Echoes of a Distant Summer

by Guy Johnson

  Tree smiled a crooked smile and put his big hand on Witherspoon’s shoulder.

  Witherspoon gave a hurried glance at Tree, then looked down at his hands clasped in his lap.

  DiMarco looked at Braxton and said, “You still haven’t talked about exactly how we can take control of his corporation. That’s the critical piece of information.”

  Braxton put his thumbs under his suspenders and said smugly, “Well, I have it on good authority that when King was forced to go to Mexico in 1954, he had to sell everything with his name on it, otherwise it would have been seized by the police. He sold everything to a corporation that he had set up. The one failure in his plan was that no one’s name was ever put on the corporation’s founding papers because he was never able to come back to San Francisco and get the papers officially transferred to someone he trusted. Those papers are still hidden somewhere in San Francisco’s Western Addition. We find them, we take control of a cool fifty million.”

  DiMarco leaned forward with interest and asked, “What’s your strategy?”

  “One of his grandsons is the key. Now, we know that when Tremain went to Mexico in 1954, the only person he had regular contact with was one grandson.” Braxton looked down at his notes to refresh his memory. “Hmmm, yes, Jackson Tremain—”

  “We know where he is,” Tree interrupted enthusiastically. “I got two men watching him. Why don’t we just pick him up and find out what he knows?”

  “Because he doesn’t know anything, yet.” Braxton answered as he took off his glasses and cleaned them. “He stopped having anything to do with his grandfather when he was eighteen; that was in 1964. What makes this grandson key is that he is the only one in the whole family that King Tremain cared about. So, if he leaves a will, this fellow Jackson will figure pretty prominently in it.” Braxton let the information sink in while he carefully adjusted his glasses. He didn’t like wearing them but they were necessary for reading.

  “How are we going to know if Tremain contacts this Jackson?” DiMarco asked.

  “Well, you’ve got to think like Tremain,” Braxton said contemplatively. “He wouldn’t send a stranger, because the grandson probably wouldn’t have anything to do with someone he didn’t know.…” Braxton paused in thought then continued, “I think he’ll contact the grandson directly and they’ll meet face-to-face before he dies.”

  “Then we should have this Jackson under twenty-four-hour surveillance!” DiMarco suggested. “So we can give King Tremain the send-off he deserves!”

  “We’ve already taken care of that.” Braxton gestured to Tree.

  “We on ’im, like white on rice,” Tree confirmed. “We got him followed wherever he goes. I got one of my best men on him. It’s Fletcher Gil—”

  “John!” Braxton interrupted testily. “We agreed not to use the names of people assigned to surveillance activities.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Tree complained. “It’s just us and we know everybody!”

  Braxton explained, “Precautions are necessary. We may not always be in a secure room.”

  DiMarco chuckled cynically, “He’s too stupid to understand that.”

  Braxton caught Tree’s eye and discreetly gestured to him not to respond. “Let’s get on with our prospective assignments, shall we?” No one said anything. DiMarco was smirking and Tree was glaring at him. Witherspoon continued to sit quietly, looking down into his lap. “John, I want you to continue to keep this Jackson Tremain under surveillance. Learn everything about him. If he’s got a girlfriend, find out where she lives and works. I want his friends’ names and addresses. I want to know all his regular stops.”

  “I got it!” Tree answered gruffly. “He gon’ be locked down tighter’n a drum.”

  “Good. Paul, you still have people down in Mexico City?”

  DiMarco nodded his head affirmatively.

  “Good,” Braxton smiled. “I want you to put them on notice. If the grandson goes down there to visit him, we want him followed. Maybe he’ll lead us right to his grandfather, and then we’ll be able to resolve everything right then and there.”

  DiMarco said, “I’ll have a man staked out at the Mexico City airport, once we know he’s headed down that way.”

  “That’s all the news on that front. Now to our local business transactions. Delbert, are you still with us?” Braxton spoke softly. Witherspoon raised his eyes and looked at Braxton, his face wooden with resignation. “We need to ship some money through the construction company. I want you to alert the accountant. The money will come from a bank in Canada. I want half the payment to go through the same subcontractor in Nassau that we used before, and the other half to the Bahamas account. Anybody else need a pass through?”

  DiMarco nodded. “Yeah. I’m transferring money from my restaurant. I want the money sent to my Bahamas account.”

  Braxton looked at Witherspoon. “Got that?”

  Witherspoon stared at Braxton without a word. His face was expressionless.

  Tree leaned over and smacked the back of his head with a powerful forehand swipe. “You heard the man. Answer him!”

  The blow knocked Witherspoon’s hat onto the table. Witherspoon trembled as he spoke. “I got it.”

  “Good,” said Braxton as he sought to bring the meeting to a close. “We should meet for a status report in one week at the Embassy Suites in Napa. Different place, same time. After that, it may be too dangerous to meet again as a group.”

  Braxton stood up as a signal of dismissal, but before anyone else could move, Tree said in a malevolent voice, “You ought to send somebody who knows what they doin’ to Mexico this time.” He indicated DiMarco with a hand gesture. “These greasy motherfuckers haven’t been able to find nothin’ in twenty years. Ain’t no reason to think they gon’ change now.”

  DiMarco bent over as if he were pulling up his socks when he began his snide retort. “I heard that you had more than a couple of opportunities to stand up to the man.” He kept his eyes on Tree as he spoke. “The way I heard it, you ran away faster than everybody. Too bad it wasn’t an Olympic year, you might have gotten a medal, except they don’t give ’em for yellow streaks.” DiMarco leaned back in his chair and laughed tauntingly.

