Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  Quinn charged in. Wilson jabbed at his face as he advanced, but Quinn swatted it off and threw a right. The right glanced off Wilson’s cheek, and as Wilson moved a hand up to fend off another blow, Quinn put one in his gut and buried it there. Wilson jacked forward, then squared himself straight. They traded body blows. Quinn threw a vicious uppercut in the space between Wilson’s hands and connected square to Wilson’s chin. Wilson’s eyes rolled up, and Quinn hit him there again. Wilson staggered back. He shook the cobwebs out and kicked the table violently away from the couch. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  There was a large space, cleared now, in the middle of the room. They circled the space and met in its center.

  Wilson stepped on Quinn’s foot and punched through his guard. Quinn’s neck snapped back as he took the short right. He tasted the blood flowing over his upper lip, and Wilson threw the same jab. Quinn blocked it with his palm, quickly wrapped his arms around Wilson, and locked his hands behind him once again. Wilson ran him straight into a wall. Quinn felt a picture frame splinter behind his back. He reared back and butted his forehead into Wilson’s nose. Wilson’s blood mingled with his, and Quinn heard an animal sound that was his own and he butted Wilson again. Tears welled in Wilson’s eyes, and Quinn released him. They both stepped back and tried to breathe.

  Below his nose, blood covered Wilson’s face. His blood was brown on his green suit. Quinn’s shirt was slick with blood.

  “Enough,” said Wilson, reaching into his suit pocket. His hand emerged with a pearl-handled knife, and its blade flicked opened as Wilson walked toward Quinn. The scream of a woman now pierced the room.

  Wilson’s arm whipped forward. The blade winked in the light, and Quinn tried to move out of its arc, but as he felt the impact, like a punch, he knew that he had failed. Fresh blood warmed his face.

  Wilson turned the handle in his hand so that the blade revolved and he tried to make a backswing, but Quinn caught his forearm and held it. Wilson’s legs were spread wide, and Quinn kicked him in the balls, aiming for three feet behind them and following through. Wilson coughed. Quinn felt the tension go out of Wilson’s forearm, twisted the arm behind him, and kicked Wilson’s right leg out from under him at the shin. Wilson went down on one knee, and Quinn got his wrist and bent it forward until Wilson released the knife. The knife dropped to the carpet. Quinn put everything he had into it and kicked Wilson in the face. There was a wet cracking sound. Wilson’s body jerked up, and blood arced up with it. Wilson fell on his side and then onto his back, where he remained. His face was featureless and ruined.

  Quinn picked up the knife. He folded the blade into its handle and pocketed it. He dragged Wilson to the radiator and cuffed him to one of its tubes.

  A woman was screaming obscenities at Quinn. She was standing in the doorway, ass-out in a short skirt and fishnets, but not attempting to enter the room.

  Quinn reached into his jeans for his cell. He sat on the purple couch, squinting at the keyboard of the cell, and with a shaky hand punched in 911. He asked for squad cars and an ambulance and gave the dispatcher his general address. He ended the call and tried to think of Strange’s number. He tried to think of Sue’s. He couldn’t bring either of their numbers to mind.

  He breathed slowly. He knew that he was still bleeding because he could feel it going down his neck. He could feel the wetness of it on his upper chest and behind his collar. He wanted to bring his heart rate down to slow the flow of blood. The air was full on his wounds now, and the pain had ratcheted. He stared at the ripped curtains and the broken glass, and after a while he heard sirens and an odd sound coming from his lips.

  Wilson said something from across the room. It was hard to hear him because the woman was still alternately sobbing and berating Quinn.

  “What?” said Quinn.

  “Somethin’ funny?” said Wilson.

  “Why?”

  “You laughin’.”

  “Was I?” said Quinn.

