Streets of Fire

  The whistle had entirely died away before Ben headed out across the parking lot. He kept his eyes on the wall of solid rock which rose above the small tin shed, but he’d already found what he was looking for. A wide swath of whitish-clay ground spread out from the base of the stone wall, and when he reached it, he bent down, scraped some of the clay onto his fingers and looked at it carefully.

  The voice, when he heard it, seemed to slice him like a cleaver.

  ‘What you doing here, mister?’

  Ben turned instantly, his breath locked in his throat.

  The man was dressed in bib overalls and a shortsleeve plaid shirt. He cradled a twelve-gauge shotgun in his naked arms, its long black barrel nosed slightly upward, toward the top of Ben’s head.

  ‘This ain’t no lovers’ lane,’ the man added threateningly.

  ‘I know,’ Ben said softly.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m with the Birmingham police.’

  ‘You got any proof of that?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, let’s see it then,’ the man said coldly.

  Ben lifted one hand into the air while the other crawled slowly beneath his jacket pocket and pulled out his identification.

  ‘Just hold it up,’ the man commanded.

  Ben lifted it toward him and watched as the man peered at it for a moment, then stepped back.

  ‘You may be with the police,’ the man said, ‘but it still don’t tell me what business you got up here.’

  ‘I’m looking into a murder,’ Ben said. ‘It might have started here.’

  ‘In the chert pit?’ the man asked unbelievingly.

  ‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘Are you here every night?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘Company just put me on. It’s my first night.’

  ‘Was anybody guarding the place before tonight?’

  ‘No. They just decided to put a guy on because they’s been a few little robberies.’

  ‘Robberies?’

  The man laughed. ‘Yeah. It don’t look like they’s much to steal but rocks and dirt.’

  ‘What was stolen?’

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ the man said. ‘Nothing much. But the company gets real jumpy about it. You know how it is, they got to keep track of things.’

  Ben forced a smile. ‘Yeah.’

  The man shook his head. But murder – I ain’t heard nothing about that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have heard anything about it,’ Ben told him.

  ‘Who got killed?’

  ‘A policeman.’

  ‘From Birmingham?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The man shook his head despairingly. ‘Well, don’t that beat all.’ He smiled again, lowered the barrel of the shotgun to the ground and tapped the pouch of his overalls. ‘You want a drank?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘’Cause you’re on duty?’

  ‘No, because I don’t want one,’ Ben said. He stepped away slightly. ‘I got to get back to Birmingham.’

  ‘Okay,’ the man said cheerfully. ‘Just wheel your car all the way around. You start backing up, you’ll hit them ruts on the side of the hill.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ben told him.

  The man was still standing in the middle of the lot as Ben began the wide turn out of the lot. He circled slowly, waving at him as he passed, then guided the car up near the face of the stone. He could hear the spray of the white clay slapping up underneath the car as he pressed down on the accelerator and made his way back toward Birmingham.

  FORTY-ONE

  The short gravel driveway in front of the Langleys’ trailer was empty, and because of that, Ben was surprised when Tod Langley opened the door, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes with his fists, his body clothed only in a pair of tattered Boxer shorts.

  ‘You come to get me?’ he asked groggily.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever-time I hear somebody knocking, I figure they’ve come to get me.’

  ‘Where’s your car?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Didn’t you drive a Chevy, a ’59?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In the shop,’ Tod said. ‘Busted radiator. I guess it overheated.’

  ‘Which shop is it in?’

  ‘Gallager’s.’

  ‘How long’s it been there?’

  ‘Three days,’ Tod said. ‘Why, was you gonna take it?’

  ‘Take it?’

  ‘Like they did the Black Cat,’ Tod said. ‘They already took it away from us.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ Tod said. ‘They sent McCorkindale over here for it. He said Captain Starnes told him that since me and Teddy was both suspended, we didn’t have no right to ride around in it no more, and he wanted it back.’

  ‘Where’d McCorkindale take it?’

