Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  “Yeah.”

  “Thought you were gonna try and close that Jennifer Marshall thing tonight.”

  “I am,” said Quinn. “I’ll let you know how it pans out.”

  Prince, Lamar, and Joe Wilder were standing by Strange’s Brougham. He put his football file into the trunk, let them in the car, and drove off the school grounds.

  Strange turned up Prince’s street, not far from the football field.

  “There go my houth right there,” said Prince.

  “I know it,” said Strange, stopping the car. “Get in their straight away, boy, don’t make no detours. Those boys on that corner over there, they try to crack on you, you ignore ’em, hear?”

  Prince nodded and got out of the car. He went quickly up the steps to his place, where the light on the porch had been left on.

  As they drove south on Georgia, Joe Wilder held two action figures in his hand. He was making collision sounds as he pushed their rubber heads together like warring rams.

  “I thought those two was friends,” said Lamar, sitting beside Wilder.

  “Uh-uh, man, Triple H be the Rock’s enemy. H is married to the commissioner’s daughter.” Joe Wilder looked up at Lamar. “Will you come inside and watch it with me tonight?”

  “Okay,” said Lamar. “I’ll watch it with you some.”

  After Strange dropped them off, he popped a tape into the dash, a Stevie Wonder mix Janine had made him. Kids sat on the wall and dead-eyed him as he passed through the exit to the housing complex, Stevie singing “Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away” from the deck. Strange couldn’t help thinking how beautiful the song was. Thinking, too, how for those who’d been born in the wrong place through no fault of their own, how sad that it was true.

  SUE Tracy picked up Terry Quinn at his apartment somewhere past ten o’clock that night. She stood in the doorway of his place while he shook himself into a waist-length black leather jacket over a white T-shirt. As he did this he blocked her way, his body language telling her to come no further. She watched him fumble his badge case into one jacket pocket and his cell into the other. Clearly he was anxious to slip out before she had a chance to get a good look at his crib. But Tracy had taken in enough to know that there was nothing much to see.

  They walked out of the squat, three-story brick building, toward an old gray Econoline van parked on Sligo Avenue.

  “Hey, Mark,” said Terry to a mixed-race teenage boy standing with a group of boys his age outside a beer-and-cigarette market on the corner.

  “Wha’sup,” said the boy, not really looking at Quinn, muttering the greeting in a grudging, dutiful way.

  Tracy stopped to light a cigarette. She dropped the spent match to the ground and exhaled smoke out the side of her mouth. “Kid really likes you, Terry.”

  “He does like me. It’s just, you know, the code. He can’t act like we’re friends when he’s hanging with his boys, you know what I’m sayin’? I have this gym set up in the basement of the building; I let some of these neighborhood guys work out with me, long as they show me and the equipment respect.”

  They stood by the van, Tracy finishing her cigarette before getting in, Quinn letting her without comment.

  “And you coach a football team, too.”

  “I kinda help out, is all.”

  “You’re not so tough, Terry.”

  “It’s a way to kill time.”

  “Sure.” Tracy ground out her cigarette. “Where to first?”

  “We’ll pick up Stella. I got it all set up.”

  The van dated back to the 1970s. It had front and rear bench seats and little else. The three-speed manual shift was a branch coming off the trunk of the steering wheel. A tape deck had been mounted where the AM radio had been, its faceplate loose, its wires exposed and swinging below the dash.

  “I bet you only fly first class, too,” said Quinn.

  “It was a donation,” said Tracy.

  She wore a black nylon jacket over a black button-down blouse tucked into slate gray utilitarian slacks. She found a gray Scunci in her jacket pocket, put it in her mouth while she gathered her hair behind her, and formed a ponytail. The Scunci picked up the gray of the slacks. She pulled a pair of eyeglasses with black rectangular frames from the sun visor and slipped them on her face.

  “Cool.”

  “This van? Bet there’s a bong around here somewhere, too, if you’re interested.”

  “I was talking about your glasses.”

  “They’ll keep us from getting killed. My night vision is for shit.”

