The Burning Day (7 page)

It would be a lonely place to get stuck, I decided. At long last the airfield itself came into view. It was quite dark now, but there were streetlights on out on the empty stretch of parking lot. From a distance, and in the poor illumination, it looked remarkably like one would expect an intact airfield to look. There were hangers and a wide expanse of tarmac stretching into the distance, all dominated by a large central building with an observation tower. The odd thing was, the place could have leaped to life from a brochure printed about 45 years or so before. The architecture was probably cutting edge in 1962; now it was a quaint relic.

The illusion of timelessness fell apart as I drew closer, and I began to see the signs of disuse everywhere. Thick clumps of weed stuck up through the cracked tarmac where nature had patiently worn holes in the thick landing surface. There were gaps in the sides of some of the hangers where the wind had carried away pieces of the tin sheeting. Still there were other tracks through the grass leading up to the place. The ground was littered with empty fast food containers and soda cans—signs that people had been here recently.

I pulled up near what had once been the baggage claim area, and got out of the car. The main building was a smaller version of the all-in-one terminal I had visited earlier at the present-day Bessemer Airport. Double doors greeted me. They yawned open to the area where people would have, long ago, awaited departures and arrivals. The control tower was built right on top of the structure.

Twin arcs in the thick dust showed that the double doors had been forced open quite recently. The doors had once been locked securely; a chain looped between the double door handles was still shiny at the point where it had been pinched in half with bolt cutters. I wasn’t alone out here, I realized, and in all likelihood, whoever was in the building had observed my approach from the tower. I pulled my .45 and backed away slowly.

I heard a stealthy footstep on some stairs somewhere in the dark interior. I ducked back around the side of the building and waited for them to come out. Then, something I didn’t expect happened. I heard the creak of a door on the other side of the building. Cursing the fluke of biology that gives a man a back and no eyes back there to keep tabs on things, I spun and brought my gun up. I faintly heard quick footfalls receding. Whoever had been inside the building was running away over the tarmac.

Why would they wait until I made it all the way up here to run away, I wondered. And why run across the tarmac, where they would be the most visible? I stepped out to the corner and watched the figure recede. I had known from the footfalls it wasn’t Mary. I saw the back of a man in a running suit, veering towards the woods alongside the landing strip. Then I heard gunfire.

Pop, pop, pop. The sound of a pistol, back off to the other side of the building. Surely no one was firing at the running man. With a pistol, it would have been an impossible shot. Maybe there’s more than one person, and they’re shooting at each other. As if to confirm my thoughts, there was immediately a more sullen report; The low slap, slap of someone double-tapping a bigger gun, maybe a .45 like my own.
 

I worked my way around to the other side of the building and was greeted by the stutter of automatic weapons fire. I had heard that sound before, in the military. The grating rip of an MP5 sounded, and this time metal on a building nearby rang when a rapid burst of bullets tore into it. I hit the ground. It was getting hot out there, and it might get a lot hotter.
 

Down the runway, lights flared on. Someone in the tower had turned the runway lights on. They were dimmer than they should have been, and it looked like only every third one had been switched on. Then, another set of lights blinked on at the end of the runway. There was a plane sitting out there. Now the sound of the engine reached me. I smiled to myself in surprise. Someone was flying a plane out of there, regardless of what the old man at the newsstand had said. It was a private affair, too, apparently, and someone felt strongly about that fact. The gunfire proved that.

The lights from the runway didn’t improve my situation. Nothing was visible beyond the glare. I lay there on the tarmac, which was still shedding heat from the day. Finally, I reasoned that since they weren’t shooting at me, anyway, whoever was shooting had either not seen me, or had taken no interest in me. Either way was fine with me. I got up and decided to slip back into the darkness, go to my car, and get the hell out of there.
 

I backed away through the breezeway between the hangers, because that was a wide expanse of open asphalt that was mostly hidden in darkness from either side. I looked out to the edge of the pavement to where my car sat. No one appeared to be around. I walked quickly to the car and, while I was fishing my keys out of my pocket, I heard a familiar voice say, “Put your hands up for me, Longville, and turn around. Nice and slow.”

I put my arms over my head, keys in one hand, gun in the other, and turned slowly. A man stood in the darkness, alongside one of the empty hangers. He had been squatting there, waiting. He held an automatic weapon; an MP5, I was willing to bet.

“Hello, Francis,” I said to him.

Francis Lorenzo and I knew each other well, though you wouldn’t call us friends. He was the right hand man—the FBI would say a Capo—of Don Ganato, local mafia boss and racketeering entrepreneur.
 

“Hiya, Longville,” he said, and I could see his grin from ten feet away, even in the gloom. He was basking in the fact he’d gotten the drop on me. “I had you there,” he said, confirming my thoughts.
 

I laid my gun down on the hood of my car, and then put the keys down for good measure. I lowered my now-empty hands.

“Mind if I ask what you’re doing out here, Longville?” Francis asked in a polite voice.

“I’m working on a case. Nothing special. I got lost. Took a wrong turn. I guess I just don’t know Bessemer that well.”

“You don’t say,” Francis said, and his grin flared again.

“You boys getting in a little target practice?” I asked.

His face grew serious for a second. “Some of Lonnie’s boys tried to stop us from what we were doing. I don’t think anybody got hit. I think we scared them off, though.”

“Do tell. What was it you were doing?”

Francis shrugged. “Putting a package on a plane, is all. No big deal.” Francis lowered his gun. Then he said in a low, calm voice, “Go on, Longville, get yourself going. I just needed to check out who was up here. Take your gun and get out of here.”
 

Mildly astonished, I slowly picked my gun up and put it away, then my keys. I walked to my car and opened the door. Francis called out to me. “Hey, Longville. Roland . . . hold up a minute.”
 

