He looked away from us, his gaze far away as he remembered events he’d rather forget. I recognized the look, understood the feeling. I, too, had been in the same place too many times.
He bent over and picked up a wooden train with wooden wheels and tinkered with it, spun the wheels with the edge of his hand.
Marie leaned forward. “How old are they?”
He looked up. “Ricardo’s four and Rebecca’s three. I dropped them off at the preschool and daycare and went to work. The teacher called me and … ”
He went back to tinkering with the train.
With those ages, that meant he had to have had the children when he was sixteen or seventeen. A terrible idea, kids having kids, but not that unusual, not in Willowbrook. It happened far too often.
“Hey,” I said, “look at me.”
He did.
“I’m your uncle. I used to be a cop. I’m good at this kind of thing, but we can’t help you if you don’t tell us what happened. We need to know everything, right down to the last detail.”
He jumped up and threw the train against the wall. The vibration knocked off a framed award of some sort and the picture next to it. “Now you come around. Where’ve you been all of these years, huh?”
I stood.
Marie grabbed my hand and tried to tug me back down. I resisted.
“I’m here now. Shut up and sit your butt down. Your anger isn’t gonna help anything. It’s only gonna delay us. There’s time enough for that later.”
We stared at each other. He needed a moment to cool down. I went over and picked up the two framed pictures from the floor. The glass to the one with the photo cracked on impact. The picture depicted Bruno, my nephew, receiving the award. The award was the other framed picture he’d knocked down. In the photo, Bruno shook hands with County Supervisor Willy Jessup. Jessup had been on the board for years and held the most senior seat. With his experience, knowledge, and supporters, he garnered sway over the rest of the board. A year ago, maybe eighteen months now, I’d read in the LA Times that Jessup’s long-time girlfriend drowned in his backyard pool. Controversy surrounded the incident, rumors of murder that couldn’t be proven. Whether true or not, in politics it doesn’t matter: some pundits thought he’d served his last term and would be ousted the next election.
Jessup’s Afro had turned all white, and that made him what they called on the street a cotton-top. His politics had always been a little too liberal for me. In his mind, he wanted to continue entitlements forever, not leaving any motivation for a family to work to improve, to earn back their self-esteem. Sure, people needed a helping hand, but not for a lifetime. I’d never vote for him.
I hung the picture back up and looked at the award, one given to Bruno just last year. Had this occurred three years ago, I might’ve caught it on the news. This wasn’t just a meritorious life-saving award; it was a notch up, one of the highest, a county proclamation. My eye jumped to a line that read, “Whereas Bruno Johnson saved a three-year-old’s life.”
On June 5th, BRUNO JOHNSON, who worked for Valiant Security Services, was on routine patrol in the area of Slauson Park at 54th Street and Compton Avenue, when a young mother saw his security vehicle and flagged him down. The mother held a three-year-old child in her arms; the child was turning blue. The panic-stricken mother didn’t know the cause of her child’s soon-to-be fatal distress. Bruno called for paramedics and then noticed chocolate cookie crumbs stuck to the child’s cheeks. He took the child from the mother and administered the Heimlich maneuver, successfully dislodging the chunk of chocolate chip cookie blocking the child’s airway. If not for Bruno Johnson’s quick and decisive action, the child would not have survived.
I carried the award over to Marie to read. I felt proud and honored, but something about it bothered me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I looked at Bruno. “This is very impressive. Your dad must be proud of you.”
He shrugged, his expression without emotion. “I only did what I was trained to do. And as far as my dad being proud, he’s in prison. That says it all right there.”
He kept his anger and hate bound up tight in his heart. It would strangle him someday if he didn’t let go, probably sooner than later. Bruno resented his father being locked up through all of his childhood, missing birthdays and Christmases, proms, and his driver’s test, all the firsts a parent wasn’t supposed to miss. What my nephew really meant was, “What did proud mean coming from a convict serving a life sentence?”
We stared at each other.
