Echoes of a Distant Summer (20 page)

D
eleon’s day began as it had so often, with a dream. It was a sharp-edged dream that had haunted him from the early days of his youth. It was one of the blades that helped sculpt the man he had become. As he grew older, the keenness of its edge dulled and it became instead a psychological weight that he dragged through his nights, a ball and chain that prevented him from ever climbing out of the pit of his past.

Deleon pulled himself out of bed with his mother’s voice still ringing in his ears. He was not rejuvenated by his hours in bed; he was fatigued. The first light of dawn was gleaming behind the closed shades of his windows. He went through his morning rituals with a modicum of effort.
A dull headache pulsed above his eyebrows. By the time he descended the stairs to the kitchen, San Vicente and two of his men were sitting around the kitchen table drinking small cups of thick, black, sugary Cuban coffee. Their conversation stopped as he entered the room. Deleon gave them a perfunctory nod and walked over to the stove. He was disgusted that the men his grandfather had sent were still in bed despite the fact he had discussed with them the need for alertness and the necessity of rising at the same time as their Cuban associates. He poured himself a cup of the syrupy coffee and drank it down in two gulps. The coffee was hot and nearly scalded his throat, but he gave no indication of his discomfort.

He walked out of the kitchen and went to the closet for his jacket. As he was putting it on, San Vicente came out of the kitchen.

“You have business this early?” San Vicente asked.

Deleon hesitated briefly before he answered. He was pondering whether or not to inform San Vicente of his plans, but since he only planned to follow Fletcher and Jesse, and they were both bumbling fools, he thought no harm could come of it. He informed San Vicente of his intentions and San Vicente surprised him by asking if he could come along. “These are just some peripheral thugs,” Deleon explained. “They aren’t important enough for you to invest your time.”

“Oh,” San Vicente replied, rubbing his chin. “Then maybe I should send one of my men along with you.”

Deleon gave San Vicente a long look then said, “I don’t like the attitudes of your men. There might be trouble if you send one of them along with me.”

“Then please let me join you. Perhaps we can get to know each other better. Our interests are the same, no?”

Deleon nodded but he knew that he and San Vicente would eventually be enemies and he cursed himself for divulging his plans. He had been stalling him with the line that nothing would be done until his grandfather arrived. Now he had no choice but to invite San Vicente along. He put a smile on his face and said, “Sure, come with me. Two heads are better than one.”

“What you say is true,” agreed San Vicente. “Perhaps my men can assist your men today as well.”

Deleon kept his smile, but he said, “As I said before, your men’s attitudes are a problem. I think it’s better that they stay here.”

“Whatever you think,” San Vicente conceded with noticeable reluctance.
“But you need not worry, my men are soldiers. They will do as I tell them.”

San Vicente had meant his words to be calming, but all that Deleon could see was that the situation was highly flammable. He had a sudden thought; it was pure intuition, but he knew it to be true. San Vicente was having his men followed. Fortunately, Deleon had given them relatively simple assignments such as stealing getaway cars, checking the routes to be taken in emergencies, and identifying motels along the path of the projected departure. San Vicente’s men would not learn much, but in the future Deleon would have to increase his vigilance.

Deleon suggested, “Let’s leave them here for now and go on. When my grandfather gets here, there will be important work for every able-bodied man.”

“Whatever you say,” San Vicente replied. He had a smile on his face, but his displeasure was nonetheless evident.

Deleon suggested, “If you are carrying a gun, you should leave it here. We won’t need it today and there’s always the possibility we may be stopped and questioned by the police. We’ll be doing a lot of sitting in the car as we maintain surveillance on our friends. Sometimes that can draw the attention of a patrolman.”

“Don’t worry, I never carry a handgun. I have only this.” San Vicente pulled a ten-inch knife blade from a sheath beneath his jacket. “If I am close, it is as good as a gun.”

After a brief discussion of logistics, the two men agreed to meet in twenty minutes in the garage. Deleon aroused Hardigrew and Brown and informed them of his concerns, then gave them assignments which would take them out of the city for the day. As he walked down to the garage he hoped that Jesse and Fletcher’s schedule wasn’t going to be critical to the overall operation. The less San Vicente knew, the better. The only reason Deleon was following them was that he knew that their employers, John Tree and Braxton, used them to perform all their legwork. Once they were in the car, joining the traffic leaving the Potrero Hill area, where Deleon had rented his house, he asked San Vicente, “Is this your first time in California?”

“No. I graduated from UC Irvine. I’ve spent a lot of time here. That’s why my English is so good.”

“Have you been to the Bay Area before?”

“No,” San Vicente responded quickly, and turned the question back on Deleon. “Have you?”

Deleon lied. “No, this is my first time.”

“Hmm.” San Vicente grunted with a trace of incredulity.

It was a regular San Francisco commuter weekday morning. The rush-hour traffic impeded their progress out to the Westlake District. There was a heavy silence in the car, similar to the quiet in a high-stakes card game where neither player knows the other’s hold card. Deleon recognized that their day together would be tremendously arduous if neither he nor San Vicente was willing to build a bridge. He searched for a subject which wouldn’t seem like small talk. Finally, he determined there was no better subject than the core of their association. He said in his best conversational tone, “This is a beautiful city. I wish I had the opportunity to see it like a tourist, but that won’t happen this time. I’m here because my grandfather sent me. He wants to kill the last of the Tremains. My family has been at war with the Tremains for over a hundred and fifty years. I’m just here to make sure that when my grandfather arrives, we can end this thing once and for all.”

