No Good Deeds Part 24

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."

s.h.i.t. "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.

"A hundred thousand dollars for five guys," Lloyd said in disbelief as the caper took shape. "That's crazy."

"Lloyd, you made yourself an accessory to murder for two hundred, a sandwich, a pair of shoes, and a jacket. Oh, and a DVD player for your buddy."

"I was gonna get my mama some earrings, too," Lloyd said. "But it was crowded at the Hecht's counter."

It was the first time that Lloyd had ever spoken of his mother voluntarily. Perhaps the experience with the Anderson family yesterday was making him wistful for home. Crow decided to mine that vein of feeling, play on those emotions to see if Lloyd could be persuaded to go back.

"You miss your mom?"

"She okay."

"Yeah, but do you miss her?"

An adolescent shrug.

"You want to call her?"

"Thought we couldn't tell people where we are."

"I'm getting rid of the cell phones every forty-eight hours, remember? Besides, no one's going to be coming around to talk to your mother, much less get up on her phone, unless they figure out who you are. And there are only four people who know that. Me, Tess, and the two reporters."

"And that crazy blond b.i.t.c.h with the cookies."

Normally Crow would have reproved Lloyd's careless misogyny, but the description of Whitney wasn't that far off base. She was a bit of a b.i.t.c.h. In a good way. Whitney's WASP b.i.t.c.hery was a kind of superpower, one that had extricated Tess out of many a jam-and gotten her into almost as many.

"Here, call." He handed Lloyd the cell phone and paused the film on the wonderfully anguished face of Paul Sand as he swallowed the diamond.

Lloyd punched, listened, punched the number in again. "Phone's dead. Lost the charge already. You gotta stop buying this cheap s.h.i.t."

"Dead?" Crow took the phone and examined it. "No problem, it'll work while plugged in to the charger."

Lloyd punched in the number, listened poker-faced.

"Number disconnected."

"Try information. Maybe she changed it."

"Phones get disconnected," Lloyd said.

"I thought your father-"

"Stepfather."

"Yeah, I thought he was pretty, um, together. Steady."

"Even people with jobs get their phones cut off. It's the easy one to let go, this time of year."

"This time of year?"

"Still too cool to let the gas and 'lectric get turned off, especially with all those kids. Plus, Murray's got a cell, so they can get by without the home phone."

"Call on Murray's phone."

"I don't wanna waste my time trying to get past him. He's big on questions. My mama will get the phone turned back on next month, probably."

There was no recrimination in Lloyd's tone, no self-pity. He spoke of the world he knew as casually as Crow might speak of playing Little League in Charlottesville or going to Luray Caverns on field trips.

"Hey, you get Internet access on this phone," Lloyd said. "You know that?"

"Probably costs an arm and a leg to access it."

"Everything cost, man."

"True. Hey-see if you can get that e-mail from Tess. The one with the photos attached."

It was as if technology were Lloyd's second language, Crow marveled. A week ago he hadn't known what instant messaging was. Now he quickly opened three e-mails from Tess, each with a photo attachment. "White dude," he said, showing Crow a photo of a youngish man. "Old white dude." A middle-aged man. "Brother-s.h.i.t."

"What?"

"Nothin'." Lloyd's face was closing down, his eyes slanting sideways.

"Lloyd. No more secrets. You agreed."

"I know this guy. Well, I don't know him, but I seen him. He's the guy who gave Le'andro the card."

"You always said Le'andro gave you the card, that you didn't know where he got it from."

Lloyd shifted uncomfortably. "I thought we'd all be safer if I left that part out."

"You were supposed to tell us everything, Lloyd. That was the deal-no lies, no omissions."

"I know," Lloyd said. "But I didn't know the guy, and he doesn't know I was there. I was hiding. Le'andro didn't want him to know that he was going to contract it out, you know? So I stayed in the car when he went for the meeting, but I could see them in the rearview mirror. Didn't seem no harm to it."

"You're saying this guy is connected to Gregory Youssef's murder?"

"I'm saying he had the card and the code, and he told Le'andro what to do with it. I didn't know him. Bennie Tep told Le'andro to do him a favor, no big deal. We thought this guy was from New York or Philly. He didn't dress like anyone special, and his car was really s.h.i.tty. He looked trifling."

"Lloyd, this is a DEA agent. This is one of the guys who's been trying to get your name out of Tess ever since the article appeared. Tess thought it was because the feds want you as a witness, but he may just want you."

"s.h.i.t."

Lloyd's face was as frozen in desperation as Paul Sand's, although Crow didn't find it the least bit comic.

"I'm going to call Ed," he said. "He's a former cop. Maybe he knows someone over here who can take us in, protect us."

Ed's phone rang and rang, and Crow had a moment of wondering where he could be at ten o'clock. No answering machine either. How typically Ed. But he picked up on the eighth ring, and his voice sounded sharp, not as if he had been asleep or outside.

"Ed, it's Crow. I think Lloyd and I need to turn ourselves in to someone, but someone we can absolutely trust. Definitely not anyone in the DEA or the FBI. Do you have any contacts in the department back in Baltimore, anyone you can vouch for-"

"Wrong number," Ed said.

"Ed, it's Crow-"

"I'm telling you, you've got the wrong number. You call here again, I'm gonna Star 69 your a.s.s, turn you over to the local cops. You hear me? The local cops, the Delaware state troopers up to Rehoboth. You think they're small-time, but they'll know what to do with your punk a.s.s. I'm sick of this s.h.i.t."