Bronx Requiem(127)

Beck made his way to the bedroom. The room was unkempt. The bed unmade. There was a desktop computer set up on a small desk. It was turned off. Beck ignored it.

He found a stack of printer paper on the shelf over the desk and took one page. He pulled open a file drawer and looked through Palmer’s papers until he found a sample of his writing. It wasn’t really script. Mostly printing. Beck sat at Palmer’s desk and from a pen he found next to the keyboard he wrote a simple note, mimicking Palmer’s almost childish handwriting: I’m sorry. Can’t do this anymore.

He pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket on which Alex Liebowitz had printed out an enlarged image of the signature on Palmer’s driver’s license. Beck scribbled a reasonable likeness of the signature on the suicide note, left the pen on the desk, returned to the living room, and pressed Palmer’s thumb on one side of the signed page and forefinger on the other. Remembering that Palmer had held the gun in his right hand, Beck pressed the heel of Palmer’s right hand onto the page below the signature. He set the page on the end table.

Beck retrieved the SIG from the floor. He positioned himself in front of the slumped-over corpse and put the gun in Palmer’s lifeless right hand, placing Palmer’s index finger on the trigger.

Then he surrounded Palmer’s hand with his, and pushed the tip of his thumb over Palmer’s index finger. He placed his right hand under Palmer’s chin and lifted the head and body into an upright sitting position. He raised Palmer’s right hand and pressed the muzzle of the gun on the wound he’d made in Palmer’s temple.

James Beck leaned left a bit, but did not look away. He watched to make sure he’d set everything correctly. Breathing short breaths under the strain of holding the head, body, and gun in position, Beck felt a grinding, sick feeling in his stomach. He wasn’t sure what caused it. All the misery created by the ruthless, narcissistic young man in front of him, the pain caused by holding him in position, or the knowledge of what was about to happen.

Beck squeezed Palmer’s finger against the trigger.

The SIG Sauer emitted a sharp crack. The hot, empty shell flew up and away, and a great deal of John Palmer’s skull and brains exploded outward, splattering everything to the left of Palmer’s shoulder: couch, window, wall. And the suicide note.

The 9-mm bullet plowed into the Sheetrock wall, just below the window, penetrating into the brick that separated John Palmer’s private eighteenth-floor perch from the rest of the world beneath him.





76

In the aftermath, Beck lived in a strange limbo, waiting to flee if necessary, but staying to make sure his men remained safe from arrest as all the investigations played out.

Even though none of the crew kept their distance or acted differently, Beck felt isolated, because he had to be ready to leave everything behind if anything about Palmer’s death turned the attention of the police on him and the others.

After the shooting, he’d wiped off the blood that blew back on him with Handi Wipes, folded everything into his latex gloves, and placed the gloves and wipes in his pocket.

He put his ball cap on and left the apartment, shutting the door firmly behind him, covering the door handle with his sleeve. He walked two flights up to the twentieth floor. The Bolo brothers had taped over that door lock, too. Beck pocketed the tape and stepped out onto the floor, taking the elevator all the way to the basement. He waited near the service entrance until he could slip out with two FreshDirect deliverymen exiting past a kid delivering a stack of pizzas.

Finally, after weeks of intense investigation, the NYPD ruled John Palmer’s death a suicide based on the physical evidence at the scene, the stress Palmer’s crimes must have caused him, and Levitt’s last phone call. Investigators decided that when Levitt told Palmer to remain in his apartment until further notice, Palmer concluded his arrest was imminent.

The investigators also took note of all the other factors pointing to Palmer’s guilt: the evidence Walter Ferguson and Phineas Dunleavy provided, the fact that Palmer’s witnesses recanted within minutes after hearing Juju Jackson was in federal custody, Raymond Ippolito’s testimony blaming everything on Palmer, and the Bronx DA dropping any prosecutions that had anything to do with Palmer’s evidence—all of which convinced the NYPD brass to sweep everything linked to John Palmer as far under the carpet as possible.

Ippolito avoided prosecution, but that didn’t prevent the commissioner from stripping him of his rank and pension. He fled to Venice Beach, California, got a job as a bartender, faded into the woodwork, but never stopped watching for James Beck or Ciro Baldassare.

The FBI initiated an investigation against Edward Remsen and Eric Jackson, both of whom they picked up on a tip that led them to a motel in New Jersey where the pair had been hiding out. The charges against them were extensive.

Remsen negotiated a plea bargain, which included forfeiting almost three million dollars in assets, agreeing to testify against Eric Jackson, and identifying all the men in his father’s prostitution ring, including Fred Culla, the sixth of Beck’s five attackers who had been found beaten in the parking lot of Remsen’s old bar shortly before his arrest by the FBI.

Eric Jackson pleaded not guilty to all charges and remained in the Federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn awaiting the trial that would eventually send him to prison for the rest of his life.

Patrolmen in the 43rd Precinct arrested Floyd Whitey Bondurant at Bronx River Houses after his fight with Demarco for possession of a firearm. An anonymous tip prompted the cops to test the gun, and ballistics confirmed it was the weapon used in the murders of Derrick Watkins, Jerome Watkins, and Tyrell Williams. Bondurant’s reputation as Eric Jackson’s assassin, plus the intense pressure to find someone responsible for the killings, led the Bronx District Attorney to charge him with all three murders, which meant dropping charges against Emmanuel Guzman and Demarco Jones.