Streets of Fire

TWENTY-THREE

Fourth Avenue looked as if it had been hit by a gigantic thunder-storm as Ben drove Coggins back down toward Police Headquarters. Small oily streams flowed slowly down the gutters, pushing swirling clumps of debris along with them, and in the park across the street, long thin trenches had been dug into the earth and now rippled with pools of muddy water.

‘They can clean up all they want,’ Coggins said confidently, ‘but a demonstration leaves more behind than litter.’ His eyes shifted over toward the deserted park. Far in the distance a single fire engine winked bright red in the afternoon sunlight.

‘They can spray the streets forever,’ Coggins added. ‘They can try to make them nice and clean. But by the time it’s all over here, everybody in the world is going to know just how dirty Birmingham really is.’

Ben said nothing. He kept his eyes on the street ahead. A scattering of uniformed patrolmen was pulling down police barricades while a small contingent of the Highway Patrol watched lazily from a few yards away. One of their commanders stood in front of them, very tall and erect. His uniform was perfectly pressed, and his high black boots had been shined to a gleaming finish. He stepped out into the middle of the street, his eyes narrowing in concentration as Ben’s car approached.

Ben brought the car to a halt, and the commander stepped over to him.

‘This area is under heavy security right now,’ he said. He glanced at Coggins, then back at Ben. ‘Do you have some business being around here?’

‘I’m on my way to Police Headquarters,’ Ben told him. He took out his badge.

The commander glanced at the badge, but did not seem impressed. ‘What are you doing with this man here?’ he asked as he nodded toward Coggins. ‘Is he under arrest or something?’

‘No,’ Ben said. He glanced at the small black nameplate which had been pinned to the commander’s uniform: Halsey.

‘Well, we’ve had some trouble here today,’ the commander said, ‘and so we’re keeping a close eye on things.’

Ben nodded slowly. ‘Looks like it,’ he said. His eyes drifted to the right of Halsey’s body. He could see what looked to him like an unmarked police car, dark green and very dusty, with nearly treadless blackwall tires, parked at the edge of the park. Two men sat in the backseat, and as their faces moved in and out of the shadowy gray which engulfed the inside of the car, he could tell that one of them was Teddy Langley.

‘So my suggestion to you, Sergeant Wellman,’ the commander said, ‘is to get this man back to headquarters as soon as possible.’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said dully, his eyes still on the unmarked car.

Tod Langley suddenly emerged from behind one of the trees in the park, walked to the driver’s side of the dark-green car and got in.

‘It’s dangerous to be in this area right now,’ the commander concluded.

Ben did not answer. Instead he continued to watch as the car pulled out slowly and headed down the avenue. In the small square of light between the commander’s broad body and the end of Ben’s line of vision, Ben could see Teddy Langley’s eyes catch sight of him, then widen slightly as he peered at him through the dusty rear window of the car.

‘So be on your way,’ the commander said authoritatively as he stepped away from the car, ‘and be alert to what’s going on around you.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ Ben said as he pressed slowly down on the accelerator. In his rearview mirror, he could see the other car as it sped quickly up the still wet street. Its tires threw up a glistening fan of droplets which fell like a silver curtain through the bright air.

‘Well, I can’t say I’m exactly glad to be back,’ Coggins said as Ben closed the cell door.

‘You boys have a high old time, did you?’ McCorkindale asked with a laugh.

Ben continued to stare at Coggins. ‘I’ll let you know what I find out,’ he told him.

An odd, appreciative smile spread across Coggins’ face. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He wrapped his fingers around the bars of the cell. ‘And of course you’ll know where to find me.’

McCorkindale smiled slyly as he walked down the cellblock. ‘You two look like you’re getting real close,’ he said.

‘You’re going to be getting in some stuff from the Coroner’s Office,’ Ben told hiin. ‘Keep a real close eye on it.’

McCorkindale looked interested. ‘What kind of stuff?’

