As I ran, slivers of red onions flew off the top of the hot dog, dotting my cheek and the front of my white T-shirt. I cut past the P.A.L. entrance and turned the corner at 50th Street.
He was close on me, arms and legs moving in their own furied rhythm, the fork still gripped in one hand, his breath coming in measured spurts.
'Pay my money, thief!' he shouted after me. 'Pay my money now!
Michael, John and Tommy were on their second hot dogs, leaning casually against the side of the cart, faces turned to the sun.
'How long you think he'll be?' John asked, wiping brown mustard from his lower lip.
'Shakes or the hot dog guy?' Michael asked.
'You got one, you got the other,' Tommy said. 'That guy looked pissed enough to kill.'
'Gotta catch him to kill him,' John said. 'Don't worry.'
'These things are heavier than they look,' Michael said, standing now, hands gripping the cart's wooden handles.
'The heavy shit's underneath,' Tommy said. 'Where nobody can see it.'
'What heavy shit?' John asked.
'The gas tanks,' Tommy said. 'The stuff that keeps the food hot. Or maybe you thought the sun made the water boil.'
'Think we can push it?' Michael asked. 'The three of us?'
'Push it where?' John asked.
'Couple of blocks away,' Michael said. 'Be a nice surprise for the guy when he gets back from chasing Shakes not to find his cart.'
'What if somebody takes it?' Tommy said.
'You gotta be pretty dumb to steal a hot dog cart,' Michael said.
'Ain't we doin' that?' John asked.
'We're just moving it,' Michael said. 'Making sure nobody else steals it.'
'So, we're helpin' the guy out,' Tommy said.
'Now you're listening,' Michael said.
The vendor tired at 52nd Street and 12th Avenue.
He was bent over, hands on his knees, the fork long since discarded, face flushed, his mouth open and hungry for breath. I was on the other side of the street, against a tenement doorway, hair and body washed in sweat. My hands were still greasy from the hot dog I held for most of the run.
I looked over at the vendor and found him staring back at me, anger still visible, his hands now balled up and punching at his sides. He was beat but not beaten. He could go ten minutes more just on hate alone. I decided against a run toward the piers, choosing instead to double back and head for neighborhood safety. By now, I figured, the guys should have downed enough hot dogs and sodas to satisfy Babe Ruth's appetite.
I took three deep breaths and started running toward 51st Street, traffic moving behind me. I turned my head and looked back at the vendor, his body in the same position as it was a block earlier. I slowed when I reached the corner and allowed myself a smile, content that the chase, while not over, had drifted to my favor.
If I got to the cart fast enough I might even have time for a hot dog.
Michael, John and Tommy were standing at the corner of 50th Street and Ninth Avenue, tired from having pushed the cart up the one long block. They stopped in front of a florist, a short woman, her hair in a bun, clipping stems from a handful of roses, watching them with curiosity.
'Let's have a soda,' John said, sliding open the aluminum door and plunging a hand into dark, icy water. 'A Dr. Brown sounds about right.'
'I'll take a cream,' Tommy said.
John handed Tommy a sweaty can of soda. 'How about you, Mikey?'
'I don't want anything,' Michael said, looking down the street, arms across his chest.
'What's wrong?' Tommy asked, taking a slurp from his soda.
'Shakes is taking too long,' Michael said. 'He should've been back by now.'
I stopped at the light at 51st Street and 10th Avenue and looked for my friends and the hot dog cart.
The vendor was one avenue down, running again at a full pace, his stride seemingly stronger than ever. I bent over to tie my laces and caught a glimpse of him.
'Give it up,' I whispered. 'Let it go.'
I stood and continued to run, this time toward Ninth Avenue. My sides hurt and my legs were starting to cramp. I was light-headed, my throat dry and my lungs heavy. I ran past Printing High School, the yard empty except for two rummies drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, thinking of ways to score their first drink of the day. I dodged past a heavy-set woman tugging a shopping wagon piled with groceries and jumped two garbage can lids tossed to the side by a passing sanitation crew.
Then, halfway up the block, the vendor still on my trail, I saw the hot dog cart being pushed toward Eighth Avenue by my friends. They were hunched low and moving easy, walking within the shadows of the arches of the old Madison 'Square Garden, as calm and steady as if they were out walking a dog.
The vendor saw them too.
'Stop them!' he shouted, not breaking stride. 'Stop them! Stop the thieves!'
In a neighborhood where silence in the face of crime is a virtue and blindness a necessity, no one moved.
I ran as fast as burnt lungs and tired legs would permit and reached my three friends as they went past a poster announcing the much-heralded rematch between World Wrestling Federation champion Bruno Sammartino and challenger Gorilla Moonsoon.
'You're only supposed to take the hot dogs,' I said when I got to them, my hands holding a side of the cart. 'Not the wagon.'
'Now you tell us,' John said.
'Just leave it here,' I panted. 'You guys are lookin' to push somethin', push me. I can't take another step.'
'No, not here,' Michael said, pointing to our right. 'Up there. Over by the subway station.'
'The guy's comin' fast, Mikey,' John said. 'I don't think we got time to make it to the subway.'
'I got a plan,' Michael said.
I turned around and saw the vendor gaining on us by the second. 'I'm sure he's got one too,' I said, helping to lift the cart onto the sidewalk, toward the top step of the IRT subway station.
'I don't even like hot dogs,' John said.
The plan, as it turned out, was as simple and as dumb as anything we had ever done. We were to hold the cart on the top edge of the stairwell, leaning it downward, and wait for the vendor. We were to let go the second he grabbed the handles and leave the scene as he struggled to ease the cart back onto the sidewalk.
To this day, I don't know why we did it. But we would all pay a price. Everyone. All it took was a minute, but in that minute everything changed.
People who've been shot always recall the incident as if it happened to them in slow motion and that's how I'll always remember those final seconds with the hot dog cart. The action around me moved at quarter speed and the background was nothing but haze – quick hands, fleeing legs, scattered bodies, all shaped in dark, nasty blurs.
That moment arrived for me and my friends on a day and time when Mickey Mantle was crossing the plate with a home run we would have all been proud to witness.
Michael held the cart the longest, his arms bulging at the strength needed to keep it from falling down the steps. John had slipped on his side, his back against the station's wooden banister, both hands sliced by the wooden handles. Tommy fell to his knees, desperately grabbing at one of the wheels, his knees scraping concrete. I held both my hands to the base of the umbrella stand, grip tight, splashes of hot water showering my arms and face.
The vendor was a few feet behind us, on his knees, his hands spread out across his face, his eyes visible.
'It's not gonna hold!' Tommy said, the wheel slipping from his grip.
'Let it go,' Michael said.
'Don't stop now!' I said. 'We can't stop now!'
'Let it go, Shakes,' Michael urged, his voice a surrender to the inevitable. 'Let it go.'
Watching the cart tumble down the stairs was as painful as trying to keep it from going down. The noise was loud, numbing and eerie, two cars colliding on an empty street. Hot dogs, onions, sodas, ice, napkins and sauerkraut jumped out in unison, splattering against the sides of the stairwell, bouncing and smacking the front of a Florida vacation poster. One of the rear wheels flew off halfway down the landing. The umbrella stand split against the base of the stair wall.