The Burning Day (5 page)

“Are we done here?” Moss asked. It was obvious Cassandra was getting on his nerves.

“For now.”
 

The two younger detectives stood and stretched, then walked slowly out of the room in search of coffee, or maybe the restroom. Broom watched them go. They were both right, and they were both wrong, he thought.
 

Detective Lester Broom smiled to himself. He knew a lot of secrets, and he was the sole keeper of many of them. Neither Cassandra Taylor or young Lancelot Moss knew that he had a spy in Lonnie’s camp, a spy who had been there for many months. He went over and pulled the door to the room shut and took out his cell phone. Then he punched in a number that he kept only in his head.

Chapter 7

Mad Dog Maddox went back to his boss’s place to deliver the news. His boss made him nervous. You never knew where you stood with the guy. Longshot Lonnie O’Malley had a blue eye and a green eye, and a thick shock of yellow-gold blond hair. He was also astigmatic. The eyes looked off into different worlds unless he was concentrating on something. Then they would both focus in like two serpents that have both noticed a prey’s movement.

Lonnie also had two sides to him, a cold logical side and a demonic, volatile, explosively mean side. The sides of his character sort of matched his eyes. You never knew which one you were going to get, the cool blue eye or the poisonous green one. Mad Dog had discovered that the best thing to do was stand expressionlessly until Lonnie decided whether he was angry with you or you had done something good.

Today, Lonnie wasn’t mad. In fact, he seemed positively upbeat. “Forget about the hardware store. It’s small change, anyway. You did a good job icing those two Ganato thugs. The more of them taking the dirt nap, the better. The nerve of that wop, tryin’ to muscle in on my territory.” The green eye glittered and the blue eye beamed. “Say, that’s one cute puppy,” Lonnie said. He reached over and petted Oscar. Mad Dog still held the puppy in the crook of his left arm. The canvas bag of money was on Lonnie’s desk.
 

Mad Dog liked the way Lonnie talked. He spoke with an Irish accent, since he had been born there and lived there until his early teens. Lonnie liked to think of his crew as the Irish mob, Mad Dog knew, but in truth he just liked to hire guys with last names that were of Celtic origin. “Mad Dog” Maddox, “Pullover” Patrick Mullally, “Murderous” Pete Lonagan, Johnny “Shakes” Sheehan, and others were all in his employ, and all had Scotch-Irish or Welsh names. It made Lonnie feel closer to home, Mad Dog figured.

The two of them were in Lonnie’s office, which was located in the back of Finnegan’s Bar. Lonnie had taken over the bar after Tim Finnegan, the owner, had gotten in over his head with gambling debts. Now, Tim Finnegan worked out front, just like always, but Lonnie owned the place and never let Tim forget it.

Lonnie had decorated the office the way he liked, with leather couches and a big, expensive-looking desk. The work he did there usually consisted of drinking and playing cards with the boys. He did those things, and gave orders to Mad Dog and his colleagues.
 

Lonnie moved around behind his desk now. There was a bottle of Bushmills Irish Whisky on the desk, and a couple of glasses. Lonnie sat down and poured a belt in each glass and nodded and leaned back in his chair. Mad Dog picked his glass up and stood there, waiting.

“I got a new job for you, Mad Dog,” Lonnie said through his alligator smile. He twirled his glass and looked at the pale amber of the whiskey as though the details of Mad Dog’s new mission were revealed somewhere there in its depths. “I need you to keep an eye on somebody for me.”

Suddenly, the door opened behind Mad Dog and a stunning, olive-skinned woman with long thick black hair entered. It was Dextra, Lonnie’s girlfriend. Mad Dog immediately became nervous. Dextra always made Mad Dog nervous because she would flirt with him openly in front of Lonnie, who seemed either to think it amusing or not to notice, depending on which eye and personality held sway at the moment. Like Lonnie, though, Dextra had two sides, and sometimes she was cruel to Mad Dog, and would make fun of him in subtle ways. But she was very pretty, so he was in awe of her. This only added to his nervousness.

