Street of No Return Read Free Page B

and what was happening there. Whatever it was, it had no connection with the man he was following. But then he heard it again and it seemed to reach inside him and beg him to stop.
He stopped. He listened to the sound coming from the alleyway. It was a gurgling, rattling noise. And then the faint voice saying, "Please. Please. Help me."
Whitey turned and walked quickly to the alleyway. He entered the alley and the glow from the lamppost showed him the brass buttons and the blue uniform. The policeman was sitting in the alley, his head down very low. His cap was off and his hair was mussed and the top of his head was all bloody.
The policeman looked up and saw Whitey and said, "Get an ambulance."
"I'll hafta phone."
"Use a call box. Call the station house. Ask for the Thirtyseventh District."
"Where's the nearest call box?"
The policeman opened his mouth to reply. The sound that came out was more gurgling and rattling. His head went down again and then he was falling over on his side. Whitey caught hold of him.
"The call box," Whitey said. "Tell me where it is."
The policeman gurgled very low in his throat.
"Tell me," Whitey said. "Try to tell me."
"It's on--" But the policeman couldn't take it further than that. His head was leaning against Whitey's chest and his hands clutched at Whitey's arms. Now he made no sound at all and his full weight was on Whitey. As Whitey knelt there holding him to keep him from falling, there was the sound of an auto and then the beam of a searchlight. Whitey turned his head and blinked in the glare of the light shooting into his face. He blinked again and saw the blackand-orange police car parked out there. The door opened and he saw the policemen getting out and running toward him.
They were young policemen and their faces were expressionless. One of them was grabbing for a revolver and having trouble pulling it from the holster. The other policeman grabbed Whitey's shoulder, couldn't get a good grip on the shoulder, and decided to hook his fingers around the back of Whitey's neck.
"Let go," Whitey said. "I'm not running."
"You telling me?" the policeman said. He tightened his hold on Whitey's neck.
"That hurts," Whitey said.
"Shut up." The po.liceman pulled Whitey to his feet. The other policeman had managed to get the revolver from the holster and was now trying to put it back in. Finally he got it in and then he knelt beside the injured policeman, who was now face down in the alley. He rolled the man over on his side and looked at the face. The eyes were half open and the mouth sagged at the corners. The color of the face was gray with streams of red running down the cheeks and dripping from the lips.
"It's Gannon."
"Bad?"
"Dead."
The policeman stood up. He looked down at the body and then he looked at Whitey.

3
The station house of the Thirty-seventh District was on Clayton Street, six blocks west of the river and four blocks west of the Hellhole. It was a one-story brick structure that had been built some thirty years ago. At both sides of the front entrance there were frosted-glass lamps. In the glare of the lamplight Whitey stood between the two policemen. He was handcuffed but they weren't taking any chances with him. They were very young policemen and new to the force and this arrest was very important to them. One of them gripped Whitey's arm and the other had hold of his trousers. He looked very small standing there between the two tall policemen.
The entrance doors were wide open and Whitey could see it was very crowded in the station house. It was a noisy assemblage and some of them were shouting in Spanish. He saw a Puerto Rican woman pull away from the grip of a policeman and lunge at a yellow-haired man and her fingernails ripped the man's face. The man stepped back and hauled off and punched her in the breast. Three Puerto Rican men started toward the yellow-haired man and several policemen moved in and for some moments there was considerable activity. One of the Puerto Ricans