Streets of Fire (18 page)

Coggins’ hands dipped into his pockets, then came out again. He bounced slightly on the balls of his feet.

‘What’s the matter?’ Ben asked.

Coggins’ eyes shot over to him. ‘Nothing.’

‘You look a little jumpy,’ Ben said.

‘This neighborhood,’ Coggins admitted, ‘I’m not used to it.’ He nodded toward the lines of Negroes that gathered across the street, idly waiting for the light to change. ‘I don’t know any of these people.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I’m a law student at Columbia, for Christ’s sake. I’ve lived my whole life in Ensley.’

Ben said nothing.

‘I’m a middle-class Negro, goddammit,’ Coggins added vehemently, ‘I don’t belong down here.’ A nervous laugh broke from him, thin and edged with self-mockery. ‘My mother never shopped on Fourth Avenue.’ He glared at Ben helplessly. ‘She goes to New York to shop. She shops in Bloomingdale’s, for God’s sake.’ His eyes snapped forward as the light changed and the milling crowd of Negroes swept toward him like a high black tide. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he whispered quickly as he stepped off the curb, ‘but you really picked the wrong guy for this deal.’

Ben continued to walk beside him as the thickening crowds swarmed around them. Coggins looked as if he’d been gathered into the tentacles of some strange dark beast, but he moved boldly forward anyway, his head held almost artificially high, as if he were trying to give off an attitude of complete control.

‘There it is,’ Ben said as they neared the first poolhall.

Coggins nodded apprehensively but maintained his stride. He did not stop until he reached the door. Then he pressed his back to the front wall.

‘Okay,’ he asked, ‘what now?’

‘We go in,’ Ben told him.

‘And do what, exactly?’

‘Ask a few questions.’

‘And what if the people inside don’t feel like answering them?’

‘Then we’ll leave,’ Ben said with a shrug. ‘What else can we do?’

The simplicity of the answer seemed to ease Coggins’ nervousness a bit. He drew in a slow deep breath, as if preparing for a long dive into dangerous waters.

‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s go.’

A smoky gray light engulfed them as they stepped into the poolhall. Inside, two rows of about twenty tables stretched the length of the room, each resting beneath its own shaded fluorescent light. A jukebox ground out Little Richard’s latest number, and the men who were waiting to shoot rocked to its beat while they stood back from the table and watched their opponents’ moves. An ancient Coca-Cola machine was wedged in between two cigarette machines at the back of the hall, and the side walls were covered with advertisements and pinup girl calendars.

For an instant everything went on as usual, but then it stopped abruptly. The low murmur of conversation dropped into an eerie silence, and even the men who had begun to calculate their shots froze in place and stared at Ben and Coggins as the two of them continued to stand at the front of the room, their bodies backlighted by the still open door.

Coggins shifted nervously, then offered a toothy grin. ‘How y’all doing?’ he bawled cheerfully.

No one spoke.

Again Coggins shifted from one foot to the next. ‘Listen, I want to talk to you fellows about something. ‘

Silence.

‘You guys may have heard about this little girl who got killed over in Bearmatch,’ Coggins continued. ‘The fact is, I’m trying to find out who did it, you know?’

Several of the men sat back on the edges of the tables and stared mutely at Coggins.

Coggins nodded toward Ben. ‘This fellow, here, he’s helping me out a little. He’s from the Justice Department. He works with Robert Kennedy.’

The men did not seem impressed.

‘He’s been sent down from Washington, you know,’ Coggins went on wildly. ‘We figure some … some cracker killed that little girl, and we aim to find out who it was.’ He turned swiftly and snapped the ring out of Ben’s jacket pocket. ‘You see this?’ he asked as he lifted it to the crowd.

All eyes turned toward the ring, but no one spoke.

‘This ring just might have belonged to the guy who killed that little girl,’ Coggins explained shakily. ‘Yeah, that’s right. And the thing is, it had chalk dust all over it. You know, like you use here on your pool cues.’

A loud, husky voice came from somewhere in the back of the room. ‘What color?’

Coggins’ eyes searched the room. ‘What was that?’

‘What color was the chalk dust?’ the voice answered.

‘Yellow,’ Ben said.

Suddenly a small man in a floppy gray hat and bright-red bow tie stepped out of the crowd. ‘We don’t use yellow in this poolhall,’ he said. He picked a small cube of chalk from the table beside him and tossed it to Ben.