She let out an “Aw,” and petted the puppy that Mad Dog held, letting the side of one red-nailed finger trail across Mad Dog’s cheek as she walked past him.

“His name’s Oscar,” Mad Dog said aloud. Neither Lonnie or Dextra seemed to hear him.

“Kevin and me are talking business, Dexie.”
 

“Oh, all right. I’ll let you talk ‘man talk’ if you give me some shopping money.”

Lonnie smiled and upended the canvas bag on the desk. Several hundred dollars fell onto the desktop, bills of every denomination. With an intense “hmm,” Dextra hunted around and helped herself to the larger bills, and bent over and gave Lonnie a long kiss.

“That’s nice, my dove, but it’s really not me you should be thanking,” Lonnie said with a bemused smile. “It was Mad Dog here that financed your little shopping trip.”

Dextra turned, with a similar smile, and draped her arms around Mad Dog. Not a hug, exactly, her body away from his, just her forearms resting on his shoulders and her hands meeting somewhere behind his head. But she brought her forehead up against his and touched the tip of his nose with her own. “Thank you.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. Then she was gone, leaving him standing there, catching his breath, and Longshot Lonnie O’Malley shaking with laughter behind his desk.

“Let’s have that drink now,” Lonnie said.

Mad Dog was not really a drinking man, but he gulped down the Bushmills Irish Whisky anyhow, and he understood, really for the first time in his life, what it meant when he heard men say that they needed a drink.

Lonnie gulped his own whisky, and watched Dextra’s retreating backside with open admiration. He shook his head.
 

“Dextra . . . what a gal. Imagine, me of all people, hooking up with an Italian. Least ways, they’re good Catholics.” Lonnie let out a short ironic laugh. Mad Dog didn’t understand the joke, but had long ago learned better than to ask. He continued to stand at loose attention, and a warm glow started to spread around the edges of his vision. That Bushmills was some powerful stuff, he mused.

“Well, all right, then, back to business,” Lonnie said, rubbing his hands together. His blue eye sparkled and the green eye glared. “Since we were just speaking of women, here’s one for you. I need this fine piece of skirt followed.” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a large photograph. He pushed the picture across the desk blotter, through the remainder of the small bills that Dextra hadn’t bothered with.
 

Mad Dog bent to take a look at the photo. He stared at a red-headed woman, in her thirties, maybe. She had a keen, intelligent look in her eyes, and a dazzling smile full of perfect white teeth.

“She’s pretty,” Mad Dog said.

“Her name,” said Lonnie, his blue eye rolling around and centering on Mad Dog, “is Mary Wiggins.”

Chapter 8

His name was Johnny Sheehan, but everybody called him Johnny Shakes. Not because he had a nervous disorder, but because when he had first started hanging out in bars he had always asked for Vodka martinis, shaken not stirred, just like he’d seen in those James Bond movies. Of course he’d never watched one all the way through and didn’t know enough to call it a Vesper martini, but that was Johnny “Shakes” Sheehan—all flash and no substance.

Johnny was ostensibly in the employ of Longshot Lonnie O’Malley as a numbers runner. “Ostensibly” because he had rolled over on Lonnie a year or so earlier regarding some unpleasant goings-on in the old mid-town district. The cop who had sweated him had promised that he would never tell a soul that Johnny had talked, as long as Johnny played ball. Johnny had agreed. The problem was, the ballgame was never over.

The cop had made it clear to Johnny that he worked for
him
now, regardless of how much money Lonnie paid him. Johnny also got money from the cop, of course, but he was getting so stressed out from the secret meetings and the everyday dangers of informing on Longshot Lonnie that his nickname was taking on a whole new meaning. He’d caught himself shaking for real a time or two in the past few months.

Now, here he was, hanging around in a back alley behind a restaurant, waiting on the cop like a junkie waits on his pusher. It was a warm evening, and Johnny was getting a powerful whiff of the restaurant’s dumpster.
 

