Ben nodded.
‘Okay,’ Patterson said. He took a long, slender scalpel and inserted it into the hole, pressing it deeper and deeper as he twisted it gently. ‘Pay dirt,’ he said after a moment. Then he dug a pair of tweezers into the wound, maneuvered it slightly and pulled it out. ‘There it is,’ he said, as he lifted it toward Ben’s face. ‘Twenty-two long, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yeah.’
Patterson grinned teasingly. ‘Look like it might be the cause of death to you, Ben?’
Ben said nothing.
Patterson dropped the slug into a metal tray and handed it to the attendant. ‘Bag this and label it,’ he said. ‘Case three-zero-six.’ He looked back at Ben. ‘Now we can go on to the really good stuff.’ He took up the scalpel once again, and held it poised above the girl’s small body. ‘You want a nose clamp, Ben?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Well, if you ask me, the human body’s not much even from the outside,’ Patterson said, ‘but on the inside, it’s a real mess.’ He glanced down at the girl. ‘She’s got undigested food, bile, feces.’ He stopped and looked back up at Ben. ‘You want a nose clamp?’
Ben shook his head. ‘No.’
Patterson shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
By the time Patterson had finished, the body looked as if a hand grenade had exploded beneath it. The chest, stomach and abdomen were slit open and their cavities exposed. Large flaps of skin hung over her sides like pieces of torn cloth, and a continual stream of blood and other fluids trickled down the drainage spouts and into the buckets below.
Patterson peeled the rubber gloves from his hands and dropped them into the wastebasket beside the dissecting table. ‘Well, we learned two things, Ben, both of which I could have told you without all this.’ He looked at Ben haughtily. ‘She was shot in the head. And she was raped.’
Ben continued to stare at the ravaged body. The face remained intact, but the skin over the rest of the head had been peeled back, the skull sawed open, and the brain removed. She seemed even more exposed, her body open like a blasted fruit, her small naked buttocks now pressed flat against the cold blue of the tabletop.
‘What’d you do with her clothes?’ he asked as he glanced back up at Patterson.
‘They’re in a box in the other room,’ Patterson said. He stepped over to his desk and put on his jacket. ‘We’ll bury her in them.’
‘Did you vacuum them?’ Ben asked.
Patterson laughed. ‘You must be kidding, Ben. Till the front office got on it, we were treating her just like any other case.’ He straightened the knot of his tie. ‘You want to vacuum them? Go ahead. Just get them back to me by tomorrow morning.’ He moved to the door and opened it. ‘Unless you want her buried in a bag.’ He looked back toward the adjoining room. ‘I’m finished out here, Davey,’ he called. ‘Just put a sheet over it and put it back in the cooler.’
The old man appeared at the door, his milky brown eyes staring silently at Patterson.
‘I’m going to take a break,’ Patterson added, ‘then I’ll come back and sew up.’ He looked back at Ben and politely touched the brim of his hat. ‘And with that final word, Ben, I’ll say goodnight.’ He smiled thinly, then disappeared behind the door.
Ben continued to stand by the table, and after a moment the attendant walked out of the back room and over to the opposite side of the body.
‘You want me to take her now?’ he asked.
‘I guess,’ Ben said. He stepped back slightly and watched as the attendant draped a clean white sheet over the body.
‘We found her over on Twenty-third Street,’ Ben said.
The old man did not seem to hear him. He walked to the rear of the table, grasped the handle and began to tug it backward toward the adjoining room.
‘What part of town do you live in?’ Ben asked as he followed along.
‘Thirty-second Street,’ the attendant said dully.
‘That’s not too far from where we found her,’ Ben said. ‘You know that old ballfield around there?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’s where she was. Buried under a goalpost.’
The old man said nothing. He continued to tug the table slowly forward, maneuvering carefully toward the open door behind him.
‘What’s your name?’ Ben asked him.
‘They calls me Davey.’
Ben grasped the edge of the table, stopped its movement, then pulled the sheet back to reveal the girl’s face.
‘You ever seen this little girl, Davey?’
The old man gave the small face a quick glance. ‘Naw, sir.’
