Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  It took Tucker a while to come out of the club. Strange knew the place. He used to drink there occasionally when it was a neighborhood bar, just a few short years ago. In the summer the management had strung speakers outside, and on some nights, driving slowly down U Street, Strange could hear James Brown doing “Payback,” or a Slave tune, or Otis and Carla singing “Tramp,” and that was enough to cause him to pull over and stop in for a beer. All types were in the bar then, even a few whites; you could wear what you wanted to, it was cool. But then they changed things over, instituting a dress code, and a race code, it seemed, as one night Strange had seen some fancy brothers punk out this one young white dude who was sitting at the bar quietly drinking a beer. The white dude, he wasn’t bothering anyone, but he wasn’t the right color and he wasn’t wearing the right clothes, and they hard-eyed him enough to make him feel like he wasn’t wanted, and soon he was gone. Strange hadn’t gone back since. The truth was, he was too old for the crowd himself, and he preferred a working-class atmosphere when he sat down to have his drinks. Mostly, he didn’t dig that kind of intolerance, no matter who was on the giving or the receiving end. He’d seen too much in his life to excuse that kind of behavior from anyone, even his own people. If this was the New U, then it wasn’t for him.

  Strange retrieved his car and kept it running on the street, waiting for Tucker to come out of the bar. Soon Tucker walked down the steps of the club, slipping his shades on, and went to his car. He pulled out onto U, and Strange followed.

  Tucker went east, over to Barry Place, parking his Audi between Sherman and 9th, not far from Howard University. Strange kept going and circled the block.

  He parked on the Sherman / Barry corner and got his AE-1, outfitted with a 500mm lens, out of his trunk, keeping his eye on Tucker, who was now walking down the street, talking on his cell. Strange returned to the driver’s seat of his Chevy, where he had a clear view of Tucker, and snapped several photographs of him walking up the steps of a row house and waiting at its door. He got a last shot of Tucker going though the open door, and of the woman who let him in. He used the long lens to read the address off one of the brick pillars fronting the porch of the house. He used his cell to phone in the address to Janine. Janine had a reverse-directory program on her computer that would give them a phone number and name for the residence.

  Strange sat there for an hour or so, sipping water from a bottle, listening to Joe Madison’s talk show on WOL, while he thought of what was going on in the house. Maybe that was a business appointment in there, or it was a friend and the two of them were having lunch. More likely, right about now Tucker was knocking the back end out of that woman Strange had seen in the open door. Strange was disappointed but not surprised. Thinking about that young man and woman in there, it stirred something in him, too. He’d done enough today. He was hungry and he had to pee.

  Strange ignitioned the Chevy and drove over to Chinatown, where he parked in an alley behind I Street. A man whom Strange recognized, a heroin addict who worked the alley, appeared like a phantom, and Strange handed him a five to look after his car. Then he went in a back door next to a Dumpster, down a hall where he passed a kitchen and several closed doors, and through a beaded entranceway into a small dining area where dulcimer music played softly. He took a deuce and ordered some hot-and-sour soup and Singapore-style noodles from an older woman who called him by his name. He washed the lunch down with a Tsingtao.

  “Everything okay?” said the hostess.

  “Yes, mama, it was good. Bring me my check.”

  “You want?” she said, her eyes moving to the beaded curtain leading to the hall. “Your friend here.”

  Strange nodded.

  He paid cash and went down the hall to a door opposite the kitchen. He went through the door and closed it behind him. He was in a white-walled room lit by scented votive candles. The music from the dining area played in the room. A padded table was in the center of the room, with a small cart set beside it holding lotions, towels, and a washbasin.

  Strange went through another door, turned on a light, and undressed in a room containing a toilet, sink, and tiled shower stall. He hung his clothing on a coat tree and took a hot shower, wrapping a towel around himself when he was done. Then he returned to the candlelit room and lay facedown on the padded table. Soon he heard a door open and saw light spear into the room. The light slipped away as the door was closed.

