I went down on one knee, waited.
He did exactly what I thought he would do. He pulled a flash and sent a long bright beam of light in search of me.
The roar of the Luger rolled around the narrow alley, bounced off the walls. The cop’s flash disintegrated; darkness settled down again.
I had about sixty seconds to get moving before he recovered his nerve. I moved.
The top of the wall was gritty under my hands. I was glad I’d learned the trick of rolling over walls instead of sitting astride them. I was dropping into the far-side darkness when the cop opened up with a chopper. Slugs threw up a little cloud of mortar and brick dust six feet above my head. I didn’t wait.
Beyond the wall was an expanse of trees, shrubs and darkness. I guessed it was the garden of the apartment block. I melted into the darkness; kept edging to my right, where I knew I’d eventually come out to the main street.
There was much shouting in the front drive. Heads peeped cautiously out of windows. The chopper continued to grind away. No one was taking chances.
I kept on. The Army certainly did a swell job in teaching me how to act like a Red Indian. Sitting Bull had nothing on me. Moving through the shrubs and trees, I made no more noise than a ghost and was a lot less visible.
The night was now full of police sirens, some near, some distant, some almost too faint to hear. There seemed a lot of Law on the move.
I reached the wall surrounding the garden as some bright boy decided to turn on a floodlight. I had just pulled myself up and was lying on top of the wall when the lights came on. I felt like a nudist in a subway on a Saturday in the rush-hour.