No Good Deeds

by Laura Lippman

  "Mike…?"

  The young man picked up the gun, studying it as if he wasn't quite sure what it was or where it had come from, then put it back down.

  "I…I may have overstepped, Barry."

  "Overstepped?"

  "Gabe Dalesio learned something, and it struck me as key, but I knew if we acted on it, he might begin to put things together. So, um, I killed him."

  This was a new situation to him. As a father to his own sons, Jenkins had been the one who disappointed, who stood before his children's sorrowful and disapproving faces again and again. Here at last was his chance to assure someone that it was okay to screw up, to give comfort and succor.

  Succor. Funny word. Say it out loud and it sounded just like "sucker."

  "You used this gun?"

  "Yeah. Out on the street, like it was a carjacking or a robbery gone wrong. I took it off a drug dealer years ago. There's no paper on it."

  "You take the car?"

  "No, but I grabbed his wallet and his keys. Then I went to see a woman I know out Hunt Valley way, one who's not too fussy about advance notice."

  "What you kids call a booty call?" Collins managed a feeble smile at Jenkins's deliberate squareness. "That was smart, Bully." This earned a genuine smile, one of relief and pride. "And you didn't use your service weapon, smarter still. Now we just have to throw this one down the sewer."

  "And go to Delaware?"

  "Delaware?"

  "That's what Dalesio found. There's an ex-cop, held the liquor license on the dad's bar, and he's also listed as the founding partner in the girl's business. He figured that a guy like that was probably in the habit of doing the family favors."

  "Well, that sure is interesting." But not worth killing another federal prosecutor for. "I mean, it's worth checking out. Still sounds like a bit of a long shot to me. Why would an ex-cop shield someone wanted in a murder investigation?"

  "Dalesio did some preliminary checking. He pulled a reverse directory, started calling some of the guy's neighbors. There was some strange guy drinking beer with him just yesterday."

  "Strange?"

  "Unknown, not a familiar face. White, youngish. Could be the boyfriend. We should go over there."

  "Throw the gun down the sewer. Then go to work."

  "Work?"

  "A federal prosecutor was killed last night. You don't know that now, but it will be all over your office soon after you get there. And while you may have his wallet—throw that down the sewer, too, okay?—police will have already traced the car registration back to him. Go into work and be glad, for once, that they treat you like shit. I'll do the same thing, and we'll do what we've been doing all along: keep our eyes and ears open, figure out who knows what, then proceed according to an orderly plan of my devising."

  Collins winced a little, picking up the implicit criticism in that one stressed word, and Jenkins realized that he had to modulate his tone. "It's okay, Bully. You did okay. Just let me do the thinking. It worked with Youssef, didn't it? We took our sweet time, and it was just about perfect."

  "Except for the kid using the ATM card again. And then that private eye came along."

  "Yeah, well, she's got other fish to fry now." Jenkins wondered fleetingly how they would continue to press her without Gabe. Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe they really did have the information they'd sought all along. "The thing is, we've got to do this without involving civilians. Mike? You feel me?"

  Another wisp of a smile from Collins for the way Jenkins sounded when he aped that ghetto talk.

  "If this little fucker is at the beach, we've got to take him into custody and isolate him. Set him up to run from us, then do the old throw-down. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated."

  "I get it."

  "You sure? Because we're up to two more bodies than we ever planned to have. I don't blame you for Youssef—he tricked you into telling him what we had going, demanded in, then wanted out. He was a liability, and we had to get rid of him. But this…"

  Collins's shoulders sagged. The kid meant well. But his central flaw could not be fixed. When in doubt, he went for his gun. It was a weird defect, one usually found in female officers, but it had been okay as long as Collins kept shooting criminals. It was only when he shot that civilian that he'd gotten in such deep shit. Irony was, he'd been absolutely justified for once. The guy had refused to stop, just kept coming at Collins, one of those old-timers who thought he could beat a drug dealer with a rake, fucking up a big buy that Collins had spent eight months getting to that moment. The geezer was lucky to have survived, in Jenkins's opinion.

