Hell To Pay

around. Far as where they live or how to get in touch with ’em, I don’t have a clue.”

“I can find them,” said Strange. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“My mother would know. She had this address book, she used to keep all our friends’ names in it, ’cause me and Lorenze, when we were young? We were, like, always slipping out, and she had to have a way of finding us. ’Specially Lorenze; that boy was buck wild, you couldn’t keep him in the house at all.”

“Can I speak to your mother?”

“She’s dead.”

Strange turned on the couch so that he was facing her. “Where’d y’all come up, Sandra?”

“Manor Park, over there around North Dakota Avenue. South of Coolidge?”

“I know it,” said Strange, something catching his eye over Sandra’s shoulder. On an end table abutting the couch sat a framed photograph of Joe in his uniform, his face shiny with sweat, a football cradled against his chest.

“Anything else?” said Sandra.

“You say you were out of contact with your brother. Why was that, you don’t mind my askin’?”

“Lorenze was no-account. I loved him, but that’s what he was. He wanted some of that bling-bling, but he couldn’t even do that right, for real. He was always calling me, trying to get me to hook him up with Granville. Tellin’ me he wanted Granville to put him on. But when Joe got born, I didn’t want to have anything to do with Granville anymore. I didn’t want Joe to know about him at all. Lorenze wouldn’t leave it alone, so I broke things off with my own blood. You know I took a car from Granville, and I am not proud of that, but I swear to you, that’s all I had to do with that man.”

“You don’t need to apologize for anything.”

“But I do want you to know. I’ve been straight all the way. I been having the same job for years now and I’m never late on my bills . . . . It’s been hard, Derek, but I have been straight.”

“I know you have,” said Strange. “Did Lorenze have enemies you knew of?”

“It’s like I told the police. He didn’t go lookin’ for trouble. But it found him sure enough. It was his way. He just didn’t take anything serious. Couldn’t hold a job, and still, he always felt free to put out his hand. Never did take care of his debts. Never did. Laughed it off most of the time. He thought it was all a joke, but the ones he was laughin’ at, they didn’t see it that way. To them, Lorenze was tryin’ to take them for bad.”

“You think that’s why he was killed?”

“I expect.”

Strange folded the list and slipped it into the inside pocket of his suit coat. He took one of Sandra Wilder’s hands. It felt clammy and limp in his.

“Listen,” said Strange. “You did right by keeping your son away from Oliver, and away from your brother, too. And don’t you ever think that you could have prevented what happened. Because you did right, and you did good. That boy was as special as they come, Sandra. And it’s because of you.”

A smile broke upon her face. The smile was perfect, and her hair was beauty-shop done and in place, and her makeup was perfectly applied. Cosmetically, Sandra Wilder was completely intact. But Strange could see that her eyes were jittery and too bright, and her mouth twitched at the corners as he tried to hold the smile.

Strange put his arms around her and drew her toward him. She fell into his embrace without resistance, Strange catching the foulness of her breath. It was quiet in the room except for the faint voice of the announcer calling the game. After a while he felt Sandra’s shoulders shaking beneath him and her hot tears where she had buried her face in his neck. He held her like that until she was cried out, and he left her there when he knew that there was nothing left.

THE ’Skins / Ravens game was tied up three to three, a pair of field goals the only score, as Strange drove north. A pass interference call against Washington put the Ravens on the Redskins’ one yard line with ten seconds to go in the half. From the radio, Sonny Jurgensen and Sam Huff discussed the most likely call for the next play. It would certainly be a run, Jamal Lewis up the middle. If he was stopped, there would still be time on the clock for a field goal to put the Ravens ahead before the end of the first half.

Strange pulled his Cadillac to the curb and let the motor run. He clockwised the volume dial.

“Come on,” said Strange. “Hold ’em.”

Ravens quarterback Tony Banks did not hand the ball off to Lewis. He attempted a pass into the flat of the end zone to Shannon Sharpe, who was in the company of two burgundy jerseys. It was a bad play to call — if Banks were to throw it at all he should have thrown it away. Redskin linebacker Kevin Mitchell picked off the pass.

Strange’s holler was one of disbelief. The roar of FedEx and the laughter of Sonny and Sam were in the car as Strange pulled down on the tree and continued uptown.

“DEREK, come on in,” said George Hastings. “You see that last play?”

“I been listenin’ to it on the radio,” said Strange.

They walked through the hall of Hastings’s brick tudor in Shepherd Park. Hastings wore a Redskins cap, but he was otherwise cleanly dressed in an expensive sweater and slacks. His house was just as clean.

“You believe that call Billick made?” said Hastings, looking over his shoulder as he led Strange into his den. “You got Jamal Lewis, a tough young back, on the one yard line, and all you got to do is give it to him and let him run it up the gut, and you call a pass? ”

“Tony Banks ain’t exactly one of your top-tier NFL quarterbacks either.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

“Should have pitched it out of the end zone when he saw the coverage. That was his inexperience showing right there.”

Hastings pointed to one of two big loungers in the den. A large-screen Sony was set in a wall unit in the room;