Bronx Requiem(45)

“How’d he beat a charge like that?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. Brady shit, or something the judge did. Beck is Kryptonite, or he had a hell of a good shyster, or both.”

Palmer shot back. “James Beck isn’t clean. He’s an ex-convict. He was at the scene of a brutal execution where a guy was shot three times. He shot his f*cking face off. He fled the scene with a guy who unloaded a shotgun at me. There’s shit in Beck’s file about an assault charge last year. We’ll find whatever there is to discredit Beck. He’s an ex-con, a murderer, and a cop killer who everyone in this department would love to see back in jail where he belongs.”

“With a lawyer who’ll portray him as a victim of the NYPD. John, all I’m saying is you’re going to need more than one bust-out skel of a witness like Tyrell f*cking Williams.”

Palmer said, “I’m going to make these cases, Ray. I’m going to use anybody and everybody in the New York Police Department to help me do it, and in the Bronx DA’s office, and the FBI, and any other place that can help me. You can jump on board or keep an arm’s distance or whatever you want, Ray. It’s up to you.”

Ippolito raised both hands and said, “Yo, relax, man, I’m on your side.” Ippolito checked around them to make sure nobody was within earshot. He leaned closer to Palmer and lowered his voice. “Just hear me out, kid. This is Uncle Ray talking. I been doing this a long time. You want to go after this *, Beck, trust me, you’re going to need more than your buddy, Tyrell.”

“I know that.”

“So listen to me, John. You ain’t got time to run around the Bronx trying to persuade some nitwits from Watkins’s crew to be witnesses for you. They live their whole lives getting it pounded into their heads never to rat. Stitches for snitches and all that shit. You’d need a thirty-year bit hanging over one of them to get ’em to turn. It just ain’t going to happen. Not in two or three days. No way.”

“Tyrell turned.”

“For now. He fell into your lap, and he knows you’ll try to hang a murder on him if he doesn’t play along.”

“All right, so what do you have in mind, Ray?”

Ippolito looked around again to make sure nobody was within earshot. He bent closer to Palmer and said, “Look, I was going to float this to you back when we were looking for Watkins at Bronx River Houses, but I figured well, whatever.”

“Float what?”

“I think we gotta go to the head honcho and make a deal here.”

“The head honcho?”

“The guy who runs all these mutts.”

“Eric Jackson?”

“Yeah, Eric Juju Jackson.”

“What kind of a deal?”

“We give him something, he gives us witnesses.”

“Why should he help us?” Palmer asked.

“For starters, murder investigations aren’t good for him. He’ll want to shut this thing down as fast as we do. The only way to make that happen quickly is to prove Derrick shot Paco Johnson. Jackson should be happy to get us a couple of witnesses who’ll claim Derrick Watkins did it. Stitchin’ up a dead guy for shooting Johnson is zero skin off Jackson’s ass.”

Palmer nodded. “Makes sense. What about helping us with Beck?”

“Why shouldn’t he? Beck shot his boy Derrick. We ask him nice, he’ll give us a couple of *s to back up Tyrell’s testimony.”

Palmer said, “Just ask him nice?”

“Well … plus offer him the same thing they all want, John.”

“What?”

“Information. Information that will keep him and his crazy enforcer, Whitey Bondurant, out of jail. Fuck, even disinformation. I don’t give a shit. We both know the Fibbies have got multiple cases they’re developing. Hell, even our dumb asses in Gangs are always looking at Jackson and Bondurant. They’ve been trying to nail those two pricks for years.”

Palmer looked at Ippolito. “Christ, Ray, giving a guy like Eric Jackson inside information? If that ever got out…”

Ippolito raised his hands and said, “John, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I’m just telling you how I see it. It’s up to you. My clock gets permanently punched in two weeks one way or the other. Makes no difference to me. I’m tryin’ to help you if you want to go for it. No risk, no reward.”

Palmer nodded. And then asked, “You ever make a deal with Eric Jackson?”

“No comment.”

Palmer said, “I assume you know how to get to him.”

“You assume correctly. Listen, John, don’t make any decision now. Take what you’ve got—your theory of the murders, Tyrell’s statement, what you saw at the scene, whatever. Present everything to the ADA. Hear what he says. Then decide.”

John Palmer nodded slowly, but both he and Ippolito knew he had already decided.





26

Walter Ferguson walked into Beck’s second-floor loft space looking like he had aged about five years. He sat alone on the unoccupied third couch, so he could face all four men.

Manny asked him, “You hungry, Walter? Let me heat up a plate for you.”

“No thank you, Emmanuel. I’m fine.”