Sleepers

ONE

Hell's Kitchen had changed. The streets were no longer swept daily and graffiti marred many of the buildings. A scattering of low-income high-rises had replaced stretches of run-down tenements, and storefronts now needed riot gates to guard against the night. Many of the Irish and Italians tenants had left the area, heading for the safer havens of Queens and Long Island, and the Eastern Europeans had deserted the neighborhood altogether, moving to Brooklyn and New Jersey. Replacing them were a larger number of Hispanics and a mixture of uptown blacks and recent island immigrants. In addition to these groups, young middle-class couples, flush with money arrived, buying and renovating a string of tenements. The young and rich even set about changing the neighborhood's name. Now, they called it Clinton.

The old order was in turmoil, guns and drugs replacing gambling and stolen goods as the criminals' best route to a fast dollar. Cocaine use was rampant and dealers dotted the area, openly selling on corners and out of parked cars. Residents fell asleep most nights to the sounds of police sirens. There were many gangs, but the deadliest was Irish and numbered close to forty sworn members.

They called themselves the West Side Boys and they controlled the Hell's Kitchen drug trade. The deadliest gang to invade the neighborhood since the Pug Uglies, the West Side Boys would do anything for money, both within and the area beyond. They hired themselves out to the Italian mob as assassins; they hijacked trucks and fenced the stolen goods; they shook down shopkeepers for protection money; they swapped cocaine and heroin with uptown dealers for cash and then returned to shoot the dealers dead and reclaim their money. Heavily fueled by drugs and drink, the West Side Boys considered no crime beyond their scope.

They even had their own style of dress – black leather jackets, black shirts and jeans. In winter, they wore black woolen gloves with the tips cut off. They also left their signature on every body they discarded: bullets through the head, heart, hands and legs. Those they didn't want found were hacked up and scattered throughout the five boroughs of New York City.

Hell's Kitchen was not alone in the changes affecting its streets. Similar sounds of violence and decay were being heard in cities and neighborhoods throughout the country. In Atlanta, a serial killer was still on the loose, preying on young black children. Eleven people were crushed to death at a Who concert in Cinci

During all these changes, a few familiar faces remained. King Be

Time had not mellowed Fat Mancho, either. He still stood in front of his bodega, snarling and screaming at all who passed. But time had also brought him another wife, a new Social Security number, one more apartment and another monthly disability check.

Bars and restaurants still dotted the neighborhood, though many were new, designed to draw an uptown clientele. But the best establishments were old and frayed, and among them, the Shamrock Pub on West 48th Street, with the sweetest Irish soda bread in town, was the finest place to eat in Hell's Kitchen. It was a joint that kept true to the past, where a local could run a tab, place a bet and even spend the night on a cot in the back. It was also a place where a secret could still be kept.

The Shamrock Pub was unusually crowded for a late Thursday night. Two men in outdated suits, ties undone, sat at the center of a wooden bar that ran the length of the restaurant, each clutching a sweaty Rob Roy, arguing about the economic policies of President Jimmy Carter. An old, raw-faced Irishman in a heavy wool coat sat at the far end of the bar, nursing his third beer, pointedly ignoring their conversation.

Five leather booths faced the bar, each positioned next to a window and lit by lanterns hanging overhead. Four circular tables, draped with white tablecloths, lined the rear wall. Framed photos of champion racehorses hung above them, along with tranquil Irish settings and a color portrait of the restaurant's original owner, a sour-looking Dubliner named Dusty McTweed.

The Shamrock Pub was a neighborhood institution, known to all who lived or worked on the West Side. It catered to an odd assortment of locals, publishing types with a taste for ale, beat cops with a thirst, tourists and, in recent years, to the volatile members of the West Side Boys.

A young couple sat at one of the tables, their backs to the bar, holding hands, a half-empty bottle of white wine between them. Another couple, older, more friends than lovers, sat in a front booth, their attention fixed on their well-done lamb chops and second basket of Irish soda bread.

Two waitresses in their early twenties, wearing short black skirts and white blouses, stood against a side wall, smoking and talking in whispers. They were actresses and roommates, earning enough in tips to pay the rent on a third-floor Chelsea walk-up. One was divorced, the other had a relationship with a long-haul trucker with a drinking problem.

There was one other customer in the restaurant.

A chunky man in his late thirties sat in the last booth. He smoked a cigarette and drank a glass of beer while the meal in front of him cooled. He had ordered the day's special – meat loaf and brown gravy, mashed potatoes and steamed spinach. He had asked for a side order of pasta, which was served with ca

The man had long, thick blond hair that covered his ears and touched the collar of his frayed blue work shirt. His face was sharp and unlined, his eyes blue and distant. The shirt of his uniform was partly hidden by a blue zippered jacket with Randall Security patches on both arms. A.357 magnum revolver was shoved into his gun belt. A small pinky ring decorated his right hand.

Putting out the cigarette in an ashtray lodged between the glass salt shaker and a tin sugar ca

Outside, a crisp fall wind rattled the windows. The overhead sky threatened rain.

It was eight-fifteen in the evening, less than a week before the Presidential election.

At eight twenty-five p.m., two young men walked through the glass and wood doors. They were both dressed in black leather jackets, black crew shirts and black jeans. One was bone-thin, with dark curly hair framing his wide, handsome face. He wore black gloves, the fingers on each cut to the knuckle, and a pork-pie hat with the brim curved up. He had a half-pint of bourbon stuffed in one back pocket of his jeans and three grams of coke in a cigarette case in the other. He was smoking a Vantage and was the first one through the door.

The second young man was heftier, his black jeans tight around his waist, the open black leather jacket revealing the bulk of his neck and shoulders. His mouth was hard at work on a wad of chewing tobacco. He wore a longshoreman's watch cap atop his light brown hair. His calf-length black boots had a fresh spit shine and he walked into the tavern favoring his right leg, damaged in childhood.