  It didn’t surprise him. It didn’t scare him or make him feel any way at all. Quinn let his head drop back to the couch. He closed his eyes.

  chapter 31

  ON the stoops of the row houses of Buchanan Street, the jack-o’-lanterns of Halloween had begun to wilt. Time and the weather had mutated the faces carved into the pumpkins, and hungry squirrels had mutilated their features. Gloves and scarves had come out of the closets, and lawn mowers had been drained of gas and put away in basements and sheds. Colors had exploded brilliantly upon leaves, then the leaves had dried and gone toward brown. One holiday was done and another was approaching. Thanksgiving was just a week away.

  Strange drove his Cadillac up his block, waving to an old woman named Katherine who was out in a heavy sweater, slowly raking her small square of yard. Katherine had been an elementary school teacher in D.C. for her entire career, put two sons and a daughter through college, and had recently lost a grandson to the streets. Strange had been knowing that woman for almost thirty years.

  Strange hooked a right on Georgia Avenue. He looked in his shoebox of tapes and slipped an old Stylistics mix into the deck. Bell and Creed’s “People Make the World Go Round” began with a wintry prologue, Russell Thompkins Jr.’s incomparable vocal filling the car. As Strange drove south on Georgia he softly sang along. At a stoplight near Iowa, he noticed a flyer with the likenesses of Garfield Potter, Carlton Little, and Charles White still stapled to a telephone pole. By now, most of those flyers had been torn down.

  Potter and Little had been arrested at their house on Warder Street without incident. They had been arraigned and were now incarcerated in the D.C. Jail, awaiting trial. The trial would not come for another six months. The whereabouts of the missing suspect, Charles White, would continue to be a source of speculation for the local media from time to time. A year and a half later, White’s identity would surface in connection with another murder charge outside of New Orleans. White would eventually be shanked to death, a triangle of Plexiglas to the neck, in the showers of Angola prison. The story would only warrant a paragraph in the Washington Post, as would the violent fates of Potter and Little. As for Joe Wilder, the memorial T-shirts bearing his face had been discarded or used for rags by then. For most metropolitan-area residents, Wilder’s name had been forgotten. “Another statistic.” That’s what hardened Washingtonians called kids like him. One name in thousands on a list.

  Strange parked on 9th and locked the Brougham down. He walked by the barber shop, where the cutter named Rodel stood in the doorway, pulling on a Newport.

  “How’s it goin’, big man?”

  “It’s all good.”

  “Looks like you could use a touch-up.”

  “I’ll be by.”

  He went down the sidewalk and looked up at the logo on the sign hung over his place: Strange Investigations. There were a few dirt streaks on the light box, going across the magnifying glass. He’d have to get Lamar on that today.

  Strange was buzzed into his storefront business. Janine was on her computer, her eyes locked on the screen. Ron Lattimer sat behind his desk, a porkpie hat angled cockily on his head. The color of the hat picked up the brown horizontals of his hand-painted tie. Strange stopped by his desk and listened to Lattimer’s musical selection for the day, a familiar-sounding horn against a slamming rhythm section.

  “Boss.”

  “Ron. This here is Miles, right?”

  Lattimer looked up and nodded. “Doo-Bop.”

  “See, I’m not all that out of touch.” Strange looked at the paperwork on Lattimer’s desk. “You finishin’ up on that Thirty-five Hundred Crew thing?”

  “I’ll be delivering the whole package to the attorneys next week. Major receivables on this one, boss.”

  “Nice work.”

  “By the way, Sears phoned in. They said your suit’s been altered and you can pick it up any time.”

  “Funny.”

  “Serious business. The cleaner down the street called, said your suit and shirts are do
ne.”

  “Thank you. I got a wedding to go to this weekend. You remember George Hastings, don’t you? His little girl’s.”

  “The dress I’m wearing is down there, too, Derek,” said Janine, not taking her eyes off the screen. “Could you pick it up for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t mind my saying so,” said Lattimer, “you goin’ to a wedding, you ought to do something about your natural.”

  “Yeah,” said Strange, patting his head. “I do need to get correct.”

  Strange passed Quinn’s desk, littered with old papers and gum wrappers, and stopped at Janine’s.

  “Any messages?”

  “No. You’ve got an appointment down at the jail, though.”

  “I’m on my way. Just stopped in to check up on y’all.”

