Hell To Pay

by George Pelecanos

  The person worked in the ice-cream place, had a paper hat on his head, Potter could see it from back on the street, was taking his time. Potter looked around the block. He didn’t see anyone outside the few residences that were situated around the commercial strip, but there could have been some people looking out at them from behind curtains and shit, you never knew. Later on, they might remember their car.

  “Take it around the block again, Coon,” said Potter. “I don’t like us just sittin’ here like this.”

  Potter pulled the trans down into drive and rolled out into the street. As they neared the ice-cream shop, Potter saw Wilder and his nephew walk toward the Olds. Then he saw the kid hand Wilder his cone and head back toward the shop. The kid was going around the side, where they had hung some swinging signs over a couple of doors.

  “Keep goin’!” shouted Potter, and then he barked a laugh. “Oh, shit, that boy’s goin’ to the bathroom! Hit this motherfucker, man, go around the block quick. Just drive straight into that ice-cream lot when you get back onto Rhode Island, hear?”

  White’s foot depressed the gas. He fishtailed the car as he made the left turn, and the tires squealed as he made the next one.

  “You ready, Dirty?” said Potter.

  “I guess I am,” said Little, his voice cracking some on the reply. He bunched up the McDonald’s trash by his side and flung it to the other side of the car. He thumbed off the Glock’s safety and racked the slide.

  “Motherfucker thinks he gonna rise up and take me for bad,” said Potter. “He’s gonna find out somethin’ now.”

  White made the next turn, and Rhode Island Avenue came up ahead. His hands were shaking. He gripped the wheel tightly to make the shaking stop.

  JOE Wilder went around to the side of the building. He had to pee, and his uncle had told him they had a bathroom there. His uncle said to go now so he could enjoy his ice cream without squirming around in the car. But when Joe got to where the men’s room was, he saw that someone had put one of those heavy chains and a big padlock through the handle of the door.

  He could hold it for a while. And the thought of that ice cream, the soft chocolate-and-vanilla mix, made him forget he had to go. He went back to the car and got inside.

  “That was quick,” said Lorenze, handing Joe his cone.

  “It’s all locked up,” said Joe. “But it’s all right.” He licked at the ice cream and caught some that had melted down on the cone.

  “Good, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s tight.” Joe smiled. His tongue showed a mixture of white and brown.

  “Listen, Joe… you need to get up with your moms about your father and all that.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, he ain’t exactly gone, like gone gone, know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Not really.”

  “You really ought to meet your father, son. I mean, every boy should be in contact with his pops.”

  Joe Wilder bit off the crest of the mound of ice cream sitting atop the cone.

  “When you do meet him,” said Lorenze, “what I want you to do for me is, I want you to tell him how nice I been to you. Like what we did right here tonight.”

  “But my moms says he’s gone.”

  “Listen to me, boy,” said Lorenze. “When you do talk to him, wheneva you do, I want you to tell him that Uncle Lo wants to be put on. Hear?”

  Joe Wilder shrugged and smiled. “Okay.”

  Lorenze looked up at a tire sound and saw a white police-looking car pull very quickly into the lot. The car stopped in front of his Olds. Well, it wasn’t no police. The car was too old, a fucked-up Plymouth, and anyway, it looked like a bunch of young boys just driving around. Dumb ones, too, if they thought he was gonna let them block his way when there were plenty of other spaces in the lot.

  Both passenger-side doors opened on the car, and two of the young men jumped out, one coming around the hood and the other around the tail of the Plymouth. Lorenze’s eyes widened as he recognized Garfield Potter at the same time that Potter and a boy with cornrows showed their guns and raised them, stepping with purpose toward the Olds.

  “Hey,” said Joe Wilder, “Uncle Lo.”

