The Burning Day Read online

  THE BURNING DAY

  The Roland Longville Mystery Series #6

  Written by Timothy C. Phillips

  Kindle: 978-1-58124-084-9

  ePub: 978-1-58124-297-3

  ©2012 by Timothy C. Phillips

  Published 2012 by The Fiction Works

  http://www.fictionworks.com

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About the Author

  This book is dedicated to

  James Cecil Phillips, 1947-2009.

  Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea.

  For behold, the day cometh, burning like a furnace; and the wicked will be as chaff;

  and on that day that cometh, they shall all be consumed in its flames.

  — Malachi 4

  Prologue

  It was about noon when they shot Little Tony. It was a Tuesday. It had been raining, but it was clearing up when it all went down. The water vapor hissed off the streets and made the early spring day muggy and humid.

  There he was, hanging around the entrance to some run-down old building that everybody called a barber shop, although they all knew that no one had gotten their hair cut there in a very long time.

  Here’s the way it happened: Little Tony was out there on the corner, talking animatedly on his cell phone. Everybody in the neighborhood knew that he was the nephew of Don Ganato, the local mob boss, and that he was there to sell drugs. Since he was who he was, nobody said or did anything about it. Little Tony, just hanging out and selling his wares on the block. It was best not to notice.

  Cars came by and slowed and people talked to Little Tony through their lowered windows. He preferred to do business this way, people in the neighborhood whispered, because it showed people he wasn’t afraid of anything. It showed everyone that he was able to do business for himself, and he didn’t need his uncle’s say-so, or his help. It also showed what an idiot he was, because Don Ganato had run the family business in Birmingham for over thirty years and never gone to jail. He had managed to do this supremely difficult thing because he kept a low profile. Don Ganato did not approve of his nephew’s flamboyance, and had tried to counsel him and bring him into the fold repeatedly, always without success. The old ways of secrecy and keeping a low profile were lost on Little Tony. He was part of the new world and its new ways. “You gotta front, get your name out there,” he had told the Don. This contradicted everything the Don stood for, but still he tried.

  Only a month before, on Little Tony’s twenty-first birthday, Don Ganato had attempted to counsel the youth one final time. He had taken his nephew aside for a few moments of quiet reflection. Turn it down a notch, Don Ganato had advised Little Tony, before you come to grief. Little Tony had nodded but smiled slyly to his uncle. Don’t worry, he had told his uncle, it’s a brand new scene out there and I got it covered. I’m The Man. People know I’m The Man. He had spoken with such bravado and conviction that there had been a moment’s self-doubt flicker in the old Don’s eyes.

  Maybe he’s right, that flicker in the Don’s dark eyes seemed to say; the world has changed so much, and Little Tony is young . . . but it was only a flicker. After that, Don Ganato had simply shrugged and moved on. He had not spoken with Little Tony again about such matters.

  That was last month, but now it was a certain rainy Tuesday, and the grief his uncle had prophesied for Little Tony was bearing down hard upon him, though he had no way of knowing that. Little Tony was on the corner, where he was in his element and on top of his game—a game that was all about drugs and dough and hot cars and hot girls—and things were moving fast, really fast. The rain didn’t slow Little Tony’s business, because nothing slowed the drug trade. Morning, noon and night, monkeys needed feeding all over town, and Little Tony’s cell phone never stopped ringing.

  Little Tony had just dropped a quarter of pink ice on two Latina honeys in a cherry-red 1978 Grand Prix with chrome spinner rims, a classic from the ground up, and the girls had just pulled away from the curb when a brand-ass new, banana-yellow Chrysler 300 rolled slowly toward him, directional tires hissing on the still-wet pavement. The windows were tinted to a near black-out shade.

  Little Tony smiled to himself. Man, it looks like hot wheels all day today, he thought. Probably brothers, he figured, which would mean they were most likely looking for herb. That was fine because he had some kind bud in his rain slicker that would stone the most hard-core gangsta wannabe on the North Side to the point of drooling.

  The Chrysler 300 pulled up to the curb and the window cranked down. Little Tony looked up and down the street, just for show, really, since even if cops patrolled this block, which they didn’t, none of them would dare mess with him. He stepped out to the curb like a man who owned the world.

  “What’s up?” Little Tony said with practiced bravado.

  “Got a message for you, you dirty little wop,” a rough voice from inside the car growled. There was a ripping burst of gunfire. Little Anthony went down on his back, eyes staring at the sky. But after a few seconds, he didn’t see anything, and he didn’t even hear the sexy hum of the Chrysler 300’s Hemi as it roared away down the street.

  Chapter 1

  It was a bright and sunny Wednesday, a beautiful spring day in Birmingham. One hundred percent humidity sent rivers of sweat down the backs of the people, whether they were in markets, bistros or coffee shops. Power bills climbed and people panted.