  Tree pushed back his chair and stood up. He leaned over the table and pointed at DiMarco, who remained seated. “I ain’t gon’ let no stubby-assed cracker talk to me that way!” He stepped behind Witherspoon’s chair as he began to make his way to DiMarco.

  DiMarco displayed a 9mm pistol, which he had pulled from an ankle holster, and set it on the table. “Come on! Come on!” he taunted, daring Tree to continue.

  Braxton walked over and stood between the two men. “Gentlemen, we’re here about business.” He glanced back and forth between the two like a school monitor, intervening between miscreants. “Business,” he emphasized again. Braxton watched Tree make his way truculently back to his seat and thought, In a very short while you will have outlived your usefulness.

  “No more meetings,” DiMarco stated coldly as he shoved the pistol in the waistband of his pants. He stood up and buttoned his jacket. He said to Braxton, “You have other ways of contacting me.”

  Tree began to taunt him, “You’s a coward! And one day I’m gon’ make you eat that little gun.”

  DiMarco turned toward him and said, “After this is over, I’m going to squash you like a bug!”

  “You don’t scare me,” Tree answered triumphantly. “I know where your family lives. Where your little girl goes to school. What time she gets picked up by the chauffeur. I even know about your mother in New Jersey.”

  “You dare to threaten my family?! You dare to threaten—” DiMarco reached under his coat for his pistol.

  Once more, Braxton stepped between the men. “No fireworks in here or the whole plan is finished.”

  DiMarco looked over Braxton’s shoulder at the still-seated Tree and snarled, “You’re a dead man; it’s just a question of when! But you’re a dead man!”

 
Tree laughed evilly. “You jes’ better watch who you threatening!” He laughed a big belly laugh. He had succeeded in upsetting DiMarco and that was enough for him.

  Braxton ushered DiMarco from the room, speaking to him in hushed undertones, but to no avail. At the door DiMarco pulled his arm roughly out of Braxton’s grasp. “We’ll go forward as planned,” he said, adjusting the collar of his coat. “But if I see that fool again, I’ll kill him and everyone who’s with him!” DiMarco gave Braxton a long look then turned and walked down the hall.

  Witherspoon came to the door and waited for Braxton to move so he could leave. His hat was in his hands. There was a pleading look on his long, narrow face and his mouth twitched with unspoken words. Braxton stepped out of his way and watched Witherspoon dart past him and scurry down the hall.

  As Braxton reentered the sitting room, Tree was pouring himself a large brandy. Braxton sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs behind him and asked, “What is on your mind that you would want to antagonize DiMarco?”

  “He ain’t nothing,” Tree responded, slopping his brandy as he dropped into a chair across from Braxton. “I liked it that you didn’t let on about the real amount of money we’s after. You think land and everything, King got more’n a hundred million?”

  “Yes I do, but let me caution you. DiMarco is a dangerous man. When I asked you to get that information on his family, I never intended that he should know about it. It was for us to use in case of emergency.”

  Disgustedly, Braxton rose up and went over to stand in front of the window. The fog was lifting. He could now see the sailboats moored in the water and behind them, the shadowy presence of Strawberry Point still partially obscured by fog. He took a moment to control his irritation over Tree’s stupidity. Once he gathered himself, he turned and said, “Now, we have a problem.”

  “What’s that?” Tree asked.

  “We knew before that DiMarco might not want to share the business with us, but now there’s no doubt. He’ll try to kill us once everything is in hand. We’ve got to be ready before that happens.” Braxton poured himself a brandy and continued. “I want you to keep tabs on his family. I think he’ll try to move them before he moves on us. That’ll be our signal.”

  “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.

  May 20, 1982

  Mr. LeRoi Bordeaux Tremain

  1717 Embarcadero Blvd.

  San Diego, California

  Dear Mr. Tremain,

  We were extremely sorry to hear of your serious illness and your subsequent hospitalization. It is our hope that sound medical intervention will assist you in regaining your health so that we may continue our long professional relationship.

  We received your written, notarized request regarding the disposition of your estate upon your death. For the most part, your desires are fairly clear and easy to implement. There are, however, a few concerns. These concerns relate to your grandson, Jackson Tremain, inheriting all of your estate. At this time, there is no problem with the transition of land and fixed assets into his name, but there are some problems concerning the unsigned stock certificates which represent the bulk of your estate. According to our records these stock certificates amount to nearly a hundred million dollars. Since these certificates are unsigned and are not currently in your possession, there will be considerable problems with your grandson assuming control and ownership over them. We’ll have to establish a chain of possession and ensure that these certificates have not been sold. Still, we may be open to challenges by parties as yet unknown. Clearly, it is in your best interest to find these certificates and have them in your possession at the time of your death. We also acknowledge your request that any transfer of possession of these certificates to parties other than your grandson can only be accomplished if he appears in person at the Central Bank of San Francisco and notarizes the transaction.

  We further understand that it is your wish, should your grandson meet an u
ntimely death before he inherits your estate, that everything you own shall be donated to charities related to the care and maintenance of children. While we may experience similar problems as those outlined in the preceding paragraph with the transfer of the unsigned certificates, it should be less of an obstacle in that there is no specific party of interest.

  We await news of your recovery and are here to assist you in any way possible. Please contact us, if we have misunderstood any part of your bequest, or if you’ve regained possession of the certificates.

  Sincerely,

  Noah Goldbaum

  Goldbaum & Goldbaum

  3932 Fifth Avenue

  New York City, NY

  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—”