Streets of Fire

THIRTY-EIGHT

Tod and Teddy Langley were both relieved of duty and Teddy was arrested a few hours later. For the rest of the afternoon Ben and Luther made their way through the three tiny rooms of the house on Courtland Street.

‘I gave McCorkindale your old job,’ Luther said as he slit open the mattress beside the window. ‘I didn’t figure you’d go back to watching King anyway.’ He shook his head. ‘And if Sammy goes to sleep in his car, Daniels’ll be there for backup.’

Ben checked the rooms for hidden compartments, tapping lightly and listening for any hollow spaces which might have been dug out, then covered over, within the solid plaster walls.

Luther pulled a huge wad of stuffing from the mattress and felt through it for solid objects. ‘If they kept Breedlove’s ring,’ he said, ‘they could have kept anything. The pistol they used on him, anything. Once people start doing stupid things, they’s no limit to it.’ He stopped and stared at Ben pointedly. ‘And killing a brother officer, that’s real goddamn stupid.’

Ben continued to move along the walls, monotonously tapping them with the knuckles of his hand. In his mind, he could still see the thin red line of the thermometer as it inched up to one hundred and two. It was the sort of fact that argued against almost all the other facts that could be arrayed against it, a grudging, insistent detail that clung to him like a small note pinned to his suit.

‘If you ask me,’ Luther said as he tossed a handful of ragged stuffing onto the floor, ‘they set Breedlove up. They lured him out here, killed him, then took him out in the country.’

Ben said nothing. He bent down and ran his fingers along the floor, searching for loose boards. As he worked, he tried to move back through what he knew of Breedlove’s death. Once again, he saw the body hanging limply from the tree, the bloody letters carved in his chest, his shattered face, the small dot of light that peeped through from the hole in the back of his skull.

Luther shook his head. ‘That’s the way it is when you get too hot on something. It makes you crazy. Shit, Ben, there’re times when I think it makes the Chief himself crazy.’

Ben straightened himself, then moved on to the next wall, his mind still working the case, methodically moving through each sketchy detail. He could feel a steadily increasing unease. Too many questions were still rising from places where they should have normally been put to rest. He decided to ask one of them to someone other than himself.

‘Why do you think they called it in?’

Luther continued to tear at the mattress. ‘Called what in?’

‘Breedlove’s body.’

‘You mean, to the sheriff?’

‘Yeah.’

Luther stopped, thought a moment, then went back to the mattress, sinking his hands deep inside. ‘’Cause they were proud of it,’ he said sullenly. ‘They wanted somebody to see it.’

‘They pinned his badge to his shirt,’ Ben added.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Hell, Ben, how do I know?’ Luther said. ‘For God’s sake, they hung him up like a trophy. They’re out of their goddamn minds. You don’t deal with reasons for things when you deal with people like them.’ He threw the last of the stuffing onto the floor, then stood up and stretched. ‘I guess all hell’s breaking loose in the park by now.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Demonstration was supposed to start at three sharp.’ He ran a few calculations through his mind. ‘I figure by now they’re just about at the park.’

Ben looked at him. ‘You can time it that close?’

‘Got to,’ Luther said. ‘Time is everything in a situation like this.’ He nodded toward the far wall. ‘You done that one yet?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I’ll give it the once-over,’ Luther said. He walked over to the wall and began tapping at it. ‘You ask me, Teddy’s not smart enough to think of a hiding place.’ He thought for a moment, his hand suddenly holding motionlessly in the thick hot air. ‘Course, that ring was pretty well hid.’

‘Why’d he take it?’ Ben asked.

Luther resumed his search. ‘I don’t know. Maybe for a souvenir. Something to remind himself of what a big tough guy he was.’ He shook his head disgustedly. ‘But he should have just kept his attention on Bearmatch. It don’t take much to be a tough guy with the colored people. They’re already beat down too much. But when you start screwing around with a brother officer, you better be ready to pay the price.’ He stopped his tapping again and looked pointedly at Ben. ‘If the Langleys did kill Charlie Breedlove, they’re going to the electric chair for damn sure.’

Ben nodded slowly, then went back to his search. He inspected each room in turn, emptied drawers, checked closets, opened the few cardboard boxes that were stacked here and there, heavy with undistributed books and pamphlets. Finally he went over the floors, probing for loose wooden slats. He found nothing but the trapdoor to the crawlspace beneath the house. He shined his flashlight into its darkness, then lowered himself down onto the dusty ground. The yellow beam swept left and right, lighting the most distant corners, but there was nothing at all beneath the house but the bare red clay, which, from all that he could tell, had rested entirely undisturbed for at least a hundred years.

