No Good Deeds Part 9

"Have you been paying attention to spring training? I'd have a shot at the number-five spot in the Orioles rotation."

Tess chewed an olive pit. She had no appet.i.te, and there was no better barometer to her mood. She was in very deep s.h.i.t. She never got herself in more trouble than when she was being clever.

The thing that killed her was that Lloyd was wandering clueless through the city, with no inkling of what he had set in motion. Ignorance was bliss.

At the relatively advanced age of fifty-seven, Bennie Tep was still in the game, but he had been trying to grow the legal side of things, rely less on the game itself, which was so volatile. He planned to enjoy his old age, retire like any citizen, although he wasn't going to play f.u.c.kin' golf. Last thing he wanted at this point was another homicide on his calendar, but once it was explained to him, he understood. The boy had talked, the boy had to go. Okay, so he'd been clever enough not to throw Bennie's name around, or so they a.s.sumed, because the cops hadn't dropped by to talk to him yet. It was only a matter of time. They would get to the boy, and the boy would give them all up. The newspaper might not know or care who'd given the order, but the investigators most certainly did. The boy had been given a job, and he not only screwed it up, he had talked. The consequences for the second were more dire than for the first. And it wasn't like it was the first time this kid had f.u.c.ked up. Bennie understood why it had to be done. But his heart wasn't in it. Heart wasn't in it, and his hand couldn't be anywhere near it.

Toad wasn't crazy about being the triggerman, but disloyalty p.i.s.sed him off, so he took on the job. Toad could be trusted. Tell him to do a thing and he did it. No muss, no fuss. Thing was, they could have done it this way in the first place, just popped the guy on a downtown street. Bennie didn't believe in making things more complicated than they had to be. If the lawyer needed to die, he needed to die. But why all the to-and-fro? The whole plan had made Bennie's head hurt. Bennie already knew how to commit the perfect murder. He had done it many times over, coming up. Shoot the guy. Make sure there are no witnesses. Get rid of the gun. Doubt his system? Well, he was here, in his own house-t.i.tled to his aunt, but his house nonetheless-fifty-seven years old and forty years in the business, and they'd never even gotten so much as a felony indictment against him. There were men in so-called legitimate businesses who couldn't make that claim.

Bennie puttered around his kitchen looking for something he was allowed to eat or drink. This was usually the time of night that he liked to have a little cognac, but his doctor was down on that. Said his liver was fatty, although Bennie himself was lean, just a little paunch. Apparently he was like that guy on the commercial, the cut one who belly-flopped because his cholesterol was so high. Wine with dinner was okay, he had been told, but wine was something you wanted with a steak, and he wasn't allowed to have that either. He looked at the doctor's diet suggestions, taped to the side of the refrigerator. Fish, but not fried. Chicken, no skin. Nasty. The usual rabbit food. He could have some low-cal microwave popcorn, but his dentist looked down on that. Bennie's heart was simply on notice, but his gums had crossed the line to rotten. He could have popcorn or nuts only on the night before a trip to the periodontist, but he was so sick with dread about the pain the night before that he didn't have the appet.i.te for much.

He settled for a York Peppermint Patty, a mini, only fifty calories, low-fat, and no trouble for his teeth. With a cup of hot tea, it was almost as good as a real dessert. Almost.

Waiting for his water to come to a boil, he turned on the late news. Slot machines-s.h.i.t, he hoped they didn't come to town, the legal numbers were bad enough-something else about the governor. Had Toad missed his chance? But when the news came back from commercial, the anchorgirl had on her serious face, signaling a sad story. That meant a homicide, a fatal car accident, or something about an injured pet.

"We've just gotten word that police have been summoned to the 2300 block of East Lombard Street for what appears to be a drive-by shooting. A young man was shot multiple times while standing on the corner there. Police say there were no witnesses. Those with information are asked to call...''

Bennie winced, poured a little extra sugar in his tea. The boy was so young. Bennie hadn't even started at sixteen, and here was a young man already dead. But it had been a different business in Bennie's day-more time to learn on the job, get some savvy. The young ones today were too impatient, hotheaded, wild to use their weapons. Plus, no one diversified anymore. Bennie, for example, still carried some gambling action, a daily street number and some sports book from time to time. Now he had the real estate and the sub shops, although those were wearing him out. d.a.m.n health department. They were more formidable compet.i.tion than the New York boys, citing a man for every little thing. It was the ghetto. Of course there were roaches and rats.

d.a.m.n. He felt bad for the kid. If they had done things Bennie's way to start, none of this bulls.h.i.t would have come to pa.s.s. He hated fancy s.h.i.t. All that hoodoo with ATM cards and bank machines and surveillance cameras, and they weren't any more in the clear than if they had just shot the guy in the head and left him in Patterson Park. Everybody had to be so got-d.a.m.n smart all the got-d.a.m.n time.

But it was over. Now only two of them knew what was what, and they would never tell. They both had too much to lose.

TUESDAY.

13.

In his dreams Crow held fast to Tess while she tried to wriggle out of his grasp. She wasn't attempting to escape out of malice or rejection, only because her curiosity had fastened on something bright and shiny and just out of reach. It was like trying to hold on to a squirming child, and eventually he had to concede her strength and let go.

Plus, she smelled awful.

He awakened to find his arms around the greyhound, who was not trying to evade his touch at all but had instead burrowed into him, exhaling bursts of fishy breath. A mere two nights since Tess had decamped, Esskay had usurped Tess's place in the bed, even using her pillow. Miata, less conflicted about the idea that she was a dog, was draped across the foot of the bed.

It was odd, being in Tess's house-and he always thought of it as her house, despite the work he had done on the rehab-without Tess. He felt off balance and tentative. But perhaps what he really felt was superfluous. The rational part of his mind understood that Tess was protecting him by concealing her whereabouts, but another part wondered if she had expected him to wilt when confronted by various authorities. "I don't want to put you into the position of lying," she had said Sunday when she packed her bag and left the house. They had been in regular phone contact since then, and she had let slip that she was less than a mile away, somewhere in North Baltimore. "I can almost see Stony Run Park from where I am," she said, then stopped abruptly. But Crow knew that meant one of the high-rises near Johns Hopkins.

What if the newspaper had reported that Edgar "Crow" Ransome was the actual go-between in this tale? Would he now be on the run, while Tess was kept in the dark? True, he had not ferreted out the connection between Lloyd and Youssef, much less gone out and plucked the kid off the streets of Baltimore and forced him to tell what he knew. Crow had found that part of the story a little appalling, in fact, an echo of nineteenth-century bounty hunters rounding up slaves. Whitney and Tess didn't have good sense sometimes. But none of this would have happened if he had not brought Lloyd home that first night.

Right now Tess probably wished this were so, although Crow thought the Howard County investigators had been given a promising lead, if they could just focus on it. Even if Lloyd couldn't or wouldn't say who had asked him to use Youssef's ATM card, the detectives now knew this wasn't a case of a man being murdered by a piece of would-be trade.

He glanced at the clock: 11:00 A.M. With Tess gone, he had honored his own night-owl nature instead of trying to fit his schedule onto Tess's days, playing weft to her warp. It had felt good, sleeping in, obeying his own body's needs for once.

The dogs, poor things, hadn't adjusted to the new routine. They needed to be walked immediately. He threw on his clothes, Esskay leaping around him in giddy circles while Miata just panted in excitement. They preferred Crow, for he was focused on them during the walk, while Tess's thoughts tended to drift and her pace to slacken. Eager and anxious, they burst through the door-and almost tripped over the huddled form of Lloyd Jupiter, who seemed to be trying to fold himself behind a yew-berry bush.

"You gotta help me, man. They killed Le'andro. They killed Le'andro."

"Le'andro was the one who was supposed to use the card, but he had a chance to get with this girl. So he gave me the card, told me I could have the money. But that was a secret, see? Between us. Because he had a direct order to do it his own self. So they think he done it. And if they think he done it-"

"Then they think he's the source in the newspaper article."

"Yeah." Lloyd picked up a rock and threw it as far as he could-which turned out to be pretty far. The kid could probably be a decent baseball player. But inner-city kids seldom played baseball. It took too much equipment, too many people, whereas basketball could be played with two guys on a cement playground covered with broken gla.s.s.

They were walking along Stony Run Creek, a narrow stream in a park known mainly to those whose houses bordered it. Esskay and Miata were compa.s.sionate dogs, but it was hard to explain to two walk-bound creatures that anything was more important than their twice-daily routine. They scampered ahead, towing Crow behind them as if he were a water-skier. Lloyd had refused to hold either leash on the grounds that he hated dogs. Crow had a hunch it was more fear than hate but didn't press the issue.

Along the way Lloyd's story had tumbled out quickly, as if trying to keep pace with the dogs. Le'andro was a low-level player in an East Side drug gang, one run by a man that Lloyd knew as Bennie Tep, although he admitted that probably wasn't his full and proper name. Still, he whispered it, as if it were a powerful thing in its own right, almost like an Orthodox Jew saying Yahweh or spelling G-d. And before he told Crow the name, he made him promise it was a secret-secret, one just between the two of them. "Not for your girlfriend or those d.a.m.n reporters," he said. "They got Le'andro killed."

Crow didn't have the heart to point out that Lloyd had helped. In trying to protect his contact, he had only made him more vulnerable.

"But Le'andro was involved in dealing drugs, right?"

"Yeah."

"And you said he was shot to death on a corner where there have been disputes over territory. It could be unrelated."

"There ain't been no quarrels over that corner for at least three weeks. That thing was settled when Buck Jackson was locked up."

Three weeks didn't seem like a true truce in a drug war, but perhaps Crow didn't understand how time was calculated in Lloyd's world. Perhaps three weeks in East Baltimore was three years in Iraq.

"So if they killed Le'andro, you're off the hook. They think the informant is dead."

"Yeah, but your people"-Crow was charmed despite himself by the concept that he had people-"have to make it official, tell police that Le'andro was the one they talked to. That's the only way I can be safe."

"They can't, Lloyd. Not if they get hauled in front of a grand jury. Perjury is a big deal."

"Yeah," Lloyd said. "They got Lil' Kim on that, but Baretta and his parrot go free on murder. World is f.u.c.ked up."

Crow couldn't disagree on that last point, although he remained as mystified as ever by Lloyd's cultural markers. A hip-hop star like Lil' Kim, sure, but how did he know about Baretta? Then again, even the poorest homes in Baltimore were usually wired with premium cable, and why not? Crow couldn't find it in him to begrudge the poor any luxury, no matter how shortsighted it seemed.

"Tess told me that the reporters who know your ident.i.ty can invoke state shield laws," he said. "If brought before the grand jury, they'll testify that everything in the story is true, but they can't be compelled to say anything else. Not under state law. And Tess is trying to figure out a way to avoid being interviewed at all, because she has no privileged status. Maybe if police a.s.sume it was Le'andro..."

But even ever-optimistic Crow couldn't see how this would happen. They would demand that Tess verify that Le'andro was the source, and Tess couldn't risk lying to local investigators when the stakes were so large.

"Lloyd, here's the thing: If you stay with me at the house, someone's going to put it together really fast that you're the source."

"Why?"

"Well, because, it's just that..."

Lloyd laughed at his discomfiture. "I was just messin' with you, man. I know you got no black friends."

"That's not true. That's absolutely not true."

"Yeah? So who you hang with who's black?"

"Well, Tess's friend Jackie and her daughter. And I sometimes have lunch with Milton Kent, the talk-show host."

"On 1010 AM?" Lloyd looked impressed. The station was the only talk channel in Baltimore programmed for a black urban audience. Crow sometimes toggled between it and the all-conservative WBAL, marveling at the wide world of conspiratorial thinking.

"No, the NPR affiliate." Lloyd was no longer impressed. Meanwhile Crow was reeling inside his own head. Of course he had black friends, he must have black friends. There was, well, Seth, back at college. They had been tight. And some musicians, from his days as the lead singer of Poe White Trash. Certainly he had never made a conscious choice not to have black friends.

But this was Baltimore. Sixty-six percent black, and most of its white citizens lived inside an all-white bubble. Just walking through the park, Crow and Lloyd had drawn more than their share of odd looks from the stay-at-home mothers who speed-walked at midday. That's why he knew he had to get Lloyd out of Roland Park as soon as possible.

"Lloyd, you have to go to the police. Tell them the part about Le'andro, and they'll understand you've got nothing more to tell. Tess will do everything she can to keep her promise to you, but you can't expect her to go to jail to protect your ident.i.ty."

"I never asked for this trouble. She made me do it. She was just looking out for her own self. Now I'm looking out for me."

This was all too true. Not particularly n.o.ble on Lloyd's part, but true. Tess, driven by insatiable curiosity as sure as Kipling's elephant was, had dragged Lloyd into this, not the other way around.

"But it's the only way you'll be safe. Once you talk to the police, they'll do everything they can to protect you. You can't get in trouble for giving a dead man's name."

"Yeah, right. You know how many witnesses been killed in my neighborhood? Even locked up, you're not safe. They want you, they get you. Besides, if I say Le'andro, they gonna go to Bennie Tep and he'll have me killed. Snitchin' don't play where I'm from."

They had come full circle, in the conversation and in the walk. Lloyd was right. Well, not right exactly, but logical in his own way. Outing himself would achieve nothing. Lloyd had already told everything he knew. True, he had omitted a key detail, Le'andro as middleman, but now that Le'andro was dead, Lloyd truly had nothing more to offer. Police would charge him and hold him. Worse, they might release him to streets where he, too, would be hit. Meanwhile Lloyd couldn't stay with Crow, because even Barney Fife would quickly ascertain the ident.i.ty of the black teenager who had suddenly taken up residence in Tess Monaghan's North Side home. He needed to get away, somewhere safe.

Why not take a page out of Tess's playbook? If Crow and Lloyd disappeared, she could then say in all innocence that she didn't know where her source was. He'd have to work it out with Pat-no, let Tess explain to her father why Crow was on the lam and couldn't come to work. On the lam. He couldn't help finding the idea somewhat romantic. He and Lloyd would take off today, disappearing into the city. He'd need cash to avoid leaving any trail, but cash was never a problem. They would use disposable cell phones, the kind available from every convenience store now, to stay in touch with Tess; he had learned about that scam from watching HBO. No, no, he wouldn't call at all. If Tess's phones weren't already tapped, they would be soon. He'd have to buy pairs of cell phones, send one to Tess in the mail.

"Lloyd, are you sure no one knows that Le'andro handed the card over to you?"

"Absolutely." His answer was swift, emphatic. Perhaps too much so.

"Lloyd?"

He sighed, put-upon by his own unreliability. "I got a friend."

"The kid you run the tire scam with?"

"Uh-huh. But he's good people. You don't need to be bothering with him."

"What if he tells someone?"

"He won't." The swift conviction was sincere this time.

"How much does he know?"

"He knows Le'andro gave me a chance to make some money last Thanksgiving. And he was with me when I used the card, out at the mall. I bought him something, too. But he don't know I talked, and I don't want him to."

"Lloyd-you were supposed to tell the reporters everything. That was the deal."

"I told 'em about what I bought myself. The DVD player was for him. He likes movies, and it got a battery pack, so he can charge it up at the library, watch it in the night."

Crow remembered the pile of DVDs he had found on the floor of the spare bedroom the day after Lloyd's memorable first visit, the copy of Throne of Blood in the Volvo.

"You steal the Kurosawa movie for him?"

"What? Oh, no, I just thought it looked cool."

"It is cool. If we had time, I'd let you watch it."

"Where we going?"

"To hide in plain sight."

14.

In principle Tess disliked people who used cell phones in restaurants. But she was getting ready to make an exception for herself, rationalizing that she hadn't spoken to Crow all day, when Tyner arrived for their meeting. His face was stormy with general disapproval-of her cell phone, of the restaurant, of Tess, who had chosen it-and she meekly slid the phone back into her knapsack.

"You can't keep playing this silly game of hide-and-seek," he said as soon as he had barked his drink order at the waitress. Tyner wasn't big on social preliminaries. "You need to decide what you're going to do when you finally surface."

"I could take the Fifth."

"You haven't broken any laws."

"Maybe I think I have," Tess said.

"Your lawyer," Tyner said, pointing to his chest in case she had forgotten he was here in a professional capacity, not a family one, "is informing you that you haven't. You can't invoke self-incrimination if you haven't in fact done anything incriminating. That's a kind of perjury, too."

"I could marry Lloyd and refuse to testify against my husband."

"Don't be droll, Tess. Besides, if you married the boy, you'd create a legal trail that would lead police right to him. That's the one thing you've managed to do right so far, through no real fault of your own. The boy's name isn't recorded anywhere. If Crow had given Lloyd's real name to the police the night of the accident, the detectives would eventually have pieced it together. As it is now, they're probably searching Baltimore for Bob "One O' Smith."

"I know," Tess said. "That's Crow's karma. He's also refused to help the insurance companies, who are just as keen to find our little friend."

"He won't be able to stonewall them forever, you know. And you won't be able to evade the cops much longer. They'll put you in front of the grand jury when it meets next month. You'll be asked to name the source you brought to Marcy and Feeney. If you refuse to name a person of interest in a homicide case, you could be jailed. In fact, they'll take great delight in locking up a middle-cla.s.s white woman."

"A lot could happen before the grand jury convenes. Lloyd could decide to come forward on his own-"

Tyner, a champion snorter, gave a short, elegant whiff of air. It was the equivalent of a teenage girl's "as if."

"Or they could develop leads in the case that make Lloyd irrelevant."