‘Evidence. From a homicide. A gun, at least. It’s being dusted now. The rest will be going to the lab. You probably won’t see that for weeks.’

At the end of the hall, McCorkindale dropped himself heavily into his swivel chair. ‘Well, I got your afternoon assignment,’ he said. ‘Captain Starnes gave it to me.’

‘What is it?’

‘Peace in the valley, Ben,’ McCorkindale said. ‘A real plum. You’re supposed to represent the department at Kelly Ryan’s funeral this afternoon.’ He tore a piece of paper from a steno pad and handed it to Ben. ‘He didn’t have no relatives. So they’re burying him fast. Here’s all the details.’

Ben glanced at the paper, then shoved it into his jacket pocket.

McCorkindale smiled happily. ‘I swear, Ben, you are getting the sweet treatment these days.’ He shook his head wonderingly. ‘Why, if it weren’t for me, I think you’d get all the cushy jobs.’

Ben smiled thinly, then stepped away.

‘One more thing,’ McCorkindale said quickly. ‘Captain wants to see you. He’s in his office.’

‘Okay,’ Ben said. He turned, then walked back down the corridor to Luther’s office.

Luther was hunched over his desk, his large hands wrapped around a ham and cheese sandwich.

‘Just grabbing a quick bite between crises,’ he said as Ben stepped into his office. He took a gulp of coffee, then wiped his mouth with the side of his hand. ‘Listen, I heard you got something on that little girl thing.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What is it?’

‘Well, we traced the ring we found on her to a colored man that used to live in one of those storm drains over at the rubber factory.’

‘Used to live?’

‘He’s dead,’ Ben said. ‘Shot.’

‘With what?’

‘A twenty-two.’

‘Same one used on the little girl?’ Luther asked.

‘Probably,’ Ben said. ‘We found the pistol in the storm drain. It was still in the guy’s hand. We’re checking to make sure it killed both of them.’

Luther nodded thoughtfully. ‘So it’s a murder-suicide, you think?’

‘Could be,’ Ben said. ‘People called this guy Bluto. He hung around a poolhall on Fourth Avenue. He was mentally retarded.’ He decided to keep his doubts about Bluto’s death to himself for the moment.

‘Good,’ Luther said. ‘Good job, Ben.’ He took another quick bite from the sandwich. ‘Well, I guess everything’s pretty much wrapped up, then.’

Ben nodded noncominittally. ‘We’re checking the guy’s blood to see if it matches the semen we found in the little girl.’

Luther seemed no longer interested in the details. ‘Sounds like it’s all over, Ben,’ he said, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Listen, did McCorkindale talk to you about the funeral?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s not the greatest assignment,’ Luther added, ‘but I figured you were the one to do it. Kelly wasn’t exactly the most popular officer on the force.’

Ben said nothing.

‘You don’t mind sort of being the department’s representative, do you?’ Luther asked.

‘No,’ Ben said.

‘Good,’ Luther said. He smiled. ‘You know how it is, when a cop goes down, there needs to be a little blue in the boneyard.’ He laughed. ‘No matter who he was.’

Kelly Ryan was buried at three o’clock in the afternoon in a small cemetery not far from his house. A single hearse delivered the body, and no one came with it but an old preacher who’d long ago been designated Police Chaplain and who usually showed up at cop funerals when no private minister was indicated.

‘Did you know Mr Ryan very well?’ the preacher asked as he stepped over to the grave.

‘No.’

‘I didn’t either,’ the preacher said. ‘I just got a call from the Chief’s office. They just said they needed me over here at the cemetery.’ He looked at Ben intently. ‘I don’t suppose there are any relatives?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Ben said. He shrugged. ‘I’m just here to represent the department, I guess.’

The preacher nodded slowly as his eyes fell toward the coffin. ‘I guess he was a good cop.’

