Streets of Fire

TWENTY-FIVE

The firemen had disappeared by the time Ben got back to headquarters. The outside of the building was completely surrounded by a grim cordon of highway patrolmen, but the inside was almost wholly deserted.

Only the jails remained choked with people. Hundreds of demonstrators were still crammed together in the tiny, sweltering cells. Ben expected to find Coggins among them, but as he walked down the corridor, he saw him standing quietly in front of McCorkindale’s desk.

‘I’m out for now,’ Coggins said to him. He shifted his eyes over to McCorkindale and glared at him. ‘But I’ll be back.’

McCorkindale grinned. ‘Sure you will, boy. I can’t hardly wait.’

Ben touched Coggins’ shoulders. ‘Come with me a second,’ he said. ‘I want to ask you something.’

Coggins glanced at his watch. ‘Okay, but let’s make it fast. They need me back over at the church. That’s why they bailed me out.’

Ben walked him out of the building. At the top of the steps, Coggins waved to a waiting car. Several men waved back.

‘They’re here to make sure I get from the steps to the car,’ Coggins said to Ben.

‘I want you to keep an eye on everybody, Leroy,’ Ben said. ‘Just like those guys are keeping an eye on you.’

Coggins looked at him darkly. ‘Can you be more specific?’

Ben shook his head. ‘Somebody called the Coroner’s Office with a strange question. He wanted to know how long you could tell if a man was a Negro after he’d been buried.’

Coggins shivered. ‘Oh, God.’

‘I don’t know what it means,’ Ben warned, ‘but just keep a close watch. And tell everybody else to do the same.’

Coggins nodded, his eyes oddly quiet. ‘Do you think they’re after me?’

‘It could be anybody.’

‘I meant it, you know — what I said,’ Coggins told him. I’m ready to die. I really am.’

Ben smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Just try not to, that’s all.’

McCorkindale was flipping through the newspaper when Ben returned to his desk.

‘Here’s that gun I was telling you about,’ Ben told him as he set it down on McCorkindale’s desk.

McCorkindale gave it a quick glance. ‘Okay, I’ll log it in after a while,’ he said. He looked up at Ben. ‘You know, I think that Coggins boy really likes you.’

Ben glanced about the empty room. ‘Where is everybody?’

‘Over at the park,’ McCorkindale said, his eyes returning to the newspaper. ‘They’re expecting a lot of trouble this afternoon.’

‘More than usual?’

‘I guess so,’ McCorkindale said absently. ‘Word is, the Chief’s come up with some new idea on how to handle things.’

‘What new idea?’

McCorkindale shrugged. ‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘But I guess we’ll all know soon enough.’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said dully as he turned away.

He walked back to his desk in the detective bullpen and sat down to consider his next move. He thought of Doreen, Coggins, the city’s long fury, and suddenly he felt more locked within its grip than he ever had before. It was as if the fingers of some invisible fist were tightening around his throat. He could sense its presence as animals sensed an approaching storm and then either retreated into their burrows to wait it out, or dug their feet into the ground, tightened every muscle and slowly turned their faces toward the wind.

The streets off Fourth Avenue were as deserted as the ones around Police Headquarters. As Ben got out of his car, he could see only desolate, empty alleyways and tightly closed shops. The avenue itself did not look much different. At the northern end of Kelly Ingram Park, a long line of fire engines stretched like a wide swipe of bright red paint across the motionless trees and deserted buildings. Contingents of firemen huddled in small knots beside the engines. Not far away, thin gray lines of highway patrolmen crisscrossed the avenue or blocked off its adjoining streets. Files of municipal police paced back and forth between the lines, moving nervously from one position to another.

Ben turned away from them and headed south, up the rounded hill that rose gradually, then dropped off toward the central Negro district.

The Better Days Pool Hall was near the top of the hill, and Ben was sweating heavily in the summer heat by the time he reached it.

The few games that were going on as Ben came through the door stopped instantly.

‘I’m looking for Gaylord,’ Ben said instantly. He pulled out his badge. ‘This is a friendly visit.’

The men looked at him doubtfully.

‘Last one wasn’t too goddamn friendly,’ someone said from the back.

Ben turned in the direction of the voice and recognized the man he’d slammed against the wall only the day before.

‘I’m hoping this one will be,’ he said to him.

The man stepped forward, half his face illuminated by the naked bulb that hung over the pool table beside him. A raised tan scar ran along the side of his face, curling upward from the edge of his jaw to the side of his ear.

‘You slammed me good, boss,’ the man said. ‘You not too smart to come back here.’

‘I’m not looking for you,’ Ben told him resolutely.

‘Gaylord, like you say.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What for?’

‘That’s for me to tell him,’ Ben said bluntly.

The man leaned against the table, and the slant of light now cut in a yellow diagonal across his dark face. ‘We heard about Bluto,’ he said. ‘We heard maybe you done it.’

Ben said nothing.

‘Maybe we set you on him,’ the man added. Told you where he was. Then you killed him. That how it was?’

‘He was dead when I found him,’ Ben said. ‘He’d been dead for several days.’

The man squinted as he stared evenly at Ben. ‘’Round here, we ain’t no house niggers. Not like them that’s in the streets. Always singing and shouting for Jesus.’

‘Was Bluto like that?’

‘House nigger, you mean?’

‘Yeah.’

The man laughed. ‘Bluto wadn’t hardly nothing at all.’ He shook his head. ‘Shit, that boy didn’t have the sense of a fieldhand.’

‘It doesn’t take much sense to kill a little girl,’ Ben said bluntly.

Again, the man laughed. ‘Kill a child? Bluto? You crazy, boss.’ He waved his hand. ‘Why, Bluto, he…’

The door of the back room swung open suddenly, and Gaylord’s massive frame stepped out of it, immediately filling up the dark space, the pool tables shrinking to miniature before him.

