At Park Road, Strange cut east and then turned into the Section Eight government-assisted housing complex called Park Morton. Kids sat on a brick wall at the entrance to the complex, their eyes hard on Strange as he drove by.
The complex was dark, lit only by dim bulbs set in cinder-block stairwells. In one of them a group of young men, and a few who were not so young, were engaged in a game of craps. Some held dollars in their fists, others held brown paper bags covering bottles of juice halved with gin, or forties of malt liquor and beer.
“That your unit, Joe?” said Strange, who always had to ask. There was a dull sameness to these dwellings back here, broken by the odd heroic gesture: a picture of Jesus taped to a window, or a string of Christmas lights, or a dying potted plant.
“Next one up,” said Lamar.
Strange rolled forward, put the car in park, and let it idle.
“Walk him up, Lamar.”
“Coach,” said Joe, “you gonna call Forty-four Belly for me in the game?”
“We’ll see. We’ll practice it on Wednesday, okay?”
“Six o’clock, on the dot,” said Joe.
Strange brushed some bits of lint off of Joe’s nappy hair. His scalp was warm and still damp with sweat. “Go on, son. Mind your mother, now, hear?”
“I will.”
Strange watched Lamar and Joe disappear into the stairwell leading to Joe’s apartment. Ahead, rusted playground equipment stood silhouetted in a dirt courtyard dotted with Styrofoam containers, fast-food wrappers, and other bits of trash. The courtyard was lit residually by the lamps inside the apartments. A faint veil of smoke roiled in the light.
It was a while before Lamar returned. He rested his forearms on the lip of the open passenger window of Strange’s car.
“What took you so long?”
“Wasn’t no one home. Had to get a key from Joe’s neighbor.”
“Where his mom at?”
“I expect she went to the market for some cigarettes, sumshit like that.”
“Watch your mouth, boy.”
“Yeah, all right.” Lamar looked over his shoulder and then back at Strange. “He’ll be okay. He’s got my phone number he needs somethin’.”
“Get in, I’ll ride you the rest of the way.”
“That’s me, just across the court,” said Lamar. “I’ll walk it. See you tomorrow, boss.”
Strange said, “Right.”
He watched Lamar move slowly through the courtyard, not too fast like he was scared, chin level, squared up. Strange thinking, You learned early, Lamar, and well. To know how to walk in a place like this was key, a basic tool for survival. Your body language showed fear, you weren’t nothin’ but prey.
Driving home, Strange rolled up the windows of the Brougham and turned the AC on low. He popped a War tape, Why Can’t We Be Friends, into the deck, and he found that beautiful ballad of theirs, “So.” He got down low in the bench, his wrist resting on the stop of the wheel, and he began to sing along. For a while, anyway, sealed in his car, listening to his music, he found some kind of peace.
chapter 7
SUE Tracy sat in a window deuce, watching the foot traffic on Bonifant Street in downtown Silver Spring, as Terry Quinn arrived at the table carrying two coffees. They were in the Ethiopian place close to the Quarry House, the local basement bar where Quinn sometimes drank.
“That good?” said Quinn, watching her take her first sip. She had asked for one sugar to take the edge off.
“Yeah, it’s great. I guess I didn’t need the sugar.”
“They don’t let the coffee sit out too long in this place. These people here, they take pride in their business.”
“That bookstore you work in, it’s on this street, isn’t it?”
“Down the block,” said Quinn.
“Near the gun shop.”
“Yeah, and the apartments, the Thai and African restaurants, the tattoo parlor. Except for the gun place, it’s a nice strip. There aren’t any chain stores on this block, it’s still small businesses. Most of which have been wrecking-balled or moved, tucked under the rug to make way for the New Downtown Silver Spring. But this street here, they haven’t managed to mess with it too much yet.”
“You got something against progress?”
“Progress? You mean the privilege of paying five bucks for a tomato at our new designer supermarket, just like all those suckers on the other side of town? Is that the kind of progress you’re talking about?”
“You can always stick to Safeway.”
“Look, I grew up here. I know a lot of these shop owners; they’ve made a life here and they won’t be able to afford it when the landlords up the square-foot price. And where are all these working people who live in the apartments going to go when their rents skyrocket?”
“I guess it’s great if you own real estate.”
“I don’t own a house, so I couldn’t really give a rat’s ass if the property values go up. I walk through this city and every week something changes, you know? So maybe you can understand how I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about it, man. I mean, they’re killing my past, one day at a time.”
“You sound like my father.”
“What about him?”
“He thinks that way, too, is all.” Tracy looked Quinn over, held it just a second too long, so that he could see her doing it, and then reached down to get something from the leather case at her feet.
He was still looking at her when she came back up, holding some papers in her hands. She wore a scoop-neck white pullover with no accoutrements, tucked into a pair of gray blue slacks that looked like work pants but were probably expensive, meant to look utilitarian. Her breasts rode high in her shirt, its whiteness set off by her tanned arms. Black Skechers, oxfords with white stitching, were on her feet. Her blond hair was pulled back, held in place by a blue gray Scunci, with a stray rope of blond falling forward over one cheek. He wondered if she had planned it to fall out that way.
