where warm people could sometimes cool off.
Well, here they were, and it wasn't so much - in fact, both of them
were homesick for New York, which was why they were talking
about the Yankees. But they never saw New York or the Yankees
again.
Their voices reached down the hall to the stairwell where the
murderers stood six risers down, with their stocking-covered heads
just below line of sight, if you happened to be looking down the
hall from the door of the Presidential Suite. There were three of
them on the stairs, dressed in dark pants and coats, carrying
shotguns with the barrels sawed off to six inches. The shotguns
were loaded with expanding buckshot.
One of the three motioned and they walked up the stairs to the hall.
The two outside the door never even saw them until the murderers
were almost on top of them. One of them was saying animatedly,
'Now you take Ford. Who's better in the American League than
Whitey Ford? No, I want to ask you that sincerely, because when it
comes to the stretch he just
The speaker looked up and saw three black shapes with no
discernable faces standing not 10 paces away. For a moment he
could not believe it. They were just standing there. He shook his
head, fully expecting them to go away like the floating black
specks you sometimes saw in the darkness. They didn't. Then he
knew.
'What's the matter?' his buddy said.
The young man who had been speaking about Whitey Ford clawed
under his jacket for his gun. One of the murderers placed the butt
of his shotgun against a leather pad strapped to his belly beneath
his dark turtleneck. And pulled both triggers. The blast in the
narrow hallway was deafening. The muzzle flash was like summer
lightning, purple in its brilliance. A stink of cordite. The young
man was blown backward down the hall in a disintegrating cloud
of Ivy League jacket, blood, and hair. His arm looped over
backward, spilling the Magnum from his dying fingers, and the
pistol thumped harmlessly to the carpet with the safety still on.
The second young man did not even make an effort to go for his
gun. He stuck his hands high in the air and wet his pants at the
same time.
'I give up, don't shoot me, it's OK-!'
'Say hello to Albert Anastasia when you get down there, punk',
one of the murderers said, and placed the butt of his shotgun
against his belly.
'I ain't a. problem, I ain't a problem!' the young man screamed in a
thick Bronx accent, and then the blast of the shotgun lifted him out
of his shoes and he slammed back against the silk wallpaper with
its delicate raised pattern. He actually stuck for a moment before
collapsing to the hall floor.
The three of them walked to the door of the suite. One of them
tried the knob. 'Locked.'
