Free Street of No Return by David Goodis, Robert Polito Page A

and looked at Whitey. "Not even with fifty-to-one odds. Or make it a hundred-to-one and I still wouldn't take it. That Thirty-seventh Precinct is a madhouse. It's these race riots, getting worse and worse, and now the riots really score and a cop from the Thirty-seventh gets put in the cemetery. And that does it, man, that really does it. That flips the Captain's lid, and I'm prone to say right now he's just about ready for a strait jacket."
Whitey shrugged. "Maybe he's wearing it already."
"No," the old man said. "They don't put strait jackets on police captains." And then abruptly and somewhat frantically he gripped Whitey's wrists. "Don't go back there, Gene. Please. Don't go back."
Whitey shrugged again. It was a slow shrug and it told the old man that Eugene Lindell was headed for the station house. The old man's hands went limp and fell away from Whitey's wrists. Whitey turned the doorknob and opened the door and walked out of the shack.

6
It was like walking inside an overturned barrel that revolved slowly and wouldn't let him get anywhere. There were no window lights and no lampposts, as though all electric bulbs were conspiring to put him in the dark and get him lost. It was the same with the sky. There was no moon at all. It was hiding behind thick clouds that wouldn't allow the glow to come through. The sky was starless and pitch-black.
The only light that showed was the yellow face of the City Hall clock, very high up there about a mile and a half to the north of the Hellhole. The hands pointed to one-forty-five. But he wasn't interested in the time element. He wished that the lit-up lace of the City Hall clock could throw a stronger light so he could see where he was going.
He was really lost. There were too many intersecting alleys and narrow, twisting streets to confuse him and take him into more alleys. He was trying to find River Street, so that he could get his bearings and go on from there to Clayton and then to the station house. But in the darkness his sense of direction was confused. And the maze of alleys was like a circular stairway going down and putting him deeper and deeper into the Hellhole.
One wrong turn had done it. When he'd walked out of the wooden shack he'd gone left instead of right, and after that it was right turn instead of left, then south instead of north, east instead of west. He might have used the City Hall clock as a point of reference, except that it wasn't there all the time. It played tricks on him and vanished behind the tenement rooftops. Then it showed again and he'd use it for a while until there'd be a dead-end street or alley and he'd have to go back and start all over. Finally the clock was hidden altogether and he couldn't see anything but black sky and black walls and the dark alleys that were taking him nowhere.
It went on like that and it got him annoyed. Then very much annoyed. Then it struck him sort of funny. As though the Hellhole were using him to joke around with the law. The Hellhole was getting clever and cute with the Thirtyseventh District. Like saying to the Captain: This stupid bastard wants to give himself up, but you don't get him that easy. We'll let him outta here when we're good and ready.
Whitey laughed without sound. It was really as though the Hellhole were pulling the Captain's leg. Or sticking in another needle. Ever so gently. To let the Captain know that law enforcement was not welcome in this neighborhood, that all honest cops were enemies and the dark alleys were friendly to all renegades. With extra hospitality for copkillers. No sirree, the Hellhole said to Captain Kinnard of the Thirty-seventh District, this is our boy Whitey and we won't letcha have him. Not yet, anyway. But don't worry Captain, don't get your bowels in an uproar, it ain't even two o'clock and maybe you'll have him before morning.
It wasn't anyone's voice and yet Whitey could almost hear it talking. He began to have the feeling that a lot was going to happen before