by Guy Johnson
It was nine-thirty, approximately half an hour before the scheduled meeting. Guns were checked, everyone was ready to go. King handed Herbert his shotgun and a belt of shells. “If a car pulls up with reinforcements, fire that through its ceiling. It’s loaded with shotgun slugs.”
El Indio cracked the door leading down to the second story balcony and went down the stairs cautiously. Joey and Doke followed him. Jack, Rico, and King descended the stairs after them in time to see a brief scuffle, which was ended when Doke broke the man’s neck. The team had safely entered and no alarms had been set off. A quick glance over the rail revealed a haphazard arrangement of stacked wooden crates lit by several banks of fluorescent lights that hung twenty feet above the floor.
There was a loud banging on the door of the warehouse. Voices emanated from a large stack of crates set against the far wall away from the stairs. King heard the voices and pressed himself into the shadows. He looked at the balcony and he saw Joey sitting on the stairs, out of sight of the door. Joey was motioning at something on the ceiling above King’s head. King looked up and saw a foot briefly swing into view. The DiMarcos had placed someone in the roof scaffolding on a square of plywood. The view between the square of plywood and the balcony was obstructed by several large ceiling fans. Obviously, the man had been placed there to protect the entrance, not the balcony.
King heard a heavy door swing open and then the growls of dogs. He had to give them credit, they were smarter than he thought: They’d sweep the place with dogs first, to ensure that the site hadn’t been breached. King pulled one of the matched pair of Colt .45 pistols that he carried from a holster and awaited the dogs. He heard the heavy door swing shut.
A voice called up to the balcony, “Hey, Turo!” There was silence. The voice again, with impatience, “This ain’t no time to play, Turo! Turo! Danny! Answer me, one of you guys!”
Joey answered, trying to speak with a New York accent, “Yeah, I heard you!”
There was a pause, then the voice spoke again, this time with fear. “That ain’t either one of them guys’ voices! The niggers are here! Let them dogs—” The man did not finish his sentence; Jack shot him through the throat. The dog handler fought to release his animals, but a forty-five slug in his heart ended conscious thought. Over his body, there were four rottweilers snarling and struggling to be free. Jack killed two of the dogs while they fought to release themselves from the tangles of their leashes. The other two pulled free and disappeared into the labyrinth of crates.
King fired a full magazine from his pistol into the floor of the plywood square and watched a body fall heavily onto the crates. He was changing magazines when a rottweiler rounded the corner and began approaching him. The dog’s head was low and the growl that issued from its throat was spine-tingling. King pushed a new magazine into his pistol, but it didn’t catch. The dog broke into a run, charging him. King pulled out his other pistol and shot the dog three times before its dead body collapsed against his legs.
Rico Ramirez was not so lucky. His back was turned when the remaining dog discovered him. Its charge caught him by surprise, knocking him off his feet and causing his gun to fall from his hands. Things might have gone badly for him had not Jack come to his aid. The dog was on top of Rico and had sunk its fangs into his left shoulder and was trying to shift the grip to his neck when Jack shot it. It took two bullets to bring down the enraged dog.
There was complete silence in the warehouse. Jack checked Rico’s wound. There were deep lacerations and punctures, but no bones were broken and no major blood vessels were cut. Rico had some difficulty moving his left shoulder, but he waved Jack off and picked up his gun.
A voice cried out, “King Tremain? King Tremain, are you out there?”
King answered back, “I’m here.”
“We got your son. You wanna talk to him?” King did not answer. There were sounds of a number of voices in angry conversation. Then LaValle screamed, “No, not another finger! Please! Plea—EEEEEEEE!” LaValle’s words turned to a shriek and then to a whimpering moan.
The voice spoke again. “We’re going to chop him up piece by piece until you come out and talk like a man!”
Jack ran, hunched over, back up the stairs. He retrieved the bag with tear gas and masks. He left two masks on the second landing and descended to ground level to find his father.
Herbert Broadhead liked sentry duty and he did it like he was still in the military. When he heard a car door slam he rushed to the side from which the sound emanated. Peering over the edge of the roof, he saw a balding, blond-haired man in a long coat leave his limousine and go into an unmarked door in the side of the building. Herbert picked up the shotgun and sighted the roof on the driver’s side of the limo. He waited for a hoist’s engine to rev up, then he squeezed off two shots through the roof, hardly audible above its mechanical roar. A limo door squeaked. A man on the front passenger side of the limo pushed open his door and ran for the building. He didn’t make it. The shotgun slug nearly separated him in two before he reached the door. Herbert fired several more shots into the limo’s engine to ensure that it would not operate.
