Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  Granville and Bennett’s hands no longer touched drugs. In the tradition of these businesses, the youngest shouldered the most risk and thereby earned the chance of graduating to the next level. The Olivers rarely killed using their own hands. When they did, they didn’t hold the weapon until the moment of execution. The gun was carried by an underling; the squire, in effect, handed it to the knight at the knight’s command.

  So the Olivers were smart, and it seemed to the newspaper-reading public and to some of the police that they would never be stopped. There were possibilities: tax evasion was one, as were wires and bugs planted to record their conversations. The more likely scenario was that they would be ratted out by snitches: guys who needed to plead out or guys who had previously been raped in jail and would do anything to avoid being punked out again. The Olivers knew, like all drug kingpins knew, that they would go down eventually. And snitches would be the means by which they would fall.

  In August of 1999, one week before he was scheduled to go on trial for racketeering after a wire recorded him discussing a major buy, Bennett Oliver was found murdered behind the wheel of his car, a new-style Jag with titanium wheels, idling a block from the rec center. Two bullets had entered his brain, one had blown out an eye, and a fourth had bored a tunnel clean through his neck. The Jag was still idling when the police rolled up on the scene. There were no bullet holes in the palms of the hands, no defensive marks at all, indicating that Bennett knew and maybe even trusted his attacker and had been surprised by his own murder. The word on the street was that Bennett’s nephew Granville, expecting his uncle to roll over and implicate him on the stand, had pulled the trigger or had ordered it pulled.

  Granville Oliver had kept a relatively low profile since the murder of Bennett. Though he was still very much in the business, his name, and the name of his operation, had not appeared recently in the news. He had moved to a new home outside the city, in Largo, where he was said to be recording an album in a studio he had built in the basement of the house.

  Strange steered his Cadillac off the main highway. He supposed that he was headed toward Granville Oliver’s house now.

  He parked behind the Mercedes in a circular drive in front of a large brick colonial. Another brand-new Mercedes, less adorned than the one Phillip Wood drove, was parked there, facing out.

  The house was on a street with two similar houses, one of which appeared to be unoccupied. It wasn’t a neighborhood, exactly, certainly not one of those gated communities favored by the new African American wealth of Prince George’s County. Maybe Granville wanted the privacy. More likely, those kinds of people had moved behind the gates to get away from the Granville Olivers of the world. There were unofficial covenants protecting them; real estate agents working certain neighborhoods knew to discourage sales to his kind.

  Wood’s partner remained in the car. Strange followed Wood to the front door. He noticed an open garage, totally empty, attached to the side of the house. Beside the garage, a boy no older than twelve raked leaves.

  They walked into a large foyer in which a split staircase led to the upper floor. Two hallways on either side of the staircases reached a state-of-the-art kitchen opening to a large area holding cushiony couches, a wide-screen television, and stereo equipment. They went through this area, past a dining room introduced by French doors, and into another sort of foyer that led to an open door. Wood was talking on his cell all the way. He made a gesture to Strange and stepped aside so that Strange could go, alone, through the doorway.

  The room was a kind of library, with framed photographs on the walls and books shelved around a huge cherry-wood desk, and it smelled of expensive cologne. Granville Oliver sat behind the desk. He was a large man with light brown eyes, nearly golden, and handsome in an open-neck shirt under a dark suit. Strange recognized him by sight.

  “Go ahead and close that door,” said Oliver.

  Strange closed it and walked across the room.

  Oliver stood, sized Strange up, leaned forward, and shook his hand. Strange had a seat in a comfortable chair that had been placed before the desk.

  “This about Joe Wilder?” said Strange.

  “That’s right,” said Oliver. “I want you to find the ones who killed my son.”

  chapter 23

  “YOU’RE Joe’s father?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He never mentioned it.”

  Granville Oliver spread his hands. “He didn’t know.”

  The Motorola StarTAC on Oliver’s desk chirped. Oliver picked up the cell, flipped it open, and put it to his ear. Strange listened to “uh-huh” and “yeah” over and over again. He was too wired to sit in the chair and digest what had been revealed. He got up out of the chair and walked around the room.

  The wall cases were filled with books. Judging by the tears on the corners of the frayed jackets and the cracks in the spines of the paperbacks, the books had been read. Except for a few classic works of fiction by writers like Ellison, Himes, and Wright, most of Oliver’s collection consisted of nonfiction. The subjects dealt with black nationalism, black separatism, and black empowerment. All were penned by black authors.

  The photographs on the walls were of Oliver with local sports celebrities and politicians. One showed him with his arm slung over the shoulder of D.C.’s former mayor. There was a rumor, unsubstantiated, that Oliver had periodically supplied the mayor with both women and drugs. Another photo had Oliver standing on an outdoor court, presenting a trophy to a basketball team wearing black shirts with red print across the chests. The shirts read, “Dare to Stay Off Drugs.”

  The cell phone made a sound again as Oliver ended his call.

  “You sponsor a team?” said Strange.

  “Gotta give back to the community,” said Oliver, with no apparent irony.

  Strange could only stare at him. Oliver nodded in the direction of his cell phone, which he had placed on a green blotter. “I had to take that, but it’s turned off now. We can talk.”