  "Go to work, Bully," he said. "The minute someone tells you about Gabe, say, ‘Holy shit! I was having a drink with him last night. He was telling me his theories about the Youssef case.' Don't say anything that can be contradicted by an eyewitness. You walked out with him. Walked most of the way to his car with him because you were parked in the same direction. Admit that you were a little lit—"

  "I wasn't, actually."

  "Admit that you were a little lit, that you went out to visit your lady friend and barely had time to change your clothes before coming in to work. Get me? We're in assessment mode today."

  Collins left, and Jenkins sat at his kitchen table, head in hands. How had it all gone so wrong? It had been so perfect on paper, so bloodless and simple, money coming in and no one going out. He added up the death toll in his head. Youssef, Dalesio. Oh, and the kid, Le'andro Watkins, not that the world could really mourn a lowlife who was going to kill or be killed before his twenty-first birthday.

  And now they had to find this other kid, set him up. But then they would be done. It had to end there. Please, let it fucking end.

  30

  Tess had planned to go straight to her office from Laurel, but she headed home instead. WBAL was reporting on a street murder in Canton, the kind of crime sure to spook the area's yuppies and tourists. When the newscast yielded to the morning call-in show, she could hear people trying to extract the detail that would establish that the crime was somehow the victim's fault. Was it a domestic? No, it appeared to be a robbery and attempted carjacking. Was it someone driving a flashy car? Not clear. A man cruising for…um, female companionship? The callers were desperate for proof that no crime or misfortune was ever truly random. Tess thought it more remarkable that such murders were so infrequent. It was less than a mile from the swank condos on the Canton waterfront to the desperate neighborhood where Dub, Terrell, and Tourmaline squatted in an abandoned rowhouse.

  At home she found another FedEx with another cell phone—Crow had thought to waive the signature this time—but after several futile minutes with the instructions, she realized she had hit the wall of her own technological limitations. There probably was a way to download the digital photos she wanted to send Crow from her camera to the phone and then to his phone, but it would take a better mind than hers. She decided to use her laptop, setting up a neutral Hotmail account, then forwarding the photos there. She would call Crow on the new phone and give him the password, then hope he could get to a computer to view them.

  The problem was, she had no proof that Mike Collins was anything other than the concerned federal agent he purported to be. She called her one good friend in the Baltimore City homicide squad, Detective Martin Tull.

  "Not a good time," the detective said with his customary curtness. "Got a red ball so far up my ass that it might end up coming out of my nose the next time I blow it."

  "Canton, yeah, I heard it on 'BAL. I'll be quick. You got an open case on a kid named Le'andro Watkins? He was killed last week. Shot, typical drug-murder stuff." Or so it would appear.

  A moment of silence. Tull must be glancing at the board that carried the cases, listed by number and victims' last names. The board was color-coded—black for closed ones, red for those still open. Tess would bet anything there was a sea of red on the board this year.

  Tull came back on the line. "Yeah, that's Rainier's."

  Shit. If T
ess had only one friend in homicide, she also had only one enemy. Still, she didn't carry a grudge, and maybe Rainier didn't either. In the end she had done right by him, handed him a bouquet of clearances. Tess had probably helped Rainier earn his highest clearance rate since he joined the department.

  "He around?"

  "That worthless fucker called in from the field this morning, said he was doing some interviews. He's hiding, worried that he'll be pulled to help on this case."

  "Got a cell for him?"

  "Yeah. And maybe he'll answer if he doesn't see the 396 prefix." All city numbers, including those from police headquarters, began with those three numbers.

  "Good luck," Tess said. "I owe you one."

  "You've lost count if you think all you owe me is one."

  "Final question: If you were the kind of homicide detective who ever pretended to be out in the field to avoid a difficult assignment—we all know you'd never do that, just being theoretical here—but if you were that kind of detective and you weren't working and you didn't want to be found, where would you be?"

  Tull began laughing.

  "What's so funny?"

