Bronx Requiem

by John Clarkson

  Manny Guzman stepped toward his friend, hand outstretched. “Woody. Good to see you, man.”

  “Come here, brother.” The six foot seven pastor stood and embraced Manny Guzman, gathering in the smaller man. He placed his enormous forehead on the top of Manny’s head for a moment, as if extending a benediction.

  Once he released Manny, he turned to Demarco and offered a huge right hand. Demarco took hold and felt a solid grip. The pastor did not attempt a show of strength.

  Demarco and Manny sat on the couch. Woods returned to his chair and asked, “What can I do for you?”

  Manny got right to it. “A good friend of ours was shot dead. We’re trying to find one of the people involved.”

  “Who got shot?”

  “Packy Johnson.”

  The pastor’s brow furrowed as he searched his memory. “Yes. I knew him. In Clinton. A righteous man, if I remember correctly. Kept to himself.”

  “Yes. The one we’re looking for is named Jerome Watkins. We’ve been asking around. His street name is Biggie, but we can’t get a lead on him.”

  “Yes. Biggie Watkins. You believe he had something to do with shooting Johnson?”

  “We think so.”

  “He’s been around for quite some time. He has a brother, Derrick.”

  Manny said, “Right,” but didn’t mention that Derrick was dead.

  Demarco asked, “What’s his story?”

  “Biggie Watkins is another depraved man outside the circle of the Holy Spirit.” Woods raised his right hand. “Although all things are possible in the fullness and sufficiency of God’s grace and scripture.”

  Demarco didn’t respond. The pastor looked at Demarco and said, “It was sufficient to save me, son.”

  “Amen. Can you help us find Watkins?”

  Woods turned his attention to Manny. “Do either of you all intend to kill him?”

  Manny answered immediately, “No.”

  “What if he killed your friend?”

  “We don’t think he did. We think he might know who did.”

  The pastor nodded. He took a deep breath, narrowed his eyes, and contemplated. Or perhaps he prayed.

  After a few moments, he began speaking and spoke for ten minutes without stopping, working himself up into a sweat. He occasionally mopped his brow with a large white handkerchief he extracted from his back pocket. He kept the handkerchief in hand while he recited a detailed history of the evolution of street gangs in the northern Bronx. He named a dozen groups that had emerged from various neighborhood affiliations, morphed, split, and merged again.

  He described how the brothers Watkins’ affiliation could be tracked to an offshoot of the old Black Spades who had dominated several of the Bronx housing projects in the seventies.

  There had been feuds, factions, deaths, and rivalries. Many had died or gone to prison. Woods explained how the current gang scene resembled militias in a third-world country. At the top were older leaders. Under them, in a loosely enforced structure, were hundreds of young men who had, like always, formed into dozens of small groups based mostly on geography.

  “It’s all a grand pyramid with fewer villains on top controlling young men below and forming the usual alliances for protection. Everything powered by one unending, ever-growing horror.”

  “Which is?” Demarco asked.

  “Guns. Guns are the entry ticket. The young ones all aspire to a gun. With the gun, they can get money. With the gun, they can make a name for themselves and avenge anyone who disrespects them. They are willing to shoot each other for the smallest insult. With a gun and money and reputation, they believe they can move up the food chain.

  “These boys have nothing else. Most of the men who sired these children ended up among the incarcerated masses. Or died violent deaths. As did their uncles and cousins and older brothers. There are no more role models. The young ones have no god. No religion. No churches.”

  Benjamin Woods looked back and forth between Demarco and Manny.

  “All the power of God and His Word are within the walls of my humble room downstairs. But do you think any of these young men will walk into that space? No, they won’t. They are lost to us. They run wild, shooting each other for no good reason. Bragging on the Internet. I don’t understand it.”

  Manny turned the conversation back to their objective.

  “And Biggie Watkins?”

  Woods responded quickly. “He’s one of those right below the twin pillars of evil.”

  “Who are?”

