Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  “Protect your brother,” said Strange when he was done, trying to meet eyes with most of the boys kneeling before him. “Protect your brother.”

  The boys formed a tight group and put their hands in the center.

  “Petworth Panthers!” they shouted, and ran down to the field.

  Both teams were rusty at the start of the opening quarter. Morris fumbled an errant Prince snap in the first set of downs but fell on the ball and recovered. They went three-and-out and punted. On first down the Cardinal halfback was taken down behind the line of scrimmage, and on second down he was stripped of the ball. A Panther named Noah picked up the ball off its bounce and ran ten yards before he was dropped. It was the gasoline on the fire the Panthers needed, a wake-up call that would carry them the rest of the game.

  The offensive line began to make their blocks and open the holes. Rico hit those holes, and the chains began to move as the team marched down the field. The Cardinals’ coach called a time-out and yelled at his defensive line. Strange could see the veins on the man’s neck standing out from across the field.

  “No heart,” said Strange.

  “Their hearts are pumpin’ Kool-Aid,” said Blue.

  The line tightened its play and stopped a thirty-five-run call on the next play. Strange had Joe Wilder run in the next play to Morris, a triple-right. Morris lobbed a pass in the direction of the three receivers – halfback, end, and flanker – who had lined up on the right and gone out to the flats. Rico caught it and took it in, freed by a Joe Wilder block on the Cardinals’ corner.

  Strange stuck with the running game but took it to the outside. The Cardinals’ left side was weak and seemed to be growing weaker the more the coach screamed at his players. At flanker, Wilder was taking out the defensive man assigned to him, pushing him inside, allowing Rico to turn the corner and just blow and go.

  By halftime, the Cardinals were totally demoralized and the Panthers were firing on all cylinders. Barring an act of God, the game was theirs, Strange knew.

  The second half went the same way. Strange played the bench and rested his first-stringers. The Cardinals managed a score against the Panthers’ scrubs, causing an anemic eruption from the cheerleaders on the other side of the field. But the drive was just a spark, and even their coach, who threw his hat down in disgust when his team turned the ball over on their next possession, knew they were done. The Panthers moved the ball into Cardinal territory easily and were threatening again with a minute left to play.

  Strange brought Joe Wilder out of the game and rested his hand on his shoulder. “Next play, I want you to tell Dante to down the ball. Just let the clock run out, hear?”

  “Let me take it in, Coach,” said Wilder. He was smiling at Strange, his eyes eager and bright. “Forty-four Belly, that’s my play.”

  “We won, Joe. We don’t need to be rubbin’ it in their faces.”

  “C’mon, Coach Derek. I ain’t touched the ball all day. I know I can run it in!”

  Strange squeezed Wilder’s shoulder. “I know you can, too, son. You got real fire in you, Joe. But we don’t do like that out here. Those boys been beat good today. I don’t like to put the boot to someone’s face when they’re down, and I don’t want you doin’ it either. That’s not the kind of man I want you to be.”

  “Okay, then,” said Wilder, the disappointment plain on his face.

  “Go on, boy. Run the play in to Dante like I told you.”

  The game ended the way Strange had instructed. At the whistle, the players gathered on the sideline. Wilder got a hug from Quinn and a slap on the helmet from Strange.

  “Line up,” said Strange. “Now, when you go to shake their hands, I don’t want to hear a thing except ‘Good game.’ No trash-talking, you understand? You said all you needed to on the field. After what you did out there, don’t shame yourselves now, hear?”

  The Panthers met the Cardinals in the center of the field, touched hands as they went down the line. The Panthers said ‘Good game’ to each player they passed, and the Cardinals mumbled the same words in reply. Dante Morris stared into the eyes of the pug-nosed boy who had cracked on their uniforms, but Morris didn’t say a word, and the boy quickly looked away. At the end of the line the Cardinals’ coach shook Strange’s hand and congratulated him through teeth nearly clenched.