  ‘Truth be told, I'd go to your father's bar, because no one's ever going to find anyone in that little bend of Franklintown Road. But if I were Jay Rainier—and I thank God every day that I'm not—I'd be on Fort Avenue. He came up through Southern District patrol, has a soft spot for Locust Point."

  "Tull, there's a bar in almost every block of Fort."

  "Yeah, but it's only, what, two, three miles long? And it's a nice day for a pub crawl. Cool, but sunny."

  Tess called Crow's new number but got no answer. She left careful instructions about how to access the Hotmail account, then made a quick costume change before heading to South Baltimore, trading her suede jacket for a nylon windbreaker of a startling bright blue, lined with synthetic plush of the same color. It had belonged to her father and still had his name, Patrick, embroidered on the front.

  But it was the back, proclaiming Tess a member of the Colts Corral, No. 34, that should make the Fort Avenue bartenders warm to her.

  Crow and Lloyd were loading supplies at the 84 Lumber off Route 26 when the cell rang, and Crow couldn't get his hands free to answer it without dropping a two-by-four on Lloyd's toe. It was wonderful just to hear it ring, to know Tess was trying to get in touch with him. He checked the message on the drive back, listened to her breathless instructions to get to a computer and review the photos she had sent.

  But the South Coastal Library, so helpful in all other respects, thwarted him. Its computer network was loaded with virus protections that refused to allow him to download the images Tess had forwarded. One of the librarians could probably help him bypass the program, but Crow didn't want to risk drawing that much attention to himself. Maybe Ed had a computer.

  "We take technology too much for granted," he said to Lloyd as they drove back to Fenwick.

  "What you mean?"

  "We assume everyone has a cell phone, computers, Internet access—or that cell phones will always work or we'll be able to find a wireless hot spot when we need it. Can you imagine the chaos if terrorists or hackers brought down all the landlines and cell access and wireless connections for even an hour? If you couldn't call anyone, use an ATM, send an e-mail?"

  "I'd be okay," Lloyd said.

  Crow started to explain that Lloyd was missing the larger point of what he was trying to describe, the global nature of technological dependence. But Lloyd had spoken a simple truth. Lloyd would be okay, probably better than most. On the day that the shit really came down—when buildings fell again or if a similar nightmare scenario played out—Crow wouldn't mind having Lloyd Jupiter at his side.

  Fort Avenue dead-ended into Fort McHenry, the star-shaped fort where a pivotal battle in the War of 1812 had inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner." In honor of that deed, the fort had commissioned a statue of Orpheus—or, as locals called him, that naked guy with the harp. Tess parked in the public lot and began heading west along a street where there was a bar, on average, every two blocks.

  She had not been in the Locust Point section of Baltimore for two years, and the area had changed considerably, like most of the city's waterfront. She could see the shells of expensive town houses—at this width and price, they would never allow themselves to be called rowhouses—rising by the harbor, and there was a fancy-schmancy bakery, the kind of place where a cupcake cost almost as much as a Lady Baltimore in the old-fashioned stalls in Cross Street Market. But most of the old bars were hanging on, with only a few chichi interlopers. Given that her father was once an inspector for the liquor board, Tess couldn't help speculating why so many licenses had been granted in the area. It had to be tied to political patronage; the question was whether it implied a surplus of clout or a complete lack thereof. She also wondered how many of the places made illegal payouts on the video poker games where, even at midday, stonefaced zombies sat pressing buttons forlornly.

  The bartenders at such places were expert at protecting their regulars, especially from women inquiring after them. But with reasonable deployments of charm and cash, she managed to ascertain whether Jay Rainier was known in these parts. "Captain Larry's?" the bartender at Truman's volunteered, but the skipper there sent her to Hogan's Alley, which recommended the End Zone, a cruel joke, as that bar had been replaced by a yuppie joint, the Idle Hour. She had worked her way almost two miles down Fort Avenue when she found the man himself in Dorothy's, a pale lager and a large cheeseburger in front of him.

