Echoes of a Distant Summer (57 page)

The fat man jerked on the back of Rhasan’s shirt, but he still wouldn’t get up. The man pressed the barrel of his pistol against Rhasan’s head and growled, “Two …” Then after waiting a moment for a response, the man said, “Three!” and pulled the trigger.

Pres had launched himself at the fat man and was airborne when the man pulled the trigger. He had hoped to intervene before the man had a chance to get off a shot, but he was too late. The hammer of the pistol fell upon the firing pin with a dull click.

When the weapon didn’t discharge, Tony realized that he had forgotten to chamber a bullet. He scrambled to pull back the gun’s slide, but Pres’s hurtling body hit him from behind and sent him sprawling. He scraped his face on the pavement and landed hard on his stomach. The air was knocked out of him. Still, he tried to roll over and load a bullet into the chamber, but Pres was on him before he could get both hands on the pistol. Pres’s elbow smashed into his face, cracking his head against the cement. Then Pres was on top of him, preventing him from getting a rejuvenating breath.

Pres kept smashing his elbow into the man’s face. He was trying to catch the man’s windpipe, but the man’s double chin prevented him from getting the killing blow. Pres kept on pounding the man’s face until he no longer moved. When he was sure that his adversary was unconscious, Pres rolled off him and pulled the gun from his hands. He got to his feet slowly.

Rhasan, his face bruised and bleeding from several contusions, staggered erect and recognized his savior. “Uncle Pres? Is that you? Man, am I glad to see you! You saved my life! Thank you! Thank you!” He stumbled toward Pres, arms outstretched.

Pres hugged him and responded, “Thank God you’re alive, not me! Thank God! It’s a miracle the gun misfired!”

“You’re right, Uncle Pres. You’re right!” Rhasan bowed his head and closed his eyes. He prayed silently.

Pres bowed his head as well, but he could not close his eyes. He
stared at Tony’s unconscious form. He could not erase from his mind that he had just tried to kill the man, that he had meant to kill him.

Wayman walked over and put a hand on Pres’s shoulder. “Uncle Pres, that’s the fastest I’ve ever seen you move. You really took him down!”

Pres shrugged. “Three and a half years of recon in front-line Vietnam. If you don’t learn how to fight well, you die.” Pres paused and looked down at Tony before he continued, “And you never forget how to kill. It’s easy to learn but hard to forget.”

Rhasan, who had finished his communion, put his arm around Pres. “I thought I was toast! I heard the hammer fall! Then you came flying out of the night! What are you doing here?”

Pres dusted off his clothes. “I was looking for your uncle Jax, but it looks like I’m not the only one.”

“Yeah, he was trying to find out where Uncle Jax is too! Who the fuck is this guy?”

“He works for the Mob. I had a run-in with him three or four days ago myself.”

Wayman asked Rhasan, “You all right, man?”

“Yeah. That fat fuck chipped a tooth when he was smacking me around with his gun, but other than that I’m fine. Uncle Pres says that this guy is working for the Mob.”

“No shit? The Mob, huh?” Fox asked as he walked over and kicked Tony, who had just started coming to, between the legs. Tony groaned with pain and drew his legs up into a fetal position. Fox snarled, “You in Oakland now, motherfucker! And you ain’t got no business here!” He kicked Tony again. “Bring that other one over here, Deshawn!”

Deshawn walked Victor down the driveway, prodding him in the back with the shotgun. He asked, “What we gon’ do with them?”

Fox suggested, “We ought to send them straight on down the hill in their car! That’ll teach them not to send assholes into Oakland!”

“Fox, that’s your answer to everything!” Wayman retorted angrily. He gestured to Tony. “You were going to let him kill Rhasan!”

Fox denied the accusation vehemently. “That ain’t true! I just let him know that if he killed Rhasan, he was a dead man! That’s all, so he knows it’s no option!”

Rhasan said, “Fox, you and I’ve been brothers since the third grade, but I thought you were throwing my life away too! Bracing him like that with my life on the line! He was going to kill me, man! The pistol misfired! That’s the only reason I’m here!”

Pres interjected, “We don’t have time for this. None of us is the enemy. The enemy is on the ground. We need to spend time on what we’re going to do from here, not arguing with one another!”

