Bronx Requiem(19)

Demarco glanced at Beck brooding. He had never seen him give in to such a dark, angry mood. A mood Demarco knew might turn Beck reckless. And that would be very dangerous.

In the backseat, Manny Guzman showed little except for the imperceptible clenching of his jaw and occasional pursing of his lips.

Demarco cleared his throat.

“I left a message for Ciro.”

Beck nodded once. “Good.”

Demarco pushed it, wanting to get Beck talking.

“What do we know about this old lady?”

Beck scratched his nose with the knuckle of his forefinger. His mouth twitched. “Not much. Walter and I went to see her in order to get the housing issue cleared with the parole board. She’s a hard case.”

“How old is she?”

“I don’t know. I’d guess in her seventies.”

“And what is she to Packy? An in-law?”

“Barely. I don’t know if she’s anything to anybody.”

“What about his daughter? He has a daughter, right?”

Beck knew Demarco’s questions were his way of pulling him out of his silent brooding so he went along with it, barely.

“I don’t know much about her. I think she’s sixteen or seventeen.”

“Who’s she live with?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t something we asked the mother-in-law about.”

“Was Packy close to her? The daughter?”

Beck lapsed into one-word answers.

“No.”

Demarco persisted. “So you and Packy first met up at Clinton, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How long before you got sent there? I forget.”

Beck shifted in his seat. They were entering the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. His thoughts narrowed like the car lanes entering the underpass, remembering back when he had been unjustly sentenced to a term of ten to thirty years for first-degree aggravated manslaughter.

“After my trial was finally over, which took almost two years, they sent me to Sing Sing for about eight months, which is where a lot of guys go until they get sorted out.”

“But that judge tried to get you exiled right away up to Clinton, right?”

“He tried. He put a target on me with the Department of Correction as much as he could, but DoC moved at its own pace.”

From the backseat Manny said, “You killed a cop, man. He wanted to make an example of you.”

“I killed a drunken loudmouth in a stupid bar fight that consisted of a chest bump and one punch. The prosecutor tried to screw me by withholding evidence, the judge f*cked me with the jury instructions and the way he ran the trial, and he f*cked me again in the sentencing and the assignment. It all gave Phineas more grounds for appeal, but at the time, it put me in a nearly constant state of rage. Pissed off at the judge, the trial, my lawyer, myself.”

Manny nodded at his memory of Beck in Dannemora. “And what, couple days after that they threw you in the SHU?”

“Yeah. When I got out of the Box, I was ready to go after anybody. Inmates. Guards. I was right on the edge.” Beck shook his head at the memory. “If I hadn’t run into Packy, I wouldn’t have made it.”

Manny spoke while staring out the car window, almost as if he were talking to himself. “Those sadist pricks like driving men to suicide.”

Demarco asked, “How’d you connect with Packy?”

“Day after I got out of the SHU. Ran into him in the north yard.” Beck shook his head at the memory. “He’d been in a long time by then. He took one look at me and just said what I needed to hear. He saved my life. He changed my life.”

Demarco glanced at Beck, waiting for Beck to explain more, but he didn’t, and Demarco let it go.

The car emerged from the tunnel. Demarco eased over to the left lane heading for the FDR.

A sad silence descended in the car. No one spoke for a while. And then, without preamble, the grizzled, oldest, perhaps toughest of them, Manny Guzman, leaned forward and placed his hand on Beck’s left shoulder. He let his heavy hand remain there for a moment, and then patted Beck’s shoulder one time. Suddenly, everything Beck had been feeling penetrated into him. And he allowed it. Allowed the deep, terrible unremitting loss to stream into him and flow back out.

Beck blinked, feeling the sudden sting of tears welling up. He stared straight out the windshield, silent and still. Nothing seemed to touch him now as he let the tears spill from his eyes. He wiped his face with an open palm, in the same way he would wipe away sweat.

In the backseat Manny Guzman nodded to himself slowly.

In the driver’s seat Demarco Jones blinked and cleared his throat.

Beck turned in his direction and smiled ruefully, shaking his head. “Jeezus.”

Demarco tipped his head in acknowledgment.

Beck began talking again to fend off the emotion.

“Packy and me met first.” Beck pointed a thumb toward the backseat. “A month or so later, me and the OG there connected.”

“After he got ahold of himself.”

“After I helped you with the Crips thing.”

“That, too. D, once we got together it wasn’t long before we ran our part of that place. I mean, we ran that thing and half the dopes in there didn’t know we was running it. That was the beauty of it.”