‘We use blue chalk here,’ the man said. ‘That’s all we’ve ever used.’ He glanced around at the other men and smiled. ‘Ain’t that right?’

‘That’s right,’ someone said.

‘Uh huh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s right, Larry.’

The man walked over to Coggins. ‘Ain’t I seen you before?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Coggins told him.

‘When all them kids was marching down the street,’ Larry said. ‘Didn’t I see you with one of them little walkie-talkies, sort of in charge of things?’

‘Well, maybe,’ Coggins said slowly. ‘I was monitoring the demonstration?’

‘Say what?’

‘Keeping tabs on things,’ Coggins added. ‘Watching out for the kids.’

Larry laughed. ‘Yeah, I thought I seen you.’ He offered his hand. ‘Larry Sugarman. I own this place.’

Coggins grasped Sugarman’s hand and shook it vigorously. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Sugarman.’

Sugarman’s eyes slid over to Ben. ‘Robert Kennedy, huh?’

Ben said nothing.

Sugarman thrust out his hand. ‘Well, good luck to you, sir.’

Ben shook his hand.

Sugarman stepped back, smiling. ‘And as far as that yellow chalk’s concerned, they got that over at Better Days Pool Hall. You might ought to check in over there.’

‘We will,’ Coggins assured him enthusiastically. ‘We sure will, Mr Sugarman.’ He glanced back toward the other men. ‘And thank you, gentlemen,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Sorry for the interruption.’

Back on the street, Coggins drew in a deep, relaxing breath. ‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he asked.

Ben glanced back toward the downtown corner of the avenue. Several fire trucks had joined the first one at the edge of the park, and the Chief’s white tank was stationed in front of them, almost like a mascot. Lines of firemen had taken up positions along the avenue and at various places within the park. Long strands of fire-hose snaked out behind them like thick black tails.

Coggins slapped his hands together happily. ‘Well, want to hit the next one?’

‘Yeah,’ Ben said quickly. He glanced down the hill to where the Highway Patrol was massing.

TWENTY-ONE

Ben and Coggins moved down Fourth Avenue toward the Better Days Pool Hall through steadily thinning crowds. On both sides of the street, people were hurrying off the avenue and onto the side streets. Shopkeepers had begun removing goods from their display windows, and by the time the two men reached Better Days, almost all of them were empty.

When they stopped outside the door of the pool hall, Coggins turned to face the street, his eyes sweeping it north and south. ‘I’d say we have about twenty minutes before it starts,’ he said confidently.

‘You don’t know for sure?’ Ben asked.

Coggins shook his head. ‘This is a civilian demonstration, not a military operation. You can’t time things that well.’ He glanced up at the sign above the poolhall. It was written in thick red letters, and on either side of
BETTER DAYS
someone had drawn crisscrossed pool cues. ‘Nice,’ he said as he looked back at Ben. He smiled mockingly. ‘I mean, what’s law school compared to a classy place like this?’

Inside, the atmosphere was decidedly different from the poolhall down the street. There was the same smoky air, the same jukebox, soda and cigarette machines, even the same speckled linoleum over the cement floor, but the tone was darker, grimmer, and Ben recognized it immediately as being similar to the sort of white redneck bar where he’d seen violence erupt like a broken sore, spewing blood on all four walls.

Coggins appeared to see no difference at all, and as he stepped forward toward the first line of tables, he offered the men who were standing at them the same innocent grin. ‘How y’all doing, fellows?’ he asked cheerfully.

One of them lifted his cue slowly and massaged the tip. ‘What you want, dickhead?’ he asked in a voice as flat as steel.

Coggins’ smile vanished.

The man continued to finger the tip of the cue. His eyes squeezed together slowly as they moved back and forth from Ben to Coggins. ‘This is a nigger poolhall,’ he said when they finally settled on Ben.

‘Well, now, we … uh … we,’ Coggins sputtered.

The man’s eyes shifted over to Coggins. ‘I said a nigger poolhall,’ the man said menacingly, ‘and you don’t look black to me, Tomboy.’

Coggins offered a high nervous laugh. He glanced down at his arm and rubbed it smoothly. ‘My skin looks as black as yours,’ he said.

The man shook his head. ‘No, it don’t,’ he said. He looked around at the other men. Some of them began to move forward slowly, slapping their cue sticks in their hands. ‘No, you look like a cracker to me, boy,’ he said. He smiled coldly. ‘Don’t this boy look like a cracker to you?’ he called to the other men.

A thin, edgy laughter rippled through the room.