  “Eric Jackson and Floyd Bondurant. Jackson is their leader. He’s known by the name Juju. Bondurant is called Whitey. He is Jackson’s enforcer. A depraved, murderous man. The finger of evil has touched both those men.” Woods turned to Manny. “Do you know them?”

  “No.”

  “You won’t forget them once you see them. Bondurant is an albino. He has black features, but no color to his skin. He’s big. Has reddish white hair. Jackson is … well, I’ll just say he too is unpleasant to look at.”

  “Why?”

  “His skin was ravaged as a youth. Perhaps God’s way of marking him. They’ve spread the myth they are special. It’s not a new tactic. In the past, there were some who used to call themselves the Five Percent or some such nonsense. Now these two call themselves The Chosen. An insult to the Lord himself. I’ve long ago stopped trying to understand the kinds of evil men can commit. Those two I leave to God’s judgment and damnation.

  “As for Jerome Watkins, he will be difficult to locate. He’s a pimp. He exploits women for money. An abomination in the eyes of the Lord. And he handles money for the sets controlled by Eric Jackson. I believe he has several places around the Bronx to house his whores and play his role as moneychanger. I don’t know where these places are located. I assume he moves around between his houses of exploitation and misery. But if you want to find him, I suggest you find his masters.”

  “Jackson and Bondurant.”

  “Yes, Emmanuel.”

  The pastor said, “I won’t go near those two. I might fall into the trap of hate.”

  Manny waited a beat and then stood up and said, “Thank you, Ben.”

  Demarco stood with Manny. The pastor blessed them and wished them well. The blessing seemed immaterial to Manny, but it unnerved Demarco. If felt like an assumption of his damnation.

  They thanked Benjamin Woods and got back in the Impala.

  Demarco said, “I appreciate the history lesson, but the good pastor didn’t tell us anything that will help us locate Watkins.”

  “He’s pointing us were we’re gonna have to go.”

  “I guess that’s his style.”

  “Yep. Straight at it.”

  “He’s right. That’s where this is heading.”

  Manny said, “But right now, we don’t have nearly enough information to take on Jackson and Bondurant. And we can’t make a move like that until James returns.”

  Demarco said, “I think that leaves us one option.”

  Manny nodded. He had come to the same conclusion. “The girl.”

  Demarco said, “And now that I think about it, she might help us get to Biggie Watkins.”

  “And we know of at least one place she might be hiding.”

  Demarco nodded, “Her grandmother’s place.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Demarco leaned forward and fired up the Impala.

  37

  Amelia had heard the scratching and skittering of rats before. As she lay wrapped in her car-cover cocoon, hidden in the dark basement of the abandoned house, she remembered her mother’s panicked reactions to the rats that always seemed to invade wherever they had ended up living. It was all part of her mother’s self-indulgence. The hysterics, the drugs, the neglect, the nearly incomprehensible disregard for her one child.

  The anger rose inside Amelia in an all-encompassing spiral. She sat upright, tearing away at the stupid car cover. She ached from sleeping on the hard, cold, floor. She’d slept more than twel
ve hours and now felt as if she couldn’t breathe in the goddam dark, stinking, moldy, stifling hole in the ground.

  They’d taken everything from her. Her mother, the foster system, the schools, every man who’d abused her, her father who never nurtured or protected her, but most of all the pimp and his crew who had torn away her last shreds of dignity and turned her into a murderer.

  She stood up, done with it now. Done with being taken from. Done with running. There was no way she was going to escape from the Bronx without money. It was time to get out of this stinking hole and take back what they had taken from her.

  With the dark night over, Amelia could see more of the basement. She saw a bookcase attached to the back wall with L brackets. Amelia tore it off the wall with the tire iron and dragged the bookcase to the window.

  She used the shelves like a ladder, stepping up all the way to the top, high enough so she could push the iron bars out of her way and lean out the opening. The cool air revived her. She breathed deeply and shimmied out the half window.

  She found the Jeep where she’d left it. There was a parking ticket shoved under the windshield wiper. Good, she thought. She threw the ticket on the ground. Let them come after that dead piece of shit Derrick Watkins.

