George Pelecanos - Hell To Pay

“Lorenze have many enemies when you two were hangin’ together back then?”

“Back then? I guess he did. He had this way about him, right? But if you’re askin’ me, Did he have enemies lately, or, Do I know who killed him? The answer is, I don’t know.”

“Y’all didn’t swing in the same circles,” said Strange.

“Like I said: not for a long time.”

“You use drugs, Walter?”

Lee’s eyes, directly on Strange, narrowed, and he lowered his voice. “This ain’t right. You know this ain’t right. Comin’ up in here to a black man’s workplace and tryin’ to sweat him.”

“ If you do drugs,” said Strange, plowing ahead, “and if you cop from the same people, then maybe you know who Lorenze owed. ’Cause it could’ve been a drug debt got him doomed.”

“Look. I haven’t been usin’ any kind of drugs for a long time. Back in the eighties, yeah, I had a little problem with powder. Lotta people did. But I found my way out of it, see-”

“Let’s get back to Lorenze.”

“No, you’re gonna let me finish. I found my way out of it. This isn’t the only job I have. I got a night job, too. I been holdin’ two jobs down now for the last ten years, and all the time doin’ it straight. Takin’ care of my little girl, raising her right.”

“All right,” said Strange. “You’re so far away from all that, why’d you go to Lorenze’s wake, then?”

“Because I’m a Christian. I went to say a prayer for my old friend. To pay my respects. Even you can understand that, right?”

“Did Lorenze still hang with some of the old crowd that you know?”

Lee relaxed his shoulders. It seemed he’d given up on reaching Strange’s human side and now he just wanted this done. “Most of them grew up and moved on. A couple of them passed.”

“Sequan Hawkins? Ed Diggs?”

“I haven’t seen Sequan, so I don’t know. Digger Dog? He’s still around.”

“That’s Diggs’s street name?”

Lee nodded. “I saw him at the funeral home. He’s still livin’ over there with his grandmother. He looks older, but the same, you know? He always was Lorenze’s main boy.”

“Thanks for your time,” said Quinn.

“That it?” said Lee, his eyes still locked on Strange.

“That’ll do it,” said Strange. “We need you, I expect we can find you here.”

Strange and Quinn walked toward the entrance to the store. They passed a white guy in a maroon shirt, small, with a belly and patches of hair framing a bald top, trying to calm an angry customer. The manager, thought Strange.

Out in the lot, Quinn glanced over at Strange on the way to the car. “You were kinda rough on him, weren’t you?”

Strange stared straight ahead. “We got no time to be nice.”

They drove out toward Potomac in Strange’s white Caprice. Strange made a cell call to see if Sequan Hawkins was at his job. Then he phoned the office and got Janine. Quinn sipped coffee from a go-cup and listened to their short, businesslike conversation. Strange made another call, left a message on the machine at Lamar Williams’s apartment, and left Lamar the number to his cell.

“What’s going on?” said Quinn.

“Lamar’s been trying to get up with me. Janine said he told her it was important.”

“Well?”

“He’s got his classes right now. I’ll get him later.”

“Any idea what he wants?”

“These boys rolled up on him a while back in Park Morton, lookin’ for Joe’s mother? Pretty sure it’s the same hard cases I saw up at Roosevelt one night at practice. They were huntin’ Lorenze, I’m certain of it now. Bet you they ain’t nothin’ but neighborhood boys, too. Maybe Lamar found out something more.”

“If they’re stupid enough to stay in the neighborhood, it won’t be long until someone turns them in.”

“You’re right. If it doesn’t happen today, it’ll happen tomorrow, if you know what I mean. The police are gonna get those boys soon enough.”

“What if we find them first?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet, Terry. To tell you the truth, right now I’m just goin’ on blind rage.”

Strange kept the needle above eighty on the Beltway. Quinn didn’t comment on the speed. He blew the steam off his coffee and took a long pull from the cup.

“You and Janine got some problems, huh?” said Quinn.

“Guess you heard that in my tone.”

“You two gonna make it?”

“Haven’t figured that one out yet, either,” said Strange. “Anyway, it’s not up to me.”

Strange parked the Caprice in the lot of Montgomery Mall, near an upscale retailer that anchored the shopping center. In contrast to Westfield, the parking lot here was clean, and the multiethnic people walking from their luxury cars and SUVs to the mall might as well have had dollar signs stamped right on their foreheads.

Strange and Quinn went up to the second floor of the department store. The sound of piano met them as they reached the top of the stairs. A man in a tuxedo played the keys of a Steinway set near the escalators adjacent to a menswear section and a large layout of men’s shoes. Middle-aged white men wearing pressed jeans and sweaters strolled the aisles. Strange wondered what they were doing here on a Monday, why they weren’t at work. Living off the interest, he reckoned.

They walked along the display tables of shoes. Several well-dressed salesmen eyed them as they passed.

“You need any kicks?” said Strange.

“I got a wide foot,” said Quinn, “and it’s hard to fit. There’s this salesman, though, at Mean Feets, down in Georgetown? Says he can fit me. Dude named Antoine.”

“Skinny cat, right? Always standin’ outside in the doorway there, hittin’ a cigarette.”

“That’s him.”

“I know him. They call him Spiderman.”

“You know everyone in town?”

“Not yet,” said Strange. “But it’s a long life.”

To the side of the shoe department was a shoe-shine stand, where a kneeling man in suspenders was buffing the cap-toes of a suited white man sitting in a chair above him, up on a kind of elevated platform.

Strange and Quinn waited in an alcove-type area beside the stand. They could hear the white man talking to the shoe-shine man about the Redskins/Ravens game, praising only the black players. They could hear the white man ending his sentences with “man” and they could hear him dropping his g’s, talking in a way that he thought would endear him to the black man kneeling at his feet. Talking in a way he would never talk at work and in a way he would forbid his children from talking at the dinner table at home. Strange looked over at Quinn, and Quinn looked away.

Soon the white man left, and they went out to the stand, where the shoe shiner was straightening the tools of his trade.

“Sequan Hawkins?” said Strange, getting a short nod in return. “I’m Derek Strange, and this is Terry Quinn, my partner. We phoned you a little while ago.”

Hawkins rubbed his hands clean with a rag that smelled of nail polish remover. He was a handsome, well-built man with a light sheen to his close-cropped hair and a careful hint of a mustache.

“Come on around here,” said Hawkins, indicating with his chin the alcove where they had stood.

They went back to the alcove and Strange said, “This is about Lorenze Wilder, like I explained.”

“Let me see some identification, you don’t mind,” said Hawkins.

Strange flipped open his leather case and produced his badge and license. Hawkins’s mouth turned up on the right, a lopsided grin.

“You two are, like, cops.”

“Investigators, D.C.,” said Strange. “We knew the young man who was murdered alongside Lorenze.”