Hell To Pay

“Ask him he knows her,” said Potter.

“Yo,” said Little out the window. They were alongside the young man now. He was still walking, and the Plymouth was keeping pace.

“What?” said the young man, who looked at them briefly, for just the right amount of respect time, but kept his step.

“You know a woman name of Wilder lives here?” said Little. “Got a little boy, kid plays football, sumshit like that. I got this friend owes her money, he asked me to swing by and tell her he’d be payin’ it back to ’er next week.”

The young man looked at them again, scanned the front and backseat, his sight staying on the odd-looking young man in the bright orange pullover for what he feared might be a moment too long, then cut his eyes. “I ain’t know no one around here, no lie. I just moved up in here, like, last week.”

“Aiight then.”

“Aiight,” said the young man, moving off into the playground, walking with his shoulders squared, his head up, turning a corner and disappearing into the night.

“Maybe I ought to talk to that boy my own self,” said Potter, the lids of his eyes heavy, half shut.

“He said he didn’t know, D,” said Little. “Let’s just let this shit rest for tonight.”

Potter kept the Plymouth cruising slow. He went around a kind of long bend that took him to the other side of the housing complex. They could see a group of people back in a stairwell lit pale yellow. Potter braked, steered the Plymouth up on the dirt, and cut the engine.

Potter said, “C’mon.”

They got out of the car and followed him across the dirt to the stairwell entrance. There were three men crouched down there and a pink-eyed woman leaning against a cinder-block wall. In one hand the woman held both a cigarette and a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. Smoke hung in the yellow light.

Older cats, all of ’em, thought Potter. Didn’t know nobody, didn’t have nobody gave a fuck about ’em.

The dice-playing men looked up briefly as Potter approached, Little and White behind him. The oldest of the players, vandyked, wearing a black shirt with thin white stripes and a black Kangol cap, eyed Potter up and down, then rolled dice against the wall. The dice came up sixes. There was some talk about the boxcar roll, and money changed hands. Money was spread out on the concrete.

“Y’all want in,” said the roller, staring down the lane to the wall, shaking the dice in his hand, “you’re gonna have to wait.”

Potter didn’t like that the man didn’t look him in the eye when he spoke.

“That your woman?” said Potter, staring at the lady leaning on the wall. She took his stare, even as Potter smiled and licked his lips.

The dice man didn’t answer. He made his roll.

“Asked you if that was your woman.”

“And I told you to wait,” said the man.

The other men laughed. One of them reached into his breast pocket and extracted a cigarette. None of them looked at Potter.

“Get up,” said Potter. “Stand your tired ass up and face me.”

The dice man sighed some, then stood up. He grunted and rubbed at one knee as he did. He was old. But he was bigger than Potter expected, both in the shoulders and in height. He had a half foot on Potter if he had an inch. Now his eyes were twinkling.

“You got somethin’ you want to say to me?”

Potter reached under his shirttail and drew the Colt. He held it at his hip, the muzzle on the midsection of the man. The man’s eyes were calm; they didn’t even flare.

“Give it up,” said Potter. “All the cash.”

“Shit,” said the man, drawing it out slow, and he smiled.

“I’m gonna take your money,” said Potter. “You want, I’ll dead you to your woman, too.”

“Son?” said the man. “I done had guns pointed at me, by real men, while I was layin’ in rice paddies and mud, for two solid years. And here I am standin’ before you. Do I look like I’m worried about that snub-nose you got in your hand?”

“This here?” Potter looked at the gun as if it had just showed up in his hand. “Old-time, I wasn’t gonna shoot you with it.”

Potter swung the barrel so quickly that it lost its shape in the light. He slashed it across the brow of the man, the blow knocking the cap off his head. The man’s hand went to his face, blood seeping through his fingers immediately, and he stumbled back against the wall. Potter flipped the gun in the air and caught it on the half turn, so that he held it now by the barrel. He moved forward, ignoring the other men who had stood suddenly and backed away, and smashed the butt into the man’s cheekbone. He hit him in the nose the same way, blood dotting the cinder blocks as the man’s head whipped to the side. Potter laughed against the woman’s screams. He reared back to beat the man again and felt someone grab his arm. Looking over his shoulder with wild eyes, he saw that it was Charles White who held him there.

“Man, get your got-damn hands off me, man!” yelled Potter.

“Let’s just take the money,” said Little, moving into the light. “You about to kill a motherfucker, boy.”

“Get the money, then,” said Potter. He smiled and spit on the man lying bloodied before him. “You ain’t standin’ now, are you, Old-time?” Potter barked a laugh and raised his voice in elation. “Can’t nobody in this city fuck with Garfield Potter?”