Streets of Fire (29 page)

‘Example of what?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. He looked down at the ground around the tree. It was splattered with blood, and from the look of the way the tall grass had been beaten to the ground, it looked as if Breedlove had put up a fierce but ultimately hopeless fight before they’d killed him.

Ben pulled one of the long green reeds which had been trampled down and stared at the small dot of dried blood which clung to it. ‘Why do you think they brought him way up here?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Luther said. ‘I’m not even sure they did.’

Ben looked at him. ‘Well, why would he have come up here on his own?’

Luther shrugged. ‘I don’t know that either,’ he said, ‘But I do know that Fred found his car right down the road back there. His police ID was on the dashboard. That’s why Fred called me.’

‘But you don’t have any idea what he was doing up here?’

Luther shook his head firmly. ‘No, I don’t.’

A siren could be heard suddenly, growing louder with each passing second.

‘They’re coming from Birmingham,’ Luther explained. ‘Fred said it was okay to take Breedlove back.’ His eyes lifted toward the terribly torn and violated face. ‘I told him that he was one of ours, and that we’d find out who did this to him.’ He looked at Ben pointedly. ‘But I’m not sure we can,’ he said. Then he turned away quickly, plowing through the deep grass until he reached the road.

THIRTY-ONE

At eight in the morning, the Chief marched to the front of the detective bullpen and made the announcement. He bowed his head slightly before beginning, then glared fiercely out into the assembled detectives.

‘We’ve lost one of our own,’ he declared, his small blue eyes narrowing tightly. ‘We don’t know how it happened, but, by Jesus, gentlemen, we’re going to find out.’ His large, bulldog face squeezed together determinedly. ‘Nobody does something like this to one of our boys and gets away with it.’

The detectives exchanged puzzled glances. Across the room, Ben could see Daniels standing alone, while a few yards away, near the opposite corner, the Langleys stood shoulder to shoulder, their eyes fixed on the Chief.

‘Gentlemen,’ the Chief said slowly, his voice suddenly low and mournful, ‘Charlie Breedlove is no longer with us.’

A confused murmur rose in the room, muffled and indecipherable.

The Chief waited for it to die away, then continued. ‘I’d like to be able to say – well, I wouldn’t like it – but it would be better if I could say that Detective Breedlove had died of natural causes, or in a car wreck, or something like that.’ He paused, his face growing tense and angry. ‘But, gentlemen, that is not the case here. The case is, gentlemen, that a person or persons did this thing to Detective Breedlove. What I mean to say is, they murdered him in cold blood.’

A wave of noise and shifting about swept the room, and again the Chief waited for it to fade to silence.

‘Now we don’t know much about what happened yet,’ he said, ‘but one of our brothers is dead by a violent hand. Captain Starnes will fill you in on the details, and I want to assure you that he’ll be very frank in what he tells you about this tragedy. So all I need to add is this.’ He drew in a deep dramatic breath. ‘Gentlemen, despite the fact that we have our hands full these days, we are going to find out who killed Charlie Breedlove, and we’re going to see to it that that person is severely punished for doing it.’

Again a wave of noise swept the room, lingering for so long this time that the Chief lifted his hands to bring it to an end. ‘Now I’m telling you all this because it’s going to be in the papers anyway,’ he said. ‘And there are probably a lot of people in Birmingham who will try to use this to embarrass us, or make us look stupid. Now don’t any of you let that happen. Just go on with your duties, and let the officers who have been assigned to this case do theirs.’ He stopped, stared at the group of detectives that were gathered before him for a moment, then nodded briskly. ‘That is all.’

Luther took the Chief’s place immediately, described what he and Ben had seen earlier in the morning, and then darted away as quickly as the Chief.

Ben turned from the front of the room just as Luther disappeared behind the rear doors. He could see Daniels slumped down in the chair behind his desk. Several detectives had gathered around him, and he was talking quietly to them. The Langleys stood alone in the opposite corner, talking so intently to one another that they did not see Ben until he was almost on them.

‘Hey, Teddy,’ Ben said. He looked at Tod. ‘How you doing?’

The two brothers stared at Ben expressionlessly.

‘Terrible about Breedlove,’ Ben said.

Tod nodded, but Teddy stared rigidly at Ben.

‘I didn’t know him very well,’ Ben said. ‘Did you?’

Teddy watched Ben intently. ‘Is this your case, Well-man?’

‘What?’

‘They must have assigned it to somebody,’ Teddy said, and it wasn’t to me.’

Ben shrugged. ‘They didn’t give it to me either.’

Teddy stared at him knowingly. ‘Bullshit.’

‘Why would they give it to me, Teddy?’ Ben asked.

‘Because Daniels is too close to it, and everybody else is too busy.’

‘I’m busy, myself,’ Ben said. ‘I got that little girl thing.’

Teddy laughed. ‘That’s a nigger case,’ he said. ‘You could drop that and nobody would give a shit.’

‘But I haven’t dropped it,’ Ben said.

‘Maybe you better.’

‘You know something I don’t, Teddy?’ Ben asked.

‘That nobody gets ahead in this department by working a nigger case,’ Teddy said.

Daniels suddenly appeared at Ben’s side. ‘How does a person get ahead around here, then?’ he asked in a voice that was mildly accusatory.

Teddy glared at him. ‘Well, you ought to know, Harry, you’ve been greasing the pole for a few years now.’

Daniels’ body tightened. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

Langley laughed mockingly. ‘Oh, come on, Harry. Everybody notices the way you’re always brownnosing the Chief.’

Daniels moved toward him slightly. ‘You better shut your mouth, Teddy.’

‘There was a time when the Chief come to me for things,’ Teddy went on resentfully. ‘Now he goes to people like you. Young guys. People who are ready to make a deal with the niggers, give them what they want.’

Daniels took another step toward him, glaring fiercely, his body clenched.

Teddy grinned coldly. ‘What do you want to be, Daniels? You want to take the Chief’s place, or do you want to be mayor, or what?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You talk a good game, you and Breedlove, and most of the rest of the new people around here. But you’re just in it for yourselves. You don’t have no feeling for what you do.’ He shook his head. ‘You think I don’t notice how you’re always having little huddles with the Chief, or following the Captain around? You think I don’t notice that?’ He shrugged. ‘Well, one of these days you may have Birmingham all to yourself, but it’ll be a mongrelized, no-account place with nothing but white trash and niggers in it.’

Daniels cocked his head slightly, mocking him. ‘And you’re going to stop all that, right, Teddy? You’re going to save the whole goddamn white race.’

‘I’ll do my goddamn best,’ Teddy said determinedly. ‘But don’t think that I don’t already know that if the Communists and racemixers get desperate enough, they’ll set somebody up, somebody like me, like Tod, like anybody they want out of the way.’

‘You think you’re going to be set up, Teddy?’ Ben asked seriously.

‘Maybe.’

‘Who would do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you have any idea who killed Breedlove?’

‘No.’

‘Or why?’

‘The only thing I know is that they didn’t give me the case,’ Teddy said. ‘And that don’t seem right to me.’ He laughed derisively. ‘But nothing seems right about this thing. I mean, tying him to a tree like that. Calling it in to the local sheriff.’ He grimaced. ‘That’s the sort of thing you do when you want to get attention or set somebody up. Any other way, it don’t make no sense.’

Daniels glanced over to Tod. ‘You feel that way, too?’

Tod started to speak but Teddy interrupted. ‘My brother agrees with everything I say.’

‘Stay together pretty much, is that right?’ Daniels asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, you boys better be careful,’ Daniels said sneeringly. ‘People might get the idea that you’re closer than nature ought to allow.’

Langley’s body tensed but he did not move.

‘Were you two patrolling Bearmatch last Sunday?’ Ben asked quickly.

Teddy nodded.

‘Around that old ballfield?’ Ben added pointedly. ‘Maybe at about five in the afternoon?’

Teddy smiled. ‘This about that little girl?’

‘Why did you pull Horace Davenport over?’ Ben asked bluntly.

Daniels’ lips parted. ‘You pulled Horace Davenport over?’ he asked, astonished.

‘That’s right.’

Daniels laughed. ‘You know who he is, Teddy? He could be the next mayor of this town.’

‘He was speeding,’ Teddy said sternly. ‘And I don’t allow no speeding in Bearmatch.’

Daniels laughed again. ‘My God, you are an idiot.’

Teddy stared at him coldly. ‘Why don’t you go find out who killed your partner,’ he snapped. ‘That’d really get you in tight with the big wheels.’

‘Davenport lied to me,’ Ben said to Teddy. ‘He told me that he let that little girl out because she saw a friend of hers playing in the field.’

