Streets of Fire (13 page)

Ben continued to stare out the window. Rows of dilapidated shacks lined the unpaved roads, and the mounting clouds seemed to draw a dark curtain over them, as if to shield them from his eyes.

FOURTEEN

The first thunder could be heard rolling in from the north by the time Ben made it back to headquarters. Dozens of squad cars surrounded the area, and police barricades seemed to sprout up at every corner. Lines of young Negroes were being funneled into the underground garage, while still others were being moved to the large parking lot which spread out, flat and gray, behind City Hall.

Ben parked across the street, then walked up the stairs and into the building. He could see Luther sitting nervously in the Chief’s outer office. He looked as if he had been summoned to his own execution, and Ben hurried up the stairs to the detective bullpen before he could be spotted.

Even before he walked through the double doors of the bullpen, he could hear loud voices coming from the room. The loudest one belonged to Breedlove, and when he walked into the room, he was not surprised to find Daniels standing alongside him. A tall slender Negro stood quietly between them, his eyes glaring straight ahead while they screamed at him.

‘You’re going to keep these fucking kids out of this!’ Breedlove yelled.

The young man did not move. His eyes remained calm, his face utterly expressionless.

‘Did you hear me!’ Breedlove demanded.

‘We have a constitutional right to demonstrate,’ the young man said coolly.

‘You don’t have shit!’ Breedlove shouted. He stepped in front of the man and shoved him backward, pressing him against the wall. ‘You hear me, Coggins? Huh? You hear me, Leroy?’

‘The constitutional rights of the United States apply to the children of the United States,’ Coggins intoned.

‘Bullshit!’ Breedlove shouted. ‘Bullshit on your fucking rights.’

Daniels laughed slightly, then stepped forward, pressing his face near Coggins. ‘You know what kind of shit these kids could get caught up in if you keep using them, Leroy?’

‘They are demonstrating for their constitutional rights,’ Coggins said. ‘Sacrifices must be made.’

‘You want them dead, Leroy?’ Daniels asked. ‘You want them shot down in the streets?’

‘They’ll be blood and hair all over the place if this keeps up!’ Breedlove screamed.

Coggins closed his eyes wearily. ‘I came up here to discuss having the children you have gathered in the parking lot – probably more than a hundred of them – to discuss bringing them inside before it begins to rain.’

‘Yeah, well we don’t want to talk about that, Leroy,’ Breedlove said. He grabbed him by the collar and jerked him forward. ‘We want to talk about the fact that these kids shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing in the first place.’

‘Thunderstorms are predicted,’ Coggins said quietly.

‘Who gives a shit?’ Daniels asked with a laugh.

‘Yeah,’ Breedlove said. ‘You know what this whole thing is, Leroy? It’s a passing fad.’ He grinned maliciously. ‘Like the hula hoop. It’ll be gone in no time, and everything will be back just the way it was.’

Breedlove and Daniels laughed together for a moment, then stopped suddenly.

‘Stop putting them kids in the streets, Leroy,’ Breedlove said icily. ‘Everybody’s had enough of that shit.’

Coggins eyes slid over toward Breedlove. ‘Were VD tests conducted on the girls who were arrested yesterday?’

Breedlove and Daniels exchanged cheerful glances.

‘Well, what if they were?’ Breedlove asked.

Coggins eyes narrowed mockingly. ‘Did you do that, Mr Breedlove? Did you check those little girls out?’

Breedlove’s hand flew up and struck Coggins hard on the side of the face. Coggins’ head snapped to the left, and Breedlove hit him again, this time with his fist.

‘Charlie, stop it!’ Daniels cried.

Breedlove drew back his fist. His face was trembling wildly as he held Coggins by the throat, his fingers digging into his neck.

‘You better stop me, Harry,’ he cried. ‘You better stop me before I kill this nigger shit!’

‘Ease off now,’ Daniels said, almost soothingly. ‘Ease off, Charlie.’

Ben moved forward quickly and gripped Breedlove’s shoulder. ‘Let go, Charlie,’ he said.

Breedlove turned toward him and smiled thinly. ‘You just saved this nigger’s life, Ben,’ he said. He pulled his hand from Coggins’ throat. ‘You ought to get some sort of award.’

Coggins gasped loudly and massaged his throat. ‘You can’t get away with this shit!’ he said angrily.

Breedlove glared at him. ‘You ain’t took over everything yet, Leroy,’ he said grimly.

