I'm sorry.
Can you tell me where the police are?
Yes, sir.
I'm going to the police.
I'll be right back.
Yes?
You, Ross Locke?
That's right.
And you?
Police.
You got a reason to come around this time of night?
My wife and I were just going to sleep.
You were in a place earlier tonight, a bar on 139th off 7th.
There's lots of bars on that street.
There's an alley behind this one where a man was beaten to death.
Ross, Ross, who is it?
Nobody at all, honey.
You just go back to sleep.
You said a man was beaten to death?
A man who invited you out into an alley, a shoe salesman named Ted Eberly.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Honey, Janie.
Whoever it is, Ross, tell them you've got to get to sleep.
I've got to go out for a while, honey.
Now, don't you wait up for me, you hear?
All right, let's go, huh?
Quietly.
We're waking everybody in the house.
Sit over there, Ross.
This is Detective Muggler.
Hi, Ross.
Now we all know each other.
That's right.
We're going to get along, too, aren't we, Ross?
Sure, sure. Anything you say.
Tom, you're a fighter, Ross.
Welter, good one.
Muggervin here is quite a fight fan.
I just mentioned your name. Do I mean you all about some?
Sure, every time you hit the garden, that was me in the aisle seat third row.
You had class, real class.
Danny?
Yeah?
How many times have I told you about this boy?
How many times a week I ask myself why a boy like Ross quits, resigns from the field,
a champ with crowbars in his face?
Why ask yourself? Why not ask me?
All right, Ross. I'm asking.
Fighting? That's not their way. Not for me.
The other boys. I know all the reasons why they fight. All the reasons.
But me? What's for you, Ross? I make models.
Models? Kids' airplanes, ships and bottles, things like that?
From blueprints, inventions, buildings, machines, all to scale.
Gives them a chance to see and touch what they were dreaming about on the drafting board.
Gives me a chance to use my hands.
Real fine work. To scale. I like that.
Sounds interesting.
I like it.
Sure you do. You killed a man tonight, Ross.
I didn't kill him.
Maybe you didn't mean to at first. Maybe you forgot. A boy with fists like yours.
Deadly weapons, we call them.
A fighter can kill a man easy with hands like yours.
I told you...
No, you haven't, Ross. You haven't told us a thing.
Except you were in the bar.
I was sitting there with my friend. Just talking.
This guy came up, this slumber, drunk, tried to pick a fight.
They do that sometimes. Gives them kicks because they remember I was a fighter once.
Sure. Sure they do that.
But this one you took out in the alley. Beat him to death. Murdered him.
Yeah, I took him out in the alley. Put my arm around him. Tried to talk to him. Reason with him.
I'm crazy. I do that sometimes.
I walked him up the alley from the bar. He broke away. Pulled a jackknife.
Came after me. Passed out before he got to me. In a heap.
Poor, miserable drunk.
And after that?
I didn't touch him. Just walked away from him.
Turned around, walked away. Down the other end of the alley. Went home.
Hello, boys. Guess what I got, boy.
We give up, Webster. What have you got?
A writ. That ever-loving writ. Habeas Carpenter's.
Don't talk to them anymore, Ross, boy. You don't have to.
I'm taking you away from all this.
I don't know you.
I know, boy, I know. But I'm a friend of a friend of yours.
A fellow you haven't been very nice to. Jack Colboy, your former manager.
But he's sure nice to you, Colboy, here.
He hired old Billy Webster, counselor.
And you're gonna get up and walk out of here.
Just because I say so. Isn't he, boy?
Yeah. And you too, Webster. Leave with him.
The next morning, look up a man named Jack Colboy.
Come up with an address of a place. Asy's Gym on Amsterdam.
Go there. A gym like a thousand others.
Sweaty, hot. Training quarters for latter-day gladiators.
Classed variously according to poundage, records, expectations.
Boxers, punchers, bums.
Past the middleweight, who was being furious at a canvas bag.
A lightweight, being nimble with a jumping rope.
Brushed against a man in an overcoat who had taken a fighting stance...
and was sneering his broken face into a full-length mirror.
Stop a boy with a bucket and ask for a Jack Colboy.
And be told that's him over near the ring in the purple T-shirt.
The left, kid. Throw it.
What's the matter with you? Throw the left, huh?
No, no, no.
Your name Colboy? Yeah.