Jack knelt on the floor as he passed out gas masks to his father and Rico. They had determined where LaValle was being held. There was a large stack of crates set against the far wall behind the stairs. Jack wanted to lob tear gas over in front of the stack, but King thought that would give the DiMarcos a chance to disperse under cover of the clouds of gas. The three men edged stealthily closer until they could see the opening leading into the stack. Jack removed the launcher from the bag and affixed a tear gas canister to it. King took out his machine gun and snapped the stock to its full extension. Jack caught Joey’s eye and pointed to the stack of crates, then gestured with his pistol. Joey nodded his head in understanding. Jack launched two canisters into the opening of the stack and King laced the opening with machine-gun fire. Doke and Joey also pumped round after round into the opening.
LaValle was lying on the floor in a haze of pain when the first canister landed in the darkened interior of the room formed by the crates. The second canister actually hit one of his captors in the head before it fell in front of LaValle’s face. A whiff of the acrid odor brought him back to the world. He sat upright, partially dizzy from the pain and the gas. In the darkened room there was pandemonium, particularly when the bullets started sending splinters flying. Someone fell over his feet, another stepped on his still-intact left hand, someone else kneed him in the head. LaValle staggered to his feet, driven by a desire to get a fresh breath of air. The narrow beam of a flashlight lanced through the darkness. Someone had opened the outside door. There was a brief silhouette of a man in a long coat, standing in the doorway, then the man rushed out to get into the limo and was met with an explosion. No one else followed him.
In the confusion, LaValle appeared to have been forgotten. He threw himself on his stomach and the pain of breaking his fall with the remains of his right hand caused him to crumple up on the cold cement floor. Spurred on by his desire to survive, he crawled out underneath the fire that his rescuers were concentrating on the stack of crates. One of his captors, attempting to escape the discomfort of the gas, ran into the line of fire. A hail of bullets hit his body, and he fell within three feet of LaValle. It was too much for LaValle. He had endured all the pain and suffering he could stand. Escape was all that he could think of. His mind blanked out; animal panic controlled him. He struggled to his feet and ran to the corner of the next aisle before a bullet fired by his captors shattered his right shoulder. The impact carried him face-first into the crates in front of him. He crashed into the hard, wooden surface and slumped to the floor.
Jack leapt to his feet and had to be forcibly restrained by Rico and King. “He’s lying in their line of fire,” King warned, gripping Jack roughly. “You go after him and you’ll both be dead meat. I heard from Herbert on the walkie-talkie that there’s an outside door leading into those crates. Let me send Doke around to fire a
few shots through that door to spark ’em.”
A tear gas canister was thrown out into the aisle where LaValle lay crumpled. The gas billowed up from the canister like an evil genie. Jack pulled himself free of his father’s grasp and said, “There’s my cover. I’m going to get him!” Jack ducked down along the sides of the crates and made his way to within five feet of LaValle’s unconscious form. LaValle’s body was lying in full view of the DiMarcos. In the background, Jack heard the front door slide open. He looked back at his father, who signaled that Doke had gone outside. Jack did not want to wait. He was sure that once the DiMarcos discovered that they were cornered, they would make sure that LaValle was dead by firing more bullets into his body.
But he was momentarily stymied as to what he should do. Sweat dripped down his face. The goggles of the mask were beginning to fog over from his body heat.
Jack heard footsteps behind him; it was Joey with a shotgun. Joey mumbled through his gas mask, “Let me fire a couple of rounds of buckshot in there, then you might have a chance.”
“Do it!” Jack replied and readied himself to make a dash for his brother.
Joey stood up and fired three quick shots from his shotgun into the entrance. Jack started to move on the first shot and reached his brother by the third, but by the time he had a grip on LaValle, a man ran out of the stack of crates, firing a machine gun. The bullets swept in front of Jack, forcing him to retreat to cover. Joey caught the man with a blast of his shotgun that lifted the man off his feet and propelled his body backward into a wall of crates. Jack ran out and grabbed his brother underneath his arms and began to pull him to safety. Joey saw movement on top of the crates. Two men were frantically struggling to climb out of a narrow opening about fifteen feet above ground level. Crates blocked the two men from Rico’s and King’s view and partially blocked a clear shot of them from where Joey stood as well. The first man who freed himself saw Joey and swung his gun up. But Joey reacted more quickly and fired off another blast from his shotgun, which knocked the man down.
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.
Sunday, June 27, 1982
After 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 blood
shed.”
“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.”
