The Burning Day (15 page)

“So why are you still here?”

“Loose ends, Longville. You, Wiggins, and of course, Francis and his dear Mary.”

“Why hurt them? None of them have ever harmed you.”

“Wiggins knows about me now, and so do the rest of you. I have to walk out of here clean.”

“I can’t see how any of it will matter, once you’re gone.”

“Well, there’s a lot you don’t know, Longville. Maybe there’s somebody looking for me a lot worse than anybody you know. Maybe I have something going on the side that I can’t risk. Anyway, it’s just good business sense. I can’t leave anybody around to point a finger. I have to take care of them.”

I gestured with my head to the bathroom. “Like you took care of your old pal, Charlie Zellars, in there?”

Morton grimaced. “That couldn’t be helped. Zellars was a great con, but he was crazy. Paranoid, I mean. He always went for the violent solution too quickly. There were some bad things happened a few years back, when we were all three together—Zellars, me and Mary. Mary got freaked out, so one night she left. Understandable.”

Morton licked his lips, and shrugged. “Things weren’t the same after that. Some of our con jobs fell through and certain people got wise to us, so we had to keep moving. I got sick of it, and decided to strike out on my own. So what? But Zellars got it in his head that Mary and I had planned it all, because back when it all started for us, we’d been a couple. He figured we planned it behind his back and were running away together, cutting him out of the action.”

“You two were his family, and you left him.”

“Right, that’s how he saw it. In some kind of weird way, I guess that was it. He was still crazy about it all. So I can’t leave anybody around here to tell the tale. When I found out Charlie was in town, I had to take care of business. So I looked him up and bribed the guy at the desk and here we are. Loose ends getting tied up, and all of that.”

“Aren’t you forgetting a few things, Morton? Like Longshot Lonnie. You talk about loose ends, has it ever occurred to you that you’re one yourself? Do you really think that he’s going to let you just walk away, with everything that you know? You’ve got blood on your hands, Morton. It’s only a matter of time before someone hunts you down.”

Morton took a step closer. “You’re wrong, first of all. I don’t have to worry about Longshot. We made a deal, and it’s worked out pretty damned well for both of us. Him particularly. Besides, give me a few days and I’ll be on the other side of the world.” He smiled and came a little closer. One more step, I thought. Just one.

“That might be true,” I said, lowering my voice, “but there’s something you still don’t know. Something that’s going to make all the difference.”

“What might that be?” Morton asked, and took that final step that I was waiting on. My hands were tied, but Morton had neglected to tie my feet. I shot my legs out, sweeping his feet from beneath him, he came down like a sack of potatoes right beside me, and I heaved myself up and kicked at his gun hand, once, twice. The gun flew to the corner of the room. With a cry of rage, Morton came to his feet and struck at me. I bent down, and rammed my shoulder hard into his abdomen, the way I had rammed people when I was a linebacker at the University of Alabama, long ago.

I slammed into Morton with all my strength and carried him back and crunched him hard against the wall. He let out a loud oof, and then struggled free of me. With my hands tied behind me, I wasn’t able to hold him. Wheezing mightily, he scrambled to the door. He was out and gone in a second, slamming it closed behind him. I looked around wildly for something I could use to cut the rope that bound my hands.

It took me most of twenty long minutes to get the ropes off, and all the while I was aware that Morton was headed across town with blood in his eye. For the moment, at least, he had no gun. I retrieved my .45 from the corner, checked it, and holstered it. Something told me I’d be needing it later.
 

~

I got into my car, my head throbbing, and headed across town to find Francis and Mary. I checked myself in the rearview mirror. There was a big red welt there, just like I thought. I hadn’t returned the favor, necessarily, but I had at least given Morton something to think about.

While I drove, I thought about the man. Dom Morton had obviously been biding his time. There had originally been a partnership of three. Mary and Dom had some history. After that relationship ended, Dom saw her as a tool. A beautiful woman attracted wealthy suitors, and with his knowledge of Mary’s past, Dom had decided to leverage her beauty into cash. Somewhere along the way, though, she had slipped away.