So toss it already. Don't stand there and wave it. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Okay, kid. Do something to heavy bag. Three rounds.
Okay, what? I'm from the police, sir.
I want to know what made you hire a lawyer for Ross Lock.
You think because Christmas is over I'm strange because I'm friendly?
I just asked you. I'm just telling you.
I'm friendly to Ross Lock.
What's the matter with you? Don't you have friends?
Look, Mr. Colboy, I'm trying to find out all I can about Ross Lock.
As I understand it, you used to manage him. He was a comer. He left you.
Didn't it bother you?
You look like I'm stone. Sure it bothered me.
A fighter like him giving up all that dough. Sure, dough for me too.
Sure it bothers me. But you're still his friend.
Sure I am. Especially when I saw her last night.
You were at that bar last night? You saw the fight?
Where were you when I got there? I'm trying to find Ross.
Just tell me what happened.
The dame standing in the doorway with a bottle. I couldn't get near Ross and that slumber.
Ran outside and around the block and up the alley.
The slumber was banging on Ross. The names he was calling him.
I'm going to court and testify self-defense for Ross like I was.
Ross said he didn't put a hand on that man.
Maybe that's the story Ross was planning for you.
But that's not the way it happened.
Me testifying, my lawyers, self-defense plea.
The dead man was holding a jackknife.
It'll be simple. I'm going to take care of everything.
I'm going to...
Pardon me.
Yah.
Yah, he's here. I'll take the message.
Sure, I'll tell him.
It's for you. I just don't let people to use my phone.
Germs on a mouthpiece. What was the message, Colbo?
The message is about the Harlem River at the end of Lennox.
Said that's where you were wanted. In a hurry.
You leaving? Goodbye.
Over here, Danny.
Who found her?
Some kid. Looked in the river. There she was.
Yelled for the police.
Why'd you call me, Muggerman? Couldn't you handle it?
I didn't think you'd want me to.
Didn't they tell you over the phone?
Come on, who is she?
I'll take the blanket off.
See?
Carol Bennett.
The woman who screamed murder in the alley last night.
You better look close, Danny.
Murdered.
That's right. Carol Bennett, Danny. Strangled to death.
You are listening to Broadway's My Beat, written by Morton Fine and David Friedkin,
and starring Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover.
For each hour of each day of the year, someone dies.
A man steps off curb without looking in both directions.
A woman jaywalks.
And a child turns a corner on his bicycle without looking first.
Nearly 9,000 pedestrians were killed in these and other motor accidents during 1951.
The fault, many times, is yours, the pedestrian.
Careless walking is as dangerous as careless driving.
Broadway makes happy holidays for the time of the year's dying.
Those 12 long months with not enough laughter, they're going now.
And it's a time for dancing.
So hurry up and exchange the Christmas presents.
Get out on the street, buy a noisemaker, and create a stir.
It's the thing to do. Join the mob, kid.
Everybody's making the new dreams for the new year.
Maybe even today, maybe the golden girl will smile to you from the crowd and beckon,
once happened to a friend of yours.
But in my office at police headquarters, no crowd, just me and the sergeant with papers in his hand.
Danny?
Yeah, what is it, Gino?
I'm worried.
What's the trouble?
Next year is leap year.
And it worries you, huh?
Go ahead, laugh. Make funny jokes.
Make mockery of daddy's cares and woes.
I'm not making mockery of anything, Gino. What's the trouble?
Ah, my eldest youngster, Tina. She's 17.
She told me last night that next year being leap year,
she's going to pop the cork to Patrolman Reardon.
She's going to offer her hand in marriage to him.
I think that's very nice. Tina's a lovely girl.
Reardon's a fine officer.
Heckle. Go ahead.
I stand here helpless before your heckle.
You're on their side.
Gino, I...
After all the thick and thin we've been through, shoulder...
Did you get what I asked for?
First let me finish. Shoulder to shoulder. Yeah, I did.
Tell me about it, huh?
Carol Bennett is dead from strangle unknown,
tossed into the Harlem River and found at 11.23 a.m. by several...
Tell me about Carol Bennett. What did you find?
Minor misdemeanors which caused the plague of 30-day sentences
by our magistrates and many unheeded lectures by same.
A girl prone to petty thefts, et cetera.
Where'd she live?
A drifter, mostly outside of Harlem.
