“Always playing the middle.”
“When I can.”
“I won’t worry about you, Stella. But I do want this girl. So I’ll get you the money, with one condition. That you’ll be right there with me when I make the snatch. Because I don’t trust you, understand? I won’t get burned by you again.”
“Fair enough.”
“When can we set it up?”
“Soon as you want, lover.”
“I need to get my hands on the money and a van. How’s tomorrow night sound?”
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, hear?”
Quinn hit “end.” He phoned Sue Tracy and got her on her cell.
“Sue, it’s Terry.” He cleared his throat. “Quinn.”
“Hey, Terry.” There was a rasp to her voice, and he heard a long exhale before she said, “What’s up?”
“Listen, I got a strong line on Jennifer Marshall. But I’m gonna need a half a yard to buy the last piece of the puzzle.”
“I can get it.”
“Good. I think I might be able to make a grab tomorrow night.”
“We can do that.”
“We?”
“Well, one person generally can’t do this right, Terry. I’ll bring the van.”
“Okay, then. Okay.”
“Hold on a second.”
Quinn heard a rustling sound and waited for Tracy to get back on the line.
“Tell me where and when,” she said.
“You all right?”
“I’m in bed, Terry.”
“Oh.”
“I had to find paper and pen. Go ahead.”
“I don’t know yet. What I mean is, I’ll let you know.”
“You been out tonight?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You sound like you been drinking a little.”
“Just a little.”
“I bet you drink alone.”
“I don’t like to,” said Quinn.
“Tell you what. We get this girl tomorrow, I’m gonna buy you a beer. You don’t mind sitting next to a woman when you drink, do you?”
Quinn swallowed. “No.”
“Good work, Quinn.”
Quinn sat there for a while thinking of the velvet sandpaper in Sue Tracy’s voice, the sound of her long exhale, the way his stomach had kind of flipped when she’d said “I’m in bed.” How “Good work, Quinn” had sounded like “Fuck me, Terry” to him. Well, he was just a man, as stupid as any other. He looked down, saw his hand resting on the crotch of his jeans, and had to grin. He was too tired to jerk off, so he went to bed.
STRANGE sat on the edge of the bed, Janine’s strong thighs over his. She moved slowly up and down on his manhood, gyrating on the upstroke, that thing she did that made him feel twenty-one all over again. One of his hands grasped her ass and the other was flat on the sheets, and he pushed off, burying himself all the way inside her.
“You going for my backbone, sugar?”
“A man can try.”
She gave him her hips. “Shit, yeah.”
“C’mon, baby.”
“I am on the way.”
She kissed him deep, her eyes wide and alive. She kept them open when they kissed. He liked that.
Strange licked and sucked at one of her dark nipples, and Janine laughed low. Quiet Storm was coming from the clock radio by the bed, playing Dorothy Moore. Strange had turned it up before undressing her, so that Lionel, in the next room over, could not hear them making love.
He shot off and kept himself in motion. She was almost soundless when she came, just a short gasp. Strange liked that, too.
Later, he stood in his briefs by the bedroom window, looking through the blinds down to the street. Greco had nosed his way through the door and was sleeping on a throw rug, his muzzle resting between his paws.
“Come to bed, Derek.”
He turned around and admired Janine, her form all woman beneath the blanket on the bed.
“I’m just wondering what’s goin’ on out there. All those kids, still walking around.”
“You’re done working for today. Come to bed.”
He slid under the sheets and rested his thigh against hers.
“You better go to sleep,” said Janine. “You know how you get cranky when you don’t get enough.”
“Oh, I got enough.”
“Stop it.”
“Look, it’s just, at the end of the day, all these things go racing through my mind.”
“Like?”
“Thinkin’ on you, you want the truth. How I don’t tell you enough what a good job you do. And what you mean to me.”
Janine ran her fingers through the short wiry hairs on Strange’s chest. “Thank you, Derek.”
“I mean it.”
“Go ahead.”
“What?”
