Bronx Requiem

by John Clarkson

  Jackson nodded. Thinking it through.

  “Eric, trust me, if we don’t make these cases, nobody is going to cry over some poor ex-con. And definitely not over fucking Derrick Watkins, or his brother, and that other mook, Tyrell. We keep gettin’ paid.

  “You, on the other hand, you’re going to be out there all on your own, my friend. The Watkins brothers are connected to you. Their whores are connected to you. If the powers that be decide your time is up, it’s up. And whoever these guys are coming after your people, they ain’t amateurs. What’s it been? Couple days and they’ve already taken out both the Watkins brothers? Plus Tyrell. Who knows how far they’re gonna take this little vendetta? Better we work together to put all this to sleep.” Ippolito shrugged and sat back in his chair, trying to look nonchalant. “Join forces. Faster, easier, simpler. Divide and conquer.”

  “Divide how?”

  Palmer chimed in. “There are four guys on this crew shooting your people. You give us witnesses who will let us take down Beck and one other guy on his crew. We give you leads on the other two. That’s two for us, two for you. Take yours down however you want.”

  “How you know it’s only four guys?”

  “We know. There have connections, but it’s only four involved in this.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Seems like they’re pretty good at what they do.”

  “And you know where to find the other two shooting my people?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Plus, I get a heads-up on the FBI thing.”

  “Yes.”

  Jackson nodded to himself. “When you need these witnesses?”

  Ippolito spoke. “We’re meeting with the assistant district attorney tomorrow at one. We need four witnesses at the Forty-second Precinct by noon, latest, so we can prep them.”

  Palmer added, “Preferably four with fairly clean records who can take direction.”

  “And when do I get the rundown on Beck’s crew?”

  Palmer continued, “Just to be clear. We get Beck and one of his guys I can identify. You get the other two.”

  “But I gotta have information and whereabouts on every fucking one of them. You guys don’t nail Beck and whoever, I got to be ready to defend myself.”

  Ippolito closed the deal. “All right, Eric, we see four stand-up witnesses by noon tomorrow, we’ll give you everything we can on Beck’s crew, plus keep you ahead of the Feds. But—you give us a few days to arrest Beck and the other guy. After that, everybody does whatever the fuck they want.”

  Jackson said, “Today’s Thursday. So by Sunday, I’m free to go.”

  Ippolito said, “No. Today’s shot. We need until Monday, earliest.”

  Jackson nodded, leaned toward Palmer and Ippolito, and said, “I don’t like sitting on my hands.”

  “You’ll have the info on that crew tomorrow. If I were you, I’d use the time to make a plan. Monday is reasonable.”

  “All right, fuck it. And remember, you two don’t hold up your end, my witnesses gonna get real hard to find. And if you do find ’em, they’ll have amnesia.”

  “Fair enough.” Ippolito stood. He knew when to end the meeting. “Nice talking to you, Eric.”

  He and Palmer put on their jackets and left without another word.

  Thirty seconds after they left, Jackson took out his cell phone to call Bondurant. The cops had no idea who had really shot Derrick Watkins. He wanted to make sure Bondurant had found the girl, or was close to it. He waited for Bondurant to pick up. He didn’t.

  He wondered what the hell was going on.

  “Whitey, call me.”

  51

  They ended up at one of Ciro’s favorite Italian restaurants not far from the strip club. A small, unassuming family operation with very good food.

  By the time they finished dinner, Demarco had a plan to find Amelia.

  “We should get going. We’ll leave Ricky’s Impala in the strip mall for him to pick up, and drop you off, Manny, so you can meet Walter and retrieve the Merc.”

  “Okay.”

  “Make sure to tell Walter to check up on the police investigation first thing in the morning. We have to know what they know.”

  “Yo, señor mamí, that’s, like, the fifth time. I’m on it.”

  “All right, sorry.”

  “You think those tonto cops are really gonna have any leads on who shot Packy?”

  “I doubt it. We don’t. What I really want to know is, if they have any leads on us.”

