George Pelecanos - Hell To Pay

“I haven’t been interested in anyone in a long time.” Tracy took a drag off her smoke and ashed the tray. “Now you. Ask me anything you want.”

“Okay. First day I met you, I had the impression you had some daddy issues.”

“You’re wrong,” said Tracy, shaking her head. “Not like you mean. I loved my father and he loved me. I never felt I had to prove anything to him. He was always proud of me. I know ’cause he told me. He even told me the last time I saw him, in his bed at the hospice.”

“Was he a cop?”

“No. He did come from a family of them, but it wasn’t something he wanted for himself. He was a career barman at the Mayflower Hotel, downtown.”

“They’re all, like, Asian guys behind the bar down there.”

“That’s now. Frank Tracy was all Irish. Irish Catholic. Just like you, Quinn.”

“And you.”

“Not quite. The Tracy part of me is. My mother was Scandinavian, where I got the name Susan and my blond hair.”

“You’re a natural blonde?”

“Don’t be rude.”

“I was just wondering.”

Tracy smiled. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“You are something,” said Quinn.

They undressed each other back in his room, standing face to face before the bed. She helped him off with his T-shirt and then slipped out of her slacks, leaving on her black lace panties. They were cut high, and her thigh muscles were ripped up to the fabric. He unbuttoned her shirt and peeled it back off her strong shoulders. She wore a black brassiere that fastened in the front. He unfastened it and let it drop to the floor. He pinched one of her pink nipples and flicked his tongue around it.

“These are nice,” said Quinn.

“I’ve been told.”

He swallowed. “I mean it, baby.”

“They hold my bra up,” said Tracy.

Quinn chuckled and kissed her lips. He got down to his knees and drew her panties down and kissed her sex. He blew on her pubis and kissed her there and split her with his tongue. Her fingers dug into his shoulder until it hurt. He sucked her flesh into his mouth and tasted her silk and she came standing there.

They moved to the bed and fucked on the edge of it, Quinn on top. His orgasm was like a punch in the heart. They talked for a while and took a shower and fucked again. Quinn lay beside Tracy and they looked at each other for a long time without speaking. He watched her eyelids slowly drop. In sleep she had a small smile.

Quinn got out of bed and walked to the window. It was late, nearly four. The street was still. A cop car from the station up the street blew down Sligo Avenue and was gone. He wondered if the guy was on a call, or if he was just driving fast, looking for the next piece of action. He wondered if he was that kind of cop, the kind Quinn had been.

It had happened fast with Tracy. He knew it would when he’d met her the first time, in the coffee shop. It had been simple, as simple as her uttering those few words. Irish Catholic. Just like you, Quinn . Nothing much needed to be said between them after that, as all was understood. There was her father, as much a part of her as the blood in her veins, and now him, equally familiar. He wondered, as he often did, if it wasn’t more natural for people to stick with their own kind. Well, anyway, it was easier. Of this he was sure.

Tracy had been a cop, too, just like him. With her, he didn’t have to pretend that he didn’t care about the action, that he didn’t crave it all the time. There wouldn’t be any of that bullshit fronting, the mask he’d felt he had to wear when he was with other women. In that way, they were good for each other. She took him for who he was.

Quinn stood there looking out the window to the darkened street, picturing Wilson in that trick-house, seeing that gold-capped smile and hearing his smooth baritone and trying to forget. Trying to figure out where he was headed with this problem of his. Trying to figure out, himself, who he was. Who he was and where it would take him in the end.

ON Saturday morning the team gathered at Roosevelt High School for a roster check. Strange and Blue wanted to be sure the kids were outfitted with the proper pads and mouthpieces, so that there would be no surprises before game time or injuries on the field of play. When they were done checking on those details, the kids got into the cars of the coaches and the usual group of parents and guardians and drove across town and over the river to the state of Virginia, where the Petworth Panthers’ first game was to be played.

Their destination was a huge park and sports complex in Springfield that held tennis and basketball courts, picnic areas, and several soccer and football fields. A creek ran through the woods bordering the property. Complexes like this one were typical and numerous in the suburbs, especially farther out, where there was land and money. The kids from the Panthers had rarely seen playing fields as carefully tended as these, or sports parks situated in such lush surroundings.

“Dag, boy,” said Joe Wilder, his eyes wide, “this joint is tight; check out those lights they got!”

“Look at thoth uniforms,” said Prince, pointing to a team warming up on a perfect green field, with big blue star decals on their helmets. “They look just like the Cowboys!”

The kids were on a path between the road and the field, alongside a split-rail fence. Strange, Blue, Lionel Baker, Lamar Williams, Dennis Arrington, and Quinn were walking among them. Rico, the cocky running back, was telling the quarterback, Dante Morris, what he was going to do to the opposing team’s line, and Morris was nodding, not really listening to Rico but keeping quietly to himself. Later, just before the first whistle, Morris would say a silent prayer.

There were several teams on and around the two main fields. Many had their own cheerleading squads and booster clubs. A game was ending on one of the fields. As the Panthers went through an open chain-link gate, they passed a group of boys in clean red-and-white uniforms, decked out in high-tech equipment, their gleaming helmets held at their sides.

“Y’all the Cardinals?” said Joe Wilder.

“Yeah,” said one of the boys, mousse in his studiously disheveled hair, looking down on Wilder and looking him over.

“We’re playin’ y’all,” said Wilder.

“In those uniforms?” said the kid, and the Cardinal next to him, pug nosed and with an expensive haircut like his friend, laughed.

“What, did you find those in the trash or somethin’?” said pug nose.

Wilder looked over at Dante Morris, who shook his head, Wilder taking it to mean, correctly, that Morris was telling him to keep his mouth shut. Rico took a step toward the two Cardinals, but Morris pulled on his sleeve and held him back.

Strange, who had heard the exchange and seen this kind of thing before, said, “C’mon, boys, you follow me.”

The Cardinals were a team of white kids and the Panthers were all black. But it wasn’t a white-black thing. It was a money-no money thing, a way for those who had it to show superiority over those who did not. Plain old insecurity, as old as time itself.

Blue checked in the team rosters to a guy in a Redskins cap whom he knew to be the point man for the league, then met Arrington, Lionel, and the Midgets for their pregame warm-ups. Strange and Quinn led the Pee Wees under the shade of a stand of oaks beside the main stadium and had them form a circle. Strange told Joe Wilder and Dante Morris, the designated captains, to lead the team in calisthenics. Lamar Williams stood by and made sure that they kept the circle tight.

“How y’all feel?”

“Fired up! ”

“How y’all feel?”