Hell To Pay

“We can come back.”

“We will. I’m gonna smoke that motherfucker when I see him, too.”

“Wilder don’t owe you but a hundred dollars, D.”

“Thinks he can ignore his debt. Tryin’ to take me for bad; you know I can’t just let that go.”

“Ain’t like you need the money today or nothin’ like that.”

“It ain’t the money,” said Potter. “And I can wait.”

chapter 2

DEREK Strange was coming out of a massage parlor when he felt his beeper vibrate against his hip. He checked the number printed out across the horizontal screen and walked through Chinatown over to the MLK library on 9th, where a bank of pay phones was set outside the facility. Strange owned a cell, but he still used street phones whenever he could.

“Janine,” said Strange.

“Derek.”

“You rang?”

“Those women been calling you again. The two investigators from out in Montgomery County?”

“I called them back, didn’t I?”

“You mean I did. They been trying to get an appointment with you for a week now.”

“So they’re still trying.”

“They’re being a little bit more aggressive than that. They’re heading into town right now, want to meet you for lunch. Said they’d pick up the tab.”

Strange tugged his jeans away from his crotch where they had stuck.

“It’s a money job, Derek.”

“Hold up, Janine.” Strange put the receiver against his chest as a man who was passing by stopped to shake his hand.

“Tommy, how you been?”

“Doin’ real good, Derek,” said Tommy. “Say, you got any spare love you can lay on me till I see you next time?”

Strange looked at the black baggage beneath Tommy’s eyes, the way his pants rode low on his bony hips. Strange had come up with Tommy’s older brother, Scott, who was gone ten years now from the cancer that took his shell. Scott wouldn’t want Strange to give his baby brother any money, not for what Tommy had in mind.

“Not today,” said Strange.

“All right, then,” said Tommy, shamed, but not enough. He slowly walked away.

Strange spoke into the receiver. “Janine, where they want to meet?”

“Frosso’s.”

“Call ’em up and tell ’em I’ll be there. ’Bout twenty minutes.”

“Am I going to see you tonight?”

“Maybe after practice.”

“I marinated a chuck roast, gonna grill it on the Weber. Lionel will be at practice, won’t he? You’re going to drop him off at our house anyway, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“We can talk about it when you come back by the office. You got a two o’clock with George Hastings.”

“I remember. Okay, we’ll talk about it then.”

“I love you, Derek.”

Strange lowered his voice. “I love you, too, baby.”

Strange hung up the phone. He did love her. And her voice, more than her words, had brought him some guilt for what he’d just done. But there was love and sex on one side and just sex on the other. To Strange, the two were entirely different things.

STRANGE drove east in his white-over-black ’89 Caprice, singing along softly to “Wake Up Everybody” coming from the deck. That first verse, where Teddy’s purring those call-to-arms words against the Gamble and Huff production, telling the listener to open his eyes, look around, get involved and into the uplift side of things, there wasn’t a whole lot of American music more beautiful than that.

His Rand McNally street atlas lay on the seat beside him. He had a Leatherman tool-in-one looped through his belt, touching a Buck knife, sheathed and attached the same way on his right hip. His beeper he wore on his left. The rest of his equipment was in a double-locked glove box and in the trunk. It was true that most modern investigative work was done in an office and on the Internet. Strange thought of himself as having two offices, though, his base office in Petworth and the one in his car, right here. His preference was to work the street.

It was early September. The city was still hot during the day, though the nights had cooled some. It would be that way in the District for another month or so.

“‘The world won’t get no better,’” sang Strange, “‘if we just let it be . . . .’”

Soon the colors would change in Rock Creek Park. And then would come those weeks near Thanksgiving when