“I…I don’t know.”

“Where your people?”

Where indeed. Who were his people? His mama and Murray? Dub? Not Bennie Tep and his folks, not since they killed Le’andro. Lloyd felt something strange in his throat and his eyes, a stinging sensation. Why did this woman’s gentle voice and manner make him want to cry when he had held his ground through ass whippings? He’d be more comfortable if she were bitching him out. He was used to that tone, at least.

“I been staying over to, like, the boardwalk,” he said.

“In Ocean City?”

“Northa there.” It took him a second, but he pulled the name out. “Fenwick.”

“So why you going the other direction?”

He shrugged, not wanting to admit that he didn’t know where he was going.

“We’re from Dagsboro, but we’re on our way to lunch, up to the Denny’s in Salisbury. You want to come with us?”

“I thought Denny’s was the place that didn’t like black people to eat there,” he said.

“That’s why we go there, every Sunday.” The woman had a single dimple in her left cheek, sharp as a diamond winking in a ring. “We go and we say grace, and I have to say they’re always real nice to us. You’re welcome to come, too, although no soda. And no dessert unless you clean your plate. You gotta play by the same rules as my owns.”

Two little girls on the bench seat in the far back scooted apart, pulling in their full skirts and making room for Lloyd.

“You smell funny,” said one, but not with any real meanness to it.

“Shavonda Grace,” the lady scolded, but her tone was mild. “What are you thinking, talking to our guest that way?”

Guest. He was a guest. Lloyd didn’t remember anyone ever calling him that before.

Wait-Crow had, the first night he’d brought Lloyd to his house. Thing was, Lloyd had been so busy being a thief in his own head, he hadn’t even noticed, or cared, what Crow considered him. If only he hadn’t tried to steal the car, if he had just accepted the kindness for what it was. If he hadn’t stolen the car, then that woman wouldn’t have been so hell-bent on coming after him and he wouldn’t have told them what he knew to get her off his ass and Le’andro wouldn’t have been killed.

He thought he’d been so clever, telling the story the way he did. He had thought he was smart, leaving out those details that complicated things. But it was his own cleverness that had gotten Le’andro killed. Maybe he should have told the whole story from the beginning. But it was his nature to hold back what he could, to squirrel away a little extra.

Besides, if he had told the story in full, the only difference would be that he and Le’andro both would be dead.

“You smell,” Shavonda Grace repeated, but she was giggling.

“You’d smell, too, you spent the night in some got-damn cornfield.”

The children gasped in horror at the mild profanity, but the woman behind the wheel kept her company manners.

“Son-I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Lloyd.”

“Well, Lloyd, we don’t permit bad language, especially if it involves taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that in mind.”

Her manner couldn’t have been sweeter, the same easy tone she had taken with the little girl, but for one moment Lloyd was reminded of every woman, every teacher, every person who had told him what to do, where to go, what to say, and how to say it. He wanted to unleash a string of curses, things that would sear the ears of these little churchgoing prisses, show them just how tough he was. Fuck you. Fuck them. Fuck everybody. Fuck the whole got-damn world, and all the people who think they know what you should be doing and saying and thinking and breathing.

Then his stomach sent up a sad, sour rumble, and Lloyd recognized it for the plea it was. Go to Denny’s. Get a meal. Maybe borrow some bus fare, you lucky. Then you can be as got-damn tough as you want to be. Just take this little kindness, for once.

“Yes’m,” he said, meek as a girl.

“You smell,” Shavonda Grace repeated, giggling behind her hand.

“Yeah, well, at least I don’t-” He was going to say something mean about her dress, her hair, her nose, her ears, whatever he could find, and although she was a pretty thing, there was no shortage of material to work with. There was always something you could find to use against a person, tear her down. But she was just a little girl, and her mother-or aunt or whoever-was doing him a kindness. Besides, he remembered the insults flung at him when he was her age, the way they stuck. He wouldn’t do that to her.

“Don’t what?” Shavonda Grace demanded to know.

“Don’t take up too much room, so you can scoot as far from me as you like and hold your nose. I won’t take no offense.”

Shavonda Grace made a great show of pinching her nose shut and fluttering her eyes, but she didn’t slide one inch away. If anything, she seemed to move a little closer.

24

“February two years ago, you took a loan out for your house,” Gabe said, pushing a photocopy of the mortgage application toward Tess. She didn’t have to see the paper to remember the transaction. She had been almost nauseous after the hour at the title company, stunned by the dollar amounts, the commitment she was making. Thanks to Baltimore ’s real-estate market, she looked brilliant now, but at the time all she could fixate on was the actual cost of a $140,000 loan over thirty years.

“You got me there,” Tess said. “I bought a house.”

“And you made a down payment of twenty percent.”

“Sure. That’s mandatory to avoid private mortgage insurance.”

“Where did you get thirty-five thousand?” Gabe asked.

“I had just closed a case that included a generous reward for information about a long-missing girl.”

“So you made the down payment on your own?”

Were they trying to bring this back to Crow and his mystery money? Tyner looked as mystified as she was. Tess nodded tentatively.

“You didn’t borrow any of the money for the down payment?”

“No.”

“Didn’t take money from your father?”

“My father’s contribution was a gift.”

“Right.” Gabe produced another piece of paper from the file. “And here’s his notarized statement that the money was a gift. Nine thousand nine hundred fifty dollars-just under the limit for taxable gifts under the codes then.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And here’s where you swore on the application that no borrowed money was used for the down payment. You remember checking that?”

“I checked a lot of things in the process of buying the house, but sure. As my father’s letter said, it was a gift.”

“But you’ve since made two payments to your father-five thousand dollars year before last, seven thousand last fall.”

Last fall. Tess remembered wistfully how flush she had been.

“I was grateful to my father. He had helped me buy my house. When times were good for me, I wanted to repay the favor.”

“In other words, it was a loan, and you repaid it with interest.”

Tyner ran his fingers through his hair, a sign that he was nervous, but only Tess would know that.

“No,” Tess said. “He gave me a gift. I gave him a gift. It’s like-if my dad gave me a turkey for Christmas and I gave him a ham for Easter.”

“I’m afraid the federal government doesn’t see it that way. Call it turkey, call it ham, but it was a loan, and you lied about it.”

Tess flounced in the hard plastic chair, impatient and out of sorts. They had been trying to scare her with their talk about federal charges, but this was so chickenshit. She thought of the blatantly illegal things she had done as part of her job. Taking confidential documents out of the governor’s trash, for one. And this was the best they could do? Nitpicking over payments from a father to a daughter and back again.

“Fine-” she began, ready to concede the point, but Tyner put a cautionary hand on her arm and interrupted.