Streets of Fire

  ‘You think maybe I might have the same problem with mine?’ Ben asked pointedly.

  Coggins smiled but said nothing.

  ‘He’s still out there,’ Ben said, ‘whoever it was who killed Doreen Ballinger.’ He shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t be all that much to think about,’ he added, ‘if more little girls weren’t out there, too.’

  Coggins did not speak immediately, but from the look in his eyes, Ben knew that he had won.

  NINTEEN

  Ranks of fireman in boots, helmets and rubber slicks were lined up in the basement as Ben and Coggins made their way to the car. The Chief paced up and down before them, his voice echoing through the concrete chamber. ‘You all pledged to serve the City of Birmingham when you came to the department,’ he cried. ‘And you are going to be asked to render that service, no matter what.’

  Several of the firemen glanced at each other apprehensively, but the rest stared expressionlessly at the Chief.

  ‘We are all part of the same city,’ the Chief went on, his hand sweeping out into the gray air of the garage, and we’ve all sworn an oath to protect it.’

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Coggins whispered as Ben ushered him around a concrete column.

  Ben shrugged lightly and continued moving steadily forward, one hand gently held to Coggins’ arm, until they reached the car.

  ‘He’s a dinosaur, that old man,’ Coggins said as he glanced back at the Chief.

  ‘Get in,’ Ben said.

  Coggins pulled himself into the car, his eyes still directed toward the Chief and the lines of fireman who stood in formation before him. ‘He’s like a bug trying to hold back the ocean,’ he said.

  ‘Think so?’ Ben said idly.

  ‘Just like a little bug, trying to protect its hole against the tide,’ Coggins added. Then he looked at Ben and smiled, almost tauntingly. ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’

  Ben said nothing. He grasped the wheel and jerked it to the right, sending the car in a wide are through the garage.

  Coggins returned his eyes to the ranks of firemen and the stocky little man who paraded back and forth in front of them. ‘No sense of history,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘No idea at all of how they’ll be remembered when all this is over.’

  Ben kept his eyes straight ahead as he guided the car past knots of city police and highway patrolmen until it nosed up the embankment to the street.

  Breedlove stood at the top of the hill, his hat pulled down over his eyes. When the car stopped, he strolled over and leaned in, his arms resting on the open window.

  ‘Looks like it’s going to be a pretty day,’ he said to Ben. Then his eyes shifted over to Coggins. ‘What do you think, Leroy? Reckon we might bust some ass today?’

  Coggins sat rigidly in place. A line of sweat formed on his upper lip.

  ‘What do you think, Leroy?’ Breedlove repeated in a thin, threatening voice. ‘Think maybe some of us crackers might bust a few burrheads before the sun goes down?’

  Coggins did not move. He kept his eyes straight ahead, but as Ben glanced over toward him, he noticed that his knees were trembling.

  Breedlove glanced at Ben. ‘Where you taking this boy?’

  ‘Just going for a ride,’ Ben said.

  Breedlove laughed. ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘I’m checking a lead,’ Ben told him.

  Breedlove smiled as he stepped away from the car. ‘Well, you guys have a great time, you hear? But if you get a chance, come on down to the park. It’s going to be real lively down there this afternoon.’ He stepped back from the car and tipped his hat. ‘Have a safe and happy day.’

  Coggins let out a quick, nervous breath as Ben pulled into the street. ‘I’m tired of being scared,’ he said angrily, his teeth tightly clinched. ‘I’m just tired of it.’

  Ben eased the car on down the street. Lines of helmeted highway patrolmen stood at intervals all along the avenue, their pump shotguns held casually in their arms. To the right the Chief’s white tank could be seen wedged in between two brightly polished fire trucks, and a few feet away Black Cat 13 seemed to be sunning itself lazily in the bright morning light. Teddy Langley sat behind the wheel, his eyes silently following Ben’s car as he muttered into his police radio.

  ‘You know them?’ Coggins asked. ‘You know the Lang-leys?’

  ‘A little.’

  Coggins’ eyes bore down on Ben. ‘You could be taking me to them, for all I know. This whole thing could be a setup.’

  Ben slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a squealing halt in the middle of the street. ‘Get out!’ he said hotly.

