Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

Of course, that would have created a longer, more detailed trail for investigators in the Youssef murder. Which meant, Tess realized, that Lloyd really didn’t have any idea at the time how radioactive that ATM card was, how much trouble it could cause.

“So Lloyd told you about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he have any details about the guy who hired Le’andro?”

“Naw. He didn’t know him.”

“But did Le’andro mention a name, say where he was from? Any new scrap of information would help, maybe keep the police from trying to charge Lloyd with being an accomplice.”

Dub thought. “Lloyd said the man drove a punk-ass car. Some shitty Chevy, like a Malibu or something. Said thieving wasn’t what it used to be if a player like this had to drive something that raggedy.”

“But I thought he never met the guy.”

“He didn’t.”

“So how could he know what he drove?”

“Maybe Le’andro told him.”

Tess tried to work this through. Lloyd hadn’t met the man who hired Le’andro, but he knew the make of his car. Had Lloyd been lying all along? Was Dub lying now, intent on shielding his friend? But then if the man who gave the ATM card to Le’andro had met Lloyd, knew who he was or at least what he looked like, why hadn’t he killed them both once the story got out?

“Lloyd ever mention Gregory Youssef to you?”

“Who?”

“It’s been on the front page of the papers just this past week-”

Dub’s blank look persuaded her to abandon the story before she began it. She was talking to a homeless seventeen-year-old, a kid who was trying to go to school, keep his family together, and stay one step ahead of whatever forces-his mother, the Department of Social Services-would break them up. Dub had heard Lloyd’s side of things, nothing more.

“Look, is there anything I can do for you?”

He looked wary. “Naw. We fine.”

“I mean money, groceries. I know you don’t want DSS in your life, but there’s got to be a better way to keep your family together.”

“We’ll be okay. I got one more year of high school, then I’ll get a scholarship, go to community college part-time, work the rest. When I’m eighteen, I can petition for custody of Terrell and Tourmaline, official like, and I won’t have to fight my mom for theirses checks anymore. Then I’ll get those two through. Long as we show up for school and don’t cause trouble, no one needs to know anything about us.”

“What do you use for a mailing address?”

Dub smiled as if he found Tess naïve. By his standards, she was.

“How much do you and Lloyd get for the tire trick?”

Dub shrugged as if he had no idea what she was referencing, although he had already admitted his role. He might not have been born this cagey, but life had schooled him as well as the Baltimore city school system, probably better.

“Twenty? Forty?” Tess took three twenties from her wallet. “The way I see it, my household has thwarted you twice.” When he didn’t reach for the money, she added, “I pay for information all the time. You earned this, same as anyone. No special treatment, no handout.”

“I didn’t tell you much,” he said, his fingers closing over the bills.

“You know, I can find odd jobs for you,” she said. “My office isn’t two miles from here, and my aunt has a bookstore nearby. Between us, there are lots of little jobs, things that would work around your school schedule. And my aunt’s store stays open late. She’d let you hang there until closing-”

“We fine,” he repeated.

Back in her car, Tess checked her watch. Almost six, but that was early in high-powered-lawyer land. The secretaries and receptionists might have gone home, but she was betting that a young comer such as Wilma Youssef was still at her desk-depending on her day-care situation.

Wilma worked at one of Baltimore’s better-known firms, a string of Italian and Jewish surnames where politicians came to roost when they tired of public life or, in some cases, the public had tired of them prematurely. In fact, the most recent U.S. attorney, the one who had seen Youssef’s death largely as a publicity bonanza, had dropped hints about how much he would like to work here, to no avail. It wasn’t his Republican affiliation; the firm was apolitical, throwing its weight behind power and money and those who already had them. But the firm also valued discretion, and the former U.S. attorney had failed to impress on that score. High in the glossy white IBM tower near the harbor, this was a genteel, old-fashioned law practice, one that eschewed criminal cases in favor of civil ones. Again, it was all about money.

Wilma Youssef, squirreled away in a small office far from the pristine reception area, did not appear to be getting her share, not yet. This was not where partners sat, Tess decided after sweet-talking a custodian into unlocking the main doors for her and pointing her toward Wilma’s office. She had claimed to be a client with an appointment, which barely seemed a lie.

Wilma jumped a little when Tess appeared in her doorway.

“Have you decided to cooperate with the police?” Wilma asked, skipping past any pretend niceties.

“I’m prepared to make a deal with you. You get your husband’s safe-deposit box open, find out what’s in it-and then I’ll name my informant.”

Okay, she would name Lloyd in a few days in order to avoid prosecution on the mortgage charge. It was still the truth. Why shouldn’t she leverage it any way she could?

“What do the two things have to do with each other?”

“Nothing, probably. But I want to be sure of that. See, I’ve been thinking. Someone made your husband’s death look like what it wasn’t. So then we all jumped to the conclusion that it must be the other, a virtuous prosecutor cut down for his work. Maybe that’s not it either.”

Wilma was one of those fair, thin-skinned blondes who blushed readily and deeply from emotion.

“I’ve lived through the past five months with all this crap innuendo about my husband, delivered our child even as the nurses were gossiping about Greg. Was he gay? Did he have a lover? You, better than anyone, should know that my husband was murdered because of something he had worked on. Why do you persist in protecting these people?”

“These people?”

Once in full blush, a person can hardly moderate the meaning of the blood that has rushed to the face. But Tess thought she saw a flicker of shame in Wilma’s expression.

“Drug dealers, I mean. Criminals.”

Tess plopped herself into the chair opposite Wilma’s desk, tired of waiting for an invitation. “My source isn’t pure, I’ll grant you that. In fact, if the informant in this case didn’t have a record, I doubt I would have ever extracted any information to begin with. But the source isn’t a drug dealer, I can guarantee you that.”

“Still-”

Tess had read of people tossing their heads but seldom seen it done with any true flair. Wilma, however, managed to execute the gesture with style, lifting her chin with the force of a skittish racehorse being led into post position at Pimlico. Too bad that her blond hair was too short and too lacquered with spray to make a satisfactory mane.

“ Still, ” Tess echoed. “You mean there’s your husband’s death, which matters, and the life of my informant, which matters to you not at all.”

“My husband is dead. Your informant is a lowlife who needs to be coerced into doing his civic duty.”

“Less than forty-eight hours after the newspaper article appeared-the one that detailed how your husband’s ATM card was handed over, along with the code and explicit instructions on how and when to use it-a teenager was killed in Baltimore. Shot to death while standing on a corner.”