5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

44 come apart in the middle, and slump slowly and awkwardly and forever to the street. McGinley, the killer-cop. Out in the sticks now, out in the bush, wearing a uniform. Shunted aside. He walked in at 3:55, went past the desk to the squad room, and nobody said a word to him. A dozen men were loung- ing around, in uniform and plain clothes, and they ignored him as if he didn’t ex- ist. They sprawled in chairs and stood near the wall and they didn’t give Ed McGinley a second look. Then Joe Heston came in, the lieuten- ant..A big man, Joe Heston, big and good-looking and dapper, with a thin mustache across his upper lip. Police De- partment talk makes a peg for each man in the department, and the label over Joe Heston’s peg said, ‘“‘Skirt-chaser.” “Roll call!” Joe Heston bellowed, and the room quieted a bit. Just a bit. “Abbott!” he bellowed, and somebody to Ed’s right answered, “Here!” “Bland ..:.Dalrymple. .. .Filipowicz. ...’”’ and on down the alphabet. When he’d fin- ished in alphabetical order, he came to the new man, just transferred. “Mc- Ginley !” : The room was quiet. Quiet and hostile. “Here!” said Ed McGinley. “McGinley!” Heston bellowed again. “McGinley, Edward, Badge Number Four One.” “Here!” McGinley said. They were looking at him, every man in the room. “You got your gun with you, McGin- ley?” Heston asked. The quiet grew quieter and the hostil- ity more hostile, like an unsounded snicker. “Yes, sir,” McGinley answered. That was all, “Yes, sir.” His fists were clenched, but his voice was calm and even. ESTON went on to the orders of the day and when he had finished with them, he yelled, “Okay, get at it!” and they trooped out. All of them, except Ed McGinley who had no assignment yet. “You,” Heston said to him, “wait until the captain gets back, see?” On a straight-backed wooden chair he waited in that empty squad room, and at five o’clock the Captain came in and sent FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE for ‘him. He was a florid-faced man, the cap- tain, named Souder, and he wore his uni- form. Day in and day out he wore the uniform with the gingerbread on it. How else would people know he was the cap- tain? “McGinley, eh?” he asked, staring at Ed from his big, watery eyes. “So you’re McGinley ?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, we got a quiet district here, Mc- Ginley. Not much happening. No chance to get your picture in the papers.” Not unless you could stick your head around from behind that captain’s uni- form. “No, sir, nothing much happens out here. I think I’ll put you in a squad car, McGinley. How does that sound?” In a squad car, riding up and down, back and forth, around and around, end- lessly. Answering minor complaints. Finding lost kids. Walking into danger when it came, unprepared and unsus- pecting. Or, if anything. big should break, calling the detectives to take over. “That’s fine, sir,” Ed McGinley said. “Yes, I think I’ll put you in with Bland. Do you know Bland?” “No, sir.” “He’s a nice young fellow, pays atten- tion to his duty, keeps his nose out of Hele Pll tell you something, McGin- ey.” 168, Sint >-] “That’s what we like around here, men who don’t stick their noses into someone else’s business. Now you take this patrol you and Bland will be on. It’s from Green Street to Laflin, Eighty-Sec- ond to Seventy-First. Got it?” “Yes, sir.” “I don’t go as far east as Halsted and it don’t go as far west as Ashland. You stay off of Halsted and you stay off of Ashland. Them streets—they’re none oF your business. You got that, McGinés ey? ” “Yes, sir,” Ed McGinley said. He got it, all right. Ashland and Hal- sted, the two big business streets of the district. The taverns and nightclubs, the handbooks and numbers writers, the dice games. The shakedown for the whole dis- trict, and a patrolman stays away from it because it goes to the brass, see? CoOMmicloo S (C@)