Quinn wore a plain white T-shirt tucked into Levi’s jeans.
“What?” said Tracy.
“Nothing.”
“You were staring at me.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t know why I mentioned my father.”
“I don’t either. Let’s get to work, okay?”
Tracy handed Quinn a stack of flyers exactly like the one Strange had given him the night before. “You might need more of these. We’ve got ’em posted around town, but they get ripped down pretty quick.”
Quinn picked up the Paper Mate sitting atop the notepad he had brought along with him. “What else can you tell me about her?”
Tracy pushed another sheet of paper across the table at Quinn. “Jennifer ran away from her home in Germantown several months ago.”
Quinn scanned the page. “This doesn’t say why.”
“She hit her teens and the hormones kicked in. Add to that, the kids she was hanging with were using drugs. It’s the usual story, not so different from most that we hear. From interviews we did with her friends out in the county, it sounds like she started hooking before she split.”
“In the outer suburbs?”
“What, you think that part of the world is immune to it? It starts out, girl will take a ride with an older guy and fellate him so she can buy a night of getting high for her and her friends. Or maybe she lets herself get penetrated, vaginally or even anally, for a little more cash. She doesn’t get beat up or ripped up those first couple of times – she doesn’t learn something, I mean – it accelerates pretty quickly after that. It gets easy.”
“She’s only fourteen.”
“I’m hip.”
“Okay, so she leaves Germantown. What makes you think she’s in the District?”
“Her friends again. She told them where she was going. But they haven’t heard from her since.”
“You said she was using drugs. What kind?”
“Ecstasy was her favorite, what we heard. But she’d use anything that was
put in front of her, if you know what I mean.”
“Anything else?”
“We haven’t done a thing except interview her parents and a few of her friends. Like we told Derek, we’re up to our ears in county business right now. That’s why we were looking to hook up with you guys for the D.C. side of things. My partner wanted to meet you, but she’s out rounding up a girl she found as we speak.”
“Rounding up?”
“Basically, we yank ’em right off the street when we find them. We’ve got this van, no windows-”
“This legal, what you do?”
“As long as they’re minors, yeah. They have no domain over themselves, and if the parents sign a permission form for us to go after them it’s all straight. If there are any repercussions, we deal with it later. We work with some lawyers, pro bono. Basically, we’re out to save these kids.”
“That’s nice. But this work here, Derek didn’t say anything about it being pro bono. And on top of our hourly rate, I’m gonna need expense money.”
“Keep detailed records and you got it.”
“It could get rich.”
“We’re covered by the APIP people.”
“They must have some deep pockets.”
“Grant money.”
“Because I got a feeling I’m going to have to pay some people to talk.”
“Okay. But I’m still going to need those details.”
Tracy’s hand kept going into a large leather bag set on the table. She had been fondling something inside of it, then removing her hand, then putting it back in again.
“What’ve you got in there?”
“My cigarettes.”
“Well, you might as well stop romancing that pack. You can’t light up in here.”
“You can’t light up anywhere,” she said, adding by way of explanation, “It’s the coffee.”
“Gives you that urge, huh?” Quinn reached into a pocket and dropped a pack of sugarless gum between them. “Try this.”
“No, thanks.”
“We’ll be done in a minute, you can step outside.” Quinn tapped his pen on the notepad. “The one thing I’m wondering is, a girl runs away from home, there’s got to be good reason. It can’t just be galloping hormones and drugged-out friends.”
“Sometimes there’s an abusive parent involved in the equation, if that’s what you’re getting at. Emotional or physical or sexual abuse, or a combination of the three. Part of what me and Karen do is, we spend considerable time in the home, trying to figure out if that’s the best place for the kid to go back to. And sometimes the home’s not the best environment. But you’re wrong about one thing: It often is just hormones and peers, and accelerating events, that make a kid run away. With Jennifer, we’re convinced that’s the case.”
“Where do you suggest I start?”
“Start with stakeouts, like we do. The Wheaton mall, it’s near D.C. and it’s been good for us before. The overground rave clubs, trance, jungle, whatever they’re calling it this week. The ones play a mix of live and prerecorded stuff. What’s that place, in Southeast, on Half Street?”
“Nation.”
“That one. Platinum is good, too, over on Ninth and F.”
“I don’t like stakeouts. I’d rather get out there and start talking to people.”
“No one likes stakeouts. But suit yourself, whatever works for you.”
“Anything else?”
“Just in general terms. White-girl runaways tend to start out in far Northwest, where they’re around a familiar environment.”
“Other white kids.”
“Right. Places like Georgetown. They get hooked into drugs in a bigger way, they get taken in by a pimp-”
“They move east.”
Tracy nodded. “It’s gradual, and inevitable. Last stop is those New York Avenue flophouses in Northeast. You don’t even want to know what goes on in those places.”
“I already know. I was a patrol cop in the District, remember?”