  They drove down into Northwest, cutting into Rock Creek Park at 16th and Sherrill and heading south. Tracy slipped a Mazzy Star compilation tape into the deck. Chicks and their chick music, thought Quinn, but this was guitar driven and pretty nice.

  They didn’t talk much on the ride into town. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Quinn didn’t feel like he did around most women, like he had to explain who he was, why he’d chosen the path he’d taken, the one that had put him on the way to becoming a cop. The singer’s voice, breathy but unforced, was relaxing him, and arousing him, too. He looked over at Tracy, at the tendons in her neck, the elegant cut of her jaw as it neared her ear.

  “What?” said Tracy.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re staring at me again, Terry.”

  “Sorry,” said Quinn. “I was just thinking.”

  After a while they came up out of the park. Stella emerged from the shadows of a church at 23rd and P as they pulled the van along the curb.

  “That her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She looks fifteen.”

  “Cobras live to be fifteen, too,” said Quinn.

  “They do?”

  “I’m making a point.”

  “The back doors are open,” said Tracy. “Tell her to get in there.”

  Quinn rolled down his window as Stella reached the van. She wore black leather pants and a white poplin shirt, with a black bag shaped like a football slung over her shoulder. Her eyeglasses sat crooked on her face.

  “You like?” said Stella, looking down at her pants. Her eyes were magnified comically behind the lenses of her glasses. “I wore ’em for you, Officer Quinn. They’re pleather, but that’s okay. I get paid tonight, I’m gonna buy me a pair of leather ones on the for-real side.”

  “You look nice,” said Quinn.

  “What color should I get? The black or the brown?”

  “The back door’s open. Let’s go.”

  They drove east. Quinn introduced Stella to Sue Tracy. Stella was cool to her questions. She only became animated when responding to Quinn. Clearly she was eager for his attention. It was plain to Tracy that Stella had a crush on Quinn, or it was a daddy thing, but he was ignoring it. More likely, as with many men, the obvious had eluded him.

  On 16th they saw some girls working the stroll, a stretch of sidewalk off the hotel strip south of Scott Circle.

  “Around here?” said Tracy.

  “Those aren’t World’s,” said Stella.

  “Where, then?” said Quinn.

  “Keep goin’,” said Stella. “He ain’t into that visiting-businessmen trade. They talk too much, take too much time. Worldwide’s girls walk between the circles. The Logan-and-Thomas action, y’know what I’m sayin’?”

  Quinn knew. “That’s old-school turf. I remember that from when I was a teenager.”

  Tracy shot him a look from across the seat.

  “Strictly locals,” said Stella. “Husbands whose wives won’t blow ’em, birthday boys lookin’ to get their cherry broke, barracks boys, like that. World’s got some rooms nearby.”

  “We’re gonna try and take her in Wilson’s trick-house?” said Quinn. “Why?”

  “Because she don’t trust me,” said Stella. “She won’t meet me anywhere else.”

  Tracy steered the van around Thomas Circle.

  “North now,” said Stella, “and make a right off Fourteenth at the next block.”

/>   The landscape changed from ghost town-downtown to living urban night as soon as they drove onto the north side of the circle. Small storefronts, occupying the first floors of structures built originally as residential row houses, low-rised the strip. The commercial picture was changing, new theater venues, cafés, and bars cropping up with regularity. In fact, it had been “changing” for many years. White gentrifiers tried to close down the family-run markets, utilizing obscure laws like the one forbidding beer and wine sales within a certain proximity to churches. The crusading gentrifiers cited the loiterers on the sidewalks, the kinds of unsavory clientele those types of businesses attracted. What they really wanted was for their underclass dark-skinned neighbors to go away. But they wouldn’t go away. The former Section Eights were up the street, and so were families who had lived here for generations. It was their neighborhood. It was a small detail that the gentrifiers never tried to understand.

  There weren’t any hookers walking the 14th strip. But as they turned right and drove a block east, Quinn could see cars double-parked ahead wearing Maryland and Virginia plates, their flashers on, girls leaning into their driver’s-side windows.

