Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  Strange turned and looked into a cracked mirror hanging from a nail driven into a column in the middle of the office. “Damn, boy, you’re right.” He patted the side of his head. “I need to get my shit correct.”

  STRANGE dropped a couple of the kids off at their homes after practice. Then he and Lionel drove up Georgia toward Brightwood in Strange’s ’91 black-over-black Cadillac Brougham, a V-8 with a chromed-up grille. This was his second car. Strange had an old tape, Al Green Gets Next to You, in the deck, and he was trying hard not to sing along.

  “Sounds like gospel music,” said Lionel. “But he’s singing it to some girl, isn’t he?”

  “‘God Is Standing By,’” said Strange. “An old Johnny Taylor tune, and you’re right. This here was back when Al was struggling between the secular and the spiritual, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

  “You mean, like, he loves Jesus but he loves to hit the pussy, too.”

  “I wasn’t quite gonna put it like that, young man.”

  “Whateva.”

  Strange looked across the bench. “You got studies tonight, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Don’t want you to let up now, just ’cause you already applied to college. You need to keep on those books.”

  “You want me to stay in my room tonight, just say it.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  Lionel just smiled in that way that drove Strange around the bend.

  Janine Baker’s residence was on Quintana Place, between 7th and 9th, just east of the Fourth District police station. Quintana was a short, narrow street of old colonials fronted with porches. The houses were covered in siding and painted in an array of earth tones and bright colors, including turquoise and neon green. The Baker residence was a pale lavender affair down near the 7th Street end of the block.

  In the dining room they ate a grilled chuck roast, black on the outside and pink in the center, along with mashed potatoes and gravy and some spiced greens, washed down with ice-cold Heinekens for Strange and Janine. Lionel went upstairs to his bedroom as soon as he finished his meal. Strange had a quick cup of coffee and wiped his mouth when he was done.

  “That was beautiful, baby.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it.”

  “You want me to come back after I’m done working?”

  “I’d like that. And I’ve foil-wrapped the bone from the chuck for Greco, so bring him back, too.”

  “Between you and me we’re gonna spoil that dog to death.” Strange came around the table, bent down, and kissed Janine on the cheek. “I’ll be back before midnight, hear?”

  STRANGE returned to his row house on Buchanan Street and hit the heavy bag in his basement for a while, trying to work off some of the fat he’d taken in from his meat consumption that day. He broke a sweat that smelled like alcohol when he was done, then showered and changed clothes up on the second floor, which held his bedroom and home office. In the office, Greco played with a spiked rubber ball while Strange checked his stock portfolio and read a stock-related message board, listening to Ennio Morricone’s “The Return of Ringo” from the Yamaha speakers of his computer.

  Strange checked his wristwatch, a Swiss Army model with a black leather band, and looked at his dog.

  “Gotta go to work, old buddy. I’ll be back to pick you up in a little bit.”

  Greco’s nub of tail made a double twitch. He looked up at Strange and showed him the whites of his eyes.

  STRANGE drove down Georgia in his Chevy, through Petworth and into Park View. The street was up, Friday night, kids mostly, some hanging out, some doing business as well. Down around Morton a line had formed outside the Capitol City Pavilion, called the Black Hole by locals and law enforcement types alike. D.C. veteran go-go band Back Yard had their name on the marquee, as they did most weekends. In a few hours, Fourth District squad cars would be blocking Georgia, rerouting traffic. Beefs born inside the club often came to their inevitable, violent resolution at closing time, when the patrons spilled out onto the street.

  Strange saw Lamar Williams, wearing pressed khakis and wheat-colored Timbies, standing in the line outside the club. Strange drove on. Between Kenyon and Harvard, kids sold marijuana in an open-air market set up on the street.

