Streets of Fire

by Thomas H. Cook

  The man stepped forward and snatched the pistol from Ben’s holster. He lifted it lightly up and down in his hand. ‘Got good balance.’

  ‘I’m pretty good with it, too,’ Ben said lightly. ‘But I don’t think I’ll be needing to use it very much in Bearmatch.’

  The man smiled happily. ‘Well, now, that’s go-good to hear. Mr Jolly, he gon’ be glad to know that. ’Cause them Black Cat boys, they been giving him a lot of shit.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Ben said. ‘That’s a shame, too. But they’re not around anymore.’

  ‘Mr Jolly, he be glad to know that, too.’

  ‘I figured he would be,’ Ben said. ‘And I reckon I can understand that, too.’ He shifted slightly on his feet. ‘Course we need to have a little talk first.’ He stared around casually. ‘And I sort of figured this time of day was better than broad daylight.’

  ‘Yeah, you right ’b-bout that,’ the man agreed. He smiled broadly, his white teeth gleaming in the porch light. ‘Well, you stay right here. I’ll tell Mr Jolly you waiting on him.’

  Ben stepped up to the porch as the man disappeared into the house. Quickly, he checked for the tire iron, keeping his fingers wrapped loosely around it until the man returned.

  ‘Okay,’ the man said as he came back through the screen door. ‘Mr Jolly say he see you now.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ben said.

  The man stepped to the side, waiting for Ben to pass in front of him.

  ‘After you,’ Ben said politely.

  The man nodded quickly and turned toward the house.

  The tire iron hit him exactly where Ben had intended, and he went down hard, his body slamming against the plain wooden floor, a wave of blood spreading down his neck, soaking his shirt collar. Ben straddled him immediately, then cuffed him. The man groaned slightly, but remained unconscious. His breathing was shallow but rhythmic, and as he stepped over him and headed toward Jolly’s office in the back of the house, Ben half-hoped that there’d be no breath left in him at all when he came back.

  Roy Jolly was sitting behind his desk when Ben entered. He was dressed in a bright-red smoking jacket that looked two sizes too big. An enormous gilded mirror hung on the wall behind him, and as he stepped up to the desk, Ben caught his own reflection in it, worn, bedraggled, a face that suddenly seemed so old and broken that he could hardly recognize it.

  ‘Douglas tell me you come in place of the Black Cat boys,’ Jolly said.

  Ben nodded.

  ‘They been pushed aside, that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jolly did not smile. His voice remained almost expressionless, a dry wind blowing through dry reeds. ‘How come you wants to see me?’

  ‘I hear you run Bearmatch.’

  ‘I in business,’ Jolly said modestly. ‘A businessman, he got to keep his ear to the ground.’ One eyelid drooped slightly. ‘Got to keep his eye on the sparrow, ain’t that right?’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘Ain’t nothing took from nobody that they ain’t let it go,’ he said. ‘That’s the truth, ain’t it?’

  ‘Except life,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not sure Daniels wanted to let his go.’

  Jolly’s head tilted to the right slightly. ‘What you want, Mr White Man?’ he asked.

  Ben stared at him silently.

  ‘People do for me, I do for them,’ Jolly said. ‘That’s the way it is in this world. Ain’t no paradise.’ He laughed softly. ‘More like Hell, you wants to know the truth of it. More like Hell.’ He leaned forward slightly, his small brown eyes bearing down on Ben. ‘How come you got Bearmatch?’

  ‘I wanted it,’ Ben said.

  ‘So did them Black Cat boys,’ Jolly said. ‘They come in here, starts messing around. I say, “Okay, I lets you mess. I don’t fuck with you.”’ He waved his finger at Ben menacingly. ‘For a time, I do it. For a little time, I lets you get it out of your system. Least till you figures it out. Then we makes a deal.’

  ‘What kind of deal?’ Ben asked.

  Jolly grinned boyishly. ‘One thing for another.’

  ‘But the Langleys wouldn’t make any deals.’

  ‘No, them boys wouldn’t make no deal,’ Jolly said. ‘You know why? ’Cause nigger money, they wouldn’t have none of it.’ He laughed at their stupidity. ‘Now money, it’s jes’ one color. It ain’t white. It ain’t black. It jes’ green, that’s all.’ He waved Ben forward gently. ‘Step over to the light,’ he said. ‘I seen you before.’

