Streets of Fire (9 page)

‘No!’

‘Are you bitter?’

‘No!’

‘Then go out and go out and go out again,’ King cried. ‘And let justice flow down from the mountainside.’

‘Yes!’

‘Let justice flow down from Red Mountain.’

‘Yes, Lord!’

‘Let justice rise like the mighty waters.’

‘Amen! Amen!’

‘Until it is high in the streets of the city.’

‘Yes! Yes!’

‘O Lord, let justice flow down upon Birmingham like a mighty stream.’

The furious cheers of the people seemed to be even greater than the day before, and as Ben brought his pen to rest and glanced around him, he realized that they had reached such a deafening pitch that they now drowned out everything, as if their thunderous roar came like an immense and shuddering wave from the deep core of the earth.

TEN

Kelly Ryan was slumped behind the single gun-metal gray desk of the Property Room, and he did not move as Ben approached him. His small green eyes peered expressionlessly forward, and his lips remained tightly closed. He wore a plain blue shirt, open at the collar, and with the sleeves rolled up above the elbow, so that he looked more like a farmhand than a policeman.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d still be here,’ Ben said as he stepped up to the desk.

Ryan nodded slowly. ‘They had me on special duty.’

‘Doing what?’

Ryan said nothing, but his thin lips jerked down slightly.

‘Doing what, Kelly?’ Ben repeated.

‘All those girls they brought in today,’ Ryan said. ‘They’re doing VD checks on them.’

Ben felt the air grow cold around him.

Ryan looked at him pointedly. ‘Were you in the park?’

‘Yes.’

‘Must have been really something down there today.’

‘It was,’ Ben said. ‘Where were you?’

‘They kept me right here most of the time,’ Ryan said. He smiled thinly. ‘They had me running back and forth from the cells, bringing the girls upstairs.’ He drew in a long, weary breath. ‘Is there something you want from Property?’ he asked.

Ben’s eyes surveyed the rows of metal shelving which lined the walls behind Ryan’s desk. They were almost entirely empty.

‘Looks like they cleaned you out,’ he said.

‘Just the guns,’ Ryan told him.

‘Yeah, I know. I saw McCorkindale signing them out.’ Ben paused. ‘We buried a little girl in Gracehill this evening,’ he said. ‘They sent a man over from the Highway Department. Patterson was surprised it wasn’t you.’

‘Well, that’s because I do all the colored cemeteries.’

Ben leaned forward slightly. ‘Why’s that, Kelly?’

Ryan looked at him evenly. ‘You never struck me as the nosy type, Ben.’

Ben shrugged. ‘I was just wondering,’ he said.

‘Wondering about what, exactly?’

Ben did not answer.

‘Wondering why I get all the nigger work?’ Kelly asked. There was a bitter edge in his voice. ‘Is that what you were wondering?’

‘I guess.’

Ryan sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. Well, what have you heard?’

‘Nothing,’ Ben said lamely.

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘Well, I know that you used to work Bearmatch.’

Ryan said nothing.

‘That little girl we buried,’ Ben added. ‘We found her in that old ballfield off Twenty-third Street.’

Ryan remained silent, but Ben could see something stirring behind his eyes.

‘And I thought you might be able to help me.’

Ryan turned away sharply. ‘I haven’t worked Bearmatch in two years. If you want to know something, go ask the Langleys. It’s strictly their beat now.’

‘I talked to them,’ Ben said. ‘They weren’t much help.’

Ryan said nothing. He kept his eyes averted slightly.

Ben continued to stand over him, staring down. He could feel an odd tumult building in Ryan’s mind, and for a moment he simply stood by silently and let it grow.

‘Bearmatch was my first assignment,’ Ryan said as he turned slowly toward Ben, his voice almost wistful as he continued, ‘I was fresh as a daisy.’ He started to go on, then stopped himself and drew his eyes quickly to the left, as if he were looking for a way out. ‘I feel old now,’ he added finally. ‘I don’t know why.’ He said nothing else.

Again, Ben waited, allowing the silence to lengthen slowly. When it seemed stretched to the limit, he broke it.

‘You want to have a drink with me?’ he asked.

Ryan’s eyes flashed toward him. ‘I haven’t had a drink with a cop since they took me off Bearmatch,’ he said.

Ben smiled quietly. ‘Want to have one now?’

Ryan looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘A little girl,’ Ben told him softly. ‘A little colored girl.’