Ben thought of Kelly alone behind the battered metal desk of the Property Room or standing by the rows of plain brown file cabinets that lined the walls of the Records Department, of Kelly trudging up the steps with one young girl on either side, taking them to their VD examinations, of Kelly in the bar, soaking up one drink after another: ‘I haven’t had a drink with a cop since I left Bearmatch,’ he’d said, his eyes lolling left and right as if almost unable to look a fellow officer in the eye.

‘Yeah,’ Ben said, ‘I guess he was.’

‘Young man?’

‘Yeah.’

The preacher shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Terrible for a man to die young. Of course, it happens The heart is a tricky thing.’

‘What?’

‘The heart,’ the preacher explained. ‘Sometimes it just gets you, young or not.’

‘Heart attack, you mean?’ Ben asked.

The preacher nodded. ‘That’s the way they say he died. Nobody told you that?’

Ben shook his head. He could see Ryan’s body swinging beneath the lamp, the overturned chair, the black, swollen tongue and round, protruding eyes.

‘No, nobody told me,’ he said.

The preacher smiled politely, then stepped to the head of the grave. A mound of reddish earth stretched out before him, naked as a corpse.

‘Okay to begin?’ he asked Ben.

Ben nodded.

The preacher bowed his head slowly and began to speak, but Ben could hardly hear him over the roar of the diesel trucks that swept loudly up and down the street, groaning under the weight of so much iron and steel. He glanced away from the grave and down the long avenue that led up to it. At the end of it, he could see the high storm fence of the rubber plant, and he realized that if his vision could rise above the line of trees which blocked it, he would be able to see the cold round eye of the storm drain, and then, sweeping to the right, the gray, unpainted goalpost that had briefly marked the grave of Doreen Ballinger. In his mind, they seemed to form a triangle, these three bleak, impoverished graves, but as he continued to consider it, he realized that it was one which was made up of little more than lines drawn over a vast and empty space.

The bar where Kelly had taken Ben the night he died was only a few blocks from the cemetery, and as he sat in the same booth through the evening, Ben tried to imagine the way Kelly had had to live during the long years before he’d finally decided to end it. In his mind, he could see his body hanging grimly at the end of the rope, circling slowly in the small breeze that swept through the bedroom, turning, turning, as if sleeplessly in search of some impossible deliverance. ‘The thing is, I loved her,’ he’d said over the night’s final drink, with his eyes already hooded, his words vaguely slurred. For that, he’d paid a heavy price, living more alone than even Ben could now imagine, alone in a tiny, dilapidated house set down among a raw assortment of clanging factories, without family or friends, mocked by the people he worked with. Death would at last seem lovely after such a life.

Ben took a sip of whiskey and glanced toward the front of the bar. The early evening air had turned bluish-pink, and just over the roof of the rubber plant, he could see the residue of sunset, a spray of purple which rose like a light mist above the city. It might have looked beautiful, setting over a beautiful city, but it looked only dreamy and out of place above the cinderblock and tin-roofed factories which surrounded him. He turned his eyes from the window and glanced about the bar. A few factory workers crouched in a booth a few feet away, while a couple of others leaned against the bar, sipping slowly at their beers while they made idle conversation with the bartender. He wondered if Kelly had known any of the men who trudged into the bar after their shifts, had ever had a single decent talk with even one of them. He could not know for sure, but it struck him that he probably hadn’t. For what would be the use, after all, since the one great experience of his life could not be talked about with any of them. And so Kelly had chosen not to deceive anyone, but to take the isolation instead, the silence, the absolute apartness, and to live with that as long as he could, and when he couldn’t anymore, to go out like a man, asking no one’s pity, apologizing to no one, but simply going out of life in the way he had lived it, utterly and unbreachably alone.