  Ben stepped toward him, his face now bathed in the red-tinted lamplight that came from Jolly’s desk.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Jolly said lightly. ‘You come in here before. You come looking in on that little gal.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You settle that one?’

  ‘I think so,’ Ben said. He waited a moment, then added, ‘Collins Avenue.’

  Jolly stared at him, unmoved. ‘You was there tonight.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Was you in it with Daniels?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What you there for, then?’

  ‘I was looking into something else,’ Ben said.

  Jolly shrugged. ‘It don’t matter to me what you seen,’ he said. ‘You come to me like you should have done. I ain’t going to let you go away mad.’

  Ben stared at him silently.

  Jolly leaned back slightly. ‘What you wants from Roy-Joy, huh? You wants a little gal for yourself? I got plenty of them. Sweet as candy.’

  Ben did not answer.

  ‘Money, maybe,’ Jolly said. ‘Got plenty of that, too.’

  ‘When I was here last time,’ Ben said, ‘you told me how you like to see a man face to face when you make a deal with him. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Don’t have to remember nothing,’ Jolly said. ‘The whole world already in my head.’

  ‘That’s what you did late one Sunday afternoon,’ Ben told him. ‘You met Harry Daniels on Collins Avenue.’

  Jolly stared at Ben calmly.

  ‘You met face to face with him, like you always do,’ Ben went on. ‘You thought you’d be alone. But a car came by. It was a dark-blue Lincoln. There was a deep rut in the road, so it had to slow down quite a bit as it passed. There was a little girl in that car. You saw her, but what mattered is that she saw you. She was from Bearmatch, so she must have recognized you.’

  ‘She wave at me,’ Jolly said almost tenderly. ‘Sweet little thing. Big smile on her face.’ His eyes shifted over toward the door, as if looking for Douglas. ‘It surprise you, don’t it? It surprise you that I come right out and say it?’ He laughed. ‘But it don’t matter now. ’Cause you come to me, and ain’t nobody going to go home mad.’

  Ben watched him icily.

  ‘Daniels was a fool,’ Jolly said. ‘He say he just want this and that. But in his eyes, he want everything.’ He smiled. ‘You look different to me. You look like I could do my business with you.’

  Ben remained silent.

  ‘That’s right,’ Jolly went on. ‘Your eyes, they tell me we going do business, you and me. And when you do business with somebody, you got to come clean about things. You can’t have no secrets. In Bearmatch, we don’t have no lies. Ever-body know ever-thing. Ain’t a living soul don’t know how ever-thing work.’ His hand lifted up gracefully. ‘They all know who bring in the whiskey and the whores. They wants them.’ He laughed. ‘Daniels, he want to be a big shot. He want to be Chief of something. But the old Chief, he still around.’ He shook his head, chuckling to himself. ‘Can’t kill him. That wouldn’t do no good. Got to get rid of him in some other way. Got to embarrass him.’

  ‘By killing Martin Luther King,’ Ben said.

  Jolly released a high, piercing cackle. ‘They be a terrible uproar over that, now,’ he said. ‘Ain’t no Chief going to still be around when the smoke clear on that one.’ He shook his head. ‘And that little shit Daniels, he think he going be Chief after that.’ His face curled into a snarl. ‘He ain’t got enough sense for that
. He don’t even know how to show respect. He like them Black Cat boys. He hate Bearmatch.’ He lifted his head grandly. ‘But I loves Bearmatch. I knows what it need the most.’

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘Relief,’ Jolly said loudly. ‘A little relief that a man can get from a drink of whiskey and a gal.’

  ‘You killed Doreen,’ Ben said.

  Jolly smiled. ‘Done for me.’

  ‘Did Douglas rape her, too?’

  Jolly scowled. ‘The ole fat boy done that,’ he said, ‘not Douglas. He don’t need no little girl. He got a good-looking woman for his own self.’ He waved his hand. ‘’Sides, Doreen already dead when Bluto climbed on her. Douglas say, “She want you, boy. She your wife. Go ’head.”’ He shrugged. ‘That Bluto, he never was worth nothing to me till right then.’

