“Long enough to see that you’re not working hard enough at the hotel if you have that much energy left when you get home.” She smiled and, in a lower tone, said, “You’d better have saved some of that for me.”
Back in the States, the love of my life, Marie, had been a physician’s assistant at Martin Luther King Hospital before she threw in with me and became a federal fugitive dodging the law for taking children out of their toxic homes. Now she volunteered at the local clinic just to stay fresh in the career she dearly loved, helping people who were sick or injured.
I, casually so she wouldn’t notice, reached down and felt my outside pants pocket to make sure the small lump was still there after all the rough and tumble, and relaxed some. Relaxed as much as I could, given what it represented. To be honest, it scared the hell outta me, and I thought I’d rather go back to the States and do battle with the Sons, rather than have it in my pocket.
Dad touched my back and said, “Hey?”
I turned around expecting to see his glowing smile. He liked to watch me wrestle around with the kids. This time, though, his expression remained neutral.
“Bruno,” he said, “I need to talk to you for a minute.”
“Sure, Dad.” He rarely called me by name. Most times he called me “Son.” This did not bode well. Maybe one of the kids needed something extra, additional tutoring for math or history that would put an added drain on our already limited budget. He’d become their de facto advocate. I never denied him anything, but we’d periodically dance this dance.
I turned back to look at Marie and, at the same time, said to him, “First though, would you mind watching the kids tonight. I’d like to take my lovely girl out to dinner at the El Toro, in San José.”
Marie smiled. “The El Toro, Bruno, really? I’ll call Rosie, she’ll help watch the children, give your dad a little break. A night out, and at the El Toro, I can’t wait.”
Dad took hold of my hand. “This is important, Son, can I talk to you, please?”
I turned back; his expression remained grim. “Sure, sure, Dad. Come on, let’s go outside.” I gently turned him and guided him out the double French doors to the patio.
The weather varied little, with sporadic showers throughout the day. Water sat in puddles and dripped from the tropical plants and trees, a far cry from the desert-like conditions in South Central Los Angeles. Even so, I missed LA.
I grew more scared with each step as my mind started to spin out the possibilities. Dad had been battling stomach cancer. He’d had the surgery, the chemo, and now they were finishing up with radiation. Like a scared child, I’d put aside the reality of it. He used to be strong, well built with muscle he came by naturally. I remembered him most often the way he was in the 1970s when I was growing up, with his glistening close-cropped hair and a narrow waist and broad shoulders. He’d worked forty years for the postal service as a mail carrier and never called in sick, not even one day. The USPS thought this an amazing feat and honored him when he retired with a special plaque. He told me later, “Pshaw, thanking me for doing something that was the right thing to do, anyway. That’s ridiculous. They should save their honors for those who deserve it, those who keep their families together and safe from this crazy, out-of-control world.”
Of course, the crazy world to which he referred had been all about Albert, my grandson, Dad’s great-grandson, who died at the hand of Derek Sams. I’d tracked Sams and gunned him down like the mad dog that he was. I went to prison for two years for that little indiscretion and lost my job as a detective on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Violent Crimes team. A job—and a position in the community—Dad had been so damn proud of.
Moving out to the patio, Dad looked emaciated, a mere shell of what he used to be. In my heart I knew what he was about to tell me, that he didn’t have long to live.
What the hell would I ever do without him?
Outside, he turned and looked up at me. I swallowed hard and fought the huge lump growing in my throat. He took my hand and held up a white paper folded in thirds. “I want you to read this. I know you don’t want to, but I want you to do it for me. Please?”
I swallowed hard. “What is it? Is it from the hospital? Is it from the doctor?”
“No, of course not. What’s the matter with you? It’s a letter from your brother Noble.”
CHAPTER SIX
“NO, I’M SORRY, I don’t want anything to do with him.” I shoved it away.
