The streets off Fourth Avenue were as deserted as the ones around Police Headquarters. As Ben got out of his car, he could see only desolate, empty alleyways and tightly closed shops. The avenue itself did not look much different. At the northern end of Kelly Ingram Park, a long line of fire engines stretched like a wide swipe of bright red paint across the motionless trees and deserted buildings. Contingents of firemen huddled in small knots beside the engines. Not far away, thin gray lines of highway patrolmen crisscrossed the avenue or blocked off its adjoining streets. Files of municipal police paced back and forth between the lines, moving nervously from one position to another.
Ben turned away from them and headed south, up the rounded hill that rose gradually, then dropped off toward the central Negro district.
The Better Days Pool Hall was near the top of the hill, and Ben was sweating heavily in the summer heat by the time he reached it.
The few games that were going on as Ben came through the door stopped instantly.
‘I’m looking for Gaylord,’ Ben said instantly. He pulled out his badge. ‘This is a friendly visit.’
The men looked at him doubtfully.
‘Last one wasn’t too goddamn friendly,’ someone said from the back.
Ben turned in the direction of the voice and recognized the man he’d slammed against the wall only the day before.
‘I’m hoping this one will be,’ he said to him.
The man stepped forward, half his face illuminated by the naked bulb that hung over the pool table beside him. A raised tan scar ran along the side of his face, curling upward from the edge of his jaw to the side of his ear.
‘You slammed me good, boss,’ the man said. ‘You not too smart to come back here.’
‘I’m not looking for you,’ Ben told him resolutely.
‘Gaylord, like you say.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What for?’
‘That’s for me to tell him,’ Ben said bluntly.
The man leaned against the table, and the slant of light now cut in a yellow diagonal across his dark face. ‘We heard about Bluto,’ he said. ‘We heard maybe you done it.’
Ben said nothing.
‘Maybe we set you on him,’ the man added. Told you where he was. Then you killed him. That how it was?’
‘He was dead when I found him,’ Ben said. ‘He’d been dead for several days.’
The man squinted as he stared evenly at Ben. ‘’Round here, we ain’t no house niggers. Not like them that’s in the streets. Always singing and shouting for Jesus.’
‘Was Bluto like that?’
‘House nigger, you mean?’
‘Yeah.’
The man laughed. ‘Bluto wadn’t hardly nothing at all.’ He shook his head. ‘Shit, that boy didn’t have the sense of a fieldhand.’
‘It doesn’t take much sense to kill a little girl,’ Ben said bluntly.
Again, the man laughed. ‘Kill a child? Bluto? You crazy, boss.’ He waved his hand. ‘Why, Bluto, he …’
The door of the back room swung open suddenly, and Gaylord’s massive frame stepped out of it, immediately filling up the dark space, the pool tables shrinking to miniature before him.
‘Who ask you?’ he demanded harshly of the other man.
The other man stiffened.
Gaylord thumped his enormous chest. ‘The man come looking for me, you sends him to me. He don’t need none of your shine before we talks.’
The man nodded quickly, then slinked out of the light and disappeared into the far corner of the room.
Gaylord’s eyes flashed over to Ben. ‘You be some kind of crazy coming back down here this afternoon.’
‘I needed to talk to you.’
‘Gone be all hell breaking loose before long,’ Gaylord said.
‘Looks that way.’
‘Better get your saying said and then be gone from here.’
‘Fine with me.’
Gaylord waved him toward the back room. ‘Come on, then,’ he said quickly. ‘I wants to be out of here before the trouble starts.’
Ben followed him quickly into the back room and took a seat opposite Gaylord’s small wooden desk.
‘I just need to know as much as I can about Bluto,’ he said.
‘Nothing much to know,’ Gaylord said. He placed his hands behind his head and leaned back in chair. ‘He come in here sometime.’
‘Just to play pool?’ Ben asked.
‘That’s right,’ Gaylord said.
‘Did he have any friends around here?’ Ben asked. ‘People he hung around with?’
Gaylord shook his head. ‘Not that I ever seen.’
‘And as far as you know he didn’t do any work?’
‘Once in a while I let him rack the balls,’ Gaylord said. ‘I paid him a little for that. Sometimes he do an errand or two for somebody. Deliver something down the street.’
‘Who’d he do that sort of thing for?’
‘Anybody that asked him,’ Gaylord said. ‘I guess they paid him whatever they wanted to. But like I say before, he didn’t have a regular job, far as I know.’
Ben shifted to a different direction. ‘Was he ever rough, violent?’
Gaylord looked at Ben wonderingly. ‘Bluto? Violent? Naw, he ain’t like that. He ain’t got the sense to be rough.’
‘Did you ever see him act mean to anybody?’
Gaylord shook his head. ‘Nah, he ain’t like that.’ He chuckled. ‘He think he a cop, you know. He always trying to act big, like he a cop. He say he deputized. He had a little badge to prove it.’
‘Police badge?’
‘Yeah, look like.’
‘Did he carry it with him?’