Hell To Pay

“Any luck?” said Ron.

“Nothing yet. Our girl got a sheet?”

“Jennifer Marshall. Got it right here.”

“Solicitation?”

“Man wins the Kewpie doll.”

“What about an address?”

“Listed as five seventeen J Street, Northwest. You might have a little trouble finding it, unless someone went and built a J Street in the last week or so—”

“There is no J Street in D.C.”

“No shit.”

“She’s got a sense of humor, anyway.”

“Or the one who told her to write it like that does.”

“Thanks, Ron. I’ll look over the rest of it when I come in. Derek around?”

“Uh-uh, he’s out doing a background check.”

“Tell him I was looking for him, hear?”

“Call him on his cell.”

“He doesn’t keep it on most of the time.”

“You can leave a message on it, man.”

“True.”

“I see him, I’ll tell him.”

Quinn was replacing his cell in his bag when he noticed a girl standing before him. She wore boot-cut jeans and a spaghetti-string pink shirt with a cartoon illustration of a Japanese girl holding a guitar slung low, a la Keith. Her shoulder bag was white, oval, and plastic. Her dirty-blond hair fell to her shoulders. Her hips were narrow, her breasts small, mostly nipple and visible through the shirt. She was pale, with bland brown eyes and a tan birthmark, shaped like a strawberry, on her neck. She wore wire-rim prescription eyeglasses, granny style. She was barely cute, and not even close to pretty. Quinn put her in her midteens, maybe knocking on the door of seventeen, if that.

“You gonna smoke that?”

Quinn looked at the cigarette in his hand as if he were noticing it for the first time. “I don’t think so.”

“Can I get it from you, then?”

“Sure.”

She sat down without invitation. He handed her the cigarette.

“You got a light?”

“Sorry.”

“You need a new rap,” she said, rooting through her shoulder bag for a match. Finding a book, she struck a flame and put fire to the cigarette. “The one you got is lame.”

“You think so?”

“You be hittin’ those girls up for a smoke, you don’t ask ’em for a light, you don’t even have a match your own self?”

Quinn took in the girl’s words, the rhythms, the dropping of the g’s, the slang. Like that of most white girls selling it on the street, her speech was an affectation, a strange in-and-out blend of Southern cracker and city black girl.

“Pretty stupid, huh?”

“And if you was lookin’ to score some ass, you went and picked the only two girls out here ain’t even had their boots knocked yet. Couple of Sidwell Friends girls, trying out the street for a day before they go back to their daddy’s Mercedes, got it parked around the block.” She grinned. “You prob’ly don’t even smoke.”

“I tried it once and it made me sick.”

“But you want something,” she said, no inflection at all in her voice, just dead. It made Quinn sad.

“I’m looking for a girl.”

“You a cop?”

“No.”

“You have to tell me if you are. It’s entrapment otherwise.”

“I’m not a cop. I’m just looking for a girl.”

“I can get you some pussy, now.” She lowered his eyes, magnified behind the lenses, suggestively. “Shit, you can have this pussy right here, that’s all you want.”

Quinn found a flyer in his knapsack and slid it across the table. “I’m looking for her.”

He watched her examine the face and data on the flyer. If she recognized Jennifer Marshall, her eyes did not