Bronx Requiem

by John Clarkson

  “Good.” Beck shoved a wad of bills into Leon’s front pants pocket. “Go. Now.”

  Beck jump back into the Mercury as the light turned green. He didn’t bother to watch Leon Miller run away.

  19

  Amelia Johnson clomped down the worn wooden stairs of the Mount Hope house as fast as she could, her ears ringing from gunfire, the acrid smell of gun smoke clinging to her clothes. She felt a mixture of joy, fear, and excitement that made her shiver.

  By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was out of breath. Her legs felt wobbly. She stopped at the interior door, forcing herself to take deep breaths and concentrate.

  She realized she was still holding the gun in her right hand. She shoved it into the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie, feeling both the hot barrel and the cold body of the gun against her stomach.

  She checked her red wig, making sure it was in place, and then she stepped out onto Mount Hope Place, moving with an urgency fueled by exhilaration and fear.

  Without knowing when the idea had come to her, she turned and walked toward Derrick’s black Jeep parked near the end of the block. When she reached the car, she quickly crouched down near the left-rear wheel well, feeling inside the top of the rear panel for the magnetic key case Derrick used to store a spare key. She located the case, extracted a single key for the Jeep, and opened the driver’s-side door.

  She climbed in the driver’s seat, fired up the engine, and drove away, nearly sideswiping the cars on the other side of the street. She’d driven a car only twice in her life. Never anything as big as the Jeep. She drove hunched over, gripping the wheel, staring straight ahead, concentrating on keeping the Jeep in the middle of the narrow street. When she managed to get three blocks away, she pulled over to an empty section of curb on Mount Hope Place, bounced the right front wheel up onto the sidewalk, and braked hard. She put the car in park. It was only then that she figured out how to adjust the seat, strapped on her seat belt, and positioned the rearview mirror.

  She slipped off her red wig, pulled the gun out of her hoodie, wrapped the wig around it, and shoved both under the passenger seat.

  Her hands still shaking slightly, she fished out the bills she’d hidden in her hair, stuffed them into her front pocket, and pulled the hoodie over her head. She drove back out into the street without hitting anything, but cut off a driver coming up behind her who beeped furiously at her.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  She put all her attention on driving straight forward. Mount Hope Place quickly dead-ended at Jerome Avenue, forcing Amelia to make a nervous left turn onto the busy two-way street. The traffic ran in narrow lanes squeezed between huge iron girders supporting the elevated subway tracks, bordered by cars parked block after block on both sides.

  Minutes ago, Amelia had the courage and strength to shoot a man, but now she felt like a teenager who had stolen the family car and was worried about getting into a traffic accident. The adrenaline that had fueled her escape and sharpened her concentration had worn off. She felt weak, almost faint. She hadn’t eaten anything except a chicken leg the night before, and a cup of coffee and a stale donut eleven hours earlier.

  Up ahead, she spotted a McDonald’s. She managed to turn into the parking lot without hitting anything and park the Jeep in an empty space. She kept her hood up and walked into the fast-food restaurant, ignoring the looks her bare legs and platform heels attracted.

  She got her food and took a seat in a corner, as far back from the front window as possible. She forced herself to eat her meal slowly, but sitting in a public space where anybody might see her gave her a nearly unbearable feeling of dread and anxiety.

  Unless those friends of her father had killed everyone else in the room, and she hadn’t heard any gunfire after she left, she knew it wouldn’t be long before Biggie got the word to Eric Jackson about what she’d done. Once that happened, dozens, maybe hundreds of neighborhood punks would be out looking for her along with the dreaded Whitey Bondurant.

  She kept her head down and her hoodie pulled up, pictured Biggie Watkins or Whitey bursting into McDonald’s, walking up to her, and shooting her in the face.

  God help her if Whitey Bondurant found her. She’d been around him only a few times, but he was the scariest man she’d ever seen. Big, with a creepy albino face and dead, weird-looking pink eyes. Usually, Bondurant wore sunglasses to protect his eyes, but if he talked to you or looked at you he always took them off to see you better. Nobody wanted those crazy grim-reaper eyes staring at them.

