No Good Deeds

Be

He settled for a York Peppermint Patty, a mini, only fifty calories, low-fat, and no trouble for his teeth. With a cup of hot tea, it was almost as good as a real dessert. Almost.

Waiting for his water to come to a boil, he turned on the late news. Slot machines-shit, he hoped they didn’t come to town, the legal numbers were bad enough-something else about the governor. Had Toad missed his chance? But when the news came back from commercial, the anchorgirl had on her serious face, signaling a sad story. That meant a homicide, a fatal car accident, or something about an injured pet.

“We’ve just gotten word that police have been summoned to the 2300 block of East Lombard Street for what appears to be a drive-by shooting. A young man was shot multiple times while standing on the corner there. Police say there were no witnesses. Those with information are asked to call…’’

Be

Damn. He felt bad for the kid. If they had done things Be

But it was over. Now only two of them knew what was what, and they would never tell. They both had too much to lose.

TUESDAY

13

In his dreams Crow held fast to Tess while she tried to wriggle out of his grasp. She wasn’t attempting to escape out of malice or rejection, only because her curiosity had fastened on something bright and shiny and just out of reach. It was like trying to hold on to a squirming child, and eventually he had to concede her strength and let go.

Plus, she smelled awful.

He awakened to find his arms around the greyhound, who was not trying to evade his touch at all but had instead burrowed into him, exhaling bursts of fishy breath. A mere two nights since Tess had decamped, Esskay had usurped Tess’s place in the bed, even using her pillow. Miata, less conflicted about the idea that she was a dog, was draped across the foot of the bed.

It was odd, being in Tess’s house-and he always thought of it as her house, despite the work he had done on the rehab-without Tess. He felt off balance and tentative. But perhaps what he really felt was superfluous. The rational part of his mind understood that Tess was protecting him by concealing her whereabouts, but another part wondered if she had expected him to wilt when confronted by various authorities. “I don’t want to put you into the position of lying,” she had said Sunday when she packed her bag and left the house. They had been in regular phone contact since then, and she had let slip that she was less than a mile away, somewhere in North Baltimore. “I can almost see Stony Run Park from where I am,” she said, then stopped abruptly. But Crow knew that meant one of the high-rises near Johns Hopkins.

What if the newspaper had reported that Edgar “Crow” Ransome was the actual go-between in this tale? Would he now be on the run, while Tess was kept in the dark? True, he had not ferreted out the co

Right now Tess probably wished this were so, although Crow thought the Howard County investigators had been given a promising lead, if they could just focus on it. Even if Lloyd couldn’t or wouldn’t say who had asked him to use Youssef’s ATM card, the detectives now knew this wasn’t a case of a man being murdered by a piece of would-be trade.

He glanced at the clock: 11:00 A.M. With Tess gone, he had honored his own night-owl nature instead of trying to fit his schedule onto Tess’s days, playing weft to her warp. It had felt good, sleeping in, obeying his own body’s needs for once.

The dogs, poor things, hadn’t adjusted to the new routine. They needed to be walked immediately. He threw on his clothes, Esskay leaping around him in giddy circles while Miata just panted in excitement. They preferred Crow, for he was focused on them during the walk, while Tess’s thoughts tended to drift and her pace to slacken. Eager and anxious, they burst through the door-and almost tripped over the huddled form of Lloyd Jupiter, who seemed to be trying to fold himself behind a yew-berry bush.

“You gotta help me, man. They killed Le’andro. They killed Le’andro.”

“Le’andro was the one who was supposed to use the card, but he had a chance to get with this girl. So he gave me the card, told me I could have the money. But that was a secret, see? Between us. Because he had a direct order to do it his own self. So they think he done it. And if they think he done it-”

“Then they think he’s the source in the newspaper article.”

“Yeah.” Lloyd picked up a rock and threw it as far as he could-which turned out to be pretty far. The kid could probably be a decent baseball player. But i

They were walking along Stony Run Creek, a narrow stream in a park known mainly to those whose houses bordered it. Esskay and Miata were compassionate dogs, but it was hard to explain to two walk-bound creatures that anything was more important than their twice-daily routine. They scampered ahead, towing Crow behind them as if he were a water-skier. Lloyd had refused to hold either leash on the grounds that he hated dogs. Crow had a hunch it was more fear than hate but didn’t press the issue.

Along the way Lloyd’s story had tumbled out quickly, as if trying to keep pace with the dogs. Le’andro was a low-level player in an East Side drug gang, one run by a man that Lloyd knew as Be