Daniels swept his arm over Breedlove’s shoulder and tugged him away. ‘Let’s go have a drink, Charlie,’ he said. He looked at Ben and winked. ‘You don’t mind cleaning this nigger up, do you, Ben?’

Ben stared silently at Coggins until Daniels and Breedlove were safely out the door.

‘You going to “clean me up” now?’ Coggins asked sarcastically after they had disappeared.

‘I’m going to try to keep you alive,’ Ben told him. ‘But you’re not making it very easy for me.’

‘I’m ready to die,’ Coggins said. ‘There’s not one person in all these jails that’s not ready to die.’

‘That may be so,’ Ben said. ‘But does it have to be today?’

Coggins turned away slightly and wiped a line of sweat from his lip. His hand was trembling. ‘I just came up here about those kids they have out in the parking lot. That’s all I came up here for, and I got into this shit.’

Ben said nothing.

‘It’s going to rain like hell,’ Coggins went on, ‘and those kids shouldn’t be left out in it like a herd of cows or something.’

Ben eased himself back down on the desk behind him and folded his arms over his chest.

‘They used to be able to treat us that way,’ Coggins added angrily, ‘but no more, goddammit!’ He sucked in a deep, shaky breath, and let it out in a loud burst. ‘No, sir,’ he proclaimed loudly, regaining his resolve, ‘I’m not afraid to die.’

‘Then you’re a fool,’ Ben said.

Coggins’ eyes shot over to him. ‘Don’t you believe there’s anything worth dying for?’

‘Quite a few things, I guess,’ Ben said. But what’s that got to do with fear?’

Coggins eyes squeezed together. ‘You trying to make a fool out of me?’

‘I admire you,’ Ben heard himself say with a sudden surprise.

Coggins laughed bitterly. ‘Yeah, I bet you do.’

Ben pulled the photograph of Doreen Ballinger from his pocket and held it up in front of Coggins. ‘You ever seen this little girl?’ he asked.

Coggins looked closely at the photograph. ‘She’s dead.’

‘Murdered,’ Ben said. ‘Shot in the head. Buried in that little ballfield over on Twenty-third Street.’

Coggins smiled cagily. ‘And you’re trying to pin it on me,’ he said, as if everything had now suddenly come clear to him.

Ben let it pass. ‘Do you know her?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever seen her?’

Coggins glanced back at the photograph. ‘She looks familiar. A lot of people do.’

‘Her aunt said she saw her in a group of young girls that was hanging around you on Saturday afternoon,’ Ben said.

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Outside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Coggins said. ‘I remember that. A few of them came up and asked some questions about the Thursday march.’ Again, he looked at the picture. ‘She could have been there, but I don’t recognize her in particular.’

‘Are you from Bearmatch, Mr Coggins?’ Ben asked.

‘No, I’m from Ensley,’ Coggins said. He looked at Ben knowingly. ‘I know what you’re thinking, just another one of those rich niggers trying to get the poor ones stirred up.’

‘Doreen was from Bearmatch,’ Ben said. ‘She was deaf. Her father ran off when she was three. Her mother died last year. Did your father run off, Mr Coggins?’

‘My father is a doctor,’ Coggins said.

Ben continued to hold Doreen’s picture in front of him. ‘You’re right, a lot of people look familiar. But they don’t live the same.’

‘I can’t help how I was born.’

‘Doreen couldn’t either,’ Ben said as he pocketed the photograph. ‘Who can?’ He was about to say more, routinely ask Coggins to report anything he might learn about the girl, but suddenly Luther burst into the room.

‘You’re goddamn lucky they canceled that speech at First Pilgrim,’ he shouted to Ben from across the room. ‘Because I get the feeling you never made it over there.’

Ben said nothing, and Luther’s eyes slid over to Coggins.

‘What are you doing up here, Leroy?’ he asked.

Coggins’ body stiffened, as if he were coming to attention. ‘I came to formally request that the children that have been gathered together in the parking lot be brought inside.’

‘What for?’

‘Because it’s about to rain,’ Coggins said.

‘It’s already raining,’ Luther said. ‘Request denied.’

Leon Patterson walked into the detective bullpen a few minutes after Coggins had been escorted back down to his cell. He smiled brightly as he came up to Ben’s desk.

‘Got something for you,’ he said excitedly. He dropped the ring onto the desk. ‘Remember that yellowish powder we found on that thing? It’s not pollen, after all. It’s just plain old chalk dust.’

‘From a school?’ Ben asked.

