‘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.