He pulled himself up out of the crawlspace, then bent forward to slap the reddish-orange dust from his pants. The trapdoor was still open, its underside clearly visible in the light that poured in from the open shutters. He could see his own handprint clearly etched across its smooth surface, a dusty pattern of palm and outstretched finger. A few inches to the left, there was another handprint, dustier, less clearly visible, but unmistakably there, and which had been left when another, entirely different hand had pushed upward from the crawlspace. It was slightly larger than his own, the fingers longer and more slender, and for an instant it seemed to reach toward him, thrust out violently, as if desperately to cover his eyes.

The holding cells on the third floor of City Hall were packed with demonstrators, and they were singing loudly as Ben made his way down the corridor to the last cell on the right. It was quiet, and almost entirely empty, and as he looked in, his eyes staring between the bars, he could feel the sullen isolation that came from it, powerful as an odor, raw and resentful.

Teddy Langley sat upright on the edge of the upper bunk, his back curled forward, his eyes glaring at the seatless toilet bowl which rested near the center of the room. He looked oddly lifeless and shrunken, as if some vital force had been drained from him. He did not seem to hear the joyous singing which rocked the cell-blocks all around him or feel the sweltering heat. He still wore his police uniform, the top button of his shirt still tightly snapped, the tie pulled snugly against his throat.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked snidely as Ben let himself into the cell and closed the door behind him.

A burst of cheers followed the end of the song, then a long, sustained clapping of hands. Ben waited until it had all died away into the next rollicking hymn. Then he walked over to Langley and offered him a cigarette.

Langley glanced at the cigarettes but didn’t take one. ‘Is this where you’re supposed to come in and sweet-talk me into a confession?’

‘Not unless you have something to confess,’ Ben told him.

‘Well, I don’t,’ Langley snapped. ‘So why don’t you just go on home.’

Ben said nothing.

‘’Bout time for the evening shift anyway, right?’ Langley asked.

‘More or less.’

‘What is it, five or six, something like that?’

‘About five-thirty.’

Langley nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s what I figured.’ He slid backward on his bunk, pressing his back against the hard cement wall. ‘What you doing here, Wellman?’

‘I thought I might talk to you a minute or two,’ Ben said.

‘What about? You figure I killed Breedlove, right?’

‘Maybe.’

‘’Cause he was an informer,’ Langley said. ‘That’s what they’ll use for motive.’

‘Could be,’ Ben admitted.

‘Did they arrest Tod yet?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘We’re keeping an eye on him,’ Ben said. ‘But the mail we found in the house, it was all addressed to you.’

‘So there’s nothing to connect him to the killing.’

‘Nothing yet.’

‘Except that he’s my alibi,’ Langley said. ‘Of course, he could be telling a lie on that, right?’

‘He’ll go in on a perjury charge if he swears to it,’ Ben said. ‘He could be hit with an accessory if he knew about Breedlove before or after.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘No, I think you do.’

‘Tod didn’t know shit,’ Langley said exasperatedly. ‘Hell, I don’t know shit as far as the killing’s concerned.’

Ben pressed the package of cigarettes toward him, shaking it slightly. ‘Sure you don’t want one?’

‘Ah, hell,’ Langley said. ‘I’ll take one.’ He pulled a cigarette from the pack, then leaned forward and let Ben light it.

‘I was over at the house most of the afternoon,’ Ben said as he waved out the match.

‘I figured you would be,’ Langley said. ‘Find anything else? A pair of Breedlove’s underwear, something like that? With his initials on it?’ He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me what you found in that house. They could have planted anything.’

‘Trouble is,’ Ben said, ‘how’d they get in?’

Langley shrugged and took a pull on the cigarette.

‘The windows were all nailed shut,’ Ben said. ‘And the doors hadn’t been messed with.’

Langley said nothing.

‘Any other way in that house?’ Ben asked pointedly.

‘I don’t know,’ Langley said. ‘I ain’t been renting it but a few weeks. I didn’t hardly ever go there.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Maybe somebody came down the chimney. You know, like Santa Claus.’

‘The chimney’s cemented over,’ Ben said. ‘Got any other ideas?’

