“Just give me a minute of your time,” said Baker. “Okay?”
Alex Pappas was lying in bed beside his sleeping wife, waiting for Johnny to come home, when he heard the sound of his Acura coming to a stop. Then he heard two car doors slamming shut, one after the other. And soon after that, voices. Alex got out of bed. Johnny never brought anyone home late at night, men friends or women. He was respectful that way.
Through the bedroom window that fronted the house, Alex saw Johnny in the street, standing close to an older black man. The two of them were talking. The black man was smiling and Johnny was not. Two houses down, an old Honda was parked and idling, smoke coming from its tailpipe. It looked like a young white man was under the wheel.
Alex quickly put on jeans and tied a pair of New Balance sneakers onto his feet. Because he kept no guns or weapons of any kind in the house, he grabbed the heavy, long-handled Mag-Lite he kept beside the bed, ignoring Vicki, who had woken and was asking, “What’s wrong?” and “Alex, what’s wrong? ”
He passed Gus’s bedroom and went down the stairs.
“You say you’re his friend?”
“Oh, I’m not claiming that we’re friends, exactly,” said Baker. “More like acquaintances.”
“Excuse me,” said John. “I really have to get inside.”
He tried to step around Baker, but Baker moved in front of him.
“I ain’t done,” said Baker. He put his index finger to the corner of his eye and pulled down. “I gave that to your daddy. That’s right. Me.”
John narrowed his eyes and felt warmth come to his face. “Make your point.”
“Ho, look at you,” said Baker with a chuckle. “You got your little fists in a ball and your cheeks is pink, just like Raggedy Andy. You ain’t gonna hurt me, are you?”
“Get out of here.”
“Okay.” Baker laughed. “I will. But not because a fellow like you told me to. Just tell your old man I came by. Just tell him, fifty thousand dollars. That’s all he needs to know. I’ll contact him next and make the arrangements. He calls the law, you’re the one who’s gonna suffer. You hear me, pretty? Tell him.”
Baker began to walk toward the Honda. He heard the door to the house open, a commanding voice and rapid footsteps on concrete, and he kept pace and got to the Honda’s passenger side, turned and smiled at the shirtless middle-aged man who was running toward him with eyes on fire and something like a steel club in his hand. Baker opened the door and dropped into the seat.
“Go, boy,” he said. Kruger gunned it off the curb.
Alex Pappas broke into a sprint. He ran alongside the Honda, and it passed him, and he continued to chase it, knowing he could never catch it.
“Stay away from my family!” shouted Alex.
The Honda turned the corner and was gone. Alex slowed down and came to a stop in the middle of the street. He bent over and put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath. His heart was beating rubbery in his chest.
“Dad,” said John, standing behind him. “Dad, it’s all right.”
Alex stood and turned. John had his cell phone out and was making a call. Alex reached out and took it from his hand.
“Don’t,” said Alex. “No police.”
“What, are you kidding?”
“I’ll explain. Come on, let’s go inside.”
They moved toward their home. Alex put his arm around his son as they walked.
“You okay, Dad?”
“Yes. Did he say his name?”
“He said that he was the man who gave you your eye.”
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No.” John looked at the Mag-Lite and smiled with affection at his father. “What were you going to do with that?”
“Damn if I know. I didn’t have a plan. I saw him out here with you and I just grabbed it and ran.”
Vicki was waiting for them at the front door.
It was very late when Raymond got the call on his cell. He was at his mother’s place, seated in his father’s old recliner, watching television and not watching it, as someone does when his thoughts are intense. The phone rang in his pocket, and he answered it and heard Alex Pappas’s voice. Gone was the gentle tone he had come to like and grow comfortable with in the past couple of days.
Alex described the visit from Charles Baker, his attempt at extortion, and his conversation with John.
“He was talking to my son, right outside my home,” said Alex. “Where my wife sleeps. Do you understand, Ray? He came to my home and threatened my son.”
“I do understand,” said Raymond. “Did you -”
“No. I didn’t call the police. But next time I will. I need to be clear with you on that.”
“I got it,” said Raymond. “Thank you, Alex. Thank you for thinking of my brother.”
“You’ve gotta do something about this,” said Alex, the anger gone out of him.
“I will,” said Raymond.
He next phoned James, now at his apartment on Fairmont.
“Where does Charles Baker stay?” said Raymond.
“Why?”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know exactly. He’s in a group home on Delafield. One of those places for men on paper. Said he’s in a house on the thirteen hundred block, in Northwest.”
Raymond ended the call abruptly. He got up out of the recliner and went down to the cellar, quietly, so as not to wake his mother. There, on a workbench, he found his father’s tools in a steel box. Ernest Monroe, the bus mechanic, had kept them orderly and clean. Since his father’s death, Raymond had used them infrequently and left them in their proper sections, as his father would have wished.
Ernest had never kept a gun in the house. He said it was dangerous and unnecessary, that with boys around, it would just be a temptation that would lead to tragedy. But he had modified certain tools, and shown them to his sons, in the event that the family was in need of protection. One of them was a heavy-shafted flat-head machinist’s screwdriver whose tip Ernest had bench-ground to a point.
Raymond lifted the screwdriver from the box.
Twenty-three
On his way to work, Alex Pappas often topped off the tank of his Cherokee at the gas station on Piney Branch Road. This served two purposes. The gas was relatively cheap at this particular outlet, and if he desired, he could check on his investment property, situated directly behind the station, while he was there.
It was not smart to have unrented property, as the absence of a tenant left the owner vulnerable to vandals and possibly even squatters. But Alex did not have much cause to worry, as his property was in a decent neighborhood and was visible from a heavily traveled road. Also, it was well fortified by design, solid brick with no windows. The electric company had built the substation with the intent of blending it in, as much as possible, with the rest of the neighborhood.
Still, as secure as the building was, he needed to find someone to lease it, if only to get Vicki off his back. She was right, of course. She was almost always right when it came to money.
Alex was pondering this, looking at his building as he set the pump’s nozzle into his vehicle. He could see the wide, corrugated bay door that fronted the property, and the small parking lot, which the Iranian, the last tenant, had enlarged at his own expense to accommodate his flooring and carpet customers.
When the tank was full, Alex drove around to the front of the building and parked. From the glove box he got his Craftsman measuring tape and a set of keys holding one that operated the bay door.
