Streets of Fire

EIGHTEEN

Stacks of mattresses lined the walls of the lobby when Ben got back to headquarters the next morning, and Luther was busily directing a couple of highway patrolmen in how to carry them.

‘Over your goddamn shoulders,’ he said irritably. He heaved one onto his own shoulder. ‘Like this.’

Each of the patrolmen began wrestling awkwardly with a mattress.

Luther shook his head helplessly as he walked over to Ben. ‘Shit for brains,’ he said. ‘Where does Lingo find these assholes?’ He glanced back over to the two men. They had finally managed to hoist the mattresses to their shoulders. ‘Now take them down to the cells and throw them in with the female prisoners. The bucks can sleep on the fucking springs.’

The two men lumbered toward the stairs, one of them giggling mindlessly.

Luther turned to Ben. ‘By the way, I didn’t have time to ask you last night. What’d you find over at Kelly’s?’

‘Just the body.’

‘No sign of foul play?’

Ben shook his head. ‘Not that I could see. Daniels and Breedlove were going over the place when I left.’

Luther shrugged. ‘Well, they had nothing better to do. The rain had put a damper on the demonstrations. At least for a while.’ He glanced toward the front door where bright shafts of warm sunlight could be seen cascading through the glass. ‘Not like today. Today we’re going to get it.’

‘That guy Coggins,’ Ben said. The one Breedlove was after yesterday. Is he still in custody?’

‘I’d keep that agitating bastard in jail for twenty years, if it was me,’ Luther snapped. ‘The idea of putting little kids in jail. It makes me sick.’

‘Is he still around?’ Ben repeated.

Luther looked at him as if he were a naive little boy. ‘Well, nobody’s trying to get out, Ben. Shit, that’s the whole idea, fill up the jails.’ He shook his head. ‘We got them in Mountain Brook, Irondale, Bessemer. We’re hauling by the truckload all over Jefferson County.’ He sighed loudly. ‘When’s it going to end?’

‘Coggins,’ Ben said. ‘I want to talk to him.’

‘All right,’ Luther told him, ‘he’s in one of the cells with the rest of the male prisoners. Ask McCorkindale. He’s supposed to be keeping track of people.’ He glanced nervously at the stairs. ‘Let me go check on those two monkeys,’ he said irritably. ‘They could end up trying to stuff those mattresses down the goddamn toilet.’ Then he rushed away.

Ben found McCorkindale straddling a metal chair at the entrance to the cellblock.

‘Howdy, Ben,’ he said. ‘They got me watching the niggers.’ He frowned unhappily. ‘They’ll probably have me doing a lot of this shit now that Kelly’s gone.’

Ben looked down the hallway to the lines of cells. Scores of black hands could be seen clutching loosely to the bars.

‘Looks like you’re full up,’ he said.

McCorkindale lifted a small box of chocolate candy toward him. ‘Want one?’

‘No, thanks,’ Ben said.

McCorkindale popped one into his mouth and chewed it slowly. ‘Nothing to do down here but feed your face.’

‘I’m looking for one of the prisoners,’ Ben told him.

‘Take your pick, son,’ McCorkindale said. ‘They all look alike.’

‘Leroy Coggins.’

McCorkindale smiled. ‘Oh, one of the big boys. Got a mean mouth on him, too.’

‘Captain Starnes said you might know where he was.’

McCorkindale scratched his chin. ‘They brought him down yesterday afternoon,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He was bitching about something upstairs.’ He peered off down the hall. ‘I believe he’s in that far-left cell. You know what he looks like?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, go check that far-left cell,’ McCorkindale said. ‘I think that’s where I put him.’

Ben made his way slowly toward the cell McCorkindale had indicated. A murmur rose slowly among the prisoners as he passed them, and, as if in response to some silent cue, some of them began to sing and clap their hands. On either side, the individual cells were packed tightly. Young black men sat Indian-style on the bare springs of the metal bunks or stood, shoulder to shoulder, on the cramped cement floor. The cool which had swept over the city with the rain had not penetrated to the cellblock, and the suffocating smell of hundreds of sweaty crowded bodies thickened the air.

‘You a lawyer?’ someone called desperately as Ben continued toward the rear of the cellblock. ‘You gone git me out of here?’

In response, a chorus of boos and low moans swept the cellblock.

‘You staying like the rest of us, chickenshit,’ someone cried, and a series of cheers and catcalls broke from the stifling cells.

At the last cell, Ben stopped and looked in. Scores of young men and teenage boys milled about, and near the center of the cell one of them was urinating into the single toilet.

‘Looking for somebody, Preacherman?’ someone asked suddenly.

Ben glanced to the right and stared into a face that poked toward him from behind the bars.

‘Leroy Coggins,’ Ben said.