Dad’s eyes flared. “Don’t be a horse’s ass, don’t you dare. You made yourself a party to this twenty-odd years ago, so you’re going to read it.” He stopped short of saying I’d been the cause for all of Noble’s problems.
That wasn’t fair. Dad had never blamed me for Noble’s troubles, or his crimes.
Dad rarely used words like horse’s ass, and his body trembled with a fury I didn’t know he still possessed. “Sure, Dad, sure, take it easy. I’ll read it.” I took the letter from him. “Come on, let’s sit down over here.”
I gave in easily. He had another card to throw: my hypocrisy, something I knew he’d never do, so I owed him that.
We sat down on a raised flagstone planter. I held the letter still folded and rested my other hand on his. “Dad, first I need to know. It’s important that I know how this letter made it here?”
“Don’t you worry about me. I mailed everything to Tommy Tomkins. Noble does too. We both go through Tommy Tomkins. Nobody knows we’re corresponding. Tomkins works as a middleman. No one knows where we are down here. We’re still safe, I promise you. Okay? You know me better than that, little man. I’d never risk the safety of our kids.”
I like that he referred to the kids as ours. But I didn’t like so much the reference to me as little man. He hadn’t used it since I attended elementary school.
I knew Tom Tomkins, an old buddy of Dad’s who’d worked with him for several decades at the post office. They went alba-core fishing every year during the season. Tom Tomkins wasn’t much better off health wise. Last I’d heard he’d been laid up with twenty-four-hour care. No way did he receive or mail his own correspondence. That made at least one more person in this already dangerous loop.
“Okay,” I said.
I had been concerned about our security, no doubt about it, but in reality I only wanted to stall. I didn’t want to see what the letter contained. The words could only hurt and dredge up old emotional wounds of regret and again make me rue that Christmas day the neighbors’ house burned down, killing a little boy and girl.
Dad didn’t push me and waited patiently. I couldn’t wait forever and needed to get this done for Dad’s sake, and so I could move on with my life. I looked forward to the dinner with Marie and tried to think about that instead.
I took a deep breath and unfolded the paper. One page typed and dated ten months earlier. Dad had held on to the letter for a while.
Dad,
Thank you so much for the money. I can’t tell you how much it helps with Ricardo and Rebecca’s school tuition.
I stopped reading. “He has children? How can he have children? He’s in prison, been there for twenty-five years.”
“Read, read, would you just read it, Bruno?”
I understand your situation and why you can no longer visit. I get it and I’m glad you’re no longer living in South Central, in Willowbrook. The place where you are, the way you describe it, sounds absolutely wonderful and if anyone deserves it, you do.
I knew Noble better than anyone; we’d been brothers for too long. Before reading on I sensed a very large “but” coming, I could feel it. He wanted something, and it would be something big just by the way he had worked to build up to it.
Dad, let me get right to the point. I did something to Bruno long ago, and it rips my heart out that I can’t make it right. I think I know what it is, but time has clouded it, sanded off all the sharp edges. So much so, the reason now seems petty and infantile. Time has slipped through our fingers for him and me and now we don�
�t have much left. I don’t want something to happen to either one of us before we have a chance to make this right.
Could you please ask Bruno again to come and see me? Please? I really need to see him.
Always Yours, (and desperate)
Your favorite loving son
Noble Johnson
He’d put that favorite loving son part in there as a jab. He’d always joked that he was the favorite. I truly didn’t care, but it seemed to matter a great deal to him.
I handed the letter back to Dad. “I can’t go see him. I’m sorry. You know the reasons why. The cops are looking for me. It’s not worth the risk.” Being wanted by the cops worked only as a façade I hid behind.
I wanted to tell Dad that Noble had made his own choices, but couldn’t, not anymore. I no longer had the high ground to defend. Years later, I, too, had made the choice to cross over into lawlessness. First with the killing of Derek Sams, and then by taking those physically and emotionally wounded children from their toxic homes and rescuing them. By anyone’s moral compass, a correct and just motivation, but, at best, legally ambiguous. The social welfare system protecting the children was broken, but it was the only system we had.