  Manny nodded, “Ah, sí, sí, amigo. Good point.”

  Ciro said, “Yeah, it would be nice to know if they’re looking at you two for shooting that fat-fuck brother of the pimp.”

  Demarco said, “I don’t think we’ve ever been in this situation.”

  Ciro asked, “What do you mean?”

  “We’re actually innocent. Between all of us, we shot one guy in self-defense who was blasting away at us. That sixteen-year-old girl took out the other two.”

  “Yeah, she’s a whiz. Who knows, maybe she’ll shoot more. Don’t matter. Cops are gonna pin all of it on us. They lie for a living. How else are they going to do their jobs? Come on, let’s go find that child before she causes any more trouble.” Ciro dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table for a tip. He hadn’t asked for a check. The waiter wouldn’t have dared bring him one.

  Ciro dropped Manny off at a bar on Atlantic Avenue where he could sip coffee and rum until Walter was due to arrive.

  As they drove up Atlantic to jump on the BQE and head for the Bronx, Ciro asked Demarco, “So what’s the plan, Big D?”

  “Okay, here’s how I see it. It’s a process of elimination.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “A girl gets turned out at the age of sixteen, it’s unlikely she has any straight friends who can help her. Any of the people connected to her street life will turn their backs on her, because they won’t dare cross Jackson and Bondurant. She’s not going to stay at the grandmother’s after that shootout. She sure as hell isn’t going to stay in the Bronx River Houses. So my guess is she holes up in a motel.”

  “Sounds right, but where? What motel?”

  “Someplace she already knows. A place where she won’t need a credit card and ID. Which means a motel in her neighborhood. Probably someplace she turned tricks in. There are two in that area.”

  “Which one you want to check first?”

  “The one farthest from her grandmother’s—the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in West Farms.”

  * * *

  It was 8:40 when they drove past the bare-bones motel occupying a triangular lot bounded by Boston Road, the Cross Bronx Expressway, and West Farms Road.

  Ciro circled the motel to check the surrounding area. There wasn’t much to see. He bent over his steering wheel, scanning the forlorn industrial area, taking note of the oppressive elevated subway track running in front of the motel.

  “Why the fuck would anybody stay around here? There’s nothing here.”

  “There’s some nice empty lots, abandoned buildings, a lovely liquor store right there. Hey, if you have a boiler you want welded, you can get that done here, too.”

  “Or if you want to lay some pipe.”

  Ciro pulled in to the small parking lot next to the motel. Both men walked around to the front entrance. Night had fallen, invisible clouds had rolled in from the west, covering the stars and moon, but high-intensity sodium lights hanging out over the sidewalk provided enough light to read small print.

  They entered a small lobby built to be functional and damage-proof. On their left, the hotel clerk sat barricaded behind a fake-wood-veneer divider, topped by a narrow counter and a Plexiglas barrier.

  Demarco stepped up to the reception counter. Ciro stood next to him, adding even more bulk.

  The possibility of two customers prompted a small Bengali man with thinning dark hair to quickly step over to the Plexiglas barrier. He wore the same white shirt and dark dress pants he’
d worn since Monday.

  “Good evening,” said Demarco.

  The clerk took a moment to check out Demarco and Ciro. Demarco had to rest an elbow on the counter and bend over slightly to get below the top of the Plexiglas barrier. These were not typical customers. About all he could muster in response to Demarco’s greeting was, “Yes.”

  He said it without inflection. The clerk glanced at Ciro before looking back to Demarco. He seemed worried about the amount of protection his plastic barrier provided him. Before Demarco said anything else, the clerk announced,

  “We’re full.”

  Demarco frowned.

  “Did I ask for a room?”

  “No.”

  “Did you think saying that would make me leave?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just say you’re sorry. It’s offensive.”

  The clerk hesitated and then said, “Sorry.”

  “Thank you. I want to know if a young woman checked in here. She’s about five foot seven, slim. Looks to be in her twenties. Skin a bit lighter than mine.”