Langley took another pull on the cigarette, then glanced to the right. ‘Them niggers sure can keep themselves stirred up, can’t they?’

‘You could go to the chair, Teddy,’ Ben said grimly. ‘We’re talking about a cop. Informer or no informer, we’re talking about a cop.’

Langley’s eyes swept over to him. ‘Who wants me dead, Ben?’ he asked almost gently. ‘I can’t figure it out.’

Ben stood silently, staring upward slightly, concentrating on Langley’s face.

‘Put up your right hand,’ he said finally.

Langley looked at him, puzzled. ‘What?’

‘Put up your right hand.’

Hesitantly, Langley lifted his hand, palm outward. ‘Like this?’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said as he placed his own hand over it.

Langley’s was smaller, the tips of his fingers barely reaching beyond the second joint of Ben’s.

‘What’s this for?’ Langley asked. ‘They already got my prints.’

Ben drew his hand away, then stepped back over to the cell door, opened it and walked back into the corridor.

Langley continued to sit rigidly on the bunk, his hand still hovering in the air, fingers outstretched, as if reaching for an invisible bird. ‘I would die for my beliefs,’ he said fiercely. ‘But like a man, Wellman. Like a man. Not led down some hallway like an animal. Not with my legs in chains.’

Ben nodded slowly.

‘Not in the chair,’ Langley added determinedly. ‘Not in chains.’

Ben closed the cell door and locked it.

‘Not in chains, goddammit!’ Langley yelled to him once again as he turned and walked away.

Several yellow Jefferson County school buses were lined up in the garage, and as Ben headed for his car he could see hundreds of faces behind their windows. Scores of state troopers in full riot gear ringed the buses. Inside the ring, McCorkindale paced back and forth along the side of one of the buses, slapping his nightstick rhythmically against his leg. From time to time he would stop abruptly, wheel around and smack the tip of his nightstick against the window. The faces behind the glass would jerk back reflexively, then stare sullenly as McCorkindale’s enormous belly shook with mocking laughter.

Ben turned away, once again moving in the direction of his car. He was still a few yards away from it when he saw Patterson coming toward him from the other side of the garage.

‘What are you doing over here?’ he asked as they approached each other.

‘I got the lab work on the Breedlove case,’ Patterson said.

‘Where are you taking it?’

‘Directly to Captain Starnes.’

‘Captain Starnes?’

Patterson nodded. ‘He’ll probably take it straight to the Chief.’

‘What’d you find out?’

Patterson hesitated.

Ben stared at him accusingly. ‘What’s going on, Leon?’

Patterson glanced left and right suspiciously. ‘All I know is that Captain Starnes wants me to report directly to him.’

Ben looked down at the small yellow envelope that was nestled beneath Patterson’s arm. ‘What’s in the report, Leon?’ he demanded.

Again, Patterson hesitated, but only briefly. ‘Nothing much, if you want to know the truth. The cause of death was pretty obvious. Like it always is.’

‘Is there anything that wasn’t obvious?’

‘Just that Breedlove must have been on the move a little bit that night.’

‘How do you know?’

‘From what I scraped off his shoes,’ Leon said. ‘He had two different kinds of soil on them. One was a regular loose-grained loam. The kind you find in the fields to the north.’

‘Like the one we found the body in,’ Ben said.

‘That’s right,’ Patterson said. ‘It was stuck to another layer of something else, though. Some kind of whitish clay, very acidic. Those two kinds of ground, they don’t exactly end up side by side.’ He smiled helplessly. ‘I know that’s not much help.’

‘Is there anything else?’ Ben asked immediately.

‘As far as the… well… the mutilation, that was done after he was dead,’ Patterson told him.

‘Anything on the knife that was used?’

‘It had a serrated edge,’ Patterson said unenthusiastically. ‘And the blade was about an inch and a half wide at the hilt.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s about all the help I can give you. Not much, is it?’

‘No.’

‘You making any headway?’

Ben shook his head.

Patterson leaned toward Ben, lowering his voice as he spoke. ‘Is it true he was an informer?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘A lot of people think so.’

‘For the federal boys, you think?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, it must have been somebody,’ Patterson said emphatically. ‘I mean, what’s an informer do if he doesn’t report to somebody?’

Suddenly Ben felt a strange night breeze envelop him, saw a dark lake glimmering in his mind.