It was a small, honky-tonk bar, nestled among the raw metal clutter of two steel mills. Outside, the air quivered with the roar of the blast furnaces, but inside there was only the jukebox and the low murmur of the factory workers who lined the bar itself or gathered in loose clusters around tiny wooden tables.

Ben guided Ryan to a booth in the far back corner, ordered two beers, then offered him a cigarette.

Ryan took it immediately. ‘This is a real night out with the boys for me,’ he said with a mocking laugh.

Ben lit the cigarette and Ryan inhaled deeply.

‘I hope there’s nobody working undercover in this place,’ he said as he let the smoke filter slowly out of his month. ‘You don’t want to be seen with me.’

Ben lit his own cigarette and eased himself back into the padded seat. ‘Why’s that?’

Ryan smiled sardonically and took another drag on the cigarette. ‘I worked Bearmatch before the Langleys took it over. You might say I handed it over to them.’ He started to continue, but the barman stepped up with the beers, and he stopped until he had deposited them on the table and returned to the bar. Then he lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to the Chief.’

They drank together for a moment, then Ryan set his half-empty glass down on the table and looked at Ben squarely.

‘What exactly do you want to know?’ he asked.

‘Like I said before, I’m working a case,’ Ben told him, a murder. Little girl without a name. In Bearmatch.’

Ryan lifted his glass again, his eyes peering steadily over the rim. ‘You said you talked to the Langleys?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What’d they say?’

‘That they don’t bother with nigger murders.’

Kelly laughed derisively. ‘No shit.’ He took a quick gulp from the glass then returned it to the table. ‘Those two are wolves. There’s no telling for sure what they’ve been doing over in Bearmatch. Nobody keeps an eye on them.’ He leaned forward slightly, his hand squeezing the handle of the mug. ‘But everybody says they’ve really been kicking ass lately. Busting places up, harassing everybody. Sometimes they make five or six arrests a day over there.’

‘Who are they arresting?’

‘Anybody they want to,’ Ryan said. ‘From bootleggers to jay-walkers, I guess.’ He took a quick sip. ‘You know what I think? I think the Langleys feed on Bearmatch.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘After me, I guess the Chief figured he needed guys like them for that particular beat.’ He took another drink, then rolled the nearly empty glass rhythmically in his hands.

A jukebox started up at the front of the bar, and the growling voice of Ernest Tubb swept over the room with ‘I’m Walking the Floor Over You.’

For a while, Ryan listened to the lyrics, his eyes fixed on a flashing Pabst Blue Ribbon sign near the center of the bar.

‘I lost my head,’ he said at last, his voice almost in a whisper. ‘I forgot where I was.’ He finished the beer, then signaled for another. The barman brought it over immediately. Ryan took a quick sip, then fastened his eyes on Ben, as if trying to read something written on his soul.

‘Like I said before,’ he began finally, ‘it was the first thing they gave me. I was fresh to the work. They gave me Bearmatch, and I took it serious. I walked the beat, Ben, walked it like a real cop, you know?’ He laughed. ‘There ain’t an old lady in Bearmatch I didn’t help across the street.’ He laughed again, a thin, high laugh, tense and edgy. ‘Anyway, I come across this young girl one day.’ He shook his head. Her name was Memora.’ His eyes brightened somewhat. ‘They have wonderful names, the colored people. Her baby sister was named Neopoli-tana. After that ice cream, I guess, the one with strips of strawberry and chocolate and vanilla.’ He shrugged halfheartedly. ‘Anyway, I’d run across her just about every day. She’d be tending this little patch of flowers in the front yard. I’d say hello, and she’d say hello. Before long I started taking a rest in front of her house. We’d talk and talk.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘She was the most beautiful thing in the world and I …’ He stopped, and his eyes dropped hack down toward the glass. ‘And I got quite a feeling for her.’ He looked up quickly. ‘You know what I mean?’

Ben nodded.

Ryan smiled mournfully. ‘You don’t know nothing until you know a person. You may have an idea about something, ‘but until you get to know somebody, you don’t know what you feel about anything.’ Once again he fell silent, his eyes studying Ben’s face. ‘You know what I’m saying?’

‘Yes.’

