No Good Deeds Part 21

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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 c.r.a.p 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."

"So?"

"So the kid, Le'andro Watkins, was the one who was supposed to handle the ATM card, but he pa.s.sed it on to someone else-my source. My source talks, Le'andro is killed."

"These things happen."

"Exactly. Young black kids get shot and killed in East Baltimore. And, by the way, men who live secret lives sometimes end up on the wrong side of a trick, too. "These things happen." But what if they're happening this time because someone knows what it looks like, how the crimes will be perceived? We have two homicides that are meant to look like something they're not. That's the connection."

Wilma was settling down, listening to Tess's words, allowing intellect to trump emotion. Met under the best of circ.u.mstances, Wilma Youssef was never going to be a kindred spirit. She struck Tess as incurious and self-centered, a woman who lived her entire life as if she inhabited some abstract gated community where all evil could be kept at bay. Her religious beliefs and early good fortune in life had made her smug, dogmatic.

But for Tess to dismiss her because they agreed on so little would be no different from Wilma's disdain for "those people." She was a widow, a single mother trying to perform in a job that was demanding and exhausting under any conditions. She yearned for the truth, but she was terrified of it, too.

And that, more than anything, seemed to Tess the universal human condition.

"If I open the box and what's inside doesn't have any relevance to Greg's death, will you agree to keep it confidential?"

Tess wondered just where Wilma's imagination had taken her over the past few months. Some very dark places, no doubt, places far scarier than any gossiping nurse could imagine.

"Absolutely. But we need to expedite this, okay? I don't know how it's done-you're the lawyer-but there's got to be a way for you, as your husband's heir, to get into that safe-deposit box quickly. Maybe a judge in Orphans' Court, maybe-"

"A judge already has ruled," Wilma said, sheepish for once. "It's actually pretty automatic when a spouse dies. In fact, the bank has told me they'll open it for me whenever I can make it in."

"So why haven't you examined its contents if you had the right all along?"

Wilma shook her head, clearly not trusting herself to speak for a few seconds, then said, "Pandora's box, you know? I'm scared what might be unleashed."

"Hope was in Pandora's box, too. Don't forget that. The last thing that came out was hope."

28.

Gabe could tell that Collins was surprised by the invite-a drink? just the two of us?-prompting another bout of anxiety for Gabe. What if he really does think I'm a f.a.g? The rejoinder in his head-but he's black, and I'm not into black chicks, so why would I be into black guys?-made him feel only more squirmy and strange. Even on the telephone with Collins, he felt awkward and tongue-tied, like he was a teenager calling a girl.

But all Collins said, after an interminable pause, was "Okay, where?"

Even that simple question provoked another round of second-guessing. It had to be a guy-guy place, but not so obvious a guy place that it would look like Gabe was insecure about that stuff. Besides, a sports bar would be too rowdy for conversation.

"Um, that martini bar? The new one on Canton Square?"

"Sure," Collins said. "What time?"

"Eight?"

s.h.i.+t, he had to figure out a way to stop speaking in questions around the guy. He decided to get to the bar early, so he'd have a drink in progress, be in control of the situation. But the lack of street parking undermined him, and he arrived fifteen minutes late, which clearly irritated Collins. Gabe's rushed apology, his explanation that he had parked far away, didn't seem to help much.

But once Gabe got going, laid out the connections he had uncovered, he could tell that Collins was impressed.

"Do you know for a fact that this Keyes guy helped to hide the source and her boyfriend?"

"No, but we always figured they went by car, right? It's the beach, off season. The locals probably notice every out-of-towner, especially some salt-and-pepper combo."

s.h.i.+t, what he wouldn't have given to take that back.

Collins took a long swallow of his Heineken. He was drinking from a gla.s.s, which made Gabe feel as if there were something unmanly about settling for a bottle, Sam Adams at that, although he was drinking shots of Jameson on the side.

"What makes you so sure," Collins said, "that the informant is black? The fact that he bought Nikes at the Downtown Locker Room? Could be some punk-a.s.s whigger, you know."

"Um, I didn't-Imean..."

Collins smiled, gave him a playful punch in the shoulder, one hard enough to leave a bruise. "I'm just busting b.a.l.l.s. Of course the source is a black kid. Just like..."

"Just like?"

"Just like the ATM photo. Can't see his face, but we can see his hands."

"Right," Gabe said. "Of course." He wasn't a bigot. He had simply forgotten how he knew what he knew.

"You keeping this close, this insight to where they might be? Or have you gone to Schulian, opened up an official file?"

"h.e.l.l, no. It's our secret so far. I haven't even told Jenkins." Gabe was feeling the rush of camaraderie now, burbling in spite of himself. "I gotta say, I don't have utter confidence in him. Those FBI guys are so full of themselves. I mean, what's he ever done? You, you've been out there, did undercover. You risked your life." He sensed he was entering dangerous territory, but he decided to chance it. "That was bulls.h.i.+t, what they put you through."

"Before your time. How do you know of it?"

"People talk." Collins clearly didn't like the idea of being gossiped about, so Gabe quickly added, "Everyone thinks you got a raw deal."

"It turned out okay. The lawsuits were dismissed. You can't sue a federal agent doing his job-even when he botches it and shoots a citizen."

"But it ended your time undercover after the newspaper ran your photo, and I heard you were one of the best. That sucks. It was an honest mistake, under the circ.u.mstances."

Collins, back in his usual taciturn mode, said nothing, but Gabe thought he caught a wisp of a smile on his face, a moment of understanding. Finally, with Jenkins out of the way, they were bonding.