San Vicente growled in response, “There will be no doubt. We will make sure that all the Tremains are dead before we leave!”

The emphasis with which San Vicente spoke was not lost on Deleon. He reacted with surprise. “Oh, you know the Tremains? I thought you were simply paying my grandfather back for a past favor.”

“He told you that?” San Vicente’s tone contained both disbelief and anger.

Deleon explained with a chuckle, “No, man, I just thought—hell! Why else would you be coming all the way up here? I mean, what’s in it for you?”

There was a cold determination in San Vicente’s words when he responded, “I will kill the grandsons of the man who killed both my grandfather and my father. Then I’ll take their heads and their hearts back to Mexico and bury them beside the graves of my father and grandfather.”

Despite himself, Deleon was surprised at the visceral intensity of San Vicente’s answer. His words were spoken with the same fervor that Deleon’s grandfather used when he talked about the blood debt between the Tremains and the DuMonts. It appeared that his grandfather and San Vicente felt a similar bond of kinship to their respective families. For them family was something tangible and real; something they experienced and participated in; something for which they would risk
their lives. Deleon had little comprehension of that type of familial bond and he was doomed never to experience it, for he would not ever give his heart and soul to another person, nor to any cause. To him the concept of family and loyalty was a hoax that was foisted upon the trusting to make sure that rebellion and anarchy seemed less inviting. His whole life experience, from his father’s house to incarceration in adult institutions, had introduced him to all the creatures and ill intentions that used love as a cover, and when the cover was removed there was always a stench beneath it.

So what was family to him? Ever since he could remember, he had wanted to kill his own father, and while he had wanted to save his mother from his father’s abuse, she had done little to engender in him a love for her. The truth was that he had stopped loving her because she had stayed. Despite all that passed, she had continued to live with his father. At the time he could not imagine what was going through her mind. Did she actually love that bully? Love him more than her own son? They had lived, for weeks sometimes, in abject fear of the man, fear of the times he would actually catch them while his rage was upon him. Obviously, the fact that her only child was in living hell was a point of no substance. Deleon had been in jail when he was informed that his mother had been beaten to death by an unknown assailant. The news did not surprise him, nor did it occupy his mind for any length of time. He had said good-bye to her many years before. He had no blood relative to whom he felt any positive emotional connection.

After Deleon’s mother was killed, his father had become a successful businessman, a pillar in the community, a born-again Christian who swore that he had forsaken the path of anger, that he had been made anew. Deleon didn’t buy any of it. He felt only hate toward the man.

As he drove along Ocean Boulevard, Deleon found himself wondering was it simply hate which motivated his grandfather and San Vicente or love for their families. And whether it mattered in the grand karmic scheme if one was motivated by love or hate. It was idle musing, for the answer didn’t matter, his path would be the same. He would complete this assignment and then kill his father; that was his agreement with his grandfather. This was the last in a long line of tasks; after this he could exact his payment. He wondered how the sound of his father’s whimpers would make him feel; would those sounds drown out the din of his nightmare? With that one death would his own demons be exorcized?

Deleon pulled his gray sedan into a parking space facing downhill, up the block from Fletcher’s house, and turned the engine off. He looked out the window and saw below him lines of little two-story, square houses stacked against one another like boxes on the sides of the hills. The only things that broke the monotonous lines of the houses were occasional small trees which grew at the edge of the curbs, next to the street.

Deleon and San Vicente sat in silence. Twenty minutes passed before they saw Jesse’s lumbering walk as he climbed the hill to Fletcher’s house. Fletcher’s garage door opened as soon as Jesse rang the bell. Jesse waited for the door to rise, then stepped under it and went inside. The brown Cadillac backed out of the garage almost immediately following Jesse’s entrance. When it took off down the hill, Deleon followed. Deleon tailed the brown Cadillac throughout the day. When Fletcher and Jesse headed across the Bay Bridge, Deleon was several cars behind them. Consequently, he and San Vicente watched the assault on Wesley Hunter from inside the parking structure.

Five minutes after Fletcher and Jesse drove off, Deleon and San Vicente came out of the shadows and walked across the silent garage to where Wesley lay next to his vehicle. Deleon knelt down and put his hand on Wesley’s throat. He discovered a weak but still distinguishable pulse. He shook his head at his companion and whispered, “The damned fools! They left the man alive! Damn, don’t they have any brains?”

San Vicente, who was a short, stocky man, nudged Wesley with his foot and said with his barely discernible Mexican accent, “Looks like he just needs a little help and then he won’t be testifying. I help people like this all the time.”

Deleon responded, “But this was unnecessary. If these fools keep operating like this, they can bring down a whole lot of heat on everybody.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” San Vicente mused while Deleon then went through Wesley’s pockets and removed his car keys. “What’s another dead black? From what I understand, they are found dead on the streets all the time.”

Deleon said nothing, but he didn’t like San Vicente’s remark. He opened the trunk of Wesley’s car and removed the tire, then with San Vicente’s help stuffed Wesley’s body into the cramped space. He said, “We’ll leave the car with the keys in it in Emeryville by those movie
theaters. Some asshole will come out and take the car. Then the body’ll be their problem.”

San Vicente nodded and replied, “Good idea, but
primero
…” He pulled out his long-bladed knife and slit Wesley’s throat with one savage cut, then slammed the trunk shut. It took several tries to close the trunk, but he finally succeeded. As he wiped his knife on some tissues, he turned to Deleon with a trace of a smile. “I’ll follow you.”