  “Pull over,” said Stella.

  Tracy curbed the van and cut the engine. Quinn studied the street.

  A half block up, a couple of working girls, one black and one white, were lighting smokes, standing on the sidewalk outside a row house. One of them, the young white girl with big hair, wearing white mid-thigh fishnets and garters below a tight white skirt, walked up the steps of the row house and through the front door. A portly black man in an ill-fitting suit got out of his car, a late-model Buick, and went into the same house shortly thereafter.

  “These all Wilson’s?” said Quinn.

  “Not all,” said Stella. “You got a few independents out here, out-of-pocket hos. Long as they don’t look him in the eye, disrespect him like that, then they gonna be all right. But those are World’s trick-pads over there. All his. He rents out the top two floors, got, like, six rooms.”

  “What about the car action?”

  “That’s okay for a quick suck. World gets money for the room, too, so he tells his ladies, Make sure you take ’em upstairs. Anyway, you don’t want to be fuckin’ a man in a car down here. Even the pocket cops, they see that, they got to take you in. This ain’t the Bronx.”

  “That where you come from, Stella?” said Tracy.

  “I’m from nowhere, lady.”

  “We waitin’ on Jennifer?” said Quinn.

  “You already saw her,” said Stella. “She was that white girl with the white stockings, went inside.”

  “It didn’t look like her,” said Quinn.

  “What, you think she’d still be wearing her yearbook clothes?” Stella laughed joylessly, an older woman’s laugh that chilled Quinn. “She ain’t no teenager now. She ain’t nothin’ but a ho.”

  “We could have grabbed her off the street.”

  “We got to do this my way. I told you I’d come along, but I don’t want nobody spottin’ me, hear?”

  “Keep talking.”

  “I called Jennifer up. Soon after I met her, I boosted her Walkman and a few CDs she had. She never went anywhere without her sounds. I told her when I called her, I found her shit in some other girl’s bag and I was lookin’ to get it back to her.”

  “Where?”

  “Told her I’d meet her at eleven-thirty, up in three-C. That’s the third-floor room nearest the back of the house. There’s a fire escape there, goes down to the alley. The window leads out to the fire escape, one of those big windows, goes up and down-”

  “A sash,” said Quinn.

  “Whatever. World always tells the girls, leave that window open, hear, case you need to get out quick.”

  Quinn checked his watch: close to eleven by his time.

  “Think I’ll drop in on her a little early,” said Quinn.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Tracy.

  “Who’s gonna drive the van?” said Quinn, head-motioning over his shoulder. “Her?”

  Tracy looked out her window for a moment, then at Quinn. She reached back and pulled her leather briefcase from under the back bench. Her hand went into the briefcase and came out with a pair of Motorola FRS radios. She handed one to Quinn.

  “Walkie-talkies?”

  “That’s right.”

  “These come with a decoder ring, too?”

  “Quit fuckin’ around, Terry. You keep the power on, hear? There’s a call alert; you’ll hear it if I’m tryin’ to get through to you.”

  “All right.” Quinn turned the power on so that Tracy could see he had done it. He slipped the radio into his jacket.

  “How long you gonna need in there?” said Tracy.

  “Jennifer’s where Stella says she is, I’d say ten minutes tops.”

  “I’m gonna take the van back in the alley, but I’m gonna give you five minutes before I roll. I don’t like alleys. I’ve seen too much shit go wrong in alleys, Terry-”

  “So have I.”

  “I don’t want to get jammed up in there.”

  “All right. I’ll bring the girl down the fire escape. See you in ten, right?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  Quinn got out of the van and crossed the street. Go-go music came loudly from the open windows of one of the double-parked cars. The girl outside the row house, black girl with red lipstick and a rouged face, her ass cheeks showing beneath her skirt, looked him over and smiled as he approached.

  “You datin’ tonight, sugar?”

  “I’m taken, baby. My girl’s waitin’ on me inside.”

