what he thought of as African clothes. Over a purple turtleneck sweater and baggy black trousers, Abu Ben Mohammed was wearing a brightly colored dashiki. Perched on the back of his head was sort of a black yarmulke, neatly and rather brightly embroidered in a yellow and green pattern. He was also wearing a trench coat over his shoulders. Maybe they didn't have overcoats in North Africa, Mr. Katz thought, or maybe this guy just didn't have an African coat to handle the chill of January in Philadelphia.
What was important was that he was into the African thing, and the Africans were deep into carpets. They put them two and three deep on the floors, and sometimes they even upholstered their walls with them.
What was just about as important was that he had come into the store today. The furniture business just about died after Christmas; it was Phil Katz's personal opinion that the store was just pissing money down the toilet with their advertisements in the PhiladelphiaDaily News for 'After Christmas' and 'New Year's' sales. People had spent their money (or used up their credit, which was the same thing) buying Christmas presents. They had no money to do anything but start paying the bills they had run up for Christmas.
But there were exceptions to every rule, and this guy in the dashiki just might be one of them. Mr. Katz had heard that the blacks who had become Muslims had to stop drinking and smoking and gambling, which meant this guy might just have the money to cover the floors of his apartment with carpet.
He led Abu Ben Mohammed to the elevator, slid the door shut, and took him up to the third floor.
Five minutes after Abu Ben Mohammed entered the store, a man subsequently identified as Hector Carlos Estivez, twenty-four, five feet nine inches tall, and weighing 140 pounds, and again with no distinguishing marks or features, came in.
He told Red Monahan that he wanted to look at a washer-drier combination, and was turned over by Red to Mrs. Emily Watkins, who was forty-eight, and had worked for fifteen years in the Credit Department of Goldblatt amp; Sons before deciding, three years before, that she could make more money on the floor, on a small salary plus commission, than she could at her desk. She had asked Young Mr. Sam for a chance to try, and to his surprise, she had done very well, probably, he had finally decided, because women did most of the buying of washers and driers and other appliances, and probably trusted another woman more than they would a man.
Mrs. Watkins led Mr. Estivez up the stairs to the second floor, and then to the rear of the building, where the washer-driers were on display. She was not nearly as enthusiastic about her chances to make a sale to her potential customer as Mr. Katz had been about his. She had been in the credit business a long time, and had a feel for who would have credit and who wouldn't. Mr. Estivez did not strike her as the kind of man who held a steady job. But on the other hand, he might have hit his number or something and might have the cash.
In a similar manner, over the next twenty minutes, seven more potential customers pushed open the door from South Street into Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc., were greeted by Red Monahan and turned over to a member of the sales force.
One of them, the third to come in the store, was a woman. She was later identified as Doris M. (Mrs. Harold) Martin, fifty-two, of East Hagert Street in Kensington. She had come in to look at carpet for her upstairs corridor and bedrooms after having seen the Goldblatt amp; Sons advertisement in that day'sDaily News. Red Monahan introduced Mrs. Martin to Mrs. Irene Dougherty, who took her by elevator to the third floor.
The other six people to come in were all men. Two of them wore clothing suggesting they were either Muslims or at least had some connection with an African culture. All of them were, according to the race codification then in use by the Philadelphia Police Department, Negroid. Two of them, however, had such pale skin pigmentation that there was some question whether they were 'really colored' or 'maybe Puerto Rican or Mexican, or something like that.'
The last of the six men to enter the store, at approximately 1:32 P.M., described as a 'black male, approximately six feet tall, thirty years of age, and weighing approximately one hundred seventy-five pounds,' was wearing a 'dark blue, waist-length woolen jacket similar in appearance to the U.S. Navy pea coat.'
Immediately upon entering Goldblatt amp; Sons, this suspect, subsequently identified as Kenneth H. Dome, aka 'King,' aka Hussein El Baruca, turned and began to bolt the door shut.
'Hey, friend,' Red Monahan asked as he walked up to him, 'what are you doing?'
'Shut your face, motherfucker!' Hussein El Baruca replied, simultaneously drawing a large, blue in color, large-caliber semiautomatic pistol (probably a Colt Model 1911 or 1911A1.45-caliber service pistol) and pointing it at Red Monahan.
'Hey, you don't really want to do this-' Red Monahan said, whereupon Hussein El Baruca struck him, with a slashing backward motion of his right arm, in the face with the pistol, with sufficient force to knock him down and, it was subsequently learned, to cause a crack in Mr. Monahan's full upper denture.
Then he raised the pistol to a nearly vertical position and fired it three times. One of the bullets struck a fluorescent lighting fixture on the ceiling, smashing a bulb, which caused broken glass and then a cloud of powder, from the interior coating of the bulb, to float down from the ceiling. Then, the fixture itself tore loose at one end, causing a short-circuit in the wiring. There was a flash of light, and then that entire line of lighting fixtures, one of two running from the front of the store to the rear, went off, reducing the light on the ground floor by half.
'On your fucking bellies or I'll blow your fucking heads off!' Hussein El Baruca ordered.
The three salespeople, two men and a woman, waiting for customers in the living-room suite, and Red Monahan complied with the order. The woman crossed herself, and her lips moved in prayer as she got onto her knees and then laid on the floor.
Hussein El Baruca then turned back to the double doors and closed the Venetian blinds on them. There was a large display window on either side of the entrance. A complete bedroom set was on display in one window, and a complete bedroom set in the other. The 'walls' behind the furniture in each window blocked the view of the interior of the store to passersby, and with the blinds on the doors now closed, there was no way anyone on South Street could look into Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc.
The sound of the three pistol shots fired by Hussein El Baruca was muffled somewhat by the upholstered furniture on the ground floor, and because the store was open from the front to the rear, where the Credit Department was located. But it was loud enough to be heard on the second floor, where it was correctly interpreted by Hector Carlos Estivez as the signal he had been expecting.
He took what was probably a Smith amp; Wesson Military amp; Police.38 Special caliber revolver from where he had concealed it in the small of his back, held it in both hands at arm's length, and fired two shots at the glass viewing port of a Hotpoint drier that was sitting on the floor approximately six feet from him, and two feet to the left of Mrs. Emily Watkins.
Mrs. Watkins yelped and covered her mouth with both hands.
Hector Carlos Estivez when he saw that he missed the glass viewing port with one of his shots, and that the second had cracked but not smashed or penetrated the glass, said, 'Shit!' and fired a third time. This time the thick, tempered glass of the viewing port broke.
'On the floor, bitch!' Hector Carlos Estivez said, and Mrs. Watkins, now whimpering, dropped to her knees and then spread herself on the floor.
The shots from Estivez's revolver were audible to Abu Ben Mohammed on the third floor, where Phil Katz was explaining to him that trying to get by with bottom-of-the-line cheap carpet was really not economy at all.
'It's just like tires,' Mr. Katz was saying, 'what you're really buying is wear. You- What the hell was that?'
'You're being robbed, motherfucker, that's what it is,' Abu Ben Mohammed said, taking a large-caliber, single-action, Western-style revolver with plastic 'pearl' grips from beneath his dashiki. He pushed the hammer back, cocking the pistol, and then fired at a threefoot-tall, stainless-steel cigarette receptacle that had been placed beside the elevator door.
A hole appeared near the top of the receptacle, which then slowly tilted to one side, as if in a slow-motion picture, and then fell, dislodging a sand-filled glass tray, which shattered upon striking the metal elevator threshold.
'Jesus H. Christ!' Phil Katz said.
'Lay down on the floor,' Abu Ben Mohammed ordered.
'What?'
'On the fucking floor, you heard me.'
'Yes, sir.'
The executive offices of Goldblatt amp; Sons Credit Furniture amp; Appliances, Inc., those of Mr. Samuel