  “Hello, Stwange.”

  “Hello, baby.”

  Strange heard the squirt of an applicator and next felt the woman’s warm, slick hands. She kneaded the lotion, some sweet-smelling stuff, into his shoulder muscles and his lats. He felt her rough nipples graze his back as she bent in to whisper in his ear.

  “You have good day today?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She hummed to the music as she massaged his back. The sound of her voice and the sensation of her touch made him hard. He turned over, the towel falling open. She massaged his chest, his calves, his upper thighs, working her way up to his balls. The lotion was warm there; Strange swallowed.

  “You like?”

  “Yeah, that’s good right there.”

  She applied more lotion to her hands and fisted his cock. Her movement was slow. As her hand went up his shaft, she feathered the head with her fingers. Strange opened his eyes.

  The woman was in her twenties, with carelessly applied lipstick and eyes like black olive pits. She wore red lace panties and nothing else. She was short and had the hips of a larger woman. Her breasts were small and firm. He brushed his fingers across one nipple until it was pebble hard, and when the fire rose up in his loins he pinched her there until she moaned. He didn’t care if it was all fake.

  “Go now,” he said, and she pumped him faster.

  His orgasm was eye-popping, his own jism splattering his stomach and chest.

  “You need,” said the woman, chuckling under her breath.

  As she wet-toweled him, Strange said, “Yes.”

  Dressed again, he left forty-five dollars in a bowl by the door.

  Out in the alley, his beeper sounded. It was the office number. He debated whether or not to return the call. He got into his car and used his cell to dial the number. Quinn’s voice came through from the other end.

  “I stopped by the office to pick up Jennifer Marshall’s sheet from Ron,” said Quinn. “Where you at?”

  “Chinatown,” said Strange.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Had some lunch.”

  “Okay.”

  Strange had spilled his guts to Quinn one night when both of them had put away too many beers. Giving up too much of himself to Quinn had come back to him in a bad way. It was always a mistake.

  “I’m headed down to Rick’s, on New York Avenue,” said Quinn, then explained the reason. “You wanna join me?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “C’mon over to the office. We can drive down together.”

  “I’ll meet you at Rick’s,” said Strange. “Say, half hour?”

  “Fine,” said Quinn. “Bring some dollar bills.”

  Strange cut the line. He didn’t want to go back to the office and have to small-talk Janine. He was relieved it hadn’t been her on the phone when he’d called in.

  On his way east, he drove by the row house on Barry Place, the site of Calhoun Tucker’s afternoon tryst. Tucker’s Audi was gone.

  chapter 10

  RICK’S was a stand-alone A-frame establishment located a few miles east of North Capitol on New York Avenue, a bombed-out-looking stretch of road that was the jewel-in-the-crown introduction to Washington, D.C., for many first-time visitors who traveled into the city by car.

  The building now holding Rick’s had originally been built as a Roy Rogers burger house. It had mutated into its current incarnation, a combination sports bar and strip joint for working stiffs, when the Roy’s chain went the way of corded telephones.

  The conversion had been simple. The new owners had gutt
ed the fast-food interior, keeping only a portion of the kitchen and the bathroom plumbing, and hung some Redskins, Wizards, and Orioles memorabilia on the walls. The omission of Washington Capitals pennants was intentional, as hockey was generally not a sport that interested blacks. The final touch was to brick up the windows that had once wrapped around three sides of the structure. Bricked windows generally meant one of three things: arson victim, gay bar, or strip joint. Once the word got around on which kind of place Rick’s was, the owners didn’t even bother to hang a sign out front.

  Rick’s had its own parking lot, an inheritance from the Roy’s lease. A couple of locals had been shot in this parking lot in the past year, but pre-sundown and in the early evening hours, before the liquor turned peaceful men brave, then violent, the place was generally safe.

  Strange pulled his Caprice alongside Quinn’s blue Chevelle, parked in an empty corner of the lot. Quinn got out of his car as Strange stepped out of his. They met and shook hands. Quinn made a show of sniffing the air.

