Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (39 page)

She looked from this to the dead man. The knife fell to the thin carpet.

Swanmoor started forward.

“What, you gonna rape me now?” she snarled.

“Don't think every brother goes crazy for white pussy. Even stank muscled-up snatch like yours.” Bringing the rear end of the shotgun up, twisting his torso as he did so, he brought it across her face, eliciting a grunt.

She dropped to a knee, a hand to where he'd struck. She spat out blood on the now stained carpet and got back up. “I don't know much.”

“You know enough.” He grinned lopsidedly.

When Rory Briscoe arrived at the house he drove his well-cared-for LeSabre past and parked a block away. The distinct smell and background silhouette of an oil refinery was evident. He got out of the car. Briscoe had the snub-nosed revolver in the pocket of his cotton windbreaker as he walked back to his destination. His and hers Harleys were parked side-by-side in the driveway. The front door was partially off its hinges, hanging at an odd angle. He looked around, no neighbors or house pets were out. Even the birds weren't chirping.

He walked purposefully across the yellowed lawn and up the porch and peering inside, could see two chairs in the front room were turned over. Gun out, he went further into the small house and saw Clauson's corpse on the broken coffee table between the front room and the dining room space.

Briscoe surmised the coffee table had been shoved around some in the fight. On it had been a bong, its glass smoked gray and black from use. This had tipped over when the bearded man's body had landed. The bong now lay resting in the gap of his lower abdomen where his stomach had once been. Blood and organ spray patterned a near wall.

In the kitchen he found the one who he knew only as Gigi. She was bound to a straight-backed chair with duct tape and nylon cord. Two dish towels had been knotted together and tied around her mouth. She glared at Briscoe who noted her bare feet. Her little toe on the right foot and the big toe on the left had been sawed off. The hunting knife, lying on the kitchen table, had been the instrument of torture used by Swanmoor. The severed toes lay on the linoleum in small puddles of blood. He knew that Lumumba lovin' bastard wouldn't have left his prints on the blade.

Briscoe undid the gag. “You gave up my name, didn't you?”

“Fuck you,” she answered. “That jungle bunny was gonna cripple me. Get me undone. I plan to pay him back.”

He put the barrel of the Glock he'd plucked from Clauson's stiffening fingers against her forehead. “Good thing this is the kind of neighborhood where gunshots are common.” He blew out the back of her head as she gaped incredulously at him.

Briscoe wiped down the gun then returned to the dead man's body and pressed those lifeless fingers against the grip. He let the gun lay in the man's open palm. Briscoe then quit the premises.

Swanmoor down-shifted the Benz he'd jacked wearing a handkerchief owl hoot style from a trendy restaurant's parking attendant. He'd picked this car because he'd never driven a Mercedes before and wanted to feel what it was like. The seats were leather and heated. Nice.

He came around the corner via the narrow passageway between the two buildings. The macadam of the former Lamplighter bar parking lot was cracked and bulged upwards in several areas, evidence of the various earthquakes that had taken place since the drinking establishment's demise more than twenty-five years ago. Weeds sprouted from those openings.

The Lamplighter had been their office away from the office. Run by a former pimp and numbers man who was sympathetic to the cause, Swanmoor and the others would hold emergency meetings in the rear storeroom and talk trash with the hookers and hustlers who frequented the front area. This was also where Swanmoor had gotten it on in the owner's office with more than one firebrand sister and a white follower or two from the hills—young women enthralled with smack talk of revolution and brothers street army tough in black berets and black sunglasses. The bar's latest incarnation was Delgado's Discount Furniture Mart.

He got out of the car, hunching his shoulders against the cold and the incoming fog. In the near distance the mist glistened in the lights of a billboard. On it could be seen an image of a desk mic giving off a bit of fire. The words “KZRN Sizzles Liberals with Septima” were next to that.

“Hey now,” he said as the driver's door of the silver Prius opened. Out stepped a woman a tick or two past sixty but still lithe of build and seemingly effortless in her motions. He also noted the silver-white hue of her car matched her coiffured hair.

“Damn,” he said admiringly.

“Stop trying so hard and hug me, fool.”

He did, laughing, his hands tight around her midsection, hers around his shoulders.

She kissed his neck before she pushed him back to take him in. “Are you out of your cotton-picking mind coming back here, Marvin?”

“No choice, Leann.” She rarely called him by his street name.

“Bullshit.” She pulled her open topcoat closer around her. “You better get on your knees and thank the baby Jesus these crackheads around here are too young, miseducated and too far gone to know who you are. 'Cause the price is still on your nappy head, negro.”

He blew into his fist. This was his hometown but his body had gotten used to a warmer climate. “After I'm done, you can turn me in if you want to.”

She smirked. “Double fuck you and your macho counter-revolutionary posturing.”

