A Killer is Loose Read Online Free

me as I came up to him. The bus was on us. I heard the brakes then. Somebody across the street screamed. I rammed my right arm under his left with all my weight, diving. We rolled over against the curb and the bus screeched to á halt in the middle of the street.
    I stood up and my leg hurt. He pushed himself onto the curb and sat there with one shoulder against a big aluminum can lettered with the black warning:
    DUMP TRASH HERE HELP KEEP OUR CITY CLEAN
    • • •
     
    I had fallen on my knees and left shoulder, so the Luger was all right. I wanted to haul it out and look at it, but I couldn’t because people were crowding around now.
    “You all right?” I said.
    He didn’t answer.
    The bus driver came around the rear of the bus. He had left it parked in the middle of the street now. Some bus driver. He’d been going like hell and he knew it and he was scared, it showed in his face.
    “What you trying to do?” he said. “My God,” he said. “Look where you’re going. My God.”
    “What’s the matter?” I said. “Did your foot go to sleep? Or was it your head?”
    “Where’s a cop?” the driver said, looking wildly around.
    “He’s probably having a sandwich and a beer someplace,” I said. “Like everybody else. Maybe you’ve had the beer,” I said. “Is that right?”
    “I want a cop,” the driver said. He had a pad and pencil in his hand now. “Hey, you,” he said to an old lady in a straw hat, holding a shopping bag. “You see this thing? Eh? Eh?”
    “Yes,” she said. “I saw it, young man.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “What’s
your
name, young man? You were going too fast.”
    He turned quickly away from her, brandishing the pad and pencil. The crowd was already dispersing. “Somebody must of seen it,” he said. He took a step toward me. “He hurt? He ain’t hurt. He’s drunk, that’s what.”
    The man seated on the curb stood up. His face was very pale. He leaned over and brushed his pants two or three flicks with his hand, hitched at his belt, stepped up to the bus driver.
    “Case out,” he said softly.
    The bus driver blinked at him.
    “Look,” the man said kindly. “Go back to your bus, get in, and drive away.” He turned, came over to me, rapped me lightly on the arm. “Come on, pal,” he said softly.
    I stood there a moment as he walked off.
    He stopped, turned, grinned at me. He jerked his head. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go have a drink.”
    I went on over. He looked at the few people still standing around and they got out of our way and we went on up the street. I glanced back once. The driver was climbing into his bus. I heard it start with a roar.
    We walked along. It was a fine, sunny spring day, as I said, with not much traffic and very few people on the streets, and we walked along.
    He was whistling through his teeth, no tune, not even a whistle, just hissing something or other through his teeth with the melody back there in his head someplace. He walked fast and purposefully, rolling his shoulders some. He wasn’t quite as tall as I was, but broad in the shoulder and with a big chest and cross-swinging arms. He wore a dark gray single-breasted suit with the coat flapping open across a white shirt that was unbuttoned at the throat. He wore no tie. The suit was too heavy for down here at any time of year. The suit looked brand-new, yet it was a mass of wrinkles, as though it had been slept in on a clean bed for maybe three days running.
    We walked along like that, with him whistling through his teeth, for a good three blocks. He walked too fast for down here. I was sweating plenty, but he wasn’t. He looked pale and cool.
    “You feel O.K. now?” I said.
    He turned his head, still whistling through his teeth, swinging his arms. “Sure, pal.” He started whistling again and we walked along.
    The hell with this. “Well,” I said, “I’ll see you. I turn off here.”
    “Me too, pal.”
    We went around the corner and walked along for a