Streets of Fire (34 page)

Ben could feel himself growing increasingly impatient as he continued to stand in the steamy summer air. ‘Let me in, Tod,’ he said finally. ‘This is department business and I don’t have time to argue about it.’ He pressed his hand against the door and felt it give way as Tod drew back.

Tod had already dropped into the small chair a few feet from the door, and for a moment Ben simply stood, his body framed in the doorway, and let his eyes adjust to the darkened room.

‘Me and Teddy keeps everything closed up,’ Tod explained. ‘On account of being cops, you know?’

Ben stared at him quizzically.

‘Grudges, I mean,’ Tod explained. ‘People out to get us.’

Large sheets of tinfoil had been taped to all the windows, and they gave the room an eerie look of utter isolation, of something cut off from the outside world.

‘It’s for pictures,’ Tod said. ‘All this tinfoil, I mean.’

‘Pictures?’ Ben asked. ‘You take pictures?’

‘It’s against pictures,’ Tod explained. ‘Against getting them taken of you. You put tinfoil on your windows, can’t nobody see inside, can’t nobody take no pictures.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Like the federal boys, you know? I mean, the FBI.’ He laughed idiotically. ‘They’d take a picture of a man on his shitter if they thought they could use it against him.’

Ben leaned against the doorframe. ‘Why would the FBI be interested in taking pictures of you, Tod?’

‘Some things I believe,’ Tod said. ‘It makes them mad.’

‘What things?’

‘About the niggers, mostly,’ Tod said with a sudden casualness. He leaned forward. ‘I mean, you know how it is with the niggers, they all got –’

Ben waved his hand quickly to silence him. ‘Look, Tod, we have a serious problem in the department. It has to do with Breedlove, with his murder.’

Tod sat back slightly but he didn’t speak.

‘Do you know about this little house on Courtland?’ Ben asked.

Tod glanced away fearfully.

‘I was in there,’ Ben went on. ‘I found a few things that could cause some people a lot of trouble.’

‘You mean Teddy? Cause Teddy trouble?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Me, too?’

Ben nodded.

‘Well, I don’t see how,’ Tod said in a tightly drawn voice. ‘I mean, we got a right to our beliefs, right?’

‘Your beliefs don’t matter,’ Ben said.

‘Well, what are you talking about then?’ Tod asked quickly. ‘Them pictures.’ He laughed nervously. ‘Ain’t they funny?’

Ben didn’t answer.

Tod’s voice took on a desperate edginess. ‘Listen, Ben – I wouldn’t say this in front of Teddy, but with me it’s just sort of a game, you know?’

‘A game?’

‘Like playing army, you know, like when we was boys. ’

Ben let him go on.

‘Like playing,’ Tod sputtered. ‘I mean, it’s nothing for anybody in the department to worry about. I just got them pictures and stuff— and sometimes I play with the guns a little.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘But it ain’t real. It’s just for fun, that’s all.’

‘Where were you last night, Tod?’ Ben asked sternly.

Tod looked at him, puzzled. ‘Last night?’

‘That’s right.’

Tod continued to stare at Ben, questioning. ‘Well, I was right here in the trailer,’ he said. ‘I was sick. I was running a fever.’

‘Where was Teddy?’

‘He stayed with me. We’re family. We all that’s left of our family.’

‘Did either one of you leave the trailer?’

Tod shook his head.

‘Did anybody come to visit you?’

Again Tod shook his head.

‘Did anybody see the two of you in here?’ Ben asked.

Tod laughed fearfully. ‘Well, nobody could do that, right? I mean, I got all this tinfoil on the windows.’

Ben watched him gravely, his eyes bearing down. ‘Think, Tod,’ he said. ‘Did anybody at all see you and Teddy last night?’

Tod did not answer. He leaned forward again, this time running his fingers through his hair. ‘What is all this, Ben? What’s last night got to do with anything? Was some other little nigger killed or something?’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘But Charlie Breedlove was.’

Tod’s lips parted silently.

‘I found Breedlove’s ring in that little house on Courtland,’ Ben said. ‘The one you and Teddy play your little games in.’

Tods eyes widened. ‘You think it was us?’

‘Where’d that ring come from?’ Ben asked coldly.

Tod stared at Ben, dumbstruck.

‘You better come up with some answers, Tod,’ Ben warned him.

Tod shook his head. ‘Oh, God Almighty,’ he breathed. ‘They ain’t no way I had anything to do with that. I been too sick. I been practically flat on my back for two days.’ He started to whimper. ‘I told Teddy we shouldn’t have hung them flags and stuff. I told him it was too much for the average person to deal with.’

Ben remained silent, watching Tod crumble slowly before him.

‘I been puking all over myself,’ Tod bawled. ‘Got the runs too.’ He glared at Ben resentfully. ‘You pick up stuff when you work Bearmatch. You pick up things they brought with them from the jungle – diseases and stuff like that.’

Ben leaned against the door jamb, his eyes trained on Tod.

Soaking wet with fever,’ Tod went on. ‘And I been that way for a long time.’

Ben straightened himself. ‘You got a thermometer, Tod?’

Tod stared at him, baffled by the question. ‘Thermometer?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yeah, I got one in the medicine cabinet.’

Ben walked back through the narrow corridor, retrieved the thermometer and handed it to Tod.

‘Put it in your mouth,’ he said stiffly.

‘What for?’

‘Just do it,’ Ben commanded.

Reluctantly, his eyes filled with confusion, Tod placed the thermometer in his mouth and waited nervously until Ben finally plucked it out.

‘What is it?’ he asked excitedly. ‘What’s my temperature?’

‘A hundred and two,’ Ben said quietly.

‘See, see!’ Tod cried jubilantly. ‘And I been like that for two whole days.’

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.’