Bronx Requiem(105)

Demarco jumped into the room the tall man had come out of. It was lit with only a night-light. Demarco could make out three cribs, but the noise from the children awakened by the gunshot was horrible. He leaned out and back for a split second and the shooter fired two more times. Now the screaming turned into hysteria, with women on the floor yelling and crying out. Demarco was trapped, but somehow he had to get to the gunman without returning fire.

He moved to his left to get a view of the hallway. There was another doorway on the opposite side, halfway down the hall. He took one step back and went for it full speed, bursting across the hall, banging the door open, and almost falling into the room. Several women had taken cover behind a bed that couldn’t possibly stop a bullet. They screamed and yelled. Demarco yelled back, “Shut up!”

Demarco had moved like a pawn on a chessboard, getting one step closer to the guy with the gun, but he still couldn’t risk shooting at him.

One of the women was cursing, another whimpering. Demarco ignored them. He pulled out the gun he had taken from the first attacker, leaned out into the hall, and threw it into the wall at the end of the hallway. Shots rang out. The shooter leaned out from the doorway to see if he’d hit anything and Demarco overhanded his steel baton at him. The handle of the baton cracked into the shooter’s forehead. He stumbled backward and disappeared down a set of stairs leading to the kitchen on the first floor.

Demarco let him run. The first man was still unconscious. Demarco walked back to the other end of the hallway, wincing against the cacophony of crying children and babies, and checked him for weapons. He found a small revolver stuck in his waistband. He pulled the gun out and shoved it in his back pocket. He ripped the man’s belt off his pants, tied his wrists with it, and kicked the side of his head.

He continued back along the hallway, leaning into bedrooms, yelling at the women to be quiet and take care of their damn babies, and headed down the back stairs.

*

Outside, Beck heard the gunshots. He stood motionless, waiting in the shadows of the small backyard, cluttered with empty spackling buckets, bags of garbage, cinder blocks, scrap wood, and other junk.

Beck picked up a concrete masonry block.

He heard footsteps running down stairs. The back door flew open. He braced himself and swung the concrete block into the body mass running his way, timing it just about perfectly.

The man fleeing the house stopped so suddenly, his feet flew out from under him and he hit the ground with a loud thud. Beck kicked the gun he had been holding into a pile of rubble. As the downed man groaned and struggled for air, Beck dragged him back into the house, the effort making him groan, too.

He called upstairs, “Demarco? Any more in there? Where are you?”

Demarco stepped into view on the back steps.

“That was the last one. You get him?”

“Yeah.”

Beck and Demarco found a roll of duct tape in the kitchen. Beck used it to immobilize Bondurant’s men, taping them from ankles to knees, wrists to elbows, and around their mouths. While he did that, Demarco, Amelia, and Queenie settled down the women and children, collected all their cell phones, and then brought the women into the large front room.

Amelia, Glock in hand, watched over the women as Beck and Demarco searched the house.

They found one ledger book on the dining room table, along with two cell phones and two landline phones. They found four rifles and five handguns stashed around the house. Beck went out into the yard and retrieved the last handgun. They piled everything on the dining room table.

In the closet of the largest bedroom, they discovered a safe bolted to the floor.

Beck said to Demarco, “Hey, bring that woman in charge up here. I don’t want to waste time on this safe if there’s nothing in it.”

Demarco returned with Queenie. She stood in the middle of the messy bedroom, a sullen look on her face. She wore jeans that fit her fifteen pounds ago and a white top with a red stain above her right breast. The years had added weight, softened her body, and hardened her attitude.

Beck said, “Thanks for getting the kids settled.”

“What you want with me?”

Beck held up the ledger book he’d found in the dining room.

“You’re the one who made all the entries in this, aren’t you?”

“So what?”

“Are there any more ledger books in that safe?”

Queenie’s mouth turned into a firmly shut line. Her expression told Beck everything he needed to know.

“What else is in there?”

He got the same reaction.

“Okay, there’s two ways you can play this, ma’am. You can take a share of all the cash we find in that safe and come with us. Or, you can stay here until Jackson, Bondurant, or more of their men show up and deal with what they do. Which way do you want to go?”

Queenie stood where she was, unresponsive.

“And just so you know, in terms of Jackson and Bondurant, their time is over. One way or another, they’re done. I guarantee you that.”

Queenie sneered. “You trippin’, man.”

“I won’t tell you again. Their time is over. You want to go in with us and take your share of what’s in the safe, or you want to stay here and wait for Bondurant?”

“What do you mean ‘go in’ with you?”

“I don’t have time to explain everything. Decide now.”