Hell To Pay

faces loosely matched those of the artist’s renderings posted around town.

He knew this. But he didn’t phone Lydell Blue back to tell him what he knew.

Strange got into Westlaw and fed the names Walter Lee, Edward Diggs, and Sequan Hawkins, along with their Social Security numbers, into the program. It took a couple of hours to find what it would have taken Janine a half hour to find. Despite his rudimentary knowledge of the programs, Strange was still old world, and much better at his job when out on the street. He also tended to seek out distractions when he should have been working nonstop behind his desk. In those two hours he played with Greco, thought of Janine, and ate a PayDay bar she had left for him on his mouse pad. But finally he got the information he needed.

Using PeopleFinder and the reverse directory, he had secured the current addresses and phone numbers of the men. Also the names and addresses of their current neighbors. The Social Security numbers had given him their past and present employment data.

Strange phoned Quinn and got him on the third ring.

“Terry, it’s Derek. You see the game?”

“I saw some of it.”

“Some of it. Your girlfriend over there, man?”

“Yes, Sue’s here.”

“Been there all day, huh? Y’all even get a look at the sunshine today, man?”

“Derek, what’s on your mind?”

“Wanted to make sure you were gonna be ready to go in the morning.”

“Told you I would be.”

“Meet me down at Buchanan at nine, then. We’ll roll out together in my car.”

“Right.”

“And Terry?”

“What?”

“Bring your gun.”

chapter 25

CARLTON Little swallowed the last of his Big Mac and used his sleeve to wipe secret sauce off his face, where it had gathered like glue on the side of his mouth. He had another Mac in the bag on the table in front of him and he wanted to kill it right now. The grease stain on the bottom of the bag, just lookin’ at it made him hungry.

He was hungry all the time. Not hungry for real like he had been when he was a kid, but hungry just the same. Loved to eat anything you could take out of somebody’s hand from a drive-through window. Taco Bell, Popeyes, and the king of it all, Mac-Donald’s. Little knew guys who had trouble with their movements, but not him. All the food he ate, the kind came in damp cartons and grease-stained bags? Damn if he didn’t take three or four shits a day.

He supposed his love for food had somethin’ to do with the fact that he didn’t have any when he was a boy. His aunt, who he stayed with, she sold their food stamps most of the time to pay for her crack habit. She had food in there from time to time, but the men she was hangin’ with, who were pipeheads, too, and always leaving a slug’s trail around the house, ate it or stole it themselves. There was cereal sometimes, but the milk went fast, and he couldn’t fuck with eatin’ no dry cereal. Before he grew some, when he weighed, like, sixty pounds, Carlton used to hide the milk outside his bedroom window, on this ledge that was there, so it wouldn’t get used up. In wintertime the milk froze and in summer it went sour, so you couldn’t do it all the time. But it was a good trick that worked half the year. This teacher taught him how to do that after he collapsed one time at school ’cause he was so weak. Weak from not eating. Not that he was cryin’ about it or nothin’ like that. He had money now, and he wasn’t weak anymore.

Man on the TV said that one third of the kids in D.C. lived below the poverty level, the same way he had. Well, fuck those kids. Nobody ever gave him nothin’, and he made out all right. They’d have to figure a road out their own selves. If they were to ask him, he’d say that there was one thing he knew for sure about this life out here. You acted the punk, you were through. You wanted to make it, you had to be hard.

Little laid himself down on the couch.

Potter sat low in one of those reclining rocking chairs he loved. Potter had bought two of them at Marlo’s, along with the couch Little lay on now, filled out the no-payment-till-whenever paperwork and had them delivered the next day. That was a year ago, and Potter had still not made a payment and never would. No Payments Till Forever, that’s the way the sign read to him. Potter had given the African or whatever he was a different billing address than the delivery address, and the dude hadn’t even noticed. Stupid-ass foreigners they hired out there, workin’ those sucker jobs.

“You gonna eat that?” said Potter, one hand pointed lazily at the paper bag holding the last Mac.

“I was thinkin’ on eatin’ it right now,” said Little.

“I wouldn’t even be feedin’ that shits to a dog.”

“It’s good.”

“You gonna throw it up out in the street, like you did the other day?”

“I ain’t ashamed. Made me sick to see what happened to that kid.”

“Well, he shouldn’t’ve been in that car.”

“Yeah, but those bullets you used done fucked him up for real.”

“Oh, it was just mines now.”

“It was those hollow points out of that three-five-seven you was holdin’, did all that damage.”

“Couldn’t handle lookin at it, huh?”