Hurry the hell up, cop, he thought to himself, but almost at once regretted his wish, because he caught sight of the cop, now, coming his way. Not that he was all that hard to spot. Detective Lieutenant Lester Broom stood close to seven feet tall, Johnny figured. If there was one person in the world that Johnny was more afraid of than Longshot Lonnie O’Malley, it was Detective Lester Broom. So when Broom had called him late in the night and told him to meet him behind this particular restaurant on this particular street next to this particular dumpster, Johnny had made sure that he was in the specified location at the specified time.
 

Broom walked up to him and turned and looked back up the alley, like a guy in a spy movie. “Johnny,” Broom said. “thanks for coming.”

“Like I got a choice,” Johnny said, matter-of-factly. “You got those tapes of me running my mouth, hanging over my head.”

“Well, Johnny, that’s the way things are. I hate to do that to you, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you wouldn’t be so cooperative if I didn’t have those tapes as leverage. Now, isn’t that so?”

Johnny said nothing to that, merely shrugged. “Whatever. So what is it this time, Broom?”

Broom took a moment before responding. Johnny figured that the giant cop might backhand him because of his smart mouth, but he didn’t. At any rate, Johnny decided to tone it down a bit, as a precaution. He didn’t like helping the cops, but he liked the idea of being in traction even less. And Broom might accidentally put him there.
 

At length, Broom finally spoke. “You know what it is, this time, Johnny. Don’t play dumb with me. Longshot Lonnie has some kind of a plan to hit Don Ganato’s crew, maybe even planning to take the Don out. That’s no easy chore. I’m worried some people in my city might get hurt. So, I need to know what his plan is.”

Johnny held up his hands as if to ward off a blow. “Whoa, Detective Broom, I mean, come on. Lonnie and Don Ganato have had it in for each other for years. We all know that.”

“And now they’re killing off each other’s soldiers, one here, two there. That only leads to one thing, Johnny, and that’s all-out war. You say they’ve been after each other for years, and you’re right. The reason no one has gone to war is because Don Ganato was always stronger, and besides, he didn’t want the attention that outright hits would bring, and years ago Lonnie was too weak to go after the Ganato Family. So what’s changed now? Why is Lonnie provoking Don Ganato with these latest shootings?”

“Broom. Look at me.” Johnny was sweating now. “For Christ’s sake, I’m just a numbers runner. I mean, Lonnie talks to me some, but he don’t tell me that kind of stuff. We’re poker and drinking buddies, at best. I mean, are you crazy? If I go nosing around into Lonnie’s plans, he’ll be on to me in five seconds flat. He’s crazy, but he’s just as smart as he is crazy, Broom.”

Broom put one big hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “I’m not asking you to do anything that’s going to get you hurt. But I have to have information. Lonnie is planning to move against Don Ganato soon, and I need to know how, where and when. Most of all, I need to know what that move’s going to be.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Johnny asked, a whine in his voice.

“You haven’t attended one of Lonnie’s poker games lately.”

“I been in Dutch with him.”

“For how much?” Broom asked, with a note of what seemed genuine concern.

“I’m down two large.”

“You don’t say.” Broom smiled and reached in his pocket, and pulled out an envelope.
 

Johnny immediately wished he’d quoted a larger figure than the two grand he actually owed Lonnie.

“Here.” Broom thrust the envelope towards Johnny. “Approved operating funds. Take this to Lonnie and tell him that you’ve come to settle up, and you want in on the next game.”

“Okay.” Johnny took the envelope and resisted the urge to tear it open immediately. “When you’re in the game, I want you to keep your ears open for anything that he and the others say about their plot against the Ganato crew. Anything you hear, and I mean anything, you beat a path to a phone and pass it on to me. And no fairy tales. You play games with me, and I’ll give you a cold, hard dose of reality. Got that?”

“Got it,” was all that Johnny Shakes said. Broom walked away without another word.

Johnny opened the envelope, and counted the hundreds inside. Two thousand dollars, and not a penny more. Johnny frowned sourly as he folded the money and put it into his pocket. Broom, he thought with a bitter smile. That son of a bitch knew all along that I owed Longshot two grand. He’d already had the money counted out and in his pocket, which meant Johnny would have to stake himself in the game with Lonnie using his own money.