5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 118: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

He DIDN’T say a thing. Suddenly a window jerked up with a smash. I had forgotten to tell him I’d lowered them all just a couple of inches too much for him to lean out easily. I stayed squatted, but it was tough waiting. I could feel the sweat running down my face. Maybe it was dumb, letting him have his gun, but I’d had to or he’d have been afraid to come out. Card sharps have a move they call “forcing” a card. You think you’re “selecting any card in the deck,” but you actually have it pushed on you. You couldn’t grab any but the planted one. No wonder the fellow can tell the spots on you, huh? Well, I did the same with Borda, only I forced a window on him. He had spent a rotten half hour, thinking he wouldn’t be able to see me. Naturally he couldn’t from the window I “forced.” He’d said, offhand, that he was looking out of one of the two. When he pointed, everybody had let it go at that. Why wouldn’t they? Nobody was mak- ing a point of exactly which window. A window is a window, isn’t it? So there he was, above me. He was thinking about Lake’s fingerprints, how they would crab the case and how that would make the D. A. look for another suspect. I’d shaken Borda on two plays. One was faked, the other real enough. He couldn’t take it, and I was wondering whether I could. The window that was jerked up was the one through which he could see me too damned easily. He began firing while the sash was still rattling. He must have had his gat out before he made a move. Just then, a dame screeched like a fire siren. It was Valeria, getting nervous about me, I guess. That spoiled Borda’s shooting for a split second. A slug kicked up sand while I rolled away from the flashlight and wedged myself against the back of the bottom step. He was pouring lead and hollering, half crazy: “You dirty heel! You think you can pull that?” Splinters hit me. I couldn’t risk letting him empty his gun, so I let him have it. He was too wild to have sense enough to duck or run. He was just killing mad. He jerked back over the sill, and his half empty gun dropped to the sand. Before FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE he could recover enough to run out, I dashed up and grabbed him. Borda wasn’t hurt bad. I had got him once, high in the chest near the shoulder. My other shot had gone wild and clipped some tape from his cheek. When a guy is pumping away at you, it isn’t like target practice. Valeria was out in the open now. She followed me, but I made her stay in the hall. I guess it made her sick when I picked Borda up and slapped him down. “T’jl tear your head off!’ I snorted. “Trying to plug me in the back, huh? Thought you could try that a second time, huh? He was bleeding like a stuck pig. “T’ll leave you here to drip dry if you don’t cough up. You did it, didn’t you?” The unlucky mug had been running into one snag right after another and now he’d missed making this my last stop. He was half crazy. “Sure I did!” he screeched. “Try to make it stick! I’d do the same for you! You—” He’d heard Valeria’s yeep. That had probably saved my hide, because I couldn’t turn around to face him until he’d opened fire. But he wasn’t using his bean. Before he had sense enough to shut up, she had heard enough. When he realized she’d tuned in on the works, he nearly collapsed. So we hauled him to town. The way it turned out, it hadn’t been absolutely necessary for me to give him a chance at my back. The position of Lake’s hands when he used the tire iron to jimmy the phone got the D.A. off on a fresh start, and Uncle George walked out clean. Borda’s trying to hose my back with lead was what made his rap tougher. I heard later it was Borda’s last stop, and he got complete service. George Lake is back in Tulsa, practis- ing law without a partner. He’s on top again, like he deserves to be. He’s okay, even if he did nearly knock my head off. And every once in a while I get a card from Valeria. Yeah, a card. If I were ten years younger and didn’t have a bald spot and red face like my Uncle Charlie Ryan, maybe I’d have got more than a card. But what the hell, a guy can’t have everything, can he? GoMmilGebaoo @) S