Bronx Requiem(86)

“Yes,” Demarco said, “we’re police. We are looking for this young woman I described to you. Is she here?”

“Do you have identification?”

Ciro calmly took out his forty-five and laid it on the counter. The clerk spluttered, “I’m not sure. I came in at six. I didn’t check everybody in.”

“Have you seen anybody like I described?”

“No.”

“Do you have any women staying here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Go check.”

Demarco watched him scurry to his desk and start clicking through the records on his computer. It took him almost a full minute. He returned to the window.

“No. No women registered.”

“Why are you so nervous?”

“You make me nervous. The gun makes me nervous.”

“You should be nervous. Particularly if you’re lying to us. Are you sure there isn’t a woman staying here who fits that description?”

“We don’t do that business.”

“What business?”

“We don’t rent rooms by the hour. Only by the night.”

Demarco paused, looked over at Ciro, turned back to the manager. He held up a hand before the man could say anything. “Listen to me carefully. If we find out the girl is here, and we will find out, we will cause you enormous problems. Do you know what the word ‘enormous’ means?”

The man nodded four times. “Yes.”

“So—are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Demarco stared at him.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

Demarco and Ciro walked back out onto the street.

Ciro said, “She ain’t there.”

*

The shower and shampoo in the bare-bones bathroom at the Expressway Motel helped, but when Amelia put her clothes back on she wished she could have washed them, too. She kept smelling the rancid, moldy smell of Crackhead Betty’s blanket and the acrid scent of gun smoke.

Amelia tried to ignore her dirty clothes as she sat on the bed and inventoried everything from the laundry bag she’d found in Tyrell’s car. The guns were a .40 caliber Taurus 840, and a 9-mm Glock 17. The two boxes of ammunition were all 9-mm bullets. She checked the magazines in the guns. Both magazines seemed full. She ignored the ledger books and counted the cash. Adding it to the money she’d taken from Biggie Watkins and Tyrell, she had a total of $4,272. More money than she’d ever had in her life.

She remembered with a Glock you just had to squeeze the trigger all the way back to shoot it. She pulled back the slide to chamber a round and looked at the little lever next to the trigger. She gently pushed it with the point of her finger, released the trigger, and laid the Glock on the bed next to her. She stuffed all the cash into the pockets of her new jeans, and placed the red laundry bag on the floor with the ammunition, the second gun, and the ledger books.

The queen-size bed filled most of the room, which needed cleaning, but at least there wasn’t any garbage in the wastebaskets. And the two small towels in the bathroom had been laundered. She’d made sure to leave the bedcover on the bed.

It was too early for the hookers and pimps to be gathering and conducting business, but not too late for the smell of marijuana to drift by, or to hear a door slam, or voices arguing through the thin Sheetrock walls.

She checked the time on the room’s digital alarm clock. 9:02 P.M. She stretched out on the bed, thinking about the money. More than four thousand dollars. She thought about robbing Biggie’s house. Picturing who might be there. No, she told herself. No way. There’s got to be some of Juju’s guys there by now. Why risk it? She had enough to get the hell out of the Bronx. She had an urge to stand up and leave now, but she ached for sleep. And her hair was going to take at least a couple of more hours to dry. Just a couple more hours.

She looked out the window. She thought she heard thunder. The bed felt so comfortable after a night on the concrete floor of that basement. Maybe drive by Biggie’s house and check it out. If it didn’t look right, leave. Plenty of money. But hair still wet. Don’t have a hat. And then Amelia Johnson fell asleep.

*

“Christ, I think this neighborhood is even worse.”

Demarco smiled. “I’d call it a tie.”

“What the hell is behind all this corrugated metal fencing?”

“Scrap metal, I think.”

“And look, D, another boiler-welding place.”

“Yes, but that one is for marine boilers.”

“What the f*ck does that mean? Is there water near here?”

“The Bronx River?”

“I can’t believe there’s a motel here.”

“Maybe sailors stay there while their boilers are being welded.”

The motel sat in the middle of a U-shaped parking lot. There were two driveways leading into parking areas at the north and south sides of the motel. The south lot was half the size of the north lot. As Ciro approached the south entrance, they saw a brand-new silver Lincoln MKT approaching the north entrance. Both men took notice.

“That car doesn’t belong here.”

“Neither does mine,” said Ciro. “Looks like somebody’s got the same idea as you.”

“Process of elimination.”