Patterson’s voice turned solemn. ‘If I had to make a guess, I’d say that maybe somebody’s got a colored guy they want to get rid of,’ he said.
TWENTY-FIVE
The firemen had disappeared by the time Ben got back to headquarters. The outside of the building was completely surrounded by a grim cordon of highway patrolmen, but the inside was almost wholly deserted.
Only the jails remained choked with people. Hundreds of demonstrators were still crammed together in the tiny, sweltering cells. Ben expected to find Coggins among them, but as he walked down the corridor, he saw him standing quietly in front of McCorkindale’s desk.
‘I’m out for now,’ Coggins said to him. He shifted his eyes over to McCorkindale and glared at him. ‘But I’ll be back.’
McCorkindale grinned. ‘Sure you will, boy. I can’t hardly wait.’
Ben touched Coggins’ shoulders. ‘Come with me a second,’ he said. ‘I want to ask you something.’
Coggins glanced at his watch. ‘Okay, but let’s make it fast. They need me back over at the church. That’s why they bailed me out.’
Ben walked him out of the building. At the top of the steps, Coggins waved to a waiting car. Several men waved back.
‘They’re here to make sure I get from the steps to the car,’ Coggins said to Ben.
‘I want you to keep an eye on everybody, Leroy,’ Ben said. ‘Just like those guys are keeping an eye on you.’
Coggins looked at him darkly. ‘Can you be more specific?’
Ben shook his head. ‘Somebody called the Coroner’s Office with a strange question. He wanted to know how long you could tell if a man was a Negro after he’d been buried.’
Coggins shivered. ‘Oh, God.’
‘I don’t know what it means,’ Ben warned, ‘but just keep a close watch. And tell everybody else to do the same.’
Coggins nodded, his eyes oddly quiet. ‘Do you think they’re after me?’
‘It could be anybody.’
‘I meant it, you know – what I said,’ Coggins told him. I’m ready to die. I really am.’
Ben smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Just try not to, that’s all.’
McCorkindale was flipping through the newspaper when Ben returned to his desk.
‘Here’s that gun I was telling you about,’ Ben told him as he set it down on McCorkindale’s desk.
McCorkindale gave it a quick glance. ‘Okay, I’ll log it in after a while,’ he said. He looked up at Ben. ‘You know, I think that Coggins boy really likes you.’
Ben glanced about the empty room. ‘Where is everybody?’
‘Over at the park,’ McCorkindale said, his eyes returning to the newspaper. ‘They’re expecting a lot of trouble this afternoon.’
‘More than usual?’
‘I guess so,’ McCorkindale said absently. ‘Word is, the Chief’s come up with some new idea on how to handle things.’
‘What new idea?’
McCorkindale shrugged. ‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘But I guess we’ll all know soon enough.’
‘Yeah,’ Ben said dully as he turned away.
He walked back to his desk in the detective bullpen and sat down to consider his next move. He thought of Doreen, Coggins, the city’s long fury, and suddenly he felt more locked within its grip than he ever had before. It was as if the fingers of some invisible fist were tightening around his throat. He could sense its presence as animals sensed an approaching storm and then either retreated into their burrows to wait it out, or dug their feet into the ground, tightened every muscle and slowly turned their faces toward the wind.
The streets off Fourth Avenue were as deserted as the ones around Police Headquarters. As Ben got out of his car, he could see only desolate, empty alleyways and tightly closed shops. The avenue itself did not look much different. At the northern end of Kelly Ingram Park, a long line of fire engines stretched like a wide swipe of bright red paint across the motionless trees and deserted buildings. Contingents of firemen huddled in small knots beside the engines. Not far away, thin gray lines of highway patrolmen crisscrossed the avenue or blocked off its adjoining streets. Files of municipal police paced back and forth between the lines, moving nervously from one position to another.
Ben turned away from them and headed south, up the rounded hill that rose gradually, then dropped off toward the central Negro district.
The Better Days Pool Hall was near the top of the hill, and Ben was sweating heavily in the summer heat by the time he reached it.
The few games that were going on as Ben came through the door stopped instantly.
‘I’m looking for Gaylord,’ Ben said instantly. He pulled out his badge. ‘This is a friendly visit.’
The men looked at him doubtfully.
‘Last one wasn’t too goddamn friendly,’ someone said from the back.
Ben turned in the direction of the voice and recognized the man he’d slammed against the wall only the day before.
‘I’m hoping this one will be,’ he said to him.
The man stepped forward, half his face illuminated by the naked bulb that hung over the pool table beside him. A raised tan scar ran along the side of his face, curling upward from the edge of his jaw to the side of his ear.
‘You slammed me good, boss,’ the man said. ‘You not too smart to come back here.’
‘I’m not looking for you,’ Ben told him resolutely.
‘Gaylord, like you say.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What for?’
‘That’s for me to tell him,’ Ben said bluntly.
The man leaned against the table, and the slant of light now cut in a yellow diagonal across his dark face. ‘We heard about Bluto,’ he said. ‘We heard maybe you done it.’
Ben said nothing.
‘Maybe we set you on him,’ the man added. Told you where he was. Then you killed him. That how it was?’
‘He was dead when I found him,’ Ben said. ‘He’d been dead for several days.’
The man squinted as he stared evenly at Ben. ‘’Round here, we ain’t no house niggers. Not like them that’s in the streets. Always singing and shouting for Jesus.’
‘Was Bluto like that?’
‘House nigger, you mean?’
‘Yeah.’
The man laughed. ‘Bluto wadn’t hardly nothing at all.’ He shook his head. ‘Shit, that boy didn’t have the sense of a fieldhand.’
‘It doesn’t take much sense to kill a little girl,’ Ben said bluntly.
Again, the man laughed. ‘Kill a child? Bluto? You crazy, boss.’ He waved his hand. ‘Why, Bluto, he …’
The door of the back room swung open suddenly, and Gaylord’s massive frame stepped out of it, immediately filling up the dark space, the pool tables shrinking to miniature before him.
‘Who ask you?’ he demanded harshly of the other man.
The other man stiffened.
Gaylord thumped his enormous chest. ‘The man come looking for me, you sends him to me. He don’t need none of your shine before we talks.’
The man nodded quickly, then slinked out of the light and disappeared into the far corner of the room.
Gaylord’s eyes flashed over to Ben. ‘You be some kind of crazy coming back down here this afternoon.’