  Regardless of the heat, people were on the move in the middle of the work week. The weather was relentlessly humid, because of heavy rains the day before. I had just returned from Mobile, so I had missed the rain. In Mobile, I’d been looking for a man who had dropped out of sight, leaving a pregnant wife and three children trying to survive on their own.

  The police had searched for him without any luck. They’d been looking for him in the wrong places. I’d found him, right there in Mobile, living under an assumed name, with a girl young enough to be his daughter. I usually make short work out of a case like that, and I was pretty happy, all things considered, that I’d found the man in question so quickly. He could have just as easily taken his new name and young girlfriend and headed for parts unknown. Against all odds, I was done and back home inside of a week.

  Home for me is Birmingham, a city that is sliding relentlessly into bigness and urban sprawl. It is a patchwork of rich and poor, big and little, urban noise and suburban quiet. I grew up here. I spent my childhood in the old Westmoreland Heights Housing Project after my dad didn’t make it back from Viet Nam. Mom worked as a waitress
, and put herself through school.She then became a teacher and got us out of the projects. I went from a skinny black kid to a big brown man in about five years. I stopped growing when I was around seventeen.

  I’m six-foot three and a half, and though I’ve met plenty of bigger men, my size and speed was good enough to get me onto the football team at Shade’s Valley High School. I won a scholarship to the University of Alabama, where I employed my skills as a halfback for four years while studying English Literature.

  Mom had always wanted me to follow in her footsteps, since, largely due to her tutelage, I could read from an early age and had always loved poetry and literature of all kinds. I had gone to college and majored in English, but a career in teaching didn’t await me. Instead, when I got out, I joined the army. I became a Military Policeman, and later, when I got out of the army, a civilian policeman, right back here in my old hometown, Birmingham. Later on, I’d made detective.

  I married Patricia, a young black girl I’d met in college. She was from a little town in Georgia. Life looked like it was going to follow a predictable pattern; we were going to have kids and careers and a future together. But fate seldom sits idly by when human beings think they have it all worked out.

  I made some mistakes along the way, and my young marriage turned rocky, early on. Patricia and I started fighting. It was about that time I started drinking. Not college era beer guzzling, but really hitting the sauce. Then there was a disaster, the kind of thing that changes people and their lives forever. I’d failed to properly heed the advice of another officer, a young female patrol cop, and she’d been killed at a crime scene where the perpetrator had hung around and blended in with the crowd.

  I blamed myself and stuck my head in a bottle for over two years. I used up a lot of favors and burned a lot of bridges while I was drunk. That’s the way that goes. When I’d crawled out of the bottle, my wife, career and future prospects were gone.

  Sobriety was just the first of my challenges in the long crawl back up to the light. I was eventually able to transform myself into a private investigator, a very sober and reliable one. Over time, working dingy little cases of whatever kind I could find, I’d made a name for myself. Nowadays, I have a good reputation; people seek my services, sometimes for tough, high-profile cases. Not too bad for a former alcoholic from the projects, if I do say so myself.

  As I rolled into town, I cranked my window down and turned up some classic Isaac Hayes I had in the CD player. Isaac was singing about love and pain, pleading with his lady not to let go, and he sure sounded like he knew what he was singing about.

  I turned off on the Oxmoor Exit and headed toward Homewood, then took the ramp for downtown. I wanted to go by the office before I went home, to check e-mail and messages. It was sort of late in the day, so I didn’t expect to have any clients in my office.

  My secretary, a thin, pretty young brunette woman named Jeannette Oliver, looked up as I came in. She smiled a sardonic smile. “You’re going to love this,” she said, her bright blue eyes twinkling with a mischievous light. “You’ve got a surprise client, and he’s a real piece of work.”

  I had found Jeannette working for a crooked private eye in Atlanta. Things hadn’t gone well between her boss and me. By that, I mean I had shot him. Dead. I had a good reason, I promise. After a month or so, she had shown up at my office and noticed that I had no secretary, and had rather bluntly suggested that she would make a good one. Seeing as I did in fact need a secretary, and I was also the direct cause of her unemployment, I agreed. She’s been with me ever since. She is the best at what she does, and knows the business from the ground up.

  “And why would that be?” I asked, with some trepidation.

  With one slender finger, she slid a business card across her desk to me.

  Henry Wiggins, Accountant, the card proclaimed. Beneath the name there was an office address and telephone number.

  “The gentleman came in to see you while you were out. He was initially in a bit of a rush, and said that he couldn’t stay. So he left his card with me, but then I saw you drive up so I told him to wait in your office.” Jeannette’s eyes continued to twinkle with obvious amusement.

