Hell To Pay

Quinn looked at his hands and saw that they were totally relaxed on the sheets. He hadn’t been thinking of the streets or if anyone had looked at him the wrong way or anything else but Sue, his girlfriend, lying beside him. He hadn’t felt this comfortable with a woman for some time.

STRANGE dropped off Prince, Lamar, and Joe Wilder, then dropped Lionel at Janine’s house uptown.

“You comin’ for dinner tonight?” said Lionel, before getting out of the car.

“I haven’t spoken to your mother about it,” said Strange.

“My mom wants you to come over, I know. Saw her marinating some kind of roast this morning before you picked me up.”

“Maybe I’ll see you, then.”

“Whateva,” said Lionel, turning and going up the sidewalk toward his house.

Strange watched the boy and his loping walk.

Boy’s still got that way of stepping. Had that walk since I been knowing him, back when he wasn’t nothing much more than a kid. Thinks he’s a man, but he’s still a boy inside.

He grinned without thinking, watching him, and waited until Lionel got inside the house before driving away.

Strange picked up the Calhoun Tucker photos from the Safeway over on Piney Branch. Safeway was cheap and they did a good-enough job on the processing. It took a little longer when you used them, but he wasn’t in any hurry on this particular job.

Back in his office, he inspected the photographs. The woman in the doorway, Tucker’s somethin’ on the side, was plain as day in the shot, letting him into her crib. Janine had gotten her name from the crisscross program, based on her street address. It was in the file he was building on Tucker, the one he was preparing for his friend George Hastings. Strange found the file and slipped the photographs inside it. He was just about done with the background check. He’d need to report on all this to George. Soon, thought Strange, I will do this soon. He wondered what was stopping him from getting George on the phone right now. Strange turned this over in his mind as he locked the file cabinet, then his office door.

Walking through the outer office, he noticed his reflection in the mirror nailed to the post, and stopped to study himself. Damn if his natural wasn’t nearly all gray. The years just . . . they just went. Strange was bone tired and hungry. He thought about having a nice meal, maybe some Chinese. And a hot shower, too; that would do him right.

AT dinner that night, Strange sat at the head of Janine’s table, as he always did, in the one chair that had arms on it. It had been her father’s chair. Lionel sat to his left and Janine to his right. Greco played with a rubber ball, his eyes moving to the dinner table occasionally but keeping control of himself, staying there on his belly, lying on the floor at Strange’s feet.

Janine had Talking Book on the stereo, playing softly. She did love her Stevie, in particular the breakout stuff that he’d done for Motown in the early seventies.

“Where you off to tonight?” said Strange, eyeballing Lionel, clean in his Nautica pullover and pressed khakis.

“Takin’ a girl to a movie.”

“What, you gonna walk her there?”

“Gonna pull her in a ricksha.”

“Don’t be playin’,” said Strange. “I’m just asking you a question.”

“He’s taking my car, Derek.”

“Yeah, okay. But listen, don’t be firin’ up any of that funk in your mother’s car, hear?”

“You mean, like, herb?”

“You know what I mean. You get yourself a police record, how you gonna get to be that big-time lawyer you always talking about becoming?”

Lionel put his fork down on his plate. “Look, how you gonna just suppose that I’m gonna be out there smokin’ some hydro tonight? I mean, it’s not like you’re my father, Mr. Derek. It’s not like you’re here all the time, like you know me all that well.”

“I know I’m not your father. Didn’t say I was. It’s just—”

“I wasn’t even thinkin’ about smokin’ that stuff tonight, you want the truth. This girl I’m seein’, she’s special to me, understand, and I wouldn’t do nothin’, anything, that I thought would get her in any kind of trouble with the law. So, all due respect, you can’t be comin’ up in here, part-time, lookin’ to guide me, when you don’t even know me all that well, for real.”

Strange said nothing.

Lionel looked at his mother. “Can I be excused, Mom? I need to pick up my girl.”

“Go ahead, Lye. My car keys are on my dresser.”

Lionel left the room and went up the hall stairs.

“I guess I messed that up pretty bad.”

“It is hard to know what to say,” said Janine. “Most of the time, I’m just winging it myself.”

“I do feel like a father to that boy.”

“But you’re not,” said Janine, her eyes falling away from his. “So maybe you ought to go a little easier on him, all right?”

Janine got up out of her seat and picked up Lionel’s plate off the table. She head-motioned to Greco, whose eyes were on her now and pleading. “C’mon, boy. Let’s see if you can’t finish some of this roast.”

Greco’s feet sought purchase on the hardwood floor as he scrabbled toward the kitchen, his nub of a tail