Ed McBain: Runaway Black

Ed McBain: Runaway Black (UK 1971)

From the Publisher:
Back cover:
The cops were hunting the wrong man - but he still had to run, and run, and run...
Across the scarred and broken pavements ran Johnny Lane. Desperate, his arm painfully injured, he looks for a friend to help him, a girl to shelter him, a hole to crawl in. Through the night city he ran, a city where violence is casual and when twilight falls, even the cops get nervous.

And as he ran, Johnny Lane discovered that even if he got free of this murder charge, he was doomed to run for the rest of his life through the ghetto of neon and squalor.

Inside:
Beneath the Sleeping City This is my life, he thought.
This sewer is my life, the stench of it and the city pressing down on me, this is my life.
And the bleeding arm, that's all part of it, because I've really been bleeding all my life. But the sewer was a hole in which to hide, and that was something, that was a break for Johnny Lane. And if he could hang to the rung with one arm until things got a little better and the bleeding stopped and the people stopped chasing him and he could come out and be Johnny Lane and not just a faceless, manless man in a community of other faceless, manless men, it would be all right.
He listened to the rush of the water beneath his feet, and he listened to the hush of the city over his head, and when he heard the other sound he thought it was part of the water.
First he heard the scraping, but a million things scraped in a sewer.
Then he heard the tiny squeak.
He looked down and tried to find the source of this squeak, this curiously animate squeak, and he saw the pin points of light then, two darting, glistening, sparkling dots of light.
The fear shot into his skull, seemed to crackle there like a loosed lightning bolt, and he screamed a scream that bounced off the slimy walls of the sewer, because he knew he was looking into the eyes of a rat. And he knew the sewer was alive with them.

Ed McBain: Runaway Black. He fled through canyons of night and neon - cops, dames at his heels and death. London: Coronet, 1971, ISBN: 0340151900, 160 p., 25p.

Ed McBain: Runaway Black (USA 1968 ?)

From the Publisher:
Across the scarred and broken pavements ran Johnny Lane and his bleeding arm... Johnny Lane, looking for a friend to help him, a girl to shelter him, a hole to hide in... through the night city he ran, a city where violence is casual and when twilight falls even the cops get nervous.

And as he ran, Johnny Lane discovered that... even if he got free of this murder charge... he was doomed to run for the rest of his life through a ghetto of neon and snowbirds and squalor.

Fawcett World Library

Ed McBain: Runaway Black. Through canyons of night and neon he fled - cops, dames, and death at his heels. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1968 (?), Fawcett Gold Medal #T2359, 160 p., ¢75.

Ed McBain: Runaway Black (USA 1964)

From the Publisher:
Back cover:
Quality Merchandise...
ON SALE
The girl sucked in a deep breath, and her sweater expanded in the darkness, high and full, straining. "You looking for a way to kill the night?" she asked Johnny.
"You got any ideas?" he said. He wasn't sure of her. Had she heard about him? Did she know he was the one the cops were after?
"I got a room on Lex," she said. "Not the Waldorf, but clean sheets. And a price that's right."
"Like?"
"Like five for a roll, and seven-fifty for all night. You got seven-fifty?"
"I've got seven-fifty."
"Don't let the price throw you, man," she said, grinning in the darkness. "It's quality merchandise. I'm feeling generous."

Inside:
"We got a dead man," the cop said dryly.
• Johnny hadn't killed Luis Ortega. But the cops were looking for a fall guy, and Johnny would do. So he ran, heedless of his badly slashed right arm.
• Desperately he sought refuge. In Harlem's dark, garbage-strewn alleys. In its smoky dens, with strippers and jazz combos. In the pad of a high-breasted prostitute. In a poker party of top numbers men. In the car of a white girl slumming at the Savoy. And finally in a sewer, where the rats clawed at his trouser leg.
• But Johnny couldn't run forever. His arm was dripping blood, and if the cops didn't get him, the rats would. His only hope was that the real killer would be found -- before the cops or the rats finished him off.
RUNAWAY BLACK was originally published by Fawcett Publications, Inc.

Ed McBain: Runaway Black. The cops wanted him for murder-and his only chance lay with a stripper, a card shark, and the dark city streets. Originally published under the pseudonym Richard Marsten. New York: Pocket Books, 1964, Permabooks M-4299, 152 p., ¢35.

Richard Marsten: Runaway Black (USA 1954)

And as he ran, Johnny Lane discovered that... even if he got free of this murder charge... he was doomed to run for the rest of his life through a ghetto of neon and snowbirds and squalor.

Richard Marsten: Runaway Black. Through canyons of night and neon he fled - cops, dames, and death at his heels. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1954, Fawcett Gold Medal #415, 160 p., ¢25.