something else. Maybe he’s acting this way because these ain’t his real feelings at all. Matter of fact, his real feelings is just the opposite.’ He took an idle swig from the bottle. ‘That’s how I figured it with Breedlove.’
Ben nodded. ‘But did you have any proof?’
‘Proof?’ Langley asked. ‘That he was an informer? No, I never had no proof. I just knew it, that’s all.’ His eyes slid up toward the overhanging limbs, then dropped back to Ben. ‘Just like I know you for a nigger lover, Ben,’ he said. Then he smiled. ‘Course, you don’t make much a secret of that, do you?’
‘I guess not.’
Langley drained the last of the cola, then tossed the bottle into the yard beyond the cracked sidewalk. ‘They decide to put you on the case?’ he asked.
‘Which one?’
‘The Breedlove thing.’
‘You might say that,’ Ben told him.
‘Why you?’
‘Maybe because I’m a nigger lover.’
Langley laughed. ‘You know why I didn’t beat the shit of you back at headquarters?’
Ben did not answer.
‘’Cause that’s exactly what the niggers would want,’ Langley said. ‘A full-scale fight between two white cops would have got us both fired.’ He shook his head. ‘And then I wouldn’t be busting heads in Bearmatch anymore, breaking up their crap games, raiding their stinking shothouses, smashing their little basement stills and chasing their whores out of town.’ He smiled cunningly. ‘That’s why I didn’t whop your ass, Ben,’ he said with a sudden coldness. ‘But I can’t always be depended upon to control myself.’
Again, Ben kept silent. He could see the sort of rage that swept back and forth like a hot wind in Langley’s mind, and he wanted to cool it slightly, coax more talk out of him.
‘Where’s Tod?’ he asked finally.
‘Sick,’ Langley answered dully. ‘He’s got a fever, so he didn’t come in.’ He glanced up and down the street, his face grim and oddly bitter. ‘If you worked this shithole,’ he said at last, ‘you’d get just like me.’
‘I thought you liked it.’
‘I do,’ Langley said, lifting his face proudly. ‘You know why?’ Cause I can do some good here. For my own damn race.’ He eased himself off the hood of the car, leaving a wide swath across its dusty, unwashed surface. ‘Well, that’s about all I got to say to you. I mean, you know how it is, a cop’s got to be on the street.’
Ben touched his arm. ‘Not yet,’ he said.
Langley stopped abruptly and turned toward him. ‘I meant what I said just now,’ he said grimly. ‘Don’t you ever make a move on me again.’
‘I took a look inside a little house this morning,’ Ben began.
‘What house?’
‘Little wood-frame thing, over on Courtland.’
Langley’s face turned rigid but he didn’t speak.
‘You know the one I’m talking about?’
Langley did not answer.
‘Sort of let go, the house,’ Ben went on. ‘No paint. A lot of crabgrass.’
Langley shifted nervously on his feet. ‘What about it?’
‘You don’t live there, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Why do you keep it?’
‘That’s my business.’
‘It’s some sort of headquarters, right?’ Ben asked.
‘I can think whatever I want to,’ Langley said bitterly. ‘I don’t have to account for it. And I’ll tell you something else. The niggers, they got some sympathy right now, but deep in every white man’s heart they’s just one truth. You know it, and I know it, and they’s not a white man on earth that don’t know it.’
‘What’s that, Teddy?’
‘A nigger is lower than a white man,’ Langley said authoritatively. ‘He’s closer to the monkeys. Nothing’s ever going to change that fact. Not Martin Luther King, or the Kennedy brothers, or you or Breedlove, or anybody else. Race is race, and that’s the end of it.’ He started for his car again, but this time Ben grasped his upper arm firmly.
‘I have to bring you back to headquarters, Teddy,’ he said.
Langley looked at him astonished. ‘Headquarters?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
‘Some people want to talk to you.’
‘What people?’
‘Captain Starnes,’ Ben said. ‘Me.’
Langley started to laugh, then abruptly stopped himself. ‘Because of that house?’ he asked with a laugh. ‘Shit, I don’t make no secret about how I feel. I know people don’t like some of the things I got in that house. Those pictures. I know that. But they’ll get used to seeing them. You know why? Because they like the ideas behind them. They know it’s the truth.’
‘I found a ring in your desk,’ Ben told him quietly. ‘Third drawer down.’
‘What desk?’
‘The one you have in that little house on Courtland.’
Langley looked at him quizzically. ‘Who told you about that place, anyway?’ he asked.
‘Breedlove told someone where he was going the night he was killed. He gave the Courtland address.’
Langley stared at Ben wonderingly. ‘He told somebody he was going over there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it you he told?’
‘No.’
‘But somebody told you, and you went over there to have a look around.’
‘That’s right.’
Langley laughed bitterly. ‘Shit, Ben, you do more than love niggers, you pimp for them.’
Ben felt his fingers draw more tightly around Langley’s arm. ‘I found a ring,’ he repeated. ‘It was wrapped up in a spool of electrical tape.’ He watched Langley’s eyes as he delivered the last line. ‘It belonged to Charlie Breedlove. He wore it the night he was killed.’
Langley’s face paled in a sudden realization. ‘So that’s it, then,’ he said quietly. ‘They’re going to pin it on me.’
‘Where were you the last night?’ Ben asked.
Langley looked at him mockingly. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘We’re talking about a murder,’ Ben said.
‘And so you want me to come up with some alibi?’
‘I want to know where you were.’
Langley shook his head. ‘It don’t matter. The niggers want me strung up. The big wheels want that, too. I embarrass them.’
‘Where were you?’ Ben repeated.
‘I was with Tod,’ Langley said determinedly. ‘He was sick last night, just like I told you. Had a fever. I tended to him all night.’
‘Did anybody else see you?’
‘No,’ Langley replied. ‘It was just me and Tod in his house. All alone. By ourselves. Just me and Tod. You figure anybody’ll believe that?’
Ben did not answer.
‘Hell, no,’ Langley said firmly. ‘Not a soul.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m already gone. They’ve already stuck me in the pen. Locked up tight.’ He smiled haughtily. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing, by God: when the people come back to their senses, I’ll be a goddamn hero. They’ll bring me out of jail on their shoulders.’
