“I’ll handle this,” Darian said. His .357 was within easy reach under his loose coat.
Toby leaned easily on the railing, his hands clasped as they drooped over the metal bar. Stanley was to his left, and in an instant there were two Africans assuming the same position as he to his right. “Nice day.”
Darian looked left at the one who spoke. He wore a baseball cap and dark glasses, as did the second one farther down. Simple measures to conceal their identity, but effective. All he could tell was that they were white, and that was enough. “You look different than when you dropped by our place.”
“It’s called shaving,” Toby said, looking right.
“And the little boy?” Darian asked.
“He’s with me,” Toby answered, still meeting the African’s unseen stare. “We’re here to do business.”
“Well, I’m here deciding whether I should trust you or kill you,” Darian said, seeing the second white boy finally look his way.
“And what’s your decision?” Toby asked without hesitation.
“We’re not cops,” Stanley said, earning himself a brief, slow look from Toby.
“Cops?” Darian chuckled, showing some teeth now. “Yeah. You two.”
“Look, you said you guys would be interested in something big,” Toby said with measured impatience. “As long as it was worth your while.”
“Big is good,” Darian quasi-agreed. “But why don’t you just do it yourself?”
“Let’s just say that one of our group draws attention real easily,” Toby answered. “We can supply the weapons and the plans, but we need the muscle.”
Darian let the smile soften to barely a grin. “Muscle, huh? Like these well-developed calf muscles of mine?”
Toby smiled fully. “Hey, why fight nature?”
The prick at least didn’t waver, Darian thought. “So why should we do this for you?”
“Not for...with,” Toby corrected. “Hey, we have one very big thing in common: we both reject the rule of our so-called government.”
“Without a doubt,” Darian agreed.
“We want to start hitting them hard,” Toby explained. “Doing big things.”
“Things?” Darian asked. “I didn’t know this was more than a one-shot deal.”
“Are you saying you won’t go for doing more?”
“That depends on what more is,” Darian answered. “ ‘Cause I don’t even know what you want us to do in the first place.”
Toby held back for a moment, knowing he couldn’t give the Africans everything at once. “Does killing a shitload of folks, mostly white ones, sound like anything you’d be interested in?”
This motherfucker was for real, Darian was beginning to think. “Define a shitload.”
“A couple thousand,” Toby clarified. “All at once.”
Darian considered the white boy’s proposal. He hardly knew anything about him or the group he supposedly belonged to. Probably one of those freedom-fighting, tax-protesting bunches. But what he was saying definitely had possibilities. Big ones. It might be just the way to get his group’s militant actions off to a thunderous start... if this all wasn’t just hot air.
“Maybe more than that,” Toby added as further incentive. “What’ll it be?”
Mustafa leaned in and whispered something to Darian, pulling back after a brief exchange. “If we do this thing for you, we want the credit.”
“That’s no problem with us,” Toby said. That would only move their plan along all the faster. “We’re interested in the end, not applause.”
“I need applause,” Darian said. “I like applause.”
“This’ll get ‘em for you,” Toby assured quite truthfully. “And after this first job?”
“After the first one we’ll talk,” Darian said.
“Fair enough.”
“When is this going to happen?” Darian asked.
“The day before Thanksgiving.”
Darian nodded. “I like it. And the details? Like the money?”
“Both on Friday,” Toby answered. “How do I reach you to set up a place and time?”
Darian hesitated just a moment, feeling Mustafa shift behind him. “Cannon’s Liquor on South Vermont. Call there and tell them you’re leaving a message for Brother D. Leave a number and I’ll call you back.”
Smart and safe, though it would mean waiting by a phone booth for a callback from the African. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Darian said. “I think we’ll be heading out now. Chains and cages get my blood pressure up. You can understand.”
“Oh, sure,” Toby answered the barb patronizingly. “But I kinda like watching the little monkeys, you know. Entertaining little fellas. Don’t you think?”
“Later,” Darian said with a smile, moving away from the exhibit and back toward the third member of their group.
“A couple thousand?” Mustafa said with disbelief. “Are they talking about some fucking bomb or something?”
“Dead is dead,” Darian said, Roger joining the group as they passed the popcorn vendor. “It doesn’t matter how whitey ends up that way.”
“He said most would be white,” Mustafa reminded his leader. “I don’t like killing brothers.”
“Some things are necessary,” Darian said.
“What about the money?” Roger asked. “Did you ask about the money?”
“Friday, Brother Roger,” Darian answered. “We discuss details then.”
“A couple fucking thousand,” Mustafa repeated, both enamored with and doubtful of the idea. “If this is for real, and we step up to this, we’re going to have to drop out of sight.”
“Some things are necessary,” Darian repeated. He would do just about anything to see thousands of dead white bodies piled high, and even more to have such an accomplishment associated with the NALF.
“Underground, man,” Roger said. “There’s only three of us.”
Darian understood Brother Roger’s concern. They had all studied various underground movements, the most successful of which had divided themselves into several self-contained “cells” of at least four people each. It was the concept of backwatching to prevent backstabbing. Two people together at all times. A minimum of two teams of two, each person responsible for working with and watching over his comrade. With such an arrangement suspicion became an ally. Your brother had to be your brother or he would end up dead.