  “All right,” said Quinn, as the team returned and took a knee before him. “I liked the way you guys played today. A lot of heart. Just remember, it’s not always going to be this easy. We’re going to be playing teams who have better athletes and are better coached. And you need to be ready. Ready in your minds, which means you keep your heads in the books during the day. And ready physically as well. That means we’re going to continue to practice as hard as we ever have. We want the championship this year, right?”

  “Right!”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Right!”

  “What time is practice Monday night?” said Strange.

  “Six o’clock on the dot, be there, don’t miss it!”

  “I’m proud of you boys,” said Strange.

  chapter 17

  LATER that afternoon, Quinn sat behind the counter of Silver Spring Books reading The Pistoleer, a novel by James Carlos Blake. His coworker, Lewis, was back in the military history room, straightening the shelves. A homeless intellectual whom everyone in the area called Moonman was sitting on the floor in the sci-fi room, reading a paperback edition of K. W. Jeter’s The Glass Hammer. A customer browsed the mystery stacks nearby.

  Quinn had put Johnny Winter And on the turntable, and the molten blues-metal classic was playing at a low volume throughout the store. Syreeta, the owner of the business, who was rarely on site, had instructed the employees to play the used vinyl in stock to advertise the merchandise. This disc, with its faded black-and-white cover portraits, had recently been inventoried as part of a large purchase, a carton of seventies albums.

  Quinn cherished these quiet afternoons in the shop.

  The mystery customer, a thin man in his early forties, brought a paperback to the register and placed it on the glass counter. It was Elmore Leonard’s Unknown Man No. 89, one of the mass-market publications Avon had done with the cool cover art depicting a montage of the book’s elements; this one displayed a snub-nosed.38, spilled-out shells, and an overturned shot glass.

  “You ever read his westerns?” said Quinn. “They’re the best, in my opinion.”

  “I go for the crime stuff set in Detroit. There’s a lot of different Leonard camps and they’ve all got opinions.” The customer nodded to one of the speakers mounted up on the wall. “Haven’t heard this for a while.”

  “It just came in. The vinyl’s in good shape, if you want it.”

  “I own it, but I haven’t pulled it out of the shelf for a long time. That’s Rick Derringer on second lead.”

  “Who?”

  “Yeah, you’re too young. Him and Johnny, the two of them were just on fire on this session. One of those lightning-in-a-bottle things. Listen to ‘Prodigal Son,’ the cut leads off side two.”

  “I will.” Quinn gave the man his change and a receipt. “Thanks a lot. And take it easy, hear?”

  “You, too.”

  Quinn figured this guy had a wife, kids, a good job. You’d pass him on the street and think he was your average square. But one thing you learned working here was that just about everyone had something worthwhile to say if you took the time to listen. Everyone was more interesting when you got to know them a little than they initially appeared to be. That was the other thing he liked about working in a place like this. The conversations you got into and the people you met. Of course, he had met plenty of people on a daily basis in his former profession. But it almost always started from an adversarial place when you met them as a cop.

  Quinn read some more of his novel. A little while later, Quinn watched Sue Tracy cross Bonifant Street on foot. She was wearing her post-punk utilitarian gear and had a day pack slung over
her shoulder. Quinn’s heart actually skipped, watching her walk. He was imagining her naked atop his sheets.

  The small bell over the door rang as she walked in. Quinn let his feet drop off the counter, but he didn’t get up out of his seat.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “New in town?”

  “I missed you.”

  “I’ve been missing you, too.”

  “Got on the Metro and walked up from the station. Can you get away?”

  “I can probably sneak out, sure.”

  “It’s a beautiful day.”

  “I’ve got my car here. We can, I don’t know, go for a ride.”

  Tracy looked down at the book in Quinn’s hand. “What’s that, a western?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “What’s with you and your partner? Strange went on about some scene from The Magnificent Seven.”

  “That would be the one with Coburn shooting the rider instead of the horse.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He does go back to that one a lot.”