“Usually, when you start going that way with me, it means you need to unload something off your mind. So what is it?”
“Ain’t nothin’ like that,” said Strange.
“Is it Terry?”
“Well, he’s still a little rough around the edges. But he’s all right.”
“Is it the job you’re doing for George Hastings?”
“Uh-uh. I’m nearly done with that.”
“I’m almost done on my end with it, too,” said Janine. “Got one more thing to check up on. You didn’t find anything, did you?”
“No,” said Strange, and reached over to the nightstand and turned off the lamp.
He wasn’t sure why he had lied to her. So Calhoun Tucker was a player, so what? But something about snitching on a guy about that to a woman didn’t sit right with most men. It was a kind of betrayal, in an odd way. One betrayal too many in the day for Strange.
QUINN was disoriented from sleep when the phone rang by his bed. He reached over and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“You called?” The voice was smooth and baritone. There was music playing in the background against the sound of a car’s engine.
“Who is this?”
“Who’s this? You called me. But you, uh, declined to leave your name.”
Quinn got up on one elbow. “I’m looking for a girl.”
“You done called the right number then, slick. How’d you get it, by the way?”
“I’m looking for one girl in particular,” said Quinn. “Girl named Jennifer, I think.”
“You think?”
“It’s Jennifer.”
“Asked you how you got my number.”
“Why is that important?”
“Let’s just say I like to know if my marketing dollars are well spent. You know, like, do I re-up with the Yellow Pages or do I go back heavy on those full-page ads in the Washington Post?”
The man on the other end of the line laughed then. It was a cut-you-in-the-alley kind of laugh, and the sound of it made Quinn’s blood tick. His hand tightened on the receiver. He looked down at some CDs stacked carelessly on the floor. An old Steve Earle was atop the stack.
“A friend of mine, guy named Steve, recommended I call you. Said you could hook me up.”
“Oh, I can hook you up, all right. Your name is?”
“Earle.”
“Okay, Earle. But I’m a little curious; it’s in my nature, if you don’t mind. White boy like you, usually when I get a request from one, it’s for some black pussy, understand what I’m sayin’? And Jennifer, it’s the same girl we both thinkin’ of, she’s white all the way.”
“That’s what I want. She’s young, too, isn’t she?”
“Oh, Jennifer’s young, all right. They call her Schoolgirl, matter of fact. She’ll be good to you, too. But I guess your boy Steve told you that.”
“He did.”
“Sure he did. Satisfied customer’s the very best form of advertising. Steve, he mention specifics?”
“Just that he had a good time. That she’ll do things.”
“Any goddamn thing you want. You can bri
ng your friends and roll some videos, too. Have your own private record of the occasion. Fuck her mouth or her pussy. Ass-fuck her, you got a mind to. Course, you gonna pay for all that.”
“Look, I’m talkin’ about a private party. You deliver her and you name the price. I got money.”
“You’re gonna need it, Earle. ’Cause this is some fresh turnout here. And I can’t be givin’ pussy this new away.”
Quinn kicked off his top sheet, swung his legs over the bed, and sat up. He reached for the pencil and pad he kept on the nightstand. Maybe he could make this happen without Stella. He didn’t need her now that he had gotten through to Wilson.
“How do I hook it up?” said Quinn.
“Well, let’s see. Where’d your boy Steve have his party?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Oh, come on, Earle, you can tell me. See, I need to know, to satisfy that curiosity I was tellin’ you about. Steve must have bragged on it. Man don’t tell another man ass stories without goin’ into the details.”
“It was out on New York Avenue,” said Quinn, feeling the sweat break upon his forehead. “I think it was one of those motels they got out there on the way out of town.”
“You think?”
“It was.”
The man on the other end of the line laughed heartily. It ended with a chuckle, long and low.
“What’s so funny?” said Quinn.
“Just that, you know, you done gone and fucked up right there. You talked too much, see? ’Cause I don’t use those trick pads over on New York Avenue. Never have.”