When he’d found her again, she’d been married to a millionaire. Dom and his pal Zellars put the squeeze on Mary. Make Silvers pay up, or they’d ruin him by making the pictures of her public. But Silvers had refused to roll over. He’d gotten the truth out of Mary and gone to meet Morton and Zellars with an amount that he thought was reasonable. It was a lot less than they’d been demanding.

I tried to envision the meeting, and the subsequent argument. Silvers had pulled a gun, a foolhardy move when dealing with people as sketchy and dangerous as Morton and Zellars. Silvers had gotten himself killed, and Morton and Zellars had dressed it up to look like a traffic accident. Except the detective who investigated the crash hadn’t bought it. Undoubtedly, when he questioned Mary, he had known that she wasn’t telling him the whole truth.

Morton and Zellars had taken whatever money they had gotten and faded into the woodwork. But when the money began to run out, the two began to squabble. Mary had disappeared, and their partnership wasn’t as profitable. So one day Morton had decided to disappear, himself. That would have been fine, but after a while Zellars began to think that maybe Mary and Morton had concocted a get-rich plan of their own—one without Zellars. He had started looking for them.
 

So they had all three ended up in Birmingham, each one of them with a very different plan for the future. Mary wanted to run away with her Mafioso, but first he had to quit the mob. Morton wanted to juice her accountant husband, but the only problem was, she’d left him already. And now the mysterious Zellars wanted revenge for something that never really had been done to him.
 

In the background of it all, two hoods were battling for the control of the streets. Naturally, I had to get mixed up in it all. I thought about that, and wondered if there was much difference in the two-bit con men who were trying to control Mary, and the malevolent mob bosses who were trying to control an entire city.

Morton had used me to confirm his suspicions, no more. He’d been shadowing me when I went out to the hotel where Mary was staying before the gun fight at the old Ensley airport. He’d been trying to get a peek at the guy Mary was seeing. The fact that she had been emboldened enough to refuse his latest attempt at blackmail had sent up a warning flare, but it had also piqued his curiosity. Had Mary hooked up with someone she felt was rich and powerful enough to protect her?
 

At the abandoned airstrip, in the mayhem that had ensued, Morton had gotten pictures of Francis, and asked around, and found out who he was. After that, it was a matter of sitting back and letting his naturally devious mind come up with the proper angle on how to use what he’d learned.
 

He’d finally decided on approaching Longshot Lonnie O’Malley. He’d seen the newspapers and the news, and knew there was a mob war brewing, and that Lonnie was the boss of the smaller gang. Lonnie would need an advantage, and therefore, Morton had reasoned correctly, he would be willing to pay well for it. It just so happened that he, Morton, could provide that advantage by victimizing Francis—and poor Mary—once again.

In the end, Lonnie had paid Morton for his information and had set his own, much more devious mind to work. He’d come up with a plan so brash that I had to give him credit. He’d decided to turn Francis, to make him his mole in Don Ganato’s organization. In return, he’d make Morton go away, forever, guaranteed. Then, after Don Ganato and his crew were out of the picture, Francis and Mary could do whatever they wanted; Lonnie would control not only the North Side, but all of the Don’s southern holdings, from Tampa to Galveston, and everyone would walk away a winner.
 

Except one thing I knew for sure . . . Morton was an old con artist, and he wasn’t about to go down quietly, or walk away empty-handed. He caught a whiff of a double deal and was gone, straight to the only cover left for him: Don Ganato. And now he had information to sell, important information if he played the angle just right. Never mind that he was the one who had sold Francis Lorenzo out to Longshot Lonnie in the first place; he could always leave out that little tidbit, and pocket some more money for telling Don Ganato that Longshot had made a traitor out of one of his most trusted men.

