Manhunt. Volume 4, Number 7, July 1956

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I sipped a weak highball in which the whiskey, on my instructions, had been measured with an eye-dropper. Getting drunk was the last thing I wanted, now or ever. I was watching Hirsch. Eliot ‘Whitey’ Hirsch. I had been studying him for a month and he didn’t know. He may have missed me because I didn’t look like a cop.

I was sleepy but I wouldn’t doze off. I couldn’t. I’d straighten up with a jerk, come out of it with my eyes wide and staring. I had to get Hirsch and the others.

He had changed in a year. Then he had been a cheap callous punk of twenty-one. Now he was twenty-two.

For one thing his clothes were better. I got the idea he was laying off thrill jobs, leaving them for beginners. Now he was concentrating on profit. He looked prosperous.

He was handsome, if you were able to discount what was behind his face. His teeth were white and strong. I wondered what he sharpened them on. He was very blond and would have been even without help from the sun which had bleached his hair so that his brows were platinum against the tan and the sun-freckles beneath the tan. He was big and knew how to use his strength, but not where. He didn’t deserve to live.

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