The first time I stayed overnight in New York City I was on assignment, reporting on cigarette smuggling for The News & Observer. The Mafia was buying truckloads of cigarettes in North Carolina, where the state tax was only two cents a pack, and then smuggling them into New York City and other high tax jurisdictions up North and selling them under the table.
I had never ridden a subway and I didn’t know that it was a lot easier to get around in Manhattan than it was in Raleigh. So I decided to stay at a hotel within walking distance of my first appointment — that would solve one problem.
The hotel I picked, on 42nd Street near Times Square, was in a rough neighborhood. You know how I knew? The cops didn’t go out walking by themselves — and they were carrying guns. They patrolled 42nd Street in pairs.
My hotel, it turned out, was a one-star, if that.
They turned over chairs in the lobby at night to get rid of the free-loaders. Stuff they had for sale, magazines, candy bars, razors, was inside a fenced off area, padlocked at night. And there were four locks on the door of my room.
Makes you wonder, don’t it, why it was necessary to have four locks.
One morning, as I was leaving the hotel, walking down the front steps to the street, a young woman who did not look like the girl next door and an older man were coming up the steps. She was leading him, maybe “tugging” him is more like it.
As they passed I heard her say, “Oh, come on. You’ll like it.”
Coming Monday: An Unfair Advantage