Bronx Noir

Hours later that night—too late—Yolanda Morales found out that while she had been hunting the two young men, they, in turn, had been stalking her. And they had a guide. As she opened her apartment door, a badge was put before her eyes. She took a stutter-step back to get the badge in focus—the badge and the gun that was aimed at her. She went quietly out to the unmarked car. Behind them was a Porsche, black.

When they got to deserted Farragut Street, Yolanda was praying for strength for the test to come. Detective Hamilton ordered her out of the car.

“You see these two nice gentlemen here?” he asked. He pointed to Tim and David getting out of the Porsche.

“You’ve been very naughty. You’ve been harassing these men, and it is time for you to learn a lesson. These men are going to teach it to you.”

Hamilton stepped back and let the two do their worst. There were parts that Detective Hamilton did not have the stomach to watch. He sat in his car until the men got tired of their frenzy. Then he got out with a throwaway handgun. He raised it and aimed at Yolanda.

“Let me,” David Franklin said. He reached out for the weapon.

“But you paid me to—”

“I want to.”

Hamilton handed over the gun, and Franklin pressed the barrel up to Yolanda’s forehead.

“What you got to say now, bitch?” There was blood dripping from his chin. Her blood.

“My name,” she rasped out. “My name is Yolanda Rivera Morales.” She almost laughed at what she had thought of to say after all this time, as her life was ebbing out, pooling inside of her.

“I’m going to kill you,” Franklin said. He tried to put some special emphasis into the words, but there is no emphasis to be put on those words. He pressed the gun to her head with more force.

“Listen, Mister Man. You do what you gotta do. I done my duty, and I’m ready to meet the Lord.”

She pressed back against the gun.

Franklin pulled the trigger and put a hole in her head. She flopped onto the sidewalk, and he put another two bullets into her chest as though she needed them. Then he stepped back and turned to Hamilton. He was breathing hard.

“If we pay the same amount next week,” he asked, “can we get this same service?”

Hamilton widened his eyes, then shook his head. “You guys want to do this again, you find another way. I’m a cop. I can’t do this every week.”

“Every month?”

Hamilton shrugged. He took the gun back from the young lawyer.

“Maybe,” he said.

HOTHOUSE

BY S.J. ROZAN

Botanical Garden

A week on the lam.

The beginning, not so bad. In the first day’s chilly dusk, a mark handed up his wallet at the flash of cold steel. Blubbering, “Please don’t hurt me,” he tried to pull off his wedding ring too; for that Kelly punched him, broke his nose. But didn’t knife him. Kelly didn’t need it, a body. He’d jumped the prisoner transport at the courthouse. A perforated citizen a mile away might announce he hadn’t left the Bronx.

Which he’d have done, heading south, heading home, risking the Wanted flyers passed to every cop, taped to every cop house in every borough, if he hadn’t found the woods.

Blubber’s overcoat hid his upstate greens until Blubber’s cash bought him coveralls and a puffy jacket at a shabby Goodwill. Coffee and a Big Mac were on Blubber too, as Kelly kept moving, just another zombie shuffling through the winter twilight. Don’t look at me, I won’t look at you. His random shamble brought him up short at a wrought-iron fence. Behind him, on Webster, a wall of brick buildings massed, keeping an eye on the trees jailed inside, in case one tried to bolt. You and me, guys. Winter’s early dark screened Kelly’s vault over. traffic’s roar veiled the scrunch of his steps through leaves, the crack of broken branches.

Five nights he slept bivouacked into the roots of a monster oak, blanketed with leaves, mummied in a sleeping bag and tarp from that sorry Goodwill. Five mornings he buried the bag and tarp, left each day through a different gate after the park opened. One guard gave him a squint, peered after with narrowed eyes; he kept away from that gate after that. None of the others even looked up at him, just some fellow who liked a winter morning stroll through the Botanical Garden.

The grubby Bronx streets and the dirty January days hid him in plain sight, his plan until the heat was off. He thought of it that way on purpose, trying to use the cliché to keep warm. Because it was cold here. Damn cold, bone-cold, eye-watering cold. Colder than in years, the papers said. Front-page cold. Popeye’s, KFC, a cuchifritos place, they sold him chicken and café con leche, kept his blood barely moving. Under the pitiless fluorescents and the stares of people with nothing else to do, he didn’t stay. The tips of his ears felt scalded; he got used to his toes being numb.