  Tod shrugged. ‘I don’t know. To the police garage, I guess. They’ll probably scrape the paint off and make it look like a regular patrol car.’

  ‘Have you talked to Teddy?’

  Tod shook his head, then looked at Ben worriedly. ‘They going to arrest me, too, Ben?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They ain’t got nothing on me, have they?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Ben said.

  ‘It’s to please the niggers,’ Tod said emphatically. ‘That’s what Teddy says.’ He opened the rust-stained door of the trailer slightly. ‘You want to come in?’

  Ben could smell the mingled odors of unwashed clothes and dirty dishes from inside the trailer. ‘No, thanks, Tod,’ he said quickly.

  Tod looked at him almost pleadingly. ‘It ain’t right, Ben,’ he said. ‘Trying to pin that killing on us. We done what we was supposed to do in Bearmatch. We busted ass.’

  Tod went on for a while after that, almost playfully relating the crap games he and Teddy had broken up, the shothouses they’d raided. There was an eerie delight in his eyes as he spoke of throwing men downstairs, or tossing them through windows, and as Ben listened, his mind drifted toward the other Bearmatch which must have helplessly stood by and watched all this from behind its hundreds of cracked windows.

  ‘We stirred them up,’ Tod concluded with a laugh. Then his face soured. ‘Maybe a little too much.’ He looked at Ben questioningly, his large, dull eyes blinking painfully against the harsh late-morning light. ‘That’s what Teddy says. He says they’re blaming us for stirring up the niggers.’

  ‘Who’s blaming you?’

  ‘The people downtown,’ Tod said. ‘The big wheels. Teddy says they’re mad at me and him for bringing this whole shit-storm down on them. He says that if we hadn’t kicked so much ass in Bearmatch, then the niggers would of stayed quiet.’ He looked at Ben intently. ‘You don’t believe that, do you, Ben?’

  As if from some great height that he had only lately reached, Ben saw the dark sprawl of Bearmatch as it swept out from the rusting railyards like a pool of oily water. He saw the unpainted clapboard houses, the muddy alleyways, the squat chicken-wire fences that cut across its face, dividing it into tiny grassless plots.

  ‘No,’ he said softly, shaking his head. ‘No, I don’t think they would have stayed quiet, Tod.’ He could feel his eyes grow narrow as he glared at him. ‘I think that sooner or later, they’d have come after you and Teddy with every goddamn thing they’ve got.’

  Gallager’s Auto Repair was little more than a tin shed with a single hydraulic lift surrounded by an oil-stained assortment of parts and tools. A large faded sign proclaimed the lowest repair rates in Birmingham.

  ‘The Langleys’ ’59 Chevy was on the lift when Ben walked into the garage. A short man in coveralls worked beneath it, pulling strenuously at a long steel wrench.

  Ben pulled out his badge, and the man stopped immediately.

  ‘This car belongs to Teddy Langley, right?’ Ben asked.

  The man seemed to draw back slightly, as if afraid to answer. ‘
Yeah, it does,’ he said hesitantly.

  ‘How long’s it been here?’

  ‘Three days.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘That’s when it come in,’ the man said assuredly. ‘And it sure ain’t in no condition to go out.’

  Ben’s eyes drifted upward toward the side of the car. It was dusty and unwashed, but there were none of the whitish flecks which had been blown across the sides of his own car as he’d left the chert pit.

  ‘I towed it in,’ the man said as he stepped out from beneath the car. ‘Teddy called me and had me pick it up.’

  Ben nodded. ‘They didn’t have another car, did they?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Not that I ever seen.’ He grinned broadly. ‘Except for the Black Cat,’ he added. ‘And they used that for most everything.’

  McCorkindale looked up from the piles of paper that lay scattered across his desk.

  ‘Morning, Ben,’ he said.

  ‘I was over at Tod Langley’s this morning,’ Ben told him.

  McCorkindale stared at him lazily.

  ‘He said you picked up their patrol car yesterday.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who told you to do that?’

