Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

“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.

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.