Manhattan Is My Beat

didn’t know anything about making it. Maybe he’d take that up as a hobby too—in addition to gardening. Home brewing. He was fifty-six. Too young for retirement from the financial services and accounting profession—but, after the RICO trial, he was definitely going to be retired from now on.
    “Clear,” came the radio voice from the hallway.
    Son Two disappeared out the door.
    Gittleman lay back and watched the movie. Janet Leigh was on screen now. He’d always had a crush on her. Was still pissed at Hitchcock for killing her in the shower. Gittleman liked women with short hair.
    Smelling the spring air.
    Thinking about a sandwich.
    Pastrami on rye.
    And a pickle.
    Feeling safe.
    Thinking: the Marshals Service was doing a good job at making sure he stayed that way. The rooms on either side of this one had adjoining doors but they’d been bolted shut and the rooms were unoccupied; the U.S. government actually paid for all three rooms. The hallway was covered by the marshal near the elevator. The nearest shooting position a sniper could find was two miles away, across the Mississippi River, and Son One— the
Guns & Ammo
subscriber—had told him there was nobody in the universe who could make a shot like that.
    Feeling comfortable.
    Thinking that tomorrow he’d be on his way to California, with a new identity. There’d be some plastic surgery. He’d be safe. The people who wanted to kill him would eventually forget about him.
    Relaxing.
    Letting himself get lost in the movie with Moses and Janet Leigh.
    It was really a great film. The very opening scene was somebody setting the hands of the timer on a bomb to three minutes and twenty seconds. Then planting it. Welles had made one continuous shot for that exact amount of time, until the bomb went off, setting the story in motion.
    Talk about building the suspense.
    Talk about—
    Wait….
    What was that?
    Gittleman glanced out the window. He sat up slightly.
    Outside the window was … What
was
that?
    It seemed like a small box of some sort. Sitting on the window ledge. Connected to it was a thin wire, which ran upward and disappeared out of view. As if somebody’d lowered the little box from the room above.
    Because of the movie—the opening scene—his first thought was that the box was a bomb. But now, as he lunged forward, he saw that, no, it looked like a camera, a small video camera.
    He rolled off the bed, walked to the window. Looked at the box closely.
    Yep. That’s what it was. A camera.
    “Arnie, you know the drill,” Son One said. Because he was heavy he sweated a lot and he sweated now. He wiped his face. “Stay away from the windows.”
    “But … what’s that?” Gittleman pointed.
    The marshal dropped the magazine to the floor, rose, and stepped to the window.
    “A video camera?” Gittleman asked.
    “Well, it looks like it. It does. Yeah.”
    “Is it … But it’s not yours, is it?”
    “No,” the marshal muttered, frowning. “We don’t have surveillance outside.”
    The marshal glanced at the thin cable that disappeared up, presumably to the room above them. His eyes continued upward until they came to rest on the ceiling.
    “Shit!” he said, reaching for his radio.
    The first cluster of bullets from the silenced machine gun tore through the plaster above them and ripped into Son One, who danced like a puppet. He dropped to the floor, bloody and torn. Shivering as he died.
    “No!” Gittleman cried. “Jesus,
no
!”
    He leapt toward the phone. A stream of bullets followed him; upstairs the killer would be watching on the video camera, knowing exactly where Gittleman was.
    Gittleman pressed himself flat against the wall. The gunman fired another shot. A single. It was close. Then two more. Inches away. Teasing him, it seemed like. Nobody would hear. The only sound was the cracking of plaster and wood.
    More shots followed him as he dodged toward the bathroom. Debris flew around him. There was a pause. He hoped the killer had given up and fled. But it turned out that he was after the phone—so Gittleman couldn’t call for help. Two bullets cracked through the ceiling, hit the beige telephone unit, and shattered it into a hundred pieces.
    “Help!” he cried, nauseated with fear. But, of course, the rooms on either side of this one were empty—a fact so reassuring a few moments ago, so horrifying now.
    Tears of fright in his eyes …
    He rolled into a corner, knocked a lamp over to darken the room.
    More bullets