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

patrolmen. They wore flat-gray uniforms, Sam Browne holsters and the sort of rounded black hats that Gifford, Ben’s former partner, had called ‘Wyatt Earps.’ Ben didn’t recognize any of them, and after a moment he realized that they must have been brought in from the distant rural counties which surrounded Birmingham. They had the look of country boys who were uneasy in the city, and who had spent most of their lives pulling over the occasional teenage speed-demon on some unpaved backwoods road. It was the sort of half-frightened, half-baffled look that he remembered from the war when a batch of reinforcements would suddenly show up, fresh-faced boys who’d been trained for thirty days, then handed an M-1, shipped to the Pacific, spewed out onto a rocky island and told to kick the hell out of a dug-in, battle-hardened army of suicidal Japanese.
    For a moment, Ben simply stood to the side and watched them, trying to figure out what use they could possibly be on the streets of Birmingham, or why they had suddenly appeared in such large numbers, unless it was to make the very idea of resistance to them unthinkable.
    He was still considering it all when Luther walked up and leaned against the wall beside him.
    ‘King’s scheduled for a speech at the Sixteenth Baptist Church late this afternoon,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I want you to be there.’
    Ben nodded.
    ‘And before that, I want you to follow along with the march down Fourth Avenue,’ Luther added. ‘It starts in about an hour, and we’re hoping there won’t be any trouble, but we want all hands on deck anyway.’ He hurriedly handed Ben a white slip of paper. ‘;This tells you where to be and when to be there. Now as far as King’s speech is concerned, I want you to take down everything he says. If he so much as burps, I want it in your notebook, you understand?’
    ‘Yes, Captain,’ Ben said.
    ‘And make sure you’re armed, Ben,’ Luther went on breathlessly. ‘In the next few days, we don’t want any of our people hurt. And remember what the Chief said yesterday. Keep control of yourself, but don’t take any shit.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Got that?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Good.’
    Ben pointed to the crowd of patrolmen. ‘What are they here for?’
    ‘Relief,’ Luther said. ‘For the time being, they’ll be taking over some of our more routine duties. Traffic control, that sort of thing.’
    ‘McCorkindale said something about civilian deputies,’ Ben said.
    ‘That’s just a contingency,’ Luther told him. ‘In a situation like this, you can’t be caught without a plan.’
    ‘McCorkindale’s downstairs getting ready to distribute handguns.’
    Luther looked at him sternly. ‘You got a problem with that?’
    Ben said nothing.
    ‘This is not a department for little girls,’ Luther added coldly. ‘You feeling like a little girl, Ben?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Luther said. ‘Now you just go on about your business, and leave policy to the people who know how to make it. Do you read me, Sergeant?’
    ‘Yes, Captain.’
    ‘Good,’ Luther said. ‘Now get on with your assignments.’
    Ben walked back to the detective bullpen immediately. At his desk, he found a note from Leon Patterson telling him that he planned to have the girl buried in Gracehill Cemetery at around six in the evening. For a moment he tried to think if there was any reason to delay the burial, decided that there was none, crumpled the note in his fist and tossed it into the wastebasket beside his desk.
    ‘Giving up on something, Ben?’ Breedlove asked as he sat down at his own desk only a few feet from Ben.
    ‘They’re going to be burying that little girl this afternoon,’ Ben said.
    ‘You got something on that case?’
    Ben shook his head. ‘Nothing much. A few things that seem a little funny.’
    Breedlove leaned toward him slightly. ‘Like what?’
    ‘Well, Patterson found a ring in her pocket, but it didn’t fit her. There