“Dad, those were feds,” Stanley said, clued in by the G license plate.
“FBI,” John said.
“Pop, I thought they took you,” Toby said with a mix of worry and relief. “They had someone in the back, but I couldn’t tell who.”
“We thought it was you,” Stanley said.
“It was that stupid Jew lawyer of mine.”
“Mankowitz? What the hell was he doing here?” Toby walked over and practically fell into the couch.
“He brought the pigs. They were asking about Freddy,” John said, a clenched fist rhythmically pounding the arm of the recliner. “And about the place on Riverside.”
“Oh, shit!” Toby swore.
“Dad, they know,” Stanley said.
“They can’t know,” Toby objected. “There’s no way.”
“Well, they know something,” John pointed out. “They were also asking about Royce.”
“He talked!” Stanley said.
“He didn’t talk,” John disagreed.
“But the papers said the feds talked to him.”
“Stan,” Toby said, glaring. “If Pop says he didn’t talk then he didn’t! Okay?!”
“But someone did!”
“Both of you! Shut up!” John sprang from the chair and began a stalk-like pacing in the confines of the front room. “I don’t know what they know or how they know it, but this is not good.”
“Let’s call it off,” Stanley suggested.
“No,” John responded, giving that possibility a short life. “We’re not stopping.” He froze at the far end of the room, looking away from his sons. “But we’re going to have to take some precautions.”
“Like what?” Toby asked.
“Toby, you make arrangements for a safe place for all of us to stay,” John directed. “Once this thing starts we’re going to have to disappear. I thought we’d just be able to ride it out, but with this... You know where the best place will be.”
“I know, Pop,” Toby acknowledged.
John continued staring at the wall and its horribly dingy wallpaper pattern. The afternoon light could do little to brighten this room with such drab decor. It would be good to get out of there in short measure. “How did the meeting go?”
“Perfect,” Toby answered, pleased to be able to give his father some good news. “Friday we finalize the details and give them the stuff.”
“They asked about the money, didn’t they?” John inquired.
“Yeah.” Toby looked to his brother.
So much for pure ideology, John thought. But their reasons were their reasons. As long as the end was the same, he didn’t care about the motivation of those just along for the ride. “So they’re in.”
“Yeah,” Toby confirmed.
John turned around, considering for a moment what transpired before his sons’ return. “Friday, when you meet with them, you tell them there’s another part to the job.”
“Okay,” Toby said, waiting for an explanation. But the wait stretched on, and all his father did was smile. “Pop?”
“I want to leave here with no strings,” John said. “Do you think they’ll mind?”
It was Toby’s turn to smile. “If we dangle some cash in front of them and say ‘kill that whitey’... Pop, these guys are ours. We can do what we want with them.”
John looked to his youngest boy, offering him a chance to speak.
“Toby’s right, Dad.”
“Good,” John Barrish said, thinking of the “strings” to be severed. Some things just had to be done, especially to advance the cause. What was the saying? By any means necessary. How ironically appropriate, John thought, considering the source...and the cause.
EIGHT
Transition
Darren Griggs took the tissue offered by Anne Preston and wiped his eyes, then let his head fall back against the liberally cushioned chair.
“Those tears were different from the ones you cried the night we met,” Anne observed. She sat a few feet from her patient, in an identical chair. Almost sixty minutes had passed since the grieving husband and father had come into the safety of her office. A few minutes at the beginning were spent in small talk, he admiring the view through the large window behind her desk, and she showing off pictures of her daughter. That had been a good lead-in to the session, she opening with how proud she was of her daughter, Darren beginning to tell what it was like to have lost his.
But somewhere in the conversation she began to realize that this man, though in great pain, had begun the process of healing himself. How she did not know, and it really did not matter. Constructive healing, from whatever source, was welcome whether elicited or delivered.
“Do you know what my wife did yesterday, Dr. Preston?”
“What?” Anne asked, watching the man stare at the ceiling, his head back as tears of relief rolled slowly down his cheeks. These he did not bother to wipe away.
“She got up and made Sunday breakfast,” Darren revealed, as though proclaiming a momentous event. “The last time she did that was more than a year ago, the morning Tanya was killed.”
“Do you think the fight you and Moises had the night before had anything to do with that?”
Darren looked to Anne and nodded, biting his lower lip. “I think so.”
“Why do you think that affected her?” The best therapists have no answers...only questions. That bit of sage advice from an old professor had been etched in Anne’s consciousness by sheer repetition, and later by recognition of its value.
Darren sniffled and dried his cheeks. “I think when she saw Moises and I...going at each other, I think she felt she was losing the rest of her family. I think maybe her mind told her that one child lost was enough. I don’t know what to call it. The survival instinct. Protectiveness.”
He had the gist of it, so a slight bending of her rule was in order. “It’s called mothering.”
“You’re right.”
“I know I am,” Anne said with a smile. “I’m one of them.”
“I tell you, Doctor, I thought I had already lost her, and here she comes and saves me from...” Darren looked away.
“Would you really have hurt your son?”
“I wanted to.”
