Learning to Kill: Stories

First Offense

This story first appeared in Manhunt. The editor of the magazine was someone named John McCloud. No one knew who John McCloud was. The poem parody we recited was “I wandered lonely as McCloud.” Well, John McCloud was Scott Meredith. It was very good to be working for the man who was editing the hottest detective magazine of the day; in 1953 alone, fourteen of my stories appeared in Manhunt under the Marsten, Hunter, or Collins bylines. This one was published in 1955, under the Evan Hunter byline, which by that time had been my legal name for almost three years.

He sat in the police van with the collar of his leather jacket turned up, the bright silver studs sharp against the otherwise unrelieved black. He was seventeen years old, and he wore his hair in a high black crown. He carried his head high and erect because he knew he had a good profile, and he carried his mouth like a switch knife, ready to spring open at the slightest provocation. His hands were thrust deep into his jacket pockets, and his gray eyes reflected the walls of the van. There was excitement in his eyes, too, an almost holiday excitement. He tried to tell himself he was in trouble, but he couldn’t quite believe it. His gradual descent to disbelief had been a spiral that had spun dizzily through the range of his emotions. Terror when the cop’s flash had picked him out; blind panic when he’d started to run; rebellion when the cop’s firm hand had closed around the leather sleeve of his jacket; sullen resignation when the cop had thrown him into the RMP car; and then cocky stubbornness when they’d booked him at the local precinct.

The desk sergeant had looked him over curiously, with a strange aloofness in his Irish eyes.

“What’s the matter, Fatty?” he’d asked.

The sergeant stared at him implacably. “Put him away for the night,” the sergeant said.

He’d slept overnight in the precinct cell block, and he’d awakened with this strange excitement pulsing through his narrow body, and it was the excitement that had caused his disbelief. Trouble, hell! He’d been in trouble before, but it had never felt like this. This was different. This was a ball, man. This was like being initiated into a secret society someplace. His contempt for the police had grown when they refused him the opportunity to shave after breakfast. He was only seventeen, but he had a fairly decent beard, and a man should be allowed to shave in the morning, what the hell! But even the beard had somehow lent to the unreality of the situation, made him appear — in his own eyes — somehow more desperate, more sinister-looking. He knew he was in trouble, but the trouble was glamorous, and he surrounded it with the gossamer lie of make-believe. He was living the storybook legend. He was big time now. They’d caught him and booked him, and he should have been scared but he was excited instead.

There was one other person in the van with him, a guy who’d spent the night in the cell block, too. The guy was an obvious bum, and his breath stank of cheap wine, but he was better than nobody to talk to.

“Hey!” he said.

The bum looked up. “You talking to me?”

“Yeah. Where we going?”

“The lineup, kid,” the bum said. “This your first offense?”

“This’s the first time I got caught,” he answered cockily.

“All felonies go to the lineup,” the bum told him. “And also some special types of misdemeanors. You commit a felony?”

“Yeah,” he said, hoping he sounded nonchalant. What’d they have this bum in for anyway? Sleeping on a park bench?

“Well, that’s why you’re goin’ to the lineup. They have guys from every detective squad in the city there, to look you over. So they’ll remember you next time. They put you on a stage, and they read off the offense, and the Chief of Detectives starts firing questions at you. What’s your name, kid?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Don’t get smart, punk, or I’ll break your arm,” the bum said.

He looked at the bum curiously. He was a pretty big guy, with a heavy growth of beard, and powerful shoulders. “My name’s Stevie,” he said.

“I’m Jim Skinner,” the bum said. “When somebody’s trying to give you advice, don’t go hip on him...”

“Yeah, well, what’s your advice?” he asked, not wanting to back down completely.

“When they get you up there, you don’t have to answer anything. They’ll throw questions but you don’t have to answer. Did you make a statement at the scene?”

“No,” he answered.

“Good. Then don’t make no statement now, either. They can’t force you to. Just keep your mouth shut, and don’t tell them nothing.”

“I ain’t afraid. They know all about it anyway,” Stevie said.

The bum shrugged and gathered around him the sullen pearls of his scattered wisdom. Stevie sat in the van whistling, listening to the accompanying hum of the tires, hearing the secret hum of his blood beneath the other louder sound. He sat at the core of a self-imposed importance, basking in its warm glow, whistling contentedly, secretly happy. Beside him, Skinner leaned back against the wall of the van.

When they arrived at the Center Street Headquarters, they put them in detention cells, awaiting the lineup which began at nine. At ten minutes to nine they led him out of his cell, and the cop who’d arrested him originally took him into the special prisoners’ elevator.

“How’s it feel being an elevator boy?” he asked the cop.

The cop didn’t answer him. They went upstairs to the big room where the lineup was being held. A detective in front of them was pinning on his shield so he could get past the cop at the desk. They crossed the large gymnasium-like compartment, walking past the men sitting in folded chairs before the stage.

“Get a nice turnout, don’t you?” Stevie said.

“You ever tried vaudeville?” the cop answered.

The blinds in the room had not been drawn yet, and Stevie could see everything clearly. The stage itself with the permanently fixed microphone hanging from a narrow metal tube above; the height markers — four feet, five feet, six feet — behind the mike on the wide white wall. The men in the seats, he knew, were all detectives and his sense of importance suddenly flared again when he realized these bulls had come from all over the city just to look at him. Behind the bulls was a raised platform with a sort of lecturer’s stand on it. A microphone rested on the stand, and a chair was behind it, and he assumed this was where the Chief bull would sit. There were uniformed cops stationed here and there around the room, and there was one man in civilian clothing who sat at a desk in front of the stage.

“Who’s that?” Stevie asked the cop.

“Police stenographer,” the cop answered. “He’s going to take down your words for posterity.”

They walked behind the stage, and Stevie watched as other felony offenders from all over the city joined them. There was one woman, but all the rest were men, and he studied their faces carefully, hoping to pick up some tricks from them, hoping to learn the subtlety of their expressions. They didn’t look like much. He was better-looking than all of them, and the knowledge pleased him. He’d be the star of this little shindig. The cop who’d been with him moved over to talk to a big broad who was obviously a policewoman. Stevie looked around, spotted Skinner, and walked over to him.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“They’re gonna pull the shades in a few minutes,” Skinner said. “Then they’ll turn on the spots and start the lineup. The spots won’t blind you, but you won’t be able to see the faces of any of the bulls out there.”

“Who wants to see them mugs?” Stevie asked.

Skinner shrugged. “When your case is called, your arresting officer goes back and stands near the Chief of Detectives, just in case the Chief needs more dope from him. The Chief’ll read off your name and the borough where you was pinched. A number’ll follow the borough. Like he’ll say ‘Manhattan one’ or ‘Manhattan two.’ That’s just the number of the case from that borough. You’re first, you get number one, you follow?”

“Yeah,” Stevie said.

“He’ll tell the bulls what they got you on, and then he’ll say either ‘Statement’ or ‘No statement.’ If you made a statement, chances are he won’t ask many questions ’cause he won’t want you to contradict anything damaging you already said. If there’s no statement, he’ll fire questions like a machine gun. But you don’t have to answer nothing.”

“Then what?”

“When he’s through, you go downstairs to get mugged and printed. Then they take you over to the Criminal Courts Building for arraignment.”

“They’re gonna take my picture, huh?” Stevie asked.

“Yeah.”

“You think there’ll be reporters here?”

“Huh?”

“Reporters.”

“Oh. Maybe. All the wire services hang out in a room across the street from where the vans pulled up. They got their own police radio in there, and they get the straight dope as soon as it’s happening, in case they want to roll with it. There may be some reporters.” Skinner paused. “Why? What’d you do?”

“It ain’t so much what I done,” Stevie said. “I was just wonderin’ if we’d make the papers.”

Skinner stared at him curiously. “You’re all charged up, ain’t you, Stevie?”

“Hell, no. Don’t you think I know I’m in trouble?”

“Maybe you don’t know just how much trouble,” Skinner said.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“This ain’t as exciting as you think, kid. Take my word for it.”

“Sure, you know all about it.”

“I been around a little,” Skinner said drily.

“Sure, on park benches all over the country. I know I’m in trouble, don’t worry.”

“You kill anybody?”

“No,” Stevie said.

“Assault?”

Stevie didn’t answer.

“Whatever you done,” Skinner advised, “and no matter how long you been doin’ it before they caught you, make like it’s your first time. Tell them you done it and then say you don’t know why you done it, but you’ll never do it again. It might help you, kid. You might get off with a suspended sentence.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. And then keep your nose clean afterwards, and you’ll be okay.”

“Keep my nose clean! Don’t make me laugh, pal.”

Skinner clutched Stevie’s arm in a tight grip. “Kid, don’t be a damn fool. If you can get out, get out now! I coulda got out a hundred times, and I’m still with it, and it’s no picnic. Get out before you get started.”

Stevie shook off Skinner’s hand. “Come on, willya?” he said, annoyed.

“Knock it off there,” the cop said. “We’re ready to start.”

“Take a look at your neighbors, kid,” Skinner whispered. “Take a hard look. And then get out of it while you still can.”