  Ben said nothing. He could see it all as if it were a film unrolling in his head. He saw Doreen’s small body shudder as Bluto ravaged her, then Bluto’s own body slump forward as Douglas fired the pistol a few inches from his head.

  Jolly smiled coolly. ‘We took off that ole ugly ring and stuck it in the girl’s dress,’ he said. He leaned back slightly. ‘Now see what I mean, I didn’t have to tell you that. But I wants you to know that I ain’t kept nothing back. You and me, we works together.’ He drew a single envelope from some papers on his desk and slid it toward Ben. ‘This for you,’ he said. ‘I ain’t greedy.’ He smiled knowingly. ‘This be nothing to you down the line.’ He shoved the envelope a little further across the desk. ‘But you can take it anyway.’

  Ben did not move. ‘Langley was only half the deal,’ he said, ‘The other half was King.’ His hand crawled toward the tire iron. ‘Are you going to try again?’

  Jolly smiled. ‘The folks in Bearmatch, they think he can give them what I do,’ he said. ‘But they wrong ’bout that. He come in and whoop them up, then he fly off to the next place. But me, I here forever.’

  Ben could feel his fingers as they touched the steel rod at his back. ‘Are you going to try again?’ he repeated.

  Jolly said nothing.

  ‘You missed him this time,’ Ben said.

  Jolly grinned. ‘But they’s always another one. And the Chief, he ain’t out yet.’

  Ben drew the tire iron from behind his back and slapped it loudly in his hand. ‘Leave King alone,’ he said resolutely.

  Jolly smiled cheerfully. ‘Why? You gon’ do it your own self?’

  Ben lifted the tire iron and heaved it toward the mirror. It crashed into it only a few inches above Jolly’s head, sending a shower of glass over him, filling his lap, gathering on the shoulders of his smoking jacket like a thin layer of sparkling snow.

  ‘I don’t know how all this is going to turn out,’ Ben said in a hard, utterly determined voice, ‘but I’ve come to tell you this. Whatever happens to King, happens to you.’

  Jolly’s body jerked left and right as he slapped the glass from his jacket. ‘Douglas!’ he screamed. ‘Douglas!’

  Ben reached across the desk, grabbed the wide lapels of the smoking jacket and pulled Jolly forward. ‘Whatever happens to King, happens to you,’ he repeated. Then he dragged him over the desk and tossed him sprawling onto the floor. ‘I don’t have time to argue with you,’ he said in a voice that had suddenly grown strangely calm in its iron resolution. ‘I just have time to stop you.’

  FORTY-SIX

  The first bluish light of dawn was only beginning to filter into the air when Ben made his way back downtown. He passed the old ballfield where he’d first glimpsed Doreen Ballinger’s tiny hand, and then on along the littered road which bordered the Gaston Motel. Part of the motel itself was still smoldering, and in the morning light, Ben could make out the remains of Room 30, its charred interior and blasted walls. State troopers stood in ranks before the ruins, their rifles slung over their shoulders like dead animals, their shoulders hunched wearily as they stared about, their eyes nervously combing the trees and neighboring buildings for snipers. All around them the metal frames of burned-out cars rested in a strange silence which was broken only by the first awakening birds.

  Once at headquarters, he placed the envelope on Luther’s desk, then told him all he knew.

  ‘I don’t know if all this is enough to arrest Jolly and his people,’ he said, ‘but whoever takes over Bearmatch should be told about it.’

  Luther sat exhausted behind his desk, his face still soiled from the battle at the motel.

  ‘Maybe you should take it over, Ben,’ he said. ‘Maybe the people over there’ll trust you.’

  Ben shook his head, then took out his badge and laid it down on Luther’s desk.

  Luther stood up quickly. ‘I know how you feel, Ben,’ he said. ‘But we could use you for a few more days.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they’re planning a big demonstration this morning, and …’

  ‘No,’ Ben repeated. ‘No more.’

  As he left headquarters for the last time, Ben realized that he had one more duty still left to him. He got in his car and drove toward Bearmatch. Long lines of Negroes were moving down the broken sidewalks toward the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, but they seemed hardly to notice him as he sped by them, moving steadily but slowly toward the heart of Bearmatch.

