Morton let go of the gun as he finally fell over, but rolled nimbly before I could come down on top of him and end the whole thing with my far greater strength and weight. He still had my gun, which he was pointing at me. But I had his gun and was pointing it at him, too.
He smiled. “I underestimated you, Longville. You’re a sneaky bastard. Now drop it.”
The revolver felt good in my hand, so I didn’t let it go. “No dice. You drop it. I called the police before I walked up here. Or, if you like, we can stand here and have our little Mexican standoff until they get here.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then you obviously don’t know much about me. I was a Birmingham Detective before I was a private eye. I put a call in to my old partner. So put it down.”
Morton laughed. “I don’t think so. If your cop buddies are coming, then I’m leaving. Morton stepped backward cautiously across the weathered tarmac, toward where his car sat waiting. I could see it out there, a glimmer in the darkness, out behind the hangers at the edge of the woods. I had parked there myself, only a couple of days ago.
“Don’t follow me,” Morton hissed. “I mean it. Don’t make me show you what I’ll do.”
“Longville. Give me that pistol,” Francis growled ferociously behind me.
“Not a chance. Listen. Wait until he gets out of sight behind that first hanger. Then you go around one side and I’ll take the other way.”
“What am I gonna do? I got no weapon.”
“Distract him.”
Francis looked at me like I had grown an extra head, but he bit back whatever he was going to say. He was thinking about Mary. And Florida. And being free of it all.
“Okay,” he said, and started running, me right alongside him. He ran at a fast waddle, being a stocky, short guy. We split up at the hanger, flattened against the wall, and moved away from each other. With any luck, Morton’s attention would be split between the two of us, and one of us would get to him.
Just then, I heard gunfire. My heart skipped a beat, but it wasn’t my .45. It was the sharp crack of a 9mm, firing once, twice. A double-tap. Executioner style.
I came around the building fast, just in time to see Francis coming from the other direction. We both stopped immediately. Mary ran past me and stopped. She stood in front of us, her face buried in her hands. Dom Morton lay on the ground, his petty schemes having played out for good. There were two bullet holes in his right temple. Tap, tap. Standing over him was Longshot Lonnie O’Malley and two of his hoods. One of them was holding a hot 9mm, which he made no effort to conceal. In fact, he looked quite ready to use it again.
Lonnie smiled and looked at Francis, then Mary, then me.
“Well if it isn’t all of my dear old friends, Roland Longville and Francis Lorenzo, and his lovely lady, Miss Mary.”
“What happened?” I asked, feeling foolish, not knowing what else to say.
“You know what happened, Longville. Obvious, isn’t it? I was looking at this air strip as a potential real estate investment, when we witnessed this crazed gunman attempting to abduct this poor young lady. By an unfortunate coincidence, we were in his path of escape. My bodyguard took the man’s life when he chose to fire on us. Regrettable, but necessary.”
“So what’s next, Longshot?” I asked him. “Are you going to kill us now?”
Longshot Lonnie feigned surprise. “Now, why in hell would I do that?” He stooped and picked up my .45 and handed it to me. “Yours, I believe. I owe you, Longville, don’t think I forgot the question you asked me earlier. Like I said, the answer is yes. And, as far as Francis and Mary go, well now, Francis and me have an arrangement, and a deal’s a deal. An Irishman’s word is his bond. And I think we’re square, up to now. The one last part of the deal is that they leave town. We’re here to make sure they get to do just that. And as for you, well, you still have that silver token, and that means I still owe you one.”
“So everybody wins.”
Lonnie smiled widely. He really did look like an alligator, albeit one with crazy, two-colored eyes. “That’s right, gumshoe. Today, everybody wins.”
Chapter 31
Without a word, Francis took Mary gently by the shoulders and led her around the dead man. She stopped when she got even with me. “Mr. Longville, I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“I understand why you did. Morton and Zellars had never found out about your son. You had to keep them from finding out, because they would have used him against you to get what they wanted.”
She smile her gigawatt smile and squeezed my hand. Then they walked away, toward the plane. I walked after them. Longshot and his men just stood there. None of them tried to stop me. Longshot had won the day. Don Ganato was dead. Morton had helped them set it all up, and he was now neatly out of the way, also.
The pilot started the plane’s engine as we drew closer. Mary slipped from Francis’ grasp and ran the last few steps to the plane. She looked like she needed to sit down, or maybe sleep for a long, long time. Francis let her go and turned to me.