“I asked if you would have.”
Darren looked through the big window to the grayish glass of the skyscraper across the street. “No. I would have hit him again, but then I would have wrapped my arms around him so tight.”
“I think he would have run whatever you did, Darren.”
“I know he would have. He’s just so far from me, Doctor. I mean, we could be nose to nose and I still can’t understand the boy. I don’t know what to do for him anymore.”
“Do you think he might agree to come with you some day?”
Darren looked at the intricate rug pattern at his feet, his head shaking.
“I want you to try.”
“I haven’t even seen him in two days, Doctor.”
“You don’t know where he’s been?”
“I have no idea,” Darren said. “I wish he’d just come home for his mother’s sake.”
Anne could do nothing to bring young Moises Griggs home. Though his father talked of him as if he were a child, as any parent would, Moises was a young man, of legal age and wanting to make his own decisions. She sincerely hoped that he was making the right ones.
“I want to meet Felicia,” Anne said, moving the session away from what she called an impassable minefield.
Darren smiled, something he had done infrequently of late when thinking of his wife. It was a good feeling. A very good feeling. “Not just yet, doctor. She’s not ready to come here.”
“That’s all right. But let her know that I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
“I will.”
Anne gave her watch a glance. They were a few minutes over the hour session length she liked to stick to. She reached to her desk and brought her personal schedule book over and scanned the following week. Abbreviate
d by the Thanksgiving holiday, her appointments were back to back. Flipping back a page she found a slot. “Things are really hairy next week, so is this Friday good for you?”
“Anytime. Sure.”
“Okay, four o’clock.” Anne penciled the appointment in. Later she would transfer it to her secretary’s book.
Darren found it difficult to get up. Part of this arrangement was still bothering him. “I really wish I could pay you, Dr. Preston.”
Anne closed her book one-handed with a slap. “Darren, you need to concentrate on you, and on your family. And we already agreed on my fee.”
“I know, but you making my family dinner hardly seems like a fair exchange. You’re doing all the giving.”
Anne smiled. “ ‘Tis the season of giving.”
Darren laughed softly. “Thank you, Doctor.”
Anne stood and walked her patient all the way through the outer office of her secretary, waiting until he was on the elevator to turn away. “Lena, put Mr. Griggs down for this Friday at four.”
“Okay. Twice in four days?”
“Next week is out,” Anne said, looking over her secretary’s shoulder to the following day’s schedule. “Wow.”
“And don’t forget you’ve got a class tomorrow night,” she reminded her boss.
“It’s going to be a long one, isn’t it?” Long, satisfying, tiring, and of her own doing, Anne knew, though now she was beginning to wonder if taking on two classes to teach was too much, especially with the full schedule of patients she maintained. But UCLA paid generously, and she really loved teaching. Adored it, actually. Still, time was so short, something she had begun to recognize since Art Jefferson came into her life. Though the pangs of schoolgirl crushes were well in her past, she found herself noticing when he was not with her. That did wonders for her concentration during those increasingly frequent occurrences. Love wasn’t a bitch, she thought. It was an eye opener.
“Anne?”
“Huh?” She smiled, popping out of her silent contemplation. “I was just thinking that I might want to ease up next quarter.”
Her secretary recognized the expression. “Can’t get enough of him, can you?”
“No,” Anne answered. “But that’s nice in a way.”
“Yeah, it is.”
* * *
Moises Griggs walked slowly along Vermont Avenue, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans and his head swiveling streetward as each set of headlights passed. This was the part of town he had never hung out in. The part of town where wearing the wrong color could get you shot. Or having the wrong look on your face. It was not a pleasant place to be, but it was the place he had to be.
He slowed near the NALF storefront, the faded neon sign of the adjacent liquor store catching his attention. His fingers fumbled through the change in his pocket. Less than a buck left. The motel room, cheap as it was, had used nearly all his money for the four nights he’d been gone from his home. Food had eaten up the rest. Now, with only a few coins left to his name, Moises was craving a Coke. Just a Coke. Something that simple, that small, and it was denied him. He sniffled against the chilly wind as he wondered if this was what his life was going to be. Want. Anger. Hate. Frustration.
The storefront to his left drew his attention back. Not with them, he thought. In there was hope. Direction. A place to be, a way to fight. A car of young men, black like him, slowed as it passed, the front passenger giving him a “mad dog” stare before driving on. “Idiots,” Moises said softly. You’re killing your own people. There were better targets for one’s rage, he now realized. And the way to them was but a few steps away, a few steps that Moises took willingly.
“Brother Moises,” Roger Sanders said upon turning toward the jingling bells attached to the front door. “Welcome back.”
“Hi.” Moises immediately noticed that it wasn’t much warmer inside than out.
Darian heard the voices from the back room and came to the front. “Brother Moises. You’re back. Good. Good.”
Moises nodded nervously. “Brother Darian.”
The NALF leader held his hand out at chest height and gave a power shake to the young man. “We know about you, Brother Moises.”
The grip tightened around his hand, Moises felt clearly. “About me?”