  The manager blinked. “Are you police?”

  “Yes,” Demarco said, “we’re police. We are looking for this young woman I described to you. Is she here?”

  “Do you have identification?”

  Ciro calmly took out his forty-five and laid it on the counter. The clerk spluttered, “I’m not sure. I came in at six. I didn’t check everybody in.”

  “Have you seen anybody like I described?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any women staying here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go check.”

  Demarco watched him scurry to his desk and start clicking through the records on his computer. It took him almost a full minute. He returned to the window.

  “No. No women registered.”

  “Why are you so nervous?”

  “You make me nervous. The gun makes me nervous.”

  “You should be nervous. Particularly if you’re lying to us. Are you sure there isn’t a woman staying here who fits that description?”

  “We don’t do that business.”

  “What business?”

  “We don’t rent rooms by the hour. Only by the night.”

  Demarco paused, looked over at Ciro, turned back to the manager. He held up a hand before the man could say anything. “Listen to me carefully. If we find out the girl is here, and we will find out, we will cause you enormous problems. Do you know what the word ‘enormous’ means?”

  The man nodded four times. “Yes.”

  “So—are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Demarco stared at him.

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “Okay.”

  Demarco and Ciro walked back out onto the street.

  Ciro said, “She ain’t there.”

  * * *

  The shower and shampoo in the bare-bones bathroom at the Expressway Motel helped, but when Amelia put her clothes back on she wished she could have washed them, too. She kept smelling the rancid, moldy smell of Crackhead Betty’s blanket and the acrid scent of gun smoke.

  Amelia tried to ignore her dirty clothes as she sat on the bed and inventoried everything from the laundry bag she’d found in Tyrell’s car. The guns were a .40 caliber Taurus 840, and a 9-mm Glock 17. The two boxes of ammunition were all 9-mm bullets. She checked the magazines in the guns. Both magazines seemed full. She ignored the ledger books and counted the cash. Adding it to the money she’d taken from Biggie Watkins and Tyrell, she had a total of $4,272. More money than she’d ever had in her life.

  She remembered with a Glock you just had to squeeze the trigger all the way back to shoot it. She pulled back the slide to chamber a round and looked at the little lever next to the trigger. She gently pushed it with the point of her finger, released the trigger, and laid the Glock on the bed next to her. She stuffed all the cash into the pockets of her new jeans, and placed the red laundry bag on the floor with the ammunition, the second gun, and the ledger books.

  The queen-size bed filled most of the room, which needed cleaning, but at least there wasn’t any garbage in the wastebaskets. And the two small towels in the bathroom had been laundered. She’d made sure to leave the bedcover on the bed.

  It was too early for the hookers and pimps to be gathering and conducting business, but not too late for the smell of marijuana to drift by, or to hear a door slam, or voices arguing through the thin Sheetrock walls.

  She checked the time on the room’s digital alarm clock. 9:02 P.M. She stretched out on the bed, thinking about the money. More than four thousand dollars. She thought about robbing Biggie’s house. Picturing who might be there. No, she told herself. No way. There’s got to be some of Juju’s guys there by now. Why risk it? She had enough to get the hell out of the Bronx. She had an urge to stand up and leave now, but she ached for sleep. And her hair was going to take at least a couple of more hours to dry. Just a couple more hours.

  She looked out the window. She thought she heard thunder. The bed felt so comfortable after a night on the concrete floor of that basement. Maybe drive by Biggie’s house and check it out. If it didn’t look right, leave. Plenty of money. But hair still wet. Don’t have a hat. And then Amelia Johnson fell asleep.

  * * *

  “Christ, I think this neighborhood is even worse.”

  Demarco smiled. “I’d call it a tie.”

  “What the hell is behind all this corrugated metal fencing?”

  “Scrap metal, I think.”

  “And look, D, another boiler-welding place.”

  “Yes, but that one is for marine boilers.”

  “What the fuck does that mean? Is there water near here?”

  “The Bronx River?”