“Longville, I know what you must think of me. I mean, I know I’m a crook, but I can’t say I’m proud of how it all went down with Longshot Lonnie and Don Ganato. You probably think I’m a no-good bum for selling out Don Ganato. Try to understand, I did it all for the boy’s sake. I couldn’t tell you, but Mary and Silvers, they had a kid. She didn’t know she was pregnant when he died. She’s been through hell, keeping these creeps from finding out about him, about Joseph. He’s a great kid. Mary and the kid deserve a life without threats and extortion hanging over them. I did what I did so they could have that.”
“There’s no need to explain, Francis, as long as you’re satisfied with the way things worked out.” Then I thought about my first visit to the airstrip, and I almost laughed aloud. “The first plane. The night I caught you guys out here. It was for Joseph.”
“That’s right. We were sending him on ahead. We’ll be picking him up soon, before we start the last leg of our trip.”
Francis and his goons had been putting little Joseph on a plane to Florida when I bumbled upon them. Of course they had seen me approaching. No doubt, Francis had instantly hit upon using me to promote the idea that there was some new Ganato crime venture going on out there, and he used my inquisitive nature against me. I had wanted a peek at what was on the plane, never guessing it was just a little boy.
So, Francis wanted to wed Mary and adopt Joseph. For this he had sold Don Ganato down the river. I hoped the little boy, wherever he was, would never know all that had been done in his name. I hoped that these three people could have a good life where there were no mob bosses and pitched gun battles, no stealthy men with guns and sleazy plans. That was hoping for a lot, I knew, but I’m an idealist, after all.
“You know what you’ll have to do, to stay alive,” I said to Francis. “You’ll have to go to ground, or stay on the move. Go down, stay low . . . and stay there. Don Ganato had friends, old school friends. They won’t let this pass. They’ll be looking for you.”
“I’m not worried about the bosses up north,” Francis said. “Longshot Lonnie had their permission, or at least, their pledge of non-interference, so he could . . . do what he did. But Don Ganato had other friends, I know. They’ll be looking, sooner or later, no matter what anybody tells them. They won’t stop, either. I’ll have to do whatever it takes to make sure they don’t find us.”
He stood there for a long second more, then gripped my shoulder. “Thanks, Longville. I just wanted to say that.”
I nodded. “Good Luck, Francis.”
That was it. There were no more goodbyes. Francis turned and walked to the plane. In the end, it had all worked out just like he had wanted. He was leaving the mob, leaving the part of the country where the last ten years of his life had been written, years he wanted to forget, and he was leaving it all behind with the woman he loved beside him.
I stood there and watched the plane go. I watched as it taxied down th
e runway, carrying Francis and Mary. After another minute or two, it took to the air, flying toward whatever fate awaited them in the time they were allotted afterwards. They were headed to a new life, after the getaway was complete. The plane rose and turned in a slow circle, canted to one side, and, leveling out and gaining altitude, headed towards Florida, and a little boy named Joseph, who waited somewhere.
“Take care, Francis,” I said aloud to myself, “and so long, Mary.” I wondered just where they were headed. Odds were that Francis had told no one of his real, ultimate destination. He was smart enough to know better than that. And as for Mary, she’d been around enough to know what she was signing on for.
But that was love, I guess. It takes you to some rocky places. Wherever their place was, I couldn’t say I envied either of them. They’d be hiding for the rest of their lives, in one way or another.
Chapter 32
Broom and Cassandra were walking through the ruins of the Ganato home. Cassandra said, “A couple of the Ganato guys made it, but they weren’t able to tell us much. One guy was in shock and the other is in a coma. They really blew the hell out of this place.”
Broom frowned and was silent.
Cassandra grabbed his arm. “What is it, Les?”
“This happened on our watch,” he said in a low voice. On my watch. I had a man inside Lonnie’s operation, and he still managed to pull this off, and my informant is dead.”
“This crime scene is full of evidence that we can use against O’Malley and his crew, Lester. You must realize that. He might have walked away today, but we aren’t beaten. O’Malley can’t get away with this. We’ll bring him down. He might have won today, but we’re going to make sure that he’s not around for much longer.”
Broom gave her arm a slight squeeze back, and gave her a rare smile. “Now that’s what I’ve been waiting to hear from you, Detective Taylor.” But he still seemed distant. Cassandra smiled and left him to his thoughts.
Broom turned away and looked over the scene. The devastation was as incredible as it was brazen. There were related crime scenes all over the city, the sites of several diversionary explosions that had been set to keep police running in the wrong directions, while Lonnie waited and struck Ganato at his most vulnerable. It was a desperate gambit that had worked because it had been well planned. Longshot Lonnie O’Malley had played the game well, and he had come out on top.
