Echoes of a Distant Summer

by Guy Johnson

  “I see a live one, Lon!” a hooded rider shouted as he spurred his horse forward. “We still might have someone to hang yet!”

  “Watch yourself, Shorty!” warned one of his companions. “They may still got some bullets!”

  As soon as he heard the horse pounding toward them, Judah let Elroy slide to his knees and took out his sling. He reached into his pocket and found a particularly large stone in his collection and placed it in his sling. He started whirling the sling, getting the feel of his projectile, and waited for the rider who was almost upon them.

  The horse and rider rounded into view and began to bear down on the two boys. The rider saw that his victims were not running and began to slow his horse. When he realized that Judah had a sling in his hand, the rock was already in flight. It hit him in the forehead just above the nose and caused him to lose consciousness and slump backward off his horse.

  Judah pulled Elroy to his feet and slapped him hard across the face. “If we gon’ live, we need to be runnin’! I mean puttin’ a foot in it!” Elroy seemed to come to his senses and began to jog through the thickets. “Faster! Faster!” shouted Judah.

  One of the remaining riders pulled the hood from his head, revealing two watery-blue eyes and a pockmarked face. He pulled a Winchester rifle out of its scabbard and focused on the retreating backs of the two boys. Because of the darkness, he decided on the larger target and waited for his shot. The boys had nearly made it to a stand of magnolias when they passed briefly into the open. The rider pushed a lock of corn-silk-blond hair out of his eyes and fired off two quick shots, then looked to see the result.

  “Run, Elroy! Run!” Judah cried out.

  After his brother shouted, Elroy heard the first bullet go hissing by his face and saw it knock a branch off a tree to his right. The fear which had strangely eluded him earlier was upon him now. It grabbed him like a hand and squeezed his heart. It spurred the pumping of his legs and drove him running pell-mell into the cover of the outlying foliage. He ran through thickets and bushes, heedless of the branches smacking his face. He ran until he could run no longer. Elroy tumbled to his knees, gasping for breath. He pulled himself underneath the branches of a dense-looking bush and lay back against its trunk. There was a large lime-green garden spider with a body the size of the first joint of his little finger devouring some hapless insect within two inches of his face. Elroy did not have the strength to move away. He lay there as daylight returned.

  Elroy did not remember when he had gotten separated from his brother. He spent the next two weeks hiding in the swamps, stealing in at night to eat the partially burned meats from the Caldwells’ smoke shed. It seemed to him that he was being punished by a cruel and merciless God. His desire for a family was filled then rudely snatched away. He did not leave the area until he overheard a neighboring colored family discuss the Caldwell family’s fate. When he heard that everyone in the family had been killed, Elroy headed back to Port Arthur. He lived by stealing and rifling through garbage. He arrived at the door of the orphanage a month later, starving and in rags. The sisters took him in and once more the cacophony and the regimen of motherless children enfolded him. He did not speak for nearly six months and would not eat any meat that was smoked or grilled over an open fire. Elroy recuperated from his experience without visible scars, but his innards had been mangled and he grew into a man who rarely smiled.

  Wednesday, June 30, 1982

  Braxton’s soundproof office at the Bay City Gazette was a large, rectangular affair with dark wainscotting halfway up the walls. Two of the walls had venetian-blind-covered windows above the wainscotting. The windows on one side looked out on a labyrinth of four-foot-high modular offices, where the six news and editorial staff members worked. The opposite wall of windows in his office looked out on a catwalk above the old printing press, which he had purchased in 1950.

  It was a quarter of six, Braxton’s favorite time of day at the paper. Most of the news and advertising staff had gone home and only the press operators were working, printing out the morning’s edition. The din and the voices of the newsroom were replaced by the intermittent jangling of the Teletype and the grinding clatter of the press. Yet with his door closed the silence in his office was like the quiet experienced in the eye of a storm.

  Unfortunately, at this very moment he was unable to appreciate the quietude and meditative value of silence, for he was involved in a serious phone call.

