Thomas Cook - Streets of Fire

‘Why don’t you just leave him alone,’ Ben said as politely as he could.

Breedlove looked at him oddly but said nothing.

Daniels stepped from behind the curtain, then shrank behind it once again. ‘Well, it seems to me he’s beyond caring about what anybody does,’ he said to Ben. Then he glanced at Breedlove. ‘Seem that way to you, Charlie?’

Breedlove glanced toward his partner. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Way beyond.’ His eyes darted back to the body, following its line upward from the feet.

Daniels bent down slightly and peered out the single bedroom window. ‘Imagine seeing this every morning,’ he said. Nothing but barbed wire and blast furnaces. No wonder he got tired of it.’

‘Nobody trusted him,’ Breedlove said matter-of-factly. ‘Not after the business with that girl in Bearmatch.’ His eyes shot over to Ben. ‘He ever tell you about that?’

‘No.’

‘Fell in love with a girl over there,’ Breedlove said with a slight laugh.

‘Yeah, he had a problem with that all right,’ Daniels said. He laughed lightly. ‘But you know, I sort of liked old Kelly. He could come up with the craziest ideas.’

Breedlove smiled. ‘Like what, Harry?’

Daniels thought for a moment. ‘Well, one night about four months back, he got about three sheets in the wind at this bar downtown. I wasn’t with him, I just happened to run into him there. He started crying in his cups about some nigger that had disappeared. He claimed he knew for an absolute fact that the Langleys had killed this old boy and buried him in a chert pit in Irondale.’ He laughed mockingly. ‘I said to Kelly, I said, “Kelly, if the Langleys killed a nigger, they wouldn’t even bother to bury the son of a bitch. They’d hang him from a streetlight in Bearmatch.”’

‘That’s the truth, too,’ Breedlove said as the two of them laughed together.

Ben turned away abruptly and walked to the door. ‘You fellows can handle it from here,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Breedlove said as the laughter trailed off. ‘It’s a job for the coroner, anyway.’

For a moment Ben paused and looked back into the room, leaning his shoulder against the unpainted door-jamb. Breedlove and Daniels were casually going through the drawers of Ryan’s dresser, as if he might have left a note for them nestled among his underclothes. The body, itself, continued to hang motionlessly above the unswept wooden floor, and thinking back to the night before, Ben tried to imagine if there might have been something he could have said or done to save him.

‘Goddamn,’ Daniels said as he pulled out the bottom drawer of the dresser. ‘You’d think he’d of folded something once in a while. Look at this mess.’

Breedlove glanced quickly toward Ben, then back at Daniels. Then he laughed loudly as he waved his hand dismissively. ‘Aw, that’s just the way you get,’ he said, ‘when you lose your best girl.’

FIFTEEN

The heavy rain had slowed traffic considerably, so it was already early afternoon before Ben made the graceful turn down the circular driveway of the Davenport house. It was a large colonial mansion, complete with tall white columns and a rounded portico. Even in the rain the dark-blue façade appeared grand and inviolate.

The great oak door opened almost immediately, and the woman who stood behind it looked surprised to see Ben standing on her front porch. She was small, with a pale, angular face, and her gray hair was gathered in a small bun which sat at almost the exact top of her head.

‘May I help you?’ she asked.

Ben showed her his badge.

‘My goodness,’ the woman said softly. ‘I am Mrs Davenport. Has something happened?’

‘May I come in?’ Ben asked.

‘Of course,’ the woman said. She stepped out of the door and allowed him to pass into the foyer. ‘Please now, what is it?’ she asked urgently.

‘You have a little Negro girl who works for you, I believe?’ Ben said.

‘Yes,’ the woman said.

‘Doreen Ballinger,’ Ben said.

‘Little Doreen, yes,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘Has something happened to her?’

‘Yes.’

The woman’s right hand lifted to her throat. ‘What?’

‘She’s dead, Mrs Davenport,’ Ben told her.

The hand curled gently around her throat. ‘Hit-and-run?’

‘She was murdered,’ Ben said.

The hand dropped softly to her side. ‘May I sit down?’

Ben nodded.

The woman’s hand swept to the left toward a large sitting room. ‘In here, please,’ she said.

Ben followed her into the room and watched as she took a seat on a large floral sofa.

‘Such a pretty little girl,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘So sweet.’ She looked up at Ben. ‘Please, sit down.’

Ben took a seat at the other end of the sofa. ‘How long had Doreen been working for you?’

‘Almost a year,’ Mrs Davenport said. She thought for a moment. ‘Yes, almost exactly a year. It was last spring when she came to us.’

‘When did you see her last?’

‘She was here on Sunday,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘She attends to my daughter on Saturdays and Sundays.’ She picked a gold frame from the table and handed it to Ben. There was a picture of a small child standing happily beneath the green curtain of a weeping willow. ‘That’s Shannon,’ she said. ‘She’ll be so upset to lose Doreen.’

Ben handed her back the picture.

Mrs Davenport gazed lovingly at the photograph. ‘She’s actually my adopted daughter,’ she said.

Ben shifted slightly in his seat. ‘About Doreen,’ he said. ‘You said you last saw her on Sunday afternoon?’

‘Well, no,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘Doreen was certainly here on Sunday afternoon, but I was not.’

‘Was she here alone?’

‘Goodness, no,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘My husband was here attending to some business. He’s in Atlanta right now, but I’m sure he’d be pleased to talk to you when he gets back.’

‘When would that be?’

‘The day after tomorrow.’

Ben took out his notebook and wrote it down. ‘Was anyone else in the house on Sunday?’

Mrs Davenport considered for a moment. ‘Well, Molly, our maid, was off, but Jacob was here.’

‘Jacob?’

‘Jacob, our driver,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘He always went and got Doreen, and, of course, took her home when she was through.’

‘Did he do that on Sunday?’ Ben asked.

‘I suppose.’

‘Is he around?’

Mrs Davenport’s face grew cold. ‘No, he is not,’ she said crisply.

‘When will he be back?’

Mrs Davenport’s back arched upward. ‘He is no longer in our service.’

‘Why not?’

‘A question of loyalty,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘Jacob had been with this family for over forty years, then one day he suddenly decided that we weren’t good enough for him anymore.’ She laughed. ‘Can you imagine? Since he was just a boy my husband’s father, and then, later, my husband, had provided him with everything he needed, a place to live, money, everything.’ She shook her head. ‘The passion of the moment, what can you do about it? Especially with Negroes.’

‘He quit?’ Ben asked.

‘He decided to join the other side.’

Ben looked at her, puzzled.

‘The Negro side,’ Mrs Davenport explained. ‘The demonstrators.’

Ben nodded.

‘Well, if you know anything about the Davenports,’ Mrs Davenport added, ‘you know that you are either with them or against them.’

‘So he was fired?’ Ben asked, trying to pin it down.

‘Well, I prefer to think that he abandoned us,’ Mrs Davenport said. ‘We had made it clear that we would not tolerate anyone in our service having anything to do with all this business in the streets and lunch counters and that sort of thing.’ She waited for Ben to respond, and when he didn’t she added, ‘It’s not as if we hadn’t made it clear.’