Thomas Cook - Streets of Fire

‘Quite a few things, I guess,’ Ben said. But what’s that got to do with fear?’

Coggins eyes squeezed together. ‘You trying to make a fool out of me?’

‘I admire you,’ Ben heard himself say with a sudden surprise.

Coggins laughed bitterly. ‘Yeah, I bet you do.’

Ben pulled the photograph of Doreen Ballinger from his pocket and held it up in front of Coggins. ‘You ever seen this little girl?’ he asked.

Coggins looked closely at the photograph. ‘She’s dead.’

‘Murdered,’ Ben said. ‘Shot in the head. Buried in that little ballfield over on Twenty-third Street.’

Coggins smiled cagily. ‘And you’re trying to pin it on me,’ he said, as if everything had now suddenly come clear to him.

Ben let it pass. ‘Do you know her?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever seen her?’

Coggins glanced back at the photograph. ‘She looks familiar. A lot of people do.’

‘Her aunt said she saw her in a group of young girls that was hanging around you on Saturday afternoon,’ Ben said.

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Outside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Coggins said. ‘I remember that. A few of them came up and asked some questions about the Thursday march.’ Again, he looked at the picture. ‘She could have been there, but I don’t recognize her in particular.’

‘Are you from Bearmatch, Mr Coggins?’ Ben asked.

‘No, I’m from Ensley,’ Coggins said. He looked at Ben knowingly. ‘I know what you’re thinking, just another one of those rich niggers trying to get the poor ones stirred up.’

‘Doreen was from Bearmatch,’ Ben said. ‘She was deaf. Her father ran off when she was three. Her mother died last year. Did your father run off, Mr Coggins?’

‘My father is a doctor,’ Coggins said.

Ben continued to hold Doreen’s picture in front of him. ‘You’re right, a lot of people look familiar. But they don’t live the same.’

‘I can’t help how I was born.’

‘Doreen couldn’t either,’ Ben said as he pocketed the photograph. ‘Who can?’ He was about to say more, routinely ask Coggins to report anything he might learn about the girl, but suddenly Luther burst into the room.

‘You’re goddamn lucky they canceled that speech at First Pilgrim,’ he shouted to Ben from across the room. ‘Because I get the feeling you never made it over there.’

Ben said nothing, and Luther’s eyes slid over to Coggins.

‘What are you doing up here, Leroy?’ he asked.

Coggins’ body stiffened, as if he were coming to attention. ‘I came to formally request that the children that have been gathered together in the parking lot be brought inside.’

‘What for?’

‘Because it’s about to rain,’ Coggins said.

‘It’s already raining,’ Luther said. ‘Request denied.’

Leon Patterson walked into the detective bullpen a few minutes after Coggins had been escorted back down to his cell. He smiled brightly as he came up to Ben’s desk.

‘Got something for you,’ he said excitedly. He dropped the ring onto the desk. ‘Remember that yellowish powder we found on that thing? It’s not pollen, after all. It’s just plain old chalk dust.’

‘From a school?’ Ben asked.

Patterson laughed. ‘Not quite, unless school’s changed a whole lot since my day.’ He glanced down at the ring. ‘It’s chalk dust like from a poolhall, that stuff you use to cue the ball. It was all over that guy’s ring.’ He looked at Ben and smiled. ‘Maybe you ought to start looking for a pool hustler.’

Ben picked up the ring and twirled it slowly between his fingers.

Leon pulled a chair up beside Ben’s desk and sat down. ‘I figure this was the guy’s lucky ring, the one he wore when he played. What do you think about that theory?’

Ben said nothing.

‘There was so much of that shit on the ring, he must have worn it every time he played. We’re talking about a very heavy residue here, very heavy, and it doesn’t look like he ever bothered to wash it off, or shine up the ring or anything like that.’

Ben continued to look at the ring. It winked bright-dark, bright-dark as he turned it slowly in the light.

‘Like it was maybe a sacred object or something,’ Patterson went on. ‘What do you think about that?’

Ben placed the ring on the desk, then turned toward him. ‘Any idea where it was made?’

‘Best guess, Cracker Jacks,’ Leon said. ‘Or some circus sideshow where you get a cheap prize if this asshole can guess your weight.’ He shook his head. ‘That ring never saw the inside of a real honest-to-God jewelry store, I can tell you that.’

Ben was about to make the guess that the ring could have been bought at one of the two or three costume jewelry stores that squatted between the barbecue stands, curling parlors and poolhalls of Fourth Avenue when Luther once again dashed into the room. He scanned the empty desks, then marched over to Ben.

‘I got nobody else to give this to,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ Ben asked.

‘I want you to get over to Kelly Ryan’s place,’ Luther said hastily. ‘It looks like the poor bastard killed himself last night.’

Kelly Ryan’s little house looked a good deal like his own, and as Ben pushed himself through the rain toward the front door, he could not help but remember the night before, the way Kelly had seemed to disappear into the night, his shoulders hunched, his back to the world.

A uniformed patrolman was stationed at the front door. He nodded as Ben came up onto the porch.

‘He’s in the bedroom, Sergeant,’ he said quietly as he opened the door.

Ben stepped into the front room and realized that it had been a long time, perhaps years, since anyone but Kelly had been in the house. It had Kelly’s rumpled clutter, his barely controlled drinking, even his odd, distinctive odor, a sweet rubberish musk that had been joked about in the department for years. There was no other smell in the front room, or the little den, or finally the bedroom where he hung motionlessly from a large oak beam.

He had thrown a rope over the beam, knotted it around his neck, climbed up on a small kitchen chair, handcuffed himself with a pair of Police Department issue, and then kicked it from beneath his feet. His face was now a purple-blue and his tongue hung from the side of his mouth like a piece of unchewed meat.

Ben suddenly felt a great wave of weariness pass over him. He slumped down on the bed, folded his hands in his lap and stared toward the single open window of the bedroom. Outside, the rain poured down in dense gray curtains, slapping mercilessly at the little mimosa tree that grew beside the house. He was not sure how long he sat there, but only that when he finally heard a voice in the outer room, it took him a moment to recognize it.

‘Well, this sure puts the cherry on top,’ someone said.

Ben glanced toward the door and saw Daniels and Breedlove standing inside it.

‘Is there any doubt it’s a suicide?’ Breedlove asked as he stepped into the room.

Ben got to his feet. ‘None that I can see.’

The two men circled the dangling body slowly.

‘At least he didn’t mess himself,’ Breedlove said. ‘These twisters usually do.’ He pulled off his hat and slapped it against his coat. A spray of droplets leaped from it and spilled on to the floor. ‘A real toad-stringer we got going out there.’

Daniels lingered at the entrance to the room, his body half-hidden behind the flowering curtain that hung across the doorway. He pointed to Ryan’s wrists. ‘Pretty cut up.’

Breedlove shrugged. ‘Probably changed his mind at the last minute. Strangling gives you time to reconsider.’ He gave the body a sudden small push. ‘No more morning roll calls, Kelly,’ he said.