George Pelecanos - Hell To Pay

“You got something against progress?”

“Progress? You mean the privilege of paying five bucks for a tomato at our new designer supermarket, just like all those suckers on the other side of town? Is that the kind of progress you’re talking about?”

“You can always stick to Safeway.”

“Look, I grew up here. I know a lot of these shop owners; they’ve made a life here and they won’t be able to afford it when the landlords up the square-foot price. And where are all these working people who live in the apartments going to go when their rents skyrocket?”

“I guess it’s great if you own real estate.”

“I don’t own a house, so I couldn’t really give a rat’s ass if the property values go up. I walk through this city and every week something changes, you know? So maybe you can understand how I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about it, man. I mean, they’re killing my past, one day at a time.”

“You sound like my father.”

“What about him?”

“He thinks that way, too, is all.” Tracy looked Quinn over, held it just a second too long, so that he could see her doing it, and then reached down to get something from the leather case at her feet.

He was still looking at her when she came back up, holding some papers in her hands. She wore a scoop-neck white pullover with no accoutrements, tucked into a pair of gray blue slacks that looked like work pants but were probably expensive, meant to look utilitarian. Her breasts rode high in her shirt, its whiteness set off by her tanned arms. Black Skechers, oxfords with white stitching, were on her feet. Her blond hair was pulled back, held in place by a blue gray Scunci, with a stray rope of blond falling forward over one cheek. He wondered if she had planned it to fall out that way.

Quinn wore a plain white T-shirt tucked into Levi’s jeans.

“What?” said Tracy.

“Nothing.”

“You were staring at me.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t know why I mentioned my father.”

“I don’t either. Let’s get to work, okay?”

Tracy handed Quinn a stack of flyers exactly like the one Strange had given him the night before. “You might need more of these. We’ve got ’em posted around town, but they get ripped down pretty quick.”

Quinn picked up the Paper Mate sitting atop the notepad he had brought along with him. “What else can you tell me about her?”

Tracy pushed another sheet of paper across the table at Quinn. “Jennifer ran away from her home in Germantown several months ago.”

Quinn scanned the page. “This doesn’t say why.”

“She hit her teens and the hormones kicked in. Add to that, the kids she was hanging with were using drugs. It’s the usual story, not so different from most that we hear. From interviews we did with her friends out in the county, it sounds like she started hooking before she split.”

“In the outer suburbs?”

“What, you think that part of the world is immune to it? It starts out, girl will take a ride with an older guy and fellate him so she can buy a night of getting high for her and her friends. Or maybe she lets herself get penetrated, vaginally or even anally, for a little more cash. She doesn’t get beat up or ripped up those first couple of times – she doesn’t learn something, I mean – it accelerates pretty quickly after that. It gets easy.”

“She’s only fourteen.”

“I’m hip.”

“Okay, so she leaves Germantown. What makes you think she’s in the District?”

“Her friends again. She told them where she was going. But they haven’t heard from her since.”

“You said she was using drugs. What kind?”

“Ecstasy was her favorite, what we heard. But she’d use anything that was put in front of her, if you know what I mean.”

“Anything else?”

“We haven’t done a thing except interview her parents and a few of her friends. Like we told Derek, we’re up to our ears in county business right now. That’s why we were looking to hook up with you guys for the D.C. side of things. My partner wanted to meet you, but she’s out rounding up a girl she found as we speak.”

“Rounding up?”

“Basically, we yank ’em right off the street when we find them. We’ve got this van, no windows-”

“This legal, what you do?”

“As long as they’re minors, yeah. They have no domain over themselves, and if the parents sign a permission form for us to go after them it’s all straight. If there are any repercussions, we deal with it later. We work with some lawyers, pro bono. Basically, we’re out to save these kids.”

“That’s nice. But this work here, Derek didn’t say anything about it being pro bono. And on top of our hourly rate, I’m gonna need expense money.”

“Keep detailed records and you got it.”

“It could get rich.”

“We’re covered by the APIP people.”

“They must have some deep pockets.”

“Grant money.”

“Because I got a feeling I’m going to have to pay some people to talk.”

“Okay. But I’m still going to need those details.”

Tracy’s hand kept going into a large leather bag set on the table. She had been fondling something inside of it, then removing her hand, then putting it back in again.

“What’ve you got in there?”

“My cigarettes.”

“Well, you might as well stop romancing that pack. You can’t light up in here.”

“You can’t light up anywhere,” she said, adding by way of explanation, “It’s the coffee.”

“Gives you that urge, huh?” Quinn reached into a pocket and dropped a pack of sugarless gum between them. “Try this.”

“No, thanks.”

“We’ll be done in a minute, you can step outside.” Quinn tapped his pen on the notepad. “The one thing I’m wondering is, a girl runs away from home, there’s got to be good reason. It can’t just be galloping hormones and drugged-out friends.”

“Sometimes there’s an abusive parent involved in the equation, if that’s what you’re getting at. Emotional or physical or sexual abuse, or a combination of the three. Part of what me and Karen do is, we spend considerable time in the home, trying to figure out if that’s the best place for the kid to go back to. And sometimes the home’s not the best environment. But you’re wrong about one thing: It often is just hormones and peers, and accelerating events, that make a kid run away. With Jennifer, we’re convinced that’s the case.”

“Where do you suggest I start?”

“Start with stakeouts, like we do. The Wheaton mall, it’s near D.C. and it’s been good for us before. The overground rave clubs, trance, jungle, whatever they’re calling it this week. The ones play a mix of live and prerecorded stuff. What’s that place, in Southeast, on Half Street?”

“Nation.”

“That one. Platinum is good, too, over on Ninth and F.”

“I don’t like stakeouts. I’d rather get out there and start talking to people.”

“No one likes stakeouts. But suit yourself, whatever works for you.”

“Anything else?”

“Just in general terms. White-girl runaways tend to start out in far Northwest, where they’re around a familiar environment.”

“Other white kids.”

“Right. Places like Georgetown. They get hooked into drugs in a bigger way, they get taken in by a pimp-”

“They move east.”

Tracy nodded. “It’s gradual, and inevitable. Last stop is those New York Avenue flophouses in Northeast. You don’t even want to know what goes on in those places.”

“I already know. I was a patrol cop in the District, remember?”

Tracy turned her coffee cup slowly on the table. “Not just any cop.”

“That’s right. I was famous.”