‘Maybe playing in the park, something like that? Maybe just walking along the sidewalk?’
‘I ain’t never seen her,’ the man said. He drew his eyes from the girl’s face and gave a tentative pull on the table.
Ben held it firmly in place. ‘Who runs things over in Bearmatch?’ he asked.
The attendant kept his eyes downcast. ‘The Black Cat boys,’ he said quietly.
‘I don’t mean them,’ Ben said. ‘I mean your own people.’
The old man said nothing.
‘Lots of things go on in Bearmatch,’ Ben said. ‘Somebody has control of it.’
The attendant shook his head. ‘It ain’t my business,’ he said softly. He waited a moment, then gave another tug on the table.
Ben released it, then followed it into the adjoining room. He leaned against the wall and watched as the old man opened the freezer door and pushed the table inside. When he turned back around, he seemed surprised to find Ben still lingering in the room.
‘You ask the Black Cat boys what you wants to know,’ he said. ‘You one of they own.’
Ben smiled quietly. ‘You trust them, Davey? You trust the Black Cat boys?’
The old man said nothing, but he looked at Ben knowingly.
‘I don’t either,’ Ben said. ‘That’s why I want to talk to somebody else about this girl.’ He paused, letting it sink in. ‘Give me a name, Davey. Just one name.’
The ancient brown eyes squeezed together slowly as he turned it over in his mind.
‘They’re going to bury that little girl tomorrow,’ Ben added. ‘I think her mama ought to be there.’
The old man’s face lifted slightly, as if with sudden pride. ‘Roy Jolly,’ he said.
FIVE
Night had begun to come down over the city by the time Ben left the chill, white corridors of Hillman Hospital. The sirens which had filled the air all day were now silent, and as he walked to his car in the pinkish-blue light, he could almost imagine that the worst was over. But he knew that it wasn’t, and the evening quiet only reminded him of the sort he remembered from the war, when, after a day-long assault, Japanese and Americans would retire to their encampments and wait nervously for dawn. He knew that that was more or less what was happening now, and when he pulled into the cavernous basement of the station house, he was not at all surprised-to find ragged lines of state troopers oiling their rifles, checking their cartridge bags, or edgily adjusting the plexiglass shields of their helmets.
He nodded to a few of them as he walked toward the cement stairs that led to the first floor, but he didn’t stop to talk. The unventilated basement always smelled faintly sour, but now the odor was even denser, and Ben realized it came from the overheated tires of the paddy wagons, rubber which had melted slightly, as if from hurtling back and forth down streets of fire.
It was better upstairs, where the large rotating fans whirred continually, and Ben took a deep, refreshing breath as he walked into the detective bullpen and sat down at his desk.
‘Anything come in, Sammy?’ he called to McCorkindale in the back corner of the room.
McCorkindale glanced toward him, then shook his head vigorously.
‘Captain Starnes around?’
‘Just stepped out to take a leak,’ McCorkindale said dully.
Luther walked back into the office a few minutes later, still pulling casu
ally at the zipper of his trousers.
‘Heard you sort of strongarmed the guy in the Coroner’s Office,’ he said as he strolled up to Ben’s desk.
‘A little.’
‘Good, good,’ Luther said happily. He took a chair from another desk and sat down. ‘Well, what’d you find out?’
Ben took out the original report and handed it to him. ‘That’s all Patterson had from his first look at her,’ he said, ‘but he didn’t learn much more after a full autopsy.’
Luther glanced briefly at the report. ‘The rape looks good though,’ he said. ‘If it was a race thing, some kind of KKK killing, something like that, there wouldn’t have been a rape.’ He slid the report back onto Ben’s desk. ‘Good job, Ben,’ he said. He reached over and squeezed his shoulder. ‘I think that’s about all we need.’
Ben leaned forward slightly. ‘For what?’
‘To close the case,’ Luther said matter-of-factly.
‘I just started on it.’
‘And you already got as far as you’re ever going to get,’ Luther told him. He smiled. ‘It’s a Bearmatch thing, Ben. If you’d ever worked that part of town before, you’d know what I mean.’
