperate to conceal." Tess showed her the photocopy. "This is taken from one of those literary postcards you can buy at Nouveau or Barnes & n.o.ble. It's Walt Whitman."

"So?"

"Poet. Poet. If Mike Collins played for Dunbar, then he was a star on the Poets. I guess he couldn't find a Dunbar postcard, so he settled for Whitman. "I sing the body electric'? "I dote on myself, for there is that lot of me, and all so luscious'?"

Wilma, despite her Ivy League education, still looked mystified. But Tess had no doubt that her husband had hedged his bets, leaving this subtle clue for someone who would eventually make the connection but treat Youssef's old friend with dignity and respect. Who else had to know that Collins played for the Poets?

Jenkins had been surprised to find Mike Collins at his door first thing that morning. As much as he liked the young man, he'd never had him to his apartment. In fact, he didn't even realize that Mike knew where he lived.

He wondered what else Bully knew about him.

"You want coffee?" he asked, although the kid seemed so wired that a shot of Jameson might have been more appropriate.

"No, I'm fine."

"Well, I need some."

He motioned Collins to follow him into the apartment's kitchen, not that it was a trip that required a tour guide. Since returning to Baltimore, Jenkins had lived in one of those sterile, rent-by-the-month gigs, already furnished. The kitchen was separated from the so-called great room by a Formica-topped bar. Collins sat there, perched on one of the wicker stools that had come with the place, rocking a little from side to side. Kid was het-up. Jenkins hoped he wasn't doing drugs, a curious but not unheard-of liability for DEA agents. But Collins's disdain for drugs had always been persuasively virulent. He saw them as a plague that had swept through his once-middle-cla.s.s neighborhood, destroying almost every young black man in their path. No, it was impossible to imagine Collins using drugs.

Jenkins pulled out his filters and the can of grounds he kept in the freezer, although he was always hearing conflicting opinions on that method of storage. It seemed to him that they kept changing the rules about everything. Plastic cutting boards, wooden cutting boards, back to plastic. Coffee with tap water, coffee with purified water, coffee with eggsh.e.l.ls and old socks, back to tap water. Whatever Jenkins did, he made c.r.a.p coffee, but at least it was cheap. Jenkins didn't like giving someone two dollars for something he could make at home for a fraction of the cost. Made him feel like a sucker. He thought about Gabe Dalesio, who never seemed to be without a large cup of pricey coffee. The guy must have spent at least four, five dollars a day on coffee drinks. Four dollars a day, almost thirty dollars a week, over fifteen hundred dollars a year on coffee. Jenkins's first wife, Martha, had criticized Jenkins for the way he tipped, the ones and fives and even tens that had slipped through his fingers so readily. But a tip went to a person at least, not some corporation. You hand a girl a five-dollar tip for checking your coat and you make her day. Give Mr. Starbucks or Ms. Seattle's Best Coffee three dollars for some fancy hot drink and you were just one of the mult.i.tudes of suckers.

The coffee machine puffed and huffed, quite a production for the task of pouring hot water over a paper filter of coffee grounds. It tasted better if you waited until the whole pot brewed, but Jenkins could never resist pulling the carafe out and letting his mug catch the first syrupy cupful.

"You sure you don't want any?"

"I'm fine."

It was only when Jenkins turned back to the counter, FBI mug in his hand, that he saw the gun on the counter. Not a service revolver, his mind registered. A street weapon, a piece of s.h.i.t. Then: Why does Mike have it? Why is he showing it to me?

"Mike," he said, his voice soft and pleading. "Bully. What's this about? What's wrong?"

Even in this agitated state, he was so very handsome. Extremely dark-skinned, with features that had always seemed vaguely Native American to Jenkins-strong straight nose, high cheekbones, a bow-shaped mouth. That mouth was trembling, just a little now. Yet any show of emotion in Collins's face was noteworthy.

"Mike...?"

The young man picked up the gun, studying it as if he wasn't quite sure what it was or where it had come from, then put it back down.

"I...I may have overstepped, Barry."

"Overstepped?"

"Gabe Dalesio learned something, and it struck me as key, but I knew if we acted on it, he might begin to put things together. So, um, I killed him."

This was a new situation to him. As a father to his own sons, Jenkins had been the one who disappointed, who stood before his children's sorrowful and disapproving faces again and again. Here at last was his chance to a.s.sure someone that it was okay to screw up, to give comfort and succor.

Succor. Funny word. Say it out loud and it sounded just like "sucker."

"You used this gun?"

"Yeah. Out on the street, like it was a carjacking or a robbery gone wrong. I took it off a drug dealer years ago. There's no paper on it."

"You take the car?"

"No, but I grabbed his wallet and his keys. Then I went to see a woman I know out Hunt Valley way, one who's not too fussy about advance notice."

"What you kids call a booty call?" Collins managed a feeble smile at Jenkins's deliberate squareness. "That was smart, Bully." This earned a genuine smile, one of relief and pride. "And you didn't use your service weapon, smarter still. Now we just have to throw this one down the sewer."

"And go to Delaware?"

"Delaware?"

"That's what Dalesio found. There's an ex-cop, held the liquor license on the dad's bar, and he's also listed as the founding partner in the girl's business. He figured that a guy like that was probably in the habit of doing the family favors."

"Well, that sure is interesting." But not worth killing another federal prosecutor for. "I mean, it's worth checking out. Still sounds like a bit of a long shot to me. Why would an ex-cop shield someone wanted in a murder investigation?"

"Dalesio did some preliminary checking. He pulled a reverse directory, started calling some of the guy's neighbors. There was some strange guy drinking beer with him just yesterday."