  Amelia forced herself to stop thinking about it. She’d done what she’d done. They were going to kill her. Maybe they’d still kill her, now in an even more horrible way. At least she’d die knowing she had killed Derrick Watkins first.

  So now what?

  She stank from fear and tension, and working all night at the Point. She needed regular clothes, not this whore outfit smelling of gun smoke. And shoes. And a place to hide. Her sixty dollars was down to fifty-three and change. She needed money, but not by turning tricks. Never again.

  She had a gun, but knew she couldn’t do a strong-arm robbery.

  She blinked and sniffed, fighting off the need to cry. She thought about what she had done to earn the money sitting in dead Derrick Watkins’s pocket. Forget about it, she told herself.

  She thought about those men who were supposedly friends of her father. Maybe she could find them. Maybe they would help her. But how could she find them? She didn’t even know who they were.

  She finished her last french fry and the rest of her Coke. The food had revived her. She had to move on. But where? And how long could she last without money? And how long before they found her and killed her?

  20

  Crouching below the dashboard of the Dodge, Palmer heard the fading squeals of the Mercury Marauder’s tires telling him his attackers had fled. The wail of police sirens told him help and protection were on the way.

  He half fell, half crawled out of his wrecked car. Palmer stood and drew his service gun. There was nothing to shoot at, but he wanted to look like he might have been shooting.

  The first patrol car appeared at the top of the block.

  Palmer walked out into the middle of the street, holding up his badge wallet, shouting his name, rank, and precinct number at the cops piling out of their patrol cars.

  * * *

  In the small, empty yard behind Derrick’s house, the last of his crew except for Tyrell Williams dropped down onto the ground from the fire escape ladder. They ran through the backyard, climbed over a wrought-iron fence, scattering in all directions. Biggie Watkins struggled over the gate last and then lumbered off toward Jerome Avenue.

  Back at the fire escape, Tyrell, still woozy and off balance from the brass-knuckled fist to his face, had taken a long time reeling down the steep fire escape. He’d just managed to get onto the drop-down ladder that hung about five feet above the ground behind the Mount Hope house. Near the bottom of the ladder, he lost his footing, dropping hard enough to make his legs buckle, and fell to the side, smacking his head on the packed dirt.

  Everything turned black for him again.

  * * *

  Out front, Palmer had been yelling a description of a black sedan into a police radio, possibly a Ford Crown Vic with four armed men leaving the scene of a shooting. He would have bet money one of the men was James Beck, but he kept that to himself.

  He quickly organized the four uniformed cops on the scene into a raiding party. As two more arrived he told them, “Go search the back.”

  One of the cops broke open the front door, and they all headed up the stairs of the rickety three-flat. They quickly searched the first two floors, finding them empty. On the top floor, the broken front door of the last apartment stood half open. Palmer moved to the front of the pack. He held his SIG in a two-handed grip, kicked the broken door out of his way, and shouted, “Police! Everybody down. Down!”

  He leaned into the room and saw the bloody, bull
et-riddled corpse of Derrick Watkins, slumped in the armchair. He stepped into the apartment, motioning the cops behind him to enter.

  He walked to the body and stood in front of the dead man, as if claiming ownership of it. He told the other cops to check the apartment. Three of the four cops made their way to the rear of the apartment, while the fourth cop stood next to Palmer, who holstered his gun and bent over to get a closer look at the body, wincing at Derrick’s destroyed face. Whoever had shot him had done a thorough job of it.

  Cops filtered back into the front room, talking to each other in raised voices, their police radios crackling. The cop who had stayed with Palmer pulled out his radio and reported in to his precinct about the discovery of a deceased black male shot multiple times. It annoyed Palmer. He considered this his case, but he was too tired to say anything.

  He checked his watch. Almost 4:27 P.M.

  Palmer asked, “Anything back there?”

