Streets of Fire

FORTY-THREE

Ben had already been sitting in his car for several minutes when he saw Patterson pull up to the curb in front of Daniels’ house.

Daniels got out immediately, then stood in the yard, waving quietly, as Patterson drove away. For a time he lingered outside, his tall, thin body clearly visible in the light from the streetlamp a few yards away. He looked up and down the street as if expecting another car to come for him, then he turned abruptly and walked back into the house.

Ben eased his car into gear and silently drifted a short distance down the low, sloping hill. When he had coasted far enough to see the edge of Daniels’ driveway, he stopped, pulled out a cigarette and waited. During the next hour one cigarette followed another, until he finally snuffed out the last one from the pack. The air inside the car was a thick, tumbling blue, despite the open windows, and from time to time he had to lean forward slightly and wave it away in order to keep Daniels’ house in clear view.

While he waited, Ben continually repeated the message he’d heard earlier in the evening: Collins Avenue. Midnight. After that, before dawn, GM, Thirty.

Collins Avenue was a stretch of sparsely populated road which ran in a winding path from one side of the city to the other, from the railyards beyond Bearmatch to the spacious lawns of Mountain Brook. It was sometimes used by people who were in a hurry to get across town and who wanted to avoid the more commercial boulevards that crisscrossed the city in the same general direction. Other than that, it remained more or less unused, a stretch of broken road which had long ago been replaced by the carefully tended avenues which funneled people rapidly into the central business district. Ben tried to reconstruct every inch of Collins Avenue, moving first along the shaded lanes of Mountain Brook and down the mountain through nearly deserted forest lands, then into the sprawling shanties of Bearmatch, where it finally came to a dead end at the railyard fences.

Then he edged his mind over to the second part of the message, trying to decipher where the next meeting place might be. GM, before dawn. He knew that there was a General Motors plant on the outskirts of Birmingham, and it seemed at least possible that this was the place Daniels was supposed to go. But who was he going to meet there, and why?

Ben was still going over the possibilities when the taillights of Daniels’ car flashed on suddenly. He leaned forward quickly, peering toward the tiny red lights of Daniels’ car and waited until it had backed out into the road. It headed north, then rounded a small curve and disappeared.

Ben glanced at his watch. It was eleven forty-five. He hit the ignition quickly and pulled away. He could see Daniels’ car again as he made the turn at the end of the street. It was moving slowly, as if Daniels were simply out for an evening drive.

The car continued west until it reached Collins Avenue. Then it turned north and headed toward Mountain Brook. Traffic was sparse, as it always was on Collins Avenue, and Ben had no trouble keeping up with Daniels’ car. ‘Like we planned.’ The phone call had just been confirmation. Daniels expected the meeting. He followed it at some distance, keeping his headlights on dim, until the lights of the city fell away and Collins Avenue turned into a narrow, badly kept and generally abandoned road which meandered through the most heavily wooded section of the city.

Daniels slowed his pace considerably as the forest thickened around him, and Ben eased back too, trying to stay as far away as possible without losing track of Daniels’ car altogether. Still further on, he saw the brake lights go on and watched as Daniels’ car pulled off the road and stopped beside an isolated picnic table.

A deep trench stretched across the road just where Daniels had pulled over, and Ben slowed down slightly before moving over it. Then he drove a few hundred yards further, pulled off onto a narrow dirt road and got out. He walked a few yards into the woods, far enough that he could not be seen by any other passing cars, and headed toward the picnic table.

Daniels was sitting quietly at the table, smoking a cigarette, one leg crossed over the other. The darkness was very thick, but the orange glow of the cigarette faintly illuminated Daniels’ face. For a while there was no other light, but after a few minutes another car appeared, moving slowly down the avenue from downtown. It slowed as it neared the trench, passed over it and nosed in just behind Daniels’ car, bathing it for a moment in a thin, silvery light.

Daniels did not stand up. He simply watched the car, still smoking idly.

A tall man got out of the other car and walked over to Daniels. He was very large, and when he spoke, Ben recognized the voice. It was the same one that had delivered the message on Daniels’ telephone only an hour or so before.

‘Everything went g-good, I guess,’ the man said.

‘No problems at all,’ Daniels told him. ‘Teddy’ll take the rap for Breedlove.’

‘You used the ring?’

‘Yeah,’ Daniels said. ‘But I didn’t have to tip anybody. Someone else stumbled onto Langley’s place.’

‘Who d-done that?’

‘That’s not your business,’ Daniels said sharply. ‘You got your own work to do. Is it set?’

‘We thought it was f-fucked-up.’

‘Because of the girl?’

‘Uh huh,’ the man said. He chuckled softly. ‘B-but we handled that.’

Daniels spit on the ground. ‘Yeah, you handled it,’ he scoffed. ‘And it was a real sloppy job if you ask me.’

‘Well, we didn’t have much t-time now, did we?’ the man asked coldly.

‘Just the same,’ Daniels told him, ‘too many goddamn bodies have been piling up on this thing.’ He crushed the cigarette onto the cement table. ‘It was supposed to be just two, remember? One for one, to seal the relationship.’ He shook his head. ‘When we do business from now on, it’s got to go smooth. I got places to go, and I can’t be cleaning up messes like this all the time.’

‘You getting scared?’

‘Do I look scared to you?’

