Echoes of a Distant Summer (40 page)

Jack stepped over his brother’s body so that he was facing where he was going, and dragged his brother between his legs. The second man scrambled free. Again Joey pumped his shotgun, but the chamber was empty. The man smiled as he pulled the trigger of his .357 Magnum and shot Joey in the heart.

Jack was nearly to safety when the bullets tore through his back and ripped through his abdomen. He fell with his brother in his arms and landed heavily on top of him.

When King saw Joey jerk backward from the force of a bullet then fall in a heap, he started running for a vantage point from which he could either kill or pin down the shooter. King’s heart was pumping. He saw that Jack had not yet reached the cover of the next aisle. King was in a full run, pushing his fifty-six-year-old body to its limits. He saw a man standing on a stack of crates peer around the corner and aim his weapon at what King assumed to be Jack’s retreating back. King desperately drew his gun and fired up in the man’s direction to distract his aim. King’s shots went wide and the man calmly took his time and pulled his trigger twice. King tore off his gas mask, came to a full stop, and aimed. His next three bullets destroyed the man’s chest cavity. The man slumped back against a crate, then fell ten feet to the cement below with a thud.

King saw Doke come through the entrance of the stack of crates. When Doke saw King, he waved. “It’s over. They’re all done!”

King merely nodded; he was no longer concentrating on anything that Doke was saying. He walked rapidly to where Jack should be. He rounded a stack of crates and saw Rico kneeling on the cement floor, holding Jack in his arms. From the blood spilling out on the floor from underneath Jack’s shirt, the pasty color of his face, and the distant, glazed look in his eyes, King knew that his son would die before they left the warehouse. Jack saw him and recognition lit up his face. Jack put his hands on LaValle, who was lying unconscious beside him, and said, “He’s alive.” Jack smiled weakly then died.

Jack’s head fell backward on Rico’s chest and his eyes slowly closed. LaValle moaned and stirred briefly before falling back into the well of unconsciousness. King walked over to LaValle and drew his other Colt pistol and pointed both his guns at his head.

From where he sat with Jack’s body still in his arms, Rico said, “Don’t, my friend. One son is already dead. Please.”

King allowed his arms to fall to his sides. His rage was so great that his body trembled. He struggled to contain his desire to kill LaValle. It was too much. Joey and Jack both dead because of this worthless piece of trash lying at his feet. His oldest son, someone else’s child, a child of a million disappointments. King raised the guns again with determination in his eye.

Rico spoke again. “We have already lost two of our own tonight. If you kill him, you make their deaths meaningless. Show restraint, please.”

King looked at Rico and said, “You right.” King holstered his guns. “He has some information that I want anyway.” King directed Doke and El Indio to bring back both vans. Both Joey and Jack’s bodies were placed in the van that King was driving. While King and El Indio were carrying Jack’s body out, Rico and Doke saved LaValle’s life. They carried LaValle to the second van. Then Doke called Lisette and told her LaValle would be dropped off at Doc Wilburn’s.

The two vans were more than ten blocks away when the dynamite in the Genaro warehouse exploded, totally destroying the building and its inventory. Of the thirteen bodies found at the scene, only three could be identified via dental records.

A
fter he had left the clinic and returned to the house, Jackson’s thoughts swirled around the morbid tale of his father’s demise. He went and sat in the darkened living room. It was a terrible injustice for his grandparents to have kept their silence for so long and he had expressed this sentiment in no uncertain terms to his grandfather before he left.

At first his grandfather had merely shrugged and said, “I did what I knew to do at that time. Didn’t have no words to explain to a child that his daddy was dead. You wouldn’t have understood the why of it. And
no words was gon’ make you feel any better with both yo’ parents gone.” His grandfather had paused, trying to find a better position on his pillow, then continued. “I wanted you with me, but I was a man on the run for a while. I had to set up a base and an organization in Mexico. I couldn’t put you in danger like that. Then after LaValle was killed, Serena would only let you come down in the summers.”

Jackson had exclaimed, “Why? She didn’t care about me!”

“She wanted you as a hostage. To make sure that I would still protect the family in San Francisco.”

