Hell To Pay

chapter 4

STRANGE dropped the paper Hastings had given him on Janine’s desk.

“You get time, run this information through Westlaw and see what kind of preliminary information you can come up with.”

“Background check on a…” Janine’s eyes scanned the page. “… Calhoun Tucker.”

“Right. George’s future son-in-law. I’ll pick up Lionel and swing him back with me after practice.”

“Okay.”

“And, oh yeah. Call Terry; he’s workin’ up at the bookstore today. Remind him he’s coaching tonight.”

“I will.”

Lattimer looked up as Strange passed by his desk. “Half day today, boss?”

“Need a haircut.”

“Next door? You ever wonder why they got the butcher and the barber so close together on this block?”

“Never made that connection. One thing I don’t need is to be spending forty dollars on a haircut like you.”

“Well, you better get on over there. ’Cause you’re startin’ to look like Tito Jackson.”

Strange turned and looked into a cracked mirror hanging from a nail driven into a column in the middle of the office. “Damn, boy, you’re right.” He patted the side of his head. “I need to get my shit correct.”

STRANGE dropped a couple of the kids off at their homes after practice. Then he and Lionel drove up Georgia toward Brightwood in Strange’s ’91 black-over-black Cadillac Brougham, a V-8 with a chromed-up grille. This was his second car. Strange had an old tape, Al Green Gets Next to You, in the deck, and he was trying hard not to sing along.

“Sounds like gospel music,” said Lionel. “But he’s singing it to some girl, isn’t he?”

“‘God Is Standing By,’” said Strange. “An old Johnny Taylor tune, and you’re right. This here was back when Al was struggling between the secular and the spiritual, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

“You mean, like, he loves Jesus but he loves to hit the pussy, too.”

“I wasn’t quite gonna put it like that, young man.”

“Whateva.”

Strange looked across the bench. “You got studies tonight, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Don’t want you to let up now, just ’cause you already applied to college. You need to keep on those books.”

“You want me to stay in my room tonight, just say it.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Lionel just smiled in that way that drove Strange around the bend.

Janine Baker’s residence was on Quintana Place, between 7th and 9th, just east of the Fourth District police station. Quintana was a short, narrow street of old colonials fronted with porches. The houses were covered in siding and painted in an array of earth tones and bright colors, including turquoise and neon green. The Baker residence was a pale lavender affair down near the 7th Street end of the block.

In the dining room they ate a grilled chuck roast, black on the outside and pink in the center, along with mashed potatoes and gravy and some spiced greens, washed down with ice-cold Heinekens for Strange and Janine. Lionel went upstairs to his bedroom as soon as he finished his meal. Strange had a quick cup of coffee and wiped his mouth when he was done.

“That was beautiful, baby.”

“Glad you enjoyed it.”

“You want me to come back after I’m done working?”

“I’d like that. And I’ve foil-wrapped the bone from the chuck for Greco, so bring him back, too.”

“Between you and me we’re gonna spoil that dog to death.” Strange came around the table, bent down, and kissed Janine on the cheek. “I’ll be back before midnight, hear?”

STRANGE returned to his row house on Buchanan Street and hit the heavy bag in his basement for a while, trying to work off some of the fat he’d taken in from his meat consumption that day. He broke a sweat that smelled like alcohol when he was done, then showered and changed clothes up on the second floor, which held his bedroom and home office. In the office, Greco played with a spiked rubber ball while Strange checked his stock portfolio and read a stock-related message board, listening to Ennio Morricone’s “The Return of Ringo” from the Yamaha speakers of his computer.

Strange checked his wristwatch, a Swiss Army model with a black leather band, and looked at his dog.

“Gotta go to work, old buddy. I’ll be back to pick you up in a little bit.”

Greco’s nub of tail made a double twitch. He looked up at Strange and showed him the whites of his eyes.

STRANGE drove down Georgia in his Chevy, through Petworth and into Park View. The street was up, Friday night, kids mostly, some hanging out, some doing business as well. Down around Morton a line had formed outside the Capitol City Pavilion, called the Black Hole by locals and law enforcement types alike. D.C. veteran go-go band Back Yard had their name on the marquee, as they did most weekends. In a few hours, Fourth District squad cars would be blocking Georgia, rerouting traffic. Beefs born inside the club often came to their inevitable, violent resolution at closing time, when the patrons spilled out onto the street.

Strange saw Lamar Williams, wearing pressed khakis and wheat-colored Timbies, standing in the line outside the club. Strange drove on. Between Kenyon and Harvard, kids sold marijuana in an open-air market set up on the street.

Georgia became 7th. Soon Strange was nearing the convention center site, a huge hole that took up several of D.C.’s letter blocks, on his right. On his left ran a commercial strip. His hooker, wearing a red leather skirt, was standing in the doorway of a closed restaurant, her hard, masculine face illuminated by the embers of her cigarette as she gave it a deep draw. Strange did not slow the car. He went west for a couple of blocks, then north, then east again, circling back to a spot on the east side of the future center, where he parked the Chevy on 9th, alongside a construction fence. He slipped a notepad into his breast pocket and clipped a pen there before exiting the car.

Strange opened the trunk of his Chevy. He pushed aside his live-case file, his football file, and his toolbox, and found his video camera, which was fitted in a separate box alongside his 500mm- lens Canon AE-1. He checked the tape and replaced it in its slot. Strange liked this camera, his latest acquisition. It was an 8mm Sony with the NightShot feature and the 360X digital zoom. Perfect for what he needed, perfect for this job right here. He’d gotten the camera in a trade for a debt owed him by a client; the camera was hotter than Jennifer Lopez in July.

Strange went over to a place by the fence at 7th and L, just north of the hooker’s position, where there was an open driveway entrance breaking the continuity of the construction fence. He situated himself behind the fence in a position that would render him unseen by the passengers or drivers of any southbound cars. He stood there for a while, setting up the camera the way he wanted it and shooting some tape for a test. He watched the hooker talk to a potential john who had pulled up his Honda Accord beside her, and he watched the john drive off. The hooker smoked another cigarette. Strange’s stomach rumbled, as he thought about AV, his favorite sit-down Italian restaurant, just around the corner on Mass. Hungry as usual, and having just eaten, too.

A black late-model Chevy rolled down 7th, slowed, and came to a stop near where the hooker stood. Strange leaned against the corner of the fence, brought the zoom in so the car was framed and clear, and shot some tape. Cigarette smoke came out of the driver’s side of the car as the john rolled his window down. The hooker rested her forearms on the lip of the open window. She shook her head, and Strange could hear male laughter before the car drove off. The car wore D.C. plates. It was an Impala, the new body style that Strange didn’t care for.

He waited. The Impala came out of the north once again, having circled the block. The driver stopped the vehicle in the same spot he had minutes earlier. The hooker hesitated, looked around, walked over to the driver’s side but this time did not lean into the car. She seemed to be listening for a while, her face going from passivity to agitation and then to something like fear. Strange heard the laughter again. Then the driver laid some rubber on the street and took off. The hooker flipped him off, but only after the car had turned the corner and was gone from sight.

Strange wrote down the Impala’s license plate number on the notepad he had placed in the breast pocket of his shirt. He didn’t need to record it, not really; he had memorized the number at first sight, a talent that he had always possessed and that had served him well when he had worn the uniform on the street.

Anyway, the two letters that preceded the numbers on the plate had told him everything he needed to know. Bagley and Tracy must have known it, too. They had put him onto this, he reasoned, as some kind of test. He wasn’t angry. It was just a job.

The letters on the plate read GT. Plainclothes, undercover, whatever you wanted to call it. The abusive john was a cop.