  "Don't you worry about mad cow disease?" Tess asked, taking the stool next to him.

  "Hmmmph," Rainier said, his mouth full.

  "Me neither. I'll have what the gentleman's having, medium rare, Swiss cheese if you've got it."

  "And a Coors Light, too?" the waitress asked.

  Tess didn't believe in the light version of anything. She studied the handles on the draft taps. "Yuengling."

  "You want fries with that?" The waitress's tone suggested she had a vested interest in Tess's weight.

  "I want fries with everything."

  "Hey, Monaghan," Rainer said after a hard swallow. He seemed wary but not unfriendly. "Is this a chance encounter?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Fuck me." There was no edge to his words, however. He studied the silent television above them, tuned to ESPN. "Second real day of the baseball season and probably the last one that the Mets will be in first place."

  Tess nodded in pretend empathy. She had been brought up to hate the Mets more than any other team in major-league baseball. The very mention of 1969—the year that Baltimore teams had lost to New York ones in the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the NBA championships—could ruin her father's day.

  "I hear you caught a case—"

  "Of the clap? You doing STD investigation now for Public Health? That would be a step up for you, prestigewise." Rainier's tone remained listless, as if he really couldn't summon the energy to taunt Tess.

  "Le'andro Watkins. Teenager, killed last week."

  "Yeah, that's a winner, ain't it?"

  "You've developed any leads?"

  "None at all. Usual drill. No one saw anything. No one knows anything. He was a low-level solider in a small-time drug gang."

  "Worked for Bennie Tepperson—Bennie Tep. Am I right?"

  "Yeah," he said, now more alert. "You got something for me, Monaghan? Because this one's a total loser."

  "I might. Eventually. Was there anything to suggest that it wasn't what it appeared to be, a straight-up retribution shooting?"

  "Naw. Although I will say the East Side has been quiet lately, and Bennie's far from a player. He's an old-timer who's stayed in the game by not taking a lot of risks. Hell, he'll barely defend what territory he does have, and he's getting a rep for putting out really weak packages. He's never been a significant player, except in his own head."

  "You hear that from DEA?"

  "Naw, our ow
n guys are more up on it. The feds got no use for the drug stuff now, unless it's big federal-death-penalty stuff with lots of gang violence, like those M-13s down in southern Maryland."

  "Still, the DEA was interested, right? Came around, asked a few questions?"

  Rainier gave her an odd look. "Nope. No DEA involvement at all. What makes you think that?"

  "You sure? I know you're the primary, but could they have spoken to someone else?"

  "Anything is possible, but I sure as hell didn't talk to anyone. It's not exactly one of our high-priority cases. And if a DEA agent came sniffing around, there would have been talk, you can be sure of that."

  It was what Tess had expected to hear, even feared. If Mike Collins hadn't talked to the primary on the case, then how could he know that Le'andro Watkins was the dead kid that had scared Lloyd into running? Chances were he was the man who had killed him.

  "You know a DEA agent name of Mike Collins?" she asked Rainier.

  "Know of him. He's the poor bastard who shot that geezer who tried to interrupt his drug buy. Honest mistake, and they hung him out to dry."

  "But you've never spoken to him, haven't had any contact with him in the last week?"

  "Nope. Never met the man."

  Tess's lunch arrived, and she decided to abandon herself, however briefly, to the reliable pleasure of grilled meat, melted cheese, and deep-fried potatoes. "So what sent you into hiding today?"

  "I'm working," Rainier said, in on the joke for once. "Hey, it's bad enough I'm saddled with this piece-of-shit Watkins case. I don't see why I have to be collateral damage in a red ball as well."

  "Tourist?"

  "Worse."

  "A relative of the mayor?"

  "Some federal prosecutor. Probably a random thing, a straight-up carjacking, but they're sending guys out to grab every lowlife in a five-mile radius, just in case it's related to his work. Two AUSA's in six months. It's making people a little jumpy."

  The cheeseburger, which would have been a contender in any best-of-Baltimore survey, turned to ash on Tess's tongue.