  Lorenze Wilder heard popping sounds and saw fire spit from the muzzles of the guns. He dropped his ice cream and threw his body across the bench to try to cover his nephew just as the windshield spidered and then imploded. He felt the awful stings and was twisted and thrown back violently and thought of God and his sister and Please don’t take the boy, God in that last long moment before his brain matter, blood, and life blew out across the interior of the car.

  chapter 19

  FRIENDS, relatives, police, and print and broadcast media heavily attended Joe Wilder’s showing at a funeral parlor near the old Posin’s Deli on Georgia Avenue. At one point, traffic had been rerouted on the strip to accommodate the influx of cars. Except for a few acquaintances and a couple of black plainclothes homicide men assigned to the case, few came to pay their respects to Lorenze Wilder on the other side of town.

  The boy and his uncle were buried the next day in Glenwood Cemetery in Northeast, not far from where they had been murdered.

  Because of the numbing consistency of the murder rate, and because lower-class black life held little value in the media’s eyes, the violent deaths of young black men and women in the District of Columbia had not been deemed particularly newsworthy for the past fifteen years. Murders of young blacks rarely made the leadoff in the TV news and were routinely buried inside the Metro section of the Washington Post, the details consisting of a paragraph or two at best, the victims often unidentified, the follow-up nil.

  Suburban liberals plastered Free Tibet stickers on the bumpers of their cars, seemingly unconcerned that just a few short miles from the White House, American children were enslaved in nightmare neighborhoods, living amid gunfire and drugs and attending dilapidated public schools. The nation was outraged at high school shootings in white neighborhoods, but young black men and women were murdered without fanfare in the nation’s capital every single day.

  The shooting death of Joe Wilder, though, was different. Like a few high-profile cases over the years, it involved the death of an innocent child. For a few days after the homicide, the Wilder murder was the lead story on the local television news and made top-of-the-fold Metro as well. Even national politicians jumped into the fray, denouncing the culture of violence in the inner cities. As the witness at the ice-cream shop had mentioned the loud rap music coming from the open windows of the shooters’ car, these same politicians had gone on to condemn those twin chestnuts, hip-hop and Hollywood. At no time did these bought-and-sold politicians mention the conditions that created that culture, or the handguns, as easily available as a carton of milk, that had killed the boy.

  Strange was thinking of these things as he pulled his Brougham into Glenwood Cemetery, coming to a stop behind a long row of cars that stretched far back from Joe Wilder’s grave site. Lydell Blue was beside him on the bench. Lamar Williams and Lionel Baker sat quietly in the back of the Cadillac.

  Strange looked in his rearview. Dennis Arrington was pulling up behind him in his Infiniti. He had brought along Quinn and three of the boys from the team: Prince, Rico, and Dante Morris. Some of Joe’s other teammates had attended the church service, a ceremony complete with tears-to-the-eyes gospel singing, in the Baptist church where Joe and his mother had attended services.

  Strange looked out at the automobiles, and the people getting out of them and crossing the lawn. Joe Wilder’s mother, Sandra Wilder, was stooped in the middle of a group of mourners who were helping her along to the grave site. She had just gotten out of an expensive German car. Lorenze’s casket and Joe’s, half the size of his uncle’s, were up on platforms under a three-sided green tent beside two open graves.

  Most of the cars parked along the curb and up on the grass had been waxed and detailed out of respect. There was a van in the mix that Strange knew to be a police van, its
occupants taking photographs of the funeral’s attendees. This was fairly routine in killings believed to be of the serial variety, as serial killers often showed up at the wakes and funerals of their victims.

  Strange knew, and the police knew, that the killers would not show up here today. He was fairly certain what this had been about. This wasn’t a serial killing. It was a gang killing, or turf beef, or eyeball beef, or a death collect on a drug debt. The target was Lorenze Wilder; his nephew Joe just happened to have been in the car. A simple, everyday thing.

  Again, Strange studied the cars. Many of them were not just clean. Many of them were drug cars. High-priced imports tricked out in expensive customized options. The men getting out of them were very young and flashily dressed. Strange didn’t even have to turn it over in his mind. It wasn’t black-on-black racism. He had lived in the city his whole life. It was real.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” said Blue.