  ‘Captain Starnes,’ McCorkindale said with a slight shrug. ‘There wasn’t much to it. Tod give me the keys without a fuss. He’s scared shitless if you ask me.’

  ‘Where’d you take it?’

  ‘Right downstairs,’ McCorkindale said. ‘You probably passed it coming in.’

  ‘I parked out front.’

  ‘Well, it’s down there with all the other cars,’ McGorkindale said. ‘They’re getting ready to fix it up again. You know, repaint it. Word is, the Langleys got way out of line – I mean, even before this Breedlove thing – and they’re going to retire the Black Cat and forget it just as soon as they can.’

  ‘But they haven’t done it yet?’ Ben asked quickly.

  ‘Far as I know, it’s still down in the garage.’

  It was sitting in an isolated corner of the garage, but Ben saw it immediately, a gray blur which seemed to lunge toward him from the corner of his eyes. As he approached it, the cat took on the shape that he remembered, brutal, snarling, its yellow eyes glaring hatefully back at him as he walked toward it through the thick gray air of the garage.

  The car had not been washed, and as Ben circled it slowly, he noted what appeared to be months of accumulated dirt, dust and grime. It was as if the Langleys had purposefully made the car look as battered as possible. At the back, he bent down and looked for signs of white clay on the sides of the fenders and the rims of the tires. They were both entirely free of the white flecks which had been spewed across his own car as he drove out of the chert pit. He bent lower and carefully checked the treads of the tire itself. Nothing.

  He was already back on his feet when he heard footsteps moving toward him from the entrance of the garage. He turned immediately and saw Luther walking toward his own car.

  Luther slowed when he saw Ben, nodded quickly, then walked over.

  ‘What are you doing down here?’ he asked.

  ‘Checking a few things out.’

  ‘On the Black Cat?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘This business with Breedlove and the Langleys,’ Ben said. ‘Some of it doesn’t fit together very well.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, that second handprint on the trapdoor, for one,’ Ben told him. ‘It wasn’t mine.’

  ‘So what?’ Luther asked. He shook his head dismissively. ‘That could have been anybody’s. It could be one of the Langleys’.’

  ‘Why would they come in their own house through a dirty crawlspace?’

  ‘Maybe because they got shit for brains, Ben,’ Luther said irritably. ‘Those two never did have much sense, you know.’

  Ben looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘Or it could have been a burglar,’ Luther added. ‘Somebody trying to break in.’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘You don’t think so?’ Luther asked crisply.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? You know something I don’t?’

  ‘Well, I think I know where Breedlove went the night he died,’ Ben said.

  Luther took a small step toward him. ‘You do? Where?’

  ‘A gravel pit over in Irondale.’

  ‘What was he doing over there?’

  ‘Looking for a body.’

  ‘A body?’ Luther asked unbelievingly. ‘Whose body?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ben told him.

  ‘What do you know?’ Luther demanded. ‘I mean, for sure.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well, where’d you come up with this bullshit about Irondale and a body?’

  ‘From the Langleys.’

  Luther chuckled. ‘And you believed them?’

  ‘The day Kelly Ryan died,’ Ben began slowly, his mind suddenly drawing back to the dank room, the sound of the rain, the gentle sway of the body, ‘Daniels was talking about how Ryan had always thought that Teddy and his brother had killed a colored man and buried him in a chert pit in Irondale.’ He started to continue, then stopped.

  Luther watched Ben silently, his face almost motionless. ‘Well, go ahead,’ he said impatiently.

  Ben remained silent, still trying to bring the entire scene back into his mind.

  ‘What are you getting at, Ben?’ Luther demanded.

  Ben did not answer. Over the patter of the rain, he struggled to hear again all the voices he’d heard that day in Kelly’s room. He heard phrases, muttered words, strained laughter. All of it tumbled chaotically in his mind.

  ‘This whole business with Kelly Ryan sounds like bullshit to me,’ Luther said sternly. ‘And we don’t have time to go on wild-goose chases.’