Stevie grimaced and turned away from Skinner. Skinner whirled him around to face him again, and there was a pleading desperation on the unshaven face, a mute reaching in the red-rimmed eyes before he spoke again. “Kid,” he said, “listen to me. Take my advice. I’ve been...”

“Knock it off!” the cop warned again.

He was suddenly aware of the fact that the shades had been drawn and the room was dim. It was very quiet out there, and he hoped they would take him first. The excitement had risen to an almost fever pitch inside him, and he couldn’t wait to get on that stage. What the hell was Skinner talking about anyway? “Take a look at your neighbors, kid.” The poor jerk probably had a wet brain. What the hell did the police bother with old drunks for, anyway?

A uniformed cop led one of the men from behind the stage, and Stevie moved a little to his left, so that he could see the stage, hoping none of the cops would shove him back where he wouldn’t have a good view. His cop and the policewoman were still talking, paying no attention to him. He smiled, unaware that the smile developed as a smirk, and watched the first man mounting the steps to the stage. The man’s eyes were very small, and he kept blinking them, blinking them. He was bald at the back of his head, and he was wearing a Navy peacoat and dark tweed trousers, and his eyes were red-rimmed and sleepy-looking. He reached to the five-foot-six-inches marker on the wall behind him, and he stared out at the bulls, blinking.

“Assisi,” the Chief of Detectives said, “Augustus, Manhattan one. Thirty-three years old. Picked up in a bar on Forty-third and Broadway, carrying a .45 Colt automatic. No statement. How about it, Gus?”

“How about what?” Assisi asked.

“Were you carrying a gun?”

“Yes, I was carrying a gun.” Assisi seemed to realize his shoulders were slumped. He pulled them back suddenly, standing erect.

“Where, Gus?”

“In my pocket.”

“What were you doing with the gun, Gus?”

“I was just carrying it.”

“Why?”

“Listen, I’m not going to answer any questions,” Assisi said. “You’re gonna put me through a third degree. I ain’t answering nothing. I want a lawyer.”

“You’ll get plenty opportunity to have a lawyer,” the Chief of Detectives said. “And nobody’s giving you a third degree. We just want to know what you were doing with a gun. You know that’s against the law, don’t you?”

“I’ve got a permit for the gun,” Assisi said.

“We checked with Pistol Permits, and they say no. This is a Navy gun, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I said yeah, it’s a Navy gun.”

“What were you doing with it? Why were you carrying it around?”

“I like guns.”

“Why?”

“Why what? Why do I like guns? Because...”

“Why were you carrying it around?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you must have a reason for carrying a loaded .45. The gun was loaded, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, it was loaded.”

“You have any other guns?”

“No.”

“We found a .38 in your room. How about that one?”

“It’s no good.”

“What?”

“The .38.”

“What do you mean, no good?”

“The firing mechanism is busted.”

“You want a gun that works, is that it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said the .38’s no good because it won’t fire, didn’t you?”

“Well, what good’s a gun that won’t fire?”

“Why do you need a gun that fires?”

“I was just carrying it. I didn’t shoot anybody, did I?”

“No, you didn’t. Were you planning on shooting somebody?”

“Sure,” Assisi said. “That’s just what I was planning.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” Assisi said sarcastically. “Anybody. The first guy I saw, all right? Everybody, all right? I was planning on wholesale murder.”

“Not murder, maybe, but a little larceny, huh?”

“Murder,” Assisi insisted, in his stride now. “I was just going to shoot up the whole town. Okay? You happy now?”

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“From the Navy.”

“Where?”

“From my ship.”

“It’s a stolen gun?”

“No, I found it.”

“You stole government property, is that it?”

“I found it.”

“When’d you get out of the Navy?”

“Three months ago.”

“You worked since?”

“No.”

“Where were you discharged?”

“Pensacola.”

“Is that where you stole the gun?”

“I didn’t steal it.”

“Why’d you leave the Navy?”

Assisi hesitated for a long time.

“Why’d you leave the Navy?” the Chief of Detectives asked again.

“They kicked me out!” Assisi snapped.

“Why?”

“I was undesirable!” he shouted.

“Why?”

Assisi did not answer.

“Why?” There was silence in the darkened room.

Stevie watched Assisi’s face, the twitching mouth, the blinking eyelids.

“Next case,” the Chief of Detectives said.

Stevie watched as Assisi walked across the stage and down the steps on the other side, where the uniformed cop met him. He’d handled himself well, Assisi had. They’d rattled him a little at the end there, but on the whole he’d done a good job. So the guy was lugging a gun around. So what? He was right, wasn’t he? He didn’t shoot nobody, so what was all the fuss about? Cops! They had nothing else to do, they went around hauling in guys who were carrying guns. Poor bastard was a veteran, too; that was really rubbing it in. But he did a good job up there, even though he was nervous, you could see he was very nervous.

A man and a woman walked past him and onto the stage. The man was very tall, topping the six-foot marker. The woman was shorter, a bleached blonde turning to fat.

“They picked them up together,” Skinner whispered. “So they show them together. They figure a pair’ll always work as a pair, usually.”

“How’d you like that Assisi?” Stevie whispered back. “He really had them bulls on the run, didn’t he?” Skinner didn’t answer.

The Chief of Detectives cleared his throat. “MacGregor, Peter, aged forty-five, and Anderson, Marcia, aged forty-two, Bronx one. Got them in a parked car on the Grand Concourse. Backseat of the car was loaded with goods, including luggage, a typewriter, a portable sewing machine, and a fur coat. No statements. What about all that stuff, Pete?”

“It’s mine.”

“The fur coat, too?”

“No, that’s Marcia’s.”

“You’re not married, are you?”

“No.”

“Living together?”

“Well, you know,” Pete said.

“What about the stuff?” the Chief of Detectives said again.

“I told you,” Pete said. “It’s ours.”

“What was it doing in the car?”

“Oh. Well, we were... uh...” The man paused for a long time. “We were going on a trip.”

“Where to?”

“Where? Oh. To... uh...”

Again he paused, frowning, and Stevie smiled, thinking what a clown this guy was. This guy was better than a sideshow at Coney. This guy couldn’t tell a lie without having to think about it for an hour. And the dumpy broad with him was a hot sketch, too. This act alone was worth the price of admission.

“Uh...” Pete said, still fumbling for words. “Oh... we were going to... uh... Denver.”

“What for?”

“Oh, just a little pleasure trip, you know,” he said, attempting a smile.

“How much money were you carrying when we picked you up?”

“Forty dollars.”

“You were going to Denver on forty dollars?”

“Well, it was fifty dollars. Yeah, it was more like fifty dollars.”

“Come on, Pete, what were you doing with all that stuff in the car?”

“I told you. We were taking a trip.”

“With a sewing machine, huh? You do a lot of sewing, Pete?”

“Marcia does.”

“That right, Marcia?”

The blonde spoke in a high, reedy voice. “Yeah, I do a lot of sewing.”

“That fur coat, Marcia. Is it yours?”

“Sure.”

“It has the initials G. D. on the lining. Those aren’t your initials, are they, Marcia?”

“No.”

“Whose are they?”

“Search me. We bought that coat in a hockshop.”

“Where?”

“Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn. You know where that is?”

“Yes, I know where it is. What about that luggage? It had initials on it, too. And they weren’t yours or Pete’s. How about it?”

“We got that in a hockshop, too.”

“And the typewriter?”

“That’s Pete’s.”

“Are you a typist, Pete?”

“Well, I fool around a little, you know.”

“We’re going to check all this stuff against our stolen goods list. You know that, don’t you?”

“We got all that stuff in hockshops,” Pete said. “If it’s stolen, we don’t know nothing about it.”

“Were you going to Denver with him, Marcia?”

“Oh sure.”

“When did you both decide to go? A few minutes ago?”

“We decided last week sometime.”

“Were you going to Denver by way of the Grand Concourse?”

“Huh?” Pete said.

“Your car was parked on the Grand Concourse. What were you doing there with a carload of stolen goods?”

“It wasn’t stolen,” Pete said.

“We were on our way to Yonkers,” the woman said.

“I thought you were going to Denver.”

“Yeah, but we had to get the car fixed first. There was something wrong with the...” She paused, turning to Pete. “What was it, Pete? That thing that was wrong?”

Pete waited a long time before answering. “Uh... the... uh... the flywheel, yeah. There’s a garage up in Yonkers fixes them good, we heard. Flywheels, I mean.”

“If you were going to Yonkers, why were you parked on the Concourse?”

“Well, we were having an argument.”

“What kind of an argument?”

“Not an argument, really. Just a discussion, sort of.”

“About what?”

“About what to eat.”

“What!”

“About what to eat. I wanted to eat Chink’s, but Marcia wanted a glass of milk and a piece of pie. So we were trying to decide whether we should go to the Chink’s or the cafeteria. That’s why we were parked on the Concourse.”

“We found a wallet in your coat, Pete. It wasn’t yours, was it?”

“No.”

“Whose was it?”

“I don’t know.” He paused, then added hastily, “There wasn’t no money in it.”

“No, but there was identification. A Mr. Simon Granger. Where’d you get it, Pete?”