  Mr Ballinger was sitting quietly on his front porch when Ben got to the house. He did not move as Ben got out of his car, then walked through the tiny gate and up the rickety front steps.

  ‘I was wondering if I could talk to your daughter for a few minutes,’ Ben said.

  ‘She ain’t here,’ Mr Ballinger said.

  ‘I drove by the place she works,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t see her around there.’

  ‘She ain’t at work. She’s with the rest of them. They all going downtown.’

  ‘You mean for the demonstration?’ Ben asked.

  Mr Ballinger nodded. ‘She gone for that, yes, sir. She probably at the church by now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ben said as he turned and walked back to his car.

  Scores of people were already flowing down the steps of the church when Ben got there. He stood where he had stood so often before, but now he was almost alone, except for the state troopers. The Langleys were gone and Daniels and Breedlove were dead. Only McCorkindale remained, lazily leaning against a telephone pole as he watched the procession pass him slowly on its way to Fourth Avenue.

  Several minutes passed before Ben spotted Esther coming down the stairs. He moved toward her quickly, joining the crowd as it surged down the street, the people singing now and clapping hands.

  ‘I wanted to tell you a few things,’ he said quickly as he stepped up to her.

  She turned to him, surprised. ‘You better go off, now,’ she whispered vehemently. ‘You shouldn’t be around here.’

  ‘I know what happened to Doreen,’ Ben said.

  Esther’s eyes widened.

  ‘It was Roy Jolly,’ Ben said. ‘He made a deal with some people in the Police Department. Doreen saw him make it’

  Esther’s eyes glistened in the bright sunlight. Her body trembled slightly, then stiffened. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘you told me. Now you better be gone from here.’

  He did as she asked, melted away from her, but continued forward with the crowd, keeping pace with the line of march until they flowed over the hill at Fourth Avenue. He could see ranks of state troopers and firemen as they stood in a thick line at the bottom of the hill, blocking off the business district of the city. For an instant he stepped out further from the crowd and let it flow on without him. Then, suddenly, he began walking again, slowly, steadily, only a few feet from the great moving bulk of the march. He could see the Chief as he stood at the bottom of the hill, his small eyes peering at the approaching crowd. When they were near enough, he lifted his megaphone and shouted to them.

  ‘This march will not continue,’ he cried.

  But the people proceeded anyway, and Ben walked along at a distance beside them, his eyes straight ahead, his he
art pounding wildly as he came nearer and nearer to where the firemen and troopers waited.

  The march stopped only a few feet from the Chief’s position, and for a moment the two groups stared silently at each other. Then the Chief shouted into the megaphone again, warning them to go back to their churches and neighborhoods, that the march would have to end.

  Suddenly a man stepped out in front of the crowd and addressed the men behind the Chief, addressed them personally, almost intimately, as if speaking in a quiet, persuasive voice to each man individually.

  ‘We have done nothing wrong,’ he declared, ‘and we only want the freedom that is supposed to be for every American in this country.’

  The Chief stepped back slightly, then turned on his heels and headed back toward his men.

  The other man did not seem to notice him. He continued to speak to the ranks of policemen and firemen.

  ‘We have a right to be treated like human beings,’ the man cried. ‘We’re just people, like you. We want the things you want.’

  His voice rang over them, and Ben could see some of the firemen’s hoses begin to droop limply in their hands as they listened to him. He could see them glancing at one another, their lips moving softly.

  ‘We have the right to pray,’ the man declared. ‘And we are going to get on our knees and pray for a moment. And then we’re going to get off our knees and continue this march.’

  Ben began to walk slowly down the hill. The firemen had stopped talking among themselves and were now standing rigidly in place, staring over the long dark line that moved up Fourth Avenue.

  The prayer ended, and the demonstrators rose quietly, paused a moment and then began to move forward.

  The Chief stepped back behind the firemen, lifted his megaphone and yelled into it. ‘Hit ’em!’

  No one moved, and as Ben stepped onto the curb, he could see that the firemen continued to stand absolutely still, their hands still on the hoses, but making not the slightest effort to release the water.

  ‘Hit ’em!’ the Chief cried again.

  Still, no one moved, and the water remained pent-up and unreleased behind the enormous steel nozzles.