  “Damn, Derek. You smell kinda, I don’t know, sweet. Is that perfume?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man.”

  It was the lotion that girl had rubbed on him back in Chinatown. Strange knew that Quinn was remarking on it, in his own stupid way.

  They walked toward Rick’s.

  Strange nodded at the JanSport hanging off Quinn’s shoulder. “What, we goin’ mountain climbing now? Thought we were just gonna have a beer or two.”

  “My briefcase.”

  “You been waitin’ on me long?”

  “Not too long,” said Quinn.

  “You coulda gone inside,” said Strange, giving Quinn a long look. “I bet I would have spotted you right quick.”

  “I’d be the one on the bottom of the pile.”

  “With the red opening in his neck, stretchin’ from one ear to the other.”

  “Not too many white guys in this place, huh?”

  “Seeing a white guy at Rick’s be like spottin’ a brother at a Springsteen concert.”

  “I figured I’d just wait for you to escort me in.”

  “No need to tempt fate. It’s what I been telling you the past two years. You’re learning, man.”

  “I’m trying,” said Quinn.

  They went into Rick’s. Smoke hovered in the dim lights. The place was half filled, just easing into happy hour. A bar ran along one wall where the order counter for Roy’s had been, and beyond it was a series of doors. Guys sat at the stick, watching the nostalgia sports channel, Packers uniforms dancing in a flurry of snow, “Spill the Wine” playing on the stereo throughout the house. In two corners, women danced in thongs, nothing else, for groups of men seated at tables. Waitresses wearing short shorts and lacy tops were servicing the tables. Big men with big shoulders and no headsets were stationed around the room.

  Floor patrons fish-eyed Strange and Quinn as they stepped up to the bar. Those seated at the bar barely noticed their presence, as their eyes were glued to the television set mounted on the wall.

  Strange nodded up at the set. “You want to get a man’s attention, put on any Green Bay game where it got played in the snow. Guy’ll sit there like a glassy-eyed old dog, watchin’ it.”

  “It’s like when they run The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on TNT.”

  “You mean, like, every week?”

  “Tell me the truth; if you’re scanning the channels with the remote and you see Eastwood, or Eli Wallach as Tuco-”

  “‘Otherwise known as the Rat.’”

  “Right,” said Quinn. “So, when you recognize that movie, have you ever been able to scan past it? I mean, you always sit there and watch the rest of the film, don’t you?”

  “The Wild Bunch is like that, too,” said Strange. “How many times you figure you’ve seen that one?”

  Quinn pumped out two short strokes with his fist. “With my pants on, or with them around my ankles?”

  Strange chuckled as the bartender, a young guy with a hard face, arrived before them. “What can I get y’all?”

  “I’ll take a Double R Bar burger and a saddle fulla fries,” said Quinn, but the bartender didn’t smile.

  “Heineken for me,” said Strange.

  “Bud,” said Quinn.

  “In bottles,” said Strange. “And we’re gonna need a receipt.”

  The tender returned with their beers. Quinn paid him and dropped a heavy tip on the bar, placing his hand over the cash. “Which one of the girls is Eve?”

  “That’s her right there,” said the bartender, chinning in the direction of a big-boned dancer working one of the corners of the room.

  “When does she stop?”

  “They work half hours.”

  “Any idea how long she’s been at it?”

  “’Bout ten years, from the looks of her.”

  “I meant tonight.”

  “Ain’t like I been clockin’ her.”

  “Right,” said Quinn. He took his hand off the money, and the bartender snatched it without a word. He had never once looked Quinn in the eye.

  Strange saw two men get up from their table near Eve’s corner. He folded the bar receipt, put it in his breast pocket, and said to Quinn, “There we go, that’s us right there.”

  They crossed the floor, one of the stack-shouldered bouncers staring hard at Quinn as they passed. “Sweet Sticky Thing” came forward from the house system. Quinn and Strange had a seat at the deuce. Strange leaned forward and tapped his beer bottle against Quinn’s.