“I found it in the subway. There wasn’t no money in it.”

“Did you find all that other stuff in the subway, too?”

“No, sir, I bought that.” He paused. “I was going to return the wallet, but I forgot to stick it in the mail.”

“Too busy planning for the Denver trip, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“When’s the last time you earned an honest dollar, Pete?”

Pete grinned. “Oh, about two, three years ago. I guess.”

“Here’re their records,” the Chief of Detectives said. “Marcia, 1938, Sullivan Law; 1939, Concealing Birth of Issue; 1940, Possession of Narcotics — you still on the stuff, Marcia?”

“No.”

“1942, Dis Cond; 1943, Narcotics again; 1947 — you had enough, Marcia?”

Marcia didn’t answer.

“Pete,” the Chief of Detectives said, “1940, Attempted Rape; 1941, Selective Service Act; 1942, Dis Cond; 1943, Attempted Burglary; 1945, Living on Proceeds of Prostitution; 1947, Assault and Battery, did two years at Ossining.”

“I never done no time,” Pete said.

“According to this, you did.”

“I never done no time,” he insisted.

“1950,” the Chief of Detectives went on, “Carnal Abuse of a Child.” He paused. “Want to tell us about that one, Pete?”

“I... uh...” Pete swallowed. “I got nothing to say.”

“You’re ashamed of some things, that it?”

Pete didn’t answer.

“Get them out of here,” the Chief of Detectives said.

“See how long he kept them up there?” Skinner whispered. “He knows what they are, wants every bull in the city to recognize them if they...”

“Come on,” a detective said, taking Skinner’s arm.

Stevie watched as Skinner climbed the steps to the stage. Those two had really been something, all right. And just looking at them, you’d never know they were such operators. You’d never know they...

“Skinner, James, Manhattan two. Aged fifty-one. Threw a garbage can through the plate-glass window of a clothing shop on Third Avenue. Arresting officer found him inside the shop with a bundle of overcoats. No statement. That right, James?”

“I don’t remember,” Skinner said.

“Is it, or isn’t it?”

“All I remember is waking up in jail this morning.”

“You don’t remember throwing that ash can through the window?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t remember taking those overcoats?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you must have done it, don’t you think? The off-duty detective found you inside the store with the coats in your arms.”

“I got only his word for that, sir.”

“Well, his word is pretty good. Especially since he found you inside the store with your arms full of merchandise.”

“I don’t remember, sir.”

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

“I don’t remember, sir.”

“What do you do for a living, James?”

“I’m unemployed, sir.”

“When’s the last time you worked?”

“I don’t remember, sir.”

“You don’t remember much of anything, do you?”

“I have a poor memory, sir.”

“Maybe the record has a better memory than you, James,” the Chief of Detectives said.

“Maybe so, sir. I couldn’t say.”

“I hardly know where to start, James. You haven’t been exactly an ideal citizen.”

“Haven’t I, sir?”

“Here’s as good a place as any. 1948, Assault and Robbery; 1949, Indecent Exposure; 1951, Burglary; 1952, Assault and Robbery again. You’re quite a guy, aren’t you, James?”

“If you say so, sir.”

“I say so. Now how about that store?”

“I don’t remember anything about a store, sir.”

“Why’d you break into it?”

“I don’t remember breaking into any store, sir.”

“Hey, what’s this?” the Chief of Detectives said suddenly.

“Sir?”

“Maybe we should’ve started back a little further, huh, James? Here, on your record. 1938, convicted of First-degree Murder, sentenced to execution.”

The assembled bulls began murmuring among themselves. Stevie leaned forward eagerly, anxious to get a better look at this bum who’d offered him advice.

“What happened there, James?”

“What happened where, sir?”

“You were sentenced to death? How come you’re still with us?”

“The case was appealed.”

“And never retried?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re pretty lucky, aren’t you?”

“I’m pretty unlucky, sir, if you ask me.”

“Is that right? You cheat the chair, and you call that unlucky. Well, the law won’t slip up this time.”

“I don’t know anything about law, sir.”

“You don’t, huh?”

“No, sir. I only know that if you want to get a police station into action, all you have to do is buy a cheap bottle of wine and drink it quiet, minding your own business.”

“And that’s what you did, huh, James?”

“That’s what I did, sir.”

“And you don’t remember breaking into that store?”

“I don’t remember anything.”

“All right, next case.”

Skinner turned his head slowly, and his eyes met Stevie’s squarely. Again there was the same mute pleading in his eyes, and then he turned his head away and shuffled off the stage and down the steps into the darkness.

The cop’s hand closed around Stevie’s biceps. For an instant he didn’t know what was happening, and then he realized his case was the next one. He shook off the cop’s hand, squared his shoulders, lifted his head, and began climbing the steps.

He felt taller all at once. He felt like an actor coming on after his cue. There was an aura of unreality about the stage and the darkened room beyond it, the bulls sitting in that room.

The Chief of Detectives was reading off the information about him, but he didn’t hear it. He kept looking at the lights, which were not really so bright, they didn’t blind him at all. Didn’t they have brighter lights? Couldn’t they put more lights on him, so they could see him when he told his story?

He tried to make out the faces of the detectives, but he couldn’t see them clearly, and he was aware of the Chief of Detective’s voice droning on and on, but he didn’t hear what the man was saying, he heard only the hum of his voice. He glanced over his shoulder, trying to see how tall he was against the markers, and then he stood erect, his shoulders back, moving closer to the hanging microphone, wanting to be sure his voice was heard when he began speaking.

“...no statement,” the Chief of Detectives concluded. There was a long pause, and Stevie waited, holding his breath. “This your first offense, Steve?” the Chief of Detectives asked.

“Don’t you know?” Stevie answered.

“I’m asking you.”

“Yeah, it’s my first offense.”

“You want to tell us all about it?”

“There’s nothing to tell. You know the whole story, anyway.”

“Sure, but do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tell us the story, Steve.”

“What’re ya makin’ a big federal case out of a lousy stickup for? Ain’t you got nothing better to do with your time?”

“We’ve got plenty of time, Steve.”

“Well, I’m in a hurry.”

“You’re not going anyplace, kid. Tell us about it.”

“What’s there to tell? There was a candy store stuck up, that’s all.”

“Did you stick it up?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“We know you did.”

“Then don’t ask me stupid questions.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“I ran out of butts.”

“Come on, kid.”

“I done it ’cause I wanted to.”

“Why?”

“Look, you caught me cold, so let’s get this over with, huh? What’re ya wastin’ time with me for?”

“We want to hear what you’ve got to say. Why’d you pick this particular candy store?”

“I just picked it. I put slips in a hat and picked this one out.”

“You didn’t really, did you, Steve?”

“No, I didn’t really. I picked it ’cause there’s an old crumb who runs it, and I figured it was a pushover.”

“What time did you enter the store, Steve?”

“The old guy told you all this already, didn’t he? Look, I know I’m up here so you can get a good look at me. All right, take your good look, and let’s get it over with.”

“What time, Steve?”

“I don’t have to tell you nothing.”

“Except that we know it already.”

“Then why do you want to hear it again? Ten o’clock, all right? How does that fit?”

“A little early, isn’t it?”

“How’s eleven? Try that one, for size.”

“Let’s make it twelve, and we’ll be closer.”

“Make it whatever you want to,” Stevie said, pleased with the way he was handling this. They knew all about it, anyway, so he might as well have himself a ball, show them they couldn’t shove him around.

“You went into the store at twelve, is that right?”

“If you say so, Chief.”

“Did you have a gun?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Just me. I scared him with a dirty look, that’s all.”

“You had a switch knife, didn’t you?”

“You found one on me, so why ask?”

“Did you use the knife?”

“No.”

“You didn’t tell the old man to open the cash register or you’d cut him up? Isn’t that what you said?”

“I didn’t make a tape recording of what I said.”

“But you did threaten him with the knife. You did force him to open the cash register, holding the knife on him.”

“I suppose so.”

“How much money did you get?”

“You’ve got the dough. Why don’t you count it?”

“We already have. Twelve dollars, is that right?”

“I didn’t get a chance to count it. The Law showed.”

“When did the Law show?”

“When I was leaving. Ask the cop who pinched me. He knows when.”

“Something happened before you left, though.”

“Nothing happened. I cleaned out the register and then blew. Period.”

“Your knife had blood on it.”

“Yeah? I was cleaning chickens last night.”

“You stabbed the owner of that store, didn’t you?”

“Me? I never stabbed nobody in my whole life.”

“Why’d you stab him?”

“I didn’t.”

“Where’d you stab him?”

“I didn’t stab him.”

“Did he start yelling?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You stabbed him, Steve. We know you did.”

“You’re foil of crap.”

“Don’t get smart, Steve.”

“Ain’t you had your look yet? What the hell more do you want?”

“We want you to tell us why you stabbed the owner of that store.”

“And I told you I didn’t stab him.”

“He was taken to the hospital last night with six knife wounds in his chest and abdomen. Now how about that, Steve?”

“Save your questioning for the Detective Squad Room. I ain’t saying another word.”

“You had your money. Why’d you stab him?”