Reading the letter forced me to reevaluate my stand on my brother Noble. He’d sold rock cocaine for Papa Dee. He ruined hundreds, if not thousands, of young lives with that poison. So no, he and I were still not in the same category. I tasted a hint of my own snobbery—the moral high ground—what the hell had I been thinking? He was my brother just like the twins in the house, the Bixlers. I’d watched the Bixlers; they would argue and fight with each other like normal kids do and then band together against a common interloper, another kid trying to take undue advantage. Noble and I had acted the same way through school, until Noble had dropped out his junior year to sling the rock. He made lots of money and flaunted it in Dad’s face. Told Dad that he was a fool for working for the government making peanuts when all the money in the world lay just outside our front door in the ghetto.
Noble didn’t understand that the coke crushed the breath out of lives and families.
I came home from school one day and found Dad with skinned knuckles and one eye swollen shut. I knew what had happened even though Dad wouldn’t say. Noble had come over and goaded Dad one time too many. Dad had put Noble in his place. Still, I’d turned furious that Noble would raise his hand to our father. I went looking for Noble that day and didn’t find him. Good thing.
Noble had to have been laid up somewhere licking his wounds from the thrashing Dad had given him. I never saw Noble again until the night he shot and killed two gang members who were trying to rob the Stop and Go.
Dad gently took the letter from me and handed me another. He patted my hand as he struggled to his feet and left me to it. I watched him hobble back through the doors into the dining room and disappear into the gloom.
This one was really the letter he wanted me to see. He’d given me the first one to force me to think things over, to gently ease me into what the next one held. And his strategy worked. I had relived our past, reexamined my own life with its errors and omissions, some that had turned deadly. Dad had done this without saying a word. If I lived to be a hundred, I’d never possess the natural insight Dad had into the human psyche.
And now, this bombshell, the folded paper that lay in my hand.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I SAT A long time with the folded letter, the paper turning unnaturally warm in my hand, the sensation generated entirely through imagination. I wanted to tear it up, walk away. I couldn’t. I don’t think I’d ever been so conflicted.
Noble had come over that day long ago and fought with Dad, and yet Dad still loved him unconditionally. I thought about little Alonzo, my grandson, inside playing with the other kids. I’d do the same for him. I’d defend him to the death, no question. All the kids for that matter, I’d do the same for them.
I didn’t want to unfold the paper, to read the words written by Noble. Words I knew would suck me back into his vortex of emotion, his violent world that would glom onto me, pull me down and never let go. The first letter had been bad enough—this one—well—
I closed my eyes and unfolded it. After a long moment, I looked down at the words. The letter was dated from the previous week, the time it took to make its way through the cutout Dad had set up with Tom Tomkins and for Tomkins or Tomkins’ agent to re-mail it.
* * *
Bruno,
My big brother, I’m in terrible trouble and need your help. I admit, when I was younger, to being a fool, a hateful, immature fool. And I am sorry. Sorry more than you know. You have to believe me when I say I’ve changed. I’m not like that anymore, not at all. I went to school while behind these walls and earned my degree. I’m educated, big brother, can you believe it? Me, of all people, with a degree in theology, a certified ordained minister.
No more excuses, though. As I said, I am in deep trouble here and only the Lord can help me. I’ve asked Him for His guidance. He came to me, told me I could only help myself. That help can only come from one place. The only option left to me. My big brother.
My past life has come back to teach me the same lesson all over again. I am desperate. Please come. I have no one else to turn to.
Bruno, it’s my family, evil stalks my family and I can do nothing about it, not from behind these walls. It’s so damn frustrating and scary. More scary than I can describe. Think about it. How would you feel in a similar situation, if the tables were turned?
