Bronx Requiem Read online

  As Amelia approached the corner of Bronx River Avenue, a blue Ford Taurus pulled over to the curb next to her. The driver lowered his passenger-side window and leaned over to ask, “Yo, what’s up?”

  He sounded drunk, slurring his words so much Amelia was surprised he could drive. She looked around. No other cars in sight. If for no other reason than to get off the street, Amelia decided to take advantage of the opportunity. She walked over and leaned in the open window. The sickly smell of digesting alcohol filled the air. She checked the backseat to make sure it was empty before she slipped into the passenger seat.

  “What you want?”

  “Get my dick sucked.”

  Amelia said fifty. He said twenty. She said forty. When he hesitated, Amelia opened the door and turned to leave.

  The driver said, “Wait.”

  She turned back. With the door open, the interior lights gave the mark a better view of Amelia.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Amelia smiled and closed the door. She held out her hand for the money, carefully watching where the man pulled it from. Unfortunately, he dug the bills out of his shirt pocket, handing them to her and slurring something Amelia couldn’t make out.

  She quickly checked the bills. Two twenties. She stuffed them into her back pocket and asked, “What are you drinking?”

  The man smiled and opened his eyes wide like he was going to tell her a big secret. He reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a pint of Johnny Walker Red, unscrewed the cap, and handed the half-empty bottle to Amelia. She smiled back, tipped the bottle up, sipped a small amount, and handed it back. She didn’t have to encourage him. He took a healthy swallow.

  She asked, “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Bill. What’s yours?”

  “Princess.”

  “Princess what?

  “Okay, Bill, let’s get to it, huh? Pull over there around the corner, baby, and find a quiet spot.”

  “I asked you a question. Princess what?”

  “Princess I-wanna-suck-your-dick. Let’s go, baby. Time is money.”

  Amelia caressed Bill’s thigh, moving her hand toward his crotch.

  “Come on, baby.”

  Bill put the car in gear and followed Amelia’s directions, finding a dark spot under a linden tree on Elder Avenue.

  By the time he’d pulled over, Amelia had the condom out. She opened his belt and zipped open his trousers. She worked fast, her heart pounding at the risk she was about to take. She said the things she had to say. She did what she had to do. She even let the drunk’s hands wander, all the time keeping a discrete eye on him, watching to make sure his head was tipped back and his eyes were closed.

  She kept working him toward a climax, hoping he wasn’t too drunk to come, keeping him occupied while she felt the outsides of his pants pockets. She could tell there was nothing but a set of keys in one pocket, a cell phone in the other.

  She kept working him, angry at her bad luck. He’d obviously hidden his money somewhere. Maybe in his sock.

  She put a hand on Bill’s knee, then shifted around so she could lightly brush her free hand past his ankle. Instead of a wallet or money hidden in a sock, she’d felt the outlines of a gun in an ankle holster. Her heart pounded. Could this be a cop? Off duty? Or a bad guy with a gun? Either way the danger level had suddenly escalated enormously.

  And now Bill had his hand on the back of her head, pushing her head down, adding to Amelia’s panic.

  She braced her left hand on the seat and lifted off him. Trying to keep the fear out of her voice she said, “Hey, take it easy, honey. Don’t be rough. I’ll do you good. Be nice.” And as she said that, her left hand slid into the crease between the driver’s seat bottom and seat back. Her fingers touched something. She started in on him again, carefully pushed the fingers of her left hand farther into the crease. His wallet. He’d hidden it there.

  She worked faster. Making sounds like she was uncontrollably excited.

  The drunk slurred encouragement, telling her. “Keep going, bitch. That’s it. Come on. Come on you fucking whore.”

  She did, finishing Bill off as she slid the wallet out from between the seat crevice and into her back pocket. Fear sent her heart banging against her ribs. She knew if this drunk caught her, he would beat her senseless, or quite possibly shoot her.

  She smiled, she flirted, she complimented Bill, and got out of the car as fast as she could without creating suspicion, making sure to tell him she’d keep an eye out for him. She left the condom on him to keep him busy.