"Strange?"

"Unknown, not a familiar face. White, youngish. Could be the boyfriend. We should go over there."

"Throw the gun down the sewer. Then go to work."

"Work?"

"A federal prosecutor was killed last night. You don't know that now, but it will be all over your office soon after you get there. And while you may have his wallet-throw that down the sewer, too, okay?-police will have already traced the car registration back to him. Go into work and be glad, for once, that they treat you like s.h.i.t. I'll do the same thing, and we'll do what we've been doing all along: keep our eyes and ears open, figure out who knows what, then proceed according to an orderly plan of my devising."

Collins winced a little, picking up the implicit criticism in that one stressed word, and Jenkins realized that he had to modulate his tone. "It's okay, Bully. You did okay. Just let me do the thinking. It worked with Youssef, didn't it? We took our sweet time, and it was just about perfect."

"Except for the kid using the ATM card again. And then that private eye came along."

"Yeah, well, she's got other fish to fry now." Jenkins wondered fleetingly how they would continue to press her without Gabe. Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe they really did have the information they'd sought all along. "The thing is, we've got to do this without involving civilians. Mike? You feel me?"

Another wisp of a smile from Collins for the way Jenkins sounded when he aped that ghetto talk.

"If this little f.u.c.ker is at the beach, we've got to take him into custody and isolate him. Set him up to run from us, then do the old throw-down. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated."

"I get it."

"You sure? Because we're up to two more bodies than we ever planned to have. I don't blame you for Youssef-he tricked you into telling him what we had going, demanded in, then wanted out. He was a liability, and we had to get rid of him. But this..."

Collins's shoulders sagged. The kid meant well. But his central flaw could not be fixed. When in doubt, he went for his gun. It was a weird defect, one usually found in female officers, but it had been okay as long as Collins kept shooting criminals. It was only when he shot that civilian that he'd gotten in such deep s.h.i.t. Irony was, he'd been absolutely justified for once. The guy had refused to stop, just kept coming at Collins, one of those old-timers who thought he could beat a drug dealer with a rake, f.u.c.king up a big buy that Collins had spent eight months getting to that moment. The geezer was lucky to have survived, in Jenkins's opinion.

"Go to work, Bully," he said. "The minute someone tells you about Gabe, say, "Holy s.h.i.t! I was having a drink with him last night. He was telling me his theories about the Youssef case." Don't say anything that can be contradicted by an eyewitness. You walked out with him. Walked most of the way to his car with him because you were parked in the same direction. Admit that you were a little lit-"

"I wasn't, actually."

"Admit that you were a little lit, that you went out to visit your lady friend and barely had time to change your clothes before coming in to work. Get me? We're in a.s.sessment mode today."

Collins left, and Jenkins sat at his kitchen table, head in hands. How had it all gone so wrong? It had been so perfect on paper, so bloodless and simple, money coming in and no one going out. He added up the death toll in his head. Youssef, Dalesio. Oh, and the kid, Le'andro Watkins, not that the world could really mourn a lowlife who was going to kill or be killed before his twenty-first birthday.

And now they had to find this other kid, set him up. But then they would be done. It had to end there. Please, let it f.u.c.king end.

30.

Tess had planned to go straight to her office from Laurel, but she headed home instead. WBAL was reporting on a street murder in Canton, the kind of crime sure to spook the area's yuppies and tourists. When the newscast yielded to the morning call-in show, she could hear people trying to extract the detail that would establish that the crime was somehow the victim's fault. Was it a domestic? No, it appeared to be a robbery and attempted carjacking. Was it someone driving a flashy car? Not clear. A man cruising for...um, female companionship? The callers were desperate for proof that no crime or misfortune was ever truly random. Tess thought it more remarkable that such murders were so infrequent. It was less than a mile from the sw.a.n.k condos on the Canton waterfront to the desperate neighborhood where Dub, Terrell, and Tourmaline squatted in an abandoned rowhouse.

At home she found another FedEx with another cell phone-Crow had thought to waive the signature this time-but after several futile minutes with the instructions, she realized she had hit the wall of her own technological limitations. There probably was a way to download the digital photos she wanted to send Crow from her camera to the phone and then to his phone, but it would take a better mind than hers. She decided to use her laptop, setting up a neutral Hotmail account, then forwarding the photos there. She would call Crow on the new phone and give him the pa.s.sword, then hope he could get to a computer to view them.

The problem was, she had no proof that Mike Collins was anything other than the concerned federal agent he purported to be. She called her one good friend in the Baltimore City homicide squad, Detective Martin Tull.

"Not a good time," the detective said with his customary curtness. "Got a red ball so far up my a.s.s that it might end up coming out of my nose the next time I blow it."

"Canton, yeah, I heard it on 'BAL. I'll be quick. You got an open case on a kid named Le'andro Watkins? He was killed last week. Shot, typical drug-murder stuff." Or so it would appear.

A moment of silence. Tull must be glancing at the board that carried the cases, listed by number and victims' last names. The board was color-coded-black for closed ones, red for those still open. Tess would bet anything there was a sea of red on the board this year.

Tull came back on the line. "Yeah, that's Rainier's."

s.h.i.t. If Tess had only one friend in homicide, she also had only one enemy. Still, she didn't carry a grudge, and maybe Rainier didn't either. In the end she had done right by him, handed him a bouquet of clearances. Tess had probably helped Rainier earn his highest clearance rate since he joined the department.

"He around?"

"That worthless f.u.c.ker called in from the field this morning, said he was doing some interviews. He's hiding, worried that he'll be pulled to help on this case."