Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

Mike Collins sat parked outside the shuttered amusement park, trying to figure out where all the entrances were. Fearlessness had always been his greatest strength-and his largest liability. He never doubted that he could outrun, outshoot, outfight anyone. Outthink? No. But in any physical contest, he would win.

But that was in Baltimore, on occasion Prince George’s County, places where it was never truly dark. Off-season, the town of Fenwick sat in inky blackness, clouds blotting out whatever light the stars might have provided tonight. The ocean, which Collins could hear but not see, should have been a comfort. Wherever they went, they couldn’t go east. That was one direction he didn’t have to worry about. Still, it bothered him, this unknown territory. He saw only one door, in the center of a clown’s leering mouth, but what about all those garage-type entrances? He had to get the kid now or risking losing him, losing everything.

Just the kid, Jenkins had said over and over, as if Collins were stupid. Just the kid. Take him into custody, and we’ll stage our final act out on the road. Jenkins’s idea was that they would stop for a bathroom break somewhere, or so they would tell folks later on. That lonely stretch of 404, the bypass around Bridgeville. The kid would demand a chance to whiz on the side of the road, and Jenkins would join him, then the kid would go for Jenkins’s gun, and Mike would have to shoot him. Would they throw down the knife, too, or was that overkill? Collins was fuzzy on that part.

Just the kid.

Well, he’d do his best.

He eased out of the car and positioned himself in a doorway opposite the side entrance to the amusement park. Could they raise those big shutters? Not quickly, he guessed, and not without a lot of noise, chains rattling and shit. Damn, he wished he knew the layout of the place inside. Maybe he should wait for Jenkins so they could control for someone trying to go out the windows. Maybe-

But here they were. Two men, about the same height and build, moving silently and quickly toward an old Jeep. He was on them before the driver was in the car, his gun in the guy’s back. Normally he would have roared, too, used the adrenaline-fueled bluster he’d been trained to employ in such situations. But it was almost as if the guy expected him. His hands went up in automatic surrender. A civilian, as Jenkins had predicted. A candy-ass.

“Mike Collins?” the man asked.

“Yes,” he said automatically even as he thought, How? How do you know my name? The girlfriend, shit, the girlfriend-

“Run, Lloyd!” the man screamed. “Run!”

And the boy took off toward the ocean of all places, ran toward the sound of that angry surf. Surprised, then furious, Collins caught the man across the face with his weapon, then hit him again, and he would have kept going if he hadn’t remembered that the man, infuriating as he was, wasn’t the quarry. Just the kid, Jenkins had said. Should he finish the man off, was he still off-limits? No, he had to chase and catch the kid. He’d have to do the throw-down on his own. Jenkins would understand.

The kid had a good head start, and it took Mike a moment to realize he’d have to shuck his shoes if he wanted to be competitive on this wet sand and surf. Still, the kid was just a runt and a slacker, underfed and underexercised. He had no chance. The distance between them was closing, and the stretch of beach ahead was increasingly desolate. Mike wouldn’t even try to catch him until they got past that last line of houses, where he could be sure that they were alone, unseen.

Lloyd thought briefly about Crow’s advice that he should learn to swim. If he could get out in the ocean, would he be safer? Guy was a brother, maybe he couldn’t swim either. Too late now, and he’d freeze to death in that water anyway. His lungs were on fire, his legs felt like lead, churning in the sand, but he had to keep going, not daring to look back. He was pretty sure that cops, even dirty cops, couldn’t shoot you in the back. Someone had told him that. Who?

Le’andro. Fuck.

He wished he could take it back, every bit of it. Rewind his life as if it were a video, go to that night before Thanksgiving. No, Le’andro, I can’t help you out. No, Le’andro, I’m not going to hide here and listen to what this guy tells you to do, then do it for you.

Two hundred dollars and a North Face jacket. Crow was right. It was a piss-poor payment for one’s life.

The houses seem to be giving way, disappearing. He was now on an open stretch of beach, and he could hear that guy grunting behind him, steady as the Terminator. Crow was wrong. He shouldn’t have run. Guy might not have killed him in front of a witness, but he’d sure as hell do it out here in the middle of nowhere. Crow was just protecting his own ass, maybe, like in Robocop , where all those guys keep running from the guy that the machine had targeted for assassination. Fuck Crow. Fuck everybody. Lloyd could sense the other man gaining on him, and he was beginning to think he couldn’t go another step when light flooded the open beach and that pathetic ugly Jeep crested the dunes just ahead of him.

Crow hadn’t abandoned him after all. But what could Crow do anyway?

Crow’s nose was broken, he was pretty sure of that, and something felt off in his cheek. Whatever had happened, it was the worst pain he had ever known, worse even than being stabbed, because at least then he had gone into shock, been beyond pain.

Still, he knew he had to get to Lloyd. He didn’t even take time to deflate the Jeep’s tires, not caring if it got stuck in the sand. The thing was to get there, to be present, to bank on the fact that a witness would take the air out of this scheme. He raced up the stretch of Highway 1, wishing that the summer speed traps were there so he could lead them into the chase, pulled into the parking lot of the public beach, and then rammed up the path used by the surf fishers. His headlamps picked up two running figures. The one in front looked ragged, on the verge of collapse, while the other moved with a brisk, confident stride.

“Stop!” he screamed. “We’ll come with you together! We’ll both-”

To his amazement, the man on the beach turned and fired straight at him, hitting the Jeep. The lights probably made it hard for him to aim with any accuracy, but now he was approaching, coming toward the Jeep’s side, his weapon drawn. And for the first time in his life, Crow understood that he was in danger, that he could be killed. Lloyd, yes. Lloyd, sure. Lloyd, of course. He had been protecting Lloyd all along. Lloyd was vulnerable because he was the kind of disposable kid whose death no one would notice, as long as it was under the right circumstances. But not him. People like Crow didn’t get killed, not by cops, no matter how crooked and desperate.

Yet here was a man approaching him with a gun, a man who was going to shoot him and then Lloyd. How would he explain it? Crow backed away, moving behind the car, but it seemed unlikely that they could maintain this game of ring-around-the-rosy, like in some old retro movie where the boss chased the comely secretary around the desk.

“You can’t ,” he shouted to Mike Collins. “It’s over. You can’t-”

Yet the man’s very posture made clear that he could, that he would. Crow bent down and grabbed a handful of sand, flung it in Collins’s face. It wasn’t clear if he hit his eyes as he had hoped, but Collins flinched instinctively, and it was all Crow needed. He dove into the Jeep and grabbed the gun he’d taken from Tess, the.38 Smith amp; Wesson that she retired when she bought her Beretta. Lloyd, as if sensing his plan, threw himself on Collins from behind, knocking him down in the sand. Like a child, at once single-minded and unfocused, Collins turned his attention on Lloyd, pushing him off, positioning himself in the sand, taking a two-handed grip on his gun and aiming straight at Lloyd’s forehead.