Echoes of a Distant Summer (7 page)

“I can do that,” Tree said as he finished his drink. He got to his feet. “Anything else?”

“Three things.” Braxton walked over to him. “It might be a good idea to lay low for a while on the drug business. DiMarco is well connected in the police department. You wouldn’t want to get arrested now.”

Tree protested, “I’d be walking away from an easy thirty thousand a week. And you’d be giving up your cut too.”

“That’s chump change compared to the potential we can reap from our project.” Braxton forced himself to maintain an advisory tone. “Remember, it would be easy for him to get someone to take you down in jail. And we don’t want that, do we?”

“Okay, I’ll be cool,” Tree acknowledged. “What’s the second thing?”

“Don’t ride Witherspoon so hard. If we don’t handle him gently, he may crumble. He could even end up going to the police. He’s already scared. We’ve got to make him think that there’s nothing to worry about as long as he does what we say. If he feels that it doesn’t matter what he does, that he’ll be hurt anyway, we’ll lose control of him.”

“Okay, I’ll be cool on that too. What’s the last thing?”

“I want you to pick up one of the grandson’s friends. For discussion purposes only. I don’t want another botched job like the one with that Davis fellow. Tell your people not to use too much rough stuff.”

“Okay, okay,” Tree conceded grudgingly. “But who gon’ pay for killin’ my nephew? I don’t want his death to go without no answer!”

“The man who killed Frank is dead!”

“But maybe he weren’t actin’ alone! The police say that bomb was pretty sophisticated.”

“We’ll sort that out later! Right now, we want to talk! No rough stuff! Maybe with the right incentive, if it’s handled correctly, we can make a deal with one of his buddies. People can always use more money.”

“Gotcha!” Tree strode to the door. “I got me another appointment. We gon’ meet in Napa?”

Braxton thought a moment. “I doubt it, but I’ll contact you. One way or the other.”

With a wave of his hand, Tree opened the door and was gone. Braxton went back out onto the balcony and stared out at the finger of the bay that separated Sausalito from Strawberry Point. It was a beautiful view, an oriental water color captured in greens and browns and fading to gray where the fog had not yet lifted. But it was not the view which preoccupied his thinking. He wondered at the number of great ideas that were conceptualized but never realized because the men delegated to carry them out didn’t have the focus to work together. It was a problem that had plagued him since 1940. He could never seem to find thinking, rational men to work for him who could also handle a little blood. Perhaps the two traits didn’t commonly reside in the same body. But Braxton had known men who had possessed these traits. DiMarco’s uncle, for example, had been a clever man who might have risen to national prominence within his organization if he had not underestimated King Tremain. All it took was one false step. One small miscalculation.

Braxton was a man who was used to success. In his youth, he had been a medical doctor, among the more prominent in San Francisco’s black community. He also started the second black-owned San Francisco newspaper, publishing the
Bay City Gazette
. He recently had retired from his medical duties and now devoted himself entirely to his publishing business and his investments. Although he was in his late sixties, he had aged well. His hair was silver gray and went well with his light brown skin. On the surface he had a lot to live for. Yet he carried in his heart scars from his encounters with King Tremain.

He turned back into his hotel room and pulled an attaché case from beneath his bed. He removed a manila envelope from the case and sat down at the table to review its contents. It was the same envelope that John Tree had brought him the night after Sampson Davis had killed himself along with three of Tree’s men. There were only two pieces of paper in the envelope. The first was a letter written to King Tremain from his attorneys in New York, and the second was a piece of a map. Braxton read the letter for perhaps the twentieth time.

The other paper in the envelope was a torn-off piece of a map. It looked like a schematic of the San Francisco sewer system. He shook his head. What could those fools down at Tree’s have been thinking about? How could they have mishandled this gift? Here in his hand was part of the key to breaking up King Tremain’s estate.

The phone rang. It sounded harsh and discordant in Braxton’s ears. It disturbed his reverie, and since he was not expecting any calls, he considered not answering it. However, after the fourth ring, it entered his mind that it could be one of his co-conspirators, so he picked up the receiver.

A familiar voice with a raspy, southern Louisiana accent asked, “Was the meetin’ successful, William?” There was no warmth in the tone; at best it was businesslike.

“Uncle Pug? Is that you?” Braxton inquired with surprise.

“Co’se it’s me, William! Who else know about this meetin’? You sho’ put in some work in keepin’ it secret, din’t ya! You certainly din’t try to call me and tell me about it! I got to say, after I found out I was some surprised. Yesiree! What with you conductin’ secret meetings and all, a suspicious person might think that you was tryin’ to get independent action goin’! But I knew better! I knew you remembered how we deal with traitors down here. I knew you’d remember—”

Braxton interrupted, “Uncle Pug, this really isn’t necessary! I—”

“Don’t interrupt me ag’in!” The voice had turned cold and authoritarian. “As I was sayin’, I knew you’d remember the summer of 1954, the
summer you spent with us when we opened that man’s veins and staked him out in the swamp for the fish to feed on! I knew you wasn’t fool enough to try anythin’ at the expense of yo’ family! Because, if you did, I just don’t know how we’d deal with the disappointment! Get my drift?!”