“She sure made me feel like a hostage.”

“I’s probably part of the reason for that. I told her not to lay no hands on you and not to mess you up with her thinkin’.”

“What do you mean, ‘her thinking’?”

“Give you an example. Yo’ mama was a dark and pretty gal. The only reason Serena didn’t like her was the color of her skin. Serena wanted yo’ daddy to marry somebody high yellow like she was. That was more important to her than his happiness. Serena was full of puffed-up, snooty stuff like that. So, I told her if she couldn’t say nothin’ nice to you, not to say nothin’!”

“Well, Grandfather, she didn’t say anything for years. I guess you could say she kept her word.”

“You done lived a tough life, boy, and I know I’m part responsible for that. I ain’t askin’ you to excuse me or forgive me. Just know I did the best I knew to do. I was just tryin’ to make you tough enough to deal with the world. To stand tall among men, I knew you had to be strong and have yo’ own mind.”

“You were preparing me for war, Grandfather.”

“It’s true, the world I was preparin’ you for done changed a bit. But them lessons you learned still apply: Them that’s got write the history while the weak ones fade.”

“I didn’t have a problem learning to be strong. It was all the violence and bloodshed.”

“It was what I knew. I growed up in a violent world, in a white man’s world. Every time a colored man stood up or tried to act like democracy applied to him, them whites would riot. They’d lynch and burn. There was major riots in Tulsa, east St. Louis, Rosewood, Louisiana, Chicago, and New York, just to name a few, and in each one hundreds and hundreds was killed and most of them was colored folks. They ain’t never
wrote what it was like to have the drunkest, no-good white man be able to spit in yo’ face and put his hands on yo’ wife and daughter. If you tried to live within the law, you swallowed yo’ pride and you turned away when it happened to others. But it made you feel sick like you ate some bad fish. I never wanted that feeling. I was prepared to die rather than eat shit off somebody’s boots. Passing time done made the in-yo’-face racism go undercover. Who could see that all that was gon’ happen? But don’t get it twisted, the color problem ain’t that far undercover. It’s just a question of time. As soon as things get hard, it’ll be back out in the open.”

Jackson had countered, “It may rise up again, but it will be changed. The way things are going, whites will be the minority in this country soon.”

“Don’t get it twisted, boy. Money is power. The whites is gon’ keep control here just like in South Africa. But as far as the rest of the world goes, their day is done. This next century gon’ be Chinese. They gon’ run the world like the whites did before ’em. Only one thing gon’ be the same: racism. Just be a different color on top.”

Jackson had commented, “That’s a pretty cynical outlook, don’t you think?”

“I been to mainland China a couple times, boy. Them people done come out of the Stone Age in less than fifty years. They got a way to go but they pushin’ hard.”

The subsequent discussion had meandered through world politics and the Cold War. Jackson was surprised at how knowledgeable his grandfather was about current events. The conversation came to a close when his grandfather began to get exhausted. Before Jackson left the clinic, the old man pulled him close to the bed and whispered, “I know you got to do what’s in yo’ heart. I ain’t askin’ you to fight just to fight. I’m askin’ you to look at the facts real hard and make yo’ move based on the facts. If it looks like you can walk away without a fight, do it. Just be realistic.”

Later, Jackson realized that he had just had his first man-to-man discussion with his grandfather. He felt good about it and that surprised him. It also surprised him that the old man had changed his tack in asking him to pick up the gauntlet and carry on the fight. He had left the final decision in Jackson’s hands. That change in strategy alone caused Jackson to be more receptive to him and his advice. Again Jackson began
to feel the sense of loss his grandfather’s passing would cause him, and his thoughts were wrapped in melancholy. He let the puppy out and walked through the darkened house.

There were faxes waiting on the dining room table for him. He reviewed them, but found no cause to make changes in the finished report that Corazon had prepared from his revisions. He called her at home and thanked her for all her extra effort. He was in the process of complimenting her on the quality and thoroughness of her work when she interrupted him.

“Jax! There’s a note here that says your grandmother was called and given the fax number in Mexico yesterday. Did you call and give someone the approval to do that?”

