Running errands Saturday morning, Tess stopped at her neighborhood coffeehouse, Evergreen, to skim the article. Feeney and Marcy had kept all their promises. Lloyd’s identity was cloaked, and not a single one of his assertions had been shot down. Marcy also had been careful, as Tess had insisted, not to assign Lloyd’s gender. It had made for some awkward writing, with endless repetitions of “the source” and “a person with firsthand knowledge.” Marcy hadn’t even used the name of the store where Lloyd had purchased his jacket and shoes, not that Tess believed that a store clerk could remember who bought a North Face jacket on the day after Thanksgiving. In fact, neither Tess nor Lloyd would have cared if the newspaper had named the Downtown Locker Room, but the Blight’s advertising department had pleaded with the editors to omit that detail.
Satisfied, Tess went about her day, convinced she had done a good deed.
But just as she no longer remembered the rationale behind the name of the bulldog, she had forgotten how much a story could change from bulldog to Sunday final.
In the gym, sweat pouring onto the paper as he pedaled a stationary bike, Gabe Dalesio read the story with a mix of despair and pride. He had been right, he had been onto something, he had been so close. But who would believe him now? He knew that Youssef wasn’t at the wheel of his car when it left the city, and now this story all but proved it. It was an elaborate ruse, an electronic trail meant to conceal Youssef’s real movements. But his brainstorm was moot now. There was no point in being right unless others knew about it. Fuck Collins, for being so dismissive. He probably wouldn’t even remember that Gabe had said anything. The only thing that Collins carried away from that conversation was that Gabe spent a lot of time thinking about getting blow jobs from other guys. Damn it. Damn his own self. He should have told the boss lady what he had figured out.
He wondered how Marcy Appleton had found this anonymous source anyhow. She was a decent reporter, well liked around the courthouse, but better known for her exotic looks than her smarts. A house cat, not a shit disturber. Maybe a defense attorney had acted as matchmaker, offered up his client in hopes of spinning the story. No matter how ignorant the source was of the larger crime, he could still be squeezed as an accomplice. But if it were a matter of trying to protect a client from other charges by giving up valuable information, no seasoned attorney would do that through the media. He would come straight to the prosecutors, put his cards on the table. And if the source didn’t have a potential charge hanging over him, then why talk at all? If the source had been picked up for something else, perhaps by city cops, Gabe could see him making this deal, but there didn’t seem to be anyone official involved. Just the reporter and the source.
Absentmindedly Gabe rose from the bike and grabbed a cup of water.
“You’re supposed to wipe the equipment down,” a middle-aged woman berated him, one of those frightening, pared-to-the-bone types who thought having no body fat was the same as being attractive.
“Sorry,” he said, running his towel over the seat.
“It’s just hygiene,” the dried-up skank said, clearly on a mission to humiliate someone to make herself feel better. “A lot of people ’round here think the rules don’t apply to them, but your sweat’s not nectar, you know? I don’t want to sit on your sweaty seat.”
“Trust me, ma’am, I don’t want that either.” She didn’t get it, just hopped on and began pedaling away, as if she had somebody’s little dog in her basket.
Hell, Gabe’s problem was that he had been too circumspect, too mindful of rules and protocol, wasting opportunity after opportunity. He had planned to make his bones on the Youssef case, but this damn reporter had pulled the rug right out from under him.
Still, might as well drop by the office, see what was buzzing. He could at least get brownie points for showing his face in the middle of what was shaping up to be a real clusterfuck.
Jenkins spent weekends out in West Virginia, in an unassuming built-to-spec A-frame near Berkeley Springs. Inside, it had some nice touches-a plasma television, vast leather chairs, high-end bathrooms, a kitchen with all the extras. The latter had been done with an eye to his ex-wife’s taste, although Betty was long gone before he started building the place. In the back of his mind, he thought she might come back. If not for him, then at least for granite countertops. But Betty found West Virginia even less appealing than Baltimore.
He was settling in for a day of NCAA basketball, brackets and a Sam Adams at his side, when his cell phone rang. It was the fake-o switchboard number that showed up on office calls, and he almost said fuck it-his days of worrying about work 24/7 were long gone. He had done that, and look what it had gotten him. Demoted, humiliated. Still, few work emergencies could be so severe that they would order him back from the mountains, a two-hour trip, so he decided to risk it.
“There’s something in the paper today,” Collins said without preamble. “Someone who used Youssef’s ATM card talked to a reporter. And the Howard County detectives all but verified it. Remember how cagey they were with us? Well, one of the things they were sitting on was some info about the card. Turns out it was used two more times after the initial withdrawal, even as Youssef’s car was heading up the interstate. We knew about the first withdrawal, which matched up with the E-ZPass-northbound car came through the lane at ten forty-five, it was used on Eastern Avenue at eleven-oh-five. So now they know the killer wasn’t the one who used the card, assuming the killer is the one who drove Youssef’s vehicle up 95 to the turnpike.”
“Interesting,” Jenkins said. He liked to be taciturn on the phone, holding his cards as close as any target would. Not because they had any reason to worry about what they said on the phone, just because Jenkins liked discipline for discipline’s sake, and he had taught Collins to do the same. It helped, thinking like the people you were targeting, aping their habits. “Should I come back today, face the music? They let me act as liaison on this because they thought the Howard County cops would be open with me, so I guess I’m in the shitter now.”
“Actually, they’re saying Gail is spitting nails about Howard County, but your name hasn’t come up.”
So Jenkins was so far down on the shit list he wasn’t even worth getting mad at. There were worse things than being invisible, although he couldn’t think of any just now. “Thanks. Who you like in Syracuse-GW?”
“Orangemen versus Colonials? Orangemen. Pussy names, I have to say.”
“Spoken like a true Poet.” Collins had played for the Dunbar Poets, a Baltimore powerhouse that had sent some big players to college and even the NBA.
Jenkins hung up, mourning the loss of what should have been a sweet, relaxed day. He could understand the cops fucking over Gail, but why had they withheld the ATM stuff from him, when all he’d ever done was smile and charm and do his aw-shuckswe’re-all-in-this-together routine? He hadn’t leaked anything. Howard County had let the E-ZPass stuff out, but maybe they had realigned the facts in their mind, decided Jenkins was to blame. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been scapegoated that way. Bastards. They were going to do him again. He just couldn’t win.
Not even in the brackets, as it turned out. By the end of the afternoon, Jenkins was already statistically eliminated from the NCAA pool, which he once ruled. He was losing his touch across the board.