Echoes of a Distant Summer (19 page)

Half an hour after DiMarco met with the Lenzinis, Braxton was on the phone to John Tree. “I tell you, DiMarco is up to something!” Braxton declared angrily as he paced back and forth, keeping in range of his desk so that the receiver’s cord wouldn’t pull the phone off it. “He
wouldn’t meet with the Lenzinis if he
wasn’t
up to something. He’s bold too. He met them right across from his own restaurant. Goddamn his impatience! He’s forcing our hand. It’s too soon to come out in the open. But that witless fool doesn’t know it.”

“How you know he met them?” Tree asked suspiciously. “Maybe it was somebody else.”

“My man walked right by all three of them. He couldn’t be mistaken.”

“You got people followin’ them? You didn’t tell me that.”

“I needed somebody independent. Somebody he didn’t know. I need to think; hold the line a minute.” Braxton set the phone down on the desk and paced the floor. He was searching his mind trying to figure out DiMarco’s plan of action. The Lenzinis were thugs. They weren’t hired to follow people. They did strong-arm work. The only mission they could be sent on was to hurt someone or to make a snatch. A light went on in Braxton’s skull. They were going to make a snatch. The question was who? The main grandson was too dangerous a target. Snatching him would alert King, then all hell might break loose. DiMarco couldn’t be that stupid. No, he probably intended to pick up one of Jackson’s friends and hold him for safekeeping. It was the same as Braxton’s strategy. One such hostage could provide insight into the grandson’s life as well as a bit of collateral when the time came. It was a safe move. King would hardly be concerned about his grandson’s friends.

Braxton walked back over to the desk and picked up the phone. “You there?”

“I’s here,” Tree replied.

“Put a fire under Jesse and Fletcher and have them pick up that friend of Jackson Tremain right away. The one he went drinking with the other night. I want the man in good health too. Make sure that they know that.”

“Can do. Uh, who you got followin’ DiMarco?”

“Just an independent. Of no consequence. When this is all over, you can eliminate him. Right now, I want to keep him anonymous.” Braxton had no intention of telling Tree anything that he didn’t need to know. One could never tell when Tree himself might become expendable.

After he had hung up, Braxton continued to pace the floor. This was one of the things that he had feared: the moment when either Tree or DiMarco would take matters into his own hands, forsaking all of Braxton’s
carefully planned-out strategy for an impulse. A rumbling vibration, attended by a deep mechanical hum, rolled through his office. It was the sound of the printing press gearing up to print the next day’s ads and comics. Normally, it was a sound that had a calming effect upon him, but today it was simply another distracting noise. He couldn’t stop worrying. His only hope was that King really was close to death and there wouldn’t be any retribution. Even this possibility brought no peace for Braxton. Thoughts and fears clashed against one another like billiard balls shot by a person of great strength but poor aim. For the first time in many years Braxton was truly frightened.

W
esley Hunter parked his Porsche in his spot in the main garage, grabbed his briefcase, and caught the elevator to the fifteenth floor. He walked down the hall to his apartment and unlocked the door. He was greeted by the view of his floor-to-ceiling windows, which looked out over the north bay toward Richmond and San Rafael. The last stray beams of sunlight were reflected through the haze off the rippling yellow surface of the bay as the sun gradually sank behind the dark green hills of Marin County. Alcatraz and Angel Island looked as if they were floating in a sea of molten gold. Wesley smiled. He loved his view.

He hung his jacket in the closet and poured himself a shot of Stoli from the bottle he kept in the freezer. After dropping a couple of olives in his glass, he sat down on his leather sofa in front of the view and admired what nature could do with polluted air. Within ten minutes, the sky had begun to glow with colors ranging from pinkish red to purple. Wesley liked to end his day with a drink and a silent sunset. It was the meditative way that he made the transition from the hectic pressures of the corporate routine. Not that he minded the daily pressures. He understood that any position which carried the rank and salary that he desired came with pressure and competition. He had worked his whole adult life to reach the level he had attained. He looked around at his
spacious apartment with its expensive furniture and art collection and thought smugly, I have earned this. Then a strange, disquieting thought occurred to him: What would his father have thought of his achievements: the job, the Porsche, the apartment, the expensive clothes and furniture?