Victor spoke for the first time since Deshawn had knocked him unconscious. His tone was conciliatory. “Listen to him. We should go our separate ways. Let bygones be bygones. We weren’t after you.”

Fox exclaimed, “Ain’t this a bitch. Now every little motherfucker think he can join in the conversation!” He pointed his gun at Victor’s face. “Motherfucker, I absolutely don’t want to hear what you think! So keep your goddamned mouth shut!”

Deshawn asked, “If we ain’t gon’ send them down the hill in the car, what are we gon’ do with them?”

Pres ventured, “Well, I have a few ideas that will discredit them to their organization. From what I understand from the detective who called me, the DiMarcos have an old association with some of the people within this organization and the media knows about it, but has had no reason to exploit the fact. It’s old news, but we could give them a new reason!”

Tony groaned and pushed himself to a sitting position. He put his hand to his bloody face. “These fucking niggers have broken my nose! My goddamned nose! I’ll kill them for this! Niggers did this!”

“Nigger this, motherfucker!” Deshawn growled as he stepped forward quickly and kicked Tony in the side. The force of it knocked Tony over on his side.

Tony wailed in agony, “You niggers don’t know who you’re messing with! We’ll come back over here and kill all of you! You’re fucking with the Mafia now! Oh, God, my side! You fucking niggers are going to get it!”

“Well, if we’re all going to get it,” Rhasan said through gritted teeth as he walked over to where Tony lay, “I might as well give you back what you gave!” He kicked Tony in the face as hard as he could. Tony partially blocked the kick, but the brunt of it landed on his cheek. Rhasan moved to a different angle and kicked at his face again. This time there was a satisfying crunch as his foot smacked against Tony’s face. Tony screamed in pain.

“That’s enough!” Pres advised. “His screams will carry up here. The police will be notified any minute now.”

Victor stared down at his brother and growled, “You fuckers better run to the ends of the earth, because we’re not going to forget this!”

“Oh, yeah! Then remember this too!” Fox whacked Victor on the side of his head with the butt of his pistol. Victor fell on top of his brother and lay still. Fox stood over the two brothers and snarled, “This is Oakland, motherfuckers! Guns ’R’ Us! We’ll be waiting for you!”

“Let’s get on with my plan,” Pres suggested. “Now, I saw a house under construction just down the hill.…”

Later that night when Pres was sitting alone in a booth at Edie’s Restaurant in Berkeley, his thoughts were absorbed with the events of the night. He was wondering whether there was anything that Jackson could’ve done differently to avoid all that had happened. It was obvious that King’s enemies wanted him badly. If they were willing to attack Jackson’s friends and family to get to him, how much leeway did he have?

Not the least of Pres’s considerations was his own involvement in the evening’s earlier altercation. He had tried to kill the fat man when he first attacked him. It was only due to luck or fate that Pres had failed in his attempt. He was at once grateful and saddened: He was thankful that he hadn’t killed, but he was shaken by how little it took to make him want to kill. The whole sickening experience had taken him back to his years in Vietnam, back to the dichotomy of fighting in a war that he knew was being fought for all the wrong reasons, back to killing merely to survive, back to the smell of blood and the sight of mutilated bodies. It was as if all the lessons he had learned from the war meant nothing, that the commitment he had made to invest his time and attention into his community to atone for the lives he had taken was merely veneer. All of it could be scraped off like a cheap polish and the animal within him laid bare.

His thoughts rendered the food in front of him tasteless. He pushed his plate away and stared out into the deepening gloom, at the pedestrians of the night, strangers treading paths which were probably no less unsavory than his own.

H
igh in the Oakland hills a chilly morning breeze wafted through the small valley in which the Chabot Gun Club was situated. The sun had not yet cleared the eucalyptus trees on the eastern hills and its light filtered through their rustling, crescent-shaped leaves and brought no warmth. The sky was cloudless and eggshell blue. Off to the west the low-lying flatlands of Oakland and San Leandro shimmered in an early-morning haze. The pastoral quality of the view was diminished only by the echo of intermittent gunfire through the valley.

