Mile High (47 page)

The dog turned at the end of the hall and doubled back. West had pulled himself into fanatic energy. The dog halted outside Willie Tobin's apartment and began to bark.

Mayra heard the key slide into the lock. She stood erect in the center of the room. There was no place to go. She waited for him. The door crashed open. He careened into the room, his face greenish-white. He lifted the poker over his head and ran at her. Then he fell. The poker rolled out of his hand. She ran to him and rolled him on his back to help him breathe. He stared at her. His eye could move. He was alive. He could see her.

She leaned closer to him. “Blink once for yes, and twice for no,” she said. “Can you move?”

The eyes blinked twice.

“Can you talk?”

The eyes blinked once, feebly. There was a rustling sound from his throat as he tried to speak. She came still closer and put her ear just above his lips. “
Volevo essere un ballerino
” he said to her.

Acknowledgments

The writer acknowledges with appreciation and gratitude his indebtedness to the authors of the following books, who are historians of the events leading to and coming after the Eighteenth U.S. Constitutional Amendment:

K
ENNETH
A
LSOP
The Bootleggers and Their Era
(Doubleday, 1961)

H
ERBERT
A
SBURY
The Great Illusion
(Doubleday, 1950)

A
LFRED
C
ONNABLE
and E
DWARD
S
ILBERFARB
Tigers of Tammany
(Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967)

V
IRGINIA
C
OWLES
1913: The Defiant Swan Song
(Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1967)

K. G
UNTER
Prohibition
(Walter Neale, 1931)

J
OHN
A
LLEN
K
ROUT
The Origins of Prohibition
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1925)

A
NDREW
S
INCLAIR
Prohibition, the Era of Excess
(Little, Brown, 1962)

C
RAIG
T
HOMPSON
and A
LLEN
R
AYMOND
Gang Rule in New York:
The Story of a Lawless Era (The Dial Press, 1940)

C
LARENCE
T
RUE
W
ILSON
and D
EETS
P
ICKETT
The Case for Prohibition
(Funk & Wagnalls, 1923)

Special acknowledgment is made to Norman Lewis,
The Honored Society
(Collins, London, 1964)

About the Author

Richard Condon was born in New York City. He worked in the movie business for more than twenty years before beginning to write fiction in his forties. The author of twenty-six books, he is best remembered for
The Manchurian Candidate
and four novels about the Prizzis, a family of New York gangsters. Condon passed away in 1996.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1969 by Richard Condon

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2774-8

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