  Strange sat back down in his chair.

  “So what do you think?” said Oliver, waving his hand around the room, the gesture meant to include the entire house, his land, all his possessions. “Not bad for a Southeast boy, right?”

  “It is something.”

  “Check this out.” Oliver shook a black-and-white photograph out of a manila envelope and slid it across the desk to Strange. It was a head shot of a scowling Oliver wearing a skully and chains, his arms crossed across his chest, a Glock in one hand and a.45 in the other.

  Strange dropped the photograph back on the desk.

  “That’s my new promo shot,” said Oliver, “for this record I just made. I brought this boy down from New York, used to run the mixin’ board up there for some of the top acts. This boy put some beats behind me, made my flow tight. I got a studio right here in my basement, man. All new equipment, all of it the best. I mean, I got everything.”

  “It does make an impression,” said Strange. “But I hope you’ll understand if I don’t seem too impressed.”

  “So now you gonna tell me, It’s not what you have, it’s how you got it, right?”

  “Somethin’ like that. All these pretty things you own around here? There’s blood on ’em, Granville.”

  Oliver’s eyes flared, but his voice remained steady. “That’s right. I took it, Mr. Strange. Wasn’t no one gonna give me nothin’, so I just went out and grabbed it. White man gonna try to keep a black man down from birth. But Bobo, he couldn’t do it to this black man.”

  “Okay, then. In your mind, you’ve done all right.”

  Oliver blinked his eyes hard. “I have. Despite the fact that I got born into that camp of genocide they used to call the ghetto. Poverty is violence, Mr. Strange, you’ve heard that, right?”

  “I have.”

  “And it begets violence. Poor black kids see the same television commercials white boys and white girls see out in the suburbs. They’re showed, all their young lives, all the things they s
hould be striving to acquire. But how they gonna get these things, huh?”

  Strange didn’t reply.

  Oliver leaned forward. “Look, I got a good head for numbers, and I know how to manage people. I’ve always had that talent. Young boys wanted to follow me around the neighborhood when I wasn’t no more than a kid. But do you think anyone in my school ever said to me, Take this book home and read it? Keep reading and get yourself into a college, you can run your own company someday? Maybe they knew, black man ain’t never gonna run nothin’ in this country ’less he takes it and runs with it his own self. Which is what I been doin’ my whole adult life.

  “So poor kids with nothin’ are gonna want things. They start by gettin’ into their own kind of enterprise, ’cause they figure out early there ain’t no other way to get it. And these enterprises are competitive, like any business. Once you start gettin’ these things, see, you’re gonna make sure you keep what you got, ’cause you can’t never go back and live the way you were livin’ before. And now Bobo gonna act surprised when the neighborhoods he done herded us into start runnin’ with blood.”

  “You don’t have to lecture me about being black in this country, Granville. I been around long enough to remember injustices you haven’t even dreamed of.”

  “So you agree.”

  “For the most part, yes. But it doesn’t explain the fact that a lot of kids who grew up in the same kinds of places you did, the same way you did, with no kind of guidance, got out. Got through school, went on and got good jobs, careers, are raising kids of their own now who are gonna have a better chance than they ever did. And they’re doin’ it straight. By hanging with it, by being there for their children. Despite all the roadblocks you talked about.”

  “Didn’t work out that way for me,” said Oliver with a shrug. “But it sure did work out. So I hope you’ll understand me if I’m not too ashamed.”

  “That what you tell that young boy you got working for you, the one I saw outside?”

  “Don’t worry about that boy. That boy is gonna do just fine.”

  Strange leaned back in his chair. “Say why you called me out here.”

  “I told you.”

  “Okay. You claim Joe was yours.”

  Oliver nodded. “He was one of my beef babies, from back when the shit was wild. When I was out there getting into a lot of, just, battles and mad shit like that. Used to crib up with different girls I knew from around the way, just to go underground, keep myself safe until the drama cooled down. In those two or three years, I must have fathered three babies like that.”

  And you think that makes you a man.

  “But you were never there for Joe,” said Strange.

  “His mother, Sandra, wanted it like that. She didn’t want him to know about me. Didn’t want him lookin’ up to someone like me, Mr. Strange. It speaks to what you were just lecturin’ me on just now. She wanted the boy to grow up with some kind of chance.”

  God bless her, thought Strange.

  “You gave her money?”

  “She wouldn’t take much. Didn’t want me anywhere near the boy; no presents at birthday time, nothin’ like that. She did take a whip I gave her, though. Told her I didn’t want no son of mine ridin’ around in that broken-down hooptie she was drivin’. A nice BMW. She couldn’t turn that down.”

  “I saw it,” said Strange. “Why did you pick me?”

  “Sandra says you all right. You been havin’ that business down in Petworth for years, and you got a good reputation behind it. And she says you always were good to the little man.” Oliver smiled. “Boy could play some football, couldn’t he?”

  “He had a heart,” said Strange, speaking softly. “You missed out on the most beautiful thing that ever could’ve happened to your life, Granville. You missed.”

  “Maybe. But now I want you to help me make it right.”

