Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

“Well,” he continued, “me, I like to fish, too. But I like to use a fly-rod. Sometimes I don’t have much luck, but I don’t know, when I do hook something I get a bigger bang out of it. I got a silly notion that even fish deserves at least a fighting chance... And, of course, there’s shooting fish in a barrel. You ever do that, Tom?”

It took awhile to ease the needle out of my arm so I could talk. Then I told him: “All the time. When I’m not doing that, I’m spotlighting deer.”

He looked at me long and blandly and he didn’t say anything else. After awhile I felt some of the red go out of my neck. “You’ve got the wrong man,” I said, then. “Weigand, over there, is the one. He likes to shoot. He’s the sportsman. Ask him to show you his target medals. Or better, ask him about how he shot three unarmed kids in a stolen car, once. And watch his eyes. Me, I don’t consider this like hunting or fishing; it’s a job and I do it the quickest, easiest way I can. You understand that?”

He didn’t. I could tell. He said: “That’s what I mean. He’ll shoot him. Weigand will kill Meade before he can open his mouth, even. You know that. Eventually Meade would have been picked up somewhere in the regular way. It didn’t have to be like this.”

I told Hollenbeck that I didn’t know Weigand would be in on it and I didn’t like that, either, but there was nothing I could do. I’d thought about everything except that, though, when I first got the idea, before I took it to the Lieutenant. I said:

“Meade took a chance on getting killed, himself, breaking out and it didn’t bother him to slug that guard. The guard died, don’t forget. Maybe it wouldn’t bother Meade to kill a few more rather than go back for the rest of that life jolt. The sooner he’s nailed, no matter how, the sooner he’ll stop being even a possible menace.”

Hollenbeck snorted. “He likely won’t even have a gun. Meade wasn’t a gun boy. He never carried one. And they don’t change.”

I got a little sick of all of this, of trying to justify something that maybe couldn’t be justified and one way or the other it wasn’t any skin off Hollenbeck. I started to tell him that fair or unfair, dirty pool or not, if the gimmick worked and we recaptured Meade, it would mean a commendation for me for cooking it up. A commendation would mean points on the next Sergeant’s exam. I wanted that promotion. I had to have it now, with another mouth to feed. But I didn’t tell that to Hollenbeck. I still didn’t think he’d get it.

This idea was simple and I wasn’t exactly proud of it, but it was practical. Some nine months ago, before Danny Meade was picked up for his fourth breaking-and-entering, he was living with an Agnes Borst. Later we learned that when Meade was convicted, she’d gone back to her family in the midwest. Meade didn’t know this, though. Nobody in the underworld knew what happened to her. We found out by accident.

Anyhow, when I heard Danny escaped and was believed holed-up in the city, I got this idea to root him out. A snow-bird stoolie did the job for us. He circulated it around that Agnes Borst was in Polyclinic, registered as a Mrs. Nizlek, having a baby, Danny Meade’s baby. It figured that when Meade heard that, he’d want to see his kid. What man wouldn’t?

We had some trouble getting the hospital to cooperate but after we assured them there’d be no shooting in the building under any circumstances, they agreed.

It was nine o’clock and visiting hours were about over and I somehow couldn’t get Hollenbeck’s attitude out of my mind and was wondering if maybe he was right and maybe there weren’t any game laws for hunting criminals but maybe there were some other kind, when a little red light flicked over the door of our room, inside.

I looked toward the mirror and saw a slightly built man with his hat pulled low over his face, talking to the receptionist. Huskily, I said to Hollenbeck: “Yea-boy, let’s go.”

We were wearing white intern coats. Meade didn’t know any of us so we figured to get right up to him and grab him before he knew what was happening. None of us were to speak until the first one reached him and collared him.

Hollenbeck and I walked out of the room and toward the man at the desk, who was looking nervously toward Smitty and Weigand, approaching from the other side. But the white coats threw him off. He swung his eyes back to the receptionist. I heard him say: “I wasn’t listening. What ward did you say she’s in?”

It was obvious we were going to pin him easily. I was in front of Hollenbeck and only a step away from Meade and he still wasn’t tipped. Then I looked past him and saw Weigand’s moon face. He was flushed and his fat-embedded eyes shone terribly and I knew this was going to go wrong. This wasn’t going to be good enough for him.