"shoesmaketheman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Harold A)

town have got to be hard. You're not hard. You're too good-humored to ever be a cop
under me."

It wasn't fair, Joe McCarthy reflected with as much bitterness as he could muster.
The rain fell unheeded in his face. He was unconscious of the night sounds around
him.

How did commissioner Pike know he wouldn't make a good cop? The commissioner had
admitted Joe had been the most promising rookie ever to go through the police
school.

"But training and technical knowledge don't count at all if you won't get tough
once in a while," Pike had thundered. "It takes tough cops to deal with killers and
dope smugglers like Zeke Francisco. But if Zeke ever pulled a gun on you, you'd
probably just smile and apologize."

Joe McCarthy muttered to himself. Perhaps the commissioner was right. He might smile
and apologize if some hood pulled a gun, but it wouldn't be because he was afraid or
anything like that. It would be because he would feel sorry that he'd have to hurt
the guy. And especially for Zeke. He'd known Zeke all his life.

"Show me just once that you are hard, that you can get tough, and I'll put you at
the head of the eligibility list," had been Pike's parting shot. "Go get Zeke
Francisco, for example, and I'll put you in uniform tomorrow. But until you get
over being quite so good-natured, I'd see that you never get on the cops."

Joe McCarthy's huge, hammerlike fists closed into hard knuckles. Those knuckles
could knock Zeke Francisco end for end. Joe knew it. But that wouldn't be fair
either. Zeke was a little guy.

And where did the commissioner get off telling him to try to get something on Zeke?
Everyone on the force had tried it in vain, hadn't they?

Zeke was smart, Naturally he'd be able to outwit a good-natured giant who couldn't
even realize an ambition to be a policeman.


RAIN had made the sidewalk slippery. Joe's feet almost went out from under him as he
started to step from the curb. A little toe barked against the hard pavement.

For a moment Joe McCarthy thought a red-hot iron had been placed against that foot.
A terrific sheet of pain seemed to flash through his body, to hit him so hard that
it left him breathless.

He'd hit a corn, not an insignificant, futile little corn, but one of the soft type,
big enough to go with his huge feet.

There was just an instant when Joe McCarthy thought he was going to get mad for once,
just a flash when he wished he could get his gigantic hands on the clerk who had sold
him shoes too small for him.