I felt a cold wave of rage wash over me. I thought about what Morton and Zellars were trying to do, and I realized that I wanted Francis and Mary to get away from all of it, Mary from her past with Morton and Zellars, and Francis from his with Don Ganato and Lonnie O’Malley.
 

Somehow it mattered to me, on some curious level, that a person could walk away from a spotty past and make a new name and a new life for themselves. I had done it, but not without help. I realized I was all the help that these two people were probably going to get. So I made up my mind right then and there that they were going to get a chance to do just that.

Chapter 25

I needed to find Francis and Mary before Morton got to them. They both would probably assume that he was long gone, if they gave him any thought at all.
 

On the way I called Beatrice. I wanted to make sure she was off everyone’s radar in what was rapidly becoming a chaos of blood.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Roland, where are you? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Listen, I need to get hold of Francis. Have you seen him?”

“Why, yes. He was here with a woman just moments ago. They’ve left, though.”

 
“Did they say where they were going?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Just do me a favor, will you? Stay at home until I get there.”

“Are you coming over right now?”

“No. I’m sorry, but this isn’t done yet. I have to find Francis first. I’ll be home later. Promise me you’ll stay there.”

“I promise.”

“Okay. I love you, Beatrice.”

“I love you, too, Roland.”

Chapter 26

I knew instinctively where they were headed—the Old Ensley airstrip. Whatever Francis had been doing out there on that first night I saw him, he had lied about. That was still a big part of whatever was really going on. Something had told me that Mary hadn’t told me the whole truth, either, and I was beginning to suspect that whatever it was no one was telling me, it was all tied in with whatever was going on out there. I needed to talk to both of them.
 

It was still early, and since whatever goings-on at the airstrip apparently took place at night, I turned the car toward the apartment building that I had trailed Francis to a few days before. Hopefully the two lovebirds were hiding there while awaiting their getaway, and hopefully I could make them both sing.

Chapter 27

Mad Dog Maddox had been following Mary for several days. She was as boring as she was pretty, Mad Dog had decided. She never went anywhere, just sat in her apartment and waited on her boyfriend, the Italian guy that everyone called Francis, to stop by. Lately he stopped by often, but never stayed long. He carried in groceries and newspapers, and once he had even carried in some big stuffed animals.
 

Mad Dog had thought that odd, but had decided that maybe they were just gifts for the girl, since she was always stuck there alone. The apartment was something set up by Francis to keep Mary out of danger. Mad Dog was good at following and observing, however. He was so good, in fact, that a paranoid Mafioso hadn’t spotted him.

A couple of days before, Mad Dog had gained entry into a vacant building across from Mary’s apartment and had set up shop. He had a table and chairs, and a telescope and a camera. Longshot had told Mad Dog to keep an eye on the woman, and that’s just what he was doing. So far, though, his cell phone had been silent. He sometimes thought about calling Longshot to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten his own order, but he quickly dismissed the notion. You didn’t call Longshot, he called you.

Mad Dog sat in a chair and watched Mary move around her living room. The lights were out in the apartment where he kept his vigil, because the power had been shut off in the whole building. Mad Dog adjusted the telescope and got a closer look at Mary. She really was a pretty lady. He wished that he could meet her and talk to her. Oscar suddenly brushed against his leg, panting.

Suddenly the puppy started barkiing. Mad Dog wondered if Mary could hear the racket Oscar was making. Panic rose within him. If he blew his cover, Lonnie would be insane with anger. “What’s the matter, Oscar? What’s the matter, boy? Oscar, quiet down!”

As Mad Dog leaned over and scooped up the puppy, the door exploded. Mad Dog tossed the puppy aside, and grabbed his .357 off the table. He dropped the first man with a single shot to the chest, actually blew him back through the door. Another man filled the doorway and managed to get off a round from his shotgun before Mad Dog killed him, too. The shotgun blast destroyed the telescope and blew the window to bits.