Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

“You and Youssef were buddies, right?” Gabe ventured.

“We worked on some cases together. I wouldn’t call him a friend.”

“But you knew him, right?”

That earned only a slow, terse nod.

“So did you see him as a secret faggot?”

“I don’t talk shit. About anyone.” With just that handful of words, Collins made it clear that Youssef didn’t deserve to be gossiped about, while Gabe did.

“I’m not talking…shit.” The phrase sounded thin and mealy in his mouth. “I’m interested in some facts that don’t seem to fit.”

“Such as?”

“I’m just working off hunches right now. I’m not saying I can shoot down the working scenario. But it’s something I want to think about.”

Collins stared at him for several seconds before speaking. No more than three, but they were exceptionally long seconds, in which Gabe had time to consider every way he was inferior to this man. He tried to stay quiet, imitate Collins’s style, but he broke down, rushing to fill the silence.

“It’s the toll plaza. Not on the trip north. The first time, on the way out of the city to where he and his trick are going to do…whatever.”

Collins still didn’t speak.

“He must have been behind the wheel on the trip out, right? If he picked someone up and was taking him to a safer place to…rendezvous. Why doesn’t he use the E-ZPass lane? He did coming into the city, earlier that night.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to leave a record of his movements. People in our line of work tend to be paranoid.” Collins managed to make it sound as if Gabe were not in that group, not one of them.

“But if you’ve got the thing, it still registers. Using a pay lane doesn’t keep it from engaging.”

Collins shrugged. “Depending on traffic, you can’t always control what lane you end up in. Especially coming onto the highway from Boston Street, as Youssef is thought to have done. That would have been the fastest way from Patterson Park. You get hemmed in by the trucks, you go where you can.”

“Okay, sure, on any given night. But this was the night before Thanksgiving.”

This time Gabe waited Collins out, using his cigarette as a prop. True, he drew on it until it was almost burning ash between his fingers, but he didn’t start babbling again.

“So?” Collins finally asked.

“I happened to drive home that night, to my folks’ place in Trenton. And every toll lane along I-95 was stacked to hell and back. I would’ve killed for E-ZPass. If I weren’t a law-abiding type”-he allowed himself a nervous laugh here, but Collins didn’t join in-“I would have risked running it in some places. And here’s Youssef, trying to get his dick sucked or whatever he does, then get home in a reasonable amount of time so his wife will buy his work-emergency excuse, and he just sits there in line, as if he had all the time in the world?”

He barely felt the frigid air, except in his exposed fingers. He was that flush with his insight, that proud of the detail he had caught. Collins was nodding and taking it in, his esteem for Gabe growing larger by the second, silent as those seconds were.

Then Collins stubbed out his cigarette in the sand-filled ashtray and said: “You think a lot about what goes on in the mind of a guy who’s about to get his dick sucked by another guy?”

With that he walked away, leaving Gabe feeling very small and very cold. Except for his face, where the blood now rose, flaming the handsome, symmetrical features that his female relatives always swore would grease his way through life.

Tess arrived home to the usual havoc of a Crow-prepared meal, which she never minded. He was not only an excellent cook but a considerate one as well, insistent on cleaning up after himself. So it was easy to tolerate the by-products of his feasts-the bursts of flour, the dribbles of olive oil, the littered countertops.

Crow’s guest, however, was a tougher sell. The sullen teen was sitting at their dining room table locked in a staring contest with the dogs, both of whom seemed highly skeptical. Esskay’s instincts weren’t worth much; the greyhound disapproved of anyone who didn’t fawn over her. Miata, shy and reserved, was a better barometer. Her narrowed gaze and the slight rumble in the back of her throat did not speak well for the young man facing her.

“Hello,” Tess said.

He looked harmless enough-a skinny, almost scrawny kid with close-cropped hair and skin the color of a full-bodied lager. His most striking features were his amber eyes, one with a black dot in the iris, and slightly pointed ears, which gave his face an elfin cast.

“Hmmmmmph,” he said, not lifting his gaze from the dogs’ glare.

“Lloyd, this is my girlfriend, Tess,” Crow called from the kitchen. “Tess, Lloyd Jupiter. He’s going to be staying with us for a while.”

“A while?” Tess echoed. “No, I’m not ,” Lloyd said.

“Well, you’re definitely staying here for the night.”

Tess poured a glass of red wine for herself and Pellegrino for Lloyd, who sniffed suspiciously at the bubbles before he sipped it.

“This 7-Up got no taste,” he said.

“It’s water. I’m afraid we don’t keep soda in the house. Where do you go to school?” She was determined to be a good hostess.

“I don’t.”

“Where did you go before you dropped out?”

“Didn’t say I dropped out.”

“Sorry-I just assumed. So did you? Go to school and then drop out? Graduate early? Or are you just truant?”

“I was over at Clifton Park. It didn’t have much for me.”

“What do you do now?”

“I get by.”

“Puncturing people’s tires and then offering to help change them. I heard.” Crow had briefed her on that part while she was driving home, perhaps banking on Tess’s inability to work up a truly righteous rage at him while distracted by rush-hour traffic.

“I didn’t . Another kid did it. Look, you got television? Xbox?”

“There’s a television in the den, which doubles as my office and our guest room. No Xbox or PlayStation, I’m afraid. The only computer game we have is the chess software that came loaded on my laptop.”

“Can I see it?”

Tess took him to her office and set up the wireless laptop. Lloyd didn’t actually know how to play, she noticed. He asked for the computer’s recommendations and sometimes tried to move pieces in ways that were promptly disallowed. But it was a game on a screen, which seemed to satisfy him.

“Hey,” he said after a moment. “This computer’s talking to me.”

“Well, it gives you suggestions-”

“No, it’s talking to me , in this, like, little box. Asking me about”-he squinted at the screen, sounding out the words-“the giant scam.”

“What?” Tess leaned over his shoulder and saw the instant-message box that had opened in the corner. She must have logged on to her IM account by force of habit. The Snoop Sisters-the unfortunate Yahoo group name used to identify the women PIs with whom Tess worked-were enjoying a live chat, and Gretchen from Chicago had assumed it was Tess who was online. Gretchen’s question was pretty much the way Lloyd had conveyed it, albeit even ruder: So how was the giant scam you perpetrated on Christy Media Inc.? Any chance of the rest of us getting cut in on this action?

Not really here,Tess typed back, reaching around Lloyd, who seem to draw himself in as if terrified of contact. Guest using computer. Will provide details via tomorrow’s digest.

“What is that?” Lloyd’s voice was animated for the first time.

“Just IM.”

He looked mystified, but he didn’t ask for clarification. Lloyd seemed resigned to not understanding things.