Stevie did not answer.

“Were you afraid?”

“Afraid of what?” Stevie answered defiantly.

“I don’t know. Afraid he’d tell who held him up? Afraid he’d start yelling? What were you afraid of, kid?”

“I wasn’t afraid of nothing. I told the old crumb to keep his mouth shut. He shoulda listened to me.”

“He didn’t keep his mouth shut?”

“Ask him.”

“I’m asking you!”

“No, he didn’t keep his mouth shut. He started yelling. Right after I’d cleaned out the drawer. The damn jerk, for a lousy twelve bucks he starts yelling.”

“What’d you do?”

“I told him to shut up.”

“And he didn’t.”

“No. he didn’t. So I hit him, and he still kept yelling. So I gave him the knife.”

“Six times?”

“I don’t know how many times. I just gave it to him. He shouldn’t have yelled. You ask him if I did any harm to him before that. Go ahead, ask him. He’ll tell you. I didn’t even touch the crumb before he started yelling. Go to the hospital and ask him if I touched him. Go ahead, ask him.”

“We can’t, Steve.”

“Wh...”

“He died this morning.”

“He...”

For a moment, Stevie could not think clearly. Died? Is that what he’d said? The room was curiously still now. It had been silently attentive before, but this was something else, something different, and the stillness suddenly chilled him, and he looked down at his shoes.

“I... I didn’t mean him to pass away,” he mumbled.

The police stenographer looked up. “To what?”

“To pass away,” a uniformed cop repeated, whispering.

“What?” the stenographer asked again.

“He didn’t mean him to pass away!” the cop shouted.

The cop’s voice echoed in the silent room. The stenographer bent his head and began scribbling in his pad.

“Next case,” the Chief of Detectives said.

Stevie walked off the stage, his mind curiously blank, his feet strangely leaden. He followed the cop to the door, and then walked with him to the elevator. They were both silent as the doors closed.

“You picked an important one for your first one,” the cop said.

“He shouldn’t have died on me,” Stevie answered.

“You shouldn’t have stabbed him,” the cop said.

He tried to remember what Skinner had said to him before the lineup, but the noise of the elevator was loud in his ears, and he couldn’t think clearly. He could only remember the word “neighbors” as the elevator dropped to the basement to join them.

Kid Kill

In this story — which first appeared in Manhunt in 1953, under the Evan Hunter byline — there’s a detective named Marelli and another one named Willis and yet another one named Ed. Is it just coincidence that I chose the pseudonym Ed McBain for the series of cop novels I would begin writing a few years later? Is it further coincidence that two of the continuing characters in the 87th Precinct novels are named Carella and Willis? I don’t know. Maybe “Kid Kill” should properly belong in the Cops and Robbers section of this book. But when I wrote it back in 1953, I didn’t think of it as the first cop story I’d ever written in my life. I just thought of it as a story about a kid.

It was just a routine call. I remember I was sitting around with Ed, talking about a movie we’d both seen, when Marelli walked in, a sheet of paper in his hand.

“You want to take this, Art?”

I looked up, pulled a face, and said, “Who stabbed who now?”

“This is an easy one,” Marelli said. He smoothed his mustache in an unconscious gesture, and added, “Accidental shooting.”

“Then why bother Homicide?”

“Accidental shooting resulting in death.”

I got up, hitched up my trousers, and sighed. “They always pick the coldest goddamn days of the year to play with war souvenirs.” I looked at the frost edging the windows and then turned back to Marelli. “It was a war souvenir, wasn’t it?”

“Luger,” Marelli said. “Nine millimeter. The man on the beat checked it.”

“Was it registered?”

“You tell me.”

“Stupid characters,” I said. “You’d think the law wasn’t there for their own protection.” I sighed again and looked over to where Ed was trying to make himself look small. “Come on, Ed, time to work.”

Ed shuffled to his feet. He was a big man with bright red hair, and a nose broken by an escaped con back in ’45. It happened that the con was a little runt, about five feet high in his Adler elevators, and Ed had taken a lot of ribbing about that broken nose — even though we all knew the con had used a lead pipe.

“Trouble with you, Marelli,” he said in his deep voice, “you take your job too seriously.”

Marelli looked shocked. “Is it my fault some kid accidentally plugs his brother?”

“What?” I said. I had taken my overcoat from the peg and was shrugging into it now. “What was that, Marelli?”

“It was a kid,” Marelli said. “Ten years old. He was showing his younger brother the Luger when it went off. Hell, you know these things.”

I pulled my muffler tight around my neck, and then buttoned my coat. “This is just a waste of time,” I said. “Why do the police always have to horn in on personal tragedies?”

Marelli paused near the desk, dropping the paper with the information on it. “Every killing is a personal tragedy for someone,” he said. I stared at him as he walked to the door, waved, and went out.

“Pearls from a flatfoot,” Ed said. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

It was bitter cold, the kind of cold that attacks your ears and your hands, and makes you want to huddle around a potbelly stove. Ed pulled the Mercury up behind the white-topped squad car, and we climbed out, losing the warmth of the car heater. The beat man was standing near a white picket fence that ran around the small house. His uniform collar was pulled high onto the back of his neck and his eyes and nose were running. He looked as cold as I felt.

Ed and I walked over to him and he saluted and then began slapping his gloved hands together.

“I been waitin’ for you, sir,” he said. “My name’s Connerly. I put in the call.”

“Detective Sergeant Willis,” I said. “This is my partner, Ed Daley.”

“Hiya,” Ed said.

“Hell of a thing, ain’t it, sir?”

“Sounds routine to me,” Ed said. “Kid showing off a war trophy, bang! His little brother is dead. Happens every damned day of the week.”

“Sure, sir, but I mean...”

“Family inside?” I asked.

“Just the mother, sir. That’s what makes it more of a tragedy, you see.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Well, sir, she’s a widow. Three sons. The oldest one was killed in the last war. He’s the one sent the Luger home. Now this. Well, sir, you know what I mean.”

“Let’s get inside,” I said.

Connerly led us to the front door, and rapped on it with a gloved hand. Ed stole a glance at me, and I knew he didn’t relish this particular picnic any more than I did.

The door opened quickly, and a small woman with dark blue eyes looked out at us. She might have been pretty once, but that was a long time ago, and all the beauty had fled from her, leaving her tired and defeated.

“Mrs. Owens, this is Detective Sergeant Willis and his partner,” Connerly said.

Mrs. Owens nodded faintly.

“May we come in, ma’am?” I asked.

She seemed to remember her manners all at once. “Yes, please,” she said. “Please do.” Her voice was stronger than her body looked, and I wondered if she was really as old as she seemed. A widow, one son killed in the war. Death can sometimes do that to a person. Leave them more withered than the corpse.

“We’re sorry to bother you, ma’am,” I said, feeling foolish as hell, the way I always did in a situation like this. “The law requires us to make a routine check, however, and...”

“That’s quite all right, Mr. Willis.” She moved quickly to the couch and straightened the doilies. “Sit down, won’t you?”

“Thank you, ma’am.” I sat down with Ed on my right Connerly stood near the radiator, his hands behind his back.

Ed took out his pad, and cleared his throat. I took that as my cue and said, “Can you tell us exactly what happened, ma’am.”

“Well, I... I don’t really know, exactly. You see, I was in the kitchen baking. This is Wednesday, and I usually bake on Wednesdays. The boys...” She hesitated, bit her lip. “The boys like pie, and I try to bake one at least once a week.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I... I was putting the pie into the oven when I heard this... this noise from the attic. I knew the boys were up there playing so I didn’t think anything of it.”

“What are the boys’ names, ma’am?”

“Jeffrey. He’s my oldest. And... and...”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ronald.”

“Was Ronald the boy who was shot, ma’am?”

She didn’t answer. She simply nodded. I got up and walked to the upright piano, where there were four photos in silver frames. One was of an older man, obviously the dead Mr. Owens. A second was of a young man in an Army uniform, crossed infantry rifles on his lapels. The other two were of the younger boys.

Mrs. Owens blew her nose in a small handkerchief and looked up.

“Which one is Jeffrey?” I asked.

“The... the blond boy.”

I looked at the photo. He seemed like a nice kid, with a pleasant smile and his mother’s dark eyes.

“Is he in the house?”

“Yes. He’s upstairs in his room.”

“I’d like to talk to him, ma’am.”

“All right.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to see the attic first.”

She seemed about to refuse, and then she nodded. “Certainly.”

“You needn’t come up, Mrs. Owens,” Ed said. “The patrolman can show us the way.”

“Thank you,” she said.

We followed Connerly up the steps, and he whispered, “See what I mean? Jesus, this is a rotten business.”

“Well, what’re you gonna do?” Ed philosophized.

The attic had been fixed as a playroom, with plasterboard walls and ceiling. An electric train layout covered one half of the room. On the other side of the room, young Ronald Owens lay covered with a sheet. I walked over, lifted the sheet, and looked down at the boy. He resembled the older Jeffrey a great deal, except that his hair was brown. He had the same dark eyes, though, staring up at me now, sightless. There was a neat hole between his eyes, and his face was an ugly mixture of blood and powder burns. I lowered the sheet.