  Lewis came forward from the back of the shop. His black hair was long, greasy, and tangled, and his thick glasses had surgical tape holding one stem to the frame. Yellow perspiration marks stained the armpits of his white shirt.

  “Lewis, meet my friend, Sue Tracy.”

  “My pleasure,” said Lewis. Tracy and Lewis shook hands.

  “I’m gonna punch out for the day, Lewis. That okay by you?”

  Lewis blinked hard behind the lenses of his glasses. “Fine.”

  Quinn gathered his things, marking the Leonard paperback off in the store’s inventory notebook before he came around the counter.

  “This Johnny Winter?” said Tracy.

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Older brothers. I had one played this till the grooves wore out on the vinyl.”

  “That’s Rick Derringer on second lead right here.”

  “Who?”

  “You’re too young.”

  They left the shop and walked up Bonifant.

  “Lewis gonna be all right back there, all by himself?” said Tracy.

  “He’s the best employee Syreeta’s got. A little lonely, though. Any suggestions?”

  Tracy laced her fingers through Quinn’s. “I’m spoken for.”

  “Maybe your partner, then.”

  “He’s not Karen’s type.”

  “What type is that?”

  “The type who runs a comb through his hair every so often. The type who showers.”

  “Picky,” said Quinn.

  They stopped at his car, parked in the bank lot.

  “Sweet,” said Tracy. Quinn had recently waxed the body, scrubbed the Cragar mags with Wheel-Brite and wet-blacked the rubber. The Chevelle’s clean lines gleamed in the sun.

  “You like, huh?”

  Tracy nodded. “You got the Flowmasters on there, huh?”

  “I bought it like that off the lot.”

  “What’s under the hood, a three ninety-six?”

  “Now you’re making me nervous.”

  “My older brothers.”

  “C’mon, get in.”

  She got into the passenger side. Quinn saw her admiring the shifter, a four-speed Hurst.

  “You want to drive?”

  “Could I?”

  “I knew there was something else I liked about you. Aside from you being a natural blonde, I mean.”

  “What can I say? I like fast cars.”

  “Bad-ass,” said Quinn.

  Tracy drove down into Rock Creek Park. They parked near a bridle trail on the west side of the creek and took the path up a rise and all the way to the old mill. On the walk back they sat on some boulders in the middle of the creek. Quinn took his shirt off, and Tracy removed her socks and shoes. She let her feet dangle in the cool water. They talked about their pasts and kissed in the sun.

  Late in the afternoon they went back to Quinn’s apartment and made love. They showered and re-dressed and had dinner at Vicino’s, a small Italian restaurant Quinn liked up on Sligo Avenue. Quinn had the calimari over linguini, and Tracy had the seafood platter, and they washed it down with a carafe of the house red. They stopped for another bottle of red on the way back to Quinn’s place and drank it while listening to music and making out on his couch. They fucked like teenagers in his room, and afterward they lay in bed, Tracy smoking and talking, Quinn listening with a natural smile on his face.

  The day had been a good one. The kids had won their game, and in his mind Quinn could still see the look of pride on their faces as they had run off the field. Then Sue Tracy had surprised him and stopped by the shop.

  Quinn looked at his hands and saw that they were totally relaxed on the sheets. He hadn’t been thinking of the streets or if anyone had looked at him the wrong way or anything else but Sue, his girlfriend, lying beside him. He hadn’t felt this comfortable with a woman for some time.

  STRANGE dropped off Prince, Lamar, and Joe Wilder, then dropped Lionel at Janine’s house uptown.

  “You comin’ for dinner tonight?” said Lionel, before getting out of the car.

  “I haven’t spoken to your mother about it,” said Strange.

  “My mom wants you to come over, I know. Saw her marinating some kind of roast this morning before you picked me up.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you, then.”

  “Whateva,” said Lionel, turning and going up the sidewalk toward his house.

  Strange watched the boy and his loping walk.

  Boy’s still got that way of stepping. Had that walk since I been knowing him, back when he wasn’t nothing much more than a kid. Thinks he’s a man, but he’s still a boy inside.

