Streets of Fire by Thomas H. Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

passing through.’
    The other patrolmen pulled back one of the long saw-horse barricades and Ben drove past them, nosing his car downward into the garage. On either side, men were lined up in marching formation, their commanders taking them through the paces of a military drill. At the southern corner of the garage, metal tables had been set up like a subterranean field headquarters, complete with telephones, typewriters, and, at the far end of the table, a cardboard box filled with an assortment of what looked like civilian handguns: thirty-eights, forty-fives, a few puny twenty-twos, and snuggled among them like a nest of sleeping vipers, a .357 Magnum, a P.38, and a few other high-powered pistols.
    Sammy McCorkindale sat behind the box, routinely cataloging the serial numbers of one pistol at a time.
    Ben picked up an old German Luger, shifted it slowly from one hand to the other, then threw open the cartridge clip. It was fully loaded. He shoved the clip back into position, then laid it down on the table in front of McCorkindale.
    ‘What the hell is this all about?’ he asked.
    McCorkindale looked up slowly. ‘What does it look like?’
    ‘It looks like a lot a firepower,’ Ben said. ‘But what are you doing with it?’
    McCorkindale returned to his ledger. ‘Chief wants all confiscated weapons to be put in working order,’ he said casually.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Case we need them, I guess,’ McCorkindale said.
    ‘Need them for what?’
    ‘To arm the deputies.’
    ‘What deputies?’
    ‘The ones the Chief’s going to swear in if we need them.’
    ‘You mean civilian deputies?’
    ‘That’s right,’ McCorkindale said idly. He pulled a forty-five automatic from the box and began to write down its serial number.
    Ben glanced to the left. A group of civilian office workers was busily unloading wooden crates filled with tear-gas canisters from a police van with Mississippi license plates and a large Confederate flag festooned across its rear double doors.
    ‘Looks to me like they’re expecting the shit to hit the fan,’ McCorkindale said. He looked up from the ledger and grinned. ‘They’re even going to put my fat ass on the line.’
    Ben drew his eyes back over to McCorkindale. ‘How long’s it been since you fired a gun, Sammy?’
    ‘You mean my service revolver? You mean in the line of duty? I ain’t never fired it, Ben.’
    Ben shook his head irritably, then picked up the Magnum. ‘You think these so-called deputies will know how to use a thing like this?’
    McCorkindale smiled cagily. ‘Well, I figure if things really get out of hand, they’ll learn pretty quick,’ he said. ‘And I figure that’s what the boys in the front office are thinking, too.’
    Ben placed the Magnum back down on the table. ‘They’ll shoot their own toes off, or they’ll shoot each other, or they’ll shoot one of us, Sammy, and that’s what’s going to happen.’ He looked down at the Magnum, then back up at McCorkindale. ‘You just don’t hand somebody a gun like that and then tell them to go on out and make up the rest.’
    ‘I’m not saying I agree with it,’ McCorkindale said, almost in a whine, ‘but we can’t just let the whole town go up in smoke.’
    Ben’s eyes drifted over to the right, past a line of cement columns to where the Chief’s white tank rested near the garage entrance. Black Cat 13 was parked only a few feet away, and next to it, one of the bright red station wagons the Fire Department used to whisk the Chief from one blaze to another across the city.
    ‘I mean, I’m just an ordinary dogface in the depart meat, Ben,’ McCorkindale continued. ‘They don’t come to me for the big decisions.’
    Ben returned his eyes to McCorkindale. He smiled softly. ‘Sometimes I wish they did, Sammy,’ he said quietly. ‘Sometimes I sure do wish they did.’
    Upstairs on the first floor, Ben found the lobby crowded with what looked like a completely new contingent of Alabama highway