Previously: Mercenary Leon fails on a mission because of David, better known as Edward the Prince of Wales. Socialite Wallis Spencer, also a spy, has an affair with German Joachim Von Ribbentrop and marries Ernest. David becomes king. Wallis divorces, David abdicates and they marry. They fail to kill Hitler.
“I’m scared.” The young black busboy shivered in the alley behind a Los Angeles café a little after midnight Oct. 25, 1937. He wore a suit coat over his white service jacket. “I ain’t never killed a man before.”
“I promise you won’t ever do it again.” Leon put a fedora on the boy’s head, a size too large to hide his face. Leon did the same with his own hat. Then, he handed the boy a revolver. “It has seven shots. Empty them into the man eating the lasagna. Call out his name to make him look up. That way you’ll be sure it’s him. Then run out the front door. Throw away the hat, gun and jacket, go around the building and in the back door. Don’t come out of the kitchen until the cops come for you. After they let you go, head straight to the Hot Kitty Club and I’ll give you your cut.”
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. I’ll be shooting too. I’ll run out and keep running.”
“But—but why are we doin’ this?”
“Don’t ask so many damn questions. The mob, they don’t like him.”
“Won’t the cops catch us? Don’t they say they always get their man?”
“They will. It just won’t be us.”
“But why me—“
“Go!” Leon pushed him into the dining room. He stood behind the boy and nudged him to say the mobster’s name. Leon didn’t want anyone to hear him speak. The boy emptied his revolver into the man. Leon shot also, but he left one bullet in the chamber. He pushed the boy toward the door, but Leon led the way out the door. When they were both on the street, Leon turned and shot him between the eyes.
With the efficiency of a professional killer, Leon stripped the boy of his jacket, gun and hat. He took off his own hat and jacket, rolled his gun and everything else together and tossed them into the shadows around the garbage cans in the alley. As he fell to his knees by the body, he put a notepad and pencil in the dead boy’s palm. Then he began howling in hysteria. People from the café and other buildings crept out. In the background police sirens wailed.
“Oh Lordy! They just killed this boy! He chased two men in coats and hats out the door. And they had guns. And they shot this poor boy! I guess they didn’t see me or else they would have shot me too! Oh Lordy! I’d be dead too!”
A couple of people from the neighborhood tried to comfort him as a police car pulled up and a sergeant got out. Several customers from the café surrounded him and started telling the story. They pointed to Leon as an eyewitness to the shooting on the street. By the time the cop got to him, Leon was spouting gibberish.
“Thank you, sir! Thank you! I gotta get home to my mama!”
Leon ran into the dark alley but stopped a few yards away, waiting for the crowds to disperse, an ambulance to take the body away and the police to leave. He grabbed his bundle and went back down the alley, crossing a couple of streets, until he found a large garbage can in which he dumped the wad. He ambled over to his hotel, the nicest in the black part of town, went to his room, bathed, changed into his white linen suit and arrived at the Hot Kitty Club.
He sat in the back of the strip club, nursing a Cuba libre, when one of the strippers, still wearing her G-string and pasties, sat on his lap.
“Les dead?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And the busboy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She took a key from her G-string and handed it to Leon. “This goes to a security box at the train station. Pick up your money and get the hell out of town tonight.”
Leon did exactly as he was told. With the heft reward he got himself a private compartment. During the three-day journey, he slept, meditated, exercised and read newspapers all the way from Los Angeles to Miami. He noticed that Los Angeles gangster Les Bruneman was shot about fourteen times about 1 a.m. by two gunman. A busboy was killed trying to get the license number of the getaway car. Underground rumors indicated he wasn’t splitting his gambling money, and the mob had him bumped. Leon smiled to himself. It wasn’t the mob. It was the organization. A job well done, he thought. By the afternoon of the third day he arrived in Miami. Leon took a small boat to Freeport where his favorite fisherman was waiting for him. He was pleased with himself. With payoffs from Biarritz and now Los Angeles he could afford to relax a while and spend time with his son. Sidney was ten-years-old but he was far more advanced than Leon was at that age. As the dock at Eleuthera appeared, he saw a crowd waiting for him.
To one side was Jessamine with her arms around Sidney. Spearheading the rest of the throng was a broad-shouldered woman who held her son in front of her as though he was evidence in an assault trial. Leon gracefully alit from the boat and headed to his family but the angry woman accosted him.
“Leon Johnson, with your fine clothes and big house, you have to face the wrath of God for raising your son to be a ruffian, leaving months at a time so he can terrorize the community!”
First Leon kissed his wife and hugged his son. Then he turned to consider what the woman had said.
“How can a ten-year-old boy terrorize a community?”
“He broke my son’s nose!”
Leon looked at Sidney and then the woman’s son who was several inches taller. “He must have been standing on a box at the time. Now why would my little boy want to hit your bigger boy?”
“That’s what I want to know!”
“Have you asked your son?”
“He’s too upset to talk about it!”
Leon turned to Sidney. “Did you hit this boy?”
Sidney wriggled free of his mother. “Yes, I hit Bobby.”
Leon smiled, “Oh, this is the Bobby I’ve heard about?” He leaned into the boy’s face. “You like to bully children, eh, Bobby?” He looked at the mother. “By the way, the nose is not broken. It’s just a little bloody.” He stared at her. “Tell me, did you raise your son to be a bully?”
“He is not a bully!” The mother huffed. “Some children get what’s coming to them, that’s all!”
“So what did Sidney have coming to him, Bobby?”
The bigger boy stuck his lower lip out. “He sounds like a girl.”
Leon stepped so close to Bobby’s mother that she took a step back. “I agree with you, madam. Some children get what’s coming to them. Now if you will step aside I want to go home with my family.”