No Lesser Plea

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Two men were leaning against the yellow Firebird talking quietly, ignoring the street life around them. The two men were professional criminals and they were plotting a crime. They were in upper Manhattan, on a mean street, one of the poor ones that smell like a barbecue party held in a garbage dump. It was noisy in the early twilight, with the shrieking of kids at play or in pain, and the contributions from half a dozen different radios drifting or blasting from the windows of parked cars or apartments. Frightened old men hurried home as the shadows deepened, past groups of idlers, past junkies, past staggering drunks, past poor folks chatting on steps and crates. It was late spring in New York, the first really mild day of the year, when New Yorkers are able to forget the hideous reality of both winter and summer in that city.

“We gonna use this car?” said the younger of the two. His name was Preston Elvis, twenty years old, recently out of Attica, where he did time on an armed robbery charge, thus making him a real man in his social circles.

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