Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  South of the P Street intersection he stopped to talk to a skinny man, all arms and legs, built like a spider, who was leaning in the doorway of Mean Feets, D.C.’s longtime trendsetting shoe boutique, dragging on a Newport. Inside the shop, Quinn saw a handsome older man smoothly fitting a shoe onto the foot of a young woman as a D’Angelo tune came from the open front door.

  As a former cop, Quinn knew that urban shoe salesmen spent a good portion of their day standing outside their shops, talking to women walking down the sidewalk, trying to get them inside, into their web. As it was an occupational necessity, they tended to remember not just shoe sizes but faces and names as well. They also serviced many of the city’s hookers and their pimps.

  Quinn greeted the skinny man, then opened a leather holder, flashing his badge and license. To the public, it looked like a cop’s badge. Beside a picture of the D.C. flag, it actually read, “Metropolitan Police Department,” over the words “Private Investigator.” It was Quinn’s habit, suggested to him by Strange, to show the license and badge long enough for the flag and MPD moniker to register, then put it away just as fast.

  “Investigator, D.C.,” said Quinn. Strange had taught him this, too. It wasn’t against the law. It wasn’t even a lie.

  “What can I do for you, officer?”

  “Name’s Terry Quinn. You?”

  “Antoine.”

  Quinn unfolded a flyer he had kept in his back pocket and handed it to Antoine. Antoine squinted through the smoke curling up from the cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “Any chance you’ve seen this girl?”

  “Don’t look familiar.”

  “You sell shoes to prostitutes from time to time, don’t you?”

  “Sure, I got my regular ladies, come in for their evening shoes. But I don’t recognize this one. Been doin’ this a long time in the District, too. She hookin’?”

  “Could be.”

  “I don’t recall ever seeing one this young in my shop. Not that I knew of, anyway.”

  “Do me a favor. Put this up in the back room, by the toilet, whatever.” Quinn handed Antoine his card. “You or your coworkers, they see her, even if she’s walking down the street, you give me a call.”

  Antoine dropped the cigarette, ground it out. He reached for his wallet, slipped Quinn’s card inside, and retrieved a card of his own, handing it to Quinn.

  “Now you do me a favor, officer. You need a pair of boots or somethin’, get you out of those New Balances you got on, somethin’ a little more stylin’, you give me a call, hear? Antoine. You walk in here, don’t be askin’ for anyone else.”

  “I got a wide foot.”

  “Oh, I’ll fit you, now. Antoine can stretch some shoes.”

  “All right,” said Quinn. “I’ll see you around.”

  “The name is Antoine.”

  Quinn walked north to a strip club up the hill on Wisconsin, stopping at an ATM along the way. He entered without paying a cover and was seated by a bouncer at a table in the middle of a series of tables set tightly in a row throughout the depth of the narrow club, facing one of several stages. Three men wearing ties, their shirtsleeves rolled back off their wrists, occupied the table. The men did not acknowledge Quinn. A nice-looking young woman in a sleeveless dress quickly arrived and took his order. She cupped her ear to hear him over the Limp Bizkit, their cover of “Faith,” booming through the speakers.

  Quinn checked out the dancers, working the poles on their stages, into the music, smiling politely at the audience but with their eyes someplace else. Thin, young, toned, and generally pleasant to look at. One of them was straight-up attractive, with a cheerleader’s bright face and ruby red nipples. Connoisseurs claimed this place had the finest, cleanest-looking dancers in town. It was all perception and taste; Quinn knew men who swore by that joint near Connecticut and Florida Avenues. Quinn had been there once and judged it to be a skank-house.

  The woman returned with a bottle of Bud, for which he paid dearly. He showed her the flyer. She barely looked at it and shook her head. Quinn paid her, tipped her, and asked for a receipt.

  There were several bouncers working the room, all wearing radio headsets. The customers could go to the stages and tip the dancers, but they couldn’t linger in the aisle, and if they did, one of the bouncers told them to get back to their seats. Patrons judged to be nursing their beers were encouraged to drink up and reorder or leave. This was the New World Order of strip clubs. To Quinn, it was all too bloodless and it didn’t seem to be much fun.

