It wasn’t any use. They were behind me and coming fast again. I didn’t have any idea of getting away. I wanted to get back where there were houses and people to come out and watch and perhaps to remember.

I didn’t make it. The police car heaved up alongside again and a hard voice yelled:

“Pull over, or we’ll blast a hole in you!”

I pulled over to the curb and set the brake. I put the gun back in the glove compartment and snapped it shut. The police car jumped on its springs just in front of my left front fender. A fat man slammed out of it roaring.

“Don’t you know a police siren when you hear one? Get out of that car!”

I got out of the car and stood beside it in the moonlight. The fat man had a gun in his hand.

“Gimme your license!” he barked in a voice as hard as the blade of a shovel.

I took it out and held it out. The other cop in the car slid out from under the wheel and came around beside me and took what I was holding out. He put a flash on it and read.

“Name of Marlowe,” he said. “Hell, the guy’s a shamus. Just think of that, Cooney.”

Cooney said: “Is that all? Guess I won’t need this.” He tucked the gun back in his holster and buttoned the leather flap down over it. “Guess I can handle this with my little flippers,” he said. “Guess I can at that.”

The other one said: “Doing fifty-five. Been drinking, I wouldn’t wonder.”

“Smell the bastard’s breath,” Cooney said.

Theother one leaned forward with a polite leer. “Could I smell the breath, shamus?”

I let him smell the breath.

“Well,” he said judiciously, “he ain’t staggering. I got to admit that.”

“ ’S a cold night for summer. Buy the boy a drink, Officer Dobbs.”

“Now that’s a sweet idea,” Dobbs said. He went to the car and got a half pint bottle out of it. He held it up. It was a third full. “No really solid drinking here,” he said. He held the bottle out. “With our compliments, pal.”

“Suppose I don’t want a drink,” I said.

“Don’t say that,” Cooney whined. “We might get the idea you wanted feetprints on your stomach.”

I took the bottle and unscrewed the cap and sniffed. The liquor in the bottle smelled like whiskey. Just whiskey.

“You can’t work the same gag all the time,” I said.

Cooney said: “Time is eight twenty-seven. Write it down, Officer Dobbs.”

Dobbs went to the car and leaned in to make a note on his report. I held the bottle up and said to Cooney: “You insist that I drink this?”

“Naw. You could have me jump on your belly instead.”

I tilted the bottle, locked my throat, and filled my mouth with whiskey. Cooney lunged forward and sank a fist in my stomach. I sprayed the whiskey and bent over choking. I dropped the bottle.

I bent to get it and saw Cooney’s fat knee rising at my face. I stepped to one side and straightened and slammed him on the nose with everything I had. His left hand went to his face and his voice howled and his right hand jumped to his gun holster. Dobbs ran at me from the side and his arm swung low. The blackjack hit me behind the left knee, the leg went dead and I sat down hard on the ground, gritting my teeth and spitting whiskey.

Cooney took his hand away from his face full of blood.

“Jesus,” he cracked in a thick horrible voice. “This is blood. My blood.” He let out a wild roar and swung his foot at my face.

I rolled far enough to catch it on my shoulder. It was bad enough taking it there.

Dobbs pushed between us and said: “We got enough, Charlie. Better not get it all gummed up.”

Cooney stepped backwards three shuffling steps and sat down on the running board of the police car and held his face. He groped for a handkerchief and used it gently on his nose.

“Just gimme a minute,” he said through the handkerchief. “Just a minute, pal. Just one little minute.”

Dobbs said, “Pipe down. We got enough. That’s the way it’s going to be.” He swung the blackjack slowly beside his leg. Cooney got up off the running board and staggered forward. Dobbs put a hand against his chest and pushed him gently. Cooney tried to knock the hand out of his way.

“I gotta see blood,” he croaked. “I gotta see more blood.”

Dobbs said sharply, “Nothing doing. Pipe down. We got all we wanted.”

Cooney turned and moved heavily away to the other side of the police car. He leaned against it muttering through his handkerchief. Dobbs said to me:

“Up on the feet, boy friend.”

I got up and rubbed behind my knee. The nerve of the leg was jumping like an angry monkey.

“Get in the car,” Dobbs said. “Our car.”

I went over and climbed into the police car.

Dobbs said: “You drive the other heap, Charlie.”

“I’ll tear every god damn fender off’n it,” Cooney roared.

Dobbs picked the whiskey bottle off the ground, threw it over the fence, and slid into the car beside me. He pressed the starter.

“This is going to cost you,” he said. “You hadn’t ought to have socked him.”

I said: “Just why not?”

“He’s a good guy,” Dobbs said. “A little loud.”

“But not funny,” I said. “Not at all funny.”

“Don’t tell him,” Dobbs said. The police car began to move. “You’d hurt his feelings.”

Cooney slammed into the Chrysler and started it and clashed the gears as if he was trying to strip them. Dobbs tooled the police car smoothly around and started north again along the brickyard.

“You’ll like our new jail,” he said.

“What will the charge be?”

He thought a moment, guiding the car with a gentle hand and watching in the mirror to see that Cooney followed along behind.

“Speeding,” he said. “Resisting arrest. H. B. D.” H.B.D. is police slang for “had been drinking.”

“How about being slammed in the belly, kicked in the shoulder, forced to drink liquor under threat of bodily harm, threatened with a gun and struck with a blackjack while unarmed? Couldn’t you make a little something more out of that?”

“Aw forget it,” he said wearily. “You think this sort of thing is my idea of a good time?”

“I thought they cleaned this town up,” I said. “I thought they had it so that a decent man could walk the streets at night without wearing a bulletproof vest.”

“They cleaned it up some,” he said. “They wouldn’t want it too clean. They might scare away a dirty dollar.”

“Better not talk like that,” I said. “You’ll lose your union card.”

He laughed. “The hell with them,” he said. “I’ll be in the army in two weeks.”

The incident was over for him. It meant nothing. He took it as a matter of course. He wasn’t even bitter about it.

TWENTY-SIX

The cell block was almost brand-new. Thebattleship gray paint on the steel walls and door still had the fresh gloss of newness disfigured in two or three places by squirted tobacco juice. The overhead light was sunk in the ceiling behind a heavy frosted panel. There were two bunks on one side of the cell and a man snored in the top bunk, with a dark gray blanket wrapped around him. Since he was asleep that early and didn’t smell of whiskey or gin and had chosen the top berth where he would be out of the way, I judged he was an old lodger.