Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

From a sub shop in South Baltimore, a place with a video game that would keep Lloyd occupied as long as there was a supply of quarters, Crow called Spike on the cell phone he had just purchased, a twin to the one he’d overnighted to Tess.

A man of few words, Spike listened to Crow without comment or interruption, reason enough to be fond of him.

“There’s a man,” Spike said. “Friend of the family, will look after you for a while. Edward Keyes.”

“Isn’t he the former cop who signed off on Tess’s paperwork so she could get licensed?”

“Yeah. Good people. He lives down the ocean.” Spike may have retired to South Florida, but his Baltimore accent had not diminished at all and he pronounced this phrase with the classic Baltimore o sounds: Downy eaushin. “I’ll call him. I’ll also call a guy in Denton, who will swap out cars for you. Give you something nice and legitimate, put yours on a lift for the duration. But look, Fast Eddie-”

Spike, despite being Spike, did not approve of Crow’s nickname and had settled on “Fast Eddie” as a suitable substitution.

“What, Spike?”

“You got enough cash? ’Cuz I’ll front you, wire some to Keyes.”

“I have all the cash I need, Spike,” Crow said, knowing that Spike would not ask how that could be, bless him. Spike was a great respecter of secrets, having had a few himself. “Enough to last for weeks, if necessary, especially with the accommodations you’re arranging.”

“But what you’re doing, it’s short-term, right?”

“Probably no more than a week or so. Just until we figure some things out.”

Even over the telephone, Spike was capable of eloquent silences. This one was skeptical.

“I need Lloyd to trust me,” Crow rushed to explain. “Once he trusts me, he’ll understand that I have his best interests at heart, and he’ll come in voluntarily, do what he has to do.”

“You don’t think he’s told you everything.” Said flatly, a question and a statement. Spike had his opinion, but he still wanted to know what Crow thought.

Crow glanced over at Lloyd, whose every cell seemed focused on the game in front of him. He held on to the controls, swaying side to side, his right hand darting out to pound the button that unleashed his artillery. His grace, his dexterity, his rapt concentration-what could Lloyd accomplish if those gifts could be directed elsewhere? But how could anyone persuade him to redefine the future as something more than the next four to six hours?

“No,” Crow admitted. “I don’t think he’s told me the whole story. But I also think he’s right that his only choices just now are being killed or being locked up.”

“Don’t lose sight of that,” Spike said.

“That he’s in danger?”

“That he’s a liar.”

“That’s harsh, Spike.”

“Also true. I bet you’ve already caught him in one lie.” Crow’s silence answered that question for Spike. “Just because he’s ’fessed up to one doesn’t mean he’s done yet. Lying’s a way of life with some people.”

It was 2:00 P.M. when Crow called Tess on the disposable cell phone that was not yet in her possession. She could retrieve the message tomorrow.

“Lloyd and I are on the road,” he said. “Details to follow via these lines of communication.”

Lloyd meanwhile was looking around the increasingly flat countryside, sniffing the air suspiciously. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Salt. The ocean’s maybe thirteen miles from here.”

“Which ocean?”

Honestly, Baltimore schools. Even a sixteen-year-old dropout should know which ocean bordered Maryland and Delaware. “There’s only one we could have reached in three hours, the Atlantic.”

“Ain’t nothing here, if you ask me.”

“Not in March, no. Not down the ocean.” Crow took a moment, for he always needed to prepare himself before he launched into an imitation of Spike’s Bawlmer accent. “We’ve gone downy eaushin, hon.”

“Hate that ‘hon’ shit,” Lloyd said, going back to the X-Men comic book that Crow had bought him at the same convenience store that provided the phones. But a few miles later, when they pulled up on the street that dead-ended into a small boardwalk and the Atlantic came into full view, Lloyd found it hard to maintain his studied nonchalance. There was a palpable awe in his silence, although he tried to hide it.

“There sharks in there?” he asked.

“No. Dolphins sometimes.”

“Is it always so loud?”

“Loud?” Crow hadn’t thought of surf as noisy, more of a soothing music, one that took him back to his childhood, the summer nights on Nantucket. “I guess so. It’s a beautiful sound, isn’t it?”

Lloyd shrugged. Crow wished that it were warmer, that they could take off their shoes and socks, roll up their pant legs, and wade into the surf. It seemed almost criminal to him that Lloyd had reached the age of sixteen without knowing what it felt like to wiggle one’s toes in wet sand, to feel the sensation of the tide rushing out, so it seemed as if one were moving while standing perfectly still.

“So what we going to do now?”

“This is our new home for the next few days. Until we figure out what’s best for you.”

“The ocean?” Lloyd’s voice squeaked a bit.

“No, this place here.” Crow waved toward a faded white square of a building, the red lettering on its side weathered by the winter. FRANK’S FUNWORLD.

“What’s there to do ?” Lloyd looked at the tiny strip of boardwalk, the largely empty houses, with a sense of desperation. “No fun that I can see.”

“Don’t worry,” said a short, squat man who came waddling out of a side door. Because the door was centered in the face of a grinning clown, it appeared as if the man had crawled out of the clown’s belly. “I got plenty to keep you busy.”

Gabe Dalesio still couldn’t believe his luck. He had all but given up on ever getting a piece of the Youssef investigation-too big now, too radioactive. Plus, all the agencies had to present a united front, pretend they were on top of things, not start pointing fingers across jurisdictional lines and glory hogging. Gabe had tried to drop some hints in front of the boss woman that the case interested him, that he had some experience with shield laws if she wanted to pursue that angle. (A lie, but what of it? He’d get the expertise if he needed it.) But nobody cared about what he had to offer.

And then boom, out of the blue, this FBI agent Barry Jenkins calls up and asks if he’d like to watch the interrogation of the private investigator, the grandstander who was refusing to name the source.

“Why me?” he asked, then wanted to kick himself. That wasn’t the comeback of a natural-born winner, all grateful and pathetic. Why me? He should have asked for the time and place, said he’d be there.

Jenkins, to his credit, didn’t bust balls. “I’m sort of the unofficial liaison on the Youssef matter. Collins at DEA told me you’d been challenging the, um, received wisdom on the murder before any of this broke. I asked your boss, and she said she could spare you on this.”

“Sure.” Trying now for the cool, hard-as-nails stoicism that he should have shown from the start. So Collins didn’t think he was a faggot after all. “I could fit it in.”

“We’re just going to watch, mind you. The state people don’t want us breathing down their necks. They want our help, but they want to run the show.”

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Gabe had said. “If Youssef is a kidnapping victim-”

“Who said that?”

“That’s my theory. It all goes to the E-ZPass, what I told Collins. I don’t think Youssef was at the wheel of his vehicle when it passed through the toll on its way south, but he wasn’t dead yet either, so it’s a kidnapping charge, which makes it a federal case even if you don’t know he’s a U.S. attorney-”