"Another round?" he asked. "My treat."

"Sure," Collins said. "Night's young. Night's so young that R. Kelly would date it."

It was almost midnight when Gabe and Collins finally left the bar. Gabe was a little lit-not so much that he couldn't drive, given that it was basically a series of straight shots and left turns until he coasted into his parking pad off Hanover. He just felt fuzzy around the edges. The air was soft, the first true spring evening so far. The season got here a little faster here than it did in Jersey, not even two hundred miles to the north. Just twenty-four hours ago, the Yankees had almost been sleeted out on Opening Day in the Bronx, but here you could see buds on the trees.

"Where you parked?" Collins asked.

He had to think about it. "I'm on Fait, like four blocks from here."

"I'm around the corner from there," Collins said. "I remember when this neighborhood was nothing but toothless old Polacks, the kind who would call the police if a black kid so much as rode his bike down the sidewalk."

It was the longest sentence Collins had ever uttered in Gabe's presence. It was so cool, them becoming friends. He could ask Collins about being a star on the Poets, or whatever that local basketball team was called. Hadn't Juan Dixon played for them? Steve Francis? Somebody good in the NBA.

"This your ride?" Collins asked when Gabe stopped by his Acura. "Nice."

He laughed, getting that Collins was still busting his b.a.l.l.s, but in a friendly way. "Not particularly."

"Nicer than a Malibu. Nice enough to get carjacked for."

"Yeah, right. Not in this neighborhood."

"I'm dead serious."

Gabe hiccuped, but only because he had been laughing too much, sucking in air much of the evening. Collins could be pretty funny when he made an effort. He did an imitation of Jenkins that was to die for-the super concerned manner, the fatherly sighs.

Collins's fist shot out, hitting Gabe so quickly and violently in the midsection that he just crumpled into the street as if his spine had been removed. What the-The last sensations he knew in this life were all metal-the sc.r.a.pe of the keys being dragged from his fingers, the barrel of a gun at the back of his head. He didn't p.i.s.s himself, but only because Collins was moving even faster than Gabe's instincts could. He was going to die, and the only thing he managed to figure out before it happened was that it had absolutely nothing to do with his car. Did I- Gone.

TUESDAY.

29.

Tess and Wilma had agreed to meet at the bank when it opened, which meant Tess had to leave Baltimore at 8:00 A.M. and fight rush-hour traffic every inch of the trip. Even without all the frazzled commuters, it would have been a charmless journey. The bank, a branch of a multinational that was relatively new in the state, was on a strip clogged with chain restaurants and stores catering to every part of one's automobile-fast-lube places, tire joints, brake jobs, winds.h.i.+eld gla.s.s.

"Why here?" Tess asked Wilma. "It's quite a haul from where you live and where he worked. It's not like he could get here on his lunch hour."

"Probably because it's one place I'd never come. I don't think I've ever been here before in my life." Wilma's face was grayish, as if the suburb of Laurel were a disease she was worried about catching.

The bank manager studied the court order in a way that made Tess fear complications. A chubby Latina packed into a bright yellow suit, the manager had the air of someone who would make things difficult just because it would make her day more interesting. But perhaps she was simply a slow reader, for she handed the paper back to Wilma and led them into the small area the bank kept for safe-deposit boxes.

"She can't come in," the woman said, pointing at Tess. "And I gotta watch."

"I'm an officer of the court," said Tess, who had prepared the lie ahead of time, along with a reasonably official-looking ID, created on her computer and then laminated at a twenty-four-hour hardware store last night. She had also talked to Tyner, who'd a.s.sured her that there was no law requiring a bank employee to observe, but some insisted on it, if only out of sheer nosiness. "The order specifies that this has to be done under supervision because the estate is still in probate. She's allowed to inventory the contents but not to remove them."

The woman looked skeptical-as well she should, because nothing Tess had said was remotely true-but fate decided to throw Tess a bone. Another bank employee arrived at that moment with a pink, orange, and white Dunkin' Donuts box. Saved by the cruller. Anxious to make her selection, the woman waved them in.

Wilma's hands shook as she fitted her key into the lock. She then took the box, a medium-size one, to the semiprivate area set aside. She lifted the lid and revealed a black-and-white photocopy of a bearded man in a straw hat, a man who looked strangely familiar to Tess. There was a layer of pink tissue paper beneath it. When Tess pushed it aside, the overwhelming impression was a landscape of green, a veritable Emerald City in a box.

"I thought you were the earner and Greg was the one who was bound for glory," she said.

Wilma was silent for a moment. "That-that-a.s.shole," she said at last. Tess regularly heard-and said-far worse words, but it was a shock to see the prim and self-righteous Wilma let loose this way. "If you knew how tight things were for us at times-college loans, the baby, the mortgage on the new house. Although now I understand where he got some of the cash to buy the new house. He said that he had borrowed money from his mother."

"I hope you reported it as a loan on your mortgage application," Tess said.

"What?"

"Nothing. Should we count it?"

"Not really. If I know how much it is, I think I might get angrier. Whatever Greg was doing, there wasn't...It couldn't be...It had to be..." Illegal, Tess wanted to say, but Wilma still wasn't ready to concede that. "He got himself killed, and for what? We would have been okay, in the long run. I would have made partner. He could have gone into private practice if it came to that. What was the rush?"

Tess had extracted one bundle of cash, counted it, and done some quick multiplication in her head. Sixteen packs, $10,000 per pack-$160,000, give or take. "He was shaking someone down. Who?"