“Also true. I bet you’ve already caught him in one lie.” Crow’s silence answered that question for Spike. “Just because he’s ’fessed up to one doesn’t mean he’s done yet. Lying’s a way of life with some people.”

It was 2:00 P.M. when Crow called Tess on the disposable cell phone that was not yet in her possession. She could retrieve the message tomorrow.

“Lloyd and I are on the road,” he said. “Details to follow via these lines of communication.”

Lloyd meanwhile was looking around the increasingly flat countryside, sniffing the air suspiciously. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Salt. The ocean’s maybe thirteen miles from here.”

“Which ocean?”

Honestly, Baltimore schools. Even a sixteen-year-old dropout should know which ocean bordered Maryland and Delaware. “There’s only one we could have reached in three hours, the Atlantic.”

“Ain’t nothing here, if you ask me.”

“Not in March, no. Not down the ocean.” Crow took a moment, for he always needed to prepare himself before he launched into an imitation of Spike’s Bawlmer accent. “We’ve gone downy eaushin, hon.”

“Hate that ‘hon’ shit,” Lloyd said, going back to the X-Men comic book that Crow had bought him at the same convenience store that provided the phones. But a few miles later, when they pulled up on the street that dead-ended into a small boardwalk and the Atlantic came into full view, Lloyd found it hard to maintain his studied nonchalance. There was a palpable awe in his silence, although he tried to hide it.

“There sharks in there?” he asked.

“No. Dolphins sometimes.”

“Is it always so loud?”

“Loud?” Crow hadn’t thought of surf as noisy, more of a soothing music, one that took him back to his childhood, the summer nights on Nantucket. “I guess so. It’s a beautiful sound, isn’t it?”

Lloyd shrugged. Crow wished that it were warmer, that they could take off their shoes and socks, roll up their pant legs, and wade into the surf. It seemed almost criminal to him that Lloyd had reached the age of sixteen without knowing what it felt like to wiggle one’s toes in wet sand, to feel the sensation of the tide rushing out, so it seemed as if one were moving while standing perfectly still.

“So what we going to do now?”

“This is our new home for the next few days. Until we figure out what’s best for you.”

“The ocean?” Lloyd’s voice squeaked a bit.

“No, this place here.” Crow waved toward a faded white square of a building, the red lettering on its side weathered by the winter. FRANK’S FUNWORLD.

“What’s there to do?” Lloyd looked at the tiny strip of boardwalk, the largely empty houses, with a sense of desperation. “No fun that I can see.”

“Don’t worry,” said a short, squat man who came waddling out of a side door. Because the door was centered in the face of a grinning clown, it appeared as if the man had crawled out of the clown’s belly. “I got plenty to keep you busy.”

16

Gabe Dalesio still couldn’t believe his luck. He had all but given up on ever getting a piece of the Youssef investigation-too big now, too radioactive. Plus, all the agencies had to present a united front, pretend they were on top of things, not start pointing fingers across jurisdictional lines and glory hogging. Gabe had tried to drop some hints in front of the boss woman that the case interested him, that he had some experience with shield laws if she wanted to pursue that angle. (A lie, but what of it? He’d get the expertise if he needed it.) But nobody cared about what he had to offer.

And then boom, out of the blue, this FBI agent Barry Jenkins calls up and asks if he’d like to watch the interrogation of the private investigator, the grandstander who was refusing to name the source.

“Why me?” he asked, then wanted to kick himself. That wasn’t the comeback of a natural-born winner, all grateful and pathetic. Why me? He should have asked for the time and place, said he’d be there.

Jenkins, to his credit, didn’t bust balls. “I’m sort of the unofficial liaison on the Youssef matter. Collins at DEA told me you’d been challenging the, um, received wisdom on the murder before any of this broke. I asked your boss, and she said she could spare you on this.”

“Sure.” Trying now for the cool, hard-as-nails stoicism that he should have shown from the start. So Collins didn’t think he was a faggot after all. “I could fit it in.”

“We’re just going to watch, mind you. The state people don’t want us breathing down their necks. They want our help, but they want to run the show.”

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Gabe had said. “If Youssef is a kidnapping victim-”

“Who said that?”

“That’s my theory. It all goes to the E-ZPass, what I told Collins. I don’t think Youssef was at the wheel of his vehicle when it passed through the toll on its way south, but he wasn’t dead yet either, so it’s a kidnapping charge, which makes it a federal case even if you don’t know he’s a U.S. attorney-”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, young’un.” The guy actually said “young’un,” as if he were John Wayne and Gabe was some kid, Ron Howard in The Shootist or one of those boys from the movie about the cattle drive.

But that was okay. Those boys came through for the Duke in the end, proved they were men. And now Gabe was here in the Howard County public safety building, arms folded, eyes squinted, staring through the one-way glass at what appeared to be a remarkably average woman. She had wavy, almost shoulder-length hair that begged to be shaped and styled in some way, light hazel eyes, and a nice shape if you liked that buxom type, which Gabe usually did. Her voice was low, her words clipped, although Gabe sensed that this was not her natural way of speaking. With each question she glanced sideways at her lawyer, an old geezer in a wheelchair. Ironside and Perry Mason, all rolled into one. It was unclear why they made eye contact each time, as the lawyer didn’t seem to signal her in any way, didn’t so much as shake his head yes or no. She looked at him, then said, over and over again, “I’m sorry, but I consider that information confidential.” Gabe didn’t get that. She had volunteered to come in, presumably to cooperate. What was this shit?

“You have no standing to assert privilege,” the Howard County assistant state attorney reminded Tess.

“I’m not saying it’s privileged. I’m saying I made a promise, a binding oral contract. Breaking it would make me liable to civil action, which would be ruinous to my business. I literally can’t afford to tell you what you want to know.”

“And this promise is more important to you than solving the murder of an officer of the court?”

“Let me remind you,” Tyner put in, “that my client has already shown her willingness to do her civic duty by getting her source to share his-or her-information with reporters. It’s up to investigators to use this information as they wish.”

“A newspaper article is no substitute for a true criminal investigation. There are unanswered questions.”

“Such as?”

“The source didn’t name who provided the ATM card.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Tyner said. “Given that I was not present for the interview, I can’t speak to that.”

“She was present.”

“That hasn’t been established for the record,” Tyner said.

“Were you present?”

“Not for the entirety of the interview.” Tess had made the food run.

Detective Howard Johnson could not hide his exasperation. Tess didn’t blame him. Semantic games pissed her off, too. “Did the source tell the reporters who gave him the ATM card?”

“Or her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Him or her,” Tess said. “I’ve never put a gender to the source, nor did the reporters. I’d like to establish that for the record.”