Someone knocked at the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
BRUNO DIDN’T MOVE. He acted like he knew who’d be out there and wanted to ignore them. I didn’t want to answer the door, either, but didn’t have any choice. If the cops stood outside on the stoop, they already knew who came and went from the house and they’d have seen us enter. To not answer would only give them reason to come in uninvited and make them even more suspicious. I went to the door, hesitated, and looked back. Bruno and Marie both waited for what I’d do next. Turning back, I saw the chrome-plated nine on the stand by the door. I shoved it in the waistband at the small of my back and pulled my shirt over it.
I flashed on that cold Christmas night when Eli Noble, Johnny Noble’s dad, knocked at our door, and Dad looked out the side window first. All those years ago and now I did the same thing, in the same house, at the same door. When Dad opened that door, our lives changed forever.
I pulled the curtain aside and peered out. On the stoop stood a huge man with a head the size of an unshelled coconut, shaved smooth and not large enough for his shoulders. He wore a black suit, tailored too tight, with a white dress shirt and a bolo tie. Behind him, standing in the dirt, stood a cotton-top, the man I’d just seen in the picture, the senior county supervisor, the esteemed Willy Jessup. In that moment I realized what had been bugging me. Jessup only used my nephew as a poster child to exploit as reelection fodder. Here lived a hero of the neighborhood, who now fell prey to that same neighborhood. What a great opportunity for media exploitation.
I opened the door.
The big man shoved his way in. He took me by the scruff, swung me around, and put me on the wall. I moved with him, helpless to do anything. The man carried every bit of the strength he projected in his size. He also displayed training beyond that of a street-level thug. He patted me down with purpose and immediately found the nine. He shoved the gun in his own waistband, took a look at Marie and Bruno, and barked, “Clear.” He took me by the belt and swung, then gave me a little shove to propel me to the couch. “Sit,” he ordered.
I complied. He had the gun, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I still had it. To shoot that rhino with a puny little nine would only serve to make him angry. That man angry could bring the house down all by himself.
Willy Jessup entered with an air of royalty, his nose up slightly as he looked down it at all us peons. He wore a dark-gray silk suit with a bright-yellow shirt and burgundy tie. He must’ve been colorblind. When he saw my nephew, his face lit up. “Hey, Bruno, how ya doin’, kid?”
Bruno stood and went over, his hand extended. “I’m good, Mr. Jessup.” They shook.
Jessup’s eyes followed Bruno’s with interest, and he didn’t let go of his hand. “Any word from those good-for-nothin’ sheriffs?”
“That’s not fair, Mr. Jessup. I told you, the sheriffs are doing everything possible.”
Jessup pulled Bruno to his side, his arm around his shoulder, and gave us his best kiss-the-babies political smile. “Who are these folks? You haven’t introduced us.”
That smile did it for me, explained the second reason for his presence. Jessup never did anything that didn’t benefit him. He’d somehow heard of Noble’s white gold, the missing cocaine, and he wanted a piece of it. All that coke on the table would bring out the jackals, and Jessup qualified as the head jackal. Or he wouldn’t have stepped this far down from his place in Baldwin Hills to be out on foot in the ghet
to, in our little hovel.
Bruno held out his hand. “This is my uncle and his wife. They’ve come from a long way off to help out.”
Jessup let go of Bruno, took a couple of steps over to us, and shook our hands one at a time. “Damn glad to meet you folks. Glad Bruno here has some family support in a time like this.” Jessup looked at his thug bodyguard. “Sammy, dial up the sheriff, I’m gonna have another piece of their ass.”
“No, don’t,” Bruno said. “Please, Mr. Jessup, let me handle this.”
“How many times I gotta tell ya, you’re to call me Willy. And no sir. No, this is unheard of. I don’t know why they don’t have those children back safe by now. What are they doin’? I don’t see ’em set up here with wiretaps and with cars parked at both ends of the street. I know how these things are supposed to work. They’re not movin’ on this because you live on Nord Avenue in the county. They’re not movin’ on this because you’re black, Son, and I’m gonna fix that problem right now.”