“What about that Griggs kid?” Darian wondered and suggested simultaneously. “Did you check him out?”
“He’s for real,” Mustafa reported. “His sister was one of the kids killed at Saint Anthony’s.”
“No shit?”
“Not a whiff of it, Brother Darian,” Mustafa assured him.
“Well, Brother Moises might just be willing enough to join us for this ride,” Darian said.
“He’s pretty damn raw for what those folks are suggesting,” Mustafa observed.
“Have you ever killed a thousand white folks?” Darian asked.
“In my dreams,” Mustafa answered proudly.
“I thought not,” Darian commented. None of them had, but all were willing to. Griggs, too, he believed. Something in the boy’s eyes and on his face convinced him of that. The same thing Darian saw each and every morning in the mirror. “I have a good feeling about him. And about this.”
“Power, Brother Darian,” Mustafa said.
“Power,” Roger added.
* * *
“John, Mr. Mankowitz is here,” Louise Barrish told her husband as she poked her head into the bedroom.
The head of the Barrish family was resting on the bed, his head propped high against pillows and the book he had just purchased open before him. He looked over the book to his wife. “What?”
“He’s here,” she repeated. “In the living room, and he has some people with him.”
What is he doing here? John closed the book and placed it facedown on the nightstand. “Who’s with him?”
Louise looked sheepi
shly at the ground, then back to her husband. “A man and a woman.”
There was more to it than that. John could sense it in his wife’s hesitation. “What are they?”
“John...”
“What are they?” he asked again with gritted teeth.
“An African and a Mexican,” Louise answered. “I think the woman is a Mexican.”
Damn you, Mankowitz! “All right,” John said with obvious irritation. “Get in the kitchen and stay there.”
Louise walked from the bedroom down the hall, passing the visitors without a look as she went into the kitchen and kept herself out of view. John was a few seconds behind her.
“John,” Seymour Mankowitz said, beckoning his client over.
Barrish went past the arched entryway to the living room, eyeing the visitors as he joined his lawyer nearer the front door. “What is this?”
“John, just listen to me and play this smart,” Mankowitz said. “They’re FBI agents—”
“FBI!?” Barrish whisper-yelled. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Listen,” Mankowitz insisted. “Just listen. You just dodged a bullet with one federal case. More suspicion is not what you need right now.”
“They can’t screw with me about that anymore, Seymour,” Barrish said. “I know my rights.”
“And I conveyed those rights clearly to them. There will be no discussion of the Saint Anthony’s shooting. Zero. But if you refuse to talk to them about this you can expect further scrutiny, more investigation, more visits, more phone taps.” Mankowitz, despite his distaste for all that John Barrish was, held a two-hundred-plus-year-old piece of paper higher than any motivation alive in his irrational self. There was right, there was wrong. Then there was the Constitution. “You don’t want that, I don’t want that. So... you listen to their questions, and, if you can, you answer them. I’ll stop any improper inquiries. Understood?”
You idiot. You worthless, legal eagle idiot. “Fine.” Barrish turned and walked straight into the living room where the agents stood from the place they had staked out on the couch. He took a seat in a well-worn recliner that faced the entire room from the corner, his lawyer standing a few feet away beneath the arched opening to the front hallway. “Sit down. Please.”
“Mr. Barrish, I’m Special Agent Jefferson and this is Special Agent Aguirre. We’re from the Los Angeles FBI office.” Art removed his notebook. “We want to ask you a couple questions about someone named Frederick Allen. Do you know him?”
“I know of him,” Barrish answered, betraying no emotion outwardly.
“How?”
Barrish shifted his gaze between the two federal pigs. The man, an African, looked to be of pure stock. No long-ago mixing of his female ancestors with the master apparent. The woman, though, was obviously the product of racial melding. The Spanish conquistadors’ taking of native Central American Indians so long before was the start of her bastardized bloodline. Probably an Aryan influence somewhere along the many generations, too, he guessed. Her figure, trim and attractive, was not reminiscent of the stockier Indian ancestry that probably provided the female half of her lineage. One mongrel. One purebred. Both equally worthless, and both equally dangerous to him at the moment. His lawyer, having obviously shown the pigs to his home—and without warning—was at least right that he should just answer the questions and be done with them.
“From his actions,” John answered. “He killed one of your brother federal officers, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Art confirmed, recognizing the tonal shift as Barrish spoke the word brother. “Is there anywhere else you know him from?”
“The papers. He died in that chemical thing not too far away.”
“Twenty miles,” Frankie said.
“Fairly close,” Art commented. “He was of a like mind to you in certain respects. Isn’t that so?”
Barrish sniffed a laugh. “The uneducated as to my beliefs might say that.”
“So you differed with Mr. Allen?” Art asked, hoping to lead Barrish into at least hinting of additional knowledge of Allen.
But the AVO leader was going to have no part of that, and chose his words carefully. “Not with Allen in particular. As I said—I did not know the man. But I understand some of his views from his past and from the news that he was part of the Aryan Brotherhood. Now, just because they and my organization share a word in our names, well, that does not mean we share a mirror-image philosophy.”
