Bronx Requiem(104)

Demarco drove around to Belmont Street and stopped directly behind the house. He pulled over to the curb next to a four-foot chain-link fence that bordered the yard.

Beck said, “Give a minute to get in place behind the house.”

“If someone comes running out the back door, just show him your face. That should stop them.”

“That might be all I can do. Don’t shoot anybody in there unless you have to. I don’t want any kids hurt. We’ve been leaving enough dead bodies behind us as it is. Take ’em down, or drive ’em out. I’ll take care of anybody who comes out back.”

“Then what?”

“We search the house for evidence on Jackson’s operation and get the hell out.”

Beck watched as Demarco pulled away. He wasn’t worried about sending Demarco alone into the house. It would be like releasing a mongoose into a nest of snakes.

Demarco parked on Crotona up the street from the house. He and Amelia stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Demarco told her, “See if you can get someone to open the door. I’ll handle it from there.”

Amelia nodded. She put her right hand in the pocket of her hoodie. Demarco slipped his steel baton out of his back pocket and into his right hand. He walked alongside Amelia in his usual effortless way, dressed in dark slacks and a dark blue Dolce & Gabbana jacquard dress shirt. He noticed the way Amelia shuffled along and said to her, “We have to get you some decent shoes.”

“You got that right.”

“In fact, we should shop for a whole new wardrobe.”

She looked at him and said, “How come you talk so white? You look like a damn hard case, but you sound like you ain’t at all.”

“I speak the way I do because I prefer it. The way I look sometimes makes people nervous, so it helps disarm them.”

“Disarm? Like they gonna lay down their guns or something?”

“Something like that.”

“Why you want to do that?”

“It usually makes things easier.”

“And what’s all this about a wardrobe. It sounds gay, man.”

“I am gay.” Before Amelia responded, Demarco said, “Go do something useful. Get me into that house.”

Demarco softly kicked the unlatched fence gate out of Amelia’s way and motioned her forward. She walked past broken toys, a rusty lawn chair, an open garbage can, and up a short flight of stairs to the front door. The heavy wrought-iron gate in front of the main door stood half open, but the front door was closed and locked. An oval window set high on the front door showed there were lights on in the house.

Amelia pushed the security door out of her way, stepped to the front door, and knocked hard, twice. Demarco positioned himself next to her. He had to stand sideways as there was barely room for him on the landing.

Amelia knocked again, harder. An outside light mounted on the wall next to the door came on.

A voice asked from the other side of the closed door, “Who’s there?”

Amelia said, “Is that you, Queenie?”

“What the hell you doing here, Princess?”

“I need a place to stay.”

Queenie opened the door a crack and spoke in an angry whisper. “Are you crazy? Everybody’s lookin’ for you. You don’t want to be coming in here.”

“C’mon, Queenie. I need a place to stay.”

“What? There’s three of Whitey’s boys in here right now. They say you shot Derrick. They gonna kill you, Princess. Go on, get the hell outta here.”

Demarco moved Amelia aside and shoved the door open, knocking Queenie back. Queenie opened her mouth to yell out a warning, but Demarco covered her mouth with his left hand and pushed her back against the wall with his right.

“Don’t move. Don’t say…”

Before he could finish, a male voice shouted out from upstairs, “Who the f*ck is that?”

Demarco motioned with his head for Amelia to come in. She stepped into the house with her Glock in her hand.

Demarco whispered to Queenie, “Tell him nobody.”

Amelia stepped forward and pointed her gun at Queenie’s face.

Demarco took his hand off her mouth, and she yelled back, “Nobody.”

The voice upstairs yelled, “What the f*ck you mean, nobody?”

Demarco was already running for the set of stairs on his right. He heard heavy steps pounding down from above. He hit the stairs running and almost made it up the first flight when a large man holding a gun at his side turned into him. Before the man could react, Demarco rammed the point of the closed steel baton into his solar plexus. The gunman doubled over, paralyzed. Demarco grabbed the back of the his head and slammed it into the stairway bannister, breaking his nose. He jammed the butt of the baton into his temple, knocking him out.

It had taken all of three seconds. Demarco paused to pull the gun out of the unconscious man’s hands and continued rushing up the stairs, gun in one hand, his expandable steel baton in the other.

He heard crying and whimpering from children awakened by the yelling.

He reached the dark second-floor hallway just as someone burst out of a room to his right. Demarco slashed the steel baton across the side of a tall man’s head, then backhanded it against his jaw. Two out of three, down and out.

Demarco couldn’t see much in the dim light, but at the far end of the hall another figure leaned out of a room and fired a shot at him. The sudden gunshot caused an eruption of screaming and crying.