  She stopped at the same McDonald’s on Jerome. Even though it was past one o’clock, she ordered a Sausage McMuffin with Egg and coffee. She ate slowly and methodically as she carefully planned her next moves. She knew they would be staking out her grandmother’s place. Good. Let them.

  She finished her meal and, to her surprise, Amelia found the bathroom unoccupied. It was the first time she’d smiled in a long time.

  Once inside the bathroom, she took as long as she needed to do everything she needed to do, including stripping off her T-shirt and washing again, this time with hot water. Several people banged on the door, but she yelled at them to wait. She walked out of the bathroom when she was good and ready, returning the glares of customers waiting for the bathroom, her hand inside the pocket of the hoodie holding her gun.

  Back in the Jeep, she pulled the gun out of her hoodie and looked at it more carefully. She saw the name Ruger etched into the barrel and grip, but it meant nothing to her. She pushed the button she figured would release the magazine, which dropped out of the gun onto her lap. She couldn’t tell how many bullets were in the magazine but, by the weight of it, she knew she had at least some. Good enough. She slid the magazine back in, clicked the safety down, and shoved the Ruger back into her hoodie pocket, feeling competent and powerful.

  She smiled, remembering the kick and crack of the gun when she’d shot Derrick, the weapon banging into the palm of her hand with each shot.

  She pulled out of the McDonald’s without any of her previous nervousness. So what if she hit something. Fuck it. She’d just leave. If somebody gave her a hard time, she’d see what would happen when she pulled out the Ruger.

  Amelia made it back to her old neighborhood in the Bronx and cruised farther north into West Farms where she knew heroin addicts scored their drugs.

  She spotted what she was looking for hunkered down at the back of the parking lot of a Howard Johnson motel. She pulled the Jeep into the lot and jumped out, strolling over to a woman whom she’d known since she was ten. Back then, the kids called her Crackhead Betty, but Amelia knew she had switched to heroin long ago, and from heroin to wine as she had become less and less able to prostitute herself for money.

  Crackhead Betty had set herself up in the far corner of the parking lot. She sat propped against the wall, surrounded by a luggage carrier filled with plastic bags, a sleeping bag, and filthy blankets. She also had a grocery-store cart and a two-wheeled shopping cart. The grocery cart held clear garbage bags stuffed with empty soda cans and plastic bottles.

  Amelia approached Betty, taking note of how much she had deteriorated. The woman was forty-two, but looked sixty. She wore a baseball cap over a filthy knit hat and, despite the warm weather, a stained down coat. The skin on her face appeared ravaged from old bruises and years of exposure to the elements.

  The bottom three buttons on her shirt were gone, and Betty’s stomach spilled over a pair of black tights. She seemed to be in a kind of alert stupor. Crackhead Betty stared at Amelia with a look of anxious paranoia.

  Amelia knew that crazed look and called out in a friendly voice, “Hey, Betty, how’re you doin’?”

  The friendly greeting elicited a crooked smile from the woman. There seemed to be something wrong with her lower jaw. The smile revealed missing teeth.

  Betty immediately took Amelia’s friendly greeting as a chance to beg for money.

  “Oh, chile,” she said, “I need a little spare change. I need to get something to eat.”

  Amelia asked, “What’re you drinkin’ these days, Betty?”

  “Wine. Any sweet wine, honey.”

  After her second stop at McDonald’s, Amelia had less than thirty dollars left. She said, “Okay, Betty, I’ll get you a bottle of wine and give you some money, too. But I got to borrow your shopping cart and some cans for a few minutes.”

  Betty’s voice grew shrill, “No, no, don’t take my stuff. Don’t take my stuff.”

  Amelia stuffed a five and two ones into Betty’s filthy right hand and told her, “You sit still. Don’t worry. I’ll be right back with your wine.”

  For a moment, Amelia considered asking Betty for her down coat, but rejected the idea. She’d never give it up, and it might be infested with lice. Instead, she emptied the shopping cart and put one bag of empty soda cans and a filthy blanket into it.

