The Burning Day

by Timothy C. Phillips

  Neither man spoke for several minutes. Finally, Lonnie said, “Nice day out here.”

  Francis bit his tongue, but finally managed, “So what is it you want to talk about.”

  Lonnie somehow managed to give the impression of shrugging without moving. “I got some things on my mind, Francis, things that I think you might be interested in.”

  “Somehow I doubt that, Lonnie.”

  “If you doubted it too strongly, you wouldn’t have come here.”

  Francis squirmed, and finally managed to choke out, “So let’s have it.”

  “Impatient, aren’t you.”

  “I can’t be seen here, talking to you. This is too risky.”

  Lonnie looked around and nodded in agreement. “All right, all right, not likely anybody who knows either of us is going to stroll through here. But like you say, mustn’t take risks. Let’s say a man came to me, and this man said he had some information that I might find useful. This fellow kept hemming and hawing with me until I became irritated. And, then, just as I was about to have the boys toss him out on his ear, he shows me some pictures. Pictures of you, dear Francis, with a certain very beautiful young woman. I must say, you have bowed to the freckle, but in style.”

  “What is this?” Francis growled, rising to his feet. Lonnie put up a hand.

  “Easy, easy, sit down, Francis. Listen.”

  Francis did so, because he sensed something momentous now, something bigger than he had first suspected. Lonnie’s crazy eyes were sparkling.

  “I didn’t trust this man. Morton was his name. He wanted money for his information. I checked into him. I know now that he’s been blackmailing your darling Mary, making her take part in certain scams of his in the past. He’s got something he’s holding over her head.”

  “That’s right.”

  Lonnie looked thoughtful for a moment. “This Morton is small fry to me. I haven’t heard of him before. In any case, he’s a two-bit con, and he thinks small. But here’s the deal I’ve come to offer you.”

  Francis sat expectantly, his face rapt with attention. He felt himself sweating.

  “Let’s say that I heard you were trying to walk away from the business, but the Don wouldn’t let you out.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I thought that was just a rumor, until Zellars brought his pictures into Tim Finnegan’s bar the other day. Mary’s a beautiful woman. You’re very lucky. Now I see a really good reason a man might want to walk away, start over. But you can’t, can you, Francis. Because here’s this guy, this Morton, gumming up the works . . . am I right? Mary can’t get clear of this guy, but you can’t just shoot him, either, because that would screw it up with her . . . am I right? Plus, such an action might send you back to prison. No more Mary. Also, Don Ganato would never give his okay to whack Morton, as we know how adverse the man is to violence as a solution. All of which makes it a very difficult situation for you.”

  Francis frowned. The last part was certainly true. If Don Ganato had only followed his lead fifteen years before and let him whack Longshot Lonnie, things would be very different now. But things were the way they were, he admitted to himself. He sighed. “So what’s your offer, Longshot?”

  “A favor. I’ll clear it all up for you, boyo. I’ll make Zellars—and Morton, too, if he’s around—take the long walk. They’ll never trouble you or darling Mary again. You two can finally have the peace you want, and you can go start your life over somewhere, wherever you choose.”

  Francis covered his eyes for a moment with his hands. The sun was sinking low, and maybe the red glare that filtered through the oak trees hurt his eyes. After a time he spoke, and his voice was full of gravel.

  “And what would you want me to do for this favor?”

  Lonnie put his hand on Francis’ shoulder, and his touch seemed to drain some of Francis’ strength away.

  “All you have to do in return, my dear Francis,” said Lonnie, in almost a whisper, “is one very small thing for me.”

  Chapter 22

  Francis sat alone in his apartment, thinking about what he had just done. He thought about why, most of all. It was just one word: love.

  Love. Francis Lorenzo smiled a bitter smile as he sat alone in his small apartment in Shades Valley. Love will make you do crazy things. For the sake of love, Francis had been forced to sit down with Longshot Lonnie O’Malley, the man he despised most in the world, and offer up information against the one he cared for and respected above all others. He had done this in the name of love, love for Mary, because she mattered more to him than all other things: more than living The Life; more than honor or loyalty; and yes, even more than hate.

