Tess sighed and focused on her pizza, but even a Matthew’s tomato pie could not soothe her. With Crow this morning, she had taken Whitney’s side of the argument. She had, in fact, been far more shrill and unkind. The past twelve hours had been a series of shocks-the jolt of the Lexus’s alarm, the cold air that hit them as they raced outside with only jackets and boots added to their nightclothes, the dogs trotting excitedly behind. The scene at the bottom of the hill, with Mr. Parrish stalking around his car in inebriated indignation, saying some terribly racist things about what and whom he never thought he would see in Roland Park. It was Mr. Parrish’s diatribe, as much as anything else, that had hoisted Crow with his sanctimonious petard. By the time the police arrived, he was adamant that Lloyd-well, Bob-was their guest and that he had implicit permission to use Crow’s car. And the fact was, Mr. Parrish’s mammoth Buick had struck the Volvo so far back along the midsection that Tess was inclined to agree with Crow: Lloyd was stalled in the street at the moment of impact, so Mr. Parrish was to blame for the collision. After all, the one thing that they hadn’t heard that night was the Volvo’s engine, and it was a noisy, raucous car, audible for blocks.
Even so, Crow shouldn’t have given the police a false name for Lloyd. That had been rash, a mistake that was sure to come back and haunt them. The boy was still liable for leaving the scene of an accident, although, given the small stakes-no real injuries, the minor damage to Mr. Parrish’s car-Tess doubted that the police would spend a lot of time trying to find and arrest him. And the insurance companies wouldn’t be much interested in him either. Lloyd had no figurative pockets, shallow or deep, under any name, so Crow’s carrier couldn’t transfer the fiduciary responsibility to him. Yet Mr. Parrish would collect nothing if the case were treated like the theft that it was. No, as long as Crow claimed that Lloyd had his permission to use the car, Crow would be on the hook for everything. Tess’s only hope was that Mr. Parrish’s insurance company, once it ferreted out how few assets Crow had, would give up.
Tess worked a lot with insurance companies. The industry’s very aversion to paying out large sums had generated several small ones for her over the years, so she would never stoop to gross generalizations where agents and actuaries were concerned. She hated to think what another Tess Monaghan might do if presented with such a case. She would make short work of the assignment, getting Mr. Parrish a nice little check and never caring what happened to the irresponsible driver on the other side of the equation.
“Crow may be a soft touch, but that’s a large part of who he is,” she said to Whitney now. “You of all people should get that. You’re the one who told me we had to stop trying to change each other.”
“He could stand to toughen up a little bit. It’s not just the car-it’s being naïve enough to bring this kid home in the first place. Whatever story he’s feeding the insurance company doesn’t change the fact that you nursed a viper in your bosom, as Aesop would say. Took the kid in, gave him a meal and a warm place to sleep, and he rewarded your hospitality by trying to steal from you.”
“The moral of Aesop’s story was that you can’t change someone’s ingrained nature.”
“Exactly.”
“No, I mean this kid did seem to have some genuine sweetness to him. And he wasn’t very good at lying-not when the name of Gregory Youssef came up.”
“Really? Do you think-”
The two old friends, who had once rowed in perfect sync at moments, were still capable of thinking that way. Tess knew that Whitney’s mind had jumped to the obvious conclusion-a young man from the East Side, not far from the neighborhood Youssef was last known to be. Police had assumed that Lloyd was a hustler. Wasn’t he, in a sense?
“No,” Tess said, shaking her head. “He didn’t know what Youssef looked like, so he can’t be the pickup. Besides, you don’t see a lot of black kids hiring themselves out as trade. It’s a weird racial division. White boys from farm country do it, sometimes. They rationalize they’re not gay, just taking advantage of gay men. But the black kids don’t go for that double standard.”
“All the more reason to be covert about it.”
“Uh-uh.” Tess took another bite of pizza. The crust recipe was said to be secret, which compelled her to analyze it every time she visited. It had a pastry feel, flaky and light. And Matthew Ciccolo had started as a baker. A little sugar, perhaps more lard? “Remember, he knew the name, not the face. He’d clearly never seen the guy in his life. But Lloyd knows something. And he’s not the kind of kid who’s going to speak voluntarily to the cops-not without a charge hanging over him, which would force him to make some deals fast.”
“You’ve got the auto-theft thing.”
“I’m not sure that’s enough of a threat to get Lloyd to talk to the cops. You know what the antisnitching culture is like in Baltimore.” The city had been abuzz for weeks about a homemade DVD, Stop Snitching, that showed an NBA player hanging with drug dealers, making ominous threats about what happened to those who cooperated with the police. “But it might be enough leverage to get him to talk to a reporter. Which would sort of make up for the fact that I embarrassed Feeney by telling his boss to go fuck himself. The thing is, we have to find Lloyd.”
“I’m in,” Whitney said, eyes gleaming. It was what made her such a satisfactory friend. She was always up for whatever Tess was planning, even when she didn’t have a clue what it was.
“We’ll need your mother’s car. And”-Tess looked up, catching the waitress’s eye-“an order of curly fries.”
“Are the curly fries the bait?”
“No, my dear. You are.”
“Here?” Crow asked.
“Almost. A little higher. A little to the right-and yes. Yes.”
Kitty Monaghan stood in the center of her ever-expanding bookstore, Women and Children First. It was a family enterprise, twice over. Tess’s aunt, her father’s only sister, had acquired the old pharmacy from Tess’s maternal grandfather, who had presided over the spectacular rise and even more spectacular fall of Weinstein’s Drugs.
Kitty was having far more luck at the corner of Bond and Shakespeare streets, although it had required endless ingenuity on her part. Over the years the bookstore had enlarged its original mission, adding annexes known as Dead White Men and Live! Males! Live! But instead of the ubiquitous coffee bar, Kitty had put the old soda fountain back into service, providing an array of ice cream drinks and baked goods. She let people drift in with coffee from the Daily Grind and Jimmy’s and perch at the counter for hours, buying nothing more than a newspaper and a cookie. Somehow she made a profit.
Now she was creating a gallery space within the store, and Crow was helping her install the first show, a grouping of tin-men sculptures-a firefighter, a policeman, a dog walker, an astronaut-all with the same conical tops, yet somehow distinctive, too. Most of the pieces stood no more than three feet high, but there was one life-size one, and Kitty had decided she wanted it suspended from the ceiling so it appeared to be flying. It was an angel, after all, its face at once goofy and benevolent. An angel with the best of intentions, one that would try to take care of you and probably would succeed in the end, but not without a few bumps along the way.
Kitty agreed with Crow’s assessment of the angel’s character.
“Like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life,” she said, offering Crow a glass of real seltzer. Not the store-bought variety but the stuff that had to be delivered by a New York deliveryman. Kitty’s life was full of people who fell over themselves to do her favors. Crow had come under her spell almost five years ago, when he took a job as a part-time clerk here-and then he met Tess. Crow studied the angel again. Now the smile seemed more mocking than kind.