Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  “I’m kiddin’ you. He seems like a good guy. He coming to the wedding?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Looking forward to seeing him again is all.”

  Tucker flexed his right hand to alleviate the pain. He watched Strange drive away, orange and red leaves rising from the street in the Caddy’s wake.

  STRANGE stopped by the house to pick up Greco and a couple of CDs, then drove down to his place of business. In his office, he slipped The Sons of Katie Elder sound track into his CPU as he settled into his chair. The message light blinked beside his phone.

  Lydell Blue had called to tell him that the beige Caprice had been found in an impound lot in Prince George’s County. The Chevy was determined to have been a stolen vehicle, wiped down of prints. Clothing fibers, orange threads of a fleece material, found in the Chevy matched those found in the Plymouth driven by the shooters.

  Strange was certain now that the boys he had seen in the Caprice idling in Roosevelt’s parking lot were the killers of Lorenze and Joe Wilder. He had caught a look at the driver and especially the boy with the braids, and their faces loosely matched those of the artist’s renderings posted around town.

  He knew this. But he didn’t phone Lydell Blue back to tell him what he knew.

  Strange got into Westlaw and fed the names Walter Lee, Edward Diggs, and Sequan Hawkins, along with their Social Security numbers, into the program. It took a couple of hours to find what it would have taken Janine a half hour to find. Despite his rudimentary knowledge of the programs, Strange was still old world, and much better at his job when out on the street. He also tended to seek out distractions when he should have been working nonstop behind his desk. In those two hours he played with Greco, thought of Janine, and ate a PayDay bar she had left for him on his mouse pad. But finally he got the information he needed.

  Using PeopleFinder and the reverse directory, he had secured the current addresses and phone numbers of the men. Also the names and addresses of their current neighbors. The Social Security numbers had given him their past and present employment data.

  Strange phoned Quinn and got him on the third ring.

  “Terry, it’s Derek. You see the game?”

  “I saw some of it.”

  “Some of it. Your girlfriend over there, man?”

  “Yes, Sue’s here.”

  “Been there all day, huh? Y’all even get a look at the sunshine today, man?”

  “Derek, what’s on your mind?”

  “Wanted to make sure you were gonna be ready to go in the morning.”

  “Told you I would be.”

  “Meet me down at Buchanan at nine, then. We’ll roll out together in my car.”

  “Right.”

  “And Terry?”

  “What?”

  “Bring your gun.”

  chapter 25

  CARLTON Little swallowed the last of his Big Mac and used his sleeve to wipe secret sauce off his face, where it had gathered like glue on the side of his mouth. He had another Mac in the bag on the table in front of him and he wanted to kill it right now. The grease stain on the bottom of the bag, just lookin’ at it made him hungry.

  He was hungry all the time. Not hungry for real like he had been when he was a kid, but hungry just the same. Loved to eat anything you could take out of somebody’s hand from a drive-through window. Taco Bell, Popeyes, and the king of it all, Mac-Donald’s. Little knew guys who had trouble with their movements, but not him. All the food he ate, the kind came in damp cartons and grease-stained bags? Damn if he didn’t take three or four shits a day.

  He supposed his love for food had somethin’ to do with the fact that he didn’t have any when he was a boy. His aunt, who he stayed with, she sold their food stamps most of the time to pay for her crack habit. She had food in there from time to time, but the men she was hangin’ with, who were pipeheads, too, and always leaving a slug’s trail around the house, ate it or stole it themselves. There was cereal sometimes, but the milk went fast, and he couldn’t fuck with eatin’ no dry cereal. Before he grew some, when he weighed, like, sixty pounds, Carlton used to hide the milk outside his bedroom window, on this ledge that was there, so it wouldn’t get used up. In wintertime the milk froze and in summer it went sour, so you couldn’t do it all the time. But it was a good trick that worked half the year. This teacher taught him how to do that after he collapsed one time at school ’cause he was so weak. Weak from not eating. Not that he was cryin’ about it or nothin’ like that. He had money now, and he wasn’t weak anymore.