  The derelict woman clutched the bills, wincing with worry as she watched Amelia wheel the shopping cart to the Jeep, open the back hatch, and lift the cart, cans, and blanket into the back.

  Amelia drove back to her grandmother’s neighborhood, but didn’t dare cruise past the house in the Jeep to see if any of Derrick’s crew were keeping watch out front. Instead, she parked on Vyse Street, one block east of Hoe Avenue.

  She pulled the gun out from the kangaroo pocket of the hoodie and shoved it into the waistband of her jeans above her left pocket. She went around to the back of the Jeep and opened the hatch, pulling out the blanket she’d taken from Crackhead Betty.

  She rummaged around the jumble of automotive junk in the cargo area, looking for a length of rope. Instead, she found a set of bungee cords.

  She quickly took off the pink hoodie. Then she draped the dingy gray blanket over her head like a long shawl. The blanket reached past her knees. She used one of the bungee cords like a belt, gathering the blanket and securing it around her waist. The blanket covering her head cut off some of her peripheral vision, but it also blocked a clear view of her face. She made sure she could still reach under it and get to the Ruger. Perfect.

  38

  When Demarco turned onto Hoe Avenue from 174th Street, he and Manny spotted a car parked in front of a small playground across the street from Lorena Leon’s public housing unit. Two men sat in the front seats. Coming up Hoe, they could see only the backs of their heads, but they had little doubt they were from Derrick Watkins’s crew.

  Demarco said, “Looks like we’ve got two of ’em. And I’m betting the big one behind the wheel is Jerome.”

  As Demarco drove past the parked car, Manny slid down out of view below the window level. Demarco casually scratched the right side of his head, blocking his face.

  “Park around the corner, D. We’ll come back on foot and take them.”

  “How you want to work it?”

  “We come up on each side of their car from behind. Put guns on them. If one of them is Biggie we throw the other one out, and take Watkins to Red Hook.”

  “In their car?”

  “Yeah. Ricky can drive up here and fetch this one. You sit in the back with him. If he twitches, put a bullet in his damn knee.”

  Demarco said, “I might do that anyhow. Get him talking right now. Who cares if he bleeds all over the place. It’s his car.”

/>   * * *

  Amelia could feel the excitement growing as she pulled the shopping cart and bag of cans out of the Jeep. She took a deep breath, telling herself to go slow. She pressed her hand against the Ruger, feeling the reassurance of its solid mass.

  As she closed the Jeep’s hatch, and set off with her shopping cart and cans, she pictured shooting whoever might be waiting for her to show up at her grandmother’s house. She hoped one of them was Tyrell Williams.

  She decided if they were parked near Lorena’s house, she would come at them straight on. She wanted to see their faces when she shot them. They’d be looking for a whore. She wasn’t a whore anymore. She was a stooped-over can-collector dressed like a crazy homeless person.

  She walked around to 172nd Street and headed for Hoe, pulling the wobbly shopping cart with her left hand so her right hand would be free to pull the gun.

  When she turned onto Hoe Avenue, she made sure to stop and look at the tied-up garbage bags set out for collection near the curb. As she pretended to check garbage bags for cans, Amelia tried to see if any of the parked cars were occupied. She couldn’t see much farther than three cars ahead, which meant she’d have to get fairly close before she would spot anybody staking out her grandmother’s. She wondered if she should pull the gun out now, so she could shoot more quickly.

  * * *

  Demarco had to drive two blocks on 172nd Street before he found a spot to park. He pulled in to the space, and they hustled back to Hoe Avenue. They planned on coming at them from behind, figuring they could get fairly close without too much risk of being spotted. At some point they’d appear in the side-view mirrors. Hopefully, they could close the distance before Watkins’s guys drew their weapons.

  At the corner of 172nd and Hoe, Demarco turned to Manny and said, “Let’s stay on the sidewalk until we get close. Just two guys walking. Then we’ll split up and take them. If they spot us before we get close, do what you have to do. Don’t risk getting nailed by these dopes.”