Ed McBain Read Online Free PDF

elevator dropped to the basement to join them.
    In this story—which first appeared in
Manhunt
in 1953, under the Evan Hunter byline—there's a detective named Marelli and another one named Willis and yet another one named Ed. Is it just coincidence that I chose the pseudonym
Ed
McBain for the series of cop novels I would begin writing a few years later? Is it further coincidence that two of the continuing characters in the 87th Precinct novels are named Carella and Willis? I don't know. Maybe "Kid Kill" should properly belong in the Cops and Robbers section of this book. But when I wrote it back in 1953, I didn't think of it as the first cop story I'd ever written in my life. I just thought of it as a story about a kid.

Kid Kill
    I T WAS JUST A ROUTINE CALL . I R EMEMBER I WAS SITTING around with Ed, talking about a movie we'd both seen, when Marelli walked in, a sheet of paper in his hand.
    "You want to take this, Art?"
    I looked up, pulled a face, and said, "Who stabbed who now?"
    "This is an easy one," Marelli said. He smoothed his mustache in an unconscious gesture, and added, "Accidental shooting."
    "Then why bother Homicide?"
    "Accidental shooting resulting in death."
    I got up, hitched up my trousers, and sighed. "They always pick the coldest goddamn days of the year to play with war souvenirs." I looked at the frost edging the windows and then turned back to Marelli. "It
was
a war souvenir, wasn't it?"
    "Luger," Marelli said. "Nine millimeter. The man on the beat checked it."
    "Was it registered?"
    "You tell me."
    "Stupid characters," I said. "You'd think the law wasn't there for their own protection." I sighed again and looked over to where Ed was trying to make himself look small. "Come on, Ed, time to work."
    Ed shuffled to his feet. He was a big man with bright red hair, and a nose broken by an escaped con back in '45. It happened that the con was a little runt, about five feet high in his Adler elevators, and Ed had taken a lot of ribbing about that broken nose—even though we all knew the con had used a lead pipe.
    "Trouble with you, Marelli," he said in his deep voice, "you take your job too seriously."
    Marelli looked shocked. "Is it my fault some kid accidentally plugs his brother?"
    "What?" I said. I had taken my overcoat from the peg and was shrugging into it now. "What was that, Marelli?"
    "It was a kid," Marelli said. "Ten years old. He was showing his younger brother the Luger when it went off. Hell, you know these things."
    I pulled my muffler tight around my neck, and then buttoned my coat. "This is just a waste of time," I said. "Why do the police always have to horn in on personal tragedies?"
    Marelli paused near the desk, dropping the paper with the information on it. "Every killing is a personal tragedy for someone," he said. I stared at him as he walked to the door, waved, and went out.
    "Pearls from a flatfootEd said. "Come on, let's get this over with."

    It was bitter cold, the kind of cold that attacks your ears and your hands, and makes you want to huddle around a potbelly stove. Ed pulled the Mercury up behind the white-topped squad car, and we climbed out, losing the warmth of the car heater. The beat man was standing near a white picket fence that ran around the small house. His uniform collar was pulled high onto the back of his neck and his eyes and nose were running. He looked as cold as I felt.
    Ed and I walked over to him and he saluted and then began slapping his gloved hands together.
    "I been waitin' for you, sir," he said. "My name's Connerly. I put in the call."
    "Detective Sergeant Willis," I said. "This is my partner, Ed Daley."
    "Hiya," Ed said.
    "Hell of a thing, ain't it, sir?"
    "Sounds routine to me," Ed said. "Kid showing off a war trophy, bang! His little brother is dead. Happens every damned day of the week."
    "Sure, sir, but I mean..."
    "Family inside?" I asked.
    "Just the mother, sir. That's what makes it more of a tragedy, you see."
    "What's that?" I