Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

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 glass.

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 compassionate 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 damn 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 fucked 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 identity 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 assume 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 identity.”

“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.”