  It was the Don’s own fault, he reasoned. Francis had been telling him for a year that he had wanted out of the rackets, out of the mob, out for good. Francis wanted to make a straight go of it with Mary. He was tired of being in and out of jail, having to carry on conversations in public restrooms, having people murmur about him behind his back in restaurants and other places. He wanted to start over with this new, wonderful person he’d found. The Don wouldn’t give him the chance. “We need you too badly, just now, Francis,” the Don would murmur in his soothing, politician’s voice. Francis needed to get his chance at the straight life somewhere else, he realized. And so for a chance at that, he’d sat down with Longshot Lonnie O’Malley and talked a few things over, but it felt like he’d sold his soul.

  Chapter 23

  Longshot Lonnie O’Malley was rarely nervous, but he was tonight. Because tonight, his business with Francis Lorenzo concluded, he had yet another chore ahead of him. Now the door was ajar, and he was going to blast it wide open. He was going to meet someone. This little ‘meet and greet’ might finally decide the long contest between Don Ganato and himself for control of the rackets in the greater Birmingham Metropolitan Area, and several other territories besides—not to mention possibly ridding him of the Ganato clan forever.

  Tonight, Lonnie was reaping the benefits of the deal he had cut with Francis Lorenzo, or, more properly, had forced the man into. No, not completely forced. Francis was, after all, a conflicted man, a mob capo who wanted out of his job, and whose boss couldn’t—or wouldn’t—let him go. Lonnie had offered him the way out that he wanted, but had demanded one thing in return. When Francis had taken a deep breath, looked out over Liberty Parkway in the low light and offered it up, he had to know what he was doing. But he must have also known that, to have anything like a normal life with his precious Mary, it was what he had to do . . . so he had done it.

  Now Lonnie was in Memphis, Tennessee, waiting in a bus station. He had never been to Tennessee before, and he hated bus stations, but he had received detailed instructions on where to go, what to wear, and even where to sit. He was wearing clothes that were much less flashy than usual, and he was alone.

  After he had been sitting there a while, a very unimportant-looking little man settled into a chair about a foot away from Lonnie. He was somewhere around fifty, and had thick glasses and a suburban dad’s mustache. He had a brown paper bag in his hand. Just as Lonnie was about to ask him to move, he turned to Lonnie and said, in a low voice that was lightly accented, “Get up and walk straight out the front door. Get in the checkered cab that is waiting.”

  Without nodding, Longshot Lonnie O’Malley rose and did as he was bid, walking out into the sun, here in the city of Elvis, where another non-descript man stood holding the door of one of Memphis’ ubiquitous checkered cabs. The ‘hired’ light on top the cab was lit up. As Lonnie got in, the man shut the door behind him.

  The cab pulled away without instructions from Lonnie. The driver did not speak for the next twenty minutes or so. He also looked Hispanic in the same vague way the man at the bus station, and the one who had waited by the taxi, had looked.

  Lonnie realized the driver was deliberately circling blocks and cutting back along the way they had come. For a minute Lonnie thought the driver was doing this to confuse him, and he c
lucked his teeth. He was wasting his time. Lonnie thought to himself that he couldn’t find his way around this town with a GPS. But then he realized that perhaps the man was making sure they weren’t being followed. Then another thought occurred to Lonnie. He realized it was possible that this man was trained to drive this way, all of the time. Maybe he drove this way every day, no matter where he was going.

  The thought made Lonnie consider the fact that these shadowy men with accents were perhaps all wanted, perhaps illegal immigrants, and worse things, too, and they were always vigilant, always coming and going in secret and silence like these three he’d met today in the last few minutes. They were all deliberately alike, purposefully non-descript, effortlessly forgettable. The thought of living such a life made him shudder. But now the cab was pulling up in front of a low brick building, an old warehouse or converted tenement from its look.

