Bronx Requiem(94)

“You want them here, too?”

“Yes. Also, tell Alex to track down a man named Edward Remsen. He’s a CO, works at Sing Sing. I think he lives in the Bronx. Have Alex do that first.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll need Ciro, too.”

Demarco asked, “Anybody else?”

“Willie Reese. Ask him to be there.”

“Full-court press, huh, James?”

“Yes.”

Beck heard footsteps outside the kitchen door. He told Demarco, “Get things rolling, my friend. I’ll see you soon.”

He hung up Janice’s phone as she entered carrying two plastic bags of groceries. Beck took the bags out of her hands and placed them on the counter while Janice slipped out of her coat. She hung it on a peg next to the door. Beck took a carton of eggs and other groceries. It all felt very domestic.

“That fits you,” Janice said.

“What? Unpacking the groceries, or the robe?”

“Both I suppose.”

“I’m not going to ask who the robe belongs to.”

“It belongs to me. He’s long gone.”

“I had to use your phone.”

“You didn’t call China or anything, did you?”

Beck smiled. “No. Listen, I…”

“If you’re going to thank me again, don’t. I’ll start breakfast.” She stopped and listened for a moment. “I think your clothes are on the first spin cycle. Keep track of them and get them in the dryer. Not that I’m rushing you, but the sooner you get out of here the better.”

“I understand.”

“No you don’t. I already got a call from the sheriff asking if I know where Oswald Remsen is. Remsen didn’t make it home last night. I don’t think that’s entirely unusual, but his wife called the sheriff a couple of hours ago.”

Beck didn’t respond.

Janice asked, “Any other wives going to be calling the sheriff this morning?”

“Depends on how much they miss their husbands.”

Janice stared at Beck. He looked back at her without expression. He watched her thinking it through, worry and concern clouding her expression.

He said, “Janice, there are two things you have to know. What happened last night, had to happen. There was nothing I could have done to stop it.”

“Okay.”

“And the other thing is, don’t jump to any conclusions. Don’t assume anything.”

“I’m not sure I know what that means.”

“It means don’t try to figure out what happened to Remsen and his men. In fact, don’t even think about it. No matter what you hear over the next few days, it’ll take time for everything to emerge. In the meantime, it’s not your responsibility. And you know nothing about it. Nothing. If anybody asks you about a stranger in the bar last night, you tell them you think there was, but you can’t remember anything specific about him. Just an ordinary guy. Did you hear fighting in the parking lot? Not really. You were busy. Stick to that, don’t draw conclusions, you’ll be fine.”

“All right.”

“Was there anybody else in the bar who saw anything?”

Janice thought for a moment. “By the time you left it was just me and Albert Collins. He’s not a problem. Albert is a little slow. Nobody will bother asking him anything.”

“Then you’re fine.”

She nodded. “All right. I got it. Thanks. How do you like your eggs?”

“Any way you want to cook them. One other thing.”

“What?”

“Do you have an Internet connection? I want to look something up.”

She almost asked Beck what, but didn’t. “My computer is in the living room. All I have is satellite out here. It’s slow, but it works.”

“That makes two of us,” said Beck.





56

This time Palmer, Ippolito, and Levitt met with the assistant district attorney, Frederick Wilson, in the precinct’s community affairs office on the first floor. The precinct commander, Dermott Jennie, was there, too. Wilson’s Asian assistant was not.

Juju Jackson had delivered four eyewitnesses, as promised, shortly before noon on Friday, in time for Palmer and Ippolito to prep them. The four did reasonably well when Frederick Wilson questioned them. One of the witnesses, Johnny Morris, actually sounded convincing when he claimed to have driven Derrick Watkins along 174th Street looking for Paco Johnson, and swore he saw Derrick shoot him. And he also managed to sound outraged when he told Wilson he saw James Beck shoot Derrick Watkins at the Mount Hope Place apartment.

The other witnesses followed Morris’s lead, backing up his claim that Beck shot Derrick Watkins, and swearing they heard that Derrick shot the guy who had been at Bronx River Houses.

Wilson didn’t bother pointing out he couldn’t use hearsay testimony, or pressing the witnesses on why they were all in the Mount Hope apartment, or on what had transpired at Bronx River Houses. He’d worry about all that if they were still around when it came time for a trial.

Ippolito ushered Jackson’s stooges out of the community affairs room where they had been meeting, and Palmer took over. He continued his presentation by pointing out there was a possibility one of the guns found at the Mount Hope Place apartment could turn out to be the murder weapon in Paco Johnson’s death.