"yourlifeismine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barton Gary)

YOUR LIFE IS MINE
by Gary Barton


All the time, I was behind you, like a shadow, living your life. And when you uncovered that
cache of stolen bonds, I'd be there--with a gun!


I've known you for a long time, Johnnie Dale. Sure, I remember you from the old days. I
remember seeing pictures of you and reading something in the papers a couple of times. And
once in a while, your name would come up in one of those cheap dives where the whiskey is
cheap and the air is heavy and foul with smoke; one of those places you cops don't know much
about.

The things they said about you weren t nice, Johnnie Dale. But they all meant the same:

Johnnie Dale--cold, hard, relentless, with a heart like his fists and fists like iron.
The toughest dick in New York. Alien squad, vice, narcotics, safe-and-loft, homicide squad,
and later, the Broadway beat.

It was when you were on the Broadway beat that I really got to know you, and now I wish
that I had remembered those things I'd read and heard about you in the other days. But I
didn't, then; and I guess it wouldn't have made any difference, anyway, because I had to know.

It was really just a few months ago. You were walking down Seventh Avenue, near where that
dance hall is. You were on the prowl, and I was standing there because they used to say that
you went past there at least once every night when you were looking for something or someone.

You picked up a lot of stuff from the punks who loafed around there; and when you put the
arm on a guy, and he knew something, you usually got it, one way or another. They didn't hold
out on Johnnie Dale very long.

But you didn't see me that night. I followed you down Seventh to Broadway, and it wasn't
hard to stay out of sight, because war had just been declared against Japan and there were
lots of people jamming Times Square, all watching the news bulletins that were running around
the Times Building.

I was right behind you all the time, though you couldn't know that, of course. You couldn't
know that there was a .45 automatic in my coat pocket, either; there was a full clip in the
magazine and every slug had your name on it.

I was going to use that gun, and the next morning all the cops in New York would have a
little black ribbon pinned across their shields.

That was the first night I picked you up. But it didn't turn out just that way.

You went into a little bar-and-grill below Times Square. There was a girl there, sitting
in one of the side booths away from the bar, and she was waiting for you. She had big brown
eyes that looked a little wet and hurt, and her hair was long and soft and the color of dark