It was almost midnight by the time Ben turned into his own gravel driveway. Across the street, the light in Mr Jeffries’ window was burning brightly, and it was easy for him to imagine the old man tossing sleeplessly on his bed or ambling shakily toward the bathroom. His own father had been like that in the last days, pointlessly moving from one room to the next, dazed, unreachably confused, only half-aware of who or where he was. Ben had gotten up many times in the early morning hours to find him stranded in the hallway, glancing about hopelessly, like a child lost in an unfamiliar city. He had finally died in this state of helpless bafflement. It was as if his mind had simply fallen away, like a body over a ledge, and Ben could still remember their last meal together, the old man mumbling incoherently while he stared expressionlessly at his food. He kept his eyes on Mr Jeffries’ lighted window for a moment longer, as if by watching from a distance, he could somehow help him if he fell, or guide him back to his bed and safely tuck him in as he had his father so many times before.

Suddenly the light went off, and Ben turned up the narrow walkway toward his house, then trudged up the short wooden stairs, unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

He felt the pistol barrel at his ear before he could reach the light switch beside the door, and the very shock of the cold round steel against his head froze him instantly.

‘Don’t move,’ someone said in a tense, trembling voice.

It was a man’s voice, but that was all that Ben could tell.

‘Don’t move,’ the man repeated sternly.

Ben stood motionlessly in the darkness, his right hand still lifted slightly toward the light, his fingers stretched toward it, but halted in midair, stiff, wooden, a puppet’s brittle hand.

‘Just take one step forward,’ the man said.

Ben could feel the barrel as it pressed more deeply into the soft flesh behind his ear.

‘Real slow, now,’ the man said. ‘Just one step.’

Ben took a single step, then stopped immediately. He could feel his eyes burning with an odd fierceness, as if trying to sear away the covering darkness.

‘Keep your hands where they are,’ the man told him. ‘Now take one more step.’

Ben did as he was told.

‘Get on your knees,’ the voice commanded.

‘What?’

‘Get on your goddamn knees!’

Ben slowly lowered himself to the floor.

‘Now kiss the street,’ the voice said with a sudden, bitter harshness.

Ben instantly tipped forward, spreading out onto his stomach. ‘Now spread them,’ the voice demanded in a tone that now seemed less harsh, even slightly muffled, as if a handkerchief had been placed over it and pressed down. ‘Spread your arms over your head.’

Ben flattened himself facedown across the hard wooden floor, then drew his hands up and over his head, as if he were reaching for something just beyond the limits of his grasp. For an instant he lay motionlessly in the darkness, then he felt the man kick at his heels.

‘Spread your legs!’

Ben did as he was told.

‘Shit,’ the man said softly.

Ben felt a hand reach down, quickly unsnap his holster and jerk his pistol from it.

‘That’s better,’ the man said.

Ben said nothing, and for a time he simply lay flat against the floor. Then, suddenly, he felt the man’s body as it pressed its full weight onto his back.

‘You ain’t moving now,’ the man said mockingly.

‘Guess not,’ Ben said weakly.

The man laughed. ‘The thing is, you got a problem,’ he said menacingly. ‘What you might call a nigger problem. Know what I mean?’

Ben did not answer.

The barrel of the pistol bit into his flesh.

‘You hear me, mister?’ the man demanded.

‘Yeah.’

‘I said you got yourself a real bad nigger problem.’

Ben remained silent, waiting, until he felt the barrel pressing into him again. ‘What problem is that?’ he blurted.

‘That little nigger girl,’ the man replied immediately. ‘The dead one.’

‘What about her?’ Ben asked weakly.

‘What do you know about her?’

‘Nothing,’ Ben told him.

He felt a fist strike him on the back of the head.

‘Don’t fuck with me,’ the voice hissed. ‘What do you know about that girl?’

Ben did not answer, and the fist struck him again.

‘Don’t fuck with me,’ the man repeated. ‘You do, you’re one dead nigger-lover.’

‘I don’t know anything,’ Ben said quietly. He could feel a haze moving down on him, descending like a curtain through the pain. ‘I don’t know anything,’ he repeated dully.

