Run Man Run
Tags: crime-fiction,
New York, winter, 1966, 4:00 a.m. Detective Matt Walker is wrapping up a shift on the vice beat near Times Square. He’s just finished taking advantage of a prostitute, having promised to let her go in exchange for a favor. He considers this one of the perks of the job. “Vice isn’t free,” he remarks. “Someone has to pay for it.”
Now he’s drunk as hell and he can’t find his car. He needs a cup of coffee to sober up. The lights are on in the diner at 37th and 5th. When he tries to go in, the night porter explains the place is closed. They can’t take any customers.
Walker doesn’t like being told no by a black man. He flashes his badge and tries to intimidate the porter. Luke sees that Walker is too drunk to be reasoned with, and he’s a mean drunk with bad intentions. Walker won’t leave, so Luke sends him inside to talk to Fat Sam. Fat Sam, a part-time preacher who likes to drink, knows how to talk to white people.
Walker, mad with liquor and racial hatred and a touch of psychosis, accuses Fat Sam (absurdly) of stealing his car. They argue. Walker shoots him dead inside the walk-in fridge. Luke comes in looking for Sam. Walker kills him too.
Then Walker hears a sound in the basement. There’s a third man down below. Walker descends the stairs to finish off the last remaining witness that can place him at the scene. But he blows it. He wounds the third porter, Jimmy Johnson, but can’t finish him off.
And here the game begins. Jimmy knows the position he’s in. A white cop lost his head and murdered two black men in cold blood. Jimmy knows it will be his word against the cop’s, and that’s a battle he’ll never win. He also knows that Walker will hunt him down and kill him, tie up that one loose end, and then go back on patrol doing whatever he wants to whomever he pleases.
Jimmy tells his story to the homicide detectives, tells them point blank that Walker shot him and the other two. But the lead homicide detective is Walker’s brother in law. Jimmy tells the same story to the district attorney. The DA tells him there’s no case without hard evidence. Even the lawyer Jimmy’s employer sends to bail him out of the jail-hospital warns him to watch his mouth and not make accusations he can’t back up with hard evidence.Jimmy’s girlfriend, Linda Lou, doesn’t believe him either.
But in the days that follow, everywhere Jimmy goes, Walker follows. At first, even the reader isn’t sure if Jimmy is a reliable narrator. Is that really Walker standing on the street corner, looking up at his building? Or is Jimmy just going mad with fear and paranoia.
We find out soon enough.
Then tension in this one runs high. Jimmy isn’t the only one being hunted. Walker’s brother-in-law, the homicide detective, is a sharp observer and a tough-minded cop who is mostly concerned with serving justice. Mostly.
Himes writes white characters better than most white authors write black characters. The only place this book falters is in the character of Linda Lou, who comes off as impossibly weak-minded as well as morally weak. She’s swayed by outlandish arguments while she resists more sensible ones, everything seems to make her horny, and her only response to temptation is to yield to it.
Those failings might be forgivable in a minor character, but she’s an important character. She’s the only person Jimmy has to fall back on, but she doesn’t seem to have a mind or a will of her own.
Himes does a good job using both the situation at hand and larger social forces to build tension. Jimmy is determined to survive, even to the point of confronting his would-be killer. Walker is just as determined to silence him. And Walker’s brother-in-law, the homicide detective, is as determined as the two of them to rid the streets of a dangerous killer.
Who’s going to come out on top in this one? You’ll have to read it to find out.