“Your little sister,” Roger said, stepping next to Darian. “We know what happened.”
Moises looked to the floor, but a hand roughly lifted his chin up. Darian had released his grip on the youngster’s hand and was now preventing his head from dipping.
“You keep your head high, Brother Moises,” Darian told him. “Always high. Always proud. You don’t bow because of nothing. Not because you’re sad. Not because you’re in chains. Because folks don’t know the difference, and no one is ever going to think you’re bowing to them.” He pulled his hand away and tapped the boy’s cheek lightly. “You understand?”
“Yeah.”
Darian nodded. “Good. Now, you said you wanted to fight the last time you were here.”
“That’s right.”
“Right,” Darian said, noticing the rougher appearance of the youth. He was unshaven by a couple of days. The clothes were not clean, though they weren’t soiled. He was different. “Are you ready to stand up for your people?”
“Yeah,” Moises said, his trepidation of a few moments before gone completely now. Yeah, I’ll stand up. I’ll stand on some cracker’s head if you want me to. “I’m ready.”
“Are you afraid of dying?” Darian inquired.
Dying? I’m halfway there already. “No.”
“What about other folks dying?”
Moises shook his head slowly. “I won’t cry as long as they’re the right color.”
A smile now came with Darian’s nod. “You’ve got a family, right?”
“I had one.”
“You’ve got a new one,” Roger said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“And this family is going to do something big real soon,” Darian said. “Then we’re gonna split. You got any problem with taking off?”
“I’ve got nothing to keep me here,” Moises answered. Just a mother and father who might as well be dead. He hurt as he thought that.
“All right, Brother Moises.” Darian looked into the boy’s eyes. Yes, the eyes. He was right the first time he had seen them. You’re a fighter. And soon, he knew, Brother Moises Griggs would be a killer. “Be here Monday night, ready to go.”
“I’ll be here,” Moises said, sensing that the life he had known was over, and another was about to begin.
* * *
“His finances check out clean,” Hal Lightman reported.
Art scanned the summary sheet that covered a stack of bank and business records relating to Monte Royce and his company. “Of course they do. Why should anything even remotely related to this make any sense? Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Everyone’s innocent.”
“What about Kostin?” Frankie asked, moving beyond her partner’s frustration. “The cashier’s checks?”
“The bank that issued them says he came in with cash and had the checks made out.”
“Just for the rent?” she probed.
“Rent and for those chemicals and the equipment,” Lightman answered.
“Nikolai Kostin was not born with that money,” Art observed with some agitation. Things were moving much too slowly, even for the new and improved Art Jefferson. “He did not come here with that money. And he sure as hell didn’t make all of it in his time at Royce Pharmaceuticals.”
“We’re trying, Art,” Lightman said.
The senior agent leaned back in his chair and let out a purposeful breath. “I know.”
Frankie looked up to the bearer of bad news, hoping to lighten the moment. “Don’t mind him, Hal. He’s still trying to decide if he likes cold weather.”
“Freezing weather,” Art corrected her.
“It don’t get cold in Chicago,” Lightman joked, his voice lowering to a whisper,
“It gets fucking cold.”
“Thanks for the weather report, Hal,” Art said.
“I’ll see you kids tomorrow,” Lightman said, leaving the agents to pore over the information some more.
Art looked down upon the pages, his head shaking. “Mr. Clean, huh?”
“We missed a smudge or something. I can feel it, Art.” Frankie rarely called her partner by name, and then only when she was dead serious and certain of something. “He’s dirty.”
“I know he is.” It was easy to spot someone soiled by their own actions, Art knew, and it was often a chore to keep from getting dirtied by that person. The last thought reminded him of one avenue they hadn’t taken yet. “Vorhees was mixed up with Royce, even if innocently.”
Innocent. Frankie rarely used that word when referring to politicians of Vorhees’s type. The consummate player. Mr. Backroom Dealer who would still get in your face if it was required. Guiltless, maybe. Innocent... Her head shook. “We need to talk to him.”
“Senator Crippen, too,” Art said. “Royce said he knows them both well. Let’s see how well.”
“It could shed some light,” Frankie agreed.
Art stood, his mind made up. It could shed some light, as Frankie said, but it would also certainly ruffle some feathers. The director was sure to get some calls about this one. “Pack a bag, partner.”
“D.C.” Frankie scowled. “Wonderful.”
NINE
Connections
The town of Sandberg, located at the northern end of the Old Ridge Route, had seen better days. Really, it was now only a gathering of crumbling walls and amputated chimneys that had once marked a bustling waystation along the former south-north route over the mountains from Los Angeles to the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley. But the two-lane, winding road had been made virtually obsolete by the completion of the Grapevine portion of the Golden State Freeway many years before. Unmaintained now, the ribbon of rough asphalt was frequented only by off-roaders and the adventurous, and the town of Sandberg, nestled among a grove of oaks at the base of an antennae-topped peak, was similarly deserted. Except for this morning.
“You see them?” Stanley asked, his head almost jerking left and right in search of the Africans.
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