“I didn’t know anything about no murder,” he said. “Not a bit of it. All I was told is there was a guy and he’d crossed some folks, and they were going to scare him a little, take his money to show that they could, that he was a fool to think he was a player. Guy gave me the card and the code, told me when to use it and where.”

“A guy?”

“I ain’t naming names. I don’t know a name to give. He was just some guy, an associate of a man I know.”

Tess didn’t believe Lloyd, but she let it go. “What about the security camera? Didn’t you realize you’d show up on it?”

“I wore a hoodie pulled up tight so hardly any of my face showed.” He demonstrated with his hands, cupping them around his face so only his eyes and the bridge of his nose were visible. “My North Face jacket was over it, but it got stole that very night. Which is why…well, that and the fact that I didn’t get no money…”

“You’re losing me, Lloyd. Take it step by step, minute by minute. When did you get the card?”

“Around eleven that night. Near Patterson Park.”

“And who gave it to you?”

He shook his head. “There were no names. I don’t know his, he don’t know mine.”

“Really?”

“Uh-uh. Just a friend of a friend of a friend.”

“Okay, but he gives you the card and the code, tells you an ATM and a time. Right?”

“Yeah, I was to hit this machine on Eastern Avenue at exactly twelve-thirty A.M. So I did. And I get rolled like fifteen minutes later, guys take my jacket and the cash. And I’m thinking-” He stopped himself. “I’m thinking the guy who hired me done fucked me over, told his boys what he had me do, so he could get the money that was s’pose to be mine. They got my jacket and the cash, but I still had the card in my back pocket. And I was hungry. So I go to an all-night deli, use the card to buy a sub and a bag of chips.”

“The deli had an ATM machine?”

“Just for purchase, but it takes Independence Cards and shit.”

Tess had to fight the urge to tell Lloyd that “and shit” was not equivalent to “et cetera.” Listening to Lloyd was like some hip-hop version of The King and I.

“Does the deli have video surveillance?”

“Don’t think so. Korean’s too cheap. He got a baseball bat instead.”

“Even if he did,” Whitney put in, “he would have reused the tape by now. Most of those places recycle the tapes every twenty-four hours if nothing happens.”

Tess knew this to be true. “What time was this?”

“Like going on two.”

Tess made a note. Youssef’s killer had been tracked by E-ZPass along the I-95 corridor about the same time. Investigators must have noticed that discrepancy-Youssef’s car in the northern reaches of Maryland, perhaps already in Delaware, his ATM card still in Baltimore. By using the card when he did, Lloyd had raised the possibility that there was an accomplice, a key fact the police had managed to hold close.

Tess wondered if Lloyd understood he would be seen as just that-an accomplice. His ignorance of the larger plan would be of no protection to him. He could be turned into a scapegoat, an easy arrest to assure the public that some progress had been made.

“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.