“No! How would they have gotten it?”

“It was written on my ink blotter.”

“But who would have done that? She’s not on my emergency call list. She must’ve called for it. Why would she want the number?”

“She’s your grandmother, you ought to know. All I can tell you is this looks like Martha’s handwriting. Bedrosian must’ve directed some people to work this weekend.”

The malaise of his mood deepened after he hung up the telephone. What was his grandmother up to? Why would she want the number? Thoughts too numerous to mention swirled around him like wisps of vapor, leaving trace elements of guilt at every turn. At around nine-thirty in the evening, he had to get out of the house. He took a walk with the puppy along the outskirts of the cemetery which lay behind his grandfather’s house. It was the beginning of the new moon, there was only a sliver visible in the sky. The stars appeared dim and indistinct as if they were behind a sheet of opaque material. The only light that illumined the darkness came from an occasional streetlight.

Jackson entered the cemetery through the Montecido Street gate. He had no fear of the cemetery. He had often played among the crypts and mausoleums as a child and his grandfather had placed more than a few bodies there himself. Jackson was headed to a knoll which overlooked the cemetery and had the city skyline in the background. He wanted to think about Elizabeth—what she was doing, what she was wearing—but he could not put the fact out of his mind that his grandmother had the fax number in Mexico. Why would she want it? She definitely wouldn’t send Franklin down to Mexico alone. It was too
dangerous. Then a terrible thought dawned on him. What if she was working with the men who had followed him? What if she was passing on information to his grandfather’s enemies? The very thought brought the taste of bile to his mouth, but it had the ring of truth. She and Franklin both stood to benefit if Jackson and his grandfather were killed.

The puppy distracted him. The young dog was happily straining at the leash to investigate various things in the darkness, yet every once in while he would stop and look back the way they had come and his ears would prick up. At first, Jackson paid no attention, but the third or fourth time the puppy looked back Jackson knew there was something or someone behind him. When he reached the top of the knoll, he stood in the shadows of the old Bustamante family mausoleum. The Bustamantes had built themselves an edifice for the ages. It was a huge stone building that towered above all the others. It was topped with a dome and had large columns lining its entrance.

Jackson knew from his childhood that the shadows in the mausoleum’s entrance would hide him from view. He knelt with the puppy behind one of the mausoleum’s columns and waited. Within five minutes, against the pale background of tombstones, a dark form could be seen moving deliberately in Jackson’s direction. From the path his follower was taking, it looked as if he would pass within twenty feet of the mausoleum. The puppy growled at the stalking form in the darkness. Jackson immediately grabbed the dog’s muzzle and held it firmly, but the stalker had heard the growl and was now casting about for its source.

Jackson had no weapon, but he was sure that whoever was following him had one. He quickly considered his options. His only real chance was surprise. He tied the puppy to the pillar and dropped to his hands and knees and crawled out of the shadows behind some shrubs that lined the walkways. He stood up as soon as he was away from the mausoleum and moved into the shadow of an adjacent crypt. His intent was to flank his follower and attack from the side. The puppy whined a few times after Jackson left, then commenced growling again as the form drew nearer. The man was within ten feet of him and Jackson could see the glint of a weapon in his hand. Jackson waited for the distance to shorten and prepared himself to spring. He was mentally kicking himself for being so foolish in taking the dangers of his grandfather’s world lightly. He held his breath and moved to the balls of his feet. He had to
put everything in his leap to catch the man by surprise. Otherwise, he would die in the attempt.

“Diablito?” the form asked cautiously.

It sounded like Carlos. The man had the shape and size of Carlos. But Jackson had no intention of revealing himself until he was sure that it was Carlos.

“I am only doing what your grandfather requested,” the form continued. “I see that you have tied the little dog, but where are you?”

“Right here, Carlos,” Jackson responded, emerging from the shadows.

“That was very good,” Carlos commented, shaking his head appreciatively.

“Thanks,” Jackson acknowledged. “How long have you been following me?”

“Since you left the house. When I came from the clinic, you were sitting in the dark thinking, so I camped out in the kitchen and got something to eat. When you left, I followed.”