  The moment she closed the car door, she walked across the street, turned south, hurrying away, trying to find an opening between houses she could duck into.

  Every driveway was blocked with a chain-link fence, except for the second to last house on the block, which had a wrought-iron gate. Amelia checked and found it unlocked. She slipped past the gate into a narrow driveway between two houses, trying to move silently in her ridiculous platform shoes. Walking sideways between the house and a car, she made it to the end of the driveway and crouched down out of sight behind a second car and a small garage.

  She pulled the wallet out of her back pocket and ripped the cash out of it, trying to count the money in the dim light. She heard a dog bark. The sound sent a wash of fear through her. She lost count. Started over. Two hundred, sixty-three dollars. She shoved the bills into her front pocket, and tossed the empty wallet under the car.

  She had to make a quick decision. Hide until Bill gave up looking for her, or make a break right now, catch a livery cab on Bronx River Avenue, and get the hell out of the neighborhood.

  She took off her wig, pulled up the pink hoodie, and zippered it closed.

  She maneuvered through the next driveway, climbing over a short fence, and made her way out to the next street over. She took a deep breath and stepped out onto the sidewalk, walking as fast as her platform shoes would allow, heading for Westchester Avenue. From the waist up she looked different, but there was no way to cover her long bare legs and platform heels.

  She made it to Westchester Avenue, feeling more exposed on the open busy street, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. She half-walked, half-ran two blocks looking for a cab or livery driver, all the while keeping an eye out for Bill’s Taurus.

  She saw a beat-up Nissan Sentra with a livery-car license plate stopped at a traffic light ahead. She slipped into the backseat before the driver could pull away.

  The driver, a tired-looking Middle Easterner told Amelia, “No. You get out now.”

  Amelia was in no mood to take any shit from the driver. She yelled, threatened to call 911, 311, and the cops. She showed him money and argued about the fare. She even had to fend off a stupid proposition that he’d take her if she showed him her tits. When she threatened to call her pimp and have him come shoot the driver, he finally agreed, but only after Amelia paid him first.

  She gave him thirty dollars for a ride that should have cost twenty and slumped out of sight in the backseat.

  When she got to Hunts Point, Amelia put her wig back on and unzipped her hoodie. She walked around, talking to a few of the other women, asking how things were going, making sure she was seen.

  Amelia wouldn’t risk robbing again. Not at the Point. Too many people knew she was with Derrick Watkins, there were few places to hide, and the area was too isolated to get out quickly.

  She already had a good start with her successful robbery, so she could be selective. Pick men who looked like she could hustle. Take her time. Work each trick to get the most dollars. Beg, taunt, make up a story, whatever she could think of to separate them from their money as efficiently as possible.

  By 5:35 A.M., Amelia had amassed four hundred and eighty dollars along with a receipt from a street food truck for six dollars and fifty cents she’d had to argue to get. It was a good amount of money, especially for working the Point. She was too exhausted to work a minute longer. Her entire body ached.

  As
a hazy predawn light seeped into the streets, Amelia wheedled a ride from one of the older women who called herself Staci, promising her five dollars for gas. When Staci asked Amelia where she wanted to go, Amelia surprised herself by giving Staci her grandmother’s address. She didn’t really know when she’d made the decision. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to do when she got there, beyond getting out of her whore clothes, showering, and sleeping on the couch until Lorena found her and woke her up.

  Long ago, Amelia had hidden a key to her grandmother’s back entrance in the courtyard that separated Lorena’s buildings from a duplicate set of buildings one street over on Vyse Avenue. Amelia knew when Lorena found her sleeping on the couch she would yell at her. Ask what she was doing. Amelia didn’t have an answer yet. All Amelia Johnson knew for sure was that she was done being Derrick Watkins’s whore.

  She and Staci were walking in the street, twenty feet from Staci’s car, when a green Chevy Malibu screeched to a halt next to her.

