Harry Strauss was frustrated.
Strauss, better known to his chums as "Pep" or "Pittsburgh Phil," was on a contract job in Jacksonville, Florida but the bum he was supposed to take out wasn't making it easy.
A fashion conscious man who always traveled with a clean shirt and spent an hour with his barber each morning, Pep had flown down from New York at the request of the Florida mob to take care of a wiseguy who had been causing some problems for the underworld. Phil had been told by his local contacts that it would be an easy job.
"He comes out of his house same time every day," the local hoodlum who met Pep's plane told him. "You're lucky, it's an easy pop."
But Phil wasn't convinced. There was no escape route; no hot getaway car; no plan. The man left his house at the same time each day, sure, but it was 11 o'clock in the morning and his house was on a busy street.
"These guys are farmers," he said to himself after dismissing the local hood. They had no idea how an artist like Pittsburgh Phil liked to work. After all, wasn't he the guy who had mugged Harry Sage with an icepick and dumped his body in an upstate New York lake? And wasn't he the one who had buried Meyer Shapiro, the boss of the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, while Meyer was still alive?
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