  Quinn recognized one of the bouncers, a black Asian-featured guy now standing by the front door, as a moonlighting cop. He didn’t know the cop personally and didn’t know his name. Quinn waited for his receipt, left his beer untouched, and walked over to the bouncer. He introduced himself, shook the guy’s hand, and showed him the flyer.

  “I don’t know her,” said the cop. He looked closely at Quinn. “Where’d you say you were at?”

  “In the end, I rode Three-D.”

  The cop got that look of recognition then, the clouding over of the eyes, that Quinn had seen many times.

  “Keep the flyer,” said Quinn, handing the cop his business card as well. “You see her, do me a favor and give me a call.”

  Quinn walked out, Kid Rock screaming at his back. He knew the bouncer would throw the flyer and his card in the trash. He was one of those guys, once he figured out who Quinn was, he didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He’d never get past the fact that Quinn had killed a fellow cop.

  Quinn returned to his car and drove east, over the P Street Bridge and onto the edge of Dupont Circle. He found a spot on 23rd Street, walked past a gay nightclub that had been there since disco’s first wave, and stopped at a coffeehouse at the next intersection. It was near P Street Beach, a stretch of Rock Creek Park that in years past had been known for sunbathing, cruising, and open-air sexual activity. Quinn remembered from his patrol days that this was also an area where ecstasy could be easily scored, as the 18th Street clubs were in the vicinity. It was a perimeter that young hustlers worked as well.

  He bought a cup of regular and took it out to where tables were set on the sidewalk. He found a seat and checked out the crowd. Teenagers were interspersed in the mostly adult customer base of coffee drinkers and smokers. Some of the teenagers sat with friends; others, both boys and girls, sat with older men. Quinn guessed that some of these kids were cutting school, just slumming, and some were runaways who crashed wherever they could around town. That left the few who had gone professional and were working the crowd.

  Quinn had the feeling, from the eye contact he was getting, that a couple of the kids had marked him as a cop. Strange claimed you never lost the look. Quinn was way too old to be one of them, too young to be a john, and, he told himself, too attractive to look like the type who would pay for it. He was mulling over all of this, sitting there trying to decide how to approach one of these kids.

  Fuck it, he thought, getting up and crossing the sidewalk patio to a table where two teenage girls sat, empty cups in front of them, ashing the pavement with their cigarettes.

  “Hey,” said Quinn, “how you ladies doing?”

  Both of the girls looked up, but only one of them kept her eyes on him.

  “We’re fine, thanks.” The girl, who had the look of hard money, someone who had been taught never to thank the waitress, said, “Something we can help you with?”

  Quinn had obviously made a mistake. “I was wondering, can I snag a cigarette from you?”

  She rolled her eyes and gave him one from her handbag without looking at him further. He thanked her and returned to his table, noticing a boy and his female friend laughing at him, feeling a flush of anger and trying to stifle it as he adjusted himself in his seat. Holding a cigarette and without even a match to complete the ruse.

  He retrieved his cell from his pack and phoned the office. Janine switched him over to Ron Lattimer.

  “Any luck?” said Ron.

/>   “Nothing yet. Our girl got a sheet?”

  “Jennifer Marshall. Got it right here.”

  “Solicitation?”

  “Man wins the Kewpie doll.”

  “What about an address?”

  “Listed as five seventeen J Street, Northwest. You might have a little trouble finding it, unless someone went and built a J Street in the last week or so-”

  “There is no J Street in D.C.”

  “No shit.”

  “She’s got a sense of humor, anyway.”

  “Or the one who told her to write it like that does.”

  “Thanks, Ron. I’ll look over the rest of it when I come in. Derek around?”

  “Uh-uh, he’s out doing a background check.”

  “Tell him I was looking for him, hear?”

  “Call him on his cell.”

  “He doesn’t keep it on most of the time.”

  “You can leave a message on it, man.”

  “True.”

  “I see him, I’ll tell him.”