  Coggins stared at him, thunderstruck.

  ‘Get out!’ Ben repeated sharply. ‘If you think I’m taking you off to be whipped or killed or something, then get the hell out of this car right now!’

  Coggins did not move.

  ‘Just open the goddamn door,’ Ben told him.

  Coggins smiled nervously. ‘And be shot for trying to run away or something.’

  Ben whipped his pistol from his shoulder holster and handed it to Coggins. ‘Take this with you.’ He thrust it toward Coggins’ face. ‘Take it. Or do you think I have another one, some little sawed-oflfjob in my back pocket?’

  Coggins pressed his back against the door. ‘I’d have to be crazy to take that thing.’

  ‘Take the fucking gun,’ Ben demanded. ‘Throw the chamber open. Make sure it’s loaded.’

  Coggins shook his head. ‘No way, man. They see me with a gun, I’m dead.’

  Ben let the pistol drop from his hand. It fell into Coggins’ lap and he shuddered to the right, as if it were a rattlesnake. ‘Get that thing away from me!’ he cried.

  ‘As long as we’re out together,’ Ben said, ‘you’re going to keep the gun. Then maybe after a while, you might get the idea that I’m not setting you up for anything.’ For a moment he glared at Coggins angrily. ‘If I wanted you dead, I’d do it myself,’ he said finally. Then he kicked the accelerator angrily and the car jerked forward, twisting wildly as it roared toward Fourth Avenue.

  The morning heat had already begun to build on the street by the time Ben pulled the car over to the side and stopped. All of Fourth Avenue swept out before him. It was a wide boulevard which made up the main street of the Negro section of downtown. The sweet smell of curling parlors and barbecued meat hung in the air, and as Ben stepped out of the car, he could see the racks of discount clothing which had been brought out onto the sidewalks and which now fluttered lazily in the slow, heavy breeze.

  ‘They’ll bring all that stuff back inside when the marchers come,’ Coggins said, as if he were divulging a trade secret. ‘That’s how you know when it’s beginning.’ He smiled at Ben. ‘Have the cops figured that out yet?’

  Ben did not answer. He continued to stare down the street. It was crowded with early morning pedestrians, and he found that his eyes were already sorting out the large from the small, concentrating on men with big hands.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Coggins asked after a moment.

  Ben pointed to a small jewelry store across the street. ‘We’ll start there,’ he said.

  Coggins nodded toward the pistol, which still rested in his lap. ‘What do I do with this?’

  ‘Put it in your belt, then cover it with your shirt,’ Ben told him casually.

  ‘But I can’t just –’ Coggins began.

  Ben stared at him fiercely. ‘You get out of this car without that gun, and I’ll kill you myself.’

  ‘But, I can’t – can’t –’

  Before he could finish, Ben stepped out of the car and headed toward the store. He was peering into its front window when Coggins came up beside him.

  ‘This is the sort of place that has that kind of ring,’ Ben said quietly. He pointed to a shoe box filled with gaudy costume jewelry. ‘See there. It could have been bought from any place on Fourth Avenue.’ He walked to the door and opened it. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  Coggins followed behind as Ben
made his way into the store.

  It was a cramped space, little more than a narrow hallway bordered on either side by two large glass display cases. A large woman sat on a stool between the cases. She seemed to pull back slightly as the two men entered, and her hands crawled into the large purse that rested on her lap.

  ‘What can I do for you gentlemans?’ she asked suspiciously.

  Ben stepped back slightly and nodded toward Coggins.

  Coggins took the cue and walked in front of him. ‘How you doing, sister?’ he asked with a bright smile.

  The woman smiled at him with everything but her eyes.

  Coggins sunk his hands in his pocket and shifted nervously for a moment before leaning awkwardly onto one of the display cases.

  ‘Careful there,’ the woman warned sternly. ‘They ain’t built that good.’

  Coggins straightened himself immediately. He jerked his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms over his chest. ‘Actually, my uh, my friend and I are looking for something.’

  The woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘I don’t sell nothing but jewelry,’ she said.

  Coggins laughed tensely. ‘Oh, well, that’s okay. It’s about jewelry.’