“No. I asked you nice. Let me handle it.”
Sammy the bodyguard had dialed the phone and now held it out to Jessup. Jessup locked eyes with Bruno for a long second. “You sure about this?”
“I’m sure. Now, please, if you don’t mind, could you please leave us?”
“Sure, sure. You need anything, anything at all, you got my number, you don’t hesitate to call.”
Having a powerful man in his pocket like that could come in handy later on.
Jessup hesitated at the door, looking unsure as to whether or not to leave, but he turned and went out. Sammy took out the nine, pulled the mag, and ejected the round in the chamber, which skittered across the carpet. He set the gun on the stand next to the door and left.
The room fell quiet.
“How’d you meet the honorable Willy Jessup?” I asked.
“I work for Valiant Security Services. Mr. Jessup owns the company. When that happened—” he pointed to the proclamation sitting on the coffee table “—Mr. Jessup came to the office and personally thanked me. He also got that for me. He pushed for it. I didn’t deserve it, not really.”
“Does he always come over here like this?”
“Why? What are you trying to say?”
“I’m just tryin’ to get a feel for the people involved in this thing, that’s all.”
“I know what you’re implying. Mr. Jessup’s not using me. We’re friends, that’s all. I’m not a fool, Uncle Bruno, so don’t treat me like one.”
“I never said you were.” We stared at each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
HE BROKE FIRST. He blinked, then dropped the bombshell. “They called just before you walked in.”
“Who did? The kidnappers?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner? What did they say? What do they want?”
“Something that’s impossible to give.”
“What?”
“They want my father busted out of prison.”
They wanted the cocaine Noble ripped off. They wanted Noble out so he could lead them to it. But that didn’t really make sense, not entirely.
Why now?
And why get him out? He could just as easily pass the information on from inside prison without ever having to leave. Unless they wanted him out for some up close and personal get-even time. That could be, but still, why now?
The young Bruno moved away from the coffee table and walked back and forth in the living room, pacing like a caged animal, a young lion. “What they want is impossible. How can I bust my father out of prison? He isn’t in some low mod correctional farm. They keep him in San Q. He’s only down here because of some dumb subpoena a BGF laid on him for a character witness in a jailhouse murder.”
The kid spoke with perfect diction without any of the street seeping in. Sasha did a great job raising him, and yet he could also talk like some kind of criminal who’d been immersed in the life. Maybe he got the criminal stuff by visiting Noble in prison.
“Bruno,” I said, “what kind of work do you do?”
“Why? What does that have to do with anything?”
The stats didn’t fall in his favor. Kids fathered by incarcerated criminals almost always followed in their father’s footsteps. Why wouldn’t they, with a convicted felon for a role model?
Bruno lived in the ghetto, he dressed like a Crip, and he had a gangster’s gun.
“I’m asking, that’s why.”
“I go to school and I’m an intern at Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Lennox Station.”
I sat down hard, stunned.
“You see what I mean,” he said. “I can’t give them what they want. I can’t bust my father out. I can’t do it, that’s flat-out craziness.”
Marie gripped my hand. She didn’t seem to grasp what he’d just said, or it didn’t have the same impact. She said to Bruno, “Do you know who these people are, the ones who have your children?”
“Sure, I’ve talked to them a couple of times. They won’t negotiate. They won’t give an inch.”
“You know them?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s what I just said. They’ve been waiting for you to get here. I don’t understand why. What can you do about my dad in jail?”
“Me? They told you that? They’re waiting for me?”
The phone rang, a cell that sat on the kitchen table. Bruno headed for the kitchen just a few steps away. “That’s them. They know you’re here. They’re watching the house.”
“Hold it,” I said. “Don’t answer that.”
He picked the phone up, but didn’t answer it. “Why?”