“Where’s the gun?” I asked Connerly.

“Right here, sir.”

He fished into his pocket and produced the Luger, wrapped carefully in his handkerchief. I opened the handkerchief and stared at the German gun.

“Did you break it open, Connerly?”

“Why, no, sir. A patrolman isn’t allowed to...”

“If you broke it open, you’ll save me the trouble.”

Connerly looked abashed. “Yes, sir, I did.”

“Any shells in it?”

“No, sir.”

“Not even in the firing chamber?”

“No, sir.”

“One bullet, then. That’s strange.”

“What’s so strange about it?” Ed wanted to know.

“A Luger’s magazine fed, that’s all,” I said. “Eight slugs in a. clip. Strange to find only one.” I shrugged, handing the pistol back to Connerly. “Let’s see what else is around here.”

We started rummaging around the attic, not really looking for anything in particular. I think I was just postponing the talk I had to have with the young kid who’d shot his own brother.

“Bunch of books,” Ed said.

“Mmmmm?”

“Yeah. Few old newspapers.”

“Here’s something,” Connerly said.

“What’ve you got?”

“Looks like a box of clips, sir.”

“Yeah? For the Luger?”

“Looks that way, sir.”

I walked over to where Connerly was standing, and took the box from the shelf. He had carefully refrained from touching it. The box was covered with a fine layer of dust. There were two clips in the open box, and they, too, were covered with dust. I lifted one of the clips out, running my eyes over the cartridges. Eight. The second clip had only seven cartridges in it.

“Only seven here,” I said.

“Yeah,” Connerly said, nodding. “That’s where the bullet came from, all right.”

“Anything else there, Ed?” I asked, turning to where he was kneeling over another box on the floor.

“Just these loose newspaper clippings. Nothing really... hey!”

“What’ve you got?”

“This’s strange as hell,” Ed said.

“What? What’s so strange?”

He got to his feet and walked over to me, holding a clipping in his big hand. “Take a look at this, Art.”

The clipping had been scissored from one of the tabloids. It was simply the story of a boy and a girl who’d been playing in their backyard. Playing with a Colt .45 that was a war souvenir. The .45 had gone off, blowing half the girl’s head away. There was a picture of the boy in tears, and a story of the fatal accident.

“Some coincidence, huh, Art?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Some coincidence.”

I put the box of Luger magazines back on the shelf.

“I think we’d better talk to the kid now,” I said.

We left the attic, Connerly whispering something about the way fate sometimes works. He called Mrs. Owens, and she came up to lead us to the boy’s room on the second floor of the house.

She rapped on the door and softly called, “Jeffrey?”

I could hear sobbing beyond the door, and then a muffled, “Yes?”

“Some gentlemen would like to talk to you,” she said.

The sobbing stopped, and I heard the sound of bare feet padding to the door. The door opened and Jeffrey stood there, drying his face. He was thinner than the photograph had shown him, with bright blue eyes and narrow lips. His hair hung over his forehead in unruly strands, and there were tear streaks under his eyes and down his cheeks.

“You’re policemen, aren’t you?” he said.

“Yes, son.”

“We just want to ask a few questions,” Ed said.

“Come in.”

We walked into the room. There were two beds in it, one on either side of the large window. There was one dresser, and I imagined the two boys shared this. Toys were packed neatly in a carton on one side of the room. A high school pennant and several college pennants decorated the walls, and a model airplane hung from the ceiling.

Mrs. Owens started into the room, and Ed said gently, “If we can talk to him alone...”

Her hand went to her mouth, and she said, “Oh. OK, all right.”

Jeffrey walked to his bed and sat on it, one leg tucked under him. He stared out the window, not looking at us.

“Want to tell us how it happened, son?”

“It was just an accident,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do it, honest.”

“We know,” Ed said. “We just want to know how it happened.”

“Well, we were upstairs playing with the trains, and then we got sort of tired. We started kidding around, and then I found Perry’s... that’s my older brother who was killed in the war... I found Perry’s Luger and we started foolin’ around with that.”

“Is that the first time you saw the gun, son?”

“No, no.” He turned to look me full in the face. “Perry sent it home a long time ago. Before he was killed, even. One of his buddies brought it to us.”

“Uh-huh. Go on, son.”

“Well, then we found the bullets in the box...”

“You didn’t know the bullets were there before this?”

“No.” Again, Jeffrey stared at me. “No, we just found them today.”

“Did you know where the gun was?”

“Well... yes.”

“You said you found it, though. You didn’t mean that, did you, son?”

“Well, I knew it was in the attic someplace because that’s where Mom put it. I didn’t know just where until I found it today.”

“Oh, I see. Go on, please.”

Ed looked at me curiously, and then turned his interest back to the boy.

“We found the bullets, and I took a cartridge from one of the magazines, just to fool around. I stuck it in the gun and then all at once the gun went off... and... and... Ronnie... Ronnie...”

The kid turned his face away, then threw himself onto the pillow.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” he said. “Honest, honest. The gun just went off. It just did. I loved my brother. I loved my brother. Now there’s just me and Mom, just the two of us. I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t.”

“Sure, son,” I said. I walked to the bed and sat down beside him. “You liked your brother a lot. I know. I have a brother, too.”

Ed gave me another curious look, but I continued to pat the kid’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I did like him. I liked Perry, too, and he was killed. And now... now this. Now there’s just me and Mom. They’re all gone. Dad, and Perry, and... and... Ronnie. Now we’re all alone.” He started bawling again. “It’s my fault,” he said. “If I hadn’t wanted to play with that old gun...”

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “Accidents happen. They happen all the time. No one could possibly blame you for it.”

His tears ebbed slowly, and he finally sat up again. “You know it’s not my fault, don’t you?” he asked solemnly.

“Yes,” I said. “We know.”

He tried to smile, but failed. “It was just an accident,” he said again.

“Sure,” I said. I picked myself off the bed and said, “Let’s go, Ed. Nothing more for us here.”

At the door, I turned to look at Jeffrey once more. He seemed immensely relieved, and he smiled when I winked at him. The smile was still on his mouth and in his eyes when we left him.

It was cold in the Merc, even with the heater going.

We drove in silence for a long time, and finally Ed asked, “All right, what was all that business about?”

“What business?”

“First of all, that brother routine. You know damn well you’re a lousy, spoiled, only child.”

“Sure,” I said. “I just wanted to hear the kid tell me how much he loved his brothers.”

“That’s another thing. Why the hell did you cross-examine the kid? Jesus, he had enough trouble without your...”

“I was just wondering about a few things,” I said. “That’s all.”

“What kind of things?”

“Well, the newspaper clipping about the little boy who accidentally killed that girl, for one. Now why do you suppose any kid would save a clipping like that?”

“Hell,” Ed said, “you know how kids are. It probably caught his fancy, that’s all.”

“Probably. Maybe the Luger magazine caught his fancy, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“The kid said he found those magazines for the first time today. He said he took a cartridge from one of the clips and stuck it into the gun. Tell me how he managed to handle a dust-covered magazine without smearing any of the dust.”

Ed looked at me.

“He didn’t, Ed, that’s the answer. He took that bullet from the clip a long time ago. Long enough ago for the box and the magazine to acquire a new coat of dust. This was no spur-of-the-moment job. No, sir, not at all.”

“What the hell are you trying to say?” Ed asked. “You mean the kid did this on purpose? You mean he actually killed his brother? Murdered him?”

“Just him and Mom now, Ed. Just the two of them. No more Dad, no more big brother, and now no more little brother.” I shook my head and stared at my own breath as it clouded the windshield. “But just take it to a judge. Just take the whole fantastic thing to a judge and see how fast he kicks you out of court.”

Ed glanced at me quickly, and then turned his eyes back to the road.

“We’ll have to watch that kid,” I said, “maybe get him some psychiatric care. I hate to think what would happen if he suddenly builds up a dislike for his mother.”

I didn’t say anything after that, but it was a cold ride back to the station.

Damned cold.

See Him Die

I grew up as Salvatore Lombino, on 120th Street between First and Second avenues, in New York City’s East Harlem. My grandfather had a tailor shop on First Avenue. We grandsons and granddaughters of Italian, Irish, Jewish, and German immigrants lighted celebratory bonfires in the streets on election night, and sometimes roasted potatoes over smaller fires in vacant lots. We roller-skated in the streets. We played marbles — or “immies,” as we used to call them — in the curbside gutters. We played stickball and Johnny-on-a-Pony and Ring-a-Leevio. It was a good street with good people on it. In all of my twelve years on that street, I never met any kid like the lead character in this story.

“See Him Die” was first published in Manhunt in July of 1955 under the Evan Hunter byline. By then, I was using my new (hey, only three years old!) name on virtually everything I wrote; the movie version of The Blackboard Jungle had been released in February of that year, and the novel was now a multimillion-copy bestseller in paperback (which it hadn’t been in hardcover) and so Evan Hunter was now somewhat well-known.

