The Burning Day (13 page)

“You should tell me. What kind of a favor? I’m getting old. I should remember these things.”

“It was one of those things that didn’t get talked about, once it was done. I’ll jog your memory. We needed a certain operator, a man who handled difficult work, and this guy Longshot, he acted as a go-between for us. It was a big help. It was for something that the old Boss wanted. He found the man we needed for the job. So he has our gratitude, for that.”

Leo nodded. “I see. Well, get this. This Irish guy, he’s the kind that likes to come on strong. Yesterday, out of nowhere, one of his guys shows up here, just like in the days when I was a kid, and he formally asks permission to move in on Don Ganato’s territory down there. Says if he’s allowed to, his boss will consider himself and his crew under our guidance and jurisdiction. The old school way. Can you beat that?” The old man cackled.

Pete nodded. “So, basically, Longshot is offering to restore business to us that we lost years ago. I mean, on the condition that . . .”

“That we give him permission to take out Don Ganato,” Leo said, his palm outstretched, inspecting his rings.

“Yeah.” Pete whistled. “Wow. But, I mean, are you going to actually do that?”

Leo rubbed his chin. He was silent for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was low and thoughtful.

“No. Well. I mean, yes and no.”

“I don’t get you, Leo.”

“It’s like this. We owe Longshot, but to give him outright permission to take out one of our own would be unpardonable. In the eyes of our own members, Don Ganato is blood of our blood. My own view is a bit different. Don Ganato has made himself an outsider, so we aren’t obligated to give him any help—unless he asks for it, that is. We can’t depend on him to do as we ask, though, so he has no right to call on us. Let’s face facts. We don’t need Don Ganato’s crew any more. They aren’t making us money, after all, and these days we send our boys to Miami to cool off if they get into trouble up here. So here’s how we’re going to play this. I’m not going to give Longshot O’Malley my blessing, but you’re going to tell him that if he moves ahead, we will turn our eyes away.”

Leo smiled and nodded. He liked the way his own idea was coming together.
 

“Whatever happens after that, happens. As far as we’re concerned, it’s out of our hands, and out of our interests to intervene either way. You can tell this Longshot guy that. Tell him that if the area once again becomes profitable for us, we’ll be pleased to do business with whoever is in control. In any case, no one will be interested in avenging the Ganato crew, if things ‘go south’ for them. Got that?”

Pete nodded. “I got it. I’ll take care of it, Leo.”

Leo watched Pete leave the room. Then he sat there, listening to the vague sounds of traffic moving on the streets outside. Leo pondered the things that motivated men, like love and hate and money and loyalty and greed, and wondered if somewhere in the world there was a balance in these things to be found. Maybe not in this world, but perhaps in the next, he decided. He grabbed his coat and got to his feet to leave. He decided that in Mass on Sunday, he would light a candle for Don Ganato. It was the least he could do. On his way out he turned off the light, and it was like no one had ever been there, talking about the murder of a man who was still quite alive, and over a thousand miles away.

Chapter 21

Another place, another meeting. Two different men. They were sitting on a park bench, on the water near Liberty Parkway. A one-quarter sized reproduction of the Statue of Liberty stood guard over their shoulders as they watched the young mothers push strollers along the paths in the shade of the high water oaks. Francis Lorenzo had been on time, but he had waited for ten minutes before Longshot Lonnie O’Malley had shown up. It was probably just his way of reminding Francis who had the upper hand in the exchange. Once a punk, always a punk, Francis reflected silently, as Lonnie finally walked to the bench and took his seat.

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 clucked 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.