The Burning Day (18 page)
Authors: Timothy C. Phillips
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 the 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: