Streets of Fire

Ben lifted the picture slightly in order to bring it into a better light. It was a small, square Polaroid, shot in a grainy black and white, but he could see the girl’s face quite plainly as it looked up toward him from the grayish dusty ground. It had the same look the dead always had. No matter how big or how small, how much or how little had been done to them, they always looked as if they’d never had a chance.

Black Cat 13 sat obliviously at rest in an emergency parking zone in the alleyway behind Smith’s Cafe. It was gray with black side stripes, and a large black cat, yellow-eyed and with its silver claws exposed in an outstretched paw, had been hand-painted on the hood. The number 13 had been scrawled in white across its side, and a dab of red hung like bloody drool from its snarling mouth.

Tod and Teddy Langley sat in the far left corner of the cafe, each of them finishing up what looked like the usual blueplate special: hamburger steak, mashed potatoes and a faded mixture of green peas and tiny cubes of carrot.

Teddy sat up slightly as Ben approached.

‘Well, hello, Ben,’ he said. He smiled thinly. ‘I hear they put you on King.’

Ben pulled one of the chairs from beneath the table and sat down. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘How are things in Bearmatch?’

Teddy laughed. ‘Couldn’t be better, now that we’re filling up the jails.’ He pulled a bottle of Coke over to the side of the table, opened a package of salted peanuts and poured them into the bottle. A hissing brownish fizz boiled up almost to the rim of the bottle, then settled back slowly.

‘Well, not all of them,’ Tod said quietly. He took the last crust of biscuit into his mouth and chewed it slowly. ‘Not all of them, right, Teddy?’

‘That’s right,’ Teddy said. He took a long pull on the bottle. ‘So what’s the story, Ben? What’s King’s next move?’

Ben let his eyes wander aimlessly about the diner, from the front, where the cafe’s menu was written on a chalkboard in the front window, to the rear wall where two photographs hung from either side of a Coca-Cola clock, one of Governor Wallace, and the other of Vice-President Johnson. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Breedlove and Daniels are watching King, too,’ Teddy said matter-of-factly, as if demonstrating how much he already knew. ‘And there are probably a few more in undercover.’

Tod laughed. ‘Undercover?’ he screeched. ‘How you get undercover with them – paint your face black?’

Ben smiled limply. ‘So what are you boys doing instead of Bearmatch, loading the paddy wagons like everybody else?’

‘Hell, no,’ Tod said excitedly. ‘We got a special –’

‘Shut up, Tod,’ Teddy said. His eyes shot over to Ben. ‘Never seen you in Smith’s before,’ he said.

‘I don’t come here very much.’

‘So why are you here now?’

Ben shrugged casually. ‘I saw your car outside, and I thought –’

Teddy leaned toward him. ‘Word is, they’s an informant in the department,’ he said. ‘Somebody who’s working for the other side.’

‘I thought you might help me with this case I’m working on,’ Ben continued without hesitation.

Teddy’s eyes squeezed together. ‘What case is that?’

‘Something that broke this morning,’ Ben told him. He took the photograph from his coat pocket and laid it down on the table. ‘A little girl. Somebody shot her in the head and buried her in that old ballfield off Twenty-third Street.’

Teddy leaned back slowly, his eyes casually lingering on the picture. ‘She from Bearmatch?’

‘I guess so,’ Ben told him. ‘But the front office still wants a full investigation.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘So the murder can’t be made to look like a racial thing,’ Ben said.

‘They’re worried about that, huh?’ Tod asked.

‘A little.’

Teddy shook his head resentfully. ‘Then we’ve already lost, Ben.’

‘It’s what the Chief wants,’ Ben said.

‘That’s how it looks,’ Teddy said emphatically, ‘but that’s not how it is.’ He smiled helplessly. ‘Don’t you see, Ben? Don’t you see how it really is?’

Ben said nothing.

‘Even the Chief is having to pay attention to them,’ Teddy explained. ‘We’re having to be worried about what they think.’ He looked at his brother angrily. ‘When the fuck did we ever have to do that before?’ He shifted his eyes back over to Ben. ‘You know what a mongrel is?’ he asked. ‘You ever see an old mongrel dog?’

Ben didn’t answer.

‘That’s what they want to turn us into,’ Teddy said darkly. ‘A race of mongrels.’

Tod’s eyes shot over to Ben. ‘That’s right,’ he said emphatically. ‘That’s what they want.’