Echoes of a Distant Summer (34 page)

The ride to the central bus station at First and Mission was short despite the traffic. Deleon disembarked with the rest of the passengers. He wandered through several small diners and eateries then hurried out to where the commuter buses were loading. He stood in line to board a bus bound for Gilroy and caused consternation in his two followers. Martinez hurriedly sent Diaz to buy tickets for Gilroy. Deleon waited for Diaz to return with the tickets before he stepped out of line and wandered back into the main hall of the bus station. He saw Martinez go to one of the phone booths. Deleon didn’t want that. He then trotted out toward the loading area again. When he was sure Martinez and Diaz were following him, he took a detour down to the terminal’s lower level, to a little-used bathroom at the far end of a poorly lit hall.

He was exultant when he entered the bathroom and found it empty. Deleon unsheathed the seven-inch blade of his knife and pulled some paper towels from the rack to cover it. He had just turned on the water in one of the sinks when Martinez entered the bathroom. Diaz remained at the door, keeping a lookout. The expression on Martinez’s face gave a clear picture of his frustration and anger as he walked toward Deleon. It was obvious that he intended to punish Deleon for leading them on a wild goose chase. Deleon, pretending to be wiping his hands on the paper towels, started forward to meet Martinez, a smile on his face.

Martinez was in no mood to play. He growled in his thick Cuban accent, “What you t’ink you doin’, you stupid fuck? You t’ink we got time to play with your fucking ass?”

“It’s a beautiful day to ride public transportation,” Deleon replied, maintaining the smile on his face as he kept the knife hidden in the paper towels.

Martinez said, “You need a lesson, punk, and I goin’ to give it to you!” He dropped down into a crouch, ready to kick or punch depending upon the opening. He feinted quickly with his left hand, and Deleon the fool moved directly into the path of his right. Martinez smiled; this was almost too easy. His right hand snaked out, driving for the throat. He was surprised when Deleon ducked under it and even more surprised to see that Deleon wanted to close with him. Martinez was still
going forward; his momentum wouldn’t allow him to stop. He tried to adjust and turn as Deleon moved to his right. He didn’t even see the knife until the last moment, just before it sliced through his neck. There was a searing pain and a whistling noise. He tried to call out to Diaz, but there was no sound. Then he saw the floor rushing up at his face.

Deleon did not hesitate after he slit Martinez’s throat, nor did he hurry. He continued walking right past Martinez toward the door, where Diaz stood. The smile was still on his face. He even waved to Diaz as Diaz stood watching him with a questioning look. It wasn’t until Martinez fell to the floor that Diaz became alarmed. He just barely had time to raise his arm to defend himself from Deleon’s attack. Unfortunately for him, he never had time to raise his other arm. Deleon sprang forward with such speed and force that he had driven his knife up to the hilt into Diaz’s heart before Diaz could mount a defense. Diaz was dead before he hit the floor.

Deleon never stopped moving. He wiped his knife on the paper towels and threw them in a nearby trash bin. He checked his clothes for stains and allowed himself to smile. The art of using a knife was not only in killing your foe, but in not getting any blood on your clothes.

He walked outside the bus station and hailed a taxi. He gave the driver directions and sat back to think. There was no distress or regret for the lives he had just taken. Instead he was thinking of his future life, a life that was so close he could almost taste it. It was a world far different from the one he had known, a world filled with vibrant colors and blank canvases. He wanted to try his hand at pastels, oils, and acrylics, and he thought that he would spend a couple of years studying composition in Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, or Martinique. Deleon thought about the first picture he would paint. He had not formulated its subject or shape yet, but he particularly liked the thought of a canvas covered with a bright, transcendent color. Perhaps it would be a fitting memorial to the end of a way of life, a painting dominated with the color of fresh blood.

P
resenio Cordero was extremely angry as he walked down the corridor of KFRE Public Radio to the employees’ lounge. The lounge consisted of a long, narrow, unpainted room with a dingy, broken-down couch, a candy machine and a drink machine, a tired little refrigerator which was barely able to maintain fifty degrees, and two Formica dining room tables accompanied by an assortment of uncomfortable folding chairs.

