“Was that the last time you used the card?”
“Yeah, that was it. For food.”
“Was it the last time you used the card for anything?”
Lloyd extended his feet sheepishly, showing off his whiter-than-white Nikes. “I figured I deserved a pair of new shoes and a jacket, to make up for the one that got stole. I went to the Downtown Locker Room at Towson Town Mall on Friday. Then I cut the card up and threw it in the sewer, like I was s’pose to do in the first place. I didn’t see how anyone could mind. I was just trying to stay even.”
“The person who gave you the card, Lloyd-did he kill Youssef? Would he have known that was the plan?”
“I dunno. He didn’t look it.”
“How did he look?”
“Just like, I dunno. Like a guy.”
“Still, this stranger asked you to use an ATM card at a certain time and place. To use it just once, then throw it away. You noticed the name and you memorized the code-you still know the code, by the way?”
“Two-four-one-one,” he shot back. Another detail that would matter, another detail that only a very small circle of people could know.
“Here’s the thing I don’t get, Lloyd. How did it escape your notice that the name on the card was the same as the name of the man who was killed that night?”
He shrugged. “Don’t follow that news shit unless it’s, like, a good chase or something. Everybody kept talking about the lawyer that got killed, but no one was saying his name, you know? And this guy, he had said what we were doing was no big thing. He said they were just going to teach a guy a lesson, fuck with him a little.”
“You ever see him again?”
“Naw.”
Tess glanced over at Whitney, who had been taking notes on a cocktail napkin, which must have been the closest thing at hand. She held up the monogrammed scrap so Tess could see what she had written:
Hoodie pulled tight
Deli at 2 a.m.
Downtown Locker Room two days later.
Nikes and a new North Face.
2 4 1 1
“It’s pretty damn specific,” Whitney said. “If it’s all true, everyone’s going to want to talk to him.”
“NO COPS,” Lloyd said. “No cops, no names. Not mine, not nobody’s. You know they’ll lock me up, and I ain’t done shit. They’ll hang a charge on me to get me to talk, but I got nothin’ to say. I done told you what I know. You promised you ain’t gonna make me.”
“I did promise,” Tess said. “And I’ll do my best to keep my word. But will you talk to a reporter if I can guarantee your confidentiality?”
“Will they make my voice sound all funny?”
“Will they-Oh, no. A newspaper reporter. Not television.”
This seemed to disappoint Lloyd, but he nodded.
“I don’t get it,” Whitney said. “So he had the card. So some stranger who claimed he had a grudge against Youssef gave it to Lloyd and asked him to use it at a certain time and throw it away. What does that really establish?”
Lloyd also looked puzzled, as if he couldn’t see how he fit into this larger story.
“I’m not sure,” Tess said. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to make it appear that Gregory Youssef was the victim of a certain kind of crime, something personal and a little tawdry. Something that would make everyone squeamish. But if this can be traced back to a local drug dealer, then Youssef’s death actually could have been a consequence of his job after all.”
“I didn’t say anything ’bout a drug dealer,” Lloyd said, but the denial rang hollow to Tess.
“So what do we do?” Whitney asked. “Call the cops?”
“NO COPS!” Lloyd roared.
“No, no cops,” Tess said. “But if Lloyd tells the Beacon-Light everything he knows, the cops will get the information just the same.”
It also would smooth over her own relationship to the newspaper and make amends to Feeney. As his friend, she had tainted him a little with that outburst the other day. This would put them back to even, or closer to it. And she had a hunch that Feeney would agree with her that Marcy Appleton deserved this juicy plum of a story. She was the federal courts reporter.
“We won’t even risk going down to the newspaper. We’ll make the newspaper come to us. Tonight, in fact. And then we’ll be out of your hair for good, Lloyd.”
“Better be some dinner involved,” he said. “Real food, too. Not that weird shit.”
“Whatever you want. Chicken box? Sub? Pizza? Burgers?”
“Yes,” Lloyd said.
GOOD FRIDAY INTO BAD SUNDAY
11
Even if Marcy Appleton had been able to meet all her editors’ various directives and second guesses in one day of reporting, Tess had always assumed that the Beacon-Light would hold Lloyd’s story for the Sunday edition, when it would make the biggest splash. Besides, it had taken most of Thursday and then Friday morning for Marcy to play the time-honored reporting game of “Would I Be Wrong If?” So would I be wrong if I wrote that the ATM card was used at these locations? Am I right about the code? I won’t print it, but would I be wrong if I said the Beacon-Light has a source who knows the code? Would I be wrong if I said the videotape showed someone in a hoodie and a North Face jacket?
The multilingual, smoothly confident Marcy had started with the Howard County detectives. While the suburban county had its pockets of bad neighborhoods, it was overall a blandly peaceful place. Great for kids, as its residents said defensively, but not so great for homicide detectives, whose skills didn’t get much of a workout. Even over the telephone, Marcy picked their bones clean. She then took on the interim U.S. attorney, Gail Schulian, who lost her much-admired cool, revealing in the process just how little she knew about the investigation. Marcy never got flustered, according to Feeney, who kept Tess apprised of the story’s movements-and reiterated his pledge, in each conversation, that Lloyd’s name would never, ever be mentioned, not even inside the newsroom. Reporters at the Blight were now required to reveal anonymous sources to at least one superior. But Feeney counted as a superior, hilarious as Tess found that fact.
“It’s gone,” he told her wearily Friday evening. “We lawyered it this afternoon, and it cleared the copy desk about five minutes ago.”
“Are you their bright and shining star now?”
“More Marcy than me, although she’s been good about sharing credit. She told the bosses that an old source of mine was the go-between. Guess that’s true enough. Only downside is we both have to work Easter Sunday, doing the jerk-off react.”
“Better than covering an Easter-egg hunt or the perennial gang fights that break out in the harbor when everyone goes promenading.”
The bulldog, the early Sunday edition, goes on sale Saturday morning. Tess Monaghan remembered the jargon, if not the reason for it. Something about the bulldog chasing the other editions off the street. But that was simply by virtue of its heft. There was precious little news in the bulldog most weekends. People bought it for the real-estate ads and the coupons, not the stories. However, a big investigative piece, such as Marcy’s article on the new facts in the Youssef case, would be anchored on the front and stay there throughout the run. Only an event of great significance-another 9/11, the death of a world leader-could knock off an exclusive this strong. The Associated Press and the out-of-town papers would start working it immediately, but the Beacon-Light had a head start, while the other news outlets would be trying to find officials willing to pick up their phones over the Easter weekend. The television stations would settle for rip-and-reads, all but reciting Marcy’s story into the camera while standing in front of suitable backdrop-the federal courthouse, the riverbank where Youssef’s body had been found.