George Pelecanos - Hell To Pay

“Meet Ed Diggs,” said Quinn.

“Ed,” said Strange, and as Strange reached him he threw a deep right into Diggs’s mouth and knocked him back over the chair. Diggs slid on the linoleum and stopped sliding when the back of his head hit the kitchen cabinet beneath the sink. Strange yanked him up by his T-shirt, kept his left hand bunched on the T, and hit him with a short, sharp right to the same spot. Diggs’s neck snapped back and his eyes fluttered. His eyes came back, and he stared up at Strange as blood flowed over his lower lip and dripped onto his shirt. Strange released him and Diggs dropped to the floor. Diggs staggered back up to his feet.

“We tell you to stand?” Quinn righted the chair. “ Sit your ass down.”

Strange pulled a chair over so it faced the one Diggs had been sitting on. He and Quinn listened to Diggs mumble and moan, and they waited for him to slouch across the room. Strange had split Diggs’s lip wide, and blood came freely now from the cut.

Diggs sat down dead eyed, his shoulders slouched. Strange reached under his shirt and pulled the.45.

“Nah,” said Diggs in the voice of a boy. “Uh-uh, man, nah, uh- uh .”

“Who killed Lorenze?” said Strange.

“I don’t know who did that.” His diction was sloppy and wet.

“Somebody was huntin’ him. Was it a drug debt?”

“I don’t know.”

Strange racked the receiver on the Colt.

“Why you want to do that, brother? I told you I don’t know.”

Strange got up out of his chair and with his free hand flat-palmed Diggs’s chest. Diggs and the chair toppled back to the floor. Diggs grunted, and Strange crouched over him and forced the barrel of the.45 into his mouth.

“ You know,” said Strange. He withdrew the barrel, touched it gently to the corner of Diggs’s right eye, and then pressed it there with force.

“They’ll kill me,” said Diggs.

“ Look at me, Ed. I’m gonna kill you right now, I swear to God.”

“Derek,” said Quinn. It wasn’t part of the act. Strange’s eyes had long since veered from the script.

“ Look at me, Ed.”

Diggs did look. His lip quivered and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again a tear sprung loose and ran fast down his cheek.

“Lorenze,” said Diggs, “he owed money to this boy for some hydro he copped. I was there when Lorenze bought it. He was gonna pay this boy in his own time… Wasn’t nothin’ but a hunrid dollars. Boy stepped to me at a dogfight back by Ogelthorpe; I could tell he was serious. I mean, that boy had nothin’ in his eyes.”

“What’d this boy look like?”

“Tall and slim, light skinned, had this crazy smile.”

“He had partners, right?”

“The ones he came with to the fight. Boy with cornrows and show muscles. ’Nother kid, one with the dog, boy had this funny-lookin’ nose and shit.”

“The main one, he say his name?”

“Garfield Potter.”

“You know where he stays at?”

“He said he was up on Warder Street, near Roosevelt.”

“What else you know?”

“Nothin’ else.” Diggs blinked hard. “You just doomed me, man. Don’t you care nothin’ about that?”

Strange slipped the Colt back under his shirt as he stood.

“Don’t speak of this,” said Strange. “Tell your grandmother you got jumped out on the street. Tell her you fell down and bounced a few times or anything you want. But don’t tell her it was us came back. It’s over for you, hear? You’ll be fine.”

They left him lying on the kitchen floor and walked out the back door of the house and to the alley.

Strange handed Quinn his gun. Quinn slipped it into his waistband and side-glanced Strange.

“You got some anger management issues you need to work on, Derek. You know it?”

“My anger’s been working pretty good for me today so far.”

“Thought you were gonna use the forty-five for a second back there.”

“Couldn’t have used it if I wanted to. I emptied the magazine before I came to the house.”

“That gun felt too good in your hand, didn’t it?”

“Scared me how good it felt,” said Strange. “Your bullets are in the ashtray, back in the car.”

ON the way to the Caprice, Strange answered his cell. He continued his conversation with Janine as he got under the wheel of the car. Quinn slipped the.45 back under the seat. As Strange listened to his call, writing in his notebook, Quinn’s cell chirped. He answered, got out of the Chevy, and leaned against the rear quarter panel as he took the call.

Strange waited for Quinn to get back inside. He noticed that some of the color had drained from Quinn’s face.

“Janine got me a name and address on that boy Lamar saw,” said Strange. “Charles White. And guess what? His credit record shows his last address is up on Warder Street. I bet you he was the only one of the three qualified to sign for the utilities. She got me the phone number there, too.”

“Guess you got enough to call Lydell,” said Quinn, his eyes showing he was somewhere else. “Time to send in the troops.”

“I’m not ready to do that yet,” said Strange, watching Quinn’s stare go out the window. “Terry, you all right?”

“I just got a call from the MPD. They got a girl down in the ER at Washington Hospital Center, she’s all fucked up. Beaten close to death. It’s an informant of mine, helped me on that snatch I did. She gave my name as the first contact. Girl named Stella.”

“You want to go there, then go. I can drop you at the hospital and pick this up my own self from here.”

“All right,” said Quinn. “Let’s go.”

Quinn phoned Sue Tracy as Strange turned off Georgia Avenue and headed east on Irving Street. Strange entered the complex of hospital buildings five minutes later and stopped the Caprice near the heliport adjacent to the ER entrance. Quinn opened his door and put one foot to the asphalt. He turned and shook Strange’s hand.

“Don’t do anything without me, Derek.”

“I won’t,” said Strange.

Even as he said this, Strange was weighing a plan. It went against most everything he believed in. Still, he couldn’t shake it from his mind.

QUINN went directly past the check-in desk, through the waiting area, and into the treatment facility. A security guard stopped him and walked him over to a plainclothes MPD cop who wore a black mustache. He held a go-cup of coffee in his thin, veined hand.

“You got a minute to talk?” said the cop.

“After I see the girl,” said Quinn. “How is she?”

“According to the people here, she got beat up pretty bad. The man did it used his fists, but he didn’t hold back. He punched right through her. Broke a few ribs, and she’s bleeding inside. They’re trying to stop that, and the doc thinks they will. Also, whoever this prince was, he carved up her face with a knife.”

“She gonna live?”

The cop shrugged. He sipped from a hole torn in the lid of the cup and looked Quinn over. “You know, I recognized your name on the sheet, and then when you walked in, from the pictures they used to run in the papers. You’re the same Terry Quinn used to be on the force, right?” The cop’s eyes said curiosity rather than aggression.

“Yeah. Can I go?”

“Why’d she have you as contact number one?”

“I don’t know why.”

“No fixed address, no mention of parents. And she wants to talk to you?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. She claims she got blindsided and never saw a thing. You got any idea who did this to her?”

“None.”

“Here’s my card.”

Quinn took it and slipped it into his coat.