‘Way you’re t-talking,’ the man said, ‘’bout that girl and all.’

Daniels waved his hand, already tired of the conversation.

‘The girl’s not my business anyway,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t my doing and I don’t want to get into it.’ He glanced about nervously, and Ben lowered himself into the dense undergrowth. He could smell the honeysuckle in the air, and somewhere in the distance he could hear water felling gently, as if over a small falls.

‘The thing is, I did my half,’ Daniels added crisply. ‘Now you do yours. The rest of it’s up to you, like I said. I don’t want to get into it.’

The man took an envelope from his jacket pocket. ‘I guess this is your b-business, though,’ he said playfully. He waved it back and forth tauntingly. ‘I b-bet you’d like to get into this.’

Daniels nodded.

‘Here you are, then,’ the man said as he handed the envelope to Daniels.

Daniels snapped the envelope quickly from the other man’s hand. ‘This is just the beginning,’ he said. ‘We’re going to run Birmingham without the kind of shit we’ve been having lately.’

‘On both sides of the f-fence,’ the man said.

‘That’s right.’

‘B-by the way,’ the man said, ‘where’s them Black Cat boys? I got to keep up with them.’ He laughed softly. ‘Least till dawn, right?’

‘Teddy’s in jail,’ Daniels said. ‘And that where he’ll stay for a long time.’

‘Yeah, you fixed him good, d-didn’t you now?’

‘The other one’s off the force,’ Daniels replied curtly.

‘We d-don’t care about the other one,’ the man said. ‘We didn’t n-never care about him. He just a little n-nothing, like the man say. He ain’t got much sense.’

‘Well, Teddy’s finished,’ Daniels said. ‘You don’t have to worry about him anymore.’ He smiled tauntingly. ‘I delivered, didn’t I?’

‘You d-done what you said,’ the man told him dryly.

‘But your half of the bargain,’ Daniels added, ‘that’s still not finished with.’

‘Don’t you worry n-none,’ the man assured him. ‘It will b-be.’

‘It’d better be,’ Daniels warned. ‘When it happens, the Chief’ll be finished. There’s no way he’ll be able to hold on to the department after all that shit breaks loose. The new mayor’ll go in without a hitch, and he’ll be looking for somebody new to run the department.’

‘And you’ll be r-right there waiting for him,’ the man said.

‘That’s right,’ Daniels told him. ‘You’ll be rid of your problem, and I’ll be the new Chief.’ He glanced down at the envelope and smiled. ‘With a little campaign war chest all my own.’

‘You real smart,’ the other man said. ‘You maybe the smartest white m-man I ever seen.’

Daniels continued to go through the envelope. Then his head suddenly snapped up.

‘You’re five short,’ he said. There was an edge in his voice.

‘We had expenses, like you know.’

Daniels stood up. ‘And like I said, that’s not my problem.’

‘You picked the p-place,’ the man said sternly. ‘That’s what f-fucked us up.’

‘Bullshit,’ Daniels blurted. ‘Look around. It’s perfect. I can’t help it if that little bitch came right out of the blue.’

‘We c-could of done it down south a little, the Black Belt.’

Daniels laughed derisively. ‘Yeah, and wouldn’t that have looked funny? You and me pretty as you please, sitting on a park bench having a nice little talk, with all the old farts whittling together.’

‘That ain’t what m-matters,’ the man said. ‘We had expenses.’

Daniels’ leg began to shake nervously. ‘I made a deal with you. You need somebody out of the way. So do I. It was supposed to be a fair exchange.’

The man said nothing.

‘The way it stands right now,’ Daniels said, ‘your problem’s settled. But mine’s still hanging around.’

‘B-but not for long,’ the man said. ‘Before the sun comes up, just like I say.’

Daniels stood up. ‘Look, I did everything I was supposed to. I did more. Shit, I even picked up what you needed to take care of the girl. I didn’t have to. But it was there, so I got it for you.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘Now I want my money.’

For a long, icy moment, the two men stared at each other. Then suddenly the large man laughed heartily.

‘Sure, you d-do,’ he said, still laughing. ‘Gimme the envelope, I’ll get it for you. I was just kidding you a little. I’ll put it in, give it right back.’

Daniels reluctantly handed him the envelope, then watched warily as the man walked back to his car and got in.

‘Here it is,’ the man said after a moment.

Ben looked toward the car. He could see a slender white envelope waving in the dark air.

Daniels walked over to the car. ‘You do business the right way, this whole town’ll be ours one day.’ He laughed coldly. ‘You must have learned by now that you could use a friend in high places.’

‘Sure enough,’ the man said happily. ‘Sounds g-good to me.’

Daniels leaned forward and reached for the envelope. Suddenly a short hiss broke the air. It sounded like a quick spurt of water. Then Daniels’ body staggered backward, his hands grabbing for his chest. Another hiss, this time with a short, stubby flash of orange, and Daniels’ face jerked upward, white in the moonlight, a jet of blood spurting from his forehead.

For one frozen instant Ben stood in place, unable to move. Then suddenly his body returned to him, and he sprang up out of the brush, grabbed his pistol and plunged through the undergrowth. The lights of the car shot through the deep green woods as it raced backward through the gravel, its rear tires churning up dusty arcs of loose dirt. As it sped away, the sound of its wheels peeling across the pavement were almost as thin and wrenching as Daniels’ final cry.