  “Relax,” said Strange.

  “I get tired of it, is all.”

  “You expect all the brothers to show you love, huh?”

  “Just respect,” said Quinn.

  They drank off some of their beers and watched the work of the woman the bartender had identified as Eve. She was squatting, her back to a group of men, her palms resting atop her thighs, working the muscles in her lower back. Her huge ass jiggled rapidly, seemingly disconnected from the rest of her. It moved wildly before the men.

  “Someone ought to give that a name,” said Strange.

  “She does have a nickname: All-Ass Eve.”

  “Bet it didn’t take long to come up with it.”

  “You like it like that?”

  “Is seven up?”

  “She doesn’t hold a candle to Janine.”

  “That’s what I know. You don’t have to tell me, man.” Strange smiled and pointed to one of the speakers suspended from the ceiling by wires. “Listen to this right here. The third verse is comin’ up.”

  “So?”

  “The horn charts behind this verse are beautiful, man. The Ohio Players never did get much credit for the complexity in their shit.”

  “That’s nice,” said Quinn. “You know, Janine was askin’ where you were when I was back in the office.”

  “You tell her I was in Chinatown?”

  “I don’t like lying to her.” Quinn’s eyes cut off Strange’s stare. “No, I didn’t say where you were.”

  Strange had a sip of beer. “You met with Sue Tracy, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d you think?”

  “She’s a pro. She’s nice.”

  “Bet you didn’t find her all that hard to look at, either.”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Just wanted to make sure you still had some red blood runnin’ through your veins. While you’re sittin’ over there judgin’ me with your eyes.”

  Quinn didn’t respond. Strange said, “Ron give you the sheet on the Marshall girl?”

  “I got it.”

  “What did it tell you?”

  “She got popped for solicitation. It’s a no-paper, so we won’t be finding her in court.”

  “She put an address on the form?” said Strange.

  “A phony. But the spot where she wrote down her contact was interesting. A guy named Worldwide Wilson.”

  “Worldwide.”

  “Yeah, looks like she gav
e up the name of her pimp.”

  “She give out his phone number, too?”

  “She did write one down. But it’s got one of those number symbols after it.”

  “Must be his pager.”

  “Genius.”

  “Just tryin’ to help you out, rookie.”

  “Anyway, I’ll find out tonight.”

  They watched the rest of Eve’s performance. The music programmer stuck with the Ohio Players and moved into “Far East Mississippi” and “Skin Tight.” Strange and Quinn ordered two more beers. Eve finished her shift and walked off through one of the doors behind the bar, accompanied by the stack-necked bouncer who had hard-eyed Quinn. A woman arrived, built similarly to Eve, and she began to dance in the same way Eve had danced, this time to a tune by the Gap Band. The woman’s behind rippled as if it were in a wind tunnel.

  “This here must be strictly an ass joint,” said Quinn.

  “And they asked me when I took you on, Will he make a good detective.”

  “It’s like their signature dish.”

  “Ledo’s Pizza got pizza. The Prime Rib’s got prime rib. Rick’s got ass.”

  “You black guys do love the onion.”

  “Was wonderin’ when you were gonna get to that.”

  Soon Eve came out of the back room wearing a sheer top with no bra and matching shorts showing the lines of her thong. She was going around to the tables, shaking hands with the men, some of whom were slipping her money in appreciation of her performance. The stack-necked bouncer was never far from Eve. He had braided hair and a gold tooth. Quinn thought he looked like Warren Sapp, that football player. He was big as one.

  “She’ll be here in a second, Terry. I’ll ask the questions, you don’t mind.”

  “My case. Let me handle it, all right?”

  Eve was a large woman, in proportion with her backside. Her nose was thick and wide, and her lips, painted a bright red, were prominent; her hands and feet had the size of a man’s. She had sprayed herself with some kind of sweet perfume, and it was strong on Strange and Quinn as she arrived at their table.