Bronx Requiem(9)
3
By eight o’clock Tuesday evening, Amelia had done what she could to recover from her night in the closet. She sat alone in the back bedroom of Derrick Watkins’s apartment. No one would go near her. She had dressed in clothes she knew Derrick would approve: denim short-shorts, a tight-fitting pink T-shirt displaying a Playboy-bunny logo formed out of cheap rhinestones, platform heels that emphasized her long legs, and no bra. She had applied enough mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick to look ten years older, and had fitted a wig of shoulder-length red synthetic hair over her straight black hair.
During the time she had prepared herself, she fought down a panicky desire to flee. To wrap a bundle of normal clothes and drop them out the window, so when Derrick let her out of the apartment she could change and make a run for it. But where would she go? She used to have a few friends she could stay with, but nobody would take her in now. Everybody knew she was with Derrick Watkins. No one would risk his retribution. She couldn’t stay with her grandmother. That would be the first place they looked.
Most important, she needed money. Derrick would be sending her out to work. If she didn’t earn enough, the beatings would continue. She was trapped and, to make it worse, she feared he was going to make her prowl the Hunts Point Market area. There were still whores working those streets, but only the very dregs: older, overweight women with missing teeth, longtime drug addicts, HIV-afflicted transsexuals.
And then she heard Derrick yelling at her from the living room. He didn’t bother to come get her. He just shouted, “Princess, get your ass out here. Now, goddammit.”
She walked into the front of the apartment, head down. She carried a small gold purse on a chain, and a lightweight, pink, cotton/polyester hoodie folded, half-hidden by the purse. Inside the purse were condoms, lipstick, a cheap cell phone, and a packet of Kleenex.
Derrick sat at the head of a table set up outside the kitchen presiding over a dinner consisting of two large buckets of lukewarm KFC extra-crispy chicken and assorted sides. The chair on his right was empty. Queenie sat in the next chair over. On the left side of the table next to Derrick sat Tyrell Williams, and next to Tyrell one of the youngest girls in the family, a fifteen-year-old runaway Derrick had named Duchess.
Derrick barely glanced at Amelia and told Duchess, “Move down a seat, honey.” He pointed to the empty chair next to Tyrell, making sure Amelia sat next to someone she loathed.
Derrick Watkins, thirty-two years old, six feet tall, about twenty pounds overweight, wore ordinary clothes purchased from popular chain stores like the Gap: tan khaki pants, a button-down white collar shirt, nondescript canvas boat shoes with rubber soles.
Derrick dressed low-key because his older brother Jerome dressed that way. And because the top man in their gang set, the feared Eric Jackson, dressed low-key. Plus, Derrick considered himself too smart and too diversified in his criminal activities to be labeled as just a pimp. So, no tattoos. No bling. No fancy car. Derrick worked hard to project his image, using his basic math skills to track every dollar earned by his prostitutes and every penny spent on them.
But the carefully cultivated exterior didn’t obviate the fact that Derrick Watkins seduced and recruited the vulnerable, both male and female. The young men he controlled through fear and promises of money. The women and girls by alternating between affection and terror, savage punishment and pitiful rewards, just like every other pimp.
Without looking at Amelia, Derrick told her to eat. She took a cold chicken leg along with a spoonful of gelatinous mashed potatoes.
Derrick ate the greasy chicken with his hands, using a white plastic fork when necessary to scoop mashed potatoes or coleslaw into his mouth. He ate with his mouth open as a sign of privilege, using napkin after napkin, which he dropped on the table.
As he ate, he made a point of ignoring everybody while still giving the impression he was always keeping track. He also kept his gun on the table next to his plate—a forty caliber compact semiautomatic Taurus. Derrick pretended to be a gun aficionado, but had actually picked the gun because it looked cool with its lightweight polymer frame.
Derrick had forced Amelia to sit next to Tyrell because he knew how uncomfortable he made her feel. Derrick used Tyrell Williams, a hulking, twenty-five-year-old high school dropout, as an enforcer, messenger, and particularly as an informer. Tyrell had a talent for knowing how to find out if any of Derrick’s prostitutes broke any of his rules.
Derrick had four women working for him. Their family names were Jewel, Duchess, Destiny, and Princess—Amelia’s working name. All of them were underage except for Destiny, who had been passed on to him by his brother Jerome. Derrick preferred underage girls because they were easier to intimidate and bully. They were the ones who had the least and feared the most.
Amelia knew the dinner would continue for some time. Often during these meals various members of Derrick’s crew would visit. Derrick had one of his new recruits, a gangly eighteen-year-old named Leon Miller, sitting out in the living room to guard the front door. There would be a knock. Leon would take out his proudest possession, a beat-up Glock 17, and stand by the door. Tyrell would lumber out, vet whoever had arrived, then escort them to the dining table.
The visitor would sit in the empty chair next to Derrick, who would do a poor version of a Mafia don chewing food while somebody talked in his ear.
Forty minutes into the meal, Derrick finally addressed Amelia.