Pres looked around the room and thought, I’m giving up my middle age for this? I could be making money and driving a new car! Instead I work for peanuts, watch executive directors mismanage the funds that I raised, and endure tedious board meetings in which the board members don’t even read their agendas or program packets, and for what? Why am I sacrificing?”

He knew the answer by heart and it was a good answer: to bring more people of color and women into the radio broadcasting environment, to provide the trainees in his program with the necessary technical training to enable them to compete for jobs in the production and broadcasting ends of radio operations. He had committed himself to giving back to the community in an attempt to atone for the lives he had taken and the harm he had caused during his military service in Vietnam. If he hadn’t had to deal with the financial mismanagement of the station’s director, the job would have been a dream; as it was, it was a nightmare.

He put two quarters in the drink machine and pressed a button. Nothing happened. He flicked the coin-return lever and nothing happened. In a fit of pique, Pres hit the machine with his fist and a can of soda rolled down the chute.

“We have to pay for any damage to lounge dispensers,” a prim voice chided him. It belonged to Gwen Hewlitt, the executive director of KFRE, a trim, brown-skinned woman in her mid-thirties. She wore her short, black hair in a strange perm that had her hair standing straight up on her head.

“Give me a break!” Pres said, still angry from her presentation to the board. “If you used the employee lounge, you’d know these machines don’t work half the time!”

“The board has finished their executive session. They’re ready for you to come back in,” Gwen informed him with a steady look. “Your
threat to get a lawyer and challenge the manner in which I’ve dispersed funds did not go over well. If you don’t tone down your approach, your continued employment here could come into question.”

“The board can do what it wants,” Pres said with resignation as he opened his soda. “I can take this trainee project anywhere.”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Gwen sputtered, “You can’t do that. You raised money under the auspices of KFRE!”

“As a matter of fact, I never mentioned KFRE in any of my written proposals or grant requests. I even mentioned KQET in San Francisco and KPSM in San Mateo as possible alternative sites in all the grants.”

“Your position is paid for by KFRE. So, in effect, we’re partially funding this program.”

“I am not paid to be the director of the training program. I started that on my own. I’m paid to produce twenty-five hours of programming a week, ten hours more than anyone else who’s making my salary. In addition, through this training program, I provide support for another thirty additional hours of programming. This training program is an asset to this radio station. And I won’t have the salaries of my trainees cut to pay the costs of overruns elsewhere in station operations!”

“That means someone else won’t get paid,” Gwen concluded.

“Oh, please, don’t give me that crap! It was poor planning like that that causes you to be over budget every year. I can’t let the trainee program suffer because of your incompetence.”

“Well!” Gwen said haughtily. “I came in here to work something out with you and what do I get? More accusations!”

Pres took a sip of his soda then said, “I have worked here for over ten years. Eight years before you came here! The only reason that I stayed here was this trainee program. And I won’t stand by and see it destroyed by mismanagement and illegal acts. You have my resignation, effective immediately!”

Pres turned to walk out the door of the lounge and said to Gwen, “You better get someone to staff the ten hours of radio production assignments that the trainees are scheduled to provide tomorrow.”

He walked out the door and down the hall. He entered his crowded office, which he shared with two other people, and began to clean out his old wooden desk. He had three boxes of trainee files, which he set on his desk. In a fourth box he put tapes of the best shows he had produced and all the grant and fund-raising paperwork.

With two boxes of files and papers in his arms Pres descended the
stairs slowly, wondering whether he had allowed his ego to interfere with finding a reasonable solution. After a few moments’ thought, he discarded that as a possibility; the only solution was that the trainees should continue getting paid as they were promised at the outset of the program.

KFRE was located above a good but inexpensive Cambodian restaurant. The restaurant had long served as a meeting place for KFRE staff and people associated with Public Radio. Tonight the trainees had taken over the lower floor of the restaurant next to the entrance and were awaiting Pres’s arrival.

Pres heard someone tapping on the restaurant window as he walked out the door of KFRE. Since his car was parked right in front of the restaurant, he just nodded. His burden seemed to increase in weight with each step. He fumbled for his keys and had just opened the car door when two men came up on either side of him.