  All three cops confirmed the apartment was empty.

  “All right, guys, this is a crime scene. Let’s seal this place off.”

  He ordered one cop to go downstairs and close off the entrance to the building. He ordered two others to search the lower floors more carefully for weapons, drugs, or other bodies, and then to check the buildings on each side to see if they could find witnesses.

  He told the cop who had stayed with him, “Okay, you and I are going to search this place more thoroughly.”

  The cop had already discovered the two pillowcases on the couch filled with guns. He opened one of them and tilted the makeshift bag toward Palmer, who walked over and looked at the pile of guns. He bent down to take a sniff. “Doesn’t smell like any of them have been fired. Just leave them there. Go in the back and work your way to the front. See if you can find anything. Guns, drugs, money. The usual.”

  “Got it,” said the patrol cop.

  “Be thorough. You got gloves?”

  The uniformed cop pulled out a pair of blue latex gloves and slipped them on, as did Palmer. As the patrolman turned toward the back of the apartment his radio crackled with the information that the cops on the street had captured somebody.

  Palmer smiled. This just keeps getting better and better.

  21

  Out in the McDonald’s parking lot, Amelia climbed back into the driver’s seat and steered the Jeep onto Jerome Avenue. She drove south, determined to get something else to wear. It was difficult enough for her to drive, but now she had to scan the stores along either side of Jerome Avenue. She passed empty lots, food stores, bodegas, pharmacies, automotive-supply stores. Finally, she found what she wanted: a discount clothing shop.

  She parked the Jeep next to a fire hydrant, unworried about getting a ticket, and walked back to the store. She found an off-brand pair of jeans that fit her. She found a gray women’s T-shirt decorated with an image of a fedora with a pink feather and the words: Thinking about the summer vacation makes me lighthearted.

  Amelia didn’t bother to read the words as she quickly shoplifted the T-shirt. In another section of the store she found a cheap pair of red ballet flats. By the time she bought the jeans and shoes she was down to thirty-eight dollars.

  She walked back to the Jeep, changed in the front seat, and dumped her old clothes and shoes in the back. She still needed a shower, her hair felt filthy, she had no bra, but at least she didn’t have to wear the stinking, cut-off, rhinestone-decorated T-shirt, short-shorts, and stupid whore shoes.

  Night was coming on as she turned off Jerome Avenue worried that someone would see her driving Derrick’s Jeep. She drove south on local streets, forcing herself to keep going so could put more distance between her and Derrick’s neighborhood, but she soon found herself squinting into the darkening streets because she didn’t know how to turn on the Jeep’s headlights. Finally, she had to pull the Jeep over and stop. She turned off the engine and rested her forehead on the steering wheel, fighting off the urge to cry.

  She looked around and found herself in an isolated, mixed residential and commercial section of Shakespeare Avenue. Across the street she saw a derelict two-story brick house with all the windows covered in sheets of plywood. Next to it, occupying the corner, was a three-story building with a bar on the ground floor, closed off behind roll-down security gates. It looked like it had gone out of business long ago.

  Amelia stared at the abandoned house. She’d known kids on the run who had squatted in such places. But she’d never done it herself. She never thought she would have to, until now. Beyond everything that plagued her, she had an overwhelming urge to hide. To hide from the men and boys and guns coming for her.

  She slipped out of the Jeep, walked back, and lifted the hatch door. She rummaged around until she found a car cover, which she pulled out and folded into a bundle small enough to carry under her arm. She also found a tire iron, which she hid in the folds of the car cover, and a partial roll of paper towels, which she stuffed into the pocket of her hoodie.

  She went to the passenger side of the Jeep and took the gun out from under the seat, threw aside the red wig, and slipped the gun into her hoodie with the paper towels.

  She pulled the hood over her head and walked around the corner until she reached a chain-link fence blocking access to the backyards behind the houses on Shakespeare. Past ragged bushes and stunted ailanthus trees, Amelia could see the back of the abandoned house. Much of the back wall was covered in large sheets of plywood.