Ben’s eyes drifted down toward the report, then back up toward Luther.
‘I have a lead,’ he said.
Luther looked at him doubtfully. ‘A lead? What kind of a lead?’
‘A name. Somebody who knows a lot about what goes on in Bearmatch.’
‘What name?’
‘A Mr Jolly,’ Ben said. ‘Roy Jolly.’
Luther’s face broke into a broad grin. ‘Mr Jolly?’ he said with a chuckle, ‘You mean old Roy-Joy? That’s your contact?’
Ben nodded slowly.
‘You know who Roy-Joy is, Ben?’ Luther asked. ‘He’s the biggest pimp in Bearmatch, maybe the biggest in Birmingham, maybe even the biggest in the whole goddamn world.’ He stopped, then looked at Ben coolly. ‘Who gave you his name?’
For an instant, Ben started to identify the old attendant. Then, suddenly, something stopped him as fully and abruptly as if a hand had shot up to cover his mouth.
‘It was just something I heard on the street,’ he said with a slight shrug. ‘Nobody in particular.’
Luther placed his hands palms down on Ben’s desk and leaned into them. ‘If you want to know about things in Bearmatch, you ought to ask the Langley boys. They been working it for the last two years.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Ben said.
Luther straightened himself. ‘Look, Ben,’ he said quietly, ‘if you want to work this case a little more, go ahead. It just makes the department look better if you do. But you’ve still got to cover King until all this shit is over.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘He’s scheduled to make a speech at the First Pilgrim Baptist Church tonight at eight o’clock. Be there.’
Ben nodded quickly. ‘All right.’
‘And as far as this little girl goes, talk to the Langley brothers,’ Luther said insistently. ‘They should be chowing down at Smith’s Cafe right about now.’
‘Okay,’ Ben said.
Luther started to leave the room.
Ben touched the sleeve of his coat to stop him. ‘That picture you took of the little girl,’ he said. ‘You got it with you?’
‘Yeah,’ Luther said. He patted his coat pockets. ‘Here it is,’ he said as he handed Ben the photograph.
Ben lifted the picture slightly in order to bring it into a better light. It was a small, square Polaroid, shot in a grainy black and white, but he could see the girl’s face quite plainly as it looked up toward him from the grayish dusty ground. It had the same look the dead always had. No matter how big or how small, how much or how little had been done to them, they always looked as if they’d never had a chance.
Black Cat 13 sat obliviously at rest in an emergency parking zone in the alleyway behind Smith’s Cafe. It was gray with black side stripes, and a large black cat, yellow-eyed and with its silver claws exposed in an outstretched paw, had been hand-painted on the hood. The number 13 had been scrawled in white across its side, and a dab of red hung like bloody drool from its snarling mouth.
Tod and Teddy Langley sat in the far left corner of the cafe, each of them finishing up what looked like the usual blueplate special: hamburger steak, mashed potatoes and a faded mixture of green peas and tiny cubes of carrot.
Teddy sat up slightly as Ben approached.
‘Well, hello, Ben,’ he said. He smiled thinly. ‘I hear they put you on King.’
Ben pulled one of the chairs from beneath the table and sat down. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘How are things in Bearmatch?’
Teddy laughed. ‘Couldn’t be better, now that we’re filling up the jails.’ He pulled a bottle of Coke over to the side of the table, opened a package of salted peanuts and poured them into the bottle. A hissing brownish fizz boiled up almost to the rim of the bottle, then settled back slowly.
‘Well, not all of them,’ Tod said quietly. He took the last crust of biscuit into his mouth and chewed it slowly. ‘Not all of them, right, Teddy?’
‘That’s right,’ Teddy said. He took a long pull on the bottle. ‘So what’s the story, Ben? What’s King’s next move?’
Ben let his eyes wander aimlessly about the diner, from the front, where the cafe’s menu was written on a chalkboard in the front window, to the rear wall where two photographs hung from either side of a Coca-Cola clock, one of Governor Wallace, and the other of Vice-President Johnson. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Breedlove and Daniels are watching King, too,’ Teddy said matter-of-factly, as if demonstrating how much he already knew. ‘And there are probably a few more in undercover.’
