Bronx Requiem(42)
“So every time she left the room, she got something she needed. The hoodie to hide the gun. Then the gun. Her purse. Her shoes.”
Ciro nodded. “She made her bones, man.”
Beck said, “What is she? Sixteen? Seventeen?”
Manny said, “Old enough to have a reason to kill somebody.”
Beck asked, “But what was the reason? She didn’t know Packy had been shot either. She jumped on me when I said I was a friend of her father’s. She set up everything, getting the gun and all before I announced her father had been shot.”
Manny said, “I don’t think Packy had shit to do with it. Girl like that, getting whored out? That means she’s getting beaten, raped into submission. Maybe drugged up on top of it. She had enough reasons on her own to pull the trigger. We come along and give her the opportunity.”
Demarco said, “Agreed, but there was more to it. When I found her, she was locked in one of the bedrooms. She looked crazed. I think she believed they were going to kill her. I think that whole crew was going to pull one last train on her, and then get rid of her.”
Manny made a sour face, thinking it over. “Animals. But that don’t explain why they wanted to kill her in the first place. Maybe it was because her father raised hell at the projects.”
Beck said, “Which brings me back to my main question. Why was Packy raising hell? I keep trying to figure out what made him risk his parole hitchhiking into town, and then rush over to that housing project minutes after he arrives ready to take on a whole crew?”
Ciro said, “Because his daughter was getting turned out. Ain’t that enough of a reason?”
“Maybe. But it wasn’t as if Packy and the girl were all that close. And the Packy Johnson I knew didn’t do things on the spur of the moment. The better play would have been to come to us for help. There had to be more to it.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But I guarantee you I’m going to goddam find out.”
Demarco asked, “How?”
Beck sat forward. “First, you guys have to find the older brother.” Beck pulled out the IDs Manny had gathered out of his shirt pocket, held one up, and dropped the rest on the coffee table. “Jerome Watkins. If anybody knows what the hell is going on, it’s him. You’ve got to find him, and find him before he gets to Packy’s daughter. If he was going to kill her before, what do you think he’ll do to her now that she shot his brother?”
Demarco, “She’ll be begging for a bullet before he’s done with her.”
Manny asked, “And while we’re doing that?”
“I’ll be looking in the only other place that might have the answers to all this.”
Ciro asked, “Where?”
“The place Packy Johnson had been up until seventeen hours before his death. Eastern Correctional.”
24
It took nearly three hours to process the crime scene and remove the bloody remains of Derrick Watkins. All the windows in the apartment were opened, and surfaces in the front room were sprayed with an enzyme solvent and deodorizer to cover the lingering odors and make it bearable for the police personnel gathering at the scene.
Palmer talked to Tyrell Williams twice more. Once, making sure Tyrell picked out James Beck from the photo array as the man who shot Derrick Watkins. And once to make sure Tyrell understood he shouldn’t talk to anyone else but him.
Since the crimes connected to the shooting of Derrick Watkins involved two precincts, the 42nd, where Paco Johnson had been found, and the 43rd, where Derrick Watkins had been shot, it meant double the number of police brass.
The bosses from the Four-Two included Lieutenant James Levitt and his sergeant Billy Clovehill, plus Levitt’s boss, the precinct commander Captain Dermott Jennie. From the Four-Three came the precinct commander, a deputy inspector named Kenneth Walker who brought with him a veteran homicide investigator, Richard Albright.
The last police official to arrive was the man who would decide what happened next, Borough Commander Edward Pierce.
Palmer, Levitt, the two precinct commanders, and Pierce occupied five seats around the kitchen table in the back of the whorehouse/apartment. Richard Albright and Billy Clovehill stood watching. Palmer had called Ippolito for help with the bureaucratic battle, but he hadn’t shown up yet.
Even though Palmer had never presented a case before so many bosses, his sense of entitlement and unbridled ambition enabled him to speak calmly and lay out the facts as if he were convinced everything he said was actually true.
He started with the murder of Paco Johnson in the Four-Two, claiming it had been done by Derrick Watkins in retaliation for Johnson threatening him at Bronx River Houses.
He then explained that Paco Johnson’s ex-convict friend, James Beck, tracked down and shot Derrick Watkins to avenge the Johnson’s murder, making sure to emphasize Beck’s history as a cop killer who got away with murder once, but shouldn’t get away with it again.
His presentation ended with an appeal that he and his partner be allowed to pursue both cases, obviously under the supervision of Lieutenant Levitt and Captain Jennie, based on Palmer’s involvement in both murders. He’d caught the original murder in the Four-Two, had followed a lead on that crime to the scene of the second murder, where he’d survived a shotgun attack, and had been able to secure an eyewitness to the shooting in the Four-Three.