I was busy finishing my second Evan Hunter novel, almost prophetically titled Second Ending (it later sold only 16,000 copies, most of them bought by my mother) when Herb Alexander, the editor in chief of Pocket Books, called Scott Meredith. What happened was that Scott had submitted to Pocket an as-yet-unpurchased Hunt Collins novel titled Cut Me In, and despite the pseudonym, Herb had recognized the style. He called Scott to ask, “Is this our friend Hunter?” Surprised to learn that I also wrote mysteries, eager to find a successor to the aging Erie Stanley Gardner, he explored with Scott — and later with me — the possibility of my writing a continuing series of novels. By then, I was convinced that cops were the only legitimate people to investigate crimes. Herb didn’t buy Cut Me In, but he gave me a contract to write three cop novels. Thus were Ed McBain and the 87th Precinct born.

“See Him Die” — in a greatly changed and expanded version — was later retitled See Them Die, and published in 1960 as the thirteenth novel in the 87th Precinct series.

When you’re the head man, you’re supposed to get the rumble first. Then you feed it to the other kids, and you read off the music, and if they don’t like it that’s their hard luck. They can take off with or without busted heads.

So that’s why I was sore when Aiello comes to me and starts making like a kid with an inside wire. He’s standing in a doorway, with his jacket collar up around his nose, and first off I think he’s got some weed on him. Then I see he ain’t fixing to gather a stone, but he’s got this weird light in his eyes anyway.

“What’re you doing, A,” I said.

Aiello looked over his shoulder as if the bulls were after him. He takes my arm and pulls me into the doorway and says, “Danny, I got something hot.”

“What?” I said. “Your head?”

“Danny, what I mean, this is something.”

“So tell it.”

“Harry Manzetti,” he said. He said it in a kind of a hoarse whisper, and I looked at him funny, and I figured maybe he’d just hit the pipe after all.

“What about him?”

“He’s here.”

“What do you mean, here? Where here?”

“In the neighborhood.”

“You’re full of it,” I told him.

“I swear to God, Danny. I seen him.”

“Where?”

“I was going up to Louise. You know Louise?”

“I know Louise.”

“She lives on the seventh floor. I spot this guy up ahead of me, and he’s walking with a limp and right off I start thinking of the guys in the neighborhood who limp, and all I come up with is Carl. And then I remember Harry.”

“There must be a million guys who limp.”

“Sure, but name me another one, dad. Anyway, I get a look at his face. It was Harry.”

“How’d you see his face?”

“He went up the seventh floor, too. I was knocking on Louise’s door, and this guy with the limp goes down the end of the hall and sticks a key in the latch. Then he remembers I’m behind him, and he turns to cop a look, and that’s when I see his face. It was Harry, all right.”

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing. I turned away fast so he wouldn’t see I spotted him. Man, that cat’s wanted in more states...”

“You tell Louise this?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Dad, I’m sure.” Aiello looked at me peculiar, and then he turned his eyes away.

“Who’d you tell, A?”

“Nobody. Danny, I swear it on my mother’s eyes. You the first one I’m talking to.”

“How’d he look?” I said.

“Harry? Oh, fine. He. looked fine, Danny.”

“Whyn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I just now seen you!” Aiello complained.

“Whyn’t you look for me?”

“I don’t know. I was busy.”

“Doing what? Standing in a doorway?”

“I was...” Aiello paused. “I was looking for you. I figured you’d come by.”

“How’d you figure that?”

“Well, I figured once the word leaked, you’d be around.”

“How’d the word leak if you’re the only one knows it?”

“Well, I figured...”

Aiello stopped talking, and I stopped listening. We both heard it at the same time, the high scream of a squad car siren.

“Cops,” I said.

And then we heard another siren, and then the whole damn block was being busted up all at once, sirens screaming down on it from all the side streets.

In fifteen minutes, every damn cop in the city was on our block. They put up their barricades, and they hung around behind their cars while they figured what to do. I spotted Donlevy in the bunch, too, strutting around like a big wheel. He had me in once because some jerk from the Blooded Royals took a slug from a zip gun, and he figured it was one of my boys who done it, and he tried to hang it on me. I told Donlevy where he could hang his phony rap, and I also told him he better not walk alone on our block after dark or he’d be using his shield for a funeral emblem. He kicked me in the butt, and told me I was the one better watch out, so I spit at his feet and called him a name my old man always uses, and Donlevy wasn’t hip to it so he didn’t get too sore, even though he knew I was cursing.

So he was there, too, making like a big wheel, with his tin pinned to his coat so that everybody could know he was a cop. All the bulls were wearing their tin outside, so you could tell them from the people who were just watching. There were a lot of people in the streets now, and the cops kept shoving them back behind the barricades which they’d set up in front of the building where Harry was. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure that somebody’d blown the whistle on Harry and that the bulls were ready to try for a pinch. Only thing, I figured, they didn’t know whether he was heeled or not, and so they were making their strategy behind their cars, afraid to show their stupid faces in case he was heeled. I’d already sent Aiello for the boys, and I hung around on the outside of the crowd now because I didn’t want Donlevy to spot me and start getting wise. Also, there were a lot of bulls all over the place, and outside of the tin you couldn’t tell the bulls from the people without a scorecard, and nobody was selling scorecards. So when a bull’s back was turned and the tin couldn’t be seen, he looked just like anybody else, and Christ knows which bull had spotted me somewhere doing something or other, and I didn’t want to take chances until all the boys were with me.

There was a lot of uniformed brass around the cars, too, and they all talked it up, figuring who was going to be the first to die, in case Harry was carrying a gun. Harry was born and raised right in this neighborhood, and all the kids knew him from when he used to be king of the hill. And Harry was always heeled, even in those days, either with brass knucks or a switch knife or a razor or a zip gun, and later on he had a .38 he showed the guys. That was just before he lammed out — the time he knocked off that crumb from uptown. I remember once when Harry cut up a guy so bad, the guy couldn’t walk. I swear. I mean it. He didn’t only use the knife on the guy’s face. He used it all over so the guy couldn’t walk later, that guy was sorry he tangled with a customer like Harry, all right. They only come like Harry once in a while, and when you got a Harry in your neighborhood, you know it, man. You know it, and you try to live up to the rep, you dig me? You got a guy like Harry around, well hell, man, you can’t run the neighborhood like a tea party. You got certain standards and ideals, I guess you would call them. So we was all kind of sorry when Harry had to take off like that, but of course he was getting all kinds of heat by that time, not only from the locals who was after him for that crumb uptown, but also he was getting G-heat because the word was he transported some broads into Connecticut for the purpose of being illegal, leastways that’s the way they read it off on him at the lineup, and I know a guy who was at the lineup personally that time, so this is straight from the horse’s mouth.

But if those cops were wondering whether or not Harry was heeled, I could have saved them a lot of trouble if they wanted to ask me. I could tell them Harry was not only heeled but that he was probably heeled to his eyeballs, and that if they expected to just walk in and put the muscle on him, they had another guess coming, or maybe two or three. It didn’t make one hell of a big difference anyhow, because the cops looked as if they took along their whole damn arsenal just to pry Harry out of that seventh-floor apartment.

The streets were really packed now with people and cops and reporters and the emergency cop truck, and I expected pretty soon we would have President Eisenhower there to dedicate a stone or something. I began to wonder where the hell the boys were because the rooftops were getting lined pretty fast, and if the cops and Harry were going to shoot this thing out, I wanted to watch him pick them off. And unless we got a good spot on the roof, things would be rugged. I was ready to go looking for Aiello when he comes back with Ferdy and Beef.

Ferdy is a guy about my height and build, except he’s got straight black hair and brown eyes, and my hair is a little curly and my eyes are not brown really, they’re amber — that’s what Marie says, and she ought to know, dad. I been going with Marie since we was both thirteen, and that makes it close to three years now, so she knows the color of my eyes, all right.

“This the straight dope?” Ferdy asked. Ferdy used to be on H, but we broke him of it ’cause there’s no room in our bunch for a hophead. We broke him by locking him in a cellar for about two weeks. His own mother didn’t even know where he was. We used to go down there and give him food every day, but that was all. He could cry his butt off, and we wouldn’t so much as give him a stick of M. Nothing till he kicked the heroin monkey. And he kicked it, dad. He kicked it clear out the window. It was painful to watch the poor guy, but it was for his own good, so we let him claw and scream all he wanted to, but he didn’t get out of that cellar. Pot is okay, ’cause it don’t give you the habit, but anybody wants to hang around me, he don’t have no needle marks in his arm. He can bust a joint anytime he likes, but show me a spoon, and show me a guy’s bowing to the White God, and I break his butt for him, that’s the truth, that shows you the kind of guy I am.

“Harry’s up there,” I told Ferdy.

“How you like that?” Beef said. Beef must weigh about two thousand pounds in his bare feet. He don’t talk English so good because he just come over from the old country, and he ain’t yet learned the ropes. But he’s a big one, and a good man to have in the bunch, especially when there’s times you can’t use hardware, like when the bulls is on a purity drive or something. We get those every now and then, but they don’t mean nothing, especially if you know how to sit them out, and we got lots of patience on our street.

“What took you guys so long?” I said.

“A only just reached us,” Ferdy said.