Your favorite little bro
Noble Johnson
I wadded up the paper and threw it as hard as I could. How could he ask me something like this? Not after twenty-five years. Not after never hearing from him at all and then asking for something I couldn’t give even if I wanted to, not without jeopardizing the welfare of my own family. I spun and kicked the unforgiving flagstone planter. I hopped around, fighting the pain. This kind of pain came as a welcome relief to the alternative, the emotional bombshell Noble just dropped in my lap to smother and ruin everything I’d worked for.
I stomped over to the door, hesitated, turned the knob, stopped, went back, picked up the balled paper, and shoved it down deep into my pocket with the other item. I stopped, thought about it, and took out the wadded paper. I shoved it in my other pocket. I didn’t want Noble’s words to taint the planned evening with Marie.
I took several deep breaths and went looking for Dad to tell him. No way. No way in hell.
Dad had retreated behind his locked bedroom door and wouldn’t answer my knock. He knew me better than I did. Without Dad present for me to rail at, Noble’s words would eat a big hole in my gut. I stood at his door, my forehead pressed to the wood, eyes closed, angry, not with Dad, but with myself. I respected Dad more than ever for his ability to read and understand the way I thought and acted.
That wadded-up paper in my pocket again started to glow warm. I put aside the thought that I might be losing my mind.
* * *
Rosie Beltran, a rotund, happy woman with long black hair down past her waist, appeared in the living room area where Marie and I sat with the kids, talking and just enjoying the early evening with our family. Rosie never knocked; she acted as an extended part of our household. She loved the kids, and when we added Eddie, Elena, and Sandy, I offered to hire a second housekeeper/sitter. She said with sixteen brothers and sisters, this well-mannered group had yet to give her problems.
Dad still had not come out of his room. He wouldn’t until we left for dinner.
I kissed the top of Alonzo’s head and lifted him off my lap. Marie got up before I could, came over, and offered a hand to help me out of the deep easy chair. “I love you dearly,” I said, “but when you do that you make me feel … ah, inadequate.”
She smiled, “Don’t be silly, you’ll never be inadequate.”
I stood and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Thank you, babe.”
“Never inadequate, just old.” She jump
ed away laughing. I grabbed at her. The smaller kids saw the game and chased her, laughing.
Marie wore her dark-brown hair back in a ponytail the way I liked it. Her peasant blouse, covered in local colors, revealed just enough décolletage to entice and yet remain classy. From her neck hung a plain gold crucifix on a thin gold chain that dangled in the cleft of her breasts. Sexy beyond belief. Her smile, the best I’d ever seen, acted like a switch that lit up my world.
I watched her with the kids and, for the millionth time, couldn’t understand what she saw in me. I gently brushed the kids aside, took her by the waist, and pulled her into me. Her head nestled nicely just below my chin. I took in her scent, tropical, hibiscus and orchid from the flowers she wore behind her ear. I kissed the top of her head and hugged her tight. Too tight, I knew, and for a different reason.
The wadded-up missive from Noble in my pocket would bring her a grief she didn’t deserve and make our evening bittersweet.
Maybe I’d wait and tell her tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow would be soon enough.
She pulled back a little. “Hey, what gives? I’m not a tube of toothpaste, you know.”
Before I could answer with a smart quip, the doorbell rang.
I took her by the hand and led her out of the room and into the hall. Rosie herded the children, kept them from following. I held tight to Marie’s hand as we walked to the door.
“Who could that be?” Marie asked. “It’s dinner time. How inconsiderate.”
I didn’t reply and opened the door.
The man, a Costa Rican native dressed in a tux, said, “Good evening, sir, ma’am.” He’d doffed his hat. Behind him, parked at the curb, sat a gleaming black stretch limo.
I watched Marie and ate up her smile. I loved the way she beamed. It made the night worthwhile, and we hadn’t even started out yet. She turned to me and gently socked me in the chest. “Really, Bruno? How can we afford this?”
“You’re right, what was I thinking?” To the driver I said, “I’m sorry we won’t be needing you after all. Thank you for coming.”
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