Hell To Pay

“Yeah, okay.”

“This is assault right here!”

“Not yet,” said Quinn. “Open that door, let’s go.”

Diggs did it and Quinn released him as they stepped inside. They were in a clean kitchen that held a small table and chairs. On the table was a coffee cup and the sports page of the Washington Post. A set of knives sat on the Formica counter, sheathed in a rubber stand. Diggs stood by the table, trying to give Quinn a hard glare. Quinn looked Diggs over carefully, thinking of the knives, deciding that Diggs would never make a play.

“Sit down,” said Quinn, pointing to one of the chairs. Diggs pulled one away from the table and sat in it. He mumbled to himself as he stared at the linoleum floor.

Quinn moved to the rear window and looked through it. Strange was coming through the open gate and moving quickly up the walkway. His shirttails were out over his jeans. Then Strange was opening the door and he was in the kitchen and closing the door behind him. He walked toward Ed Diggs. Diggs stood from his chair.

“Meet Ed Diggs,” said Quinn.

“Ed,” said Strange, and as Strange reached him he threw a deep right into Diggs’s mouth and knocked him back over the chair. Diggs slid on the linoleum and stopped sliding when the back of his head hit the kitchen cabinet beneath the sink. Strange yanked him up by his T-shirt, kept his left hand bunched on the T, and hit him with a short, sharp right to the same spot. Diggs’s neck snapped back and his eyes fluttered. His eyes came back, and he stared up at Strange as blood flowed over his lower lip and dripped onto his shirt. Strange released him and Diggs dropped to the floor. Diggs staggered back up to his feet.

“We tell you to stand?” Quinn righted the chair. “Sit your ass down.”

Strange pulled a chair over so it faced the one Diggs had been sitting on. He and Quinn listened to Diggs mumble and moan, and they waited for him to slouch across the room. Strange had split Diggs’s lip wide, and blood came freely now from the cut.

Diggs sat down dead eyed, his shoulders slouched. Strange reached under his shirt and pulled the .45.

“Nah,” said Diggs in the voice of a boy. “Uh-uh, man, nah, uh-uh.”

“Who killed Lorenze?” said Strange.

“I don’t know who did that.” His diction was sloppy and wet.

“Somebody was huntin’ him. Was it a drug debt?”

“I don’t know.”

Strange racked the receiver on the Colt.

“Why you want to do that, brother? I told you I don’t know.”

Strange got up out of his chair and with his free hand flat-palmed Diggs’s chest. Diggs and the chair toppled back to the floor. Diggs grunted, and Strange crouched over him and forced the barrel of the .45 into his mouth.

“You know,” said Strange. He withdrew the barrel, touched it gently to the corner of Diggs’s right eye, and then pressed it there with force.

“They’ll kill me,” said Diggs.

“Look at me, Ed. I’m gonna kill you right now, I swear to God.”

“Derek,” said Quinn. It wasn’t part of the act. Strange’s eyes had long since veered from the script.

“Look at me, Ed.”

Diggs did look. His lip quivered and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again a tear sprung loose and ran fast down his cheek.

“Lorenze,” said Diggs, “he owed money to this boy for some hydro he copped. I was there when Lorenze bought it. He was gonna pay this boy in his own time . . . . Wasn’t nothin’ but a hunrid dollars. Boy stepped to me at a dogfight back by Ogelthorpe; I could tell he was serious. I mean, that boy had nothin’ in his eyes.”

“What’d this boy look like?”

“Tall and slim, light skinned, had this crazy smile.”

“He had partners, right?”

“The ones he came with to the fight. Boy with cornrows and show muscles. ’Nother kid, one with the dog, boy had this funny-lookin’ nose and shit.”

“The main one, he say his name?”

“Garfield Potter.”

“You know where he stays at?”

“He said he was up on Warder Street, near Roosevelt.”

“What else you know?”

“Nothin’ else.” Diggs blinked hard. “You just doomed me, man. Don’t you care nothin’ about that?”

Strange slipped the Colt back under his shirt as he stood.

“Don’t speak of this,” said Strange. “Tell your grandmother you got jumped out on the street. Tell her you fell down and bounced a few times or anything you want. But don’t tell her it was us came back. It’s over for you, hear? You’ll be fine.”