Hell To Pay

Potter knew the man was lying, but the price was right, and anyway, he was lookin’ for something wouldn’t attract much attention. An ’88 Tempo? That was just about as no-attention-gettin’ a motherfucker as you could get.

Looking in the rearview, going east on New York Avenue, he could see the white smoke trailing out behind the Ford. Carlton Little had made mention of it, as he always reminded Potter that what they were rolling in was a hoop, but he hadn’t said much after that.

Little had turned the radio up loud. Flexx had a set going on PGC, the same list they played over and over every night, their most-requested jams. It had gone from Mystikal to R. Kelly to Erykah Badu since they’d left the house. Little had been kind of bobbing his head up and down, the same way no matter the beats, all the way. Potter didn’t bother talkin’ to him when he was chronicked out all the way, like he was now.

As he drove down the road, Potter saw a woman outside one of those welfare motels they had on New York. Woman had a boy by the hand and a cigarette hanging out her mouth, and she was leading the kid across the lot. Potter could see the boy’s shirt, had one of those Pokemon characters on it, sumshit like that.

Potter had had a shirt with E.T. on the front of it when he was a kid. He was too young to have seen the movie in a theater, but his mother had bought the video for him from the Safeway on Alabama Avenue, and he had just about wore that tape out. He really loved that part where the boy kind of flew up in the sky on his bicycle against that big old moon. For a long time Potter had thought that if he had a special bike like that boy did, he could fly away, too. Until this man who was always hangin’ around the apartment laughed at him one night when he talked about it, called him a dumb-ass little kid.

“You ain’t flyin’ no goddamn where,” said the man, Potter still remembering his words. “You a project boy, and a project boy is all you will be.”

His mother should’ve said something to that man. Told him to shut his mouth, that her boy could do anything he wanted to do. That he could fly against the moon, even, if he had a mind to. But she hadn’t said a thing. Maybe she knew the man was right.

Potter got the Tempo on the Beltway and forced the car up to sixty-five. The new Destiny’s Child was on the radio. Little was bobbing his head, kind of staring out through the windshield, his mouth open, his eyes set.

Potter’s mother, she had this smell about her, sweet, like strawberries, somethin’ like that. It was these oils she used to wear. He remembered when she used to hold his hand like that woman was holdin’ that kid’s hand back in that lot. He could close his eyes and recall the way it felt. She had calluses on her palms from work, but her fingers were cushioned, like, sorta like that quilt blanket she’d cover him with at night. Her hand was always warm, like bein’ under that blanket was warm, too. And sometimes when he couldn’t sleep she’d sit by his bed, smoke a cigarette, and talk to him till he got drowsy. Once in a while, even now, he’d smell cigarette smoke somewhere, maybe it was the same brand she’d smoked, he didn’t know, but it would remind him of her, sitting by his bed. When he was a kid and she was there for him, before she fell in love with that pipe. Forgetting she had a kid still needed her love, too.

But fuck it, you know. He wasn’t no motherfuckin’ kid no more.

“Dirty,” said Potter.

“Huh?”

“Read them directions to me, man, tell me where we at.”

Little squinted as he picked up the paper in his lap and tried to read Potter’s handwriting, nearly illegible, in the dark of the car.

“Take the next exit,” he said. “Take the one goes east.”

They took the exit and the road off of it, brightly lit at first and then dark where the county had ended the lamps. They went along woods and athletic complexes and communities with gates.

“You ever think of your moms, Dirty?”

“My mother?” said Little. “I don’t know. I think of my aunt some, ’cause she owes me money.” He smiled as he heard the first few notes of a song coming from the radio. “This is that new Toni Braxton joint right here, ‘Just be a Man’? I’d be a man to her, she let me.”

Potter didn’t know why he bothered talking to Carlton. But he figured he’d keep hangin’ with him anyhow. He didn’t have Dirty, he didn’t have no one at all.

“Where we at?” said Potter.

Little looked at the notepaper. “Turn ought to be comin’ up, past some church on the right-hand side.” Little pointed through the windshield. “There go the church, right up there.”

A half mile past the church, Potter made a turn into an ungated, unmarked community of large houses with plenty of space in between them. Many of the houses were dark, but that didn’t mean anything. It was a Monday night, and it had gotten late.

“Right turn up there,” said Little. “Then a left.”

Potter made the first turn. Some light from a corner lamppost, made to look like one of those antique jobs, bled into the car and cast yellow on his face. Then his face was greenish from the light drifting off the dash.

“You know what to do,” said Potter, “we get in there.”

Potter made the second turn.

Little pushed out his hips, withdrew his Walther from where he had fitted it, and racked the slide.

“Kill Old-time,” he said, refitting the gun under his shirt.

“Once we get the video,” said Potter, “we’ll down him quick. Put a couple in his head and get out.”

Little put on his gloves. He held the wheel steady as Potter did the same. They were on a cul-de-sac now that had only three houses set on oversize lots. The first house was dark inside, with only a lamp on over the front door. They passed the second house, completely dark, with two black Mercedes sedans parked in its circular driveway.