Streets of Fire

TWENTY

An enormous bright-red fire engine roared down the avenue as Ben and Coggins walked back out onto the sidewalk. Several firemen clung to its right side, the wind slapping wildly at their black rubber jackets. They leaned outward slightly as the engine careened around the far corner of Kelly Ingram Park, then came to a halt, half-hidden behind a wall of large elm trees.

‘I wonder if the Chief gave them a talk this morning, too,’ Coggins said with a small laugh. He turned to Ben. ‘What do we do now?’

‘Hit some other places,’ Ben told him.

‘Why?’ Coggins asked. ‘We know that ring could have been bought anywhere.’

Ben did not answer. He kept his eyes on the park. Lines of highway patrolmen were assembling barricades at the downtown corner of the park. Just behind them, several firemen were unspooling yards of flat black water-hose while small groups of pedestrians looked on wonderingly.

‘You don’t think the killer could be a woman, do you?’ Coggins asked.

For an instant Ben saw Doreen’s ravaged body, the caked blood which was smeared across her thighs. ‘No,’ he said.

‘But can you really be sure about that?’ Coggins asked. ‘I mean, you know, it’s possible that — ’

‘There was semen in her,’ Ben told him abruptly.

Coggins’ face froze. ‘Semen? You mean that little girl was raped?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t tell me that.’

Ben looked at him. ‘It was after she was dead. Somebody killed her, then raped her.’ He shook his head. ‘And whoever it was, you can be sure it wasn’t a woman.’

Coggins’ eyes drifted away from him and out toward the street. For a moment, all his attention seemed to center on a hand-lettered sign in the window across the way: BETSY’S IRONING TREATMENT — BEST IN BIRMINGHAM. ‘All right,’ he said finally, ‘what next?’

‘The poolhalls,’ Ben told him. ‘And after them, nothing.’

There were only two poolhalls on the avenue, and the first was only a block away. Ben and Coggins made their way steadily through the shifting crowds, walking shoulder to shoulder, despite the odd looks of the people they passed along the street. Coggins walked stiffly, as if trying to control a slowly building fear. His eyes darted left and right, but his face remained rigidly in place, and as he walked along beside him, Ben noticed that parallel lines of perspiration had gathered on his forehead.

‘Where is this poolhall?’ Coggins asked shakily as they stopped for a traffic signal at the end of the block.

‘Just a block ahead,’ Ben told him.

Coggins’ hands dipped into his pockets, then came out again. He bounced slightly on the balls of his feet.

‘What’s the matter?’ Ben asked.

Coggins’ eyes shot over to him. ‘Nothing.’

‘You look a little jumpy,’ Ben said.

‘This neighborhood,’ Coggins admitted, ‘I’m not used to it.’ He nodded toward the lines of Negroes that gathered across the street, idly waiting for the light to change. ‘I don’t know any of these people.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I’m a law student at Columbia, for Christ’s sake. I’ve lived my whole life in Ensley.’

Ben said nothing.

‘I’m a middle-class Negro, goddammit,’ Coggins added vehemently, ‘I don’t belong down here.’ A nervous laugh broke from him, thin and edged with self-mockery. ‘My mother never shopped on Fourth Avenue.’ He glared at Ben helplessly. ‘She goes to New York to shop. She shops in Bloomingdale’s, for God’s sake.’ His eyes snapped forward as the light changed and the milling crowd of Negroes swept toward him like a high black tide. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he whispered quickly as he stepped off the curb, ‘but you really picked the wrong guy for this deal.’

Ben continued to walk beside him as the thickening crowds swarmed around them. Coggins looked as if he’d been gathered into the tentacles of some strange dark beast, but he moved boldly forward anyway, his head held almost artificially high, as if he were trying to give off an attitude of complete control.

‘There it is,’ Ben said as they neared the first poolhall.

Coggins nodded apprehensively but maintained his stride. He did not stop until he reached the door. Then he pressed his back to the front wall.

‘Okay,’ he asked, ‘what now?’

‘We go in,’ Ben told him.

‘And do what, exactly?’

‘Ask a few questions.’

‘And what if the people inside don’t feel like answering them?’

‘Then we’ll leave,’ Ben said with a shrug. ‘What else can we do?’

The simplicity of the answer seemed to ease Coggins’ nervousness a bit. He drew in a slow deep breath, as if preparing for a long dive into dangerous waters.

‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s go.’

A smoky gray light engulfed them as they stepped into the poolhall. Inside, two rows of about twenty tables stretched the length of the room, each resting beneath its own shaded fluorescent light. A jukebox ground out Little Richard’s latest number, and the men who were waiting to shoot rocked to its beat while they stood back from the table and watched their opponents’ moves. An ancient Coca-Cola machine was wedged in between two cigarette machines at the back of the hall, and the side walls were covered with advertisements and pinup girl calendars.

For an instant everything went on as usual, but then it stopped abruptly. The low murmur of conversation dropped into an eerie silence, and even the men who had begun to calculate their shots froze in place and stared at Ben and Coggins as the two of them continued to stand at the front of the room, their bodies backlighted by the still open door.

Coggins shifted nervously, then offered a toothy grin. ‘How y’all doing?’ he bawled cheerfully.

No one spoke.

Again Coggins shifted from one foot to the next. ‘Listen, I want to talk to you fellows about something. ‘

Silence.

‘You guys may have heard about this little girl who got killed over in Bearmatch,’ Coggins continued. ‘The fact is, I’m trying to find out who did it, you know?’

Several of the men sat back on the edges of the tables and stared mutely at Coggins.

Coggins nodded toward Ben. ‘This fellow, here, he’s helping me out a little. He’s from the Justice Department. He works with Robert Kennedy.’

The men did not seem impressed.

‘He’s been sent down from Washington, you know,’ Coggins went on wildly. ‘We figure some… some cracker killed that little girl, and we aim to find out who it was.’ He turned swiftly and snapped the ring out of Ben’s jacket pocket. ‘You see this?’ he asked as he lifted it to the crowd.

All eyes turned toward the ring, but no one spoke.

‘This ring just might have belonged to the guy who killed that little girl,’ Coggins explained shakily. ‘Yeah, that’s right. And the thing is, it had chalk dust all over it. You know, like you use here on your pool cues.’

A loud, husky voice came from somewhere in the back of the room. ‘What color?’

Coggins’ eyes searched the room. ‘What was that?’

‘What color was the chalk dust?’ the voice answered.

‘Yellow,’ Ben said.

Suddenly a small man in a floppy gray hat and bright-red bow tie stepped out of the crowd. ‘We don’t use yellow in this poolhall,’ he said. He picked a small cube of chalk from the table beside him and tossed it to Ben.

‘We use blue chalk here,’ the man said. ‘That’s all we’ve ever used.’ He glanced around at the other men and smiled. ‘Ain’t that right?’

‘That’s right,’ someone said.

‘Uh huh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s right, Larry.’

The man walked over to Coggins. ‘Ain’t I seen you before?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Coggins told him.

‘When all them kids was marching down the street,’ Larry said. ‘Didn’t I see you with one of them little walkie-talkies, sort of in charge of things?’

‘Well, maybe,’ Coggins said slowly. ‘I was monitoring the demonstration?’

‘Say what?’

‘Keeping tabs on things,’ Coggins added. ‘Watching out for the kids.’

Larry laughed. ‘Yeah, I thought I seen you.’ He offered his hand. ‘Larry Sugarman. I own this place.’

Coggins grasped Sugarman’s hand and shook it vigorously. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Sugarman.’

Sugarman’s eyes slid over to Ben. ‘Robert Kennedy, huh?’

Ben said nothing.

Sugarman thrust out his hand. ‘Well, good luck to you, sir.’

Ben shook his hand.

Sugarman stepped back, smiling. ‘And as far as that yellow chalk’s concerned, they got that over at Better Days Pool Hall. You might ought to check in over there.’

‘We will,’ Coggins assured him enthusiastically. ‘We sure will, Mr Sugarman.’ He glanced back toward the other men. ‘And thank you, gentlemen,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Sorry for the interruption.’

Back on the street, Coggins drew in a deep, relaxing breath. ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he asked.

Ben glanced back toward the downtown corner of the avenue. Several fire trucks had joined the first one at the edge of the park, and the Chief’s white tank was stationed in front of them, almost like a mascot. Lines of firemen had taken up positions along the avenue and at various places within the park. Long strands of fire-hose snaked out behind them like thick black tails.

Coggins slapped his hands together happily. ‘Well, want to hit the next one?’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said quickly. He glanced down the hill to where the Highway Patrol was massing.