Laura Lippman - No Good Deeds

“Are you going to tell Lloyd about the money?” Tess asks me. “ Your money, I mean.”

“First I just want to find him.”

Secrets are corrosive. Remember that. Oh, I suppose it’s okay to conceal birthday gifts and Christmas and other pleasant surprises, but every other deception leads to rot. If I had told Tess about my inheritance when I came into the trust at the beginning of this year, then it wouldn’t have mushroomed into such a big deal. But I hated the money, loathed the very thought of it. It was blood money twice over, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak of it.

The first part of the story, Tess knew. Years ago my grandfather had disinherited my mother for running off with my father. Grandfather-and it was always “Grandfather,” nothing shorter or sweeter-saw money as a cudgel, a whip, a means of control. He thought he could bend my mother to his will with it. Much to his surprise, my mother was perfectly happy with her life as a professor’s wife. But after I was born, she sent me to her father in the summers, an olive branch of sorts, an indication that she was willing to make amends if he would meet her halfway. Unfortunately, my grandfather saw me as another weapon, another way to punish my mother. He made me heir to a trust that she had to administer, thinking that would shame and hurt her. My mother didn’t mind, but I did. I hated being a pawn in the old man’s game.

And that was before my mother told me last fall, just before I came into the trust, that it was time I knew the origins of the family’s fortunes.

“Whaling,” I said. “Grandfather never shut up about it.” My Nantucket summers had included a lot of briefings on my ancestors.

“Whaling in the nineteenth century,” she said. “But earlier, in the eighteenth…well, they had started with a very different kind of cargo.”

“Oh.”

Growing up in Charlottesville, I had gone to schools with various Lees and Jacksons and Stuarts, marveled at classmates who actually looked forward to joining the Sons of the Confederacy. I always wondered how they lived with their family’s legacies. And now it turned out my own history was just as complex. A million dollars. Did time wash money clean of its sins? Was I culpable for my ancestors’ moral relativism, in which the men enabled the slave trade and the women then protested it, achieving some kind of karmic equipoise? And wasn’t I guilty of the same kind of hypocrisy, giving it away a dollar a time but not ready to relinquish it whole? My very approach to philanthropy was cavalier, ill-conceived. My Monday-morning food drive, which recycles food from area bars and restaurants? Pure bullshit. I drive down to the wholesale market in Jessup and buy what I think the soup kitchens can use. Without me there is no Chicken Day at Holy Redeemer. I was straddling, too.

Charlotte Curtis, the director at Holy R, says Lloyd is in the wind again. He tried to go home, but it was the old Thomas Wolfe story. Within days he and Murray had clashed and he was back to his old life-scamming, loafing, scrounging. Lloyd turns seventeen this summer, and he missed most of tenth grade. How can anyone reasonably expect to help Lloyd if he won’t help himself?

The thing is, I’m not particularly reasonable. So I’m sitting on the steps of Holy Redeemer hoping against hope that Lloyd shows up. It’s Chicken Day, after all. Chicken and mashed potatoes and bags of Otterbein cookies to go. How could anyone stay away? In fact, Charlotte thinks I overdid it a little. But I keep thinking Lloyd will come, especially after Tess sees Dub, Terrell, and Tourmaline leaving with the red-and-white bags of gingersnaps clutched in their hands. They stop, exchanging cautious greetings, but when Tess begins, “If there’s anything I can do-” Dub waves her off.

“We fine,” he says. And he will be. Like the genetic marvels that emerge from inner-city neighborhoods to play pro sports, Dub was born with something extra. He’ll make it out through sheer will and intelligence. Lloyd, on the other hand…

Go figure, he comes in just under the wire, getting in line at one minute before four. He sees us, but he’s clearly anxious for his food, so we hang back, letting him go inside and eat. He must inhale it, because he’s back out in under ten minutes, Miss Charlotte locking the door behind him. Last man standing.

“Hey, Lloyd.”

“Hey.” A beat. “Crow.” I can’t tell if he’s forgotten my name or isn’t sure he wants to grant me that much intimacy. He blames me for Delaware. Nothing really bad happened to him while we were detained, but he was terrified every minute of it, and he begrudges my knowing this. But that was a month ago, and with no evidence to lead the federal authorities back to Bennie Tep or any other local drug dealer, Lloyd’s in the clear. The only person he could identify, in the end, was Mike Collins. In Howard County the death of Greg Youssef is a closed case.

In Baltimore City the death of Le’andro Watkins remains open, probably forever, and the only person who cares is Rainier, stuck with another stone-cold whodunit.

“How you doing, Lloyd?”

“Things’re cool,” he says, taking a few steps backward. Maybe he thinks we’re going to grab him and throw him in a car again.

“You know, there was a reward…”

“Ummmm.” He’s still moving backward.

“It was supposed to be for information leading to the arrest of Youssef’s killers, but they decided we’re entitled to it. Tess, me. You.”

This gets his attention. “Yeah? How much?”

“Here’s the thing: Because you’re a minor, I’m going to hold your share in trust. To get it you have to go through me.”

“Shit.” He makes it two syllables. “That’s just a way of saying you’re never going to give it to me.”

“No, I’m going to safeguard your share. It’s not a lot of money, Lloyd, but it’s enough. Enough to go to college, even set you up in your own apartment. Buy a car, assuming you ever get a license. But I am allowed to set conditions.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Condition number one: you’re going to work this summer. At FunWorld. Room and board, plus two hundred sixty-five dollars a week.”

“Fuck, I already done that.”

“Did you hear me? There’s a wage this time.”

“ Slave wages.”

That makes my skin jump. But there will be time enough, as Prufrock learned, to tell Lloyd my secrets. After all, Lloyd hasn’t always been forthcoming with me. “During the summer the dormitories will be filled with kids your age. And Mrs. Anderson, that nice lady who helped you out? She said she’ll make sure you get to church every Sunday. And you get a bonus if you stay the whole summer. You’ll come home with over two thousand dollars, if you don’t blow it on fried dough and saltwater taffy.”

“Then what?”

Good question.

“Your choice-back to school or you start tutoring for your GED. Then college or a job. The trust will be used for essential costs. But if you keep up your end of the bargain, you’ll come out of school with no debt and a nice lump sum to start your life.”

Lloyd stops moving backward, but everything in his posture suggests that he still wants to cut and run, get away from me. He likes his life just the way it is, or thinks he does. He can’t imagine what else it would be, so he has to pretend he’s happy.

“When I got to start?”

“Most of the kids begin after school lets out. But since you’re not enrolled- this semester-Ed could use you starting Mother’s Day weekend. In fact, he says your whole family could come down, spend the weekend.”

“Even Murray?”

“Even Murray,” I say, knowing it’s not what he’s hoping to hear.

“And where do I live when I come back? Not with you?” The idea clearly horrifies him. Give Tess credit: It horrifies her more, but she doesn’t let it show.