Free Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner

grandstand with the cops, and then I suddenly realized what it would mean. The D.A. would call me as a witness and the smart guy who was defending the fellow would start ripping me up the back and down the front and show that I had skipped out on parole, the jury wouldn’t believe me, and I’d get sent back to L.A. as a parole violator.”
    “Pretty smart for a kid, aren’t you?”
    “I ain’t a kid.”
    I looked down into the prematurely wise little face with the sharp eyes sizing me up, studying me for a weak point where he could take advantage of me, felt the bony little shoulder under my hand, and said, “Okay, kid. You play square with me and I’ll play square with you. How old are you?”
    “Seventeen.”
    “How are you getting along up here?”
    “I’m doing good. I’m keeping on the straight and narrow. The trouble down in L.A. I had too many friends. I’d get out with the gang and they’d start calling me sissy if I didn’t ride along.”
    “What were they doing?”
    “Believe me, mister, they were getting so they were doing damn near everything. It started out with kid stuff, then when Butch got to be head of the outfit he said the only fellows who could run with the gang were the ones who had guts enough to be regular guys. I mean he’s tough.”
    “Why didn’t you go to the probation officer and tell him all that?”
    “Think I was going to rat?”
    “Why didn’t you just stay home and mind your own business?”
    “Don’t be silly.”
    “So you took a powder and came up here?”
    “That’s right.”
    “And you’re going straight?”
    “Like a string.”
    “Give me the license number and I’ll try to keep you out of it.”
    He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket that had been torn from the edge of a newspaper. On it was scribbled a number, written with a hard pencil so that it was all but illegible.
    I studied it carefully.
    He went on in an eager, whining voice. “That’s the car that hit the guy. The driver came tearing down the hill and almost hit me. That’s when I got so mad I started to take his number. He was a fat, middle-aged guy with a little blonde plastered up against him. She started to kiss him just as they got to the corner, or he was kissing her, or they were kissing each other, I don’t know which.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I jumped out of the way and thought the guy was going to crash into the curb. I took his number — that is, I got out the pencil and was writing it down on the edge of the paper when he smacked right into this guy.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then he slowed down for a minute and I thought he was stopping; then the wren said something to him and changed his mind. He stepped on it.”
    “No one after him?”
    “Sure. A guy tried to nail him just as some goof swung out from the curb. They smashed up and littered the street with broken glass. By that time people were running around giving help to the old man, and all of a sudden I realized that I was in a spot; that if I told the police who the fellow was I’d be a gone coon.”
    “Who was he?”
    “I tell you I don’t know. All I know is he was driving a dark sedan, he was going like hell, and he and this babe were pitching woo right up to the time they hit the street intersection.”
    “Drunk?”
    “How do I know? He was busy doing other things besides driving the automobile. Now I’ve given you a break, mister. Let me go.”
    I handed him five dollars. “Go buy yourself a Coca- Cola, buddy, and quit worrying about it.”
    He looked at the five for a moment, then swiftly crumpled it and shoved it down into his pocket. “That all?” he asked.
    I said, “Would you know this gent if you saw him again, the one who was driving the car?”
    He looked at me with eyes that were suddenly hard and shrewd. “No,” he said.
    “Couldn’t recognize him if you saw him in a line-up?”
    “No.”
    I left the newsboy and looked up the registration of the number he had given me.
    It was