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
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