  There was a gate made of corrugated metal attached to the chain-link fence, secured with a padlock and an eyebolt welded to an iron pole. Amelia looked around, then placed the tire iron in the eyebolt, turning and twisting it until she broke the eyebolt off the pole. She pulled back the corrugated metal fence and slipped into the backyard, waded through the overgrown area, and climbed over another chain-link fence to get behind the abandoned house. She had to step over junk and around discarded furniture to reach the back of the house. Once there, she spotted two half-windows at ground level. One was sealed by concrete blocks, the other by a set of iron bars in front of a piece of plywood.

  Amelia squatted down and used the tire iron to pry the bars out of one end of the window frame and pulled them away as if she were opening a stuck gate. She punched the end of the tire iron into the plywood blocking the window until it dropped into the basement with a thud.

  She peered into the dark space, unable to make out anything. She shined the light of her cell phone screen into the dark, but it revealed almost nothing.

  The basement smelled moldy and damp, but she didn’t detect the stink of urine or feces that would signal someone might be living down there.

  She heard a sudden movement in the overgrown grass and bushes behind her. She let out a short scream and turned, half expecting to see Biggie Watkins or the hulking Whitey Bondurant behind her with a gun pointed at her.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Must have been a cat or something, but she hardly believed it, the noise had been so loud.

  She pulled the iron bars open wider, laid the car cover over the sill, and turned over on her stomach. She maneuvered her feet into the window opening and squirmed backward, lifting herself over the bottom of the frame so the gun and paper towels in the pocket of her hoodie wouldn’t catch. Fearful that she might be dropping into a hole she would never get out of, she lowered herself all the way in. Even hanging full length from the windowsill, her feet didn’t reach the ground. She looked down. She thought she could see the floor, but could only hope that once she let go, she wouldn’t land on something that would hurt her.

  22

  The remains of Derrick Watkins stank. Even though Palmer and the others had opened all the windows, with the outside temperature hovering around eighty and the temperature in the decrepit top-floor apartment creeping higher as more crime-scene investigators and police personnel began to arrive, the stench of the dead body, along with the blood, bones, and brain splattered on the walls, grew worse.

  With his fatigue p
ressing in on him, Palmer wasn’t sure how much more of the smell and heat he could take. And then it all went away when the uniformed cops brought Tyrell Williams up to the third-floor apartment.

  Palmer knew a man in bad shape when he saw one. Dried blood matted Tyrell’s face, and he wobbled around, clearly not fully conscious. It didn’t matter to Palmer. This was a possible eyewitness.

  He told the two cops holding Tyrell, “Take him to the first bedroom down the hall.”

  Palmer followed them and watched the cops lay the young black man on a rumpled bed, setting him on top of the dirty sheets and a bare, badly stained pillow.

  Palmer figured him for about twenty-five years old. Big, wearing a blue polo shirt with the large logo, jeans, and New Balance sneakers. Somebody had obviously hit him in the face with something more than a fist. The skin across the bridge of his nose had split open, and the nose looked fractured and swollen, as well as the area under his left eye. Blood stained not only the front of his shirt, but also his jeans.

  He would need stitches and some attention to the broken nose.

  Palmer looked at him lying on the bed with his eyes closed and wondered if he were playing up his injuries. Then again, the cops did say they’d found him passed out back behind the building.

  Fuck it, thought Palmer. Let’s see what we have here. He told the cops who had brought him into the bedroom, “All right, guys, give me a minute.”

  Palmer waited until the cops left before he knocked the back of his fist against Tyrell’s shoulder.

  “Hey. Wake up.”

  Tyrell stirred, but kept his eyes closed.

  Palmer shook him gently.

  “Yo, c’mon. Wake up.”

  Tyrell cracked one eye.

  Palmer pulled over a battered chair from the corner of the room and placed it near the head of the bed. He sat down and leaned close to Tyrell.

  “Listen to me. This is important. Can you follow what I’m saying?”