Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

But she didn’t think the federal government did apologies. Waco, Ruby Ridge, WMDs. No, not their forte.

“Mike Collins, DEA,” he said, as if they had never met.

“I remember,” she began as Esskay lunged forward, her nose jabbing into Collins’s crotch. Miata, however, held her ground and semigrowled. It was more throat clearing then menace, a sound indicating that Miata could be trouble if she deemed it necessary. Jesus, what had the Doberman’s previous owner done to create this knee-jerk racism in a dog?

“We’d like to talk to you downtown.”

“Didn’t we just go through this yesterday?”

“New info.”

“What?”

“Downtown,” he said.

“I’ll need my-”

“Lawyer. That’s fine.”

“May I tell him what this is about?”

“They’ll tell you both together.”

“Are you going back to the idea that I sheltered a drug dealer and you can use that to begin forfeiture on my house and car? Because-”

“Downtown.” If his voice had any inflection to it, he could have been Petula Clark.

“May I change?” She indicated her sweats, streaked with mud. The dogs had decided it was a good idea to ford the creek, in search of quarry that turned out to be a falling leaf.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“I need to call someone about the dogs-”

“Your boyfriend ?”

Something about the question-an underlying keenness, a just-perceptible sharpening in Collins’s tone-made Tess uneasy.

“No, the kid who takes care of my dogs when I’m not around. Am I coming home tonight?”

He shrugged. “Remains to be seen.”

“Then you should let me change.”

“Look-” He took a step toward her, and Miata produced a full-throated snarl. Tess was touched by the Doberman’s devotion but doubtful that it would help her, in the long run, for Miata to bite a DEA agent.

“Let me put the dogs away, call my sitter, and change into jeans, okay? It’s not like I’m going to pull a Goldilocks, jump out a window. I’m not under arrest, right?”

“Not yet.”

Tess studied his face, hoping for a wisp of a smile, the tiniest crack in the stony façade. The FBI agent, Jenkins, had seemed human at least, and there had been a blustery quality to the young prosecutor that allowed Tess to believe she could outwit him. Collins, however, made her feel like growling, too, if only because she sensed he was enjoying himself a little too much.

“I’m going inside. Don’t follow, okay? Stay on the porch. My dog doesn’t like you, for whatever reason, and with Crow gone, she’s super protective of me. I can’t guarantee your safety if you follow me inside.”

“I guess she hasn’t seen a lot of brothers in this neighborhood.”

“Brothers?” The word sounded strange in Collins’s mouth, which was funny. Usually it was only white people who sounded ridiculous aping street slang. “Oh, well, I mean, she’s seen-”

She caught the name, just, before it teetered off her tongue. She had been about to say, She’s seen Lloyd, and come to think of it, she didn’t like him much either.

“She’s seen…?”

“A lot,” Tess said flatly. “Her former owner was very badly beaten when Miata wasn’t there to protect him. That’s why she’s so territorial.”

“I’m not worried. If the dog comes at me, I can always shoot her.”

“Is that your idea of a joke?” His noncommittal shrug didn’t fill her with confidence. “Just stay here, okay?”

She opened the storm door, stumbling in her haste over a FedEx package that had been left there. She scooped it up and ran inside, shutting and locking the door behind her. Moving quickly, she did all she said she would do, then tried to think if there was anything else to be accomplished before surrendering. Her eyes fell on the package, which she had thrown aside. It had been shipped from Denton, Maryland, and the sender was listed as E. A. Poe of Greene and Russell streets. Crow had been named for the poet and storyteller, and he knew that Tess was familiar with Poe’s final resting place at that downtown intersection. Inside was a cell phone, and when she powered it up, there was already a message.

“Use this phone for seventy-two hours,” Crow’s voice said in her ear, and she almost wept at the familiar sound. “Then a new one will arrive. That way, even if they put a trace on your known numbers, they can’t track these calls to a cellular tower and figure out where I am. We’re okay. We’re safe. I’ve been trying to persuade Lloyd to come back on his own and cooperate, but he’s just not ready yet. If I bring him back now, I think all he’ll do is run.”

Collins began rapping on the front door. It was a hard yet matter-of-fact knock, dull, steady, and utterly unnerving. Miata barked and snarled, while the usually silent Esskay gave a high yodel, almost as if in pain. Tess shoved the “safe” phone in the laundry hamper, below some truly disgusting workout clothes that should keep anyone but the most determined searcher at bay. It wouldn’t matter if they came back with a warrant, but it was all she could do for now.

“When I was growing up, if we wanted a Jacuzzi, we had to fart in the bathtub.”

“ Trading Places ,” Crow said. “That movie was made before you were born, Lloyd. I’m surprised you know it.”

Lloyd shrugged, leaned back in the small hot tub. “It was on all the time when I was little. It’s still on all the time. There’s, like, a million movies in the world, but on television it’s always Trading Places, Die Hard, and Pretty Woman .”

The two were soothing their sore muscles at the Clarion, a beachfront hotel south of the Delaware-Maryland line. Ed had long ago arranged a swap of sorts with the hotel’s manager, giving him free passes to FunWorld in exchange for offseason privileges at this small exercise room, with its indoor pool, its hot tub, and a few ancient exercise machines. A gym snob such as Tess would have been appalled by the antiqueness of it all, but it was a fine place to soak at day’s end. Ed told the manager that Crow and Lloyd were his workers, and that was the simple truth, after all. They had put in two days of scraping and painting now. When they weren’t painting, they were applying oil to the dried-out hinges on the ten garage doors that ringed the amusement park. The merry-go-round horses were next in line, waiting to be reunited with their poles.

On the first day of April, the pool area was empty, with not even a lifeguard on duty. But then this whole part of the world felt empty this time of the year. It was pleasant, Crow thought. He wouldn’t mind living here, September through May, where the loudest noise was the ocean and there seemed to be more room in the sky for the light, pale and diffuse. But Tess could never leave Baltimore for more than an extended vacation.

Lloyd looked over at the pool, which had a slide at the shallow end. “I knew they had big water slides, but I didn’t know they had little ones.”

“You like to go to water parks?”

He shook his head. “Been to Great America and seen the wave pool, but I got no use for that.”

“Do you know how to swim, Lloyd?”

He gave an elaborate shrug, as if to suggest that swimming was esoteric or exotic. Crow might as well have asked him if he took ballet lessons or made sushi at home.

“You want to learn?”

“Naw.”

“Why not?”

Lloyd shook his head again, as if Crow were being willfully igorant.

“I could teach you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know, that’s a stereotype.”

“What?”

“African-Americans and swimming.”

“Ain’t my fault.” Said quickly, defensively, as if Lloyd were used to being blamed for all sorts of things that weren’t his fault.