‘Maybe he did.’

‘He said that was the only reason he stopped in Bearmatch.’

Teddy said nothing.

‘But you pulled him over,’ Ben said. ‘You and Tod.’

The two brothers looked at each other nervously.

‘Why did you pull him over?’ Ben demanded.

‘We pull over a lot of people in Bearmatch,’ Teddy said harshly. ‘We like to keep a close eye on things. Shit, Wellman, we pulled over a guy just before Davenport.’

‘Norman Siegel,’ Ben said. ‘I know. I talked to him.’

Teddy looked surprised. ‘You really are working the shit out of this case, ain’t you?’ He looked at his brother and sneered. ‘Maybe Ben’s going to try to pin this little nigger cunt on us, too.’

Before he could stop himself, Ben saw his own hand fly out and slap Teddy Langley’s face, then fly back and slap it again, backhanded. Langley tumbled backward, stumbled over a chair and sprawled onto the floor.

Tod Langley’s body stiffened, but he did not move forward. Instead, he pressed his back reflexively against the wall behind him and stared at Ben, thunderstruck. Daniels seemed almost equally astonished, his eyes wide and staring, but a thin, satisfied smile growing on his face.

For an instant the room was completely silent. The few detectives who had remained after the Chief’s speech looked on in motionless disbelief as Langley pulled himself to a sitting position on the floor, but did not rise. He was still resting, half-dazed on the floor, as Ben slammed through the doors of the detective bullpen and headed for his car.

THIRTY-TWO

Ben had already tromped down the stairs and pulled himself in behind the wheel before he realized that he had no place to go. It was almost two hours before King was scheduled to speak, and he had been assigned no duties in the meantime except to continue looking, in whatever way he could, for the man who’d killed Doreen Ballinger.

Everyone else was very busy, as Ben could easily see as he glanced about. The firemen were mustering on the steps again, surrounded by scores of uniformed policemen and Alabama Highway Patrol. They stood in ranks, or gathered together in small knots, but always separate from each other, the firemen looking oddly sad and disengaged, while they warily watched the police swagger up and down the stairs, their thumbs notched in their thick black gunbelts. For a moment Ben remembered how often he’d seen Breedlove do exactly that, his shoulders hunched, his long shadow cutting jaggedly at the steps as he moved toward the glass door. Now he tried to imagine what Breedlove must have thought as he laughed with the Langleys, or joked with his partner, or slammed Coggins against the wall of the detective bullpen with such pretended fury that even Daniels had been fooled by it, and had finally moved in to stop him. But it had all been an act, and it seemed to Ben that to create an atmosphere in which such acting could be called for, in which decency had to wear a grim disguise, was itself a grave and desperate wrong. He wished that he’d known about Breedlove before it was too late, because he realized now that he would have behaved differently toward him, perhaps touched his arm from time to time, or offered him a subtly pointed look, anything that might have let him know that even within the ranks of his fellow detectives, he was not entirely alone.

Ben looked at his watch and tried to imagine some way to kill the next two hours. For an instant he saw Doreen’s face in his mind, then Esther’s, then Ramona’s as she swung beneath the tree, watching Doreen saunter toward her from the other side of the field. After that it was a stream – Kelly Ryan swaying in summer heat, then Bluto’s body swelling with decay, and after him, Breedlove, his arms stretched out like broken wings, his shattered head drooping toward his chest. It was as if some dark angel had descended upon the city, randomly swinging its sword, slicing whoever stood within its path.

He glanced back up toward City Hall. The Chief had just stepped out of the building, casting his short, stubby shadow across the stairs. The men on the steps stiffened immediately, and they were still standing at attention when Ben hit the ignition and fled down the avenue and away.

‘You got anything for me?’ Ben asked as he walked up to Patterson’s desk.

‘The girl’s in the ground, Ben,’ Patterson said resignedly, ‘and it’s going to be just like it would have been with any other little girl from Bearmatch.’ He shrugged. ‘I knew it would. I said so from the beginning.’

‘I mean on Breedlove,’ Ben told him.

Patterson straightened up from the paperwork on his desk. ‘You working that case, too?’

‘Just a little,’ Ben said. ‘Sort of unofficial.’

‘Unofficial? I never heard of that.’

‘I don’t know who they’ll finally turn it over to,’ Ben told him. ‘But for now I’m just checking up on it. You know, on the side.’