  Man on the TV said that one third of the kids in D.C. lived below the poverty level, the same way he had. Well, fuck those kids. Nobody ever gave him nothin’, and he made out all right. They’d have to figure a road out their own selves. If they were to ask him, he’d say that there was one thing he knew for sure about this life out here. You acted the punk, you were through. You wanted to make it, you had to be hard.

  Little laid himself down on the couch.

  Potter sat low in one of those reclining rocking chairs he loved. Potter had bought two of them at Marlo’s, along with the couch Little lay on now, filled out the no-payment-till-whenever paperwork and had them delivered the next day. That was a year ago, and Potter had still not made a payment and never would. No Payments Till Forever, that’s the way the sign read to him. Potter had given the African or whatever he was a different billing address than the delivery address, and the dude hadn’t even noticed. Stupid-ass foreigners they hired out there, workin’ those sucker jobs.

  “You gonna eat that?” said Potter, one hand pointed lazily at the paper bag holding the last Mac.

  “I was thinkin’ on eatin’ it right now,” said Little.

  “I wouldn’t even be feedin’ that shits to a dog.”

  “It’s good.”

  “You gonna throw it up out in the street, like you did the other day?”

  “I ain’t ashamed. Made me sick to see what happened to that kid.”

  “Well, he shouldn’t’ve been in that car.”

  “Yeah, but those bullets you used done fucked him up for real.”

  “Oh, it was just mines now.”

  “It was those hollow points out of that three-five-seven you was holdin’, did all that damage.”

  “Couldn’t handle lookin at it, huh?”

  “Shit was just nasty is all.”

  “Yeah, well, you keep eatin’ that MacDonald’s, gonna make you worse than sick. Gonna kill you young.”

  “I be dyin’ young anyway.”

  “True.”

  They had been in the living room all day. Charles White had gotten into his Toyota at lunchtime and brought them back a big carton of Popeyes and biscuits for the Redskins game, and they had gotten high and eaten the chicken, and then they had watched the four o’clock game and told White they were hungry and to go out again. White had returned with a bag of McDonald’s for Little and some Taco Supremes from the Bell for Potter, because Potter didn’t eat McDonald’s food.

  Now the eight o’clock game was coming on ESPN, and the sound was off on the television because neither Potter nor Little could stand to hear Joe Theismann, the color man for the Sunday night games, speak. They put on music during the games, but the Wu-Tang Clan CD they had been listening to had ended. For the first time that day, it was quiet in the room.

  Potter and Little had been keeping a very low profile since the murders. They sent White out for all their food and beer. He was scared, they could tell it from his face and the way his voice kinda shook these past few days. But they knew him to be weak, knew that he would do as they asked.

  Juwan, their main boy down in the open-air market, had been delivering the daily take to their place on Warder. Their dealer in Columbia Heights had agreed to drop off the product, as needed, at the house. They had burned the Plymouth and abandoned it, and dropped the guns off the rail of the 11th Street bridge into the Anacostia River. Far as evidence went, Potter reasoned, their asses were covered good
.

  Since the shooting, Potter had gone out twice. Once to buy a couple of straps from this boy he knew who arranged straw purchases out of that gun store, where you could pay junkies and their kind to buy weapons real easy, over in Forestville. The other time he went out was to buy a car, a piece of garbage sitting up on that lot on Blair Road in Takoma, across from a gas station and next to a caterer. Place where all the cars had $461 scrawled in soap on the windshields, all the same price, looked like a kid had written it. Potter bought something, he didn’t even bother to look at it close, and paid cash. The salesman tellin’ him how to get plates, get insurance, get it inspected, all that, Potter not even listening because he knew he wouldn’t have the car long enough to worry about it anyway. Insurance, what the fuck was that? Shit.