  ‘And I don’t takes no hot stuff, neither.’

  ‘Hot stuff?’ Coggins asked. ‘We haven’t stolen anything, sister.’

  The woman’s hand moved within the carpetbag. ‘What you want, boy?’ she asked menacingly.

  ‘It’s about a ring,’ Ben said.

  Her eyes shifted over to him.

  ‘We think it might have been bought in one of the stores around here,’ Coggins put in quickly, as if trying to regain the high ground. ‘Maybe even from you.’

  ‘Something wrong with this here ring?’ the woman asked bluntly.

  ‘Not with the ring, no,’ Coggins told her. ‘But maybe the guy who bought it.’

  The woman watched him impatiently. ‘What’s this here ring look like?’

  Ben moved to take the ring out of his breast pocket, saw the woman’s hand move again, then stopped. ‘It’s right here,’ he said. Then he slowly took it out and handed it to her.

  The woman took the ring in her one free hand and looked at it closely. ‘Ain’t nothing special,’ she said. She lifted it slightly and turned it in the light. ‘Ain’t real. Just cheap stuff.’

  ‘Have you ever seen one like it?’ Coggins asked authoritatively.

  The woman handed it back to Ben. ‘Seen a million of them. Ain’t nothing special about it. Just a big old ugly ring like any poot-ass could wear.’ She grinned cheerfully. ‘I probably sold plenty of them myself.’

  Ben turned the ring slowly in his fingers. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘All the stores around here, they mostly sell stuff like that,’ the woman added. She drew her hand out of the carpetbag and seemed to relax slightly. ‘You wanted to, you could even get earrings to match.’

  ‘Earrings?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Why sure,’ the woman said. ‘Bracelets, too. Even a necklace if you wants one.’

  Coggins’ eyes shot over to Ben, then returned to the woman. ‘You mean that’s a woman’s ring?’ he asked.

  The woman nodded. ‘Course it is,’ she said with a small appreciative laugh. ‘Ain’t you got no sense, honey?’

  ‘But it’s so big,’ Ben said.

  She snapped the ring from his hand and turned it over. ‘See here, it’s been sawed into so it could fit a bigger finger.’ She gave it back to Ben. ‘But it’s a woman’s ring, all right. Couldn’t be nothing else.’ She laughed. ‘Ain’t no man would wear something like that. Least not one that’s got good sense.’

  TWENTY

  An enormous bright-red fire engine roared down the avenue as Ben and Coggins walked back out onto the sidewalk. Several firemen clung to its right side, the wind slapping wildly at their black rubber jackets. They leaned outward slightly as the engine careened around the far corner of Kelly Ingram Park, then came to a halt, half-hidden behind a wall of large elm trees.

  ‘I wonder if the Chief gave them a talk this morning, too,’ Coggins said with a small laugh. He turned to Ben. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Hit some other places,’ Ben told him.

  ‘Why?’ Coggins asked. ‘We know that ring could have been bought anywhere.’

  Ben did not answer. He kept his eyes on the park. Lines of highway patrolmen were assembling barricades at the downtown corner of the park. Just behind them, several firemen were unspooling yards of flat black water-hose while small groups of pedestrians looked on wonderingly.

  ‘You don’t think the killer could be a woman, do you?’ Coggins asked.

  For an instant Ben saw Doreen’s ravaged body, the caked blood which was smeared across her thighs. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘But can you really be sure about that?’ Coggins asked. ‘I mean, you know, it’s possible that –’

  ‘There was semen in her,’ Ben told him abruptly.

  Coggins’ face froze. ‘Semen? You mean that little girl was raped?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

  Ben looked at him. ‘It was after she was dead. Somebody killed her, then raped her.’ He shook his head. ‘And whoever it was, you can be sure it wasn’t a woman.’

  Coggins’ eyes drifted away from him and out toward the street. For a moment, all his attention seemed to center on a hand-lettered sign in the window across the way: BETSY’S IRONING TREATMENT – BEST IN BIRMINGHAM. ‘All right,’ he said finally, ‘what next?’

  ‘The poolhalls,’ Ben told him. ‘And after them, nothing.’