  Staci disappeared without a word. Amelia froze. Tyrell yelled out the open passenger window. “Yo, bitch. Get in the car. Now.”

  She turned toward the leering brute, unmoving.

  “Fucking get in. I ain’t telling you again.”

  Amelia put her head down and closed her eyes. Running was impossible. Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. She’d probably twist an ankle in her stupid platform heels. And running would just give Tyrell an excuse to hurt her more. She took a breath, feeling the life drain out of her. She walked to the car and got into the passenger seat.

  Tyrell couldn’t wait to tell her, “You in for it now, girl.”

  “What?”

  “You fucking heard me.”

  Amelia wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking him why she was in trouble.

  “I’m taking you to the Mount Hope Place apartment.”

  Amelia felt like someone had just punched her in the stomach. The apartment on Mount Hope Place was used by Derrick and his brother Jerome as a low-rent whorehouse for clients responding to “in-call” ads in Craigslist and Backpage. Amelia knew the Watkins brothers often made women work for days at a time in that apartment.

  Servicing clients in one of the dingy bedrooms on Mount Hope Place, knowing it wouldn’t be quick condom-covered blowjobs, but full-on penetration almost made Amelia open the car door and jump out. She looked at the car’s dashboard clock. Just past six A.M. Maybe there wouldn’t be many customers at this hour.

  As if reading her mind, Tyrell told her, “Don’t worry. You ain’t going to be workin’. Gonna be a lot worse than that.”

  A flood of questions hit Amelia. She couldn’t imagine what could be worse. She turned to Tyrell, waiting for more information. He gave her nothing but a self-satisfied smirk.

  The ride to Mount Hope Place took less than ten minutes. Tyrell pulled her out of his car by the arm and turned her toward the house. Amelia wrenched her arm free and yelled at him, “Get off me.”

  Tyrell raised a hand to hit her. Amelia screamed at him, “You hit me I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you. You ain’t my pimp. You ain’t got the right.”

  Tyrell gave her a hard look and nodded at her, as if to say, okay, just wait.

  He followed her into the house and walked behind her as Amelia made it up three flights of stairs to the top floor, knowing the disgusting Tyrell was staring at her ass all the way. Tyrell unlocked the front door and told her to go into the first bedroom.

  She told him she had to go to the bathroom first.

  He said, “Hurry the fuck up.”

  As soon as Amelia entered the bathroom, she locked the door and dug out the cash from her pocket. She took three twenty dollar bills, folded them into a small bundle, and took off her wig. She carefully hid the bills in her thick black hair, holding them in place with a barrette. She put the wig back on, used the toilet, and stepped out of the bathroom.

  Tyrell locked her in the nearest bedroom. Amelia was too exhausted to do anything more than lay down on a bed stinking of stale perfume and body odors. Within seconds, she fell into a sleep so deep it felt like death.

  4

  In the predawn light, the body spilling off the curb looked like a large bag of garbage.

  Detective John Palmer eagerly stepped out of the unmarked Impala he’d pulled over at the corner of 174th Street and Longfellow Avenue. His partner, Raymond Ippolito, pulled himself out with a grunt and walked slowly behind him, frowning at the sight of a corpse jammed between the curb and a parked car.

  The report came in thirty minutes before the end of their Wednesday midnight-to-eight shift at the 42nd Precinct in the Bronx. A dead body lying in the gutter. There wasn’t any particular reason to believe it was a murder. In fact, there hadn’t been a murder in the Four-Two in thirteen months. Not like the old days. But if this was a murder victim, Palmer knew it would provide a rare chance for recognition and advancement toward his goal of Detective First Grade.

  For Ippolito, a murder, an accident, a heart attack—it didn’t matter. It was all just bad luck.

  Clouds obscured the rising sun. The air felt heavy with humidity and hotter than normal for the end of May. In the dim light, with a stunted elm tree shading the area, Ippolito wondered how long it had taken for someone to spot the body.

  Both detectives stopped about ten feet away, stood next to each other on the sidewalk, a vest-pocket park behind them, and gazed at the corpse in front of them.