“What difference does it make? I said I thought it was there-”
“You said it was. And I did like the way you said it, Earle. It was. So sure of yourself. So tough. So much like the rough and tough man you must be. Bet you got your little chest all puffed up, right about now. Got your fists balled up, too? So easy to be tough when you’re speaking on the phone. Isn’t it? Earle.”
His voice was singsong and mocking. Quinn unclenched his jaw and spoke through barely parted lips.
“My name’s Terry Quinn.”
“Oh, I got your phone number now, so it would have been easy to get your name right quick. But thanks for providin’ it for me; I’ll remember it for sure. What’re you, Vice, sumshit like that? You must be new, ’cause I got the patrol boys on my strip taken care of.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Don’t matter to me what you are, anyway. You don’t mean nothin’ more to me than some dog shit on my shoe. Look here, I better be goin’. I’d put your girl on the line, but she’s suckin’ a dick right now, makin’ me some money.”
“Wilson-”
“So long, white boy. Maybe we’ll meet someday.”
“We will,” said Quinn. But the line was already dead as the words came from his mouth.
So now Wilson had his name and number. It would be easy for him to get Quinn’s address. In his mind, Quinn shrugged. When he was a cop, the threat that he’d be tracked down to his place of residence had been made many times. He’d lost count of those threats long ago.
Quinn turned off the nightstand lamp. He stood and went to the bedroom window. His hands were shaking at his sides. It wasn’t fear.
Tomorrow night the girl would be his.
chapter 12
ON Wednesday morning, Garfield Potter had Carlton Little and Charles White drop him at the Union Station parking garage, where he spotted a car he liked, a police-package, white-over-blue ’89 Plymouth Grand Fury with a 318 engine and a four-barrel carb. Potter used a bar to break into the vehicle and a long-handled flat-head to pop out the ignition. He hot-wired the Plymouth and rolled down to the exit. Potter wore a skully and shades so that the booth camera could record very little of his face. As he didn’t have a ticket, he paid the full-penalty parking fee and drove out of the garage.
Potter followed Little and White out to Prince George’s County, pulling up behind them on a gravel shoulder running alongside a football field in Largo. He waited for his boys to wipe the prints out of the interior and off the exterior handles of the beige Caprice, as he had instructed them to do, and when they joined him inside the Fury he turned the car back toward D.C.
Potter and Little both had priors: possession, intent to distribute, and aggravated-assault beefs. Also, there had been one sodomy-rape charge on Potter, dropped when the victim would not testify. Eventually, they knew, some judge would have to give them time. Like many of his peers, Potter often bragged on the fact that violent death or a jail cell awaited him. But he didn’t want to go down on something as mundane as grand theft. A charge like that was a bitch charge, and it bought you no respect inside the walls. So he was always careful to cover his tracks when he got rid of one of his stolen cars.
Old police cars, or those outfitted for police specifications, were the vehicle of choice for many young men in and around D.C. Potter heard you could buy them cheap off lots in Virginia, in places like Manassas and Nokesville, wherever that was. But he didn’t like to cross over into Virginia for any reason, and anyway, lately he hadn’t been buying shit. You could steal a car easily in the District, and if you rotated it out, say, once a week, you’d never get caught. Well, he hadn’t been caught at it yet.
Potter looked at it like this: What you had to do was, you had to target a car owned by a young brother who lived in the city or near the PG County line. Some young brothers got their shit stole, they didn’t even report it to the police, on account of they knew damn near nothing would come of it anyway, and there was also this unwritten thing about not talking with the MPD. Many of them didn’t carry insurance either, so there wasn’t no money reason to report it. Sure, the ones got their cars took kept their ears open and their eyes out for the thief, looking to get some street justice if they could. But so far, Potter, Little, and White had escaped that as well.
Potter floored the gas as he got on the entrance ramp to the Beltway.
“Shit moves,” said Potter.
“Better than that hooptie we done had, D,” said Little.