“But similar?” Art pressed.
“Look, I believe in separation of the races,” Barrish explained. “You people always call me a ‘white supremacist.’ I’m a white separatist. I believe that Aryans, or white people of sufficiently pure blood, should have America as a homeland. I believe that you and your fellow Africans should be repatriated to the continent my ancestors so foolishly stole you from. I believe your assistant here—”
“Partner, Mr. Barrish,” Frankie interjected. “I’m his partner.”
“Partner.” Whatever you want to call yourself, half-breed. “Your partner here should go back south of the border to the place where her kind abounds. It is all very simple. Now, the Aryan Brotherhood espouses the views of separation by destruction, meaning they want to separate anyone who is not Aryan from the group of the living. Some other similar groups have the same basic philosophy. But those groups, like the Aryan Brotherhood, all advocate violence as a means to achieve their end. I simply believe that the end is a foregone conclusion, and it is up to organizations such as mine, and individuals like me, to prepare my race for their destiny.”
“I see,” Art said.
“No you don’t,” Barrish countered. “But you will.”
He was cool, not cocky, Art thought. He spoke his words of hate as if he knew them to be the truth. He believed he was right. What more was needed to make this man dangerous?
“Did you know of Allen before your arrest?” Frankie asked.
“Excuse me,” Mankowitz interrupted. “That time period is—”
“Hold it, Seymour,” John said. “I don’t mind. The answer is no. Only after his actions hit the papers.”
“What about Twelve-Twelve Riverside?” Art asked, following Barrish’s previous answer quickly. “Have you ever been there?”
“No, but I’ve spent a great deal of time around Temple and Main for the last year,” Barrish said, referring to the Metropolitan Detention Center in which he had been held preceding and during his abbreviated trial.
“Monte Royce?” Art said, tossing the name out.
“Who?”
“Nick King or Nikolai Kostin?”
Barrish shook his head at the African’s questions. “Sorry.”
“I’m sure you are,” Art observed.
Barrish caught sight of the Mexican agent looking around the room. “Not what you expected?”
“Excuse me,” Frankie said.
“My home,” Barrish clarified. “The walls. You expected swastikas and pictures of Hitler to be my choice in decor. Me wearing a pointy white hood, spouting off about ‘Nigger this, nigger that.’ ” He shook his head, maintaining eye contact with the agent. “You just don’t get it. I’m Joe American, Miss FBI Agent. I’m your next-door neighbor.” I’m your worst nightmare, he added silently, knowing what the bounds of his soliloquy had to be. “And the government you work for doesn’t get it either.”
“Well, Mr. Barrish, we do our best,” Art said, “and my government does its best.”
“Best.” John snickered. “Of the people, by the people... You know, the people might just decide to scrap the whole thing and start over someday. A clean slate. And make it right this time.”
“And who’ll know what ‘right’ is supposed to be?” Art asked needlessly. “Let me guess.”
John simply smiled. “Someone will know.”
“Agent Jefferson, this is going nowhere,” Mankowitz said. “My client obviously can’t help you with this.”
Or won’t. “Well, it looks like we’ve wasted you
r time, Mr. Barrish,” Art said, standing. “And ours.”
“I’m sure you’ll find more time to question me again,” Barrish said, his meaning clearly harass. He remained seated as both agents moved toward the door. The African stopped short of being out of sight.
“Enjoy your freedom, Mr. Barrish,” Art said, smiling at the man, and adding a wink that only they were aware of. It was returned with a smirk by the leader of the AVO. “Good day.”
“We’ll drop you back at your car,” Frankie told Mankowitz as she and Art headed out the front door.
“I’ll be right out,” the lawyer said, going back to his client after the door had closed. “John, that little speech at the end could have backfired. When are you going—”
“Get out,” Barrish interrupted, looking up, whatever ingenuous smile there might have been on his face now gone. “Get out of my house.”
“John...”
“Get out,” Barrish said, each syllable defined by rage. A rage in the words, and in the eyes.
Mankowitz said no more. His client had always been volatile. Very challenging. But never before had he felt fear when in the man’s presence. He did now.
Art saw the lawyer emerge visibly disturbed. “Nice guy.” Mankowitz didn’t respond, instead climbing silently into the back of the car for the ride back to the city. Frankie swung the Bureau Chevy around and headed down the narrow dirt driveway, pulling far to the right as a blue minivan came at her. As they passed she noted the faces of the two male occupants, both young, their eyes wide as they peered into the front of the car heading off the property.
“He’s got sons, doesn’t he?” Art asked, looking to the backseat.
“Two,” Mankowitz answered.
“Another generation of hate,” Frankie commented. She turned the car onto the paved highway and headed east toward the freeway, putting some much-desired distance between them and the likes of John Barrish.
Toby stopped the minivan fast, sending a cloud of dust billowing forward of the vehicle. He and Stanley jumped out and bolted into the house.
“Pop?” Toby shouted before seeing his father quietly sitting in the living room. Stanley, out of breath like his brother, was right behind.
Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) Page 14