Streets of Fire Read Free Page B

nap, but slept for over an hour. He stepped over quickly and answered the phone.
    ‘Ben, this is Captain Starnes,’ Luther yelped. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
    ‘I waited around headquarters for a while,’ Ben explained. ‘Then I came home for a nap.’
    ‘You can nap at the station like everybody else,’ Luther said irritably. ‘You missed the Chief’s speech.’
    ‘What speech?’
    ‘The one he all of a sudden decided to make to the whole goddamn department,’ Luther snapped. He paused, as if waiting for a response, then continued. ‘Now you get back down to headquarters right now.’
    Ben nodded wearily. ‘All right, Captain.’
    A few men were still lingering in the briefing room when Ben arrived at the station house. Plainsclothesmen and uniformed patrolmen milled about, along with the top brass who’d come along with the Chief. Clouds of tobacco smoke hung heavily in the air, and the harsh, sporadic clack of police radios could be heard clearly over the murmur of the crowd.
    ‘Get anything on that little girl yet?’ Charlie Breedlove said as he walked up to Ben. He was smoking a thick black cigar clenched tightly between his teeth.
    Ben shook his head.
    ‘Probably never will,’ Breedlove said. ‘It’s over and done with.’
    Ben glanced toward the front of the room. The Chief stood in the distance, chewing his cigar. One of the Langley brothers huddled next to him, listening intently.
    ‘Chief made a real barn-burner,’ Breedlove told him.
    ‘He knows how to get them going,’ Ben said.
    ‘Told us we didn’t have to take shit from anybody. Now, I agree with that.’ Breedlove plucked the cigar from his mouth and glanced at the tip. ‘Lost my fire,’ he said. ’Got a light?’
    Ben took out a packet of matches and relighted the cigar.
    Breedlove took a deep draw, then blew a tumbling cloud of thick blue smoke into the already stifling air. ‘You didn’t see Harry on the way in, did you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘He disappeared on me,’ Breedlove said. ‘It’s rough having a partner who’s always disappearing on you.’ He smiled. ‘They give you a partner yet? I mean, since Gifford left?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘So you’re just working that Bearmatch thing yourself?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    Breedlove shrugged. ‘Well, when all this shits over, they’ll give you a new partner. They just got all they can handle right now.’
    ‘I don’t mind working alone,’ Ben said:
    ‘You’re a loner type, is that it?’ Breedlove asked.
    ‘I guess.’
    Breedlove’s eyes narrowed somewhat, as if he were studying him. ‘Well, I’m not like that,’ he said finally. ‘I like a partner. Speaking of which, I better find the rotten son of a bitch.’ He nodded quickly, and left the room, his thin, wiry frame disappearing into the pale green corridor like something caught up in a wave.
    Ben lingered in the room awhile longer, standing idly to the side as the last of the people filtered out into the hallway. Like all the world around them, they seemed to move in pairs. Partners on patrol went home to their separate wives, coupling up once again. There were times when it had appealed to him, this notion of someone at his side. But each time he’d moved toward it, it had slipped beyond his grasp. A secretary in the Records Department had moved abruptly to Galveston. A bank teller at First Alabama had finally decided to go with what Ben himself imagined to be a better man. Each time he’d taken it well, but each time it had worn him down a little, so that he’d made few attempts in the last few years to be anything but alone. Each night he made his supper, read the paper, then fell asleep on the sofa or in his large orange recliner, his ears tuned to the muffled wail behind the black and white Indian-head test pattern on his television screen. And each morning he awoke needing less and less to make it through the day. It was a life that seemed to suit him, and he no longer felt it necessary to apologize for it,