Ryan scratched his chin slowly. ‘I’m not one bit ashamed of what I felt for that girl. That’s what they can’t stand down at City Hall. That’s what the Chief can’t stand. That I have never done anything since then to apologize for it or to say I was wrong. That’s why they keep me on with the department. They’re waiting for me to break down and cry over it and say what a fool I was.’ His eyes hardened. ‘I’ll die first,’ he said determinedly. ‘And they can bury me in Gracehill where they’ve made me bury so many others.’ His face grew red suddenly and a trembling swept over it. His eyes widened wildly, then closed slowly as he drew in a long, lean breath. ‘You good for another beer?’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said. He signaled the barman for another round and sat silently until he deposited them on the table.

Ryan took a long draw and wiped his mouth quickly. ‘I have a little problem with drink. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

Ryan gave him a slow, curious look. ‘You married?’

‘No.’

‘Never have been?’

Ben shook his head.

Ryan smiled. ‘Like me.’

‘I guess,’ Ben said. He took a sip from his glass. For an instant he saw his little wooden frame house, saw it empty without him, unenlivened by any presence other than his own. ‘This girl, the one you liked,’ he said finally. ‘What happened to her?’

Ryan emptied the glass. ‘She went up North,’ he said. Then he lifted the glass slightly. ‘And I guess you might say I went a little hit to this.’

For a time Ben watched as Ryan sat quietly, staring into the empty glass. His face had the kind of grief he’d seen in pictures of Jesus in the Garden, silent, inexpressibly mournful, waiting for something even worse than what had come before.

‘This other girl,’ he said at last, ‘the one we found in the old ballfield. I’m not getting very far with it.’

Ryan’s eyes lifted toward him slowly. ‘What do you have on it?’

‘A few things, nothing much,’ Ben told him. ‘What I really need is a name, some way to trace her.’ He took out the picture and brought the two sides together on the table in front of Ryan. ‘That’s her.’

Ryan stared expressionlessly at the photograph.

‘Somebody in Bearmatch must know who she is,’ Ben said insistently. ‘Somebody must know everything that goes on there.’ He looked at Ryan pointedly. ‘You know a man named Roy Jolly?’

Ryan glanced up immediately. ‘Everybody who’s ever known anything about Bearmatch knows about Roy Jolly.’

‘Where can I find him?’ Ben asked.

Ryan said nothing.

‘Help me,’ Ben said.

‘Telling you where to find Roy Jolly may not be the best way to help you.’

‘Right now it’s the only way you can.’

Ryan thought about it for a moment, then nodded slowly. ‘Over on Twenty-first Street there’s a little yellow house. It looks like all the others, except it’s yellow. That’s where you’ll find Roy Jolly.’

Ben swept the photograph back into his pocket. ‘Thanks, Kelly.’

They finished their drinks silently, then walked outside together. The orange glow of the furnaces could be seen through the rusty storm fence across the way, and above it a single enormous smokestack belched a thick tumbling smoke into the sulfuric night air.

‘Get in,’ Ben said as he stepped over to his car.

Ryan remained some distance away, standing idly in the middle of the street. ‘No, thanks,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll walk. I don’t live too far from here.’

A sudden piercing whistle shook the air around them.

‘Late shift coming in,’ Ryan said. Then he hunched his shoulders slightly, sunk his hands deep into his pockets and disappeared into the thick, humid darkness.

ELEVEN

The windows of the little yellow house on Twenty-first Street were glowing brightly when Ben pulled up at some distance down the street from it. He could see a steady stream of figures moving in silhouette behind the thin red windowshades, and even from several yards away, he could make out the soft tinkle of muffled piano music. A continual flow of lightly murmuring voices came from the small open windows, and as he sat behind the wheel, staring at the house, he could sense the dark, guarded happiness that seemed to energize the air around it. It was a Negro shothouse buried deep within the folds of a dense Negro district, and for the first time in his life Ben suddenly felt the odd allure he remembered from his youth when he d worked in the nearby railyards until late in the night, and then, before going home, stood behind the rusty fence that cordoned off the Negro district and peered out longingly toward the beguiling lights of Bearmatch. At the time, he could not fathom the look he saw in the eyes of the other men who sometimes watched beside him, or even begin to understand the strange and fearful stirring he felt in himself. But now, as he listened to the music and the voices, it all came back to him, and he felt his hand grasp the door, then his feet drop to the ground, felt himself moving toward the house with a strange, beguiling urgency.

Several cars were parked in the adjoining driveway, while others lined the street in both directions. Most of them were empty, but a few contained a varying assortment of men and women in their front and rear seats. The people inside fell silent as he passed them, and he knew that they were staring at him with a mixture of fear and resentment.