Thomas Cook - Streets of Fire

Daniels leaned forward and reached for the envelope. Suddenly a short hiss broke the air. It sounded like a quick spurt of water. Then Daniels’ body staggered backward, his hands grabbing for his chest. Another hiss, this time with a short, stubby flash of orange, and Daniels’ face jerked upward, white in the moonlight, a jet of blood spurting from his forehead.

For one frozen instant Ben stood in place, unable to move. Then suddenly his body returned to him, and he sprang up out of the brush, grabbed his pistol and plunged through the undergrowth. The lights of the car shot through the deep green woods as it raced backward through the gravel, its rear tires churning up dusty arcs of loose dirt. As it sped away, the sound of its wheels peeling across the pavement were almost as thin and wrenching as Daniels’ final cry.

FORTY-FOUR

‘What did you hear exactly?’ Luther demanded.

Ben shook his head. ‘I already told you.’

Luther stared at him lethally. ‘I got two cops murdered in about as many days, Ben. Now I want some goddamn answers.’

‘They talked about a deal,’ Ben said wearily. He glanced at the clock over Luther’s desk. It was nearly three in the morning, and in the last two hours he’d sat in Luther’s cramped office and meticulously repeated his story at least twenty times.

‘But you couldn’t make out what it was?’ Luther asked.

‘It sounded like somebody had paid Daniels to set Langley up.’

‘For Breedlove’s murder?’

‘I think so.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘The Breedlove murder was only Daniels’ part of some deal,’ Ben told him. ‘The other man hadn’t done his part yet.’

‘And you have no idea what that part was?’

‘Only that it’s going off sometime before morning,’ Ben said. ‘Maybe over at the GM plant.’

‘We got that whole place surrounded,’ Luther told him.

‘But it may not be the GM plant,’ Ben said. ‘He just said, “GM. Before dawn.”’

The Chief slouched in the far corner, chewing a cigar, his eyes staring accusingly at Ben. His eyes were puffy with lack of sleep, but when he moved, it was in quick jerks, as if only his eyes were tired. ‘And you say this other fellow, he was a Nigra?’

‘Yes.’

‘How you know that for sure, Sergeant?’

‘By his voice.’

‘A lot of people stutter,’ Luther said.

‘It wasn’t the stuttering.’

‘Was it some kind of Nigra talk you heard?’

Ben shook his head. ‘Just his voice.’

‘So it might not a been a Nigra at all, is that right?’ the Chief said. ‘I mean, what about his face?’

‘I couldn’t tell in the dark.’

‘Course not,’ the Chief said. He thought a moment, then looked quickly at Luther. ‘Has the FBI got any colored agents?’ he asked.

Luther shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘’Cause this right here could be a set-up job all the way around,’ the Chief said. He looked at Ben. ‘Maybe Daniels was the real informer. Maybe he killed Breedlove to cover for hisself.’

Ben said nothing.

The Chief’s eyes drifted slowly toward the ceiling. ‘Maybe he was working for the FBI the whole time. Maybe the Justice Department. It wouldn’t matter. They all want us to look like a bunch of murdering animals down here.’ He took out what was left of his cigar and blew a column of thick smoke into the already stifling air. ‘And God knows they all want to get rid of me.’ He smiled at his own cleverness. ‘They could get two birds with one stone, you know?’ he said. ‘Get rid of me and Langley. Lord, that’d be paradise for them.’ He looked at Luther. ‘What do you think about that idea, Captain?’

‘It’s possible,’ Luther said.

The Chief chomped down on his cigar, popping the ashy tip up slightly. ‘What about you, Sergeant?’ he said to Ben.

Ben shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you this,’ the Chief said. ‘If they try to drive me out of office, they‘ll have a hell of a fight on their hands.’ He considered it a moment longer, then crushed his cigar into the small ashtray on Luther’s desk. ‘The new mayor, he sure wants me out, too. Maybe Daniels cooked up something with him and his cronies.’

Ben said nothing.

The Chief shot one stubby finger into the air. ‘So we got the FBI, the Justice Department and the new city government, all of them wanting to get me out of office so they can put themselves or somebody they like in my place.’ He grimaced at the gall of such a conspiracy. ‘Lord, boys, we got to watch our backs.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Luther said immediately.

The Chief walked over to Ben and put his hand gently on his shoulder. ‘Go home and get some sleep, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Nothing more to do tonight.’ He laughed. ‘Even the Nigra leadership’s over at Gaston’s, all tucked in, nice and peaceful.’ He laughed. ‘They’re getting their beauty sleep so they’ll be all rested up for the mess they’ll be making tomorrow.’

Ben nodded.

‘And try not to think about all this shit too much,’ the Chief added in a deep, paternal voice. ‘Just remember, you’re like everybody else that’s still on two feet in this business. You’re lucky to be alive.’

But Ben did not feel lucky, and as he slumped down in the swing on his front porch, loosening his collar in the thick summer night, he could sense, however vaguely, that his days were numbered in the department. For a long time he tried to imagine some other work that might suit him. Men had left the force before, but what had happened to them after that could hardly be thought encouraging. Some ended up as pot-bellied security guards at the local hotels and country clubs. Others, already addicted to the ceaseless movement of the streets, took jobs as cross-country truckers, endlessly hauling tons of steel or food or diapers from one coast to the next. There had to be a better way to make your daily bread.

He slapped at a mosquito, then lit a cigarette. He knew that the smoke would drive them away, and so he took several deep draws, letting the smoke out in a steady stream as he turned his head slowly, seeding the humid air with tumbling clouds. It reminded him of the spray of tear gas he’d seen rising over the heads of the marchers the day before. That was all part of what he had not bargained for in 1949, when he’d come on with the department. He’d not bargained for the violence of recent days, whether it was on the streets or in the countryside, or simply in someone’s hate-filled mind. But more than anything, he realized suddenly, he had not bargained for doing wrong, being asked, being ordered, to do what he knew was wrong. He thought of that first young boy he’d pushed across the park, then shoved through the open doors of the school bus. He had not bargained ever to be looked at like that boy had looked at him.

He stood up restlessly, walked to the edge of the porch and leaned against the old wooden pillar that supported it. It creaked with the weight of his body, but he continued to press against it anyway, his eyes peering off across the street, then over Mr Jeffries’ house, to where he could see the blinking lights at the top of the Tutweiler Hotel. There were only a few of them. Everyone else was sleeping. The whole city was sleeping, it seemed to him, even the Negro leaders, as the Chief had said, tucked securely in their beds, deep in the heart of the Negro district. It seemed to him that they could probably sleep more soundly than anyone else in Birmingham. They were doing what they had to do. Their souls were full of purpose. And even at the practical level they were safe. At the Gaston Motel, they were at the dead center of the colored district, protected even from the white communities that encircled them. Only other Negros could get close to them, and because of that, at least until morning, they were …