One man was of medium height and muscular with sandy blond hair, and the other was short and fat with a receding hairline, which he sought to cover by combing his hair from one side of his head to the other. They were both wearing dark suits. Pres gave them an angry, questioning look. He was in no mood for any shit.

“Just put your stuff in the car and come with us,” the blond man hissed.

Pres noticed that the man’s face was terribly pockmarked and he had a chipped tooth. “Why should I go anywhere with you?” he demanded.

“Because of this, asshole.” The fat man showed Pres a gun in his holster.

“Piss off!” Pres said. “You’ve got the wrong person. And I’ve had a terrible day!” Before he could react the fat man clipped him with the butt of his gun. Pres staggered and fell against his car. Blood dripped down his face.

“What’s going on here?” a woman’s voice shouted. “Pres, are you all right?”

“Mind your own business!” the blond man commanded as he unlocked the door of a black sedan parked directly in front of Pres’s car.

The woman, wearing her hair in long dreads, was short and dark-skinned. She retorted hostilely, “He
is
my business, you big shithead!” She then opened the door of the restaurant and shouted, “Hey, two guys are out here beating up Pres!” She turned and held the door open defiantly.

In moments the sidewalk was filled with twenty people. Jamal Henderson and Tito Camacho stepped forward.

“You guys came here to start trouble with Pres?” Jamal asked with a smile. “In front of KFRE? You have got to be stupid!”

Tito threatened, “We might have to tear you a new asshole for this mistake.”

The fat man pulled his gun from the holster and let his arm hang at his side. “I wouldn’t get too bold if I were you.”

When the crowd saw the gun, there was a sudden fear; some people even stepped backward, but others staunchly maintained their ground. Someone yelled, “He ain’t gon’ shoot all of us!”

“We’re police!” the blond man claimed, walking back to where his companion was standing with Pres. “We’re taking this man in for questioning!”

One of the women yelled, “Let’s see your badges!”

Someone in the crowd said, “They ain’t got to show us no fuckin’ badges!”

The blond man returned to the black sedan and opened the door. He had his hand on his gun as he reiterated, “This is police business.”

“Good,” said a woman in the back. “ ’Cause I just called them and they’re sending a couple of black-and-whites to investigate you.”

The fat man hurriedly pushed Pres toward the open door of the black sedan. The blond man went around to the driver’s side and exclaimed, “Oh, shit!”

“You’re not going far in that car,” someone shouted. “I already slit those tires.”

Police sirens wailed in the background.

“The real police are coming now,” a woman shouted. “What are you going to do?”

“We’ll take his car!” the fat man said as he pushed Pres back toward his vehicle. There were more angry rumblings in the crowd and they began to press closer. The fat man jammed his gun under Pres’s chin and said, “You better stay back or he’s a dead man!”

“Get his keys!” the blond man said hurriedly.

The fat man yelled to the crowd, “Stay back or I’ll shoot!” He jammed the gun further into Pres’s chin. “Where are your keys?”

“You aren’t the police!” a woman yelled.

Someone else shouted, “If they were police, they would have shot somebody by now!”

Two police cars pulled up with their lights flashing. As the officers got out of their cars, the fat man and the tall man placed their guns on top of the cars and raised their hands. “We have permits to carry guns,” the blond man said loudly.

As soon as the fat man raised his hands, Pres kneed him in the crotch. Air whooshed out of the man’s mouth as he bent over.

“What’s going on here?” said a policeman as he pushed his way through the crowd. Someone stepped out from the throng and kicked the fat man in the head as he started to straighten up. “That’s for Pres!” The fat man staggered back against the car and snarled, “Oh, fuck, no!” He spun and reached for his gun, but Pres intercepted him.

“Can’t let you do that,” Pres grunted as he wrestled with the fat man, who outweighed him by seventy pounds.

The crowd came immediately to Pres’s aid. In no time the fat man was being pulled away. Pres saw him go down in the center of a swarm of bodies. People crowded in front of him; he couldn’t see what was happening. A woman came to his side and grabbed his arm supportively and led him away.