My People Are Rising (43 page)

Despite our much improved position, I, as did probably many others, felt uneasy about Huey's return. I remember watching Huey, flanked by Elaine, Big Bob, and Bethune, during the press conference held upon his return. I felt deep inside that maybe his return would backfire on us all. But I knew to keep that to myself.

Elaine found a nice home for Huey and his family on a cul-de-sac in the Oakland hills. Joe Abron, the party's technology expert, installed video monitors around the perimeter of the property. Finally, Huey and Gwen and the kids, Ronnie and Jessica, could relax after the pretty rough conditions they had experienced in Cuba.

Huey enrolled in a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz, where he was driven two or three times a week by Big Bob to attend classes. He also visited the Oakland Community School on occasion, talking about having an apartment built on top of the school building. In his home, he installed a Universal gym so he could stay in good physical shape. So far, it seemed Huey was making an attempt not to fall into his old habits, yet I still had an underlying feeling of uneasiness.

Lola had started working at the LampPost, which meant on weekends she got home late. This left me to watch little Damon and Natalie and Lola's youngest sister, Valerie. After the kids went to bed, I spent many Saturday nights watching
Saturday Night Live
. It was a revolutionary show for its time, filmed live with unknown performers, using sketch comedy to comment on the dysfunction of American politics and society. Even though Lola and I were still together, I had been seeing other sisters in the party as well as out, and it wasn't long before Lola started seeing other comrade brothers. This did bother me, especially when she started seeing
Bethune
, but there wasn't a darned thing I could do about it. Our relationship slowly began to go downhill.

It wasn't long before Huey's drug habit resurfaced, and his forays into the street life resumed. One night, while Lola slept peacefully, I was lying across the bed, watching the old gangster flick
On Top of the World
with Edward G. Robinson, and thinking how similar that portrayal of gangster life was to my own and that of the others on the security squad. I thought about how we were ordered to rob dope dealers and do many other things under the cover of night. I thought about my assignment at LaToure's after-hour speakeasy, where I sat with my back against the wall, .45 at the ready, eyes on the lookout for trouble, occasionally snorting a few lines of coke to keep up with the atmosphere. LaToure was later found shot to death, stuffed in the trunk of his gray El Dorado, courtesy of our mutual enemies. In the early days our enemies had been white pigs in blue, brown, or black uniforms. Now our enemies looked like us, dressed like us, and talked like us.

Suddenly the phone rang. I wondered who would be calling me at midnight.

“Hey, A. D. Grab your shoes and come up to the Name of the Game.” It was Flores. “Shoes” was Panther code for weapon.

“Okay. Right on,” I replied, then hung up. I knew that when Flores called, it usually was serious. I got up and grabbed my pants, shoes, and gun. For the past ten years, I had always placed these items within easy reach, on the floor right next to the bed.

When I got to the club, Name of the Game on Broadway, the Duke and Tim Thomson were stationed at the front of the club. Tex swaggered over to my car, his gold tooth showing as he smiled.

“Hey, A. D. The servant is in there meeting with the Mob and the Family.”

I got out. Tex and I exchanged small talk, wondering why Huey would be meeting with these hoodlums. The Family was a rival drug gang to Felix Mitchell's Mob. Their most recent feud had left a handful of bloody bodies on the Oakland streets. They were known for jumping out of cars with machine guns. Their rivalry was so intense that the past couple of months had been reminiscent of the old Chicago gangster wars of the '30s during Prohibition.

Finally Huey emerged from the club, flanked by Big Bob, Flores, and
Bethune
. The rest of us followed them to their car and waited till they drove off. The next day I learned that Huey had given the two drug gangs an ultimatum: either they paid the party $50,000 a week, or we'd go to war. We had already begun preparing for this little war, but that had been intended to eliminate those vermin, not profit off them. Under Huey's influence, things were becoming unpredictable again.

