George Pelecanos: Hell To Pay

“We’ll be gettin’ rid of it soon,” said Potter. “And anyway, it ain’t all that funny as y’all are makin’ it out to be.”

“Yeah, you right. It just hit me funny, is all.” Little took the blunt that White handed to him over the front seat and stared at it stupidly. “I ain’t lyin’, boy, this chronic right here just laid my ass out.”

THE dogfights were held in a large garage backing to an alley behind a house on Ogelthorpe, in Manor Park in Northwest. The fights went down once a week for several hours during the day, when most of the neighbors were off at work. Those neighbors who were at home were afraid of the young men who came to the fights, and did not complain to the police.

Potter parked the Chevy in the alley. He and the others got out of the car, White heeling Trooper to his side. They went down the alley, nodding but not smiling at some young men they knew to be members of the Delafield Mob. Others were standing around, holding their animals, getting high, and drinking from the lips of bottles peeking through the tops of brown paper bags. Little and Wright followed Potter into the garage.

Ten to twenty young men were scattered about the perimeter of the garage. A group was shooting craps in the corner. Others were passing around joints. Someone had put on Dr. Dre 2001 , with Snoop, Eminem, and all them, and it was coming loud from a box.

In the middle of the garage was a fighting area of industrial carpet, penned off from the rest of the interior by a low chain-link fence, gated in two corners. Inside one corner of the pen, a man held a link leash taut on a black pit bull spotted brown over its belly and chest. The dog’s name was Diesel. Its ears were gnarled and its neck showed raised scars like pink worms.

Potter studied a man, old for this group, maybe thirty or so, who stood alone in a corner, putting fire to a cigarette.

“I’ll be back in a few,” said Potter to Little.

“’Bout ready to show the dogs,” said Little.

“Got a mind to put money on that black dog. But go ahead and bet Trooper, hear?”

“Three hunrid?”

“Three’s good.”

Potter made his way over to the cigarette smoker, short and dumpy, a raggedy-ass dude on the way down, and stood before him.

“ I know you.”

The smoker looked up with lazy eyes, trying to hold on to his shit. “Yeah?”

“You run with Lorenze Wilder, right?”

“I seen him around. Don’t mean we run together or nothin’ like that.” But now the smoker recognized Potter and he lost his will to keep his pride. His eyes dropped to the concrete floor.

“Outside,” said Potter.

The older man followed Potter into the daylight, not too fast but without protest. Potter led him around the garage’s outer wall, which faced the neighboring yards to the west.

“What’s your name?”

“Edward Diggs.”

“Call you Digger Dog, right?”

“Some do.”

“Lorenze called you that when we sold him that hydro a few weeks back. You were standing right next to him. Remember me now?”

Diggs said nothing, and Potter moved forward so that he was looking down on Diggs and just a few inches from his face. Diggs’s back touched the garage wall.

“So where your boy Lorenze at?”

“I don’t know. He stays in his mother’s old house -”

“Over off North Dakota. I know where that is, and he ain’t been there awhile. Leastways, I ain’t caught him in. He got a woman he cribs with on the side?”

Diggs avoided Potter’s stare. “Not that I know.”

“What about other kin?”

Diggs took a long final drag off his cigarette and dropped it to the ground, crushing it beneath his sneaker. He looked to his right, out in the alley, but there was no one there. Everyone had gone inside the garage. Potter spread one tail on his shirt and draped it back behind the butt of the Colt, so that Diggs could see.

Diggs shifted his eyes again and lowered his voice. He had to give this boy something, just so he’d go away. “Lorenze got a sister. She be livin’ down in Park Morton with her little boy.”

“Maybe I’ll drop by. What’s her name?”

“I wouldn’t… What I’m sayin’ is, you want my advice-”

Potter open-handed Diggs across the face. He used his left hand to bunch Diggs’s shirt at the collar, then yanked Diggs forward and slapped him again.

Diggs said nothing, his body limp. Potter held him fast.

“What’s the sister’s name?”

Diggs’s eyes had teared up. He hated himself for that. All he meant to do was advise this boy, tell him, don’t fuck with Lorenze’s sister or her kid. But it was too late for all that now.

“I don’t know her name,” said Diggs. “And anyway, Lorenze, he don’t never go by the way or nothin’. He don’t talk to his sister much, way I understand it. Sometimes he watches her kid play football; boy’s on this tackle team. But that’s as close as he gets to her.”

“Where the kid play at?”

“Lorenze said the kid practices in the evenings at some high school.”

“Which school?”

“He live in Park Morton, so it must be Roosevelt. It ain’t but a few blocks up the street there-”

“I ain’t asked you for directions, did I? I live up on Warder Street my own self, so you don’t need to be drawin’ me a map.”

“It ain’t too far from there, is all I was sayin’.”

Potter’s eyes softened. He smiled and released his grip on Diggs. “I didn’t hurt you none, did I? ’Cause, look, I didn’t mean nothin’, hear?”

Diggs straightened his collar. “I’m all right.”

“Let me get one of those cigarettes from you, black.”

Diggs reached into his breast pocket and retrieved his pack of Kools. A cigarette slid out into his palm. He handed the cigarette to Potter.

Potter snapped the cigarette in half and bounced the halves off Diggs’s chest. Potter’s laugh was like a bark. He turned and walked away.

Diggs straightened his shirt and stepped quickly down the alley. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Potter had turned the corner. Diggs reached into his pocket and shook another cigarette out from a hole he had torn in the bottom of the pack.

Diggs’s boy Lorenze was staying with this girl he knew over in Northeast. Lorenze had kind of laughed it off, said he’d crib with that girl until Potter forgot about the debt. Didn’t look to Diggs that Potter was the type to forget. But he was proud he hadn’t given Lorenze up. Most folks he knew didn’t credit him for being so strong.

Diggs struck a match. He noticed that his hand was shaking some as he fired up his cigarette.

BACK in the garage, Potter sidled up next to Little. The owner of the garage, also the house bookie, stood nearby, holding the cash and taking late bets.

In one corner of the pen, Charles White finished sponging Trooper down with warm, soapy water. Diesel’s owner, in the opposite corner, did the same. Many dogs were treated with chemicals that could disorient the opponent. The rule in this arena was that both dogs had to be washed prior to a fight.

White scratched the top of Trooper’s head, bent in, and uttered random words into his ear with a soothing tone. The referee, an obese young man, stepped into the ring after a nod from the owner of the garage.

“Both corners ready?” said the referee. “Cornermen out of the pit.”

White moved behind his dog into the space of the open gate, still holding Trooper back.

“Face your dogs,” said the referee. They did this, and quickly the referee said, “Let go!”

The dogs shot into the center of the pit. Both of them got up on their hind legs, attacking the head of the other with their jaws. They snapped at each other’s ears and sought purchase in the area of the neck. In the fury of their battle, the dogs did not make a sound. The garage echoed with the shouts and laughter of the spectators crowding the ring.