Bronx Requiem(31)

“I don’t know. He left. I came to take his place.”

“What time was that?”

“About midnight.”

“How many of you *s are in Derrick Watkins’s crew?”

Leon paused, leery of saying the wrong thing. Beck repeated his question.

“How many?”

“It varies.” Leon made a seesaw motion with his hand. “Not everybody has the same status, you know. Just figuring the ones close to him, maybe five, six. But you know, there’s others who float in and out.”

“How many others?”

“Maybe a dozen?”

“And you?”

“I ain’t official yet. You got to buy your way in. Then you get recognized.”

“Why does he need you watching the place?”

“He wants to know if the cops come by. Or if someone wants to get in touch with him.”

“Did the cops come?”

“Yeah. Couple hours ago.”

“I’m not a cop, am I, Leon?”

“No.”

“So that makes me someone who wants to get in touch with him. How do I go about doing that?”

Leon Miller hesitated.

“Careful, Leon. You said Derrick and his brother have other places. How many are there?”

“That I know of?”

“Ask me another question, and I’ll f*cking kill you.”

Leon quickly answered, “Three. I know three of them.”

Beck stood.

“Get dressed.”





14

As soon as Derrick and Jerome locked her in the bedroom, Amelia tried to stifle the paralyzing fear gripping her. She paced around the room, taking deep breaths, thinking through what was happening. Her father, whoever he was, whatever he’d been trying to do, had ruined any chance she might have had to escape.

Worse, now there was no way Derrick would want her around. Not after being called out. But he couldn’t just let her go. That would be like admitting he was afraid of her father. So he had called on his brother Biggie to figure out what to do.

Suddenly, with absolute clarity and soul-crushing certainty, Amelia Johnson knew they had only one option: kill her. Make her disappear. Jerome and Derrick were sitting in the kitchen planning it right now.

Amelia Johnson stopped pacing. She felt her own death approaching. She couldn’t take a full breath. Her legs felt so weak she had to sit down on the rumpled bed. The small bedroom closed in on her. There was nothing between her and death except a battered old wooden door with a flimsy sliding bolt lock that could be broken with one kick.

There was no way out of the room. There was a small window that had been painted shut for years with bars on the outside. Breaking the window and screaming for help would do nothing. They’d be punching and kicking her long before anybody could respond, assuming anybody would even hear her cries.

She looked around the room and under the bed, searching for something she could use as a weapon.

Survival pulled her to the other side of her fear. She rushed to the closet. Nothing but a few empty wire hangers hung on a pole. Maybe she could get the pole out of its holders. Use it to fend them off. Or twist the wire hangers into something she could slash at them with. Use the weapon pimps had used on their whores for decades.

No. That was stupid. Wire hangers against fists and guns? And they’d probably beat her to death with the pole if she tried to use it.

She sat back down at the foot of the bed, facing the door. She had nothing. She didn’t even have her shoes; they were in the other bedroom. She hardly even had clothes. All she had was a useless fold of three twenty-dollar bills hidden in her hair that once discovered would make her death even worse.

Her anger hardened into silent cursing. She cursed the father she never had who should have protected her instead of ensuring her death. She cursed her mother for being a hopeless, selfish drug addict who died and left her alone. And her grandmother for being such a crazy, angry, volatile, nagging shrew. She cursed Derrick Watkins to hell and everybody around him—that hulking fool Tyrell, and Derrick’s heartless brother Jerome, and all the stupid boys in his crew scuffling and thieving, ducking and dodging, trying to be criminals. And she cursed the stifling, dark, fearful presence of the mythic Eric Juju Jackson sitting on top of it all, ready to send out his insane assassin Whitey Bondurant. Slowly her hate and fear and anger hardened into a desperate resolve. Whoever they sent for her, she knew he would have a gun. And somehow, through stealth or seduction, she would get close to that gun, grab it, fight for it, and pull the trigger. She would pull and pull until they cut her down and ended her miserable life here and now, once and forever.





15

While Beck and the others filtered out of the Bronx River Houses one at a time, Demarco stayed behind with Leon while he dressed. They walked out of the complex side by side, as if they were friends, and headed over to Harrod Street where the Mercury Marauder sat, engine running.

Manny opened the back door and shoved Leon in next to Ciro, then climbed in after him. Beck sat in the passenger seat as usual. Demarco took the wheel.

Beck turned to Leon.

“Leon, don’t waste our time. You said there are three possibilities. Take us to the best one first.”

Leon Miller directed them to a three-flat house on Mount Hope Place. The drive took less than ten minutes.