A week later, I drove Elaine to the school to pick up her daughter, little Ericka. Elaine's time with little Ericka was limited, as it was for all of us with children, and Elaine tried to compensate by giving her daughter treats and taking her special places. I wasn't surprised when Elaine calmly asked for the keys to the Mercedes.

But something in her manner was unusual. I could not put my finger on it. When she told me she would be dropping me off and taking the car, I asked if she was sure, because she rarely went anywhere alone; Bill Elder,
Bethune
, or I would always be by her side. Elaine had a expression of peace and resignation I had never seen before. Hesitantly, I handed her the keys, looking forward to an unexpected, relaxing evening at home.

Several hours later, I was sitting at home watching the World Series. Reggie Jackson, Mr. October, had just hit his third home run, propelling the New York Yankees to victory. During his time with the Oakland A's, Reggie had lived in the same complex as Elaine. He always spoke with us whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was the epitome of the rebel athlete—defiant, bold. The phone rang as Reggie was rounding the bases, fist high in the air.

“Aaron, have you seen or talked to Elaine?” It was Ericka Huggins. I felt guilty, because I was supposed to know where Elaine was at all times.

“No. She said she was going to take little Ericka to get some ice cream,” I answered, sheepishly. I hoped my answer sufficed. Ericka sounded very concerned, which worried me.

The next day, Tex and I went to the San Francisco Airport to retrieve the red Mercedes that Bill Elder and I had driven Elaine around in for the past four years. She was gone. Huey had felt threatened by Elaine's consolidation of power and her influence in Northern California politics. When she refused to give him access to the millions of dollars under her control through the Oakland Council for Economic Development, he threatened her unless she turned over control of the funds. Elaine had dedicated the last four years to building up the party's respectability, forging alliances that Huey, Bobby, and David Hilliard had been unable to forge. She had become one of the most powerful individuals in California. As much as Elaine loved Huey, in the end, he treated her just as he had treated the others that were run off from the party.

The day after her disappearance, Elaine took out a full-page ad in the
Oakland Tribune
to explain her departure to the people of Oakland. She did not reveal the truth—that Huey had fallen back into his old patterns. She instead cited her fatigue and expressed a desire to pursue her musical interests; Elaine was a very talented singer. The fact that she felt compelled to take out this ad demonstrated her importance to the people and the city of Oakland.

The following morning, keeping with the usual routine, I picked up Janice to go Elaine's penthouse, a place she had recently moved to on Lake Merritt. Once we were inside the apartment, I told Janice that Elaine had left the party. It was a weird moment, because we didn't know whether to cry or laugh. As a matter of fact, we both yelled out in jubilation. Our reaction surprised us, but considering how difficult Elaine was to work for, maybe our joy should have been expected. I think we also realized that with Elaine gone, the party would fall. We both knew our own exit was imminent.

I had fallen in love with a young woman, a medical student at UC Berkeley, who worked at the clinic. Her name was Mildred, and she was a young woman of Black, Japanese, and Mexican ancestry from San Diego. She was attractive, intelligent, down-to-earth, and most of all, she was always happy and optimistic. I think we fell in love the first time we laid eyes on one another. With us there were no ulterior motives, no forced or hidden emotional reasons. We had a genuine attraction to one another. I felt as if she were in essence the girl of my dreams, as if she were my soulmate. My relationship with Lola was one of conscience; not that I did not love Lola, but I had been drawn to her out of my own weakness. I wanted to help her, to save her from unhappiness, and was looking to fulfill my own need for a sense of worth. I did not know what would become of this situation. I knew I loved Lola, but I knew also that Mildred and I had something special. With things in the party growing tense and uncertain, Mildred asked me if I would leave the party and go with her to San Diego. As much as I loved that woman, as much I sensed an opportunity for true happiness, I was not ready to cut my ties to the party.

I struggled to explain my inability to leave. Even though the writing was on the wall, I felt unable to make my escape. But events beyond my control would push me closer to the edge.