  So they were keeping low. Their pictures, drawings made to look like them, anyhow, were posted all around the neighborhood. Potter figured, who that could connect the pictures to their names was gonna rat them out? Wasn’t anyone that stupid, even if the reward money was printed right there on the drawings, because that person had to know that if they did this, if they snitched on them, they would die. It was a good idea to stay indoors for a while, but Potter wasn’t worried in a serious way, and if Little was worried he didn’t act it. It was Charles White who was the loose end.

  “Where Charles at?” said Potter.

  “Up in his room,” said Little. “Why?”

  “You and me need to talk.”

  “Well, talk.”

  “Go put some music on the box. I don’t want him to hear us.”

  “He can’t hear us. You know that boy’s up in his bed with his headphones on, listening to his beats.”

  “I expect.”

  Potter fired a Bic up in front of the Phillie in his hand and gave the cigar some draw. He held the draw in and passed the blunt over to Little.

  Little hit the hydro and exhaled slowly. He blew a ring of gray smoke into the room. “So talk.”

  Carlton Little knew what was about to come from Potter’s mouth. He expected it, and didn’t like it, but he would go along with it, because he knew Potter was right. Though Little fully expected to die on the street or in prison, it didn’t mean he was in any hurry. He wasn’t exactly afraid to die. He had convinced himself that he was not. But he did want to live as long as he could. His friend Charles White was fixin’ to cut his life short, one way or another. Charles had to go.

  “We got a problem with Charles,” said Potter. “Boy gets picked up for somethin’, he is gonna roll on us. Or maybe his conscience is gonna send him to the po-lice before that. You know this, right?”

  “I do.” Little sat up on the couch and rubbed at his face. “Shame, too. I mean, me and Coon, all of us, D, we go back.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Dirty.”

  “Wish you would.”

  “You know, Charles is like that dog of his,” said Potter. “Good to hang around with, wags his tail when you be walkin’ into a room and shit. But like that dog, he’s a cur. And a cur needs to be put down.”

  “When?” said Little.

  “I was thinkin’, later tonight, after we watch this game, get our heads up some? We take Charles out for a ride.”

  CHARLES White had been lying in bed, listening to a Roc-a-Fella compilation through the headphones of his Aiwa, when the cups on the phones started to hurt him some. His ears got sore when he kept the phones on too long, and he had been having them on his head most of the day. He took the headphones off and moved onto his side, staring out the window at the night out behind the house. Wasn’t nothin’ but dark and an alley back there. He looked at it a little while, then got off the bed and walked out to the bathroom in the hall.

  White could hear them playing the first Wu-Tang, the one that mattered, down in the living room. It was that last track the Clan had, “Tearz,” before that spoken thing they did to close the set. This was the bomb, the kind of classic shit he wanted to record his own self when he got the chance. But of course, he knew deep down he would never get the chance.

  White figured he better go downstairs and see what Dirty and Garfield was up to. See if they wanted him to run out for some burgers or malt or sumshit like that. But first he needed to get those dirt tracks off his face. He had been crying a little while ago, back in his room. Some of it had been over what they’d done to that kid, but most of it had been just cryin’ for himself.

  He bent over the bathroom sink, washed his face, toweled off the water, and checked himself in the mirror. He must have lost weight or something, what with the way he’d been stressin’ since they’d killed that boy. His nose looked bigger than usual, his cheeks on either side of it nothin’ but some flabby skin hanging on to bone. But you couldn’t tell he’d been crying, now that he’d cleaned up. He looked all right.

  White went along a hall, hearing their voices below and smelling the smoke of the cheeva they were hittin’ drifting up the stairs. It was strange for things to be so quiet in this house. He heard Dirty say, “So talk,” and then Garfield say, “We got a problem with Charles.”

  White’s heart had kicked up and his fingers were shaking some as he went down the stairs halfway. There was a wall there that blocked a view from the living room, and carpet on the steps to muffle the sound of his descent.

  He listened to their conversation. He heard his friend Carlton say “When?” and Garfield, quick and cold in his reply, answered, “Later tonight.” He said something else about watching the game and getting high, and then he said, “We take Charles out for a ride.”

