Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

It was dusk when Tess came home to two strangely exhausted dogs. Still, they were never so tired that they couldn’t greet her properly-Esskay doing the little vertical jumps that Crow called leaping and posturing, Miata circling Tess’s shins.

“Where’s Crow?” she asked, but the dogs just kept up their welcome-home dance.

The house had a too-neat look, as if it had been picked up in anticipation of something. Newspapers were in the recycling bin. Crow’s breakfast dishes had been rinsed and placed on the drain board. Her heart clutched a little, for the scene reminded her of the other times Crow had left. But no, when he left her left her, he did it with more obvious ceremony. Crow had a weakness for the grand gesture. Besides, his cell was on the kitchen counter, plugged into its charger.

She checked the cell phone she used for incoming calls. The technology was still quirky; calls were received and dropped into her voice mail without the phone ringing. Wait, she had placed it on vibrate while working from a coffeehouse in South Baltimore that afternoon. Still, there were no familiar numbers on the log and only one message, which had came from the home number.

“Lloyd’s in danger,” Crow said, his tone as light and uninflected as if he were telling her to pick up milk at the store. “The guy who gave him the ATM card was killed, and Lloyd is sure it’s because of the story. Yeah, he lied about being the only one involved. So I’ve taken him somewhere he’ll feel safe-and I’m not telling you where we are, so you’ll be able to claim ignorance without lying. We’ll keep in touch via disposable cell phones, changing every few days so we can’t be tracked. You should get your first one tomorrow or Thursday.”

Lord, he sounded cheerful, as if this were some Hardy Boy adventure. Crow and Lloyd, a Frank and Joe for the new millennium, a postmodern variation on all those black-white buddy movies of the 1980s: 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon.

Weapon- shit . Tess went to check the gun safe in her bedroom. She had her Beretta with her, as always, but she still owned the Smith amp; Wesson that she’d used before trading up last summer. The safe was empty, which almost made her weep in frustration and anger.

But it was the handwritten note on her pillow- I love you! Trust me on this! -that did the trick. She sat on the neatly made bed and cried. In frustration, in anger, but more in loneliness and fear.

If Lloyd was in danger, then it followed that anyone with him was, too. Crow had thrown himself on a very live grenade. Didn’t he realize that? Now she was in an impossible position. If she gave up Lloyd’s name without knowing where he and Crow were, how could she protect either of them?

If she didn’t, then how could she protect herself?

Crow had thought he would find it easy to spend a night in a homeless shelter-after all, he’d been working with various soup kitchens and shelters for the past three months-but he was wholly unprepared for the difference between life as a come-andgo-as-you-please volunteer and the lot of a client. Or guest, as this Southeast Baltimore shelter called the twenty-odd men it took in every night. It wasn’t so much the smells or the sounds that threw him, although those were plentiful and strange. It was the lack of autonomy, from when the lights were turned out to when the men themselves were turned out onto the streets the next morning. As a benefactor Crow had power. As someone in need of the shelter’s services, he felt at once meek and surly.

It was a safe haven, however, and he had planned to return there for a second night until the director pulled him aside after breakfast.

“Look, I’d do anything for you,” said Father Rob, short for Roberto. A Lutheran minister, he had convinced his church to let him use the parish hall as a shelter as the congregation’s neighborhood members dwindled over the years, replaced by yuppies who thought churches were only good for condo rehabs. “But if you’re trying to hide, this isn’t going to work for you.”

“Why not?”

“You stick out, Crow. I mean, Lloyd-sure, we could keep Lloyd forever and no one would give him a second look, although he’s a little young. But Lloyd’s not going to put up with that. He’s going to go back to his own neighborhood the minute he gets bored or frustrated.”

“His life’s in danger. He’s the one who came to me, the one who sought my help.”

“I know Lloyd, Crow. I’ve known him a lot longer than you have. You think this is the first time he’s slept here?”

“I thought you didn’t take teenagers.”

“We don’t-officially. What would you do if a kid showed up on a snowy night?”

Buy him a meal, Crow thought. Take him into my own house. Wreck my girlfriend’s life.

“Anyway, Lloyd’s ideas don’t have a lot of what I’ll call staying power. Yes, he’s scared now. But the fear will pass. It has to pass. His part of East Baltimore might as well be the Middle East. There’s so much violence he’s numb to it. This isn’t his first friend to be killed. It won’t be the last. He’ll persuade himself that Le’andro’s death doesn’t have anything to do with him after all. Or that he’s cool as long as he doesn’t talk to the police. Once out of your sight-and he’ll try to lose you, sooner rather than later, no matter how many good meals you buy him-he might go to the very drug dealer he fears, beg for some kind of clemency.”

“So I should take him to the police.”

Rob hesitated. “The good-citizen part of me says yes. The part of me that knows this city-Crow, a man was beaten to death in jail this winter. By the guards. So if I’m honest, I can’t tell you there’s a way to guarantee Lloyd’s safety. Yet you definitely can’t control him as long as he’s in Baltimore. Two days from now, he’ll be chasing a sandwich or a girl, forgetting all about how scared he was. You need to get him out of town for a little while, figure this out from a safe distance.”

Crow studied Lloyd, slumped in an old plastic chair in the shelter’s foyer, his posture and attitude radiating the typical adolescent sullenness. What would Crow do with him all day in Baltimore? He’d thought they could go to the library, a prospect that had filled Crow with joy. A day to read and think, hidden away in the gracious main library’s nooks and crannies. Then down to the harbor for lunch, maybe a long walk for exercise, back to the library until closing time, dinner somewhere in Canton, and here to sleep. Given the circumstances, Father Rob had even agreed to hold two beds for them, waiving the usual first-come, first-served rule out of gratitude for the favors that Crow had done the shelter.

But Crow saw now how delusional he was. Lloyd would never spend a day in a library, much less see the point in taking a long walk on a cool spring afternoon. He would fight Crow every step of the way.

“Where should we go?”

“I don’t know, Crow.” Father Rob gave him a rueful smile. “I really shouldn’t know, should I?”

“If anyone comes here asking after us, even someone who knows me-”

“Crow who? Lloyd who? Vaya con Dios. ”

Before Tess’s father had taken over the Point, it had belonged to Tess’s uncle, Spike. At least she called the old man Uncle Spike. The nature of his relationship to the family remained vague. No one even seemed sure if he was a Monaghan or a Weinstein. There was also the hint of some scandal about Spike, a criminal past that the usually voluble Tess skirted in conversation. Whatever Spike had been, whatever he had done, he was now a proper retiree, living in a condo in South Florida and going to the greyhound tracks. Not to bet but to monitor the treatment of the dogs. It was Spike, in fact, who had rescued Esskay, although he always insisted that Esskay had rescued him.