“Gonna buy us a Lex soon, though. I’m fixin’ to own me a nice whip.”
“When?” said Little.
“Soon.”
Charles White sat in the backseat, letting the wind from the open window hit his face. He was listening to that song “Bounce with Me,” done by that singer they called Lil’ Bow Wow, who dressed like a gangster but wasn’t nothin’ much more than a kid. White was still up there from the hydro him and Carlton had smoked on the way out to Largo, and the song sounded good. He was into music; it was, like, his hobby. Sometimes he made tapes of himself over beats. Maybe someday he’d take some of the money they were making and go into a studio, lay somethin’ down for real. But he figured that was for other people to do, like Bow Wow, had someone showin’ him how to make it and all that. Someone to guide him, like.
In his true mind Charles White knew that he was stuck with what he had right here. The only family he had now, except for his grandmother, was the boys he’d come up with. Garfield and Carlton, before both of them turned cold and all the way hard, like they were now.
White’s hand instinctively dropped to his side, but there was nothing there. He still thought of Trooper all the time. He missed him. He wished Trooper were sitting warm beside him on the backseat.
Potter looked in the rearview at White, breathing through his mouth, looking out the window with the wind beatin’ on him, slumped in the backseat. Dumb-ass motherfucker, probably still stressin’ over that stupid dog. Potter thought of White as a dog, too, in a way, a thing that just kind of followed him and Carlton around.
He was stuck with White. White still acted and thought like a kid sometimes. He hadn’t changed much since the three of them had been tiny, growing up in the Waterfront Gardens, the Section Eight housing units down off M Street by the Southeast / Southwest line. Wasn’t no “waterfront” about it, though sometimes the seagulls did drop in from Buzzards Point and pick at the trash.
Some government type actually did have the nerve to name that shit hole a Garden, too. One of those jokes you couldn’t even laugh at. Not that Potter was crying about it or nothin’ like that. If it wasn’t for what he didn’t have, and he never did have one good thing, he wouldn’t have the ambition and drive he had today.
He could have used a father, he supposed, someone to throw a football to or sumshit like that. His mother didn’t even have the strength to lift a ball, eighty-eight pounds of no-ass crackhead like she was, at the end.
He wasn’t gonna cry about that either. Family and all that bullshit, it meant nothing to him, and it didn’t get you anything when you counted the chips up at the end of the day. It was like them books his teachers was always tellin’ him to read before they gave up on his ass, back about the fifth grade. He couldn’t hardly read, and still he had a shoebox full of cash money in the closet at his place, clothes, cars, bitches, everything. So what was the point of books, or some piece of paper, said you went to school?
He had a good business going now. Him and Carlton, he guessed he had to call Charles a partner, too, they had some runners down on Georgia, below Harvard Street, and they sold the shit out of some dime bags of marijuana on that corner there. Marijuana, the good shit that was goin’ around, the stuff grown hydroponic, was the way to go. In D.C., didn’t matter whether you were in possession of a dime bag or ten pounds, it wasn’t nothin’ but a misdemeanor. You did go to court, most of the time it was no-papered, everyone in the life knew that. Black juries didn’t want to send a young black man into the deadly prison system for some innocent charge like holding a little marijuana. Innocent, shit, Potter had to laugh at that. Young brothers killed one another over chronic just as dead as they did over crack and heroin. The people in charge would change the laws, make them tougher again when they figured all this out, but until then, hydro was the game.
So Potter had this business and he liked to keep it small. He didn’t call him and his boys a “crew” or a “mob” or nothin’ like that. You got into turf beefs and eyeball beefs that way; shit just got too complex. Potter was basically into having fun: stealing cars, taking off dumb motherfuckers who could get took, robbing crap games, shit like that. But he never fucked with those he knew to be hooked into crews, or their kin. Never that he knew, anyway. Only fuck with the weak, those who had no strength in numbers, that was his plan. He figured he hadn’t made any big mistakes yet. He was still alive.
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