  Georgia became 7th. Soon Strange was nearing the convention center site, a huge hole that took up several of D.C.’s letter blocks, on his right. On his left ran a commercial strip. His hooker, wearing a red leather skirt, was standing in the doorway of a closed restaurant, her hard, masculine face illuminated by the embers of her cigarette as she gave it a deep draw. Strange did not slow the car. He went west for a couple of blocks, then north, then east again, circling back to a spot on the east side of the future center, where he parked the Chevy on 9th, alongside a construction fence. He slipped a notepad into his breast pocket and clipped a pen there before exiting the car.

  Strange opened the trunk of his Chevy. He pushed aside his live-case file, his football file, and his toolbox, and found his video camera, which was fitted in a separate box alongside his 500mm- lens Canon AE-1. He checked the tape and replaced it in its slot. Strange liked this camera, his latest acquisition. It was an 8mm Sony with the NightShot feature and the 360X digital zoom. Perfect for what he needed, perfect for this job right here. He’d gotten the camera in a trade for a debt owed him by a client; the camera was hotter than Jennifer Lopez in July.

  Strange went over to a place by the fence at 7th and L, just north of the hooker’s position, where there was an open driveway entrance breaking the continuity of the construction fence. He situated himself behind the fence in a position that would render him unseen by the passengers or drivers of any southbound cars. He stood there for a while, setting up the camera the way he wanted it and shooting some tape for a test. He watched the hooker talk to a potential john who had pulled up his Honda Accord beside her, and he watched the john drive off. The hooker smoked another cigarette. Strange’s stomach rumbled, as he thought about AV, his favorite sit-down Italian restaurant, just around the corner on Mass. Hungry as usual, and having just eaten, too.

  A black late-model Chevy rolled down 7th, slowed, and came to a stop near where the hooker stood. Strange leaned against the corner of the fence, brought the zoom in so the car was framed and clear, and shot some tape. Cigarette smoke came out of the driver’s side of the car as the john rolled his window down. The hooker rested her forearms on the lip of the open window. She shook her head, and Strange could hear male laughter before the car drove off. The car wore D.C. plates. It was an Impala, the new body style that Strange didn’t care for.

  He waited. The Impala came out of the north once again, having circled the block. The driver stopped the vehicle in the same spot he had minutes earlier. The hooker hesitated, looked around, walked over to the driver’s side but this time did not lean into the car. She seemed to be listening for a while, her face going from passivity to agitation and then to something like fear. Strange heard the laughter again. Then the driver laid some rubber on the street and took off. The hooker flipped him off, but only after the car had turned the corner and was gone from sight.

  Strange wrote down the Impala’s license plate number on the notepad he had placed in the breast pocket of his shirt. He didn’t need to record it, not really; he had memorized the number at first sight, a talent that he had always possessed and that had served him well when he had worn the uniform on the street.

  Anyway, the two letters that preceded the numbers on the plate had told him everything he needed to know. Bagley and Tracy must have known it, too. They had put him onto this, he reasoned, as some kind of test. He wasn’t angry. It was just a job.

  The letters on the plate read GT. Plainclothes, undercover, whatever you wanted to call it. The abusive john was a cop.

  chapter 5

  HOLD on a second, Derek,” said Karen Bagley. “I’m going to conference you in with Sue.”

  Strange held the phone away from his ear and sat back in the
chair behind his desk. He watched Lamar Williams climb a stepladder to feather-dust Strange’s blinds.

  “You coming with me to practice tonight, Lamar?”

  “You want me to, I will.”

  “I was just wonderin’ on if you could make it. If you had to sit your baby sister again, I mean.”

  “Nah, uh-uh.”

  “’Cause I saw you outside the Black Hole Friday night.”

  Lamar lowered the duster. “Yeah, I was there. After I did what I told you I had to do.”

  “Kind of a rough place, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a place in the neighborhood I can listen to some go-go, maybe talk to a girl. I don’t eye-contact no one I shouldn’t; I ain’t lookin’ to step to nobody or beef nobody. Just lookin’ to have a little fun. That’s okay with you, isn’t it, boss?”

  “Just tellin’ you I saw you, is all.”

  Strange heard voices on the phone. He put the receiver back to his ear.

  “Okay,” said Strange.

  “We all here?” said Bagley.