Braxton quelled his anger and replied in a resigned tone, “I understand you.”

“Now, was the meetin’ successful?”

“Yes, I have assigned people to watch the key grandson and establish his social circle. The DiMarcos will use their Mexico City connection to follow him if he travels down to see King Tremain. I’ve also arranged for the next to the last payment of your money to be sent to your Nassau bank. If you please, Uncle Pug, I didn’t know I had to check in with you to clear my every move. I thought I was serving you well by using my own initiative. That’s the way we’ve been operating for the last few years.”

“This be a new day! All debts is due now! We gon’ take over this operation! You’ll take your orders directly from me or my grandson, Deleon! You ain’t got no say in this! We have some debts to settle and we don’t want no bunglin’! One of us will be to Frisco in a couple of weeks. You hold your horses ’til we get there!”

“DiMarco isn’t too receptive to direction,” Braxton offered, trying to mount a diplomatic argument as to the drawbacks of his uncle’s plan.

“We’ll use him as far as he’s useful, after that he’s swamp food. As a matter fact, all the men you’s met with gon’ be swamp food after this is over. You should take care that you don’t end up the same. You’s a distant relative, yo’ DuMont blood ain’t that thick.” The phone went dead.

Braxton exhaled and returned the receiver to its cradle. He spent a few moments breathing deeply. The intrusion of his mother’s family was about the last thing he needed. Although he had gone to them when he had needed money for medical school and also years later when he needed capital to buy the
Bay City Gazette
, he didn’t like spending too much time with them. The summer he had spent in Louisiana had been enough for him. He saw them as the epitome of an inbred, unsophisticated backwoods family. Nonetheless, he was not foolish enough to cross them. He knew they would track him across three continents to exact their revenge.

He was beginning to regret that he had discussed Sampson Davis’s
death and the letter with his uncle. He had thought his uncle would be satisfied with his taking the lead in the matter as he had done for years, but that was obviously not the case. Once the old man heard about the possibility that King was seriously ill, he got extremely excited, spouting far-fetched plans as soon as they came into his head. His outburst exemplified what Braxton feared most about the DuMonts. They were a primal, frightening, and passionate people, more interested in displays of courage than caution. A folk who after spilling the blood of their enemies would drink, dance, and carouse until exhaustion and excess took them. They relied less on organized planning than spur of the moment, impromptu actions, which often led to messy results, like witnesses, clues, and fingerprints. Given the DuMonts’ overriding mania in all matters regarding King, Braxton was concerned that their impulsive brutishness might be directed at him should he show reluctance to perform some poorly thought-out directive.

A pain lanced across Braxton’s back as the tension in his body reached critical mass. He needed to relax. Braxton went to the phone and made a call. A woman’s voice answered. Braxton said, “I’m ready, come now.” He returned the phone to its cradle and went out on the deck. His only option to keep control of the situation was to bring it to resolution before his relatives arrived.

There was one major, nagging unknown: the grandson, Jackson Tremain. If Jackson was anything like his cousin Franklin, there would be no problem. But if this grandson had more of King’s skills, everything might unravel. Braxton simply did not know with whom he was dealing and yet he had already set actions in progress involving that person. This broke a cardinal rule of his, which was never to take an offensive move without a clear understanding of your opponent.

There was a knock at the door. Braxton had a moment’s hesitation before answering it, thinking it might be DiMarco’s men, but he put that thought out of his mind. He knew DiMarco would wait until the job was finished, or nearly finished. Braxton opened the door and a tall, stylishly dressed, golden-brown-skinned woman walked in and gave him a peck on the cheek. Her hair was in a full natural and she wore large, colorful hand-crafted earrings. She smiled at him, showing white teeth and sparkling eyes. She took off her coat and Braxton admired the curves of her body underneath her dress. As he ushered her to the bar his last business thought was, Who the hell
are
you, Jackson Tremain?

Deleon DuMont, a lean, whipcord-wiry man wearing an olive double-breasted suit, a white silk T-shirt, and loafers without socks sat at the bar and watched John Tree walk out the front door of the Miramar Vista. He sipped his drink slowly and turned to watch himself in the mirror. He was a brown-skinned man with high cheekbones and a triangular face who, no matter how well he shaved, always had a visible five o’clock shadow. Nonetheless, he thought he presented a striking image. He had tailored his look after that of the black detective on
Miami Vice
. He liked to wear silk T-shirts under his suit jackets and he liked the way his thick black hair was pomaded into waves. He pulled a pack of imported cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit one of its dark brown cylinders of tobacco. There was a faint perfume in the smell of its burning ash. By the time he had finished his cigarette and watched a bit of a baseball game that was on the bar’s TV, he saw the young woman with golden-brown skin and large, colorful earrings stop by the entrance to the bar. She did not enter, but merely nodded to him then continued on her way.