Tod,’ he said quickly.
Tod looked at him almost pleadingly. ‘It ain’t right, Ben,’ he said. ‘Trying to pin that killing on us. We done what we was supposed to do in Bearmatch. We busted ass.’
Tod went on for a while after that, almost playfully relating the crap games he and Teddy had broken up, the shothouses they’d raided. There was an eerie delight in his eyes as he spoke of throwing men downstairs, or tossing them through windows, and as Ben listened, his mind drifted toward the other Bearmatch which must have helplessly stood by and watched all this from behind its hundreds of cracked windows.
‘We stirred them up,’ Tod concluded with a laugh. Then his face soured. ‘Maybe a little too much.’ He looked at Ben questioningly, his large, dull eyes blinking painfully against the harsh late-morning light. ‘That’s what Teddy says. He says they’re blaming us for stirring up the niggers.’
‘Who’s blaming you?’
‘The people downtown,’ Tod said. ‘The big wheels. Teddy says they’re mad at me and him for bringing this whole shit-storm down on them. He says that if we hadn’t kicked so much ass in Bearmatch, then the niggers would of stayed quiet.’ He looked at Ben intently. ‘You don’t believe that, do you, Ben?’
As if from some great height that he had only lately reached, Ben saw the dark sprawl of Bearmatch as it swept out from the rusting railyards like a pool of oily water. He saw the unpainted clapboard houses, the muddy alleyways, the squat chicken-wire fences that cut across its face, dividing it into tiny grassless plots.
‘No,’ he said softly, shaking his head. ‘No, I don’t think they would have stayed quiet, Tod.’ He could feel his eyes grow narrow as he glared at him. ‘I think that sooner or later, they’d have come after you and Teddy with every goddamn thing they’ve got.’
Gallager’s Auto Repair was little more than a tin shed with a single hydraulic lift surrounded by an oil-stained assortment of parts and tools. A large faded sign proclaimed the lowest repair rates in Birmingham.
‘The Langleys’ ’59 Chevy was on the lift when Ben walked into the garage. A short man in coveralls worked beneath it, pulling strenuously at a long steel wrench.
Ben pulled out his badge, and the man stopped immediately.
‘This car belongs to Teddy Langley, right?’ Ben asked.
The man seemed to draw back slightly, as if afraid to answer. ‘Yeah, it does,’ he said hesitantly.
‘How long’s it been here?’
‘Three days.’
‘You sure?’
‘That’s when it come in,’ the man said assuredly. ‘And it sure ain’t in no condition to go out.’
Ben’s eyes drifted upward toward the side of the car. It was dusty and unwashed, but there were none of the whitish flecks which had been blown across the sides of his own car as he’d left the chert pit.
‘I towed it in,’ the man said as he stepped out from beneath the car. ‘Teddy called me and had me pick it up.’
Ben nodded. ‘They didn’t have another car, did they?’
The man shook his head. ‘Not that I ever seen.’ He grinned broadly. ‘Except for the Black Cat,’ he added. ‘And they used that for most everything.’
McCorkindale looked up from the piles of paper that lay scattered across his desk.
‘Morning, Ben,’ he said.
‘I was over at Tod Langley’s this morning,’ Ben told him.
McCorkindale stared at him lazily.
‘He said you picked up their patrol car yesterday.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Who told you to do that?’
‘Captain Starnes,’ McCorkindale said with a slight shrug. ‘There wasn’t much to it. Tod give me the keys without a fuss. He’s scared shitless if you ask me.’
‘Where’d you take it?’
‘Right downstairs,’ McCorkindale said. ‘You probably passed it coming in.’
‘I parked out front.’
‘Well, it’s down there with all the other cars,’ McGorkindale said. ‘They’re getting ready to fix it up again. You know, repaint it. Word is, the Langleys got way out of line – I mean, even before this Breedlove thing – and they’re going to retire the Black Cat and forget it just as soon as they can.’
‘But they haven’t done it yet?’ Ben asked quickly.
‘Far as I know, it’s still down in the garage.’
It was sitting in an isolated corner of the garage, but Ben saw it immediately, a gray blur which seemed to lunge toward him from the corner of his eyes. As he approached it, the cat took on the shape that he remembered, brutal, snarling, its yellow eyes glaring hatefully back at him as he walked toward it through the thick gray air of the garage.
The car had not been washed, and as Ben circled it slowly, he noted what appeared to be months of accumulated dirt, dust and grime. It was as if the Langleys had purposefully made the car look as battered as possible. At the back, he bent down and looked for signs of white clay on the sides of the fenders and the rims of the tires. They were both entirely free of the white flecks which had been spewed across his own car as he drove out of the chert pit. He bent lower and carefully checked the treads of the tire itself. Nothing.
He was already back on his feet when he heard footsteps moving toward him from the entrance of the garage. He turned immediately and saw Luther walking toward his own car.
Luther slowed when he saw Ben, nodded quickly, then walked over.
‘What are you doing down here?’ he asked.
‘Checking a few things out.’
‘On the Black Cat?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What things?’
‘This business with Breedlove and the Langleys,’ Ben said. ‘Some of it doesn’t fit together very well.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, that second handprint on the trapdoor, for one,’ Ben told him. ‘It wasn’t mine.’
‘So what?’ Luther asked. He shook his head dismissively. ‘That could have been anybody’s. It could be one of the Langleys’.’
‘Why would they come in their own house through a dirty crawlspace?’
‘Maybe because they got shit for brains, Ben,’ Luther said irritably. ‘Those two never did have much sense, you know.’
Ben looked at him doubtfully.
‘Or it could have been a burglar,’ Luther added. ‘Somebody trying to break in.’
Ben said nothing.
‘You don’t think so?’ Luther asked crisply.
‘No.’
‘Why not? You know something I don’t?’
‘Well, I think I know where Breedlove went the night he died,’ Ben said.
Luther took a small step toward him. ‘You do? Where?’
‘A gravel pit over in Irondale.’
‘What was he doing over there?’
‘Looking for a body.’
‘A body?’ Luther asked unbelievingly. ‘Whose body?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ben told him.
‘What do you know?’ Luther demanded. ‘I mean, for sure.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, where’d you come up with this bullshit about Irondale and a body?’
‘From the Langleys.’
Luther chuckled. ‘And you believed them?’
‘The day Kelly Ryan died,’ Ben began slowly, his mind suddenly drawing back to the dank room, the sound of