  “All kinds of young drug boys here,” said Strange. “Question is, why?”

  “No idea.”

  “Joe wasn’t even close to being in the life. I know his mother, and she’s straight.”

  “You see that car she got out of?”

  Strange had seen it. It was a three-series BMW, late model, the middle of the line.

  “I saw it.”

  “She’s got, what, a thirty-five-thousand-dollar car and she’s living in government-assisted housing?”

  “Could be a friend’s car,” said Strange.

  “Could be.”

  “Something to think about. But this ain’t the time or the place.”

  They got out of the car. Lamar and Lionel joined Quinn, Arrington, and the boys from the team. They walked as a group to the gravesite. Strange and Blue walked behind.

  “You okay?” said Blue.

  “Yeah,” said Strange. But to Blue’s eyes his friend looked blown apart, both depleted and seething inside.

  “I’m on midnights tonight,” said Blue. “Was gonna take a car out. Was wonderin’ if you wanted to do a ride-along.”

  “I do,” said Strange.

  “Just thought I’d see what’s out there.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Meet me at the station at around eleven-thirty. You’re gonna need to sign some papers.”

  “Right,” said Strange.

  Dennis Arrington had asked the group to form a circle. He took the hand of Quinn, who was standing beside him, and the rest of the boys joined hands until the unbroken circle went back to Arrington. They all bowed their heads, and the young deacon led Quinn and the boys in a quiet prayer. Nearby, Strange and Blue also lowered their heads and prayed.

  When Strange was done he looked over to the grave site and saw Joe’s mother, Sandra, talking to a young man with closely cropped hair, immaculately dressed in a three-button suit. The young man looked over at Strange as Sandra Wilder talked. He kept his eyes on Strange and said something to the well-dressed young man beside him. His friend nodded. These two young men, Strange decided, were also in the life.

  “Let’s go, Derek,” said Blue. “Looks like they’re about ready to say the final words.”

  Blue and Strange walked to the site. Fifteen minutes later, Joe Wilder, eight years old, was lowered into his grave.

  STRANGE woke from a nap at about ten o’clock that night, showered and changed, fed Greco, and locked the house. He had called Janine before he left, telling her that he would be out most of the night and would probably not be back in the office until the following afternoon. He had not spent the night at Janine’s place that week.

  Strange drove north toward the Fourth District station house at Georgia, between Quackenbos and Peabody. Lydell Blue had already filled him in on the developments of the Wilder case. In the three days that had elapsed since the murders, much had been learned.

  The ice-cream shop, called Ulmer’s, carried two employees in the fall and winter seasons, a young Salvadoran named Diego Juarez and the owner, Ed Ulmer, African American and fifty-nine years old. On the night of the shooting, Juarez was on the clock. His car, a black Nissan Sentra, was the only one in the lot when Lorenze Wilder pulled in and parked his Olds. After serving Wilder and his nephew, Juarez noticed that the boy tried to use the bathroom around the side of the building but quickly returned to the Oldsmobile. Ulmer had padlocked the bathroom doors after several incidents of vandalism.

  Shortly after the boy got into the Olds, joining the older man, a white Plymouth, stripped down like an old police vehicle, came into the parking lot at a high rate of speed. Driven by a young black man with “a long nose, like a beak,” the Plymouth stopped in front of the Olds, blocking its forward path. Juarez stated that the “rap music” coming from the open windows of the car was quite loud. Very quickly, two young black men got out of the car, one from the passenger seat and one from the backseat, drew handguns, and began firing into the windshield of the Olds.

  Diego Juarez mentally recorded the sequence of letters and numbers on the D.C. license plate of the Plymouth before retreating into the back of the shop. At this point, he phoned the police and then locked himself in the employee bathroom until he heard the squad cars arrive, five minutes later. He had nothing to write with in the bathroom, and in his nervous excitement he had forgotten one of the license plate’s two letters and most of its numerals. When he came out of the bathroom, he could recall none of the numerals. By then, of course, the shooters were gone.

  One of the shooters, apparently, had vomited a mixture of alcohol and hamburger meat on the asphalt of the parking lot before he’d gotten back into the Plymouth.

  Both victims had been shot several times. Lorenze Wilder had been shot in the back as well as the face and neck, indicating that he had initially tried to protect the boy. This was before the force of the bullets had spun him around. Joe Wilder had taken five bullets, one in the groin area, two in the stomach and chest, and two in the face and head. Both victims, lying in melted ice cream and blood, were dead when the police arrived. A rubber action figure, also covered in blood, was found near the boy’s hand. A football helmet with a mouthguard wedged in its cage was found at his feet.

  Ten 9mm casings were found in the lot consistent with those that would be ejected from an automatic weapon. Their ejection pattern suggested that they came from the gun of the shooter on the right, described by Juarez as the one with “the braids in his hair.” There were no casings found from the gun of the second shooter. Either he had picked them up, highly unlikely, or they had remained in the chambers of his gun. If the latter was the case, the weapon he used was a revolver. Indeed, the slugs that had done the most damage to the bodies would later be identified as hollow-points fired from a.357.

  Juarez described the second shooter as “a tall and skinny black” with light skin and a skully. Juarez said that the shooter was smiling as he fired his weapon, and it was this smile that had persuaded him, Juarez, to retreat into the back of the shop. He had since worked extensively with police artists to come up with drawings that would closely resemble his brief recollection of the faces on the young men he had seen.

  There were no other witnesses to the shooting, and none of the occupants of the nearby residences claimed to have seen a thing.

  The white Plymouth was found the next morning on a rural stretch of road bordering a forest in Prince George’s County. The car had been doused in gasoline and burned. The smoke rising above the trees had been seen by a resident of a community situated on the other side of the woods, which had prompted him to call the police. The first letter of the license plate matched the letter recalled by Juarez. This was the shooters’ car. The arson job had been thorough, obliterating any evidence save for some clothing fibers; the automobile had been wiped clean of prints.

  The Plymouth was registered to a Maurice Willis of the 4800 block of Kane Place in the Deanwood section of Northeast. Squad cars and homicide detectives were dispatched to his address, where Willis was taken in without resis
tance for questioning. The Plymouth belonged to Willis. It had been stolen from the Union Station parking lot while he was attending a movie at the AMC. He had not reported the theft, he explained candidly, because he had been driving the car without insurance. Based on his recollection of the movie he had seen and his certainty of its time, the detectives were able to pinpoint a two-hour window for the theft.

  By the end of this next day, the surveillance tapes from the pay booth at the parking garage had produced a photographic record of the one who had stolen the Plymouth. The image was of a light-skinned young black man wearing a sheer black skullcap and shades. On top of these visual obstacles, the suspect had deliberately kept his face partially turned away from the camera while he paid the parking fee. The camera evidence wouldn’t find them the shooter, but it would be useful in court.

  Detectives continued to canvass the neighborhood where the shooting had occurred. They posted sketches of the suspects and kept the sketches on hand when interviewing potential wits. They interviewed friends and relatives of Lorenze and Joe Wilder extensively, focusing on the acquaintances of the uncle. Most important, the police department had issued a ten-thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooters. This was the most important element and effort of the investigation. In the end, Strange knew, it would be a snitch who would give them the identity of the killers.

  They’re doing a good job. A damn good job so far. They’re doing everything they can.

  Strange pulled into the parking lot behind the Fourth District station, found a spot, and cut the engine on his car.

  STRANGE went around to the front of the station house, named in honor of Charles T. Gibson, the uniformed officer slain outside the Ibex Club a few years earlier. He went directly to the front desk in the unadorned, flourescent-lit lobby. The police officer on desk duty, a woman he did not recognize, phoned Lieutenant Blue in his second-floor office while Strange signed two release forms for insurance purposes. These were required of all citizens requesting ride-alongs.