“Where are the police? Noble said that you called the police.”
The phone continued to ring. “That’s right, I did. Then I found out what these people wanted, and why. I knew the police couldn’t do anything, not with these guys. I told the sheriff’s detectives it was all a mistake. I told them that the babies’ mama took the kids and that they were safe in Texas.”
The phone stopped ringing.
“Where’s the kids’ mom?” Marie asked.
Bruno looked away, lowered his tone, “She’s gone.”
“Where?”
“The ghetto took her.”
“I’m sorry.” Marie said.
I got up and walked over to him, held out my hand for the phone.
For a brief moment my eyes tracked to the refrigerator, to the novel on top, and I wondered what the title was, wondered what it would be like to not have the horrible pressure of this problem. To be able to sit down and read for pleasure, in a hammock with our kids playing in the backyard, safe.
He handed me the phone. It rang again. I hit “send” and put it to my ear.
“Nice that you could join us, Bruno The Bad Boy Johnson. Meet us at 913 Prairie Avenue, in one hour.”
“No.” I hung up.
Bruno stood close enough to hear the exchange. He shoved my chest with both hands. “What did you just do? Are you crazy?” He moved back in real close, his eyes wide with anger and fear. “Those are my kids you’re messing with, not yours. You can’t do that, you have no right to.”
I put my hand on him and moved him away. “Take it easy. Now tell me who these people are.”
He stared me down.
The phone rang again.
“Tell me quick,” I said.
“It’s the largest cocaine consortium in South Central Los Angeles, in all of LA, for that matter. It’s the only one. It’s not just one guy like before, it’s a group, run by one guy who kind of acts as the president over all these drug lords or whatever you wanna call them. They run all the coke for all the gangs. They don’t show any favorites. You have the money, they sell you the dope; white, black, or brown. It doesn’t matter to them. They have eyes and ears everywhere, on every street corner. They’re in deep with the cops. It’s hopeless. There’s too much money involved here to do anything other than what they want. That’s why I called the sheriff off. You und
erstand now? They’d know if the cops had their nose in this.”
My nephew Bruno talked with far more maturity than his young age. Life’s lessons came harder and faster when you’re raising children. Especially by yourself in the ghetto when you’re nothing more than a kid yourself.
I answered the phone. The person on the other end yelled and swore and yelled some more. I waited until he calmed down. I said, “I’ll meet you, but at a place of my choosing, not yours. You get to pick the time. I pick the place.”
“You gotta set a balls on ya, I’ll tell ya that much. I heard that about you. Okay, it doesn’t matter, name it.” There was no hint of an accent or where he might be from.
“The Santa Monica pier.”
“Okay, thirty minutes.”
“You obviously know where I am. From here, that drive’ll take at least forty-five minutes, probably closer to an hour and ten.” I hung up.
Bruno moved to the table next to the door and scooped up the nine, shoved the magazine back in, and racked the slide. He stuck it in his back waistband under his football jersey. “I’m going with you, so don’t even try and say different.”
I walked up to him and moved in close, inches away from his face. “I wouldn’t try and stop you, not for a minute, but you’re not goin’ carryin’ heavy.” I reached around, put my hand on the gun. He looked at me as he tried to step away. He didn’t try too hard.
“They have my son and daughter.”
“Exactly. You take a gun, you might have to use it. If you don’t have it, you won’t be able to use it.”
“That’s some kind of Three Stooges logic.”
His generation had no idea about the Three Stooges. Noble had always loved them, with their inane comedy. Somehow, through the years, Noble had imparted at least some of his knowledge and experience, even through his prison-visiting window. More of that life that I’d somehow missed.
Bruno held the pressure on the gun a moment longer, then gave it up. I took it from him and, still looking him in the eye, broke the gun down and field-stripped it. I stuck the barrel in my pocket to dispose of later and walked over to the trash can by the refrigerator and threw the rest away. I leaned up to look at the title of the book and couldn’t see it.
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