  When I walked into my office, I was wondering, at first, what Jeannette found so funny about this man named Henry Wiggins. When I saw him, things starting falling into place. He was a tall, good-looking man with thick blond hair slicked down and combed harshly to one side, and round glasses perched on his nose. Nothing funny there; he might have been a model or a real lady’s man, except for how he was dressed—for the late Nineteenth Century, that is. He was decked out in a brown tweed jacket over a gray sweater vest. Both were buttoned all the way, despite the humidity outside. Once he opened his mouth, the caricature was complete.

  “I wish you good day, Mr. Longville. A pleasure to meet you.” He reached out with a bit of a flourish, and we shook hands. I indicated that he should sit, and I went around my desk and did the same. He sat, and crossed his legs and assumed an air that was seriocomic to me, although maybe to him it was one of deadly earnest. All in all, he made me think of someone out of a Charles Dickens novel.

  Henry Wiggins had also read one too many books on how to increase his vocabulary, if his speech was any indication. Or maybe he’d been raised in a convent by very literate nuns who were a little out of touch with the modern world. All in all, he seemed like someone who had stepped out of a former time into my own.

  “Mr. Wiggins?” I asked, wondering when I’d actually last seen a sweater vest. “How can I help you?”

  “Mr. Longville, like you, I’m in business for myself. I’m a freelance accountant. I have some very high-profile clients. I am also a happily married man.”

  “Go on.” Wiggins wasn’t starting out like most people did, with tears in their eyes, going on and on about their problems, right up front. Maybe he just needed to work up to it. I sensed that he liked to hear himself talk, and since it was his dime, he was getting around to his problem in his own time, so I let him run on.

  He cleared his throat and said with great gravity, “If I do say so myself, I am a devoted husband. My marriage, I don’t mind telling you, is the focal point of my life. Now, I don’t mean to pontificate or engage in self-aggrandizement, but marriage dominates my life in every way, and it’s something to which I devote myself in a conscientious manner. My business, while important, is ultimately secondary, and all other concerns are, at best, tertiary. So, as you might suppose, I am rather reticent to reveal certain sensitive facts to you.”

  “To be blunt, if you want to hire me, Mr. Wiggins, you’d best tell me what’s on your mind.” I must have frowned. Wiggins looked disconcerted.

  “Of course—I apologize, it’s just that I don’t want to leave you with a misperception of myself or of . . . someone else . . . some idea that isn’t . . . accurate.”

  “You don’t have to worry about what I think. I’ve seen everything under the sun, a half-dozen times. It’s something that goes with this business, Mr. Wiggins. Without the details I can’t work for you, however dirty they might sound to you. So, if you please, details?

  “Of course, how rude of me, your time is money, the same as with me.” The spectacles came off and he wiped them with a checked hanky that lived in a pocket on the sweater vest. He replaced the hanky and the glasses and went on, as if simply exasperated by what he was being forced to relate.

  “It’s my wife, you see.” With a dramatic flourish, he produced something from inside his coat. I saw that it was a thumb drive, one of those tiny computer peripherals used to store files. Wiggins waved the drive before me, like a magician waves a wand before he pulls the rabbit out of the hat.

  “There are pictures of Mary on here.”

  “Mary is your wife?”

  “My wife, yes. I . . . I hate to say this, Mr. Longville, but I am beginning to harbor the suspicion that she might be cuckolding me.”

  I frowned. Wiggins’ pretentious way of speaking was ge
tting a bit tiresome after my long day. “You mean you think she’s cheating on you?”

  Wiggins took a deep, dramatic breath and let it out. Then he continued making his way through Webster’s Unabridged Collegiate Dictionary. “In essence. There have been certain signs—an inordinate number of unannounced trips to see friends and relatives overnight, extra expenditures showing up in the household budget, little things that Mary would laugh off, but that she couldn’t account for in a convincing manner. Things of that sort.”

  I sat with my fingers in a steeple, looking at the man. I said nothing. After a beat, he went on. “My profession, I’m afraid, is the cause of much of the trouble. You see, I am an accountant, as I have said, and that requires me to spend long hours away from home during certain periods of the year. Mary gets bored, I realize. So maybe her trips to friends are just that, but I must confess that I am beginning to suspect otherwise. All of which is very painful for me to contemplate.”

  “So just what is it that you want me to do, Mr. Wiggins?”

  “I need you to follow Mary, on three evenings,” he said without blinking.

  “You want me to keep your wife under surveillance for three days?”

  Wiggins looked at me as I were a truant seven-year-old who wasn’t applying himself to his math homework. “No, not on three consecutive days, Mr. Longville. Let me be clear. Rather, I would like you to keep tabs on Mary on three specific days. You see, after I became curious about some of the time that she was spending away from home, Mary and I had a little row. Nothing major; we have always had good communication in our marriage, so afterward we had a long talk.” He looked at his fingernails, frowned, and went on.