  “We’re doing fine.”

  “You comin’ to the game this afternoon? It’s a playoff game, y’know. Second round.”

  Janine’s eyes broke from her screen, and she leaned back in her seat. “I’ll be there if you want me to.”

  “I do.”

  “I was thinking I’d bring Lionel.”

  “Perfect.”

  Janine reached into her desk drawer and removed a PayDay bar. She handed it to Strange.

  “In case you’re too busy for lunch today.”

  Strange looked at the wrapper and the little red heart Janine had drawn above the logo. He glanced over at Ron, busy with his work, and back to Janine. He lowered his voice and said, “Thank you, baby.”

  Janine’s eyes smiled. Strange went back to his office and closed the door.

  Lamar Williams was behind Strange’s desk, reaching for the wastebasket as Strange walked in. Strange came around and took a seat as Lamar stepped aside. Lamar stood behind the chair, looking over Strange’s shoulder as he logged on to his computer.

  “You getting into that People Finder thing?” said Lamar.

  “Was just gonna check my e-mails before I go off to an appointment. Why, you want to know how to use the program?”

  “I already know a little. Janine and Ron been showin’ me some.”

  “You want to know more, I’ll sit with you sometime. You and me’ll get deep into it, you want.”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Strange swiveled his chair so that he faced Lamar. “You know, Lamar, Ron’s not gonna be here forever. I know this. I mean, good people don’t stay on in a small business like this one, and a fair boss wouldn’t expect them to. I’m gonna need some young man to replace him someday.”

  “Ron’s a pro.”

  “Yeah, but when he first came here, he was green.”

  “He had a college degree, though,” said Lamar. “I’m strugglin’ to get my high school paper.”

  “You’ll get it,” said Strange. “And we get you goin’ in night school, you’ll get the other, too. But I’m not gonna lie to you; it’s gonna take a lot of hard work. Years of it, you understand what I’m tellin’ you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyway, I’m here for you, you want to talk about it some more.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Ain’t no thing. You coming to the game?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Lamar walked toward the door, the wastebasket in his hand.

  “Lamar.”

  “Yeah,” he said, turning.

  “The sign out front.”

  “I know. I was fixin’ to get the ladder soon as I emptied this here.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Aiight.”

  Strange watched him go. He picked up the PayDay bar he had placed on his desk. He stared at it for a while, and then he shut down his computer and walked out of his office. He stopped in front of Janine’s desk.

  “I was wondering,” said Strange, “if Lionel couldn’t just take your car home after the game. I thought, if you wanted to, you and me could go for a little ride.”

  “That would be good,” said Janine.

  “I’ll see you up at the field,” said Strange.

  STRANGE drove down to the D.C. Jail at 1901 D Street in Southeast. He parked on the street and read over the notes he had taken from the news stories he had researched on the Net.

  Granville Oliver had recently been arrested and charged in one of the most highly publicized local criminal cases in recent history. He had fallen when Phillip Wood, his top lieutenant, was arrested for murder on an anonymous tip. The murder gun had been found, and Wood was charged accordingly. He had pleaded out and agreed to testify against Oliver on related charges. It was exactly what Oliver had predicted Wood would do when he and Strange had first met.

  Oliver had been hit with several federal charges, including the running of a large-scale drug operation and racketeering-related murder. At a recent press conference, broadcast on all the local stations, the attorney general and the U.S. attorney had jointly announced that they would aggressively seek the death penalty in the case. Though the citizens of D.C. had gone to the voting booths and overwhelmingly opposed capital punishment, the Feds were looking to make an example of Granville Oliver and send him to the federal death chamber in Indiana.

  Strange closed his notebook and walked to the facility.

  He checked in and spent a long half hour in the waiting room. He was then led to the interview room, subdivided by Plexiglas partitions into several semiprivate spaces. There were two other meetings being conducted in the room between lawyers and their clients. Strange had a seat at a legal table across from Granville Oliver.