  Ben nodded, his eyes staring straight ahead, focused on the dark-green car which was parked only a few feet away. It was the same car he’d seen only a few days ago as it sat parked next to the edge of Kelly Ingram Park, but it looked different now. Before it had been dusty, and Ben remembered the track which Langley had left in the dust on its hood when he’d slid off it. But now it gleamed softly, despite the dark air which surrounded it, and in the sheen which spread across it, he could tell that it had not only been recently washed, but carefully and meticulously waxed as well.

  ‘Whose car is that?’ Ben asked as he nodded toward it.

  Luther turned to look. ‘That green one?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s Daniels’ car,’ Luther said.

  Ben’s mind raced back to Kelly Ryan’s dreary bedroom. He saw it frozen before him, each man in a place that now seemed oddly destined for him, some of them in the open, full of their belief, while others waited in the wings, silently holding to the curtain.

  ‘Daniels,’ he whispered.

  ‘That’s right, Daniels,’ Luther repeated loudly. ‘Looks like he’s finally give it a wash.’

  Ben nodded. ‘I wonder why,’ he said almost to himself.

  ‘Probably for Breedlove’s funeral,’ Luther said matter-of-factly. ‘They were partners, after all.’

  FORTY-TWO

  Charlie Breedlove’s funeral was held late in the afternoon at a small graveyard outside Birmingham. Several neighbors gathered beside the grave, but only Daniels and Ben came from the department, and they stood side by side, perched beneath a maple tree, and watched as Mrs Breedlove and her son wept softly in the fading light.

  ‘Nobody’s safe,’ Daniels said mournfully after the service had ended. ‘Maybe it’s true, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About how the good die young.’

  Ben did not answer. He could see Breedlove’s wife and son as they stood peering down into the grave. He wondered how much Breedlove had told them, how much they knew of what he really was.

  ‘You know what really bothers me about all the trouble we’re having down here now?’ Daniels asked suddenly.
/>
  Ben shook his head.

  ‘The fact that so many innocent people get drawn into it,’ Daniels said. ‘White and colored. I mean, you take all these little kids they got locked up downtown. Shit, Ben, the most of them don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doing.’ He bowed his head slightly and dug the toe of his shoe into the ground. ‘And as far as Charlie’s concerned, we may not ever know what he did, or if he did anything at all.’

  ‘Well,’ Ben said tentatively, ‘we do know what happened to him, though.’

  ‘But we don’t know why,’ Daniels said. ‘At least not for sure.’

  Ben added nothing else, and for the rest of the service the two of them stood together, watching silently until the last prayer had been said. Then they walked over to Mrs Breedlove.

  ‘I’m real sorry, Susan,’ Daniels said quietly as he shook her hand. ‘And I just want you to know that we’re going to find out who hurt Charlie, and we’re going to make them pay.’

  Daniels stepped aside quickly and allowed Ben to shake Mrs Breedlove’s hand. Then the two of them made their way across the cemetery to the plain dirt road that wound its way through it.

  Daniels shook his head regretfully as he walked slowly at Ben’s side. ‘They sure did get him in the ground in a hurry,’ he said.

  Ben nodded.

  ‘I hear the department made them,’ Daniels added.

  ‘How could it make them?’

  ‘Otherwise it wouldn’t pay for the funeral,’ Daniels said matter-of-factly. ‘And you know how it is, nobody has any money. They wanted a rush job, and so they put the pressure on.’

  ‘Why would they want a rush job?’

  ‘Well, any way you look at it, Ben, Charlie was sort of embarrassing to the department.’ He shrugged. ‘I mean, on one side you got an informer, and on the other, you got a victim, right?’

  ‘Victim? Of what?’

  ‘The people who wanted him dead.’

  ‘You mean the Langleys?’

  ‘Whoever didn’t want to be informed on,’ Daniels said. ‘It could have been anybody.’

  They stopped at Daniels’ car, pausing for a moment to look back toward the city. Its stunted skyline was barely visible through the summer haze.