  Quinn was replacing his cell in his bag when he noticed a girl standing before him. She wore boot-cut jeans and a spaghetti-string pink shirt with a cartoon illustration of a Japanese girl holding a guitar slung low, à la Keith. Her shoulder bag was white, oval, and plastic. Her dirty-blond hair fell to her shoulders. Her hips were narrow, her breasts small, mostly nipple and visible through the shirt. She was pale, with bland brown eyes and a tan birthmark, shaped like a strawberry, on her neck. She wore wire-rim prescription eyeglasses, granny style. She was barely cute, and not even close to pretty. Quinn put her in her midteens, maybe knocking on the door of seventeen, if that.

  “You gonna smoke that?”

  Quinn looked at the cigarette in his hand as if he were noticing it for the first time. “I don’t think so.”

  “Can I get it from you, then?”

  “Sure.”

  She sat down without invitation. He handed her the cigarette.

  “You got a light?”

  “Sorry.”

  “You need a new rap,” she said, rooting through her shoulder bag for a match. Finding a book, she struck a flame and put fire to the cigarette. “The one you got is lame.”

  “You think so?”

  “You be hittin’ those girls up for a smoke, you don’t ask ’em for a light, you don’t even have a match your own self?”

  Quinn took in the girl’s words, the rhythms, the dropping of the g’s, the slang. Like that of most white girls selling it on the street, her speech was an affectation, a strange in-and-out blend of Southern cracker and city black girl.

  “Pretty stupid, huh?”

  “And if you was lookin’ to score some ass, you went and picked the only two girls out here ain’t even had their boots knocked yet. Couple of Sidwell Friends girls, trying out the street for a day before they go back to their daddy’s Mercedes, got it parked around the block.” She grinned. “You prob’ly don’t even smoke.”

  “I tried it once and it made me sick.”

  “But you want something,” she said, no inflection at all in her voice, just dead. It made Quinn sad.

  “I’m looking for a girl.”

  “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  “You have to tell me if you are. It’s entrapment otherwise.”

  “I’m not a cop. I’m just looking for a girl.”

  “I can get you some pussy, now.” She lowered his eyes, magnified behind the lenses, suggestively. “Shit, you can have this pussy right here, that’s all you want.”

  Quinn found a flyer in his knapsack and slid it across the table. “I’m looking for her.”

  He watched her examine the face and data on the flyer. If she recognized Jennifer Marshall, her eyes did not give it up.

  “I don’t know her,” said the girl. “But maybe I can hook you up with someone who does.”

  “You work the middle,” said Quinn.

  “When I can. It’s rough out here, you know; I’m talkin’ about the competition. My looks are, like, an acquired taste. Guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses, and all that. My mother, when she was dolin’ out one of her famous pearls of wisdom, used to remind me all the time. But contacts hurt my eyes. So here I am, lookin’ like a magnet-school geek tryin’ to peddle her ass. And my tits are too little, too. White johns like that black pussy, and with this kiddie pelvis I got, the brothers just tear my shit up. So maybe I’m not cut out for the life. You think I am?”

  Quinn gave the girl a chin nod. “What’s your name?”

  “Stella. Yours?”

  “Terry Quinn. You were gonna hook me up, Stella.”

  “It’s gonna cost you fifty.”

  “For a name?”

  “It’s a good name.”

  “How do I know?”

  “’Cause I ga-ran-tee it, dude. Now how about that fifty?”

  Quinn paid her discreetly. She finished her cigarette and dropped it to the concrete.

  “There’s a girl dances over at Rick’s, on New York Avenue, on the way out of town, past North Capitol?”

  “I know the place.”

  “Black girl, goes by Eve. They call her All-Ass Eve; you see her, you’ll know why. She knows this girl.”

  “How do you know that she knows her?”

  For the first time, Stella’s confidence was visibly shaken. She recovered quickly, though, smiling crookedly like a child caught in a lie. And Quinn saw the little girl then, just for a moment, that someone had rocked to sleep, bought presents for, loved. Maybe not always – maybe the mother or the father had fucked up somewhere along the way. But he had to believe that this girl had been loved at one time.