The man’s eyes remained fixed on Coggins. ‘What’s your name, boy?’ he asked.

‘Leroy Coggins,’ Coggins said tensely.

The man took a small, barely perceptible step toward him, and the group behind him seemed to move forward at his signal.

Ben glanced to the left and saw a tall, thin man circle over toward the wall, then stand stonily in front of the room’s only rear exit.

‘I’m here about a little girl,’ Coggins said quickly.

The man laughed as he took another small step. ‘You want a little dark meat, that it, cracker?’

Laughter broke through the room again, and as it faded away, a large man stepped through the front door, closed it behind him, and then stood, his arms folded over his chest, and stared lethally at Ben and Coggins.

Now there was no way out, and Ben felt his body tense suddenly, as if preparing for the worst.

‘She was murdered,’ Coggins said desperately, his voice all but breaking over the last word. ‘We found her body over in Bearmatch.’

The man’s eyes seemed to draw together. ‘We? Who’s we, Leroy?’

‘The police,’ Coggins blurted before he could stop himself.

A low murmur swept around them.

‘Police,’ the man bawled. He glanced back at the other men. ‘You hear that? This boy’s with the police.’

‘No, I’m not!’ Coggins cried. ‘I’m not with the police.’

The man took another small step, his hand crawling slowly toward the back pocket of his trousers. ‘Who the white cracker, Leroy?’ he asked mockingly.

Coggins looked imploringly at Ben, but he said nothing.

‘Who the white cracker, Leroy?’ the man repeated.

Coggins stared at him, terrified, but he did not answer.

‘What’s the matter, nigger, you deaf?’ the man asked. He took another step, and the men behind him surged forward. ‘
Who this white cracker?
’ the man screamed suddenly.

Coggins stepped back slightly, but the man was on him, a knife glinting in the light from the tables.

Instantly, Coggins’ hand snapped the pistol from his belt and pressed it hard under the man’s chin. ‘Drop that knife!’ he screamed, his hand trembling almost uncontrollably, his finger squeezing down on the trigger. ‘Drop it, motherfucker!’

The man at the front door lunged forward, and Ben turned and punched him hard in the stomach, then pulled him up by his collar and slammed him against the wall.

‘Now don’t move!’ Coggins squealed. He dug the barrel of the pistol deep beneath the other man’s chin. ‘You tell them not to move, motherfucker,’ he shouted.

The man lifted his arms slowly, then let them drop, and as he did so, the others moved back slightly.

Coggins glanced back and saw Ben pressing the man against the wall. He looked at him imploringly.

Desperately, Ben tried to come up with a next move. Then, suddenly, a deep sonorous voice broke over him from the rear of the room.

‘Now what you boys gone do?’

Ben’s eyes searched the room until they settled on a huge figure which stood in a small doorway on the right side of the room.

‘You remember me?’ the figure said.

Ben squinted into the thick gray light, trying to bring him into focus.

‘Gaylord,’ the man said. Then he stepped forward into a shaft of light and Ben saw the little purple stud-pin wink brightly in the shadowy darkness.

Gaylord walked to the front of the room. For a moment he looked very grim. Then a smile swept over his face. What you gone do?’ he asked Ben. ‘Strangle poor ole Jackie to death?’

Ben released his grip somewhat, and Jackie broke away, gasping.

Gaylord continued to watch Ben closely. ‘You sure do end up in the most ridiculous places,’ he said. ‘You still checking on that girl?’

‘Yes.’

Gaylord stared at him expressionlessly. ‘Why don’t you tell your buddy to let Albert go.’

Ben nodded to Coggins.

Coggins looked at him wonderingly. ‘You sure?’

‘Let him go,’ Ben said.

Coggins pulled the pistol from the man’s chin, and Albert stumbled backward against one of the tables.

‘Now we all can talk like nice folks,’ Gaylord said lightly. ‘Why don’t you come on back to my office.’

The men at the tables parted immediately as Gaylord walked through them. Ben and Coggins followed along behind him until they were in a small cluttered office at the back of the hall.

Gaylord closed the door, then took a seat behind a plain metal desk. ‘You shouldn’t pull something like this again,’ he said. ‘You could get yourself hurt real bad.’ He glanced at the pistol, which was still dangling from Coggins’ hand. ‘Why don’t you put that away, boy,’ he said.

Coggins glanced at the pistol, as if surprised to find it still in his hand. He quickly tucked it into his belt.