  “I can hear you,” said Tracy. “Derek?”

  “I got what you needed,” said Strange. “It’s all on videotape.”

  “That was quick,” said Bagley.

  “Did it Friday night. I thought I’d let the weekend pass, didn’t want to disturb your-all’s beauty sleeps.”

  “What’d you get?” said Tracy.

  “Your bad john is a cop. Unmarked. But you two knew that, I expect. The flag went up for me when you said he was talkin’ about ‘I don’t have to pay.’ Question is, why didn’t you just tell me what you suspected?”

  “We wanted to find out if we could trust you,” said Tracy.

  Direct, thought Strange. That was cool.

  “I’m going to give the tape and the information to a lieutenant friend of mine in the MPD. I been knowin’ him my whole life. He’ll turn it over to Internal and they’ll take care of it.”

  “You’ve got a videotape of his car,” said Bagley, “right? Did you get his face?”

  “No, not really. But it’s his car and it’s a clear solicitation. He might say he was gathering information or some bullshit like that, but it’s enough to throw a shadow over him. The IAD people will talk to him, and I suspect it’ll scare him. He won’t be botherin’ that girl again. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Bagley. “Good work.”

  “Good? It was half good, I’d say. You two ever see that movie The Magnificent Seven?”

  Bagley and Tracy took a moment before uttering a “yes” and an “uh-huh.” Strange figured they were wondering where he was going with this.

  “One of my favorites,” said Strange. “There’s that scene where Coburn, he plays the knife-carryin’ Texican, pistol-shoots this cat off a horse from, like, I don’t know, a couple hundred yards away. And this hero-worship kid, German actor or something, but they got him playin’ a Mexican, he says something like, ‘That was the greatest shot I ever saw.’ And Coburn says, ‘It was the worst. I was aiming for his horse.’”

  “And your point is what?” said Bagley.

  “I wish I could’ve delivered more to you. More evidence, I mean. But what I did get, it might just be enough. Anyway, hopefully y’all will trust me now.”

  “Like I said,” said Tracy, “there’s no such thing as an ex-cop. Cops are usually hesitant to turn in one of their own.”

  “There’s two professions,” said Strange, “teaching and policing, that do the most good for the least pay and recognition. But you want to be a teacher or a cop, you accept that goin’ in. Most cops and most teachers are better than good. But there’s always gonna be the teacher likes to play with a kid’s privates, and there’s always gonna be a cop out there, uses his power and position in the wrong way. In both cases, to me, it’s the worst kind of betrayal. So I got no problem with turnin’ a cat like that in. Only…”

  “What?” said Tracy.

  “Don’t keep nothin’ from me again, hear? Okay, you did it once, but you don’t get to do it again. It happens, it’ll be the last time we work together.”

  “We were wrong,” said Bagley. “Can you forget it?”

  “Forget what?”

  “What about the other thing?” said Tracy. “The flyer we gave you.”

  “I’ve got a guy I use named Terry Quinn. Former D.C. cop. He’s a licensed investigator in the District now. I’m gonna give it to him.”

  “Why not you?” said Bagley.

  “Too busy.”

  “How can we reach him?” said Tracy.

  “He’s not in the office much. He works part-time in a used-book store in downtown Silver Spring. He can take calls there, and he’s got a cell. I’m gonna see him this evening; I’ll make sure he gets the flyer.”

  Strange gave them both numbers.

  “Thank you, Derek.”

  “You’ll get my bill straightaway.” Strange hung up the phone and looked over at Lamar. “You ready, boy?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s roll.”

  STRANGE retrieved the videotape of the cop and the hooker, wedged in the football file box, and shut the trunk’s lid.

  “This here is you,” said Strange, handing the tape over to Lydell Blue.

  “The thing you called me about?”

  “Yeah. I wrote up a little background on it, what I was told by the investigators who put me on it, what I heard at the scene, like that. I signed my name to it, Internal wants to get in touch with me.”

  Blue stroked his thick gray mustache. “I’ll take care of it.”