Wesley knew the answer before the question was fully formed. His father had been a simple man of the church. He had raised three boys in Hunter’s Point’s cement-block projects and later in the Fillmore on a custodian’s salary and the unshakable faith in the Almighty. He saw success not in terms of material possessions, but in relationship to one’s standing in one’s community. If you weren’t doing God’s work, or working to improve the lot of your fellow Negro, you were just a carpetbagger, as far as he was concerned, living off the gifts of a gracious God.

Wesley’s father was not a particularly humorous or outgoing man, but he was liked and well respected in the neighborhood and church community. Wesley remembered his father’s funeral and how surprised he was at the number of people in attendance. At the time it was hard for him to accept that so many people would come out to pay respect to a man who had never attained a position higher than a custodian. The passing years had made him regret that he had not understood all the qualities that his father had possessed.

A small reminder alarm beeped in his jacket in the closet. He downed his drink and set his glass down on a custom-made glass-top table and went to the closet for his electronic scheduler. He took the beeping device out of his jacket and popped it open. Its small display reminded him that he had scheduled a tryst with a married woman in half an hour. She was the deputy vice president of marketing for his firm. The woman regularly booked a room at one of the hotels near the airport for their meetings; however, this evening’s meeting was a rescheduling of a prior appointment that he had been unable to make due to his interest in another woman. It would not bode well for him, careerwise, to miss another appointment or even be late. He had half an hour in rush-hour traffic to make it.

Wesley swiftly performed his toilet and changed clothes. Fifteen minutes had passed when he walked out the door. He was busy checking for his keys and identification, or he would have noticed someone following him into the garage. A large brown-skinned man came out
the doorway that led to the laundry room, but Wesley was oblivious. He walked swiftly down the ramp to the level on which his car was parked. When he neared his spot he saw that there was a slim brown-skinned man, in his late fifties, leaning on his Porsche. The man wasn’t a panhandler, for he was dressed in an expensive topcoat and derby hat.

“What the hell are you doing?” Wesley demanded, rounding the back bumper of his car to confront the man.

“Watch your mouth and you’ll be told everything you need to know.” The man’s tone was curt and confident. His rimless glasses reflected the glare of the garage’s lights and prevented Wesley from seeing his eyes.

“Like hell I will. Get away from my car!” He pushed the man away from the Porsche. As he did so, the man reached in his pocket. Wesley didn’t wait to see what the man had in his pocket—he attacked. He hit the man twice solidly before the man fell heavily between the cars.

The man that had followed him from the laundry room threatened, “You shouldn’t have done that,” as he lumbered toward Wesley. “Now, I’m gon’ have to kick yo’ ass good fo’ Mr. Fletcher!”

Wesley said nothing, but turned into a spinning back kick, which caught the big man unprepared as he was coming in. The impact of the kick snapped the man’s head around and caused him to fall against an adjacent car. Wesley did not wait for him to recuperate but pressed his own attack and kicked his opponent between the legs. The man doubled over like a flower wilting in the heat. Wesley stepped to his right and side-kicked his opponent in the head. The man stumbled sideways, barely maintaining his balance. Wesley pressed his advantage and that was his undoing. Had he left at that moment and taken his car, the first man that he knocked down wouldn’t have had the opportunity to recover. But such are the vagaries of the human psyche. Wesley forgot himself and his appointment, and let indignation overwhelm him.

His antagonist had finally fallen to one knee. Blood was running from the side of his face and mouth. Wesley was preparing to deliver another kick when a voice from behind him warned, “You better stop it, asshole! I’ve got a gun on you!” Wesley turned to face the speaker. The first man with the rimless glasses was pointing a small-caliber pistol at him. The man’s nose was bleeding, his glasses were bent and sitting atilt on the bridge of his nose, and his derby was gone. “You all right, Jesse?” the man called to his companion.

Jesse struggled to his feet—an act of great determination, for he had
taken a considerable beating from Wesley—and mumbled, “I’m gon’ kill you fo’ that! I’m gon’ kill you!” He stumbled toward Wesley, who timed his approach and met him with another spinning back kick. This time the kick landed flush on his mouth and Jesse fell backward onto the cement floor.

