The following day I was handcuffed and taken to an airfield, where I boarded a Douglas C-54 Skymaster with various military personnel returning home to their wives and families, and we flew north for about seven hours before we landed at Mitchell Air Force Base in Nassau County, New York. There I was handed over into the custody of the U.S. Army military police. On the main airport building was a board detailing the major units that were assigned to Mitchell AFB and a sign that read “Welcome to the United States.” It didn’t feel as if I was. Air Force handcuffs were exchanged for no-less-uncomfortable Army ones and I was shut inside a paddy wagon like a stray dog with a bad case of fleas. The wagon was windowless, but I could tell we were driving west. Having landed on America’s northeast coast, there was nowhere else for our solitary wagon train to go but west. One of the MPs was carrying a shotgun in case we ran into Red Indians or outlaws. It seemed like a wise precaution. After all, there was always the possibility that Meyer Lansky might be worried about the jam I was in; maybe even worried enough to do something about it. Lansky was thoughtful like that. He was the kind of man who always looked after his employees, one way or the other. Like all gambling men, Lansky preferred a sure thing. And there’s nothing as sure as a bullet in the head.

Ninety minutes later, the doors of the wagon opened in front of a semicircular fortress that appeared to be built on an island. The fortress was made of sandstone bricks and was about forty feet high with three stories. It was old and rather ugly and looked as if it belonged properly in old Berlin, somewhere other than New York anyway, an impression that was reinforced by the view of lower Manhattan’s much taller buildings. These stood gleaming on the opposite shore of a large expanse of water and resembled nothing so much as the walls of some modern Troy. This was my first sight of New York City, and like Tarzan I wasn’t as impressed as maybe I ought to have been. Then again, I was still wearing handcuffs.