Bronx Requiem(12)

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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*ck 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.