  He grinned without thinking, watching him, and waited until Lionel got inside the house before driving away.

  Strange picked up the Calhoun Tucker photos from the Safeway over on Piney Branch. Safeway was cheap and they did a good-enough job on the processing. It took a little longer when you used them, but he wasn’t in any hurry on this particular job.

  Back in his office, he inspected the photographs. The woman in the doorway, Tucker’s somethin’ on the side, was plain as day in the shot, letting him into her crib. Janine had gotten her name from the crisscross program, based on her street address. It was in the file he was building on Tucker, the one he was preparing for his friend George Hastings. Strange found the file and slipped the photographs inside it. He was just about done with the background check. He’d need to report on all this to George. Soon, thought Strange, I will do this soon. He wondered what was stopping him from getting George on the phone right now. Strange turned this over in his mind as he locked the file cabinet, then his office door.

  Walking through the outer office, he noticed his reflection in the mirror nailed to the post, and stopped to study himself. Damn if his natural wasn’t nearly all gray. The years just… they just went. Strange was bone tired and hungry. He thought about having a nice meal, maybe some Chinese. And a hot shower, too; that would do him right.

  AT dinner that night, Strange sat at the head of Janine’s table, as he always did, in the one chair that had arms on it. It had been her father’s chair. Lionel sat to his left and Janine to his right. Greco played with a rubber ball, his eyes moving to the dinner table occasionally but keeping control of himself, staying there on his belly, lying on the floor at Strange’s feet.

  Janine had Talking Book on the stereo, playing softly. She did love her Stevie, in particular the breakout stuff that he’d done for Motown in the early seventies.

  “Where you off to tonight?” said Strange, eyeballing Lionel, clean in his Nautica pullover and pressed khakis.

  “Takin’ a girl to a movie.”

  “What, you gonna walk her there?”

  “Gonna pull her in a ricksha.”

  “Don’t be playin’,” said Strange. “I’m just asking you a question.”

  “He’s taking my car, Derek.”

  “Yeah, ok
ay. But listen, don’t be firin’ up any of that funk in your mother’s car, hear?”

  “You mean, like, herb?”

  “You know what I mean. You get yourself a police record, how you gonna get to be that big-time lawyer you always talking about becoming?”

  Lionel put his fork down on his plate. “Look, how you gonna just suppose that I’m gonna be out there smokin’ some hydro tonight? I mean, it’s not like you’re my father, Mr. Derek. It’s not like you’re here all the time, like you know me all that well.”

  “I know I’m not your father. Didn’t say I was. It’s just-”

  “I wasn’t even thinkin’ about smokin’ that stuff tonight, you want the truth. This girl I’m seein’, she’s special to me, understand, and I wouldn’t do nothin’, anything, that I thought would get her in any kind of trouble with the law. So, all due respect, you can’t be comin’ up in here, part-time, lookin’ to guide me, when you don’t even know me all that well, for real.”

  Strange said nothing.

  Lionel looked at his mother. “Can I be excused, Mom? I need to pick up my girl.”

  “Go ahead, Lye. My car keys are on my dresser.”

  Lionel left the room and went up the hall stairs.

  “I guess I messed that up pretty bad.”

  “It is hard to know what to say,” said Janine. “Most of the time, I’m just winging it myself.”

  “I do feel like a father to that boy.”

  “But you’re not,” said Janine, her eyes falling away from his. “So maybe you ought to go a little easier on him, all right?”

  Janine got up out of her seat and picked up Lionel’s plate off the table. She head-motioned to Greco, whose eyes were on her now and pleading. “C’mon, boy. Let’s see if you can’t finish some of this roast.”

  Greco’s feet sought purchase on the hardwood floor as he scrabbled toward the kitchen, his nub of a tail twitching furiously. Strange got up and went to the foyer, meeting Lionel, who was bounding down the stairs.

  “Hey, buddy,” said Strange.

  “Hey.”

  “You got money in your pocket?”

  “I’m flush,” said Lionel.