Streets of Fire

For a while Ben remained at his desk. He expected to get a call that would put him back on surveillance or send him circling Bearmatch again, idly circling, as he’d done for a few slow rounds after leaving the football field, and which, after a few minutes, had begun to make him feel more like a prison guard than a homicide detective. Within that circle, life might well go on as McCorkindale had described it. But outside the circle, from the fake antebellum mansions to the bleak trailer parks and greasy spoons of the sprawling industrial neighborhoods, Ben could feel a kind of dreadful trembling in the atmosphere, one that was as palpable in the station house as it was along the reeking drag strips of Bessemer and Irondale. He could feel it like a thousand knifepoints in the air, and after a time, it urged him from his chair, and he walked out of the bullpen and headed out into the steamy day.

THREE

The phone was ringing urgently as Ben struggled up from sleep. He looked at the clock. He’d come home for a brief nap, but slept for over an hour. He stepped over quickly and answered the phone.

‘Ben, this is Captain Starnes,’ Luther yelped. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘I waited around headquarters for a while,’ Ben explained. ‘Then I came home for a nap.’

‘You can nap at the station like everybody else,’ Luther said irritably. ‘You missed the Chief’s speech.’

‘What speech?’

‘The one he all of a sudden decided to make to the whole goddamn department,’ Luther snapped. He paused, as if waiting for a response, then continued. ‘Now you get back down to headquarters right now.’

Ben nodded wearily. ‘All right, Captain.’

A few men were still lingering in the briefing room when Ben arrived at the station house. Plainsclothesmen and uniformed patrolmen milled about, along with the top brass who’d come along with the Chief. Clouds of tobacco smoke hung heavily in the air, and the harsh, sporadic clack of police radios could be heard clearly over the murmur of the crowd.

‘Get anything on that little girl yet?’ Charlie Breedlove said as he walked up to Ben. He was smoking a thick black cigar clenched tightly between his teeth.

Ben shook his head.

‘Probably never will,’ Breedlove said. ‘It’s over and done with.’

Ben glanced toward the front of the room. The Chief stood in the distance, chewing his cigar. One of the Langley brothers huddled next to him, listening intently.

‘Chief made a real barn-burner,’ Breedlove told him.

‘He knows how to get them going,’ Ben said.

‘Told us we didn’t have to take shit from anybody. Now, I agree with that.’ Breedlove plucked the cigar from his mouth and glanced at the tip. ‘Lost my fire,’ he said. ’Got a light?’

Ben took out a packet of matches and relighted the cigar.

Breedlove took a deep draw, then blew a tumbling cloud of thick blue smoke into the already stifling air. ‘You didn’t see Harry on the way in, did you?’

‘No.’

‘He disappeared on me,’ Breedlove said. ‘It’s rough having a partner who’s always disappearing on you.’ He smiled. ‘They give you a partner yet? I mean, since Gifford left?’

‘No.’

‘So you’re just working that Bearmatch thing yourself?’

‘Yeah.’

Breedlove shrugged. ‘Well, when all this shits over, they’ll give you a new partner. They just got all they can handle right now.’

‘I don’t mind working alone,’ Ben said:

‘You’re a loner type, is that it?’ Breedlove asked.

‘I guess.’

Breedlove’s eyes narrowed somewhat, as if he were studying him. ‘Well, I’m not like that,’ he said finally. ‘I like a partner. Speaking of which, I better find the rotten son of a bitch.’ He nodded quickly, and left the room, his thin, wiry frame disappearing into the pale green corridor like something caught up in a wave.