Thomas Cook - Streets of Fire

‘Both of them?’

‘They calls them the Black Cat boys,’ Ramona said, ‘them two brothers. Ever-body in Bearmatch knows who they is.’

Ben leaned toward her slightly. ‘What about the other car? Do you remember what kind it was?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What’d it look like?’

Ramona shook her head. ‘Just black, or blue or something like that.’

‘And that’s when you saw Doreen?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where was she?’

‘She was walking across the field right toward me.’

‘Was she alone?’

‘She was by herself, yes, sir,’ Ramona told him. ‘She didn’t have nobody with her.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘She looked real happy. She was sniggering to herself. She always sniggering. She can’t talk, you know.’

Ben nodded.

‘But she sure do snigger a lot,’ Ramona added with a smile.

‘And so she came across the field, and you two played for about an hour, is that right?’ Ben asked.

‘Played till she left.’

‘Which direction did she go in when she left?’

‘Right toward her house,’ Ramona said, once again pointing toward the opposite end of the field. ‘Right down that way.’

Ben nodded slowly. ‘Now this may seem like a funny question, but do you know where the rubber plant is?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the little girl answered immediately. ‘My daddy work there.’

‘It’s over there, isn’t it?’ Ben asked as he pointed in the opposite direction. ‘Are you sure Doreen didn’t walk toward the plant?’

‘Oh, no, sir,’ Ramona said loudly. ‘She walk toward her house.’ Again, she pointed in the direction opposite to the plant. ‘That way, just like always.’

Ben smiled quietly. ‘You didn’t happen to see anybody else around the ballfield that afternoon, did you?’

‘People was walking through it, like they always is.’

‘You ever heard of a man named Bluto?’

‘No, sir.’

‘He’s very big.’

‘Never heard of him.’

Ben took out the morgue photo and showed it to her. Ramona studied the picture carefully. ‘He asleep?’ she asked finally.

‘Yes, he is.’

Ramona’s eyes dropped back toward the picture. ‘He look like he sick or something.’

‘Have you ever seen him?’

‘No, sir, I ain’t seen him,’ Ramona said, her eyes still staring curiously at the photograph. ‘He kin to Doreen?’

‘No,’ Ben said. He slipped the picture from her fingers.

Ramona looked at him quizzically. ‘Who he is?’

‘Just a man,’ Ben said as he tucked the photograph back into his pocket.

‘He hurt Doreen?’

‘He might have,’ Ben said. He got to his feet, then stood a moment, poking the tip of his shoe into a ridge of dusty earth. ‘You got any idea if somebody else might have seen Doreen after you did?’

Ramona shook her head. ‘None as I know of.’ Her eyes drifted over to the far edge of the field. ‘’Cept maybe for them police boys and that fellow they was writing a ticket to.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

Knots of firemen still lingered outside Police Headquarters as Ben pulled over to the curb, got out and headed slowly up the stairs. Some were still dressed in their black slicks as they stood alone, or huddled together, talking quietly as the air darkened steadily around them.

Lamar Beacham slumped against the front of the building, his long, slender body propped like a bamboo fishing pole against its granite façade.

‘What happened today?’ Ben asked as he reached the top of the stairs.

Beacham smiled thinly. ‘Where you been – Mars?’

‘Working a case.’

Beacham dropped his cigarette to the steps and crushed it with the tip of his boot. ‘They brought us into it, the Fire Department.’

‘How?’

‘Just lined us up across the street,’ Beacham said. ‘And the Chief says, “Turn on the hoses.”’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘So we did.’

‘You sprayed the demonstrators?’

‘Yeah, we sprayed them,’ Beacham said. His face twisted with disgust. ‘We sprayed them good.’ He shook his head. ‘Shit, Ben, that water comes out of them hoses at a pressure of a hundred pounds per square inch. You got any idea what that does when it hits somebody?’ His eyes darted away, and he lit another cigarette. ‘It makes me sick, what the Chief made us do.’

‘Is that how the rest of them feel?’

Beacham looked at him. ‘A lot of us.’ His eyes turned back toward the avenue. A single red fire engine could be seen in the evening light. ‘The Chief, he better watch what he asks the firemen to do. We’re not like the cops. Lingo’s men, either. We’re not like them. It’s different with us.’

‘How long did this go on?’

‘Seemed like forever,’ Beacham said. ‘I was holding the nozzle. That fucking thing is heavy. After a while I felt like I was holding up a car or something. And the way the water was shooting through it, it was like wrestling a bull.’ He laughed. ‘You know Jim Pointer, don’t you, Ben? Little guy with a mustache?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, he was my backup, you know, holding up the hose,’ Beacham said. ‘Finally he just let go of it. Said, “No more, Lamar. They can get me to go in a burning building, but this ain’t my job and I’m through with it.”’ Beacham stared at Ben wonderingly. ‘And he just walked off. Just took off his helmet and walked right off. Can you beat that?’

Ben did not answer.

Beacham’s voice took on a grim note of warning. ‘Chief better watch it. He’s pushing too hard, and he’s going to find hisseif with nobody but the trash around him. Lingo’s men. Shit, half of them ought to be in the pen themselves.’ He shook his head despairingly, then eased himself from the side of the building. ‘Well, take it easy, Ben,’ he said as he moved down the stairs. ‘I got to go home, but Lord knows I dread it. My wife’s going to kill me for this.’

The inside of Police Headquarters was less crowded than Ben had seen it in weeks. The lines of makeshift cots were empty, and only a few stragglers remained in the detective bullpen. The Chief’s office was dark, and the only light in the corridor came from under Luther’s tightly closed door. It was as if a strange emptiness had overtaken everything, an eerie vacancy that could be felt in the nearly deserted hallways, the unoccupied meeting rooms, even the thickening night beyond the windows. There was an odd, unworldly quiet in the air, and as Ben moved from one room to the next, he could sense that some part of the raging tumult which had been swirling in the city for so long had finally run its course, become exhausted, and simply slumped away, like a wounded beast into the enveloping brush. He did not know what part it was, but as he headed toward the dark office door of Property and Records, he sensed that it was somehow vital to the rest, a fire guttering out, one that left in its wake only the faintly acrid smell of defeated anger.

‘What are you doing up here?’

Ben turned and saw a tall figure, backlit in the doorway at the opposite end of the corridor.

Ben stared in his direction. ‘Who’s that?’

The man stepped out of the shadows, his face now half-illuminated by a slant of light.

It was Breedlove, and his body seemed taut and catlike, poised to leap.

‘Most everybody’s gone home,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘It looks that way.’

Breedlove smiled coolly. ‘You weren’t with us today, were you, Ben?’

‘No.’

‘How come?’

‘I’m still working on a case.’

‘That little girl, right?’

‘Yes.’

Breedlove stared intently into Ben’s eyes. ‘You got some kind of special interest in that?’

‘Maybe.’