Bronx Requiem(59)

They’d taken everything from her. Her mother, the foster system, the schools, every man who’d abused her, her father who never nurtured or protected her, but most of all the pimp and his crew who had torn away her last shreds of dignity and turned her into a murderer.

She stood up, done with it now. Done with being taken from. Done with running. There was no way she was going to escape from the Bronx without money. It was time to get out of this stinking hole and take back what they had taken from her.

With the dark night over, Amelia could see more of the basement. She saw a bookcase attached to the back wall with L brackets. Amelia tore it off the wall with the tire iron and dragged the bookcase to the window.

She used the shelves like a ladder, stepping up all the way to the top, high enough so she could push the iron bars out of her way and lean out the opening. The cool air revived her. She breathed deeply and shimmied out the half window.

She found the Jeep where she’d left it. There was a parking ticket shoved under the windshield wiper. Good, she thought. She threw the ticket on the ground. Let them come after that dead piece of shit Derrick Watkins.

She stopped at the same McDonald’s on Jerome. Even though it was past one o’clock, she ordered a Sausage McMuffin with Egg and coffee. She ate slowly and methodically as she carefully planned her next moves. She knew they would be staking out her grandmother’s place. Good. Let them.

She finished her meal and, to her surprise, Amelia found the bathroom unoccupied. It was the first time she’d smiled in a long time.

Once inside the bathroom, she took as long as she needed to do everything she needed to do, including stripping off her T-shirt and washing again, this time with hot water. Several people banged on the door, but she yelled at them to wait. She walked out of the bathroom when she was good and ready, returning the glares of customers waiting for the bathroom, her hand inside the pocket of the hoodie holding her gun.

Back in the Jeep, she pulled the gun out of her hoodie and looked at it more carefully. She saw the name Ruger etched into the barrel and grip, but it meant nothing to her. She pushed the button she figured would release the magazine, which dropped out of the gun onto her lap. She couldn’t tell how many bullets were in the magazine but, by the weight of it, she knew she had at least some. Good enough. She slid the magazine back in, clicked the safety down, and shoved the Ruger back into her hoodie pocket, feeling competent and powerful.

She smiled, remembering the kick and crack of the gun when she’d shot Derrick, the weapon banging into the palm of her hand with each shot.

She pulled out of the McDonald’s without any of her previous nervousness. So what if she hit something. Fuck it. She’d just leave. If somebody gave her a hard time, she’d see what would happen when she pulled out the Ruger.

Amelia made it back to her old neighborhood in the Bronx and cruised farther north into West Farms where she knew heroin addicts scored their drugs.

She spotted what she was looking for hunkered down at the back of the parking lot of a Howard Johnson motel. She pulled the Jeep into the lot and jumped out, strolling over to a woman whom she’d known since she was ten. Back then, the kids called her Crackhead Betty, but Amelia knew she had switched to heroin long ago, and from heroin to wine as she had become less and less able to prostitute herself for money.

Crackhead Betty had set herself up in the far corner of the parking lot. She sat propped against the wall, surrounded by a luggage carrier filled with plastic bags, a sleeping bag, and filthy blankets. She also had a grocery-store cart and a two-wheeled shopping cart. The grocery cart held clear garbage bags stuffed with empty soda cans and plastic bottles.

Amelia approached Betty, taking note of how much she had deteriorated. The woman was forty-two, but looked sixty. She wore a baseball cap over a filthy knit hat and, despite the warm weather, a stained down coat. The skin on her face appeared ravaged from old bruises and years of exposure to the elements.

The bottom three buttons on her shirt were gone, and Betty’s stomach spilled over a pair of black tights. She seemed to be in a kind of alert stupor. Crackhead Betty stared at Amelia with a look of anxious paranoia.

Amelia knew that crazed look and called out in a friendly voice, “Hey, Betty, how’re you doin’?”

The friendly greeting elicited a crooked smile from the woman. There seemed to be something wrong with her lower jaw. The smile revealed missing teeth.

Betty immediately took Amelia’s friendly greeting as a chance to beg for money.

“Oh, chile,” she said, “I need a little spare change. I need to get something to eat.”

Amelia asked, “What’re you drinkin’ these days, Betty?”

“Wine. Any sweet wine, honey.”

After her second stop at McDonald’s, Amelia had less than thirty dollars left. She said, “Okay, Betty, I’ll get you a bottle of wine and give you some money, too. But I got to borrow your shopping cart and some cans for a few minutes.”

Betty’s voice grew shrill, “No, no, don’t take my stuff. Don’t take my stuff.”

Amelia stuffed a five and two ones into Betty’s filthy right hand and told her, “You sit still. Don’t worry. I’ll be right back with your wine.”

For a moment, Amelia considered asking Betty for her down coat, but rejected the idea. She’d never give it up, and it might be infested with lice. Instead, she emptied the shopping cart and put one bag of empty soda cans and a filthy blanket into it.