Streets of Fire

‘Well, Patterson found a ring in her pocket, but it didn’t fit her. There was blood on her skirt, but none on her collar. She wasn’t wearing any panties.’

Breedlove laughed. ‘These Bearmatch girls, they don’t always wear panties.’

Ben’s eyes shot over to him. ‘She was about twelve years old, Charlie,’ he said.

‘So what?’

Ben turned away and idly glanced at the slip of paper Luther had handed him.

‘How about the Langleys,’ Breedlove said. ‘Did you talk to them?’

Ben continued to stare at the paper. ‘Yeah.’

‘They know anything about it?’

Ben shook his head.

‘Then I guess you better just fold it up and drop it in the shitter,’ Breedlove said, ‘because if the Black Cat boys don’t know, nobody knows.’ He stood up. ‘Well, I got to go pick up Harry. We’re going to have a little talk with that Coggins kid.’

‘Who?’

‘The little shit that’s organizing the school kids for the march today,’ Breedlove said. He pulled out his service revolver, threw open the chamber and checked that it was fully loaded. ‘You want to come along?’

‘No.’

‘Could be fun,’ Breedlove said with a narrow, mocking smile.

Ben shook his head. ‘I’m just supposed to follow along with the line of march,’ he said.

Breedlove shrugged. ‘Hell, Ben, these days that amounts to a goddamn desk job.’ He slipped the pistol back into his holster. ‘Sure you don’t want to come along with me and Harry?’

‘Not today,’ Ben said.

Breedlove shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, ‘but hell, anything’s better than sitting around here.’

Ben leaned back in his chair and watched as Breedlove quickly checked inside the cartridge pouch that hung at his side, then walked briskly out of the bullpen.

With Breedlove gone, Ben was now entirely alone in the large, desk-littered room. All the other detectives had already gone to take up their positions. By now, as Ben knew, many of them were laboriously mounting the stairs to the roofs of the squat brick buildings that fronted Fourth Avenue, while others were hunkering down behind the windows just below, their telescopic rifles cradled in their sweating arms. Still others were simply standing on the corners in their rumpled brown suits, staring nervously left and right, searching for that one face that did not go with all the others, the wilder, meaner, more desperate face of one who was armed as they were armed, and just as willing to meet them on the common ground of sudden and annihilating violence. For a moment he saw them as the comrades they still were, men with bills to pay, children to feed, men in cheap Robert Hall suits, who smoked five-cent cigars and drank their iced tea out of old jelly jars, men in the midst of engulfing circumstances who suddenly seemed almost as fully helpless as the dead.

EIGHT

Scores of police cars had lined the streets off Fourth Avenue by the time Ben arrived. The black-and-whites of the Birmingham police mingled with the gray-and-blacks from the Highway Patrol and an assortment of vehicles from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. On the closest side streets, paddy wagons and school buses were parked one after another for almost as far as he could see, all of them manned by troopers with automatic carbines and double-barreled shotguns. They stood tensely along the otherwise deserted sidewalks, smoking cigarettes and staring off toward the avenue as if looking for the first dark whirl of a tornado.

On the avenue itself, police blockades had been set up near the entrance to Sixteenth Street, and uniformed patrolmen stood behind them, their legs spread wide apart, their lead-tipped leather truncheons already in their hands. There was no traffic, not a single civilian car, and the sidewalks on either side of the street were entirely deserted. Only a few yards away, Ben could see the Chief dashing here and there, shouting commands, deploying his troops, and generally overseeing the entire operation. His short, stocky frame darted in and out of the sunlight, and wherever he went, his men stiffened suddenly, as if coming to attention. Luther followed close behind him, along with an assortment of officials from the front office, all of them under the solitary protection, or so it seemed to Ben, of Teddy Langley.

‘So you finally made it down here, Ben,’ Charlie Breedlove said as he stepped up beside him.

‘No need to hurry,’ Ben said casually.

‘None at all,’ Breedlove said. He pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket and lit one. ‘You’ve not been on riot detail before, have you?’

Ben shook his head.

‘Why is that, Ben?’

‘I guess they needed somebody to keep watch on other things,’ Ben said.

‘Probably didn’t think they needed you before now,’ Breedlove said. ‘But you know how it is. Things build up. Things get hotter and hotter. It’s been doing that now for a long time.’

Ben nodded.

‘So today they figure to put a stop to it once and for all.’

Ben looked at him. ‘You think they can?’

Breedlove shrugged. ‘Who knows. They got King back with them.’ He shook his head. ‘They should never have let him out of jail.’