Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

“That’s for us to know,” said the young prosecutor, sounding for all the world like a peevish eight-year-old. He might as well have added, “and for you to find out.”

“You don’t have anything,” Tess said. “You’re just bullies.”

Collins stiffened, the first time Tess had seen him show any unwilled reaction. Gabe Dalesio looked as if he wanted to fling himself on the ground and drum his heels until Tess did or said whatever he wanted.

Jenkins, however, was back to playing nice.

“Look, I have a daughter about your age. I know how things happen. You meet a fellow, you’re in love, you don’t look too closely or ask too many questions. You know what I mean? Or there are those girls, the ones who get, like, life sentences in federal prison because they took a bag on the train to New York, no questions asked, and it turned out to be heroin. I’d hate to see that happen to you.”

Tess widened her eyes, so ingenuous as to be disingenuous. “What’s her name?”

“What?”

“Your daughter.”

He paused just a beat. “Marie.”

“You got a photograph of her?”

“What?”

“Your daughter. I figure you must have one, you being so loving and all. So concerned.”

Jenkins leaned back, no longer making a pretense of affection and concern. “Okay, so I got two sons. But we’re not talking about me. Where the hell is your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know,” Tess said, never happier to be ignorant. “I just don’t know.”

They kept her for another hour, then released her, reminding her that she was making a grave mistake, that she should demand Crow’s whereabouts the next time he checked in, that they were far from finished prying into her life. In front of them, she was at once blithe and resolute, but she began sagging as soon as she got into the elevator and felt strangely dizzy by the time she and Tyner reached the street level.

“Are they lying?” she asked Tyner as they made their way into the parking garage, where homeless men slept on the steaming grates. “Could Crow really have this kind of money?”

“I don’t know, but it would shed some light on his happy-go-lucky nature. Easy to be a blithe spirit when you don’t have to worry about making a living.”

“He was stone-cold broke when I found him in Texas. He’s always refused his parents’ attempts to help him out. Where does he suddenly come up with a hundred fifty grand? And why would he keep it secret from me?”

“You can ask him when he calls,” Tyner said. “But just remember-anything you know, these guys will make you tell eventually. I wouldn’t ask any question just now if I wasn’t sure of the answer.”

Ed made Crow and Lloyd wait until after dinner to test the bumper cars, delivering a rather ponderous lecture about how they worked. And while Lloyd took great pleasure in ramming Crow’s car from every angle, Ed delighted in gliding around and away from them, demonstrating a level of control that would do a NASCAR driver proud. “Try to catch me,” he yelled over his shoulder, and the younger men happily gave chase, futile as it proved to be. At one point Lloyd even demonstrated with an unmanned car exactly how the accident with Mr. Parrish had happened, and Crow could see that it had indeed been Mr. Parrish’s fault.

He knew he would sleep particularly well that night, and Lloyd didn’t even complain about the cool, salt-laden breeze that came in through the open window. Sleeping with the windows open had been an ongoing contest between them since they first arrived.

“Crow?” Lloyd said, his voice drowsy.

“Yes?”

“What we gonna do tomorrow night?”

It was almost eleven when Tess, just on the edge of sleep, heard her laundry hamper ringing. She could have reached the phone before it switched into voice mail, but she didn’t even try. She lay in bed, listening to the burst of music, one of the few classical airs she recognized, the beginning of Madama Butterfly . Had Crow programmed that into the phone for her before he slipped it into the FedEx pouch? Puccini gave way to the double beep indicating that a message had been left. She got up then, but not to retrieve the phone. Suddenly wide awake, she decided she would need a hit of pot to recapture the unconsciousness that had been so close just a few minutes earlier.

Do you or your boyfriend use illegal drugs? You betcha, Mr. FBI man. Especially now that you showed up in my life.

The unicorn box was gone. Had Crow taken it in anticipation that the house might be searched? Where did Crow buy the little bits of pot he brought into the house anyway? Where was Crow? Who was Crow? She had met his parents, seen the house where he had grown up. He was no drug dealer. If he were one, he’d be the world’s worst, extending credit to junkies, declining to maximize profits by cutting the purity of what he sold. Where had the money come from? Why had it popped up in his account on the very day he ran away? Was Crow with Lloyd, truly?

The only thing worse than having so many questions about the man she loved was being afraid of the answers. Not so much because she feared that Crow had done something nefarious, but because Tyner was right: Knowledge was dangerous in this case. The three caballeros were going to come back to her, again and again. Right now the only thing Tess had going for her was ignorance. For Crow’s own good, she should avoid speaking to him directly. She wasn’t even sure she should listen to the voice mail he had left.

But in the end she could not maintain her resolve that strictly. She pulled the cell from her laundry hamper and, after a few fumbling missteps, retrieved the new message.

“I miss you,” a familiar voice said. “I love you. Call me on this number when you get a chance.”

She meant to press 2 to save it, but she hit 3 instead, erasing it forever.

Check yes or no. Wasn’t there a country song by that title a few years back? Not that Gabe listened to that shit, but that lyric had somehow wormed its way into his consciousness, one of those songs you want to forget but can’t. Check yes or no. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, another country song. My wife ran away with my best friend, and I sure miss him. Okay, he watched CMT sometimes late at night when he couldn’t sleep. So sue him. He liked the female singers, that kind of big-hair denim-and-lace femininity-like Jersey girls but softer, more pliant. Better than counting sheep and quicker, too, because it just took one. Robert Bork laws be damned, Gabe wasn’t going to have a pay-per-view porn bill come back to haunt him. Besides, who needed porn when regular cable went as far as it did? Proud to be an American, yes siree, because at least I can say that I’m free -free to have my mortgage application pulled, along with tax returns for the past five years, and never be the wiser for it.

Gabe was back in his office, his real one, not the fake-o one they had used to interview the Monaghan woman. He had thought that was pretty sly on Jenkins’s part, taking her to the offices that theU.S. attorney had so recently vacated for this plusher joint across the street. The courthouse had an ominous vibe after hours, a real ghost-town feel. Plus, it meant no snooping colleagues would see what they were up to. But he could do the paperwork at his own desk late into the night, and no one would ever notice. It was going on 1:00 A.M., and here was the bull’s-eye, all he needed.

Gabe found it ironic, the ultimate proof that what you didn’t know could hurt you. People were running around, all steamed because the Patriot Act let authorities examine one’s fuckin’ library records, and they had no clue what the government already had the power to do. Of course Gabe was for the Patriot Act. It was an essential tool. It didn’t go far enough, to his liking. That civil-liberties crap killed him. He wouldn’t blink an eye if someone wanted to open up his life. He had nothing to hide. But he didn’t need the Patriot Act for most of the penny-ante idiocy he pursued, not even in this chick’s case.