  “Why? Okay, so you fathered Joe. But you never were any kind of father to him for real.”

  “True. But some people know he was mine. Man in my position, he can’t just let this kind of thing go. Everyone needs to know that the ones who took my kin will be got. You lose respect in this business I’m in, there ain’t nothin’ left.”

  “The police are close,” said Strange. “I’d say they’re gonna find the shooters in a few days. They’ve got likenesses and they’re putting them around the neighborhoods. This isn’t your normal street beef where everybody keeps their mouths shut. The police aren’t the enemy in a case like this. A child was murdered. Someone’s gonna come forward soon and talk.”

  “I want you to find them first.”

  “And do what?”

  “Gimme some names.”

  “I’ve been working on it,” said Strange. “I’m planning on talking to Lorenze Wilder’s friends.”

  “You got a list?”

  “Somethin’ like that.”

  “Sandra will help you narrow it down.”

  “I’ve tried to talk to her. She didn’t seem to want to.”

  “She’ll talk to you now. I just got off the phone with her before you showed. She’s waitin’ on you to come by when we get done here.”

  There was a knock on the door. Oliver raised his voice and said, “Come in.”

  Phillip Wood appeared as the door swung open but stood back behind the frame. “You got an appointment in fifteen.”

  “We’ll be done by then,” said Oliver.

  Wood nodded and pulled the door shut.

  “There’s an example of what I was talkin’ about right there,” said Oliver to Strange. “That boy, Phil Wood? Boy can’t even read. But he’s drivin’ a Mercedes. He’s wearin’ twelve-hundred-dollar suits with designer tags. Young man is gainfully employed, Mr. Strange, ’stead of lyin’ around in his own pee, which is where he was headed if I hadn’t put him on.”

  “Where you think he’s headed now?”

  “True. We all know what waits for us. But we can’t be thinkin’ on tomorrow all that much, can we? The thing you got to do is enjoy the ride.”

  “It’s all good, right?”

  “No, not all. Take Phil, for example. I’m gettin’ near to the point, I got to be making a decision on his future. Phil Wood’s taken a fall two times. The Feds know this, and they’re lookin’ to see him stumble, ’cause the third fall is gonna be long time. And Phil can’t do no long time. He’s weak that way. I know it, and he knows it, too.”

  “You’re afraid he’s gonna roll over on you.”

  “He will. Fond as I am of that young man, he will. Gonna be one of those ‘You too, Brutus’ motherfuckers in the end. My very own Judas, gonna sell out Granville Oliver for his thirty pieces.”

  “You comparing yourself to the Lord?”

  “Matter of fact, the first example was out of Julius Caesar. I read a lot, case you haven’t noticed. But, nah, it’s just… You know what I’m sayin’. I got a decision to make. Just tellin’ you, you know, this ain’t all fun and games.”

  Strange looked at his watch.

  “Yeah, okay,” said Oliver. “So, we got ourselves a deal, right?”

  “No,” said Strange.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t think I’ll be working for you.”

  “You got a problem with my kind.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Forget about me, then. Think about the boy.”

  “I am.”

  “Don’t you want to see justice done?”

  “I told you, the police will have this wrapped up quick.”

  “We ain’t talkin’ about the same thing.”

  “The cycle never ends, does it?”

  “Oh, it’ll end, you do what I ask you to do. That’s my point. There ain’t no death penalty in the District of Columbia, Mr. Strange. You want to see those shooters go to prison, get warm meals, get to sleep real comfortable, maybe walk out in twenty, twenty-five? You think my son’s ever gonna get to walk out his grave? Gimme some names, like I said. I’ll make sure justi
ce gets served.”

  “You can’t trade a bad life for a good.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Something someone told me a long time ago.”

  “I’m givin’ you straight talk,” said Oliver, “and you’re over there talkin’ proverbs and shit. Talkin’ about cycles.”

  Strange looked into Oliver’s eyes. “I knew your father.”

  “Say it again.”

  “They always say that D.C.’s a small town. Well, it’s true. I knew your father, over thirty years ago.”

  “You got one up on me, then, chief. ’Cause I never did get to meet the man. He died in sixty-eight, during the riots. Right around the time I was born.”

  “He had light eyes, just like you.”

  Oliver cocked his head. “Y’all were tight?”

  “He knew my brother,” said Strange. “My brother passed about the same time as your father.”

  “So?”

  “Cycles,” said Strange, leaving it at that.

  Strange got up out of his chair. Granville Oliver handed him a business card. It was for his record company, GO Entertainment. Under the logo, Oliver’s cell number was printed.

  “You call me,” said Oliver, “you find anything out. And somethin’ else: Sandra says you got a white boy, helps you coach that football team. Says he works with you, too. Well, I don’t want him workin’ on none of this, hear?”

  Strange slipped the business card into his suit pocket.

  “My sympathies on the death of your uncle,” said Strange.

  “Yeah,” said Oliver. “That was a real tragedy right there.”

  Strange walked out of the house. He nodded to the boy raking leaves and received only a scowl. Phillip Wood and partner were leaning against their Mercedes in the circular drive. Strange passed them without a word, got into his Cadillac, and drove back into D.C.