The man studied him a moment, then called toward the back of the cell. ‘Hey, Leroy. Preacherman’s here to see you.’

The crowd shifted about and a space opened up, as it seemed, between two dark furrows. At the end of it, Ben could see Coggins standing idly, his back to the rear wall.

‘What do you want?’ Coggins asked.

‘To talk to you.’

‘About what?’

‘That girl.’

‘Ooo wee,’ someone cried in a high, mocking voice. ‘Leroy, you got a girl?’

Coggins smiled. ‘Not one that would have anything to do with you,’ he said.

The crowd laughed.

‘That dead girl,’ Ben said.

‘She’d sure have to be dead to have anything to do with Leroy,’ the same voice shouted, and once again the crowd laughed.

Ben smiled, his eyes fixed on Coggins. ‘How about it, Mr Coggins?’ he said.

Coggins hesitated a moment, then pried himself from the wall and ambled leisurely to the front of the cell.

‘I’ve already told you everything I know,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Ben told him. He glanced down the hallway. ‘Sammy,’ he called, ‘come here a minute.’

McCorkindale lumbered down to them. ‘What can I do for you, Ben?’

‘Open up,’ Ben told him. ‘I want to take Mr Coggins out for a minute.’

McCorkindale opened the cell immediately, but Coggins did not step out of it.

‘What’s the matter?’ McCorkindale said tauntingly. ‘Scaredy-cat?’

Coggins straightened himself quickly and strode boldly out of the cell. ‘Not of anything you crackers can dish out,’ he snapped at McCorkindale.

McCorkindale’s face reddened instantly. ‘You better watch yourself, boy,’ he blurted.

Ben stepped between them and took Coggins lightly by the arm.

‘This way,’ he said as he tugged him forward quickly and led him up the stairs. He did not speak to him again until they were back in the detective bullpen.

‘You got to want to die to talk to people like you do,’ Ben said, almost lightly, as he sat down behind his desk.

Coggins remained standing, his face grim. ‘Maybe a part of me wants to do just that,’ he said.

Ben looked at him seriously. ‘Well, let the other part take over for a while,’ he said, ‘because we both know you’ve got work to do.’

Coggins face softened suddenly, but he did not move.

Ben nodded toward the empty chair which rested beside his desk. ‘I’d be much obliged if you’d take a seat.’

Coggins studied Ben’s face a moment longer, then he slowly sat down.

Ben took the purple ring from his jacket pocket and handed it to Coggins. ‘The fellow that killed that little girl — this might be his ring.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know that for sure, but right now it’s all I’ve got to go on.’

Coggins looked at the ring. ‘Well, you don’t have much, do you?’

‘No.’

Coggins laid the ring on the top of the desk. ‘I’ve never seen it. Where would I have seen it?’

‘I’m not expecting you to recognize it,’ Ben said.

Coggins leaned forward slightly. ‘Well, what exactly are you expecting, then?’

‘That ring had chalk dust all over it,’ Ben told him. ‘The kind you use on a pool cue.’

‘So?’

‘It’s the kind of ring you see down in some of those shops on Fourth Avenue.’

‘Maybe,’ Coggins said. ‘Up until recently I hadn’t spent much time down there. I’m from Ensley, remember?’

‘I was thinking it might belong to a Negro.’

‘Well, you certainly wouldn’t want it to belong to a white man.’

Ben let it pass. ‘And that this Negro just might hang around some of the poolhalls down on Fourth Avenue.’

Coggins smiled. ‘You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes,’ he said.

Ben let that pass too. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘the people who hang out on Fourth Avenue aren’t in much of a mood to talk to someone from the Police Department.’

‘Well, maybe if you had some Negro policemen in Birmingham, you wouldn’t have that problem,’ Coggins said.

‘I can’t deny that, Mr Coggins,’ Ben said. ‘I really can’t. But right now I’ve got a little girl, and I’ve got to find out who killed her.’ He looked at Coggins determinedly. ‘I got to find that out right now, not a few months or maybe even years from now, when things may be different.’

Coggins eyes returned to the ring. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘I want you to come with me down to Fourth Avenue,’ Ben said. ‘I want to go in some of those poolhalls, bring this ring with me, ask a few questions.’

Coggins looked up slowly. ‘I’m not sure I can do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because of the way it would look,’ Coggins said. ‘I mean, working with you. The way it would look to my people.’

‘You think maybe I might have the same problem with mine?’ Ben asked pointedly.

Coggins smiled but said nothing.

‘He’s still out there,’ Ben said, ‘whoever it was who killed Doreen Ballinger.’ He shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t be all that much to think about,’ he added, ‘if more little girls weren’t out there, too.’

Coggins did not speak immediately, but from the look in his eyes, Ben knew that he had won.