Bronx Requiem(51)

He muttered a curse and rolled over on his side. He focused on his breathing, letting the simple in and out of his breaths occupy his mind. He tried to let his thoughts drift, even though they kept returning to the pain he’d lived through, and a man who had helped him deal with that pain and saved him from infinitely more—Packy Johnson.

He kept at it, breathing in and out, trying not to think about his deceased friend. His thoughts drifted to Walter and Manny and the rest of his crew. Beck focused on the living and his reason for being in an old motel on the edge of a scrub forest in Napanoch, New York, until he fell into a cold, fitful sleep.





31

Amelia Johnson let go of the basement window sill and released herself into a dark void, bracing for the unknown. Unable to gauge the distance, she couldn’t prepare for the impact and fell onto her knees when she landed. Fortunately, there wasn’t anything sharp enough to cut her, or uneven enough to twist or break an ankle.

The only light illuminating the basement came from the half window above, and that light was quickly fading. The first thing she did was pull the car cover in after her. Then she looked around for something she could stand on so she could pull the iron bars back into place.

She saw dirty pieces of corrugated cardboard, broken slats of wooden lath, a few shelves, empty paint cans, old bundles of magazines, and piles of junk. But then, along the wall, she saw an old, stained porcelain toilet bowl. She dragged it over to the window, managed to balance herself on the rim, reached up and pulled back the iron bars almost all the way over the opening. For now, she left the plywood cover off so as to catch the last of the dying daylight.

She slowly picked her way around the area until she found a set of stairs leading up to the ground floor. She moved cautiously up the stairwell, feeling pieces of broken glass under her flimsy ballet flats until she reached a wooden door reinforced with three-quarter-inch plywood. She turned the door knob, pushed and pulled. There was no give at all. The door had been nailed to the frame. She felt relieved knowing nobody would be able to come down, but disappointed that there was no way out except back through the ground-level half window.

She made her way back down to the bottom stair and sat on it, closing her eyes, trying to convince herself she was safe. From somewhere behind her, she heard what sounded like dripping water. She followed the sound until she found an empty laundry room. There were no appliances, but the faucet on the wall where the washing machine had been attached dripped steadily. She opened the faucet until she had a small stream of water running.

She used her cell phone to illuminate the room and found a nearly empty box of powdered laundry detergent. She stripped off all her clothes, except for her ballet flats, scraped the hardened soap from the bottom of the box, and squatted under the water faucet.

She used her hands to soap herself with the gritty detergent and rinse with the cold water. Soon, she was shivering almost uncontrollably, but she persisted, soaping, scrubbing, cleaning off the sweat and dirt and stink from every part of her. She washed her face, over and over, working the gritty soap into her skin, rubbing and rinsing away every last vestige of makeup.

At last, she felt clean, scoured down to the point where she finally felt separated from where she had been and the things she had done.

She turned off the water and carefully stepped out of the puddle soaking through her cheap shoes. There was almost no light in the laundry room now, but she was able to pull out the roll of paper towels from her hoodie. There wasn’t much left on the roll, so she started with one piece, using it to get as much water as she could off her smooth, dark skin, squeezing out the piece of paper towel, rubbing herself with it until it became useless. Then another piece, and another until she felt like she had buffed her skin raw.

Much of her back was still wet when she put her clothes back on, but once dressed, her shivering subsided into a weird quivering centered in the pit of her stomach.

She found the remains of a cardboard box and used it to scrape a clean space until she had a big enough area to set down another piece of corrugated. She lay down on top of the cardboard and wrapped herself in the car cover. She found an old paperback book, which she used as a pillow.

She stretched out in stages, trying to ignore how hard the floor felt underneath her. She thought about finding more boxes to flatten and lie on, but she was too tired. Too enervated. She remained flat on her back, not on her side, because she knew her hip and shoulder would ache against the concrete floor.

Her quivering subsided. She closed her eyes and wondered how she could escape from the Bronx, and Biggie and Juju and Whitey, and wondered if she would die trying.





32

Manny Guzman had been awake since his usual time, five A.M. He came out from his small kitchen on the ground floor of Beck’s building in Red Hook to sit at the old oak bar with Demarco Jones, who had come down just after seven.

They were eating breakfast burritos Manny had made and drinking strong black coffee. Laid out on the bar were the IDs they had taken from Derrick Watkins’s crew.

Both men ate without rushing. Their day was going to be filled with tracking Biggie Watkins and trying to find Amelia.

Demarco pointed his fork at the IDs on the bar top.

“I know we have to find the brother, but we might have to start with one of the others so I scanned those and sent copies to Alex last night.”

“Mr. Computer.”

“Yeah. He’s probably run them through every database in the world by now.”