‘Who ask you?’ he demanded harshly of the other man.

The other man stiffened.

Gaylord thumped his enormous chest. ‘The man come looking for me, you sends him to me. He don’t need none of your shine before we talks.’

The man nodded quickly, then slinked out of the light and disappeared into the far corner of the room.

Gaylord’s eyes flashed over to Ben. ‘You be some kind of crazy coming back down here this afternoon.’

‘I needed to talk to you.’

‘Gone be all hell breaking loose before long,’ Gaylord said.

‘Looks that way.’

‘Better get your saying said and then be gone from here.’

‘Fine with me.’

Gaylord waved him toward the back room. ‘Come on, then,’ he said quickly. ‘I wants to be out of here before the trouble starts.’

Ben followed him quickly into the back room and took a seat opposite Gaylord’s small wooden desk.

‘I just need to know as much as I can about Bluto,’ he said.

‘Nothing much to know,’ Gaylord said. He placed his hands behind his head and leaned back in chair. ‘He come in here sometime.’

‘Just to play pool?’ Ben asked.

‘That’s right,’ Gaylord said.

‘Did he have any friends around here?’ Ben asked. ‘People he hung around with?’

Gaylord shook his head. ‘Not that I ever seen.’

‘And as far as you know he didn’t do any work?’

‘Once in a while I let him rack the balls,’ Gaylord said. ‘I paid him a little for that. Sometimes he do an errand or two for somebody. Deliver something down the street.’

‘Who’d he do that sort of thing for?’

‘Anybody that asked him,’ Gaylord said. ‘I guess they paid him whatever they wanted to. But like I say before, he didn’t have a regular job, far as I know.’

Ben shifted to a different direction. ‘Was he ever rough, violent?’

Gaylord looked at Ben wonderingly. ‘Bluto? Violent? Naw, he ain’t like that. He ain’t got the sense to be rough.’

‘Did you ever see him act mean to anybody?’

Gaylord shook his head. ‘Nah, he ain’t like that.’ He chuckled. ‘He think he a cop, you know. He always trying to act big, like he a cop. He say he deputized. He had a little badge to prove it.’

‘Police badge?’

‘Yeah, look like.’

‘Did he carry it with him?’

‘All the time.’

‘When was the last time you saw it?’

‘When I seen Bluto the last time, I guess,’ Gaylord said. He thought a moment. ‘Yeah, he had it on. Pinned to his shirt, like always.’

‘Did he say who deputized him?’ Ben asked immediately.

‘One of the Langleys, I guess it was,’ Gaylord said. ‘Probably that silly one. Tod. Nobody else would do a fool thing like that.’

‘Did you ever see Bluto with the Langleys?’

Gaylord nodded. ‘Once in a while. They liked to play with him. Kid him, you know?’ He frowned. ‘They liked to watch him act a fool. They tell him he a regular policeman. They tell him they gone find a woman for him, so’s he can git married, so they can be lots of new little Blutos for the police force.’

‘When was the last time you saw them together?’ Ben asked immediately.

Gaylord thought for a moment. ‘Been awhile, I reckon.’

‘Try to remember exactly,’ Ben said insistently.

‘Mor ’n a week,’ Gaylord said. ‘Maybe mor ’n two weeks.’

‘Where did you see them?’

‘Right here,’ Gaylord said. ‘Right here in the poolhall.’

‘What were they doing in here?’

‘Jes’ hanging around,’ Gaylord said with a shrug. ‘Sometimes I think they must love the colored folks, the way they hangs around them.’ He laughed. ‘Naw, they looking for something bad, something they can bust up, card game or something like that.’

‘Did they talk to Bluto?’ Ben asked.

Gaylord shook his head. ‘Not that I remember,’ he said, ‘and I usually watches them boys real close. They give me a bad feeling when they come ’round. Like a chill in my bones.’

Ben allowed his eyes to roam the cluttered back room silently. Scores of old license plates had been nailed to the walls, one of them going back to 1921. There were pinup-girl calendars mingled with aging photos of black athletes: Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson.

Gaylord watched Ben silently, until their eyes met once again. Then he leaned forward slowly. ‘You better be going now,’ he said. ‘The boys up front liable to say something.’

‘Say what?’ Ben asked.

‘Say maybe ole Gaylord’s a little too close with a white policeman.’

‘Are you afraid of that?’

Gaylord smiled nervously. ‘’Bout the only thing I is afraid of, you want to know the truth.’ He stood up immediately. ‘Les’ go, now. This place ain’t gone be too good for you to be at in a few minutes.’

Ben did not move. ‘The little girl,’ he said. ‘She was raped. Could Bluto have done something like that?’

Gaylord shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he could. He was always pulling at hisself, you know what I mean?’

Ben nodded.

‘Right out in the open,’ Gaylord added. ‘Pulling at hisself. I’d say to him, I’d say, “Stop that, Bluto. You out in the open. You want to do that, you go on home.”’ He shook his head sadly. ‘But he’d just smile that big ole smile of his and keep on pulling, like he couldn’t figure out why everybody wadn’t doing it all the time.’

Gaylord walked to the door of his office and opened it. ‘Don’t come back here no more,’ he said quietly. ‘It ain’t good for nobody.’

Ben stepped out into the poolhall. It was empty now, all the players gone.

‘Look at that, now,’ Gaylord said disgustedly. ‘’Nuther one them demonstrations coming down Fourth Avenue. All they do is ruin business.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t figure it out, why these colored folk wants to be mixed up with the white people.’ He looked at Ben wonderingly. ‘It just don’t make no sense to me. You know why? ’Cause white people, they don’t ever look like they’re having any fun.’