  Two first-on-the-scene uniformed cops were stringing NYPD crime-scene tape, forming a thirty-foot rectangular boundary around the body.

  Palmer told the cops, “Hey, you gotta close off a bigger area, guys. Take the tape across the street, run it up the whole block, and bring it back over to this side.”

  Ippolito watched the cops, a tall African-American and a short Hispanic, react to Palmer’s take-charge order with deadpan expressions. They didn’t seem to wonder why the younger detective was giving the orders. Ippolito was clearly the senior detective. At fifty-two years old, too overweight to close the top button of his white shirt, wearing a rumpled sport jacket and stained tie, he was nearly twice Palmer’s age. Palmer wore a trim-fitting dark suit, blue shirt, and skinny tie. He’d been a detective for a little over a year.

  Palmer said, “Hey, Ray, think we should pull the car across the intersection there, let people know they can’t drive through?”

  “The tape should be enough, John.”

  “Right, right.”

  Palmer walked over to the body. He slid on a pair of blue latex gloves from his back pocket and squatted next to the corpse, just looking.

  The body lay sideways, facing away from him, the head and upper body jammed between the curb and a Honda Odyssey. Most of the face was pressed against the front tire.

  Palmer had to lean over to see the profile, but the section of sidewalk where he squatted had been cracked and lifted by the roots of the elm tree so he had to place a hand against the SUV to keep his balance.

  He leaned farther over the victim and bumped his head on the parked car.

  In the dim dawn light, Palmer couldn’t tell if the man’s zippered sweatshirt and T-shirt were dark blue or black. The pants were definitely dark blue jeans. He bent closer, looking down at the side of the dead man’s face. He could just make out a swollen bruise on the left cheek.

  Palmer looked for blood. He didn’t see any on the clothes or sidewalk or curb, although there could be blood under the dead man.

  The victim’s right arm and hand were under the body. The left hand jammed between stomach and car. Palmer carefully pulled the lifeless left hand free. He took out a small Maglite from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and focused the bright white light on the hand. There were open scrapes and cuts on almost every knuckle.

  Ippolito stood close behind Palmer, watching, saying nothing.

  Palmer held up the man’s hand.

  “Looks like he was in a fight.”

  Ippolito made a small noise of agreement. />
  Palmer pulled back the unzipped sweatshirt, shining his light along the length of the torso, playing the part of a careful investigator looking for blood, stab wounds, bullet wounds. There were none.

  He slowly ran the light toward the neck and head. They both saw it at the same time.

  “Ah,” said Ippolito.

  Palmer leaned closer, moving the dark hair aside with his right forefinger, uncovering more of the angry red bullet hole, the edges stippled and stained with gunpowder. The bullet had entered about two inches below and slightly to the right of the man’s left ear.

  “Shot.”

  “Yep.”

  The long hair made it difficult to see the wound clearly, even under the glare of the Maglite.

  “Guess we’d better turn him over. See if it came out the other side.”

  Ippolito was down next to Palmer now. It was much harder for the older, heavier man to squat. He balanced himself with one hand against the Honda and craned his head down and around, almost even with the street.

  “Nah, no blood under his head. Bullet’s still in there. If it’d come out there’d be blood all over the place.”

  Palmer asked, “Nothing under him?”

  “No,” said Ippolito, “I think he got shot and the impact sent him down right here.”

  “Let’s lift him onto the sidewalk. Roll him on his back.”

  The body was wedged so tightly between the car and the curb it took an unexpected amount of effort. When they finally managed to free the dead man and lay him flat, Ippolito let out a hiss.

  “Fuck. Somebody beat the shit out of this poor guy.”

  Even without the Maglite, Palmer could see that the face had been damaged. Some of it might have been from the pressure created when the bullet entered the head, but clearly the victim had been beaten. Both eyes were filled with blood, blackened underneath, a cut split the bridge of his nose, both upper and lower lips were lacerated. There was a swollen lump at the corner of the left jaw.