Once again the fist struck him, and he felt his head jerk to the left with the force of the blow.

‘Where was she?’ the man demanded, his voice now oddly changed, tense, urgent.

‘What?’ Ben asked puzzled.

‘Where was she?’ the man repeated, his voice almost frantic.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

For a moment the man said nothing, and in the darkness, Ben could almost hear his mind ticking desperately.

‘You hate niggers?’ the man asked finally.

Ben did not answer. He could feel a raw pain shooting up and down his back. Then a large hand grabbed the back of his head and pushed forward, shoving his face into the floor.

‘You hate niggers?’ the voice demanded.

Ben said nothing.

The barrel dug into his flesh.

‘Tell me you hate niggers,’ the voice said. ‘Tell me right now.’

Ben remained silent.

‘Right now,’ the voice said sharply. ‘Or you’re dead.’

Ben said nothing. He could feel the man’s fingers as they tugged at his hair, hear his shallow, angry breath, feel the weight of his body as it pressed down upon his back.

‘Tell me you hate niggers,’ the voice said. ‘Tell me that, right now.’

Ben did not speak. He could feel the barrel of the pistol as it circled around the back of his head, then pressed into his ear.

‘I’m gonna blow your fucking brains out,’ the man said.

Ben heard the pistol cock. He glanced up and saw a small yellowish light flow toward him from the front window. Mr Jeffries had turned his light on again. He took in a long breath, very deep, then tightly closed his eyes.

‘Bye bye,’ the man repeated mockingly.

Ben waited, his hands clenched, his eyes shut tight, his mouth now suddenly so dry, his thirst so extreme that it felt unquenchable.

For a moment there was only silence, and during those few seconds, Ben regretted that it was night, rather than morning, that there was no sunlight to penetrate his closed eyes, no birds for him to hear, no reassuring traffic or street chatter, but only this flat, absolute silence in a dark which was broken only by a sickly yellowish light.

Suddenly the weight lifted, and Ben realized that the body was no longer on him. Still, he did not move, did not open his eyes, did not reach for an impossible hope.

‘Move, just once, and you’re dead,’ the man said, almost wearily, as if the exertion of his attack had all but taken the final measure of his strength.

In an instant, he was gone, moving quickly down the long corridor to the kitchen, then out the back door and into the thick black night.

Ben could hear his feet as they padded swiftly away, then the soft beat of the screen door as it closed behind him. It was only then that he pulled himself up and walked slowly back to the kitchen. He closed the door and locked it, then turned on the small light in the backyard. At the far edge of the yard, he could see the rusty wire fence that bordered it. It was still weaving slightly from where the man had climbed over it, and Ben could see his own service revolver hanging awkwardly from one of its unsteady metal posts, its barrel carefully nosed upward toward the still thickly clouded sky.

Luther looked astonished when he opened the door and saw Ben staring at him evenly.

‘Good God, Ben,’ he yelped, ‘you got any idea what time it is?’

‘I need to see you, Captain,’ Ben said bluntly.

Luther’s eyes narrowed. ‘This better be important,’ he said. ‘I got a sick wife, and that knocking probably woke her up for the night.’

‘It’s important,’ Ben told him.

Luther stepped out onto the porch, carefully closing the door behind him. He wore a pair of bulky light-blue pajamas, and the shirt billowed out slightly as he walked down the steps, then out into the yard, his bare feet nearly covered by the wet, dewy grass.

‘All right, what is it?’

‘I got jumped tonight,’ Ben said.

‘Jumped?’

‘In my own house,’ Ben added significantly.

Luther chuckled. ‘Well, shit, Ben, a cop can run up on a burglar just like anybody else.’

‘This wasn’t a burglar.’

Luther eyed him carefully. ‘How do you know?’

‘He was waiting for me.’

‘Waiting for you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What time was this?’

‘A little past midnight.’