  “Okay, I don’t know for sure that Eve knows this girl right here, but listen to me: This is the kind of girl Eve gets to know. She cruises through this intersection, and in bus stations and malls, lookin’ for new talent so she can steer it to her pimp. Everyone workin’ this area knows who she is. The ones been around know to stay away from her and stick to this side of the creek. But the girl in this picture right here? She is fresh meat. I mean, she looks like she don’t know jack. It’s the dumb ones, the desperate ones that go with Eve. I’m just connecting things, is all. Anyway, Eve don’t work out for you, you come back, we’ll start again.”

  “For more money.”

  Stella shrugged. “I’m strugglin’, dude.”

  “How do I reach you?”

  Stella gave Quinn her cell number. He used his to phone her right there at the table. Her cell rang in her shoulder bag. She fished it out and answered.

  “Hellooo? Officer Quinn?”

  “Okay.” He killed the call on his cell and gave her one of his cards. “You want to talk, you call me, hear?”

  “Talkin’ don’t pay my bills.” She looked him over. “I’ll suck your dick for another fifty, though.”

  “This pans out, there’s another fifty in it for you just for giving me the lead.”

  “I’ll take it. But don’t use my name when you’re talking to Eve.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that. Eight years on the force, I never once lost a snitch.”

  “Knew you were a cop.”

  “In another life,” said Quinn, getting up and stepping back from the table. “Let’s stay in touch, all right?”

  chapter 9

  CALHOUN Tucker was tall and lean and visibly muscled beneath a crisp beige shirt tucked into tailored black slacks. He had a thin Billy D mustache and some kind of pomade worked into his close black hair that gave it shine. He wore expensive-looking shades and a small, new-tech cell clipped to his waistband. All of this Strange could see through his 10×50 binoculars as he sat in his Chevy, surveilling Tucker across the street from his residence, a rental town house near a medical park between Wheaton and Silver Spring.

  Tucker went down the sidewalk toward his car, a cherry red S4, Audi’s hopped-up model in the 4-series line, their version of the BMW M3. Tucker’s complexion was a deep brown, not so dar
k as to hide his features, not so light as to suggest white blood. He walked with confidence, chin up, like the handsome young man he undoubtedly knew he was. He had the package women liked; the confidence thing, they liked that, too. Strange could see right away why Alisha Hastings had been attracted, surface-wise, to Tucker.

  Tucker fired up the Audi and pulled out of his space. Strange followed him south, making sure there were plenty of cars between them all the way. Just over the District line, Tucker shot right on Alaska, then another right up 13th, into the cluster of “flower-and-tree” streets, where he cut a left onto Iris. He was heading for George Hastings’s house. Strange went around the block, counter to the route Tucker had taken, and parked in the alley behind Juniper. He got out of his car and left the alley on foot, his binos in his hand.

  By the time Strange made it to the intersection of Iris and 13th, Alisha Hastings had come out of her father’s house and was leaning into the driver’s-side window of Tucker’s ride, idling out front behind George’s Volvo. Alisha had on some kind of casual, wear-around-the-house hookup that looked spontaneous but had probably been planned. Tucker had probably called her from his cell and told her he would be stopping by on his way into town. Strange didn’t blame Tucker for wanting to get a look at her before he started his day; Alisha was radiant and poised, with deep dimples framing her lovely smile. Tucker had his hand on her forearm and he was lightly stroking it, talking to her, making her laugh, making her so happy she had to look away. Seeing the two of them there, it reminded Strange of a girl he had loved hard back in the early seventies. He watched them kiss. A twinge of guilt snapped in his chest, and he went back to get his car.

  He followed Tucker down into Shaw. Tucker parked on U Street, and Strange put his Chevy in a spot along a construction fence on 10th. He jogged up to the corner and saw Tucker walking west, carrying a briefcase of some kind. He followed Tucker until he went up the steps and into a nightclub that was a quiet bar and lunch joint during the day. Tucker came out ten minutes later and walked farther west to a similar club. He entered, and Strange stood back and leaned against a parking-meter pole stripped of its head. Back from where he’d come, he could see the lunch crowd going in and out of Ben’s. His felt his mouth water and a rumble in his stomach, and he looked the other way.