Jackson and Elizabeth walked down the hill along a paved path that led to the shooting stalls of the handgun range. He was carrying two hard-sided handgun cases. Elizabeth was toting an equipment bag and an ammo can. There was only one other person occupying a stall on the far end of the row of stalls. Jackson and Elizabeth dumped their cases and gear on a table. He began opening the cases while she looked over his shoulder. Inside one case were six revolvers and in the other were five pistols.

“You’ve got quite an arsenal there,” Elizabeth declared as Jackson handed her a set of ear baffles.

“Just a few instruments of American leisure time,” Jackson replied as he slipped a pair of baffles around his neck. He took out two matching, ivory-handled pistols and locked the slides back in an open position. “Wouldn’t be America without handguns. What do you want to shoot?”

“I like revolvers. Let me shoot that long-barreled .357 Magnum on the end.”

Jackson picked up the gun, flicked open the cylinder to ensure that it was empty, then handed it to Elizabeth. As he watched her check the gun he asked, “Where do you think Elroy is?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him since the night we went to his house.”

“I really enjoyed what happened outside your apartment. I haven’t made out in a car like that since I was in high school.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath and replied, “What I remember most is waking up with you the next morning, waking up and not feeling regret.”

Jackson put down the pistol he was checking and said, “These last few nights have shown that the physical is just one of the many places
where we meet.” He stepped over and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and murmured in her ear, “I really loved making love to you, but I loved holding you in my arms as we slept just as much.”

Elizabeth pushed away and looked at him appraisingly. She asked, “Do you really want children?”

Jackson smiled and replied, “Yes, lots of them. At least four.”

“Why have you waited so long? You’ll be forty in a few years.”

“And you’ll be nearly forty,” Jackson retorted.

“Answer my question!”

Jackson shrugged. “I haven’t had children because the relationships were never right. I’ve paid for a couple of abortions, but that’s as close as it got.”

Elizabeth declared emphatically, “I’ll never have an abortion! If I get pregnant, I want to carry the baby to term and raise it. I’ll never want to kill my own child. I don’t care whether I have to raise it by myself. I feel very strongly about this.”

Jackson frowned at her and commented, “I didn’t know you were a pro-lifer.”

“I’m not. I’m for the woman’s right to choose. This is my personal choice. I’m going to give birth to any baby that I conceive. Be forewarned.”

Jackson smiled. “That’s okay with me. If you get pregnant with a baby of mine, I’ll want us to raise it.”

A horn blared and the tinny voice of the range master roared out on an aging public address system, “Cease firing! Cease firing! Remove all bullets from their chambers, secure your weapons, and step behind the safety line!” After receiving the all-clear from the monitors, the PA system blared, “Hang up your targets and return behind the safety line.” Jackson and Elizabeth strolled out across the uneven, grassy meadow to set their targets on the wooden frames.

Jackson observed as he walked beside Elizabeth, “I like being with you.”

She smiled and replied, “You don’t think I introduce everyone to my uncle Elroy, do you?”

“Speaking of your uncle again, it doesn’t look like anyone has been in his apartment in a couple of days. I thought he might have taken a trip somewhere and maybe you knew where.”

Elizabeth gave Jackson a sidelong stare and said, “That sounds like you’ve been in his apartment, or sent someone in, is that right?”

Jackson nodded while he placed red dots in the bull’s-eye and on the corners of his target.

“Are you serious? Breaking and entering? What are you thinking?”

Jackson slipped his arm under hers and walked back to the stalls. “Just entering, no breaking,” he explained. “I had to see that the file I had given him was still secure. If that information fell into our enemies’ hands, we would have to take action immediately to protect him.”

“We!” Elizabeth demanded. They walked under the roof of the pistol stalls in silence. She followed him over the yellow line and demanded, “Who is this ‘we’?”

“It’s a form of speech.”

She moved to face him and through gritted teeth said, “I want to know! I want to know everything!”

Jackson sighed. “I have access to my grandfather’s organization. His head of security is like an older brother to me. I’ve been living with him since I got back.”

The horn blew the all-clear and the public address system squawked, “You may cross the yellow line and commence firing!” The sound of intermittent gunfire began to echo across the valley.

Jackson slipped on his baffles and walked over to his stall. He clicked home the magazines into his pistols. He picked up one gun and took aim at his target.