Billy Constable moaned. A couple standing near him turned and stared.

Billy said, “What the hell you lookin’ at?”

The couple turned back to the ice skaters.

Billy wished he’d been able to pick up that ten thousand dollars they gave to the losers before he tore ass out of the building. “Better yet I wisht I’d never left home. New York City’s too big and full a too many bad people. How could a couple a hick country boys like me and Jimmy Joel survive here? I guess Jimmy Joel ain’t doin’ too badly, but he’s just—”

“Hey, putzo, too bad you didn’t win. Time to stop talkin’ to yourself an’ take a little ride.”

Billy whirled around. Sanseli’s huge henchman was standing there chewing gum, wearing his leather porkpie hat and a dark blue overcoat with its collar up. It was the guy he talked to on the telephone, the one who called him “Horse’s Mouth,” the one who sat next to him in the van. The thug had his hands in his overcoat pockets. Billy saw the dirty gray van with the one sliding door double-parked in the street across from where he and the Sanseli guy stood. Sanseli wasn’t in the van but the man named Rothberg was.

Twenty-year-old Billy Constable looked at the thug and said, “Sure,” then turned and ran east toward Fifth Avenue. Billy was fast. The out-of-shape thug lasted ten feet. Billy ran in the opposite direction the traffic was allowed to go on Forty-ninth Street, where the NBC studio’s entrance was. It was a smart move on Billy’s part. The thugs wouldn’t be able to turn their van around and chase him. They would have to go all the way around Forty-ninth Street to Sixth Avenue, turn right and go to Fiftieth Street, then come up Fiftieth Street to Fifth Avenue. What with all the traffic, that would take a while.

Billy would be long gone by then.

Billy reached Fifth Avenue and was relieved to see so many people. New York was always full of people, forever crammed with New Yorkers and tourists. It was something Billy never got used to. He was constantly amazed at the number of people crowding the streets at all hours of the day and night. Say nothing of the cars and taxis. Billy Constable had never seen so much traffic at almost nine o’clock at night. My God, thought Billy, there’d hardly be a soul on the streets at this hour in Bowling Green.

Bowling Green.

That’s where he’d go. Billy would go home. By bus. Just like he came. He’d grab the next bus out of the Port Authority terminal and go back to Bowling Green. The mob would never find him there. They don’t even know I’m from Bowling Green, thought Billy, slaloming through the pedestrians as he ran toward Park Avenue.

When I have that bus ticket in my hand I’ll be a free person!