and one of them ran to the second car and opened the rear door. A till, chunky man, whose face
indicated that he had once been thinner, got out and hustled into the apartment. One of the goons
checked the second floor hallway and waved him in. He was nattily dressed in a dark blue blazer, tan
gabardine pants, a pale blue shirt, and a dark striped tie. He climbed the stairs, nodded to the man by
the door of the apartment, who went back down. The chunky man took out his key and let himself in.
The four men gathered just inside the front door of the apartment and started pitching silver dollars
against the wall in the carpeted hallway.
The chunky man stood inside the doorway, looking at the woman on the bed, sleeping on her side, the
bed a mess. He started getting hard, thinking about it. What a wanton bitch she was. He smiled and
walked to the end of the bed and began to shake it very easily.
The closet door opened without a sound. The chunky man never heard anything until the whirrr of the
rope as it whipped around his throat, then the sudden, awful vise around his neck. He reacted almost
instantly.
Almost.
A leg wrapped around both his legs anal he lost his balance and fell forward on the bed. He was
thrashing, trying to break loose, but the vise tightened.
He began to jerk...
And jerk...
And jerk...
Downstairs in the hall, the boys pitching dollars could hear the bedsprings squeaking.
That Tony, he didn?t waste no time.
Fuckin? bull. Go on, Ricky, pitch.
The silver dollar twinkled as it soared down the hall and hit the carpet and bounced against the wall
And the winner sang:
“Yuh kin t?row a silver dollar, across the floor,
It?ll roo-ool, „cause it?s ro-ound,
Woman never knows what a good man she?s got,
Until she lets him down.”