Patterson laughed. ‘Not quite, unless school’s changed a whole lot since my day.’ He glanced down at the ring. ‘It’s chalk dust like from a poolhall, that stuff you use to cue the ball. It was all over that guy’s ring.’ He looked at Ben and smiled. ‘Maybe you ought to start looking for a pool hustler.’

Ben picked up the ring and twirled it slowly between his fingers.

Leon pulled a chair up beside Ben’s desk and sat down. ‘I figure this was the guy’s lucky ring, the one he wore when he played. What do you think about that theory?’

Ben said nothing.

‘There was so much of that shit on the ring, he must have worn it every time he played. We’re talking about a very heavy residue here, very heavy, and it doesn’t look like he ever bothered to wash it off, or shine up the ring or anything like that.’

Ben continued to look at the ring. It winked bright-dark, bright-dark as he turned it slowly in the light.

‘Like it was maybe a sacred object or something,’ Patterson went on. ‘What do you think about that?’

Ben placed the ring on the desk, then turned toward him. ‘Any idea where it was made?’

‘Best guess, Cracker Jacks,’ Leon said. ‘Or some circus sideshow where you get a cheap prize if this asshole can guess your weight.’ He shook his head. ‘That ring never saw the inside of a real honest-to-God jewelry store, I can tell you that.’

Ben was about to make the guess that the ring could have been bought at one of the two or three costume jewelry stores that squatted between the barbecue stands, curling parlors and poolhalls of Fourth Avenue when Luther once again dashed into the room. He scanned the empty desks, then marched over to Ben.

‘I got nobody else to give this to,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ Ben asked.

‘I want you to get over to Kelly Ryan’s place,’ Luther said hastily. ‘It looks like the poor bastard killed himself last night.’

Kelly Ryan’s little house looked a good deal like his own, and as Ben pushed himself through the rain toward the front door, he could not help but remember the night before, the way Kelly had seemed to disappear into the night, his shoulders hunched, his back to the world.

A uniformed patrolman was stationed at the front door. He nodded as Ben came up onto the porch.

‘He’s in the bedroom, Sergeant,’ he said quietly as he opened the door.

Ben stepped into the front room and realized that it had been a long time, perhaps years, since anyone but Kelly had been in the house. It had Kelly’s rumpled clutter, his barely controlled drinking, even his odd, distinctive odor, a sweet rubberish musk that had been joked about in the department for years. There was no other smell in the front room, or the little den, or finally the bedroom where he hung motionlessly from a large oak beam.

He had thrown a rope over the beam, knotted it around his neck, climbed up on a small kitchen chair, handcuffed himself with a pair of Police Department issue, and then kicked it from beneath his feet. His face was now a purple-blue and his tongue hung from the side of his mouth like a piece of unchewed meat.

Ben suddenly felt a great wave of weariness pass over him. He slumped down on the bed, folded his hands in his lap and stared toward the single open window of the bedroom. Outside, the rain poured down in dense gray curtains, slapping mercilessly at the little mimosa tree that grew beside the house. He was not sure how long he sat there, but only that when he finally heard a voice in the outer room, it took him a moment to recognize it.

‘Well, this sure puts the cherry on top,’ someone said.

Ben glanced toward the door and saw Daniels and Breedlove standing inside it.

‘Is there any doubt it’s a suicide?’ Breedlove asked as he stepped into the room.

Ben got to his feet. ‘None that I can see.’

The two men circled the dangling body slowly.

‘At least he didn’t mess himself,’ Breedlove said. ‘These twisters usually do.’ He pulled off his hat and slapped it against his coat. A spray of droplets leaped from it and spilled on to the floor. ‘A real toad-stringer we got going out there.’

Daniels lingered at the entrance to the room, his body half-hidden behind the flowering curtain that hung across the doorway. He pointed to Ryan’s wrists. ‘Pretty cut up.’

Breedlove shrugged. ‘Probably changed his mind at the last minute. Strangling gives you time to reconsider.’ He gave the body a sudden small push. ‘No more morning roll calls, Kelly,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you just leave him alone,’ Ben said as politely as he could.

Breedlove looked at him oddly but said nothing.

Daniels stepped from behind the curtain, then shrank behind it once again. ‘Well, it seems to me he’s beyond caring about what anybody does,’ he said to Ben. Then he glanced at Breedlove. ‘Seem that way to you, Charlie?’

Breedlove glanced toward his partner. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Way beyond.’ His eyes darted back to the body, following its line upward from the feet.