Checked out her last address early this morning,
threw 20 bucks at her landlady and said,
don't bother about the change, who needs it?
And I'll give you a piece of advice.
I think she was strangled by that Ross Locke
so that she could not testify against him.
You want an all points bulletin, Danny?
I'll let you know. I think I know where to find him.
And back again to the tenement where the boy had first been picked up.
And it's day now.
No nighttime to veil the scarred doorways.
No shadow to smother the sudden crying out that pierces the corridors.
No night sound of trumpet to wash away the stillness that follows on it.
Harlem tenement, huddled close in on itself against December,
trying to soak up the last sunlight of a dying year and never making it.
Walk through the silence that happened when your foot crossed its threshold.
And up the flight of stairs down a hall whose walls are closer against you
than they were the night before.
Knock on the door.
Oh, I thought you were someone else.
Mrs. Locke.
That's right. What do you want?
Ross. I'm from the police.
You're the man that was here last night?
Yes.
You took Ross away. He hasn't come home. Why?
You won't try to stop me if I take a look around, will you, Mrs. Locke?
Why should I? Come on in.
Do we want him, Mrs. Locke? Where is he?
I don't know. You told me why you took him away.
He beat up a man last night, killed him.
You lied. You stand there and you lied to my face.
This morning a girl was found on the Harlem River.
A girl who'd been strangled, a girl who saw Ross kill the man.
And you're telling me, me, that my Ross did all that?
He left headquarters late last night. Did he come home?
He's a fugitive now, Mrs. Locke.
I've heard all about them. Fugitives.
I've seen pictures on streets back home.
If you know where he is, it'll be better for...
Come here, mister. I want to show you something.
See that? That's a model.
A new little machine Ross was working on.
Look how tiny those parts are. How delicate.
That's the way Ross uses his hands.
You're going to stand there and tell me Ross uses his hands to kill?
I don't want to talk to you anymore, mister. Get out.
And leave her. And leave the scars...
gouged out by words and fingernails and pen knives...
and the exchange value of a dollar.
Get out into what sunshine is left.
And call Sergeant Totaglia. Tell him to get out an all-points bulletin on Ross Locke...
and continue with your own checking.
Then have Detective Muggerman drive you to the man...
who, as far as you knew, was the last one to have seen Ross...
the lawyer who had brought a writ.
Go to the office of lawyer Webster.
Glad you came, Danny. Glad you dropped in.
You're glad I'm glad, Webster.
I want you to be in a happy frame of mind. I got some questions I want to ask you.
Ask away. Shoot.
Where'd you go when you left headquarters with Ross Locke?
I took him home with me.
Gave him a clean shirt, a razor, a fissana blade and some hot water.
I wanted him to look real nice. For what?
For my client. Colbo?
He likes people to look real nice when they come calling.
Then that's where you took him, huh? I didn't say that.
Come on, Webster. You get cagey with me, you're a lawyer who's gonna need a lawyer.
You're the one, Danny. Good old you.
You ready to go downtown? We'll use my car.
Why don't you just listen sometime instead of sneering?
I never said I took Ross to Colbo, that's all.
Where'd he go?
How do I know where he went? He walked out. He wouldn't go see Colbo.
You know why?
What do you think I'd do, Danny? Tap people's brains?
I said, let's go see Colbo, kid. He pushed me against the wall, you know, playfully.
So I couldn't get up for five minutes. He pushed me and walked out.
Personally, I don't like to question playful boys like Ross.
And that's all you can tell me, huh?
On a bright, Danny. After all, do I look like a boy who would...
Danny.
Yeah, what is it, Muggerman?
Just came over to the car radio.
What did?
They found Ross' lock. I think we better get there.
Over there, Danny. They can lock between the tenements.
All right, you people. Now get back. Let us through. Police.
Let us through.
OK, officer, we'll take it. Give me your flash.
I'm sorry, sir.
You're not going to get away with this, are you?
I'm not going to get away with this.
I'm not going to get away with this.
We'll take it. Give me your flash.
Look at him, Danny.
His hands. His hands are...
It was the first thing you saw in the quickening darkness. His hands.
The hands that had shaped delicate things, minute things.
Crushed, broken, twisted into something without form, without name.
Stained now with dull scarlet of a furied violence.
In the boy's eyes as he looked at you, considered your reaction anguish.
And something else. Something that made you turn away.
Ambulance, Danny.