  You ain’t takin’ me a motherfuckin’ place, thought White as he backed himself slowly up the stairs.

  CHARLES locked his bedroom door. They came up and asked why he’d locked himself in, he’d deal with it then.

  He got into his Timbies and laced them tight. He found an old Adidas athletic bag, the size of a small duffel, in his closet. He stuffed it with underwear and a few pairs of jeans and some shirts, and one leather jacket, but he left most of the cold-weather stuff on the hangers because he had already decided that he was headed south. He had grabbed his toothbrush and shaving shit from the vanity over the sink on the way to his room, and he dropped it all in. There was still some room in the bag. He put his Aiwa in along with all the CDs, the newer joints, he could fit. He found some older stuff he still listened to, Amerikkka’s Most Wanted and Doggystyle, and jammed those in there, too.

  White went to his bedroom mirror, where he had taped a photograph of his mother to the glass. In the original shot, some Jheri-curled sucker, all teeth and sweat, lookin’ like he walked off the Street Songs cover, had his arm around White’s mom. White had scissored the man off the picture so that now you could only see the hustler’s hand. His mother was smiling in the photo, had a low-cut dress on, red, you could see her titties half hangin’ out, but that was all right. At least she looked happy. Not like she looked when they’d cuffed her right at the apartment for robbery, the last of her offenses in a long line of them, and taken her off to that women’s prison in West Virginia. Last time White had seen her, ten years back, before he went to live with his grandmother. Granmoms had been okay to him, but she wasn’t his moms. He had no idea who his father was.

  White carefully took the photograph down and slipped it into his wallet, along with eighteen hundred dollars in cash he found where he’d hidden it, under some T-shirts in the bottom of his dresser.

  He opened the window by his bed and dropped the Adidas bag into the darkness. He heard it hit the alley and he closed the window tight.

  White slipped himself into his bright orange Nautica pullover, swept the keys to his Toyota off his scarred dresser, and walked out of his room. He walked quickly, so he wouldn’t have much time to think on what he was about to do. Wasn’t like he could just drop himself out that bedroom window and ghost. He needed to talk to those two, act like everything was chilly. He needed to do this and be gone.

  And now he was going down the stairs. And now
he was down the stairs and into the living room, and he was twirling his car keys on his finger, wondering why he was doing that, tipping them off so soon that he was headed out the door.

  “Where you off to, Coon?” said Little, lying on the couch. He said it casual, like he was still White’s friend. White could see in Carlton’s eyes that he was higher than a motherfucker, too.

  “I’m hungry. You hungry, right?”

  “I still got me a Mac.”

  “I was gonna roll on up to the Wings n Things, man.” His voice shook some and he closed his eyes, then forced them open quick.

  “Bring me some malt back,” said Potter.

  “You got money?” said White.

  He moved to the lounger where Potter sat.

  Be hard, Charles. Give ’em somethin’ bold to remember you by. Let ’em know you all there.

  White opened his hand in front of Potter’s face. Potter slapped the hand away. “Man, get that shit out my face! Bring me some Olde English back, hear? Two forties of that shits.”

  “And some wings,” said Little.

  Potter and Little laughed, and White laughed, too.

  “Aiight, then,” said White. He headed for the door.

  “Coon,” said Potter, and White turned.

  “Yeah?”

  “What I tell you about wearin’ that orange shirt out, man? You want people to be noticin’ you? Is that it?”

  “Cold out, D. Shit keeps me warm.”

  “Damn, boy, you about the thickest motherfucker… Look, you ain’t gonna be long, right?”

  “Nah, I’ll be back in like, an hour, sumshit like that.”

  “’Cause I thought we’d all roll out together for a while, later on.”

  White nodded, went out the door, and closed it behind him. He walked down to the corner and when he was out of window-sight he ran around to the alley. He found his Adidas bag there and ran with it back to the street, where he walked to his Toyota parked along the curb. His heart was fluttering like a speed bag as he put his key to the driver’s-side door.