  They walked across the parking lot toward the fence that surrounded the stadium, passing Quinn’s hopped-up blue Chevelle and Dennis Arrington’s black Infiniti I30 along the way.

  Strange knew Roosevelt’s football coach – he had done a simple background check for him once and he had not charged him a dime – and they had worked it out so that Strange’s team could practice on Roosevelt’s field when the high school team wasn’t using it. In return, Strange turned the coach on to some up-and-coming players and tried to keep those kids who were headed for Roosevelt in a straight line as well.

  “You and Dennis want the Midgets tonight?”

  “Tonight? Yeah, okay.”

  “Me and Terry’ll work with the Pee Wees, then.”

  “Derek, that’s the way you got it set up damn near every night.”

  “I like the young kids, is what it is,” said Strange. “Me and Terry will just stick with them, you don’t mind.”

  “Fine.”

  Midgets in this league – a loosely connected set of neighborhood teams throughout the area – went ten to twelve years old and between eighty-five and one hundred and five pounds. Pee Wees were ages eight to eleven, with a minimum of sixty pounds and a max of eighty-five. There was also an intermediate and junior division in the league, but the Petworth club could not attract enough boys in those age groups, the early-to-mid-teen years, to form a squad. Many of these boys had by then become too distracted by other interests, like girls, or necessities, like part-time jobs. Others had already been lost to the streets.

  Strange followed Blue through a break in the fence and down to the field. About fifty boys were down there in uniforms and full pads, tackling one another, cracking wise, kicking footballs, and horsing around. Lamar Williams was with them, giving them some tips, also acting the clown. A few mothers were down there, and a couple of fathers, too, talking among themselves.

  The field was surrounded by a lined track painted a nice sky blue. A set of aluminum bleachers on concrete steps faced the field. Weed trees grew up through the concrete.

  Dennis Arrington, a computer programmer and deacon, was throwing the ball back and forth with the Midgets’ quarterback in one of the end zones. Nearby, Terry Quinn showed Joe Wilder, a Pee Wee, the ideal place on the body to make a hit. Quinn had to get down low to do it. Wilder was the runt of the litter, short but with defined muscles and a six-pack of abs, though
he had only just turned eight years old. At sixty-two pounds, Wilder was also the lightest member of the squad.

  Strange blew a whistle that hung on a cord around his neck. “Everybody line up over there.” He motioned to a line that had been painted across the track. They knew where it was.

  “Hustle,” said Blue.

  “Four times around,” said Strange, “and don’t be complaining, either; that ain’t nothin’ but a mile.” He blew the whistle again over the boys’ inevitable moans and protests.

  “Any one of you walks,” yelled Arrington, as they jogged off the line, “and you all are gonna do four more.”

  The men stood together in the end zone and watched the sea of faded green uniforms move slowly around the track.

  “Got a call from Jerome Moore’s mother today,” said Blue. “Jerome got suspended from Clark today for pulling a knife on a teacher.”

  “Clark Elementary?” said Quinn.

  “Uh-huh. His mother said we won’t be seein’ him at practice for the next week or so.”

  “Call her back,” said Strange, “and tell her he’s not welcome back. He’s off the team. Didn’t like him around the rest of the kids anyway. Doggin’ it, trash-talking, always starting fights.”

  “Moore’s nine years old,” said Quinn. “I thought those were the kind of at-risk kids we were trying to help.”

  “They’re all at risk down here, Terry. I’ll let go of one to keep the rest of the well from getting poisoned. It’ll school them on something, too. That we’re tryin’ to teach them somethin’ more than football here. Also, that we’re not gonna put up with that kind of behavior.”

  “Way I see it,” said Quinn, “it’s the giving up on these kids that makes them go wrong.”

  “I’m not giving up on him or anyone else. He straightens himself out, he can play for us next season. But for this season here, uh-uh. He blew it his own self. You agree with me, Dennis?”

  Dennis Arrington looked down at the football that he spun in his thick hands. He was Quinn’s height, not so tall, built like a fullback. “Absolutely, Derek.”