“Maybe so. But I wanted you to know Briscoe is also back on the scene, and me and that poor man's Lewis Erskine are gunning for each other.”

“Shit,” she drawled, “he's older than your monkey ass. Like I'm gonna be afraid of some oinker clumping after me with his walker.”

“He's got a goddamn hook up with the Aryan Legion. I'm not sure how extensive, but there it is. One of them, named Clauson, was checking ancient haunts about me and I got tipped.”

She leveled her gold flaked ambers on him. Angry or inviting, those eyes still knocked him out. “Fuck the Legion too. I'm not so soft I can't handle a few of them prison-bred goose-steppers.”

Swanmoor smiled. “Now who's posing?”

She flipped him the finger, smiling too. Then she took on a serious cast. “What about your daughter?”

“Even if Briscoe knows who she is, I'm figuring given the people around her and what not, he won't make a run at her. Now of course I'd like you to warn her anyway.” He frowned and what might have been regret came and went on his still lean features. “It's probably best I don't come at her direct.”

“Probably so.”

“Yeah,” he replied, letting the word and the emotions behind it linger.

She tugged on his jacket and asked, “You still like that cheap Presidente brandy?”

“It's what the masses drink,” he deadpanned.

“Nigga please. Let's hat before a constituent sees me consorting.”

She'd brought a bottle of the brandy and two plastic cups with her in the car. At the Star Burst Motel overlooking a ship container yard, once in the room Congresswoman Leann Holt shoved Marvin “Masai” Swanmoor against the door and kissed him like she was trying to quench a fever.

He got his arms and hands around her and it was 1980 and they were young and saying good-bye when he'd gone on the run after being indicted. Only now Swanmoor had the unerring impression this might be the last time he was privileged to be with this woman … his lover … his comrade. Yet the notion that his grey head could soon be blossomed out from bullets didn't cool his ardor, but inflamed him like he hadn't felt in years.

After they made noisy love they took a break to have a few sips of Presidente and talk. The old-fashioned radiator issued weak heat under the curtained window. Swanmoor had placed the one chair in the room under the door knob. It wouldn't stop anybody but he hoped slow them down long enough to reach the piece he'd placed on the nightstand.

“I want to help you,” Holt declared.

“You are.”

“You know what I mean, home. Field work.”

“That's not going to happen. Shit's gonna get funky.”

She chuckled and kissed his chest then laid her head on it. “You can't do this by yourself.”

“My face is only on dusty clippings, but you, you're ghetto fabulous. Besides, you've got grandkids you need to be around for, counselor.”

“You might too.”

He glared at the top of her head, flashing on the mushroom cloud jet-black afro from all those years before. “Shit, do I?”

“No, but you get my point, old timer.”

“I ain't stove up yet. No pork, no salt, plenty of roughage and their ghosts are with me.”

“Who?”

“Che and Malcolm, Ho and Fred, baby.”

“I'd say you were delusional, but you might be right. I want you to be right.”

“Hell yeah, I am.”

She looked up at him and they made love again.

The younger and larger man had his arm around Briscoe's windpipe and said, “You must be mixing vodka with your Ensure in the mornings, grandpa. The math you learned in grade school has evaporated from your diseased mind.”

He choked him some more to underscore his intent. Briscoe's face was red from effort and lack of breath, his hands impotently trying to loosen the other man's chiseled arms. Finally he was released and he wilted to the floor, choking and gagging on all fours.

“We understand each other now, right?” Clete Willhelm walked to the counter and picked up his open can of beer and took a lengthy pull. On the floor was an upset can of spilled beer. Briscoe had been drinking from this until Willhelm attacked him.

Briscoe finally sat and cleared his throat. “I'm not trying to cheat you, Clete. You gotta learn to relax.”

“Let me worry about my anger management issues. Two of my road dogs are dead 'cause of this super spade sparring partner of yours. How come he knew to come at them looking for your ass, he supposed to have been out of the country all those years?”

Briscoe held his hands wide. “I'm sure he still has contacts. If it was me, the first thing I would do is find out the lay of the land. There's a reason Swanmoor was high on the Bureau's key agitator index. He's no bench warmer.”

Contemplatively, Willhelm opened another beer.

Briscoe went on. “We need to flush Swanmoor out to tell us where the money is—or more precisely, where he thinks it is.”

“Uh-huh,” Willhelm grunted, considering his next words. “This isn't a Legion matter, Rory. This is between you, me and a few I trust. And that list is now a lot shorter.”

“Whatever you say. But we need to make some moves or else we're just running around with our heads up our asses.”

“Seems to me you need to be doing your job and targeting his old friends to make him come out and play.”

“I know. Only if we don't have the troop strength, we need to be selective. We can't go around jacking up worn-out Lenin-quoting has-beens. The worse thing would be for Swanmoor to go back underground.”