  “What do you mean, disappeared?” Braxton exploded. He held the telephone in a trembling hand. His secretary came to the glass-paneled door and looked in with concern, but Braxton waved her away.

  The voice of Paul DiMarco continued, “I don’t know what happened. They disappeared after calling in to say that King was done—”

  “How could they simply disappear?” Braxton questioned, keeping his voice lower but feeling an old familiar fear. “There was no message or word from anyone? How do we know they’re not just celebrating a successful mission somewhere?”

  “Because on Monday, the office building where they were headquartered was demolished by a bomb.” DiMarco’s voice was tired. It was obvious that this news had caused him some consternation as well. “It was a ten-story building and now there’s nothing left but rubble.”

  “My God!” Braxton said. He was not concerned for the lives lost, but rather the implications of the bombing. It was too reminiscent of other attempts on King Tremain. A terrible thought occurred to him. “Do you think that they actually got him?”

  “I received a confirmation call. It was correctly coded and there was no hint in my contact’s voice of any problem. In fact, the man was ecstatic.”

  “This complicates things,” Braxton mused, pondering this unexpected reality. Less than half an hour ago, he had been sitting comfortably in his office considering what he would do with the money from King’s estate. The phone rang and against his better judgment, he answered it, and the subject of the call, like a rock thrown in a placid pool, caused his vision of the future to be disrupted by ripples. He had foolishly assumed that once he received the news of King’s death, all his plans would automatically fall into place. Now, with this disturbing new information, everything had to be reexamined.

  “Is this a secure line?” DiMarco asked.

  “Of course,” Braxton snapped. “I wouldn’t have continued to talk with you so candidly if it wasn’t.”

  “We need to pick that grandson up as soon as possible. I need to resolve this issue ASAP.”

  Braxton heard the urgency in DiMarco’s voice and knew there was more to his request than a simple desire to complete the task. “I’ve already given directions for that to be done,” Braxton said.

  “I want him brought to my place in North Beach.” It was not a question, it was an order.

  “That idea could have some merit,” Braxton commented, although he had no intention of turning the grandson over to DiMarco. “Why should he be brought to your place?”

  DiMarco was losing his patience and it was reflected in his tone. “Because I—” DiMarco stopped himself and began again. “I’ve learned some techniques that make people talk. I think if you leave him with me for a day or so, I’ll get all the information we’ll need.”

  And I’m sure that you’ll like making him talk too, Braxton thought distastefully. Braxton saw himself as a civilized man who had a taste for art, culture, and haute cuisine. Although he had directed others to take actions which occasionally resulted in someone’s death, he had never spilled blood with his own hands. It was an important distinction for him. It was what separated him from animals like Tree and DiMarco. In addition, it required extra work to prove his connection, should the actions of his minions ever draw the eye of law enforcement. “Let me ask you,” he began easily. “What do you propose to do with the information that you develop?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If we have to get the corporate papers signed over, for example, we’re going to need a live and healthy human
being to appear before a notary in a bank. Not someone who has been tortured into a state that they cannot appear in public.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line. Braxton surmised that DiMarco had not considered such an eventuality. It was even likely that he had planned to kill the grandson. Once again, Braxton felt he was saddled with an ally who couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag. “I didn’t hear your answer,” he prodded gently.

  “How were you planning to handle it?” DiMarco asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, I thought we’d bring him to an isolated spot for a little show-and-tell. Evaluate him as an adversary. Rough him up a little so that he knows we mean business. Tell him what we want and then let him go.”

  “Let him go? Why, he’d go straight to the police!” DiMarco sputtered.

  “I don’t think so,” Braxton retorted. “What’s he going to do, tell the police about all the money that he has inherited from his grandfather, a felon wanted for murder who probably never paid taxes on half of what he owns? The only two men he’ll be able to identify will be the ones who pick him up. I’ve already got jobs waiting for them in two different states. He won’t know where he’s been taken. All it will do is put him in the spotlight. I don’t think that he wants that.”

  “What if he doesn’t cave in?”

  “We’ll kidnap a couple of his friends and send him a few pieces of their bodies. He’ll cave in. We’re not dealing with King Tremain.”