Francis walked up to me. “You going to be around your office tomorrow?” he asked in a whisper.

“I can be.”
 

Francis looked behind him in the gloom, then looked back at me again. “I told Frederico and Joe to wait down by the river. We gotta go now. But listen. Around noon, I’m comin’ by your office to see you. I want to talk to you about a certain thing.”

“I’ll be there.”

He walked away into the darkness. Confused now beyond words, I got into the car and backed out carefully. I turned around and made my way back up the muddy road, heading through the darkness for more civilized parts of the world.

Chapter 10

She was waiting when I drove up. As I approached the door, she flung it open and ran into my arms. Her parents were both Italian, and it showed in her flawless olive colored skin, jet black hair and beautiful dark eyes. She is so incredibly beautiful.

Beatrice. Pronounced the Italian way, it has four syllables, and that’s how I think of her privately, She of the Four Syllables. Bee-uh-TREE-chee. My Beatrice. We are in love. She held me close for a long time, and then looked up at me. “I heard Francis speaking with my uncle. I know there was a gun fight. I heard him say that you were there. I have been so worried.”

Beatrice’s uncle was Don Ganato, head of the local Mafia. What can I say, my life is complicated. Her mother, Don Ganato’s sister, had died of cancer several years ago, and Ganato had appointed himself the caretaker of Beatrice and her younger brother, Tony. However, Ganato hadn’t done such a good job protecting Tony, who had been gunned down dealing drugs on an Ensley street just a little over two weeks ago. Now, all that Beatrice had in the world was me, and a few craggy male relations who were all mobbed up.

I shrugged, though I couldn’t lie to her. “There was some shooting. I was on the sidelines, though. I wasn’t one of the interested parties. I was never in any danger.”

“Don’t make fun, Roland. I thought that I would die when I heard Francis say your name. They are wondering what you were doing out there.”

“So your uncle sent them out there?”

“I don’t think so . . . but I don’t really know.” She asked me again, “What were you doing out there?”

I kissed her gently and took her in my arms. “What I’m always doing, when things get rough. My job. But that’s enough for now. Let’s talk inside.”

We went into her apartment and sat down. It felt good to relax. The earlier excitement had left me a little tense. She took my face in both her hands and kissed me.

“I worry about you so. I wish you could stop being a cowboy, sometimes.”

I kissed her back, then I kissed her neck and whispered in her ear through her soft black hair, “I’m not a cowboy. They ride horses. I’m a detective.”

She started unbuttoning my shirt. “Detective. Knight in shining armor. Cowboy. They are all the same, there is a worried woman somewhere. I worry because I love you.”

I pulled her close and looked into those beautiful dark eyes. “I love you, too. Nothing is going to happen to me, to us. I promise.”

She smiled and leaned back away from me, and I pulled my shirt off. I started unbuttoning hers.
 

“You have work to do here, tonight, I think, mister detective,” she said. Then she pulled her blouse off, revealing a lacy black lingerie bra and dusky Mediterranean skin.

Time to get to work, indeed.

Chapter 11

I went in search of an old friend the next day. I found him just where I thought I would, in the basement, poring over a thick file.
 

“Tiller.” I called his name, and he looked up, gave a grunt, and tried to suppress a smile.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the long lost Mr. Roland Longville. What brings you down to the bowels of the Cold Case Dungeon on such a fine spring day?”

“Nothing official. I was over at headquarters looking into a case from some years back. They told me that it had fallen off the active ledger. I knew that meant that it was now down here, in your bailiwick.”

Tiller snorted. “Give an old codger a break, here, Roland. Your cases are never ‘official,’ as I recall. But somehow, they always end up that way. A cold case, huh? Well, as you know better than anyone, cold cases are my meat and drink. But in just the metropolitan area alone, there are more cold cases than Simpson and I can handle.”

“Simpson and I?”

“You didn’t know? Yeah, they finally gave me an assistant. Sgt. Simpson just made detective a couple of months ago. I think the Chief is finally getting it through his head I’m really going to retire one of these years, so I think that I am supposed to teach the lad everything a lifetime of experience has taught me. Christ, I was on the U.S.S Saratoga, halfway through my third cruise of the Mediterranean, when young Detective Simpson was born.”

“I remember Simpson from his patrol days. I’m sure he’ll do great, with you guiding the way. He couldn’t ask for a better teacher.”

This drew another grunt from Tiller. He was a genius, albeit a rather grumpy one, who had long ago decided the rest of the world needed to get its act together. He was also more than a little bit of a curmudgeon at times. It worried me some times that I agreed with him so much. It made me think that maybe I was becoming something of an old curmudgeon, too.

Tiller popped his knuckles and laced his fingers behind his head, and said, “So, tell me about this cold case of yours.”

“It all happened about ten years ago, Tiller. There was a businessman named Carlton Silvers. He was killed in what appeared to be a car accident. The detective who worked it is retired now, but he seemed to recall that the wife’s name was Mary. I was hoping to get a look at her photo, but the file had been sent down here. I think she might be the same person as someone I’m currently trying to locate.”

“Of course it happened years ago. That’s why they call them cold cases. Just out of curiosity, though, is this ‘Mary’ that you’re trying to find now married to another rich businessman?”

“Well, I know how it looks. I don’t know about rich, but he’s got the trappings: nice cars, nice house, and he’s an accountant. Let’s say ‘well-to-do’ at the very least.”

Tiller harrumphed and rose from the table where he’d been sitting when I’d come in.

“Anything to take a break from this one I’m currently working on. I’m going over some old GTA reports, using my considerable deductive powers in an attempt to divine the locations of local chop shops.”