George Pelecanos - Hell To Pay

Strange went back to his place, hit the heavy bag in his basement, showered, fed Greco, and got on the Internet, reading the comments on a stock chat room while he listened to the Duck, You Sucker sound track he had recently purchased as an import.

“See you later, good boy,” said Strange, patting Greco on the head before he headed out the door. “Gotta get over to Roosevelt.”

THEY ran the team hard that night, as their game was coming up and the night-before practice would be light. The kids looked good. They weren’t making many mistakes, and they had their wind. The Midgets were in numbers on one side of the field with Lydell Blue, Dennis Arrington, and Lamar Williams, and the Pee Wees occupied the other. Near dark, after the drills, Strange called the Pee Wees in and told them it was time to run some plays. Strange took the offense aside as Quinn gathered the defensive unit.

The offensive huddle broke and went to the line. Dante Morris took the snap from Prince on the second “go” and handed off to Rico, who hit the five-hole off a Joe Wilder block, broke free from a one-handed tackle attempt, and was finally taken down twenty yards down the field.

Quinn took the kid who had missed the tackle aside. “None of this one-handed-tackle stuff. You can’t just put your arm out and say, Please, God, let him fall down. It doesn’t work that way, you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Hit him in the stomach. Wrap him up and lock your hands.”

The kid nodded. Quinn tapped him on the helmet with his palm, and the kid trotted back to the defensive huddle.

Joe Wilder slowed down as he passed Strange on the way to the offensive huddle. “Forty-four Belly, Coach Derek?”

“Run it,” said Strange. “And nice block there, Joe.”

Wilder ran the play into Dante Morris, who called it on one. It was a goal-line play, a simple flanker run direct through the four-hole. Wilder executed it perfectly and took the ball into the end zone. He did the dirty bird for his teammates and jogged back to Strange, a spring in his step.

“I be doin’ that on FedEx Field someday, Coach Derek.”

“It’s I will be doing that,” said Strange, who then smiled, thinking, I believe you will.

After practice, Strange talked with Blue awhile, then caught Quinn getting into his Chevelle.

“Where you off to so fast, Terry?”

“Got plans tonight.”

“A woman?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought you were gonna try and close that Jennifer Marshall thing tonight.”

“I am,” said Quinn. “I’ll let you know how it pans out.”

Prince, Lamar, and Joe Wilder were standing by Strange’s Brougham. He put his football file into the trunk, let them in the car, and drove off the school grounds.

Strange turned up Prince’s street, not far from the football field.

“There go my houth right there,” said Prince.

“I know it,” said Strange, stopping the car. “Get in their straight away, boy, don’t make no detours. Those boys on that corner over there, they try to crack on you, you ignore ’em, hear?”

Prince nodded and got out of the car. He went quickly up the steps to his place, where the light on the porch had been left on.

As they drove south on Georgia, Joe Wilder held two action figures in his hand. He was making collision sounds as he pushed their rubber heads together like warring rams.

“I thought those two was friends,” said Lamar, sitting beside Wilder.

“Uh-uh, man, Triple H be the Rock’s enemy . H is married to the commissioner’s daughter.” Joe Wilder looked up at Lamar. “Will you come inside and watch it with me tonight?”

“Okay,” said Lamar. “I’ll watch it with you some.”

After Strange dropped them off, he popped a tape into the dash, a Stevie Wonder mix Janine had made him. Kids sat on the wall and dead-eyed him as he passed through the exit to the housing complex, Stevie singing “Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away” from the deck. Strange couldn’t help thinking how beautiful the song was. Thinking, too, how for those who’d been born in the wrong place through no fault of their own, how sad that it was true.

SUE Tracy picked up Terry Quinn at his apartment somewhere past ten o’clock that night. She stood in the doorway of his place while he shook himself into a waist-length black leather jacket over a white T-shirt. As he did this he blocked her way, his body language telling her to come no further. She watched him fumble his badge case into one jacket pocket and his cell into the other. Clearly he was anxious to slip out before she had a chance to get a good look at his crib. But Tracy had taken in enough to know that there was nothing much to see.

They walked out of the squat, three-story brick building, toward an old gray Econoline van parked on Sligo Avenue.

“Hey, Mark,” said Terry to a mixed-race teenage boy standing with a group of boys his age outside a beer-and-cigarette market on the corner.

“Wha’sup,” said the boy, not really looking at Quinn, muttering the greeting in a grudging, dutiful way.

Tracy stopped to light a cigarette. She dropped the spent match to the ground and exhaled smoke out the side of her mouth. “Kid really likes you, Terry.”

“He does like me. It’s just, you know, the code. He can’t act like we’re friends when he’s hanging with his boys, you know what I’m sayin’? I have this gym set up in the basement of the building; I let some of these neighborhood guys work out with me, long as they show me and the equipment respect.”

They stood by the van, Tracy finishing her cigarette before getting in, Quinn letting her without comment.

“And you coach a football team, too.”

“I kinda help out, is all.”

“You’re not so tough, Terry.”

“It’s a way to kill time.”

“Sure.” Tracy ground out her cigarette. “Where to first?”

“We’ll pick up Stella. I got it all set up.”

The van dated back to the 1970s. It had front and rear bench seats and little else. The three-speed manual shift was a branch coming off the trunk of the steering wheel. A tape deck had been mounted where the AM radio had been, its faceplate loose, its wires exposed and swinging below the dash.

“I bet you only fly first class, too,” said Quinn.

“It was a donation,” said Tracy.

She wore a black nylon jacket over a black button-down blouse tucked into slate gray utilitarian slacks. She found a gray Scunci in her jacket pocket, put it in her mouth while she gathered her hair behind her, and formed a ponytail. The Scunci picked up the gray of the slacks. She pulled a pair of eyeglasses with black rectangular frames from the sun visor and slipped them on her face.

“Cool.”

“This van? Bet there’s a bong around here somewhere, too, if you’re interested.”

“I was talking about your glasses.”

“They’ll keep us from getting killed. My night vision is for shit.”

They drove down into Northwest, cutting into Rock Creek Park at 16th and Sherrill and heading south. Tracy slipped a Mazzy Star compilation tape into the deck. Chicks and their chick music, thought Quinn, but this was guitar driven and pretty nice.

They didn’t talk much on the ride into town. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Quinn didn’t feel like he did around most women, like he had to explain who he was, why he’d chosen the path he’d taken, the one that had put him on the way to becoming a cop. The singer’s voice, breathy but unforced, was relaxing him, and arousing him, too. He looked over at Tracy, at the tendons in her neck, the elegant cut of her jaw as it neared her ear.

“What?” said Tracy.

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring at me again, Terry.”

“Sorry,” said Quinn. “I was just thinking.”