Streets of Fire

‘No, them boys wouldn’t make no deal,’ Jolly said. ‘You know why? ’Cause nigger money, they wouldn’t have none of it.’ He laughed at their stupidity. ‘Now money, it’s jes’ one color. It ain’t white. It ain’t black. It jes’ green, that’s all.’ He waved Ben forward gently. ‘Step over to the light,’ he said. ‘I seen you before.’

Ben stepped toward him, his face now bathed in the red-tinted lamplight that came from Jolly’s desk.

‘Oh yeah,’ Jolly said lightly. ‘You come in here before. You come looking in on that little gal.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You settle that one?’

‘I think so,’ Ben said. He waited a moment, then added, ‘Collins Avenue.’

Jolly stared at him, unmoved. ‘You was there tonight.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Was you in it with Daniels?’

‘No.’

‘What you there for, then?’

‘I was looking into something else,’ Ben said.

Jolly shrugged. ‘It don’t matter to me what you seen,’ he said. ‘You come to me like you should have done. I ain’t going to let you go away mad.’

Ben stared at him silently.

Jolly leaned back slightly. ‘What you wants from Roy-Joy, huh? You wants a little gal for yourself? I got plenty of them. Sweet as candy.’

Ben did not answer.

‘Money, maybe,’ Jolly said. ‘Got plenty of that, too.’

‘When I was here last time,’ Ben said, ‘you told me how you like to see a man face to face when you make a deal with him. Do you remember that?’

‘Don’t have to remember nothing,’ Jolly said. ‘The whole world already in my head.’

‘That’s what you did late one Sunday afternoon,’ Ben told him. ‘You met Harry Daniels on Collins Avenue.’

Jolly stared at Ben calmly.

‘You met face to face with him, like you always do,’ Ben went on. ‘You thought you’d be alone. But a car came by. It was a dark-blue Lincoln. There was a deep rut in the road, so it had to slow down quite a bit as it passed. There was a little girl in that car. You saw her, but what mattered is that she saw you. She was from Bearmatch, so she must have recognized you.’

‘She wave at me,’ Jolly said almost tenderly. ‘Sweet little thing. Big smile on her face.’ His eyes shifted over toward the door, as if looking for Douglas. ‘It surprise you, don’t it? It surprise you that I come right out and say it?’ He laughed. ‘But it don’t matter now. ’Cause you come to me, and ain’t nobody going to go home mad.’

Ben watched him icily.

‘Daniels was a fool,’ Jolly said. ‘He say he just want this and that. But in his eyes, he want everything.’ He smiled. ‘You look different to me. You look like I could do my business with you.’

Ben remained silent.

‘That’s right,’ Jolly went on. ‘Your eyes, they tell me we going do business, you and me. And when you do business with somebody, you got to come clean about things. You can’t have no secrets. In Bearmatch, we don’t have no lies. Ever-body know ever-thing. Ain’t a living soul don’t know how ever-thing work.’ His hand lifted up gracefully. ‘They all know who bring in the whiskey and the whores. They wants them.’ He laughed. ‘Daniels, he want to be a big shot. He want to be Chief of something. But the old Chief, he still around.’ He shook his head, chuckling to himself. ‘Can’t kill him. That wouldn’t do no good. Got to get rid of him in some other way. Got to embarrass him.’

‘By killing Martin Luther King,’ Ben said.

Jolly released a high, piercing cackle. ‘They be a terrible uproar over that, now,’ he said. ‘Ain’t no Chief going to still be around when the smoke clear on that one.’ He shook his head. ‘And that little shit Daniels, he think he going be Chief after that.’ His face curled into a snarl. ‘He ain’t got enough sense for that. He don’t even know how to show respect. He like them Black Cat boys. He hate Bearmatch.’ He lifted his head grandly. ‘But I loves Bearmatch. I knows what it need the most.’

Ben said nothing.

‘Relief,’ Jolly said loudly. ‘A little relief that a man can get from a drink of whiskey and a gal.’

‘You killed Doreen,’ Ben said.

Jolly smiled. ‘Done for me.’

‘Did Douglas rape her, too?’

Jolly scowled. ‘The ole fat boy done that,’ he said, ‘not Douglas. He don’t need no little girl. He got a good-looking woman for his own self.’ He waved his hand. ‘’Sides, Doreen already dead when Bluto climbed on her. Douglas say, “She want you, boy. She your wife. Go ’head.”’ He shrugged. ‘That Bluto, he never was worth nothing to me till right then.’

Ben said nothing. He could see it all as if it were a film unrolling in his head. He saw Doreen’s small body shudder as Bluto ravaged her, then Bluto’s own body slump forward as Douglas fired the pistol a few inches from his head.