Tod laughed. ‘Undercover?’ he screeched. ‘How you get undercover with them – paint your face black?’
Ben smiled limply. ‘So what are you boys doing instead of Bearmatch, loading the paddy wagons like everybody else?’
‘Hell, no,’ Tod said excitedly. ‘We got a special –’
‘Shut up, Tod,’ Teddy said. His eyes shot over to Ben. ‘Never seen you in Smith’s before,’ he said.
‘I don’t come here very much.’
‘So why are you here now?’
Ben shrugged casually. ‘I saw your car outside, and I thought –’
Teddy leaned toward him. ‘Word is, they’s an informant in the department,’ he said. ‘Somebody who’s working for the other side.’
‘I thought you might help me with this case I’m working on,’ Ben continued without hesitation.
Teddy’s eyes squeezed together. ‘What case is that?’
‘Something that broke this morning,’ Ben told him. He took the photograph from his coat pocket and laid it down on the table. ‘A little girl. Somebody shot her in the head and buried her in that old ballfield off Twenty-third Street.’
Teddy leaned back slowly, his eyes casually lingering on the picture. ‘She from Bearmatch?’
‘I guess so,’ Ben told him. ‘But the front office still wants a full investigation.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘So the murder can’t be made to look like a racial thing,’ Ben said.
‘They’re worried about that, huh?’ Tod asked.
‘A little.’
Teddy shook his head resentfully. ‘Then we’ve already lost, Ben.’
‘It’s what the Chief wants,’ Ben said.
‘That’s how it looks,’ Teddy said emphatically, ‘but that’s not how it is.’ He smiled helplessly. ‘Don’t you see, Ben? Don’t you see how it really is?’
Ben said nothing.
‘Even the Chief is having to pay attention to them,’ Teddy explained. ‘We’re having to be worried about what they think.’ He looked at his brother angrily. ‘When the fuck did we ever have to do that before?’ He shifted his eyes back over to Ben. ‘You know what a mongrel is?’ he asked. ‘You ever see an old mongrel dog?’
Ben didn’t answer.
‘That’s what they want to turn us in
to,’ Teddy said darkly. ‘A race of mongrels.’
Tod’s eyes shot over to Ben. ‘That’s right,’ he said emphatically. ‘That’s what they want.’
Teddy paid no attention to him. He kept his eyes on Ben. ‘They don’t really give a shit about eating with us, or going to school with us, or anything else like that. They just want to ruin us, ruin our race, so they can take over everything.’ He shook his head wearily, painfully. ‘And they’re doing it, too. They’re already making us do what they want. And before long, we’ll just be like a bunch of mongrel dogs.’ He picked up the picture, held it a few inches from Ben’s face and slowly ripped it in two. ‘I am loyal to my race, Ben,’ he said darkly, ‘before everything.’ He released the photograph, and its torn parts fluttered back down onto the table.
Ben stared at him silently for a moment, then gathered up the two halves of the photograph and returned them to his coat pocket. ‘I’m just doing my job, Teddy,’ he said quietly.
‘Well, you’ll have to do it without me,’ Teddy said.
From somewhere deep within him, Ben felt a sudden, inexplicable surge. ‘I intend to,’ he said.
He drove home slowly, turning north, so that he could move along the central boulevards of the city. The streets were almost entirely deserted. The restaurants and cafeterias were tightly closed, and some had already taken the added precaution of boarding up their windows. Even the brilliant chandeliers of the Tutweiler Hotel appeared somehow dim and exhausted in the fully fallen darkness. The streetlamps swung ponderously in the heavy summer air, and the light that swept down from them seemed to fall to earth in thick blue drops. Uniformed policemen patrolled the empty sidewalks two abreast, their holsters already unsnapped, their fingers playing at the handles of their revolvers. In front of Pizitz, black sanitation men were gathering together stacks of broken placards and tossing them into the grinding steel jaws of the compactors, and a little further down, only a few blocks from the park, another crew was hosing waves of accumulated litter into the cement gutters.
Streets of Fire Page 3