With Ganato dead, and the Ganato crew all but annihilated, Lonnie was finally top crook in the city. Detective Lester Broom realized that, for the first time that he could remember, he was really at a loss, standing there in a ruined front room of an opulent home in Mountainbrook. He secretly wondered if he would ever really be able to corner Longshot, and bring him to justice. Longshot Lonnie O’Malley had gotten the better of the Birmingham Police Department on this dark day, and that meant that he had also gotten the better of Detective Lester Broom.
Johnny Shakes was dead, and so was Don Ganato and a score of other people. There was ruin and wreckage and the press was going to have a field day. But standing there, doubtful and defeated, Detective Lester Broom vowed that he would hound Longshot Lonnie O’Malley out of Birmingham, or put him in a hole in some secluded place, if it cost him his job, his retirement . . . or his life, if that’s what it would take.
He suddenly came back to himself as Cassandra took his hand. She’s been doing that a lot, lately. Just out of concern, he figured. After that, the big detective nodded his head, mostly to himself, and went to work.
Chapter 33
I was sleeping, but someone was calling my name. “Roland, Roland. Wake up, Roland.”
I woke up and heard the rain pattering on the window, felt Beatrice’s body snug against mine. “What is it?”
“The dog needs to go out.”
I squinted and rolled over. The puppy had awakened and padded into the bedroom. He whimpered and wagged his tail. I grunted and sat up, and slipped my feet into my slippers.
“C’mon, boy.” Oscar panted and followed me out to the back door at a little puppy trot.
I opened it up and watched the slow, light rain fall as Oscar went about his doggy business near the hedges. The air was cool, with a hint of a growing chill. Summer was almost gone. The burning days were over, perhaps. The rain reminded me of the tears I’d seen in Beatrice’s uncle’s eyes, that last time we had spoken. But then I yawned and put that from my mind.
Oscar finally came to me, panting happily. “C’mon, boy,” I said, and we went back inside.
Walking through the house, I glanced at the magazines on the coffee table. Vogue, Cosmopolitan, the Birmingham Black & White. I was getting domesticated, I couldn’t help but muse. Beatrice was here with me now . . . and we even had a dog. My house was feeling more like a home these days, with someone to come home to and relax with. There were new drapes, and woman things, and pet things, too.
I thought about all that had gone down in the previous weeks. Maybe Birmingham had seen the last of a certain old type of violence, and good riddance to it. I didn’t care if I ever saw another gangster. I thought about Longshot Lonnie O’Malley, the last of a dying breed. Whether he realized it or not, with his triumph over Don Ganato, he’d brought himself one step closer to extinction.
I thought about those urban kids, the ones I’d seen on the way to that old airport out in Bessemer. I wondered about their world, and their sense of wrong and right. They were the future of crime. They operated on no code. They were amoral, and in a loose affiliation that changed from day to day.
The sound of vague thunder and a brief flash of lightning caused me to turn and look out the window. I caught a glimpse of myself, sleep haggard and a little dazed, in the glass. I was a black man in early middle age, with whatever values life had left me with on my way up.
I wasn’t getting any younger. The violence in the world seemed to be getting more random, more pointless, and it seemed like it was growing. Maybe I was more than a little bit like Lonnie, in a way. If he was a gangster out of an old movie, I pondered, what did that make me? I thought of Humphrey Bogart in his snap brim Fedora and his khaki trench coat, in all those black and white movies from so long ago.
Maybe I was working hard to make myself obsolete, too. Obsolete? Maybe I was already. My morals and my values are outdated. They seem to have little meaning in a world that has sold its morality and everything else for endless fatty food and mindless diversions. But my outdated notions were the things that made me who I was, and the good fight, my fight, was the only one that mattered.
I shook my head. I was just tired. Whatever I was, it’s all that I knew how to be. I left the lightning and the late summer rain, along with my self-doubt, behind me.
I put Oscar back in his doggy bed next to the clothes drier. He sighed and settled down, content, and went off to dream doggy dreams. Then I went back to bed and put my arms around Beatrice, the woman I love. In a few short minutes, I was asleep, too.
– THE END –
Timothy C. Phillips was born in a small town at the foot of the Appalachians. Youngest of seven children, he attended colleges in Alabama and Louisiana, and holds degrees in English, Forensics and Political Science. He lives in Alabama, where he writes and dabbles in music.
To date there are seven titles in the
Roland Longville Mystery Series:
Season of the Witch • Magician
Dead Birmingham • Medusa
Lady Midnight • The Burning Day
The Devil’s Highway
are
The Burning Day Page 13