Tracy turned her coffee cup slowly on the table. “Not just any cop.”
“That’s right. I was famous.”
“It’s not news to me. We ran your name through a search engine, and there were plenty of hits.”
“Some people can’t get past it, I guess.”
“Maybe so. But as far as you and me are concerned, this is day one.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyway, first impression, you seem like an okay guy to me.”
“You seem like an okay guy to me, too.”
“I bought a tomato at Fresh Fields once.”
“You probably spent too much for that shirt you’re wearing, too.”
“It’s a blouse. I paid about forty bucks for it, I think.”
Quinn touched his own T-shirt. “This Hanes I got on? Three for twelve dollars at Target, out on Twenty-nine.”
“I better get out there before they run out.”
Quinn tapped the stack of flyers on the table. “I’ll phone you, keep you caught up.”
“You ready for this?”
“Been a while,” said Quinn. “But yeah, I’m stoked.”
She watched him step out of the coffee shop, studying the way he filled out the seat of his Levi’s and that cocky thing he did with his walk. Talking about her father, giving up something of herself to this guy who was, after all, a stranger, it was not what she would normally do. Add to that, Christ, she should have known better, he was a cop. But there was a connection between them already, sexual and probably emotional; it happened right away like that with her if it happened at all. She had known it two minutes after they had sat down together, and, she had seen it in his damaged green eyes; he had known it, too.
STRANGE looked over the file on Calhoun Tucker that Janine had dropped on his desk.
“Nice work.”
“Thanks,” said Janine. She was sitting in the client chair in Strange’s office. “I ran his license plate through Westlaw; everything came up easy after that. People Finder gave me the previous addresses.”
Strange studied the data. Tucker’s license plate number had given them his Social Security number, his date of birth, his assets, any criminal record, and any lawsuits. Janine had printed out his credit history, with past and present employment, as well. Credit drove the database of information; it was the foundation of computerized modern detective services. It was useless for getting histories on indigents and criminals who had never had a credit card or made time-payment purchases. But for someone like Tucker, who was part of the system, it worked just fine.
Janine had fed Tucker’s SS number into People Finder, a subprogram of Westlaw. From this she had gotten a list of his current neighbors and the neighbors of his previous addresses.
“He looks pretty straight, first glance.”
“No criminal record,” said Janine. “Apart from a default on a car loan, he’s barely stumbled.”
Strange read the top sheet. “Graduate of Virginia Tech. Spends a few years in Portsmouth after college, working as an on-site representative for a company called Strong Services, whatever that’s about.”
“I’ll find out.”
“Looks like he owned a house in Portsmouth. Check on that, too, will you? Whose name was on it, any cosigners, like that.”
“I will.”
“Then he moved over to Virginia Beach.”
“Most likely that’s where he got into entertainment,” said Janine. “Got involved in promotions in clubs, hookups with fraternities, like that. Looks like that’s what he’s doing up here now, with the Howard kids along U Street and the upscale club circuit over around Ninth and on Twelfth.”
“That Audi he’s driving-”
“Leased. Maybe he’s beyond his means, but hey, he’s in a business where image is half of what you are.”
“I heard that.” Strange dropped the file onto his desk. “Well, let me get on out of here, see what I can dig up. Can’t tell much until you face-time.”
“Tucker
looks pretty clean to me.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Strange. “There’s nothin’ I’d like better than to give George Hastings a good report.”
Strange got up from his chair and walked around the desk. His office door was closed. He touched Janine on the cheek, then cupped his hand behind her neck, bent down, and kissed her on the mouth.
“You taste good.”
“Strawberry,” said Janine.
Strange clipped his beeper onto his belt and picked up the file.
“Terry phoned in,” said Janine. “He was in Georgetown when he called. Asked Ron to run some girl’s name, see if she has an arrest record in the District.”
“He’s workin’ a job those county women farmed out to us. Did you bill them for that one I did the other night?”
“It went out yesterday.”
“All right, then.” Strange headed for the door. “See you later, baby.”
“Tonight?” said Janine to his back.
Strange kept walking. “I’ll let you know.”
chapter 8
QUINN parked his Chevelle on R Street along Montrose Park, between Dunbarton Oaks and Oak Hill Cemetery in north Georgetown. He walked over to Wisconsin Avenue with a stack of flyers, a small staple gun, and a roll of industrial adhesive tape that he carried in a JanSport knapsack he wore on his back.
Foot traffic was moderate in the business district, with area workers breaking for lunch, along with college kids and the last of summer’s visitors window-shopping the knockoff clothiers and chain stores. There wasn’t anything here that couldn’t be had elsewhere and at a better price. To Quinn, and to most of D.C.’s longtime residents, Georgetown during the day was a charmless tourist trap and a parking nightmare to be avoided at any cost.
Quinn went along Wisconsin and west to the residential side streets, stapling the flyers to telephone poles and taping them to city trash cans. He knew the flyers would largely be gone, ripped down by residents and foot cops, by nightfall, maybe sooner. It was a long shot, but it was a start.
Hell To Pay Page 6