Take you, me and the patrolmen to clear the crowd.
The left, kid. Left. Left. Left. Left from the shoulder of the body. Left.
Tell your boy he can quit now, Cobol. I want to talk to you.
All right. Take a shower, kid. See you in the morning.
Brings you to the gym so late, Clover.
I checked your house. They told me you were down here.
Now let me ask you the same question. What keeps you here so late?
I keep teasing myself that kid you just saw his guts up.
Everything but her left hand.
As good as Ross Locke.
I doubt it. Ross gets socked with both hands.
No more.
Yeah, I know. Headed over the radio with the rest of the bad news.
Ever slap one of these light bags, Clover? Good for the nerves.
I get all tensed up when I hear news like that.
Cut it out, Cobol.
You kidding?
I said cut it out.
What's your mission here, Clover?
Two murders and assault.
How bad is he?
He'll be all right.
He won't be able to build any more models.
Huh?
Yeah. Somebody hit him over the head from behind.
Then went to work on his hands.
Ruined them.
Imagine.
I figure somebody doing that to a guy's hands.
Yeah, I can figure somebody doing that.
I'm sorry. I forgot you didn't like it.
Now Ross couldn't fight even if he wanted to, not for anybody.
He saw his hands, you ought to know.
A shame, too.
Good boy like him. Can't make models, can't fight.
Probably isn't any job he'll be able to do with his hands.
Tough.
Tough.
I'll send him something from time to time.
You know a girl named Carol Bennett?
Sure I know her.
A dame with a bottle. A dame who saw Ross kill that man.
A dame you fished out of the river.
Who doesn't know her?
You know why she died?
There's always a reason.
She was blackmailing the killer of a Camden shoe salesman.
The man who was found beaten to death last night in an alley.
You're crazy. How could she blackmail Ross?
He didn't have that kind of dough.
You do.
So?
When putting away for rainy days, that gives you a long nose?
Carol was standing at the doorway of the alley. She saw what happened.
Saw that Ross didn't touch that drunk.
Saw Ross walk away the way Ross said he did.
So you believe what the boy told you?
Yeah, I do.
The way someone fixed his hands makes me believe it.
The boy gets himself a couple of broken hands that makes him stop being a murderer, huh?
Let me tell you a little bit more what Carol saw.
She saw you.
She saw you finish the job on the drunk that Ross didn't get to do.
Blackmail.
You gave a good deal of my time to that boy.
You even hired him a lawyer.
Now why would I go do what you said?
Did I suddenly go crazy?
You're off your rocker, Clover.
You were going to appear as an eyewitness to Ross's murder of that man.
You told me so yourself.
That way when Ross was acquitted, he'd owe you something, fight for you again.
Anybody ever call you a deep thinker, Danny?
And when he wouldn't come to you, you found him.
Wrecked him.
Let's go downtown, Clover.
Don't be a fool, Clover. Put down that jackknife.
It cuts, Clover, like this.
You're right.
Clover.
Clover.
Clover, no.
Don't.
Don't.
Oh, a cold ball.
On your feet.
Let's go.
In a little while, Broadway will knock itself to pieces.
Funny fellas with funny hats will lean out of the hotel windows
and pour water on the celebrants with the tin horns.
There'll be laughter and crowd and swirl.
And the fine thing is that the
words, Happy New Year, and Broadway means it with all its heart.
It's Broadway, the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world.
Broadway. My Beat.
Broadway's My Beat stars Larry Thor as Detective Danny Clover,
with Charles Calvert as Tertaglia, and Jack Crouchon as Muggervon.
The program was produced and directed by Elliot Lewis,
with musical score composed and conducted by Alexander Courage.
In tonight's story, Clayton Post was heard as Colbo,
and Roy Glenn as Ross Locke.
Featured in the cast were Herb Butterfield, Charlotte Lawrence,
Jenny Lagone, and Jester Hairston.
Tomorrow afternoon, don't miss the third annual gathering of CBS Radio's top foreign correspondents,
all making their year-end reports on the state of the world.
Ed Murrow is the host.
Remember, it's tomorrow afternoon on most of these same radio stations.
It's hard-hitting. It's factual. It's food for thought.
It's years of crisis.
Bill Anders speaking.
And remember, those lovable rascals Amos and Andy are here every Sunday on the CBS Radio Network.
Thank you.