  “How long do you think all this will take?”

  “Why are you so pressed for time?” Braxton asked, expecting a lie.

  “Well, if I don’t have this resolved by next week, they’ll contact you soon enough.”

  “Who?” asked Braxton, on the alert.

  “The people from the organization that I got the strike team from.”

  “Why would they want to contact me?” Braxton asked, his mind quickly shuffling through the possibilities.

  “They figure that I owe them at least three million dollars for the loss of their building and their men.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?” Braxton questioned, afraid of the answer.

  “We’re partners, aren’t we?” DiMarco demanded. “There’s no reason I should take this loss by myself!”

  “Who do you owe this money to?” Braxton asked, knowing the answer.

  “Joe Bones in Las Vegas.” There was fear in DiMarco’s voice.

  “Old Joe is still alive, huh?”

  “You know him?” DiMarco asked, surprised.

  “I know of him,” Braxton lied smoothly. It was Joe Bones who had led the organization’s retaliation efforts, attempting to burn down a large section of the Fillmore after King killed Marcello DiMarco and his family. Braxton had interceded for the community and had gone to Joe with a proposal. It was as a result of that proposal that King was framed for the murder of four white policemen, which in turn forced him to move the base of his operations to Mexico.

  “Why don’t I call you when the grandson is brought in?” Braxton suggested, hoping to end the conversation. He needed time to think.

  “When do you think that will be?” The time issue was still of importance to DiMarco.

  “Whenever we catch him,” Braxton said, knowing that he would not call. “I’ll have my secretary call you and tell you that the editor’s meeting is on.”

  Braxton’s answer seemed to please DiMarco, for he said, “Okay, I look forward to hearing from you soon.”

  There was no good-bye, the phone simply went dead. Braxton put the phone on its cradle and stood up. He walked to the inner windows of his office overlooking the printing press and watched as the two press operators prepared the old machinery to run the next weekly edition. It appeared they were trying to replace one of the smaller rollers and were having some difficulty aligning it. Braxton’s mind drifted away from the scene in front of him and turned to address the problem with DiMarco.

  Two days earlier, Braxton had attended a fund-raising effort to put a different mayor in power in the coming San Francisco election. The brain trust behind the fund-raising effort had dedicated the proceeds to Michael Giuseppe DiMarco as their candidate. Mike ran a prominent law office with his son, Edward, and his daughter, Sophia. Braxton had heard from his sources that the real money behind Mike’s campaign came from Las Vegas. It didn’t take much thinking to arrive at the conclusion that Joe Bones was financing Mike’s electoral ambitions. It made sense. Obviously, the DiMarcos could do more for their friends with the mayoralty in their pocket.

  At one point during the fund-raising event, both Mike and Braxton were standing at the sumptuous hors d’oeuvres table sampling the offerings. Braxton said to him, “Running for political office puts the whole family in the spotlight. You’ll have to reduce your liabilities as much as possible. How do you expect to achieve that when some of your relations aren’t always amenable to listening?”

  Mike turned to face him. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man with a craggy face and dark hair and the silver sideburns of venerability. After giving a quick look around to see who else was nearby he asked, “Is this an interview that will appear in the Bay City Gazette?”

  Braxton smiled. “You know that we have discussed many things that have never seen the light of day, much less appeared in the Gazette. This is for my information only.”

  “We know you’re still doing business with my nephew. And we know how much you made last year from your, shall we say, import business. If you’re asking will that business be able to continue, the answer is no. We can’t afford it. The election is more important to us. We’re closing everything down. Anyone who continues to carry on illegal activities will suffer the full weight and wrath of our legal system. And if they are too crafty to be caught by the law, we have other means at our disposal.”

  “I see,” said Braxton, not really surprised. San Francisco was a small town as big cities go; all the movers and shakers knew one another’s secrets.

  Mike leaned toward him and said softly, “Write some positive editorials. If you can bring your people to the ballot box, there’ll be other business opportunities you can invest in. The rewards may not be quite as great immediately, but over time they will be more and they will be legal.” Several other people approached Mike and he turned to greet them with a flashing smile.