Luther seemed to reconsider things. ‘Well, go ahead,’ he said gruffly. ‘What happened?’

‘The guy jumped me as I came in.’

‘You don’t look that bummed up,’ Luther said casually. ‘Did he rob you?’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘He wasn’t interested in that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was interested in the girl.’

‘What girl?’

‘That colored girl we found in the ballfield.’

Luther’s face tightened. ‘The guy that jumped you was interested in that?’ he asked unbelievingly.

‘That’s right.’

‘What’d he want to know?’

‘Everything. Whatever I’d found out about her.’

‘What’d he ask exactly?’ Luther demanded with a sudden heightened concentration.

‘He wanted to know where she was.’

‘You mean her body?’

‘Where she was before she died,’ Ben said. ‘At least that’s what I think he meant.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe he just wanted to know where we found her.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know for sure.’

‘Did he want to know who killed her?’

‘I guess he wanted to know everything,’ Ben said. ‘But he didn’t ask about that.’

‘What’d you tell him?’

‘That I hadn’t found out very much.’

‘Could it have been some crazy relative?’ Luther asked. ‘Was the guy colored?’

‘No.’

Luther shook his head despairingly. ‘This is bad, Ben. This is real bad.’

‘It’s worse,’ Ben said bluntly.

Luther’s eyes flashed toward him.

‘He was a cop,’ Ben said.

Luther laughed nervously. ‘A cop?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must be nuts, Ben.’

‘There’s no doubt about it, Captain,’ Ben said resolutely.

‘And just how do you know that?’ Luther demanded.

‘By the way he handled me,’ Ben said. ‘He went right by the numbers. You get the guy on his knees, then on his belly. He even kicked my feet apart.’

‘Anybody could do that,’ Luther said doubtfully.

‘When he forgot to pat me down before I hit the floor, he noticed that he’d done things in the wrong order.’

‘That could be military training,’ Luther said dismissively. ‘Or any other police department.’

‘He left my pistol hanging on the fence outside.’

‘So?’

‘Why do you think he did that, Captain?’

‘Who knows?’ Luther replied with a shrug.

‘It’s the first thing I thought about,’ Ben told him.

‘Why?’

‘Because a cop in our own department would know that we have to buy our own weapons, that if he’d taken it with him, then I’d have had to replace it out of my own pocket.’

Luther’s face slackened visibly, but he said nothing.

For a moment the two of them stood silently beneath the heavy limbs of the large oak in Luther’s yard.

‘So what do you really think, Ben?’ Luther asked finally.

‘That somebody in this department is scared.’

‘Because of the girl.’

‘Maybe the way we’re looking into it. The way we’re being serious about it.’

‘But all you’ve got’s that Bluto fellow.’

‘Maybe we’re missing something.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So what do want to do about it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You want off the case?’

‘No,’ Ben said immediately, offended by the question. ‘Why would I want that?’

‘In case it all has something to do with a brother officer in the department,’ Luther said. ‘I mean, we could turn the whole thing over to the State Police.’

Ben laughed. ‘Lingo’s men?’

‘They may not all be like what we’re used to seeing lately,’ Luther told him. ‘At least you wouldn’t be looking into things that could involve people you know.’

Ben shook his head. ‘No, I want to stay on it.’

‘Okay,’ Luther said quietly. His eyes drifted upward toward the tangled overhanging limbs. ‘Things are too complex for me these days, Ben,’ he said unhappily. ‘Too mixed up for a simple mind.’ He looked at Ben determinedly. ‘Just remember. I’m right behind you.’

Ben nodded quickly, turned away, and walked back to his car. From behind the wheel he could see Luther’s large figure as it stood facing him darkly from beneath the tree’s gently sloping limbs, and as he watched from behind the dusty windshield, he could sense that the old pattern of the world had shifted suddenly into a more dangerous and complicated weave, and he realized that he could no longer tell for sure whether Luther’s last remark was meant to comfort or to threaten him.