“A’s turnin’ into a real slowball,” I said. “Look at them goddamn rooftops. How we gonna watch this now?”

The boys looked up and seen the crowd.

“We shove in,” Beef said.

“Shove this,” I told him. “There’s grown-ups up there. You start shoving with all them bulls in the street, and they’ll shove you into the Tombs.”

“What about Tessie?” Ferdy said.

“What about her?”

“Her pad’s right across the way. We stomp in there, dad, and we got ringside seats.”

“Her folks,” I said sourly.

“They both out earning bread,” Ferdy said.

“You sure?”

“Dad, Tessie and me’s like that,” Ferdy said, crossing two fingers.

So we lit out for Tessie’s pad.

She didn’t answer the door till we told her who we was.

Even then, she wasn’t too keen on the idea. She played cat and mouse with Ferdy, and he’s honeying her up, come on doll, open the door, and all that kind of crap until I tell her to open it or I’ll bust the goddamn thing right off the hinges. She begins to whimper she ain’t dressed then, so I told her to throw something on because if that door ain’t open in three flat I’m going to bust it open.

She opened the door then, and she was wearing a sweater and skirt, and I said, “You’re a fast dresser, huh?” and she nodded, and I wanted to paste her in the mouth for lying to me in the first place. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s anybody who lies.

We go over to the windows and throw them open, and Tessie says, “What’s all the noise about?” and Ferdy tells her Harry’s in the apartment across the way and maybe we’ll see some lead soon. Tessie gets the jitters. She’s a pretty enough broad, only I don’t go for her because Marie and I are that way, but you can bet Marie wouldn’t get all excited and shaking because there might be some gunplay. Tessie wants to clear out, but Ferdy throws her down on the couch and she sits there shaking as if she’s got pneumonia or something. Beef goes over and locks the door, and then we all pile onto the windowsills.

It’s pretty good because we can see the apartment where Harry’s holed up, right across the alleyway and only one floor down. And we can also see the street on the other side where the bulls are mulling around. I can make out Donlevy’s strut from up there, and I feel like dropping a flowerpot on his head, but I figure I’ll bide my time because maybe Harry’s got something better for that lousy bull.

It’s pretty quiet in the street now. The bulls are just about decided on their strategy, and the crowd is hushed up, waiting for something to happen. We don’t see any life coming from the apartment where Harry’s cooped, but that don’t mean nothing.

“What they doing?” Beef says, and I shrug.

Then, all of a sudden, we hear the loudspeaker down below.

“All right, Manzetti. Are you coming out?”

A big silence fell on the street. It was quiet before, but this is something you can almost reach out and touch.

“Manzetti?” the loudspeaker called. “Can you hear us? We want you to come out. We’re giving you thirty seconds to come out.”

“They kidding?” I said. “Thirty seconds? Who they think he is? Jesse Owens?”

“He ain’t going out anyway, and they know it,” Ferdy said.

Then, just as if Harry was trying to prove Ferdy’s point, he opens up from the window below us. It looks like he’s got a carbine, but it’s hard to tell because all we can see is the barrel. We can’t see his head or nothing, just the barrel, and just these shots that come spilling like orange paint out of the window.

“He got one!” Beef yells from the other window.

“Where, where?” I yelled back, and I ran over to where Beef was standing, and I shoved him aside and copped a look, and sure as hell one of the bulls is laying in the street, and the other bulls are crowding around him, and running to their cars to get the ambulance because by now they figure they’re gonna need it.

“Son of a bitch!” I say. “Can that Harry shoot!”

“All right,” the loudspeaker says, “we’re coming in, Manzetti.”

“Come on, you rotten bastards!” Harry yells back. “I’m waiting.”

“Three cops moving down there,” Ferdy says.

I look, but I can only see two of them, and they’re going in the front door. “Two,” I say.

“No, Donlevy’s cuttin’ through the alley.”

I ran over to Ferdy’s window, and sure enough Donlevy is playing the gumshoe, sneaking through the alley and pulling down the fire-escape ladder and starting to climb up.

“He’s a dead duck,” I said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Aiello answered, and there’s this gleam in his eyes as if he’s enjoying all this with a secret charge. “They may try to talk Harry away from the fire escape.”

“Yeah,” I said slow. “That’s right, ain’t it?”

“I want to get out of here,” Tessie said. “He might shoot up here.”

“Relax,” Ferdy told her, and then to make sure she relaxed, he sat down on the couch and pulled her down in his lap.

“Come on,” she said, “everybody’s here.”

“They only the boys,” Ferdy said, and he starts mushing her up. You can hear a pin drop in the street down there. Everybody on the rooftops is quiet, too.

“What do you think...” Beef starts, and I give him a shot in the arm to shut him up. From inside the building across the way, and through Harry’s open window, I can hear one of the cops talking. At the same time, while they’re pulling Harry over to the door of the apartment, Donlevy’s climbing up that fire escape. He’s up to the fourth floor now, and going quiet like a cat.

“How about it, Manzetti?” the cop in the hallway yells, and we can hear it plain as day through Harry’s open window.

“Come and get me!” Harry yells back.

“Come on out. Throw your gun in the hallway.”

“Screw you, cop!”

“How many guns you got, Manzetti?”

“Come in and count them!”

“Two?”

“Fifty-two,” Harry yells back, and that one really busts me up. I stop laughing long enough to see Donlevy reaching the fifth floor, and making the turn in the ladder, going up to the sixth.

“He’s gonna plug Harry in the back,” I whisper.

In the hallway, the bull yells, “This is only the beginning, Manzetti. We haven’t started playing yet.”

“Your friend in the street don’t think so,” Harry answered. “Ask him if we started or not. Ask him how that slug felt.”

Donlevy is almost on the seventh floor now. He steps onto the fire escape as if he’s walking on eggs, and I can see the Detective’s Special in his fist. I hate that punk with every bone in my body. I almost spit out the window at him, and then he’s flattening himself against the side of the building and moving up to Harry’s window, a step at a time, while the bull in the hallway is talking, talking, and Harry is answering him. Donlevy gets down on his knees, and he’s got that gun in his right hand, and he’s ready to step up to the window and start blasting.

That’s when I started yelling.

“The window, Harry! The window!”

Donlevy looks up for a second, and I can see the surprised look on his face, but then he begins to back off, but he’s too late. The slugs come ripping out of the window, five in a row, as if Harry’s got a machine gun in his mitts. Donlevy grabs for his face, and then the gun flies out of his hand, and then he clutches at his stomach, and then he spins around and he’s painted with red. He stumbles forward to the fire escape, and then he crumbles over the railing and it looks as if he’s going to hang there for a second. The crowds on the rooftops are cheering their heads off by now, and then Donlevy goes all the way over, and Harry is still blasting through that window, pumping slugs into Donlevy’s body, and then Donlevy is on his way down, and the cheers get cut off like magic, and there’s just this god-awful hush as he begins his drop, and then a lady in the street starts to scream, and everybody’s screaming all at once.

“He got him!” I said, and my eyes are bright in my head because I’m happier than hell.

“He got Donlevy!”

“Two down,” Beef said.

“They’ll get him,” Aiello said, and he’s got a worried look in his eyes now.

“You sound like you want that,” I tell him.

“Who, me?”

“No, the man in the moon. Who you think, who?”

“I don’t want them to get Harry.”

“Then stop praying.”

“I ain’t praying, Danny.”

“There ain’t a bull alive can take Harry,” I inform him.

“You can say that again,” Ferdy says from the couch. Tessie ain’t saying nothing anymore. She figures she might as well play ball or Ferdy will get nasty, and she knows Ferdy’s got a switchblade knife in his pocket.

A phone starts ringing somewhere across the alleyway. It’s the only sound you can hear on the block, just that phone ringing, and then Harry’s head pops up at the window for just a second, and he waves up, not looking at us, not looking at anybody, just looking up sort of, and he yells, “Thanks,” and then his head disappears.

“You saved his life, Danny,” Ferdy said.

“And he appreciates it, dad,” I answered.

“Sure, but what’re they gonna throw at him next?” Aiello says, and from the tone of his voice I figure like he wants them to throw a Sherman tank at him.

“Look, meatball,” I tell him, “just keep your mouth shut. You talk too much, anyway.”

“Well, what the hell. Harry ain’t nothing to me,” Aiello said.

“Hey,” Ferdy said, “you think the bulls are gonna come up here and get us?”

“What the hell for? They don’t know who yelled. It could have been anybody on the roof.”

“Yeah,” Ferdy said, and he kisses Tessie and Tessie gets up and straightens her skirt, and I got to admit Ferdy knows how to pick them, but she still don’t compare to Marie. She goes in the other room, and Ferdy winks and follows her, and I figure we lost a good man for the proceedings. Well, what the hell. There’s just me and Beef and Aiello in the room now, and we’re watching through the window, and it suddenly dawns on me what Aiello said.

“What do you mean, Harry ain’t nothing to you?”

“He ain’t,” Aiello said.

“A,” I told him, “you’re looking for a cracked head.”

“I ain’t looking for nothing. What the hell, he’s a killer. He’s wanted everywhere.”

“So what?”

“So that don’t make him my brother, that’s all. I never killed nobody.”