  “I can’t believe there’s a motel here.”

  “Maybe sailors stay there while their boilers are being welded.”

  The motel sat in the middle of a U-shaped parking lot. There were two driveways leading into parking areas at the north and south sides of the motel. The south lot was half the size of the north lot. As Ciro approached the south entrance, they saw a brand-new silver Lincoln MKT approaching the north entrance. Both men took notice.

  “That car doesn’t belong here.”

  “Neither does mine,” said Ciro. “Looks like somebody’s got the same idea as you.”

  “Process of elimination.”

  Ciro quickly turned in to the lot and took the first parking spot he found.

  Demarco opened his door. “C’mon. This could be interesting.”

  As they hustled toward the motel entrance, Ciro slipped on a pair of leather sap gloves. Each finger was filled with four ounces of steel shot. Demarco pulled a retractable-steel baton from his back pocket and carried it out of sight behind his wrist and forearm.

  They rushed through a set of sliding-glass doors into a small foyer, turned right, and walked through another set of glass doors into a lobby crammed with a small couch, two armchairs, and a table. The check-in counter occupied the far wall.

  There was no sign of the hotel clerk. They took seats on the couch. Ciro folded his arms, hiding his hands, trying to look as if he often sat in the poor excuse for a lobby in a bad hotel in the Bronx. Demarco kept his steel baton under his right hand and wrist.

  Four black men walked into the lobby. One average size, one large, two extra-extra large. The cramped space had suddenly filled with dark clothes, tattoos, bling, and muscle. The smallest of them seemed to be the leader of the group. He wore a tracksuit, leather coat, and sunglasses even though the sun had set hours ago. They all stood in the lobby posturing, glaring, accustomed to intimidating people, especially in a gang of four.

  Tracksuit headed toward the check-in counter, but stopped to look at Demarco and Ciro.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  One of the XXLs, wearing a three-quarter-length leather coat, loomed over Demarco, arms crossed over a huge chest to make himself look even b
igger.

  Demarco spoke before Ciro answered. “Nobody. We’re just waiting for a friend.”

  Tracksuit turned to Demarco and said, “Well, wait someplace else, you dumb-ass nobody motherfucker. Go on. Get the fuck out of here. Both of…”

  Before he finished the sentence, Ciro exploded off the couch and punched him in the face, breaking his nose, cheekbone, and sunglasses. Tracksuit’s head snapped back. A line of blood splattered the wall behind him. He fell unconscious onto the table between the two armchairs, breaking the glass top.

  Demarco rammed his foot into the knee of the man standing over him, buckling his leg. He jumped off the couch as the man fell sideways, leveraged his right elbow into the big man’s jaw, breaking it with a muffled snap. Demarco twisted away as XXL fell toward the couch and backhanded the steel baton across his head, cracking the back of his skull and knocking him out.

  The man closest to Ciro swung at him and hit the side of Ciro’s head. Snarling, Ciro threw a roundhouse punch into the man’s forearm, breaking the ulna bone. Ciro followed it up with punch after punch to the body, breaking ribs and rupturing internal organs with his steel-shot covered fists.

  The fourth man, the last one into the lobby, managed to draw his gun. Demarco whipped the flexible steel into the man’s wrist, his long reach extending another seven inches. The baton cracked the radius bone and broke the scaphoid bone, but not before the thug got off a shot, firing a bullet into the side of the couch. Demarco took one step and hooked a full-force heavyweight knockout punch into the man’s temple.

  Four down, four out, multiple broken bones, one ruined knee, a bruised liver, a ruptured spleen, a collapsed lung, seven seconds.

  Ciro kicked the leader, asking, “Who’s getting the fuck out, now, huh?” Kick. “Huh?” Kick, kick. “Who’s getting out now, tough guy? Motherfucker!” Stomp. Kick.

  Demarco deftly stepped over the heaps of men and rushed to the check-in counter. He leaned over to find the hotel clerk crouched down out of sight, hands over his head. Demarco grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him to his feet.