“That makes two of us. But did he come to you after Le’andro Watkins was killed? Did he tell you he feared for his life?”

Dub felt in the pocket of his jacket and took out three limp bills, dollars that looked as if they had been dug out of a trash can or a gutter, and perhaps they had. “Go down to the corner store, buy yourselves a treat,” he instructed the younger ones. His voice was gentle, yet the tone defied them to argue back. “Whatever you want.”

The boy grabbed the bills and bolted, the girl at his heels. “You’ve got to share,” she said. “Dub, tell him he’s got to go halves.”

“Be nice, Terrell,” he said. “You know you have to look after Tourmaline when I’m not around.” He waited until the plywood door swung back into place before he spoke to Tess again. “They don’t need to know everything I do. Besides, I stay away from that side of things. Lloyd and me, we run a few low-risk games, when there’s time and opportunity.”

“Like a snow day,” Tess said, remembering that school had been canceled the day that Crow and Lloyd first met. “But on Wednesday-”

“That day with the Mercedes? Staff-development day at the school, so they let us out two hours early. But I always told Lloyd that I would draw the line at anything to do with Bennie Tep.”

“Bennie Tep?”

“He’s the drug dealer that Le’andro worked for. Lloyd, too, for a while, but Bennie got no use for Lloyd. Says he lacks focus, can’t be trusted to do even small things right. But Le’andro liked Lloyd, if only because Lloyd was fool enough to think that Le’andro was someone worth looking up to. He let him hang around, threw him some little things he didn’t want to do.”

“Things like using an ATM card in a very precise way, at a very precise time?”

Dub didn’t answer, so Tess continued. “That’s practically public record at this point. Lloyd’s admitted as much to me. It was in the newspaper a week ago Sunday, only without Lloyd’s name attached. Which is probably the reason that Le’andro was killed-because Lloyd pretended he was the only one in on the scam.”

“Yeah, okay. Back last fall, Lloyd bragged on how they put one over on this guy big-time-that he tried to double-cross Lloyd, but Lloyd triple-crossed him.”

“They? You mean Le’andro and Lloyd fooled this guy Bennie?”

“No, not Bennie. Lloyd wouldn’t never have fucked with Bennie. This guy, you know, he wasn’t gonna to be around ongoing. I think he was from out of town. So Lloyd thought he could put a few extra things on the card. What was the guy gonna do? And, sure enough, we-he-didn’t catch no flak over it. No one ever came around, asked what was up, told him he had done wrong. If anything, Lloyd wished he’d held that card a little longer, charged a little more.”

Of course, that would have created a longer, more detailed trail for investigators in the Youssef murder. Which meant, Tess realized, that Lloyd really didn’t have any idea at the time how radioactive that ATM card was, how much trouble it could cause.

“So Lloyd told you about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he have any details about the guy who hired Le’andro?”

“Naw. He didn’t know him.”

“But did Le’andro mention a name, say where he was from? Any new scrap of information would help, maybe keep the police from trying to charge Lloyd with being an accomplice.”

Dub thought. “Lloyd said the man drove a punk-ass car. Some shitty Chevy, like a Malibu or something. Said thieving wasn’t what it used to be if a player like this had to drive something that raggedy.”

“But I thought he never met the guy.”

“He didn’t.”

“So how could he know what he drove?”

“Maybe Le’andro told him.”

Tess tried to work this through. Lloyd hadn’t met the man who hired Le’andro, but he knew the make of his car. Had Lloyd been lying all along? Was Dub lying now, intent on shielding his friend? But then if the man who gave the ATM card to Le’andro had met Lloyd, knew who he was or at least what he looked like, why hadn’t he killed them both once the story got out?

“Lloyd ever mention Gregory Youssef to you?”

“Who?”

“It’s been on the front page of the papers just this past week-”

Dub’s blank look persuaded her to abandon the story before she began it. She was talking to a homeless seventeen-year-old, a kid who was trying to go to school, keep his family together, and stay one step ahead of whatever forces-his mother, the Department of Social Services-would break them up. Dub had heard Lloyd’s side of things, nothing more.

“Look, is there anything I can do for you?”

He looked wary. “Naw. We fine.”

“I mean money, groceries. I know you don’t want DSS in your life, but there’s got to be a better way to keep your family together.”

“We’ll be okay. I got one more year of high school, then I’ll get a scholarship, go to community college part-time, work the rest. When I’m eighteen, I can petition for custody of Terrell and Tourmaline, official like, and I won’t have to fight my mom for theirses checks anymore. Then I’ll get those two through. Long as we show up for school and don’t cause trouble, no one needs to know anything about us.”

“What do you use for a mailing address?”

Dub smiled as if he found Tess naïve. By his standards, she was.

“How much do you and Lloyd get for the tire trick?”

Dub shrugged as if he had no idea what she was referencing, although he had already admitted his role. He might not have been born this cagey, but life had schooled him as well as the Baltimore city school system, probably better.

“Twenty? Forty?” Tess took three twenties from her wallet. “The way I see it, my household has thwarted you twice.” When he didn’t reach for the money, she added, “I pay for information all the time. You earned this, same as anyone. No special treatment, no handout.”

“I didn’t tell you much,” he said, his fingers closing over the bills.

“You know, I can find odd jobs for you,” she said. “My office isn’t two miles from here, and my aunt has a bookstore nearby. Between us, there are lots of little jobs, things that would work around your school schedule. And my aunt’s store stays open late. She’d let you hang there until closing-”

“We fine,” he repeated.

27

Back in her car, Tess checked her watch. Almost six, but that was early in high-powered-lawyer land. The secretaries and receptionists might have gone home, but she was betting that a young comer such as Wilma Youssef was still at her desk-depending on her day-care situation.

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-fashioned 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.