Hell To Pay

lace panties and nothing else. She was short and had the hips of a larger woman. Her breasts were small and firm. He brushed his fingers across one nipple until it was pebble hard, and when the fire rose up in his loins he pinched her there until she moaned. He didn’t care if it was all fake.

“Go now,” he said, and she pumped him faster.

His orgasm was eye-popping, his own jism splattering his stomach and chest.

“You need,” said the woman, chuckling under her breath.

As she wet-toweled him, Strange said, “Yes.”

Dressed again, he left forty-five dollars in a bowl by the door.

Out in the alley, his beeper sounded. It was the office number. He debated whether or not to return the call. He got into his car and used his cell to dial the number. Quinn’s voice came through from the other end.

“I stopped by the office to pick up Jennifer Marshall’s sheet from Ron,” said Quinn. “Where you at?”

“Chinatown,” said Strange.

“Uh-huh.”

“Had some lunch.”

“Okay.”

Strange had spilled his guts to Quinn one night when both of them had put away too many beers. Giving up too much of himself to Quinn had come back to him in a bad way. It was always a mistake.

“I’m headed down to Rick’s, on New York Avenue,” said Quinn, then explained the reason. “You wanna join me?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“C’mon over to the office. We can drive down together.”

“I’ll meet you at Rick’s,” said Strange. “Say, half hour?”

“Fine,” said Quinn. “Bring some dollar bills.”

Strange cut the line. He didn’t want to go back to the office and have to small-talk Janine. He was relieved it hadn’t been her on the phone when he’d called in.

On his way east, he drove by the row house on Barry Place, the site of Calhoun Tucker’s afternoon tryst. Tucker’s Audi was gone.

chapter 10

RICK’S was a stand-alone A-frame establishment located a few miles east of North Capitol on New York Avenue, a bombed-out-looking stretch of road that was the jewel-in-the-crown introduction to Washington, D.C., for many first-time visitors who traveled into the city by car.

The building now holding Rick’s had originally been built as a Roy Rogers burger house. It had mutated into its current incarnation, a combination sports bar and strip joint for working stiffs, when the Roy’s chain went the way of corded telephones.

The conversion had been simple. The new owners had gutted the fast-food interior, keeping only a portion of the kitchen and the bathroom plumbing, and hung some Redskins, Wizards, and Orioles memorabilia on the walls. The omission of Washington Capitals pennants was intentional, as hockey was generally not a sport that interested blacks. The final touch was to brick up the windows that had once wrapped around three sides of the structure. Bricked windows generally meant one of three things: arson victim, gay bar, or strip joint. Once the word got around on which kind of place Rick’s was, the owners didn’t even bother to hang a sign out front.

Rick’s had its own parking lot, an inheritance from the Roy’s lease. A couple of locals had been shot in this parking lot in the past year, but pre-sundown and in the early evening hours, before the liquor turned peaceful men brave, then violent, the place was generally safe.

Strange pulled his Caprice alongside Quinn’s blue Chevelle, parked in an empty corner of the lot. Quinn got out of his car as Strange stepped out of his. They met and shook hands. Quinn made a show of sniffing the air.

“Damn, Derek. You smell kinda, I don’t know, sweet. Is that perfume?”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man.”

It was the lotion that girl had rubbed on him back in Chinatown. Strange knew that Quinn was remarking on it, in his own stupid way.

They walked toward Rick’s.

Strange nodded at the JanSport hanging off Quinn’s shoulder. “What, we goin’ mountain climbing now? Thought we were just gonna have a beer or two.”

“My briefcase.”

“You been waitin’ on me long?”

“Not too long,” said Quinn.

“You coulda gone inside,” said Strange, giving Quinn a long look. “I bet I would have spotted you right quick.”

“I’d be the one on the bottom of the pile.”

“With the red opening in his neck, stretchin’ from one ear to the other.”

“Not too many white guys in this place, huh?”

“Seeing a white guy at Rick’s be like spottin’ a brother at a Springsteen concert.”

“I figured I’d just wait for you to escort me in.”