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and now no more little brother." I shook my head and stared at my own breath as it clouded the windshield. "But just take it to a judge. Just take the whole fantastic thing to a judge and see how fast he kicks you out of court."
    Ed glanced at me quickly, and then turned his eyes back to the road.
    "We'll have to watch that kid," I said, "maybe get him some psychiatric care. I hate to think what would happen if he suddenly builds up a dislike for his mother."
    I didn't say anything after that, but it was a cold ride back to the station.
    Damned cold.

    I grew up as Salvatore Lombino, on 120th Street between First and Second avenues, in New York City's East Harlem. My grandfather had a tailor shop on First Avenue. We grandsons and granddaughters of Italian, Irish, Jewish, and German immigrants lighted celebratory bonfires in the streets on election night, and sometimes roasted potatoes over smaller fires in vacant lots. We roller-skated in the streets. We played marbles—or "immies," as we used to call them—in the curbside gutters. We played stickball and Johnny-on-a-Pony and Ring-a-Leevio. It was a good street with good people on it. In all of my twelve years on that street, I never met any kid like the lead character in this story.
    "
See Him Die" was first published in
Manhunt
in July of 1955 under the Evan Hunter byline. By then, I was using my new (hey, only three years old!) name on virtually everything I wrote; the movie version of
The Blackboard Jungle
had been released in February of that year, and the novel was now a multimillion-copy bestseller in paperback (which it hadn't been in hardcover) and so Evan Hunter was now somewhat well-known.
    I was busy finishing my second Evan Hunter novel, almost prophetically titled
Second Ending
(it later sold only 16,000 copies, most of them bought by my mother) when Herb Alexander, the editor in chief of Pocket Books, called Scott Meredith. What happened was that Scott had submitted to Pocket an as-yet-unpurchased Hunt Collins novel titled
Cut Me In,
and despite the pseudonym, Herb had recognized the style. He called Scott to ask, "Is this our friend Hunter?" Surprised to learn that I also wrote mysteries, eager to find a successor to the aging Erie Stanley Gardner, he explored with Scott—and later with me—the possibility of my writing a continuing series of novels. By then, I was convinced that cops were the only legitimate people to investigate crimes. Herb didn't buy
Cut Me In,
but he gave me a contract to write three cop novels. Thus were Ed McBain and the 87th Precinct born.
    "
See Him Die"—in a greatly changed and expanded version—was later retitled
See Them Die,
and published in 1960 as the thirteenth novel in the 87th Precinct series.

See Him Die
    W HEN YOU'RE THE HEAD MAN, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GET the rumble first. Then you feed it to the other kids, and you read off the music, and if they don't like it that's their hard luck. They can take off with or without busted heads.
    So that's why I was sore when Aiello comes to me and starts making like a kid with an inside wire. He's standing in a doorway, with his jacket collar up around his nose, and first off I think he's got some weed on him. Then I see he ain't fixing to gather a stone, but he's got this weird light in his eyes anyway.
    "What're you doing, A," I said.
    Aiello looked over his shoulder as if the bulls were after him. He takes my arm and pulls me into the doorway and says, "Danny, I got something hot."
    "What?" I said. "Your head?"
    "Danny, what I mean, this is something."
    "So tell it."
    "Harry Manzetti," he said. He said it in a kind of a hoarse whisper, and I looked at him funny, and I figured maybe he'd just hit the pipe after all.
    "What about him?"
    "He's here."
    "What do you mean, here? Where here?"
    "In the neighborhood."
    "You're full of it," I told him.
    "I swear to God, Danny. I seen him."
    "Where?"
    "I was going up to Louises. You know Louise?"
    "I know Louise."
    "She