  Oliver wore the standard-issue orange jumpsuit of the jail. His hands were cuffed and his feet were manacled. Behind a window, a guard sat in a darkened booth, watching the room.

  Oliver nodded at Strange. “Thanks for comin’ in.”

  “No problem. Can we talk here?”

  “’Bout the only place we can talk.”

  “They treating you all right?”

  “All right?” Oliver snorted. “They let me out of my cell one hour for every forty-eight. I’m down in Special Management, what they call the Hole. Place they put the high-profile offenders. You’re gonna like this, Strange: Guess who else they got down there with me.”

  “Who?”

  “Garfield Potter and Carlton Little. Oh, I don’t see ’em or nothin’ like that. They’re in deep lockup, just like me. But we’re down there together, just the same.”

  “You’ve got more to worry about right now than them.”

  “True.” Oliver leaned forward. “Reason I’m telling you is, I got contacts all over. Last couple of years I made friends with some El Ryukens. You know about them, right? They claim to be descended from the Moors. Now, I don’t know about all that. What I do know is, these are about the baddest motherfuckers walkin’ the face of this earth. They fear nothing and take shit from no man. They got people everywhere, and like I say, me and them are friends. Wherever Potter and Little go, whatever prison they get sent to? They will be got.”

  “You don’t need to tell me about it, Granville.”

  “Just thought you’d like to know.”

  Strange shifted his position in his chair. “Say why you called me here.”

  “I want to hire you, Strange.”

  “To do what?”

  “To work with my lawyers. I got two of the best black attorneys in this city.”

  “Ives and Colby. I read the papers.”

  “They’re going to need a private detective to help build my case against the government’s. It’s routine, but this case is anything but.”

  “I know how it works. I do this sort of thing regularly.”

  “I’m sure you do. But this here ain’t the usual kind of drama. It’s life and death. And I’ll only have a black man working on my case. You do good work, so there it is. What those lawyers are gonna need is some conflicting testimony to the testimony the government is gonna get out of Phillip Wood.”

  “In a general sense, what’s he saying?”

  “I’
ll tell you specifically. He’s gonna get up on the stand and say that I ordered the hit on my uncle. That I gave Phil the order directly, and he carried it out.”

  “Did you?”

  Oliver shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

  “None, I guess.”

  Oliver turned his head and stared at one of the room’s blank white walls as if it were a window to the outside world. “They got Phil next door, you know that? In the Correctional Treatment Facility. He’s in one of those low-number cells, like CB-four, CB-five, sumshit like that. The special cells they got reserved for the snitches. Phil got punked out the first stretch he did. Got ass-raped like a motherfucker, and he can’t do no more prison. That’s what all this is about. Course, he could be got the way Potter and Little gonna be got. But that would take some time, and time is something I do not have.”

  “Told you I don’t need to know about that.”

  “Fine. But will you help me?”

  Strange didn’t answer.

  “You wouldn’t want to sit back and watch someone kill me, would you, Strange?”

  “No.”

  “Course not. But they got me on these RICO charges, and that’s what they aim to do. You remember that photo I showed you, that promo shot I did for my new record, with me holding the guns? The prosecution’s gonna use that in court against me. You know why? Do you know why they picked me to execute, the only death penalty case in the District in years, instead of all the other killers they got in D.C.? Well, that picture says it all. They got a picture of a strong, proud, I-don’t-give-a-good-fuck-about-nothin’ black man holding a gun. America’s worst nightmare, Strange. They can sell my execution to the public, and ain’t nobody gonna lose a wink of sleep over it. ’Cause it’s just a nigger who’s been out here killin’ other niggers. To America, it is no loss.”

  Strange said nothing. He held Oliver’s stare.

  “And now,” said Oliver, “the attorney general wants to help me right into that chamber where they’re gonna give me that lethal injection. She and the government gonna help me now. Wasn’t no government lookin’ to help me when I was a project kid. Wasn’t no government lookin’ to help me when I walked through my fucked-up neighborhood on the way to my fucked-up schools. Where were they then? Now they’re gonna come into my life and help me. Little bit late for that, don’t you think?”