“He’s from the neighborhood,” I said, and I tried to put a warning in my voice, but Aiello didn’t catch it.

“So it’s not my fault the neighborhood stinks.”

“Stinks!” I walked away from the window and over to Aiello. “Who said it stinks?”

“Well, it ain’t Fifth Avenue.”

“That don’t mean it stinks.”

“Well, a guy like Harry...”

“What about Harry?”

“He... well... he don’t help us none.”

“Help us with who? What’re you talkin’ about?”

“Help us with nobody! He stinks just the way the neighborhood...”

I was ready to bust him one, when the shooting began again outside.

I rushed over to the window. The shooting was all coming from the streets, with Harry not returning the fire. It seemed like every cop in the world was firing up at that window. The people on the roofs were all ducking because they didn’t want to pick up no stray lead. I poked my head out because we were on the other side of the alleyway.

“You see him?” Beef asked.

“No. He’s playing it cool.”

“A man shouldn’t walk around free after he kills people,” Aiello said.

“Shut your mouth, A,” I told him.

“Well, it’s the truth.”

“Shut up, you dumb crumb. What the hell do you know about it?”

“I know it ain’t right. Who’ll he kill next? Suppose he kills your own mother?”

“What’s he want to kill my old lady for? You’re talking like a man with a paper...”

“I’m only saying. A guy like Harry, he stinks up the whole works.”

“I’ll talk to you later, jerk,” I said. “I want to watch this.”

The cops were throwing tear gas now. Two of the shells hit the brick wall of the building, and bounced off, and went flying down to the street again. They fired two more, and one of them hung on the sill as if it was going in, and then dropped. The fourth one went in the window, and out it came again, and I whispered, “That’s the boy, Harry,” and then another one came up and sailed right into the window, and I guess Harry couldn’t get to it that time because the cops in the hallway started a barrage.

There were fire trucks down there now, and hoses were wrapped all over the street, and I wondered if they were going to try burning Harry out. The gas was coming out his window and sailing up the alleyway, and I got a whiff of the apple blossoms myself, that’s what it smells like, and it smelled good, but I knew Harry was inside that apartment and hardly able to see. He come over to the window and tried to suck in some air, but the boys in the street kept up the barrage, trying to get him, and I felt sorrier’n hell for the poor guy.

He started firing then and throwing things out the window, chairs, and a lamp, and an electric iron, and the cops held off for just a few sees, and Harry copped some air, but not enough because they were shooting more tear gas shells up there, and they were also firing, and you could tell they had some tommies in the crowd because no .38 ever fired like that, and no carbine ever did either. I was wishing I had a gun of my own because I wanted to help Harry, and I felt as if my hands were tied, but what the hell could I do? I just kept sweating it out, and Harry wasn’t firing through the window anymore, and then all of a sudden everything in the street stopped and everything inside the apartment was still.

“Manzetti!” the cop in the hallway yelled.

Harry coughed and said, “What?”

“You coming out?”

“I killed a cop,” Harry yelled back.

“Come on out, Manzetti!”

“I killed a cop!” Harry yelled, and he sounded as if he was crying from the gas those bastards had fed him. “I killed a cop, I killed a cop,” he kept saying over and over again.

“You only wounded him,” the cop yelled, and I shouted, “He’s lying, Harry.”

“Get me a priest,” Harry yelled.

“Why he wants a priest?” Beef asked.

“It’s a trick,” I said. “He wants a shield.”

“No dice,” the cop answered. “Come on, Manzetti, throw your weapons out.”

“Get me a priest.”

“Come on, Manzetti.”

“No!” he screamed. “You lousy punk, no!”

“Manzetti...”

“Get me a priest,” Harry shouted. “I’m scared I’ll... get me a priest.”

“What’d he say?” I said to Beef.

“I didn’t catch,” Beef said, and then the firing started again. It must have gone on for about ten minutes, and then all of a sudden, just the way it started, that’s the way it stopped again.

“They got him,” Aiello said.

“Bull,” I answered.

I kept watching the street. It was beginning to get dark now, and the cops were turning on their spots and playing them up at Harry’s window. There wasn’t a sound coming from the apartment.

“They got him,” Aiello said again.

“You need straightening, you jerk,” I told him.

The streetlights came on, and after about a half hour a few more cops went into the building.

“Harry!” I yelled from the window.

There was no answer.

“Harry!”

Then we heard the shots in the hallway, and then quiet again, and then the sound of a door being busted, and then that goddamn telephone someplace in the building began ringing again.

About ten minutes later, they carried Harry out on a stretcher.

Dead.

We hung around the streets late that night. There’d been a big fuss when they carried Harry out, everybody yelling and shouting from the rooftops, as if this was the Roman arena or something. They didn’t realize what a guy Harry was, and what a tough fight he’d put up.

“They got him, all right,” Ferdy said, “but it wasn’t easy.”

“He took two of them with him,” I said.

“A guy like Harry, it pains you to see him go,” Ferdy said.

“Yeah,” I answered.

We were an quiet for a little while.

“Where’s A?” Beef asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “The hell with that little jerk anyway.”

“He got an inside wire, all right,” Ferdy said. “He was the first cat to tumble to this.”

“Yeah,” I said. I was thinking about the look on Donlevy’s face when those slugs ripped him up.

“How’d he tip to it, anyway?”

“He spotted Harry in the hall. Going up to Louise.”

“Oh.” Ferdy was quiet for a while. “Harry see him?”

“Yeah.”

“He should have been more careful.”

“A guy like Harry, he got lots of things on his mind. You think he’s gonna worry about a snot nose like A?”

“No, but what I mean... somebody blew the whistle on him.”

“Sure, but that don’t...” I cut myself dead. “Hey!” I said.

“What?”

“Aiello.”

“Aiello what?”

“I’ll bet he done it! Why, I’ll bet that little crumb done it!”

“Tipped the cops to Harry, you mean?”

“Sure! Who else? Why, that little...”

“Now, hold it, Danny. Now don’t jump to...”

“Who else knew it?”

“Anybody could have spotted Harry.”

“Sure, except nobody did.” I waited a minute, thinking, and then I said, “Come on.”

We began combing the neighborhood.

We went down to the poolroom, and we combed the bowling alley, and then we hit the rooftops, but Aiello was no place around. We checked the dance in the church basement, and we checked the Y, but there was still no sign of him.

“Maybe he’s home,” Ferdy said.

“Don’t be a jerk.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Okay,” I said.

We went to the building where Aiello lived. In the hallway, Beef said, “Somebody here.”

“Shut up,” Ferdy said. We went up to Aiello’s apartment and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” he answered.

“Me,” I said. “Danny.”

“What do you want, Danny?”

“I want in. Open up.”

“I’m in bed.”

“Then get out of bed.”

“I’m not feeling so hot, Danny.”

“Come on, we got some pot.”

“I don’t feel like none.”

“This is good stuff.”

“I ain’t interested, Danny.”

“Open up, you jerk,” I told him. “You want the Law to know we’re holding?”

“Danny, I...”

“Open up!” I began pounding on the door and I knew that’d get him out of bed, if that’s where he was, because his folks are a quiet type who don’t like trouble with the neighbors.

In a few seconds, Aiello opened the door.

I smiled at him and said, “Hello, A.”

We all went inside. “Your people home?”

“They went visiting.”

“Oh, visiting, huh? Very nice.”

“Yeah.”

“Like you was doing with Louise this afternoon, huh?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Aiello said.

“When you spotted Harry.”

“Yeah.”

“And then what’d you do?”

“I told you.”

“You went into Louise’s apartment, that right?”

“Yes, I...” Aiello paused, as if he was trying to remember what he’d told me before. “No, I didn’t go in. I went down in the street to look for you.”

“You like this gang, A?”

“Yeah, it’s good,” Aiello said.

“Then why you lying to me?”

“I ain’t lying.”

“You know you wasn’t looking for me.”

“I was.”

“Look, tell me the truth. I’m a fair guy. What do I care if you done something you shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t do nothing I shouldn’t have,” Aiello said.

“Well, you did do something then, huh?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, A, what’d you do?”

“Nothing.”

“I mean, after you left Louise?”

“I went to look for you.”

“And before you found me?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you blow the whistle on Harry?”

“Hell no!”

“You did, didn’t you? Look, he’s dead, what do I care what you done or didn’t do? I ain’t the Law.”

“I didn’t turn him in.”

“Come on, A.”

“He deserved what he got. But I didn’t turn him in.”

“He deserved it, huh?”

“Yeah. He was rotten. Anybody rotten like Harry...”

“Shut up!”

“...should have the whistle...”

“Shut up, I said!” I slapped him across the mouth. “Did you?”

He dummied up.

“Answer me!”

“No.”

I slapped him again. “Answer me!”

“No.”

“You did, you punk! You called the cops on Harry, and now he’s dead, and you ain’t fit to lick his boots!”

“He was a killer!” Aiello yelled. “That’s why I called them. He was no good. No damn good. He was a stink in the neigh...”

But I wasn’t listening no more.

We fixed Mr. Aiello, all right.

Just the way Harry would have liked it.