  Yet another unexceptional-looking man awaited him there. He stepped forward, opened the cab door, nodded in the direction of the front door of the building, then casually strolled away, as though he had just opened the cab door out of politeness. Trying to look casual and unconcerned, Lonnie walked to the door and went inside. The cab drove slowly away, the “Hired” light still illuminated on top.

  Inside, there was a staircase that rose along one side of a narrow room. As Lonnie moved up the steps, he became aware of another anonymous man standing at the top of the stairs.

  “Remove your jacket,” the man said quietly. Lonnie complied, and the man frisked him swiftly and expertly. Then he stepped away from Lonnie, nodded, and walked down the stairs and out the door, a man in no particular hurry, just a man out for a stroll.

  Lonnie took a deep breath, exhaled, and opened the door in front of him. As he stepped inside, a smile cut across his face. Seated at a table was the first man he’d met, the little old man from the bus station. The paper bag that he had clutched at the bus station now sat on the table.

  “Please sit.”

  Lonnie walked in and sat down at the table across from the old man. There was nothing else in the room except for the table, two chairs, the old man, the bag, and Lonnie himself. Lonnie suspected that a few minutes before, the room had probably been completely empty. No doubt it would be again, a few minutes after they concluded their business here.

  The old man spoke without preamble. “You come well-recommended, so we can move directly to business. This room is completely secure, I assure you.” The old man looked steadily at Lonnie, his voice courteous. He did not offer his hand, and used no names, Lonnie noticed. Good.

  “I have no doubt of that.”

  “To the matter at hand. You have asked for an item that is difficult to acquire, though I am confident that we can arrange something that you will be satisfied with.”

  He paused, allowing Lonnie time to respond.

  “I also told your man that I need the thing quickly,” Lonnie said. “Time’s important here. Price is no object.”

  “That is understood. I have spoken with those who will carry the responsibility of the procurement, and they have informed me that by the end of the week, what you have requested will be in your hands. One of these people will instruct your men in its use. You will need to use this very carefully, and discard or abandon it, once it is used.”

  “I understand. I’ll only need it once, anyway.”

  “Good. Then, unless you have any questions . . . .”

  The little old man nodded at the paper bag, the one that he had clutched in the bus station, that now sat on the table between them. “Take this bag and go out the front, the way you came in. Then walk one block to the right. The bus will stop there in three minutes. The red line. It will take you back to the parking garage where your rental car is parked. There will be no other stops until you get off.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Good day.”

  Lonnie gingerly picked up the bag and rose and walked out of the room. He waited less than a minute before the bus came. He climbed aboard the bus and looked stealthily around at the empty seats before going to the back and opening the bag. Inside was a bus station locker key, with a plastic numbered keychain ornament dangling from it. Locker number 42, at the station that was the destination of the bus he was sitting on. That’s where he was to leave the payment for what he had ordered, before he left town. The amount required would be written on a piece of paper in that locker. It was almost done. Lonnie let out a breath that he realized he’d been holding for the last half hour. It looked like things were finally starting to go his way.

  Chapter 24

  I picked my way through the file until I got to the name I was looking for: Charlie Zellars. I looked at the booking mug shot that was stapled to the corner of the page. It was the man who’d passed himself off as Wiggins, all right. He hadn’t changed much from the time the photo had been taken until the moment he came into my office. His had the same tight expression, round little glasses, and math professor’s short, neat hair. I could almost hear his stilted words coming at me off the page.

  According to the I&O report, Zellars was picked up in this particular instance for something called “providing women for immoral purposes.” Pimping, they used to call that.

  It took me another half hour to find any recent mention of Zellars in Birmingham. But there it was, according to the parole board, a sometimes address in a hotel that was really a low-rent boarding house on, where else, the North Side.