  There were only two poolhalls on the avenue, and the first was only a block away. Ben and Coggins made their way steadily through the shifting crowds, walking shoulder to shoulder, despite the odd looks of the people they passed along the street. Coggins walked stiffly, as if trying to control a slowly building fear. His eyes darted left and right, but his face remained rigidly in place, and as he walked along beside him, Ben noticed that parallel lines of perspiration had gathered on his forehead.

  ‘Where is this poolhall?’ Coggins asked shakily as they stopped for a traffic signal at the end of the block.

  ‘Just a block ahead,’ Ben told him.

  Coggins’ hands dipped into his pockets, then came out again. He bounced slightly on the balls of his feet.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Ben asked.

  Coggins’ eyes shot over to him. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You look a little jumpy,’ Ben said.

  ‘This neighborhood,’ Coggins admitted, ‘I’m not used to it.’ He nodded toward the lines of Negroes that gathered across the street, idly waiting for the light to change. ‘I don’t know any of these people.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I’m a law student at Columbia, for Christ’s sake. I’ve lived my whole life in Ensley.’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘I’m a middle-class Negro, goddammit,’ Coggins added vehemently, ‘I don’t belong down here.’ A nervous laugh broke from him, thin and edged with self-mockery. ‘My mother never shopped on Fourth Avenue.’ He glared at Ben helplessly. ‘She goes to New York to shop. She shops in Bloomingdale’s, for God’s sake.’ His eyes snapped forward as the light changed and the milling crowd of Negroes swept toward him like a high black tide. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he whispered quickly as he stepped off the curb, ‘but you really picked the wrong guy for this deal.’

  Ben continued to walk beside him as the thickening crowds swarmed around them. Coggins looked as if he’d been gathered into the tentacles of some strange dark beast, but he moved boldly forward anyway, his head held almost artificially high, as if he were trying to give off an attitude of complete control.

  ‘There it is,’ Ben said as they neared the first poolhall.

  Coggins nodded apprehensively but maintained his stride. He did not stop until he reached the door. Then he pressed his back to the front wall.

  ‘Okay,’ he asked, ‘what now?’

  ‘We go in,
’ Ben told him.

  ‘And do what, exactly?’

  ‘Ask a few questions.’

  ‘And what if the people inside don’t feel like answering them?’

  ‘Then we’ll leave,’ Ben said with a shrug. ‘What else can we do?’

  The simplicity of the answer seemed to ease Coggins’ nervousness a bit. He drew in a slow deep breath, as if preparing for a long dive into dangerous waters.

  ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s go.’

  A smoky gray light engulfed them as they stepped into the poolhall. Inside, two rows of about twenty tables stretched the length of the room, each resting beneath its own shaded fluorescent light. A jukebox ground out Little Richard’s latest number, and the men who were waiting to shoot rocked to its beat while they stood back from the table and watched their opponents’ moves. An ancient Coca-Cola machine was wedged in between two cigarette machines at the back of the hall, and the side walls were covered with advertisements and pinup girl calendars.

  For an instant everything went on as usual, but then it stopped abruptly. The low murmur of conversation dropped into an eerie silence, and even the men who had begun to calculate their shots froze in place and stared at Ben and Coggins as the two of them continued to stand at the front of the room, their bodies backlighted by the still open door.

  Coggins shifted nervously, then offered a toothy grin. ‘How y’all doing?’ he bawled cheerfully.

  No one spoke.

  Again Coggins shifted from one foot to the next. ‘Listen, I want to talk to you fellows about something. ‘

  Silence.

  ‘You guys may have heard about this little girl who got killed over in Bearmatch,’ Coggins continued. ‘The fact is, I’m trying to find out who did it, you know?’

  Several of the men sat back on the edges of the tables and stared mutely at Coggins.

  Coggins nodded toward Ben. ‘This fellow, here, he’s helping me out a little. He’s from the Justice Department. He works with Robert Kennedy.’

  The men did not seem impressed.

  ‘He’s been sent down from Washington, you know,’ Coggins went on wildly. ‘We figure some … some cracker killed that little girl, and we aim to find out who it was.’ He turned swiftly and snapped the ring out of Ben’s jacket pocket. ‘You see this?’ he asked as he lifted it to the crowd.