5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 52: what you’re looking at

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

52 she rushed on. “Don’t tell me, McGinley! Don’t try to kid Fat Edith!” She flung the door open and her voice rose and her cheeks were flushed. “Well, get out! Get out, big boy. Get out and don’t come back. I don’t care what they do to you now.” “Look, Edith—” “Get out!” she yelled. He plodded along, head down, while the soft, slow traffic of a city at night- time whispered by him and a breeze whispered gently, and rain whispered down on him. He came abreast of a doorway to a building whose front was flush with the sidewalk. A car was parked at the curb near it. He heard another whisper. “McGinley,” it said. “This way, Mc- Ginley.” He hit the deck and rolled for the curb, and the bullet chipped the concrete in front of his nose. He rolled into the street and gathered his feet under him and leaped for the shelter of the parked car as another shot and another whizzed over his head. Then he was behind the auto, shielded, out of range. Before he could get his bearings, he heard the familiar sound of running feet and saw a shape disappear down the street, and that was all. More shots would attract attention, witnesses, help. This killer wouldn’t risk them. For the rest of the way home, Ed McGinley walked in the middle of the street, cautiously, paying attention to the shadows and the darkness that was too dark. Nothing else happened. Again that night Ed lay awake in bed, trying to add it up. One thing was clear. Captain Souder had been right. Some- thing was going on. The man who had whispered his name twice and who had fired at him on two occasions was no incidental killer, flee- ing from one crime, recognizing the cop, perhaps, from a newspaper picture or even from an earlier pinch. No, not when he’d set an ambush for the cop, miles away. Not when he’d shown a knowledge of the cop’s habits and of the route he’d take home. This man was out to get Ed McGinley. Who? Why? How did Frank Enright figure? FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE Ed McGinley fell asleep finally, and the’ answer that should have been in front of him wasn’t there. Chapter V EXT morning he was up early. No four o’clock roll call to rush for this day or, perhaps, ever again. But he had three stops to make to find those answers and he was in a hurry. The first was at a quiet and tiny apart- ment way out on the northwest side, the kind of apartment a cop’s widow might be able to afford. “How goes it, Officer?” Sarah Curry asked when she let him in. _So she hadn’t heard about the suspen- sion. “Good,” he said. “Good.” He took her hands, both of them, and looked at her eagerly. A redhead, Sarah Curry, with the kind of figure a redhead should have and with laughing gray eyes. You wouldn’t think she had a care in the world, a bill over her head, a kid to provide for. ~ ee She sat him down on the davenport. “You shouldn’t stay away so long, cop- per,” she said. She sat beside him. “Keep that chin up, Ed. Stick it out. It’s ugly enough to frighten anybody away.” They laughed—because he was a cop and she was acop’s widow. When you’ve lived a man’s life among men, even while . you were growing up, troubles don’t form into words easily. You keep the lid on them. Your problems are your own, and you fight a lonely fight against them and you laugh when people expect you to. Only once did she refer to Ed’s trou- bles. She said, “Vasco had a knife, didn’t he? What did they expect you to do?” She was talking about the killing that had busted him. Then:she got up and rumpled his hair and said, “Let me get you a glass of beer,” and went into the kitchen. She left Ed McGinley to think it over again. Sure, the kid had had a knife. What did they expect him to do’? ... But it went from a gun in the hand to a gun in the pocket to a knife and now, with Frank Enright, to nothing at all. Nota thing. MICLOO @) (CO) <S) (C(O)