  I drove over to Zellars’ home for the moment, a place called the Earle Hotel, a roomy, antique-looking place on the west side of town. I had busted up more than one fracas there during my time as a patrol officer: meth heads, needle jockeys, drunks on meager disability checks. According to the apathetic desk clerk, Zellars was located in Room 605. I took the elevator and instantly regretted it; the interior was hot enough inside to peel wallpaper.

  “Is the air conditioning broken?” I asked an old man in the elevator who wore something that might have once been a bellhop’s jacket, and looked like he might work there. He wore a dazed expression and his mouth hung open. Maybe it was the heat. I hoped it was the heat.

  He mumbled something unintelligible, and then said, “I think maybe. I dunno.”

  I got off the elevator on the sixth floor and walked down the hall to room 605. I tried the door. It was unlocked, so I opened it quickly and stepped inside. It was cooler in there, because the window was open. The room was a simple affair. There was a bed in the center of the room, a small desk and television along the right wall, a small closet, and a bathroom off to the left.

  I stepped into the bathroom to make sure no one was in there. The door swung open slowly. There was a man sitting in a chair. His hands were tied behind his back. He was wearing nothing but a pair of bloody pants. The pants were bloody, because he was very bloody. I knelt and checked him for a pulse, though there was obviously not going to be one. I looked at his face. I had found Zellars. From the look of his room, he had been getting ready to leave town. Now he wasn’t going anywhere, except to the morgue.

  His suitcase, which had been carefully packed, was still on the bed. It had since been opened, and something had been removed. His clothes were still neatly folded inside, but there was a square of emptiness just the size of an old school video tape. Undoubtedly, that something that had been taken was a tape that contained the raunchy movies a younger and much more naïve Mary had made to help Dom Morton and the late Charlie Zellars support their con games.

  I had no doubts about who had done Zellars in. Dom Morton had known that Zellars ripped off his dirty movies, and he had wanted them back, very badly it seemed. I wondered what value he believed they still possessed. Maybe he had just taken them out of a sense of revenge against Zellars. As if what he had done to the man himself wasn’t revenge enough.

  Morton had taken his time with his old partner, and however long the proceedings had taken, it must have seemed like an eternity to Zellars. The chair from the desk had been dragged into the bath
room, obviously to take advantage of the floor drain, and Zellars had been lashed to it with rope. His mouth was stuffed full of a pair of his own underwear. Around him on the floor, the gray tile was splashed with a dark ruby stain. Morton had taken a knife to him, and taken his time at his business. I went back to the main room and took a good look around.

  Morton had interrogated Zellars first. The questioning had taken a long time, from the marks on Zellars’ body and the amount of blood he had lost. When he had found out what he wanted to know, Morton had finished him with a ligature made from one of Zellars’ own shoestrings. The unlaced shoe lay cast aside, its mate still on the dead man’s left foot.

  It had been a brutal business, but also Morton had kept it quiet. One doesn’t want blood-curdling screams disturbing the guests in hotels with paper-thin walls. Morton had wanted to find out what Zellars knew, pretty badly. Or maybe he had gotten the pictures and movies right off the bat, and decided to punish Zellars for pursuing him. Or maybe it was just something purely evil that Morton had enjoyed doing.

  Zellars must have had the videos in his luggage, and returned to Birmingham to either extort Mary anew or attempt a deal with his old friend. Morton had probably agreed, and had sat and patiently waited for the knock on the door. One thing was clear. If this was Morton’s way of dealing with his old buddies, then I had to get to Mary and the now unarmed Francis before Morton found them. I was betting he’d gotten information from Zellars on just where to do that.

  I wondered about Francis and Mary and the airstrip. Was that the missing something? What had really been going on out there? I was just getting ready to leave when somebody hit me across the side of the head, and the lights went out.

  ~

  When I came to, I was lying in the floor. My hands were tied behind my back. Zellars had checked out, as it turned out, but his old friend had checked in. Dominic Morton was sitting over me, in a chair. He also had my Colt .45 in his hand.