  Her eyes went dead immediately, and Quinn walked on. He took the row house steps and opened the front door, stepping into a narrow foyer. The door closed softly behind him. He looked up a flight of stairs to the second floor. The foyer smelled of cigarettes, marijuana, and disinfectant. He could hear voices above. Footsteps, too.

  Quinn’s blood was up. It was a high for him, to be back in the middle of it again. And to be in this place. It reminded him of his own first time with a prostitute, fifteen years earlier, in a house very much like this one, just a few blocks away from where he now stood.

  He took the two-way radio out of his pocket and turned the power button off. He didn’t need any gadgets. He didn’t need any “call alerts” or anything else to distract him while he was looking for the girl.

  Quinn started up the stairs.

  chapter 14

  WORLDWIDE Wilson cruised down 14th in his ’92 400SE, midnight blue over palomino leather, the music down low. He had that Isley Brothers slo-jam compilation, Beautiful Ballads, on the stereo, Ronald singing all sweet, talkin’ about, “Make me say it again, girl,” coaxin’ that man in the boat to show himself and drown.

  Wilson had the seat back all the way. Still, even with that, his knees were high, straddling the wheel. He switched lanes, cutting the wheel quick to avoid hitting the dumb-ass in front of him who was making a sudden left without using the turn signal God gave him. As he swerved, the little tree deodorizer he had hung on the rearview swung back and forth.

  He had recently had the steering wheel covered in fur, but the Arab he’d given the job to up at the detail shop, he’d fucked it all up. Put some cheap shit on there, so that the hairs were always coming off in his hands and flyin’ around the car. Someone didn’t know better, they’d think he owned a cat, some bullshit like that. Teach him to give his business to an Iraqi. And he should’ve known not to trust a man had a girl’s name: Leslie.

  Wilson’s given name was Fred. Frederick, Freddie, he didn’t like it any way you put it, what with the kids always callin’ him Fred Flintstone and shit when he was a kid. Till he got the reputation, he would fuck them up good they said it again. Worldwide, that was more like it. He’d given himself that name after he returned from Germany, where he’d served in the army back in the late seventies. He’d put together his first little stable over there. Light-skinned girl with Asian eyes
, and couple of blond bitches, too. German girls could lay a stamp on a black man, didn’t even think twice about his color. Another thing he liked about being overseas.

  Wilson punched numbers into the grid of the inverted phone he’d installed in the Mercedes. He liked the way the numbers lit the cabin up green at night. This was one pretty car, real classy, not a ride with too much flash, like those wanna-be pimps, just comin’ up, were driving around. The fur steering wheel, that was the only thing he’d added. Oh, yeah, there was a working television and VCR in the backseat, and those stainless steel DNA exhaust pipes he’d recently put on. And the phone. And the Y2K custom wheels he had on this motherfucker. Those rims set the whole joint off right.

  Wilson got through on the line and lifted the phone out of its cradle.

  “What’s goin’ on, baby?”

  “Slow.”

  “I’m comin’ in.”

  Wilson turned off 14th. He went slowly down the block, checking out the action. Wasn’t much. He passed a shitty old van and a couple other hoopties parked on the street, and went around a double-parked Chevy Lumina, where one of his women stood leaning in the driver’s window. That particular girl, she talked too much, and when she did talk she had nothin’ to say. One of those special-ed bitches, wore his shit out. Time he got that mouth of hers straightened around.

  He pulled up in front of his row house, where Carola, another of his girls, his best producer but getting to be on the old side, stood. Wilson hit a button and let the window drop. Carola came over and leaned on the door.

  “Where Jennifer at?”

  “Schoolgirl’s inside. Trickin’ some old Al Roker-lookin’ sucker.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. Some white boy just went in. I axed him for a date, but he said he already had a girl. Thing is, I didn’t see him follow no one in.”

  “He high?”

  “Didn’t look to be.”

  “Vice?”

  “He wasn’t wearin’ no sign if he is.”

  “Okay. Why you standin’ around, though?”

  “Told you there wasn’t nothin’ goin’ on.”

  “Well, get out there and make somethin’ go on. Get on back to the tracks and get a date.”