  Braxton had mingled with the other guests and then after an appropriate period left the event after writing a ten-thousand-dollar check. He had gotten the information that he needed. He had been duly warned. The election was more than four months away. He had to divest himself and close down all the drug-related activities within the week.

  Below him, the big motors of the printing press started up again. The muffled sound throbbed through the windows. Braxton watched the journey press operator, a woman, run to the collator assembly and start pulling levers. The press was turned off and both operators climbed on top of the collator assembly and removed the sheet-metal housing.

  The problem, as Braxton saw it, was to neutralize Paul DiMarco long enough to let his own family deal with him, but that was not realistic. They wouldn’t move against him soon enough to help Braxton. An additional problem was that Joe Bones would want a piece of the action now that Paul had told him what was afoot. After all, the property and the holding company had all been set up with money stolen from Marcello DiMarco’s organization in 1954. First things first; he had to get the grandson in for a brief interview, then he would have a better sense of the total picture.

  He watched the female press operator. Her name was Samantha Tremain. He had hired her almost fifteen years ago upon Serena’s advice. Serena had said that Samantha was struggling to support her three-year-old son in a field in which there was considerable resistance against women. Braxton had noticed that Samantha had a very nice body, so he had said yes. He had not known at the time that she was a lesbian. He probably wouldn’t have hired her had he known, but she turned out to be an excellent press operator. Braxton bel
ieved that homosexuality was an abomination and that it should not be tolerated; it was an indication of societal decadence. He did not apply this same standard to murder; that was a necessary evil. He wondered briefly if King’s grandson cared about Samantha, whether she would serve as a suitable hostage, but he crushed that idea immediately. She was too close; someone might make the connection.

  His secretary knocked on his door and entered the office holding a sheaf of papers. “Yes, Marta?” he said with a slight touch of impatience.

  She was a petite brown-skinned woman who wore her hair long and straightened. “I brought the layout for the editorial page and several important phone messages. One is from Roy. He’s trying to set up a meeting with you and City Cab.”

  “Thank you. Come back in fifteen minutes for the layout. Call Roy and tell him that Friday is good for me.”

  “All right.” Marta spun on her heel and walked out, shutting the door behind her.

  His thoughts drifted to Serena. What type of reward should she receive for the assistance she had provided? Perhaps she should receive King, Inc. It was a sticky question. Unfortunately, he was not able to live up to his verbal agreement with her and spare the life of Franklin. Both grandsons had to die. The one who went to Mexico would be first, then Franklin would have at best six months. It was Braxton’s intent to kill all of King’s male descendants. After the grandsons were gone, he would take his time. Taking perhaps one or two a year until there were none. He would have paid King in full and Serena would have tasted the pain that he had grown to know.

  Braxton was a man of good standing in both his social and financial affairs, yet he felt that life had passed him by. He had successes in both his medical and his publishing practices, but those achievements did not sustain him. He was a man unfulfilled, because he had lived more than half his life with a broken heart. Braxton had once been a romantic man. Affairs of the heart had been serious business to him and he had given them his full attention. In his youth, he had dreamed that someday a woman would cross his path, a woman to whom he would give himself heart and soul. Such was the irony of fate that he got his wish. He fell in love with an older woman. Tragically, this woman was unable to return his love. She was married to someone else. She was King Tremain’s wife; and because of that single fact, she had lived just beyond Braxton’s reach for more than forty years. Nor could he forget that King had humiliated him in the late forties at a USO social for colored soldiers. Braxton had mistakenly not given full credence to the rumors about King’s reputation and had allowed his infatuation with Serena to carry him away. He had presented her with a large bouquet of flowers from the stage and King had subsequently confronted him. When he attempted to laugh off King’s anger, King had set upon him and slapped him around until he begged for mercy. When none of the witnesses would step forward and testify, Braxton knew that he would have to seek revenge clandestinely. He lived with the furtive looks and whispers from that one incident for years afterward.