The Burning Day Read Online Free PDF

thanks . . . thank you!” the old man behind the counter managed nervously.
    “Well, bye then, and thanks yourself. For the puppy, I mean.”
    With that, Mad Dog stepped over the two dead gunmen and opened the door to leave. With a little smile, he moved the door back and forth a bit in order to create a little extra tinkle from those brass bells, because he thought the puppy might like that.
    “You know what?” he said to the puppy. “I’m gonna name you Oscar.”

 
    Chapter 5
     
    Detective Lieutenant Lester Broom had a problem, a big problem, not that he wasn’t used to them. He was senior detective on Birmingham’s Homicide Unit, and one of the most senior in the whole Detectives Bureau. He’d been a cop a long time, and seen a lot of things, but he’d never had the problem that confronted him today. Two dead Italian males in a hardware store. He’d seen worse, of course. The major problem was what they represented to him and his partner, Detective Cassandra Taylor. The two dead men were mob guys, and a hit like this demanded payback, whatever its causes.
    “From what the owner is telling us, looks like these guys showed up at the wrong time. They showed up to put the squeeze on the place for protection, and one of Lonnie’s boys was already here to collect,” Broom mused aloud, considering silently that this was what the papers and news had been bracing for. This was the trigger event that would bring the shooting out in the open.
    “This means open mob war.” Cassandra said what Broom was thinking, what he couldn’t help but think.  
    Broom nodded in agreement. “The Ganato crew will have to hit Lonnie back now, to show they’re still in control. They just buried Little Tony a week ago, and we haven’t seen their reaction for that, and now this. Longshot Lonnie must have finally gone over the edge. Ganato’s got him outclassed and outgunned. Now they’ll come after him with both barrels, and we’ll be lucky if no innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire.”  
    Broom looked over Cassandra’s shoulder, not hard for someone around seven feet tall, since she was only five-five or so. “How’s the owner?”
    “Shaken up. Detective Moss is taking his statement, but the old guy’s pretty rattled. Couldn’t give us much in the way of a description of the shooter.”
    “Understandable. Most people come a little unglued if they see people shot down right in front of them. But he may not want to. Lonnie’s boy might have saved his hide.”
    “If we’re lucky, maybe both crews will just kill each other off,” Cassandra said.
    “That’s just what we have to stop.”
    “Why? I say we’ll be better off if they make themselves extinct.”
    Broom shook his head. “No, Cassie. Not really.”
    Cassie’s green eyes flashed. “What does that mean, Les? Are you telling me that you have some kind of sympathy for these crooks? After all that we’ve seen them do over the years?”
    “Cassie, If I could put all of these guys in one big sack and throw it in the Cahaba River, I would, and that would be fine and dandy with me, as a man. But I can’t do that. Sometimes I just want to forget I’m a cop and let them take care of each other. Half the crime in Birmingham and the Metropolitan area goes back to these two and their outfits. We can’t, though. We took an oath, and I’m going to keep that oath, because it’s what makes me who I am. That doesn’t mean I won’t put these guys out of business. So help me God, I will. The first chance I get, they’ll go down, one by one, or in a bunch. But I’m going to take them down by the book. Because once a cop gets out of the book, sister, they’ve broken the oath, and they’ve become part of the thing I’m fighting against, the way I see it. That means I have to take them down, too.”
    “Whoa. Easy, big guy. I didn’t say I was going vigilante, or anything.”
    “I know that. But that’s what worries me. Some cops do. I’ve seen it. We