On First Street, half a block from the Embarcadero, the taxi suddenly shrieked and slid to a halt.
“What—?” I began, and saw a man standing in front of the machine. He was a big man with a big gun. “Babe,” I grunted, and put my hand on MacMan’s arm to keep him from getting his gun out.
“Take me to—” McCloor was saying to the frightened driver when he saw us. He came around to my side and pulled the door open, holding the gun on us.
He had no hat. His hair was wet, plastered to his head. Little streams of water trickled down from it. His clothes were dripping wet.
He looked surprised at us and ordered:
“Get out.”
As we got out he growled at the driver:
“What the hell you got your flag up for if you had fares?”
The driver wasn’t there. He had hopped out the other side and was scooting away down the street. McCloor cursed him and poked his gun at me, growling:
“Go on, beat it.”
Apparently he hadn’t recognized me. The light here wasn’t good, and I had a hat on now. He had seen me for only a few seconds in Wales’s room.
I stepped aside. MacMan moved to the other side.
McCloor took a backward step to keep us from getting him between us and started an angry word.
MacMan threw himself on McCloor’s gun arm.
I socked McCloor’s jaw with my fist. I might just as well have hit somebody else for all it seemed to bother him.
He swept me out of his way and pasted MacMan in the mouth. MacMan fell back till the taxi stopped him, spit out a tooth, and came back for more.
I was trying to climb up McCloor’s left side.
MacMan came in on his right, failed to dodge a chop of the gun, caught it square on the top of the noodle, and went down hard. He stayed down.
I kicked McCloor’s ankle, but couldn’t get his foot from under him. I rammed my right fist into the small of his back and got a left-handful of his wet hair, swinging on it. He shook his head, dragging me off my feet.
He punched me in the side and I could feel my ribs and guts flattening together like leaves in a book.
I swung my fist against the back of his neck. That bothered him. He made a rumbling noise down in his chest, crunched my shoulder in his left hand, and chopped at me with the gun in his right.
I kicked him somewhere and punched his neck again.
Down the street, at the Embarcadero, a police whistle was blowing. Men were running up First Street toward us.
McCloor snorted like a locomotive and threw me away from him. I didn’t want to go. I tried to hang on. He threw me away from him and ran up the street.
I scrambled up and ran after him, dragging my gun out.
At the first corner he stopped to squirt metal at me—three shots. I squirted one at him. None of the four connected.
He disappeared around the corner. I swung wide around it, to make him miss if he were flattened to the wall waiting for me. He wasn’t. He was a hundred feet ahead, going into a space between two warehouses. I went in after him, and out after him at the other end, making better time with my hundred and ninety pounds than he was making with his two-fifty.
He crossed a street, turning up, away from the waterfront. There was a light on the corner. When I came into its glare he wheeled and leveled his gun at me. I didn’t hear it click, but I knew it had when he threw it at me. The gun went past with a couple of feet to spare and raised hell against a door behind me.
McCloor turned and ran up the street. I ran up the street after him.
I put a bullet past him to let the others know where we were. At the next corner he started to turn to the left, changed his mind, and went straight on.
I sprinted, cutting the distance between us to forty or fifty feet, and yelped:
“Stop or I’ll drop you.”
He jumped sidewise into a narrow alley.
I passed it on the jump, saw he wasn’t waiting for me, and went in. Enough light came in from the street to let us see each other and our surroundings. The alley was blind—walled on each side and at the other end by tall concrete buildings with steel-shuttered windows and doors.
McCloor faced me, less than twenty feet away. His jaw stuck out. His arms curved down free of his sides. His shoulders were bunched.
“Put them up,” I ordered, holding my gun level.
“Get out of my way, little man,” he grumbled, taking a stiff-legged step toward me. “I’ll eat you up.”
“Keep coming,” I said, “and I’ll put you down.”
“Try it.” He took another step, crouching a little. “I can still get to you with slugs in me.”
“Not where I’ll put them.” I was wordy, trying to talk him into waiting till the others came up. I didn’t want to have to kill him. We could have done that from the taxi. “I’m no Annie Oakley, but if I can’t pop your kneecaps with two shots at this distance, you’re welcome to me. And if you think smashed kneecaps are a lot of fun, give it a whirl.”
“Hell with that,” he said and charged.
I shot his right knee.
He lurched toward me.
I shot his left knee.
He tumbled down.
“You would have it,” I complained.
He twisted around, and with his arms pushed himself into a sitting position facing me.
“I didn’t think you had sense enough to do it,” he said through his teeth.
IX
I talked to McCloor in the hospital. He lay on his back in bed with a couple of pillows slanting his head up. The skin was pale and tight around his mouth and eyes, but there was nothing else to show he was in pain.
“You sure