“I said stop it, goddamn it! I swear to God, I’ll shoot!”

Wesley turned and faced the first man. “What the hell do you people want?”

The man picked up his derby hat and set it on his head. He straightened his glasses and said evenly, “You should have thought about that before you started showing how tough you think you are.”

Wesley watched the gun. It did not waver as it pointed directly at his torso. He was afraid but he saw no value in showing it. “Cut to the chase!” he demanded. “What is it you want?”

“Some important people want to talk with you about something.”

“They should make an appointment. They can call my office anytime. I’m busy tonight,” Wesley rejoined.

“You don’t realize how important these people are. The only reason you aren’t dead right now is that they want to talk to you.”

“Oh, so you haven’t been given permission to kill me? I guess I should just go on to my meeting.” Wesley didn’t think it would work but he decided to try the ploy anyway.

“You ain’t going nowhere, fool!” the man warned, waving the gun. The shadows cast by the bare bulbs of the parking lot gave a stark and ominous look to the man’s visage. Wesley was momentarily paralyzed by the threatening gun. The man called out to the man behind Wesley, “Get up, Jesse. I need you to drive while I keep an eye on our friend. Jesse, you all right?”

Wesley could hear Jesse behind him gradually getting to his feet, but he also heard the high-pitched sound of several female voices coming from the direction of the elevator. He realized quickly that this might be his only opportunity to escape. He spoke in a loud voice to the man in front of him, “You still planning to shoot me even if there are witnesses present? Or will you kill them too? How many people do you plan to kill?” He started edging toward his car. He heard Jesse coming up behind him. He raised his voice further, confident of his escape: “Do you still expect to shoot—”

Wesley never got to finish his thought. Jesse shoved a six-inch
switchblade into his back, through his kidney and liver. Wesley turned to face his attacker with a surprised look on his face. He felt a tremendous heat as he sank unwillingly to his knees. The lights around him grew dim gradually, as if everything he saw was blackened by the invisible flame which scorched deep in his back. There was no sound except the pumping of his heart. Then there was a tremendous roar and he felt the firestorm burning across his scalp. He tried to speak, to call out to the women whose voices he had heard, but no sound issued from his throat. He tried to raise his arm to no avail, and despite his efforts to remain on his knees, he slumped against the car and continued his decline until he was facedown against the cement. Suddenly, he realized that he was going to die, and a strange, wild panic gripped him, but it was unable to manifest itself for he was helpless. As his last thoughts flitted across his consciousness, he wondered if many people would come to his funeral. Then blackness swallowed his vision and all was silent.

The sound of more voices issued from the door leading into the garage. “You dumb-ass fool! We weren’t supposed to kill him!” Fletcher hissed at Jesse. “You’re going to have to explain this on your own. Now, we got to get out of here. Duck down! Stay out of sight!”

“It was self-defense,” Jesse said defiantly, wiping his hand across his forehead and smearing blood across his face. “Ain’t nobody ever give me a beatin’ and lived. Anyway, this motherfucker is one of them that killed Frank.”

“Get down, you fool! We don’t have time for your talking and excuses. You can work out the details with your uncle.”

“You gon’ back me, ain’t you?” Jessed demanded as he knelt down beside Fletcher. “You’s a witness!”

“Hurry up and let’s crawl down to our car. We don’t want to be found next to this body or we’ll both be suspects in custody.”

“Damn, he bleedin’ a lot!” Jesse grunted as he crawled after Fletcher. “Must have got him in the heart.”

They were about four car lengths away from Wesley, crawling in the narrow space between the bumpers of parked cars and the wall, as a party of four white women appeared from the direction of the elevator. They were wearing warm-up suits and carrying tennis rackets and gym bags. The women’s conversation echoed throughout the garage, and as they disappeared around a corner, the trill of their voices and laughter still resounded off its barren gray walls. As soon as the women were out of sight Fletcher and Jesse scuttled to their car and jumped in. Jesse
turned on the ignition and pumped the accelerator, and the car’s engine roared to life. He backed out of the parking place with a screech of rubber against cement and headed to the exit.