34

The Richmond Incident

Just a song before I go A lesson to be learned Traveling twice the speed of sound It's easy to get burned

—Crosby, Stills & Nash, “Just a Song Before I Go,” 1977

About a week
after Elaine's disappearance, I was out in the field collecting donations for the sickle cell anemia program. It was the end of the workday, so I stopped at the Hofbrau on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley to get my favorite dish, the turkey dinner. While I ate, I contemplated the future of the Black Panther Party. After my meal, I called Central Headquarters to let them know I would be coming in shortly to turn in the donation money.

Flores got on the phone. “Aaron,” he said in his calm manner, “when you come in from the field, I want you to go home and get your shoes and meet me at the office by six. We have some work to do.”

When I arrived at the office with my .45, House Man told me that Flores had already left, so I went back home to relax and spend time with Lola and the kids. The next morning I awoke feeling very strange, anxious, and extremely fearful. I sensed that something had gone wrong, something had happened.

Within minutes, Tex's girlfriend Naomi called. “Aaron, have you seen Tex?”

Her voice had a deep sound of concern, as if she suspected the answer. Since Tex and I were best friends and almost always together, she thought I surely would know his whereabouts. My stomach began to churn. I started to feel nauseated. Tex and I had been assigned together as a team after Deacon's death. He and I were inseparable buddies. For a while he had moved in with Lola, me, and the kids. We often hung out together. On occasion we skipped going out into the field, and instead went back to the pad and put on some Ronnie Laws or Gary Bartz, firing up a joint or two. As a young child, Tex had witnessed his mother stab his father to death, and that vision was always with him. We had both proclaimed that if something had to be done, we wanted to be together. If one of us were assigned to go out without the other, we always called, but I had not heard anything from Tex, not a word. That was not like him.

I opened the front door to be confronted with an ugly, overcast day. A light rain was beginning to fall. I picked up the Sunday paper and broke the rubber band. It opened onto a staggering headline, almost knocking me to the ground:
PANTHER FOUND SHOT DEAD ON RICHMOND STREET
. I frantically scanned the article, looking for a clue, any clue that could tell me something, anything that would ease my fears. The dead Panther was identified as Louis “Tex” Johnson.

Outside my apartment, I gathered with Rollins Reid, House Man, and others in the soft rain as we tried to make sense of this disaster. We took long swigs of Johnnie Walker Red, trying to deaden the pain. Not only was Tex dead, but also Flores was wounded; he had gone into hiding. At that moment, I only wanted to kill the pain. I had already been numb for almost ten years, ever since the death of Welton Armstead, the first Panther killed in Seattle. For me, that was ten funerals ago. I just wanted to get fucked up, but it was no use. I couldn't forget Tex's smiling face.

I learned later that Huey had overridden Flores's assignment and replaced me with another comrade, who, in a panic, accidentally fired the fatal round that killed Tex. Tex was wearing a blue jumpsuit, which we often wore on missions of this sort. Also, several M-16s were found at the scene. The party attempted to distance itself from the debacle, later revealed to have been an attempt to silence a witness in Huey's upcoming trial. Tex's body went unclaimed. He lay alone on the streets of Richmond, California.

The following days and months would see the party sliding into a pit of no return. As a result of Tex's death and the aborted hit, a congressional investigation began to probe the internal activities of the Black Panther Party. In response, Huey sent several comrades from the security squad underground, including Bethune. The horror of what had happened unfolded slowly. The night of the attempted hit, Nelson Malloy, a comrade from Winston-Salem who worked in the medical clinic, had been asked to take the wounded Flores to the emergency room. At the hospital, the nurse called the police. Flores and Nelson fled the hospital and caught a flight to Las Vegas, where we had just opened a branch community center. Huey sent a hit team to Las Vegas. They found Nelson and drove him into the desert, where he was shot several times and buried in a shallow grave, only to be discovered alive by passersby. Nelson was taken to the hospital and then went straight back to North Carolina. Tragically, he was paralyzed for life.