5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

KILLER COP But he was too late. The woman ma- terialized suddenly in front of them, white-faced, running in terror. She saw them, she veered toward them, she came up to the car window. They were hooked, now, for good. Out of their territory, across forbidden Ash- land Avenue, unable, with that telltale number on the car, to ignore the woman and drive on. Panting, frightened, she gasped out, “They’re shooting! Officer, he’s killing that man! Stop them!” “Where?” Ed asked. She pointed behind her, into the dark- ness of the street, sucking in her breath heavily, a middle-aged woman made old by fear. Ed McGinley turned in the direction she’d pointed and sped down the street. First, they saw the man on the pave- ment, flat on his back, then they saw the other man, a tall blob of shadow against the darkness, running away. “Get the one who’s down!” Ed shout- ed, slamming on his brakes, and Bland leaped from the car, and Ed drove on, once again pursuing a man who was fleeing. HE squad car was good for half a block, and then the shadow disap- peared. The patter: of feet swished off to the left, and McGinley was out of the car, too, and running. Between houses once more, into a back yard, and then an alley. Down the alley, those footsteps still slapping out, still to his left. The man was doubling back toward Tlst Street. A hundred feet from 71st, Ed lost him. Another alley intersected at right angles. He might have turned thére; he might be crouching behind a post or in a shadow; he might have stepped into any one of a dozen yards. Ed stopped and tried to still his heart and hear the footsteps above his own panting. He couldn’t hear a sound. : At the last house on the right a gate hung open, and as Ed’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw it sway slightly. He crossed to it, pressed it open, stepped into the yard. A hoarse whisper reached his ears. “McGinley!” it said. “McGinley! here!” Over — 49 He whirled and swung the gate shut, and a pistol cracked out. You can’t actually see a bullet pass in front of your eyes, not when it’s mov- ing at the rate of eight hundred and twenty-five feet per second. But Ed Mc- Ginley saw that bullet whizz by, saw it pick a hole in the wood of the gate, saw splinters fly. Then he was stretched out flat on the ground, facing toward the sound of the pistol, waiting for the flare of a gun. It didn’t come, and he didn’t hear any- thing. He crawled forward and he didn’t find anything, either. This house faced 71st Street, its long side on the first alley down which Ed had chased the fugitive. When Ed reached the street no one was in sight. He hol- stered his gun, brushed off his uniform, and trudged back through the alley to the squad car and to the body on the pavement. There was a crowd around it now. “He’s dead,” Bland said. “A slug in the belly. Take a look at who it is.” Someone had covered him with an old blanket but his face was turned up. A weathered and lined face that might have been thirty or forty. A faint scar ran down the right cheek. Frank En- right, he’d said when they had pinched him the night before. Dead now, shot down by someone who had whispered Ed McGinley’s name from the darkness. You have to report a homicide, to your station and to Headquarters down- town. The district detectives come out and so do the homicide men from Head- quarters and the crime lab men and the coroner’s office and an assistant state’s attorney. As Ed McGinley stared into the dead man’s face, the brass were al- ready gathering. Somebody photographed the body; somebody else examined it tentatively. Half. a dozen men were questioning the people in the crowd when a dark sedan pulled up, and a man in a cop’s uniform with gold braid on the hat and gold bars on his shoulders got out. APTAIN SOUDER. Sure, he’d be notified. Standing orders, probably. Call the captain on every homicide, ev- ery big fire, anything that breaks and might pull,a newspaper photographer cela@@ (C(O) mn S (C(O)