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第一扇门就在下面。我用钥匙把门打开，然后很轻松的用撬锁工具把（第二个）大门（gate）打开。我们沿着十五英尺的走廊走了进去，穿过第二扇门和大门，我们走进了食堂。在食堂的另一端，我们不得不走下楼梯，在楼梯脚下再打开两把锁——另一扇百叶门和一扇大门——然后进入地窖。那是一个L形的地窖，你必须急转弯，穿过制冷设备的后部，到达了那扇大钢门。
在我们转弯之前，我们听到了有人在四处走动（的声音）。一个模范犯人蹲在那里的一张工作台上。这件事情不在计划范围内。但是，他同样也没有想到我们会在这里出现。我在他身后溜过去，把胳膊搂在他的脖子上。
“完全按照我说的去做，”我说，“否则我就杀死你。”然后我告诉他我们在越狱。你永远不知道在监狱里会有什么敌人，所以，我不想让他误以为我们的目标是他。当他一旦明白发生了什么事情时，他不仅仅告诉我们梯子存放在哪里，还帮助我们把它们捆在一起，然后把它们带到出口处。为了保护他，我们松松地把他捆起来。为了保护我们自己，我们让他答应在“挣脱”和发出警报之前，给我们尽可能多的时间。
还有一扇看上去笨重的钢门要处理。但是，你知道，不管一扇门看上去有多令人害怕，当你给它安装一把锁，你要处理的就是那把锁。这一点也不难对付，用我的撬锁工具摆弄几下，我就把它打开了。
虽然探照灯照在院子里，远比我想象的要亮的多，但塔楼本身却一直保持黑暗。他们不希望任何人都能抬头看警卫在做什么。我们不得不相信那个模范囚犯的话，后塔是空的。我唯一能确定的是，向上看，那些塔楼周围的有栏杆的步行小路都是空的（没有人）。因为离两边的塔都不远，所以我们只能指望那边的狱警普遍缺乏警惕。整夜坐在黑暗的塔里是一件痛苦的工作，这或多或少是一种惩罚，没有人愿意做。没有灯光，他们就无法阅读。他们除了每隔20分钟左右打电话到主办公室让他们知道他们还醒着外，什么也做不了。
我们尽可能地低着身子，走了四十英尺左右，把梯子推到墙上，甚至更加小心翼翼地把梯子搭在塔楼上。屏住呼吸，我向上爬，每一步都觉得机关枪会开火。到了塔楼上，幸运的是那里有根挂在铁轨上的绳子，是日班用来从地面吊运货物的。下到地面时，我们不必冒着扭伤脚踝或什么的最后的风险。为了确保铁轨不会因为我们的重量而坍塌，我们在下楼之前，我把绳子完全缠绕在塔楼周围。
一落到地面，我就手脚并用地爬到陡峭的山坡上，它离马路还有大约100码，当我们离马路20码左右的时候，我能辨认出我在那儿等候的别克车的轮廓，确切地说是它应该在那里。在那一刻，一种超越了我以前所有经历的狂喜感觉笼罩了我全身。这自由和逃出生天的感觉如此强烈，就好像我可以展开翅膀飞翔一样。我感觉好极了，像《一家之主》（美国动画情景喜剧）一样站了起来，低头看着探照灯和沉睡中的监狱全景。然后我做了一些非常幼稚的事。我握了握拳头，对自己说：“我赢了，你这混蛋！”然后我们跑上车，听到汽车马达启动的声音。
Louise在我到了SingSing监狱一周后过来见过我。我告诉她，如果我的上诉不成功，我确信我能够买到赦免，这种想法在我回去成为罪犯时就已经在我的脑海中浮现。早在我在纽约的早期，当Al Smith是州长时，每个人都这么做。Smith在他工作的阶段并没有太多钱，而且每当离开这个州时，他的副州长就卖出成百的赦免。就这样，他们早已经决定这样做了。在史密斯首次担任州长期间，发布了比该州历史上任何时候都更多的赦免。
时代变了，Vitale告诉我。没有人比他知道的更多。Seabury委员会把所有人都吓跑了。罗斯福是州长，罗斯福是个有钱人，而且想入主白宫。钱没有用了，而且你也无法在其他人身上花钱获得影响。Vitale建议我老实呆在里面，希望罗斯福成为总统。等待Albany（奥尔巴尼）（美国纽约州的首府）的变化，或早或晚，Tammany会回来重新掌权，在那时，我知道，问题会成为：我要付多少钱？那时的答案是：不够。除非我在外面，我才能挣到钱。
原文：
140-141
The first door was right at the bottom. It opened to the key, and the gate yielded very easily to my picklocks. Down the fifteen-foot corridor we went, through the second door and gate, and we were into the mess hall. At the other end of the mess hall, we had to go down a stairway and take two more locks at the foot of the staircase—another blind door and a gate—to get into the cellar. It was an L-shaped cellar; you had to make a sharp turn and pass through the back section where the refrigerating plant was installed in order to get to the big steel door.
Before we got to the turn, we could hear somebody moving around. An inmate was bent over a work table back there, a trusty. That was something I hadn’t planned on. But, then, he hadn’t exactly planned on having us drop in on him, either. I slipped up behind him and threw my arm around his neck.
“You will do exactly what I tell you to do,” I said. “Or I will kill you.” And then I told him that it was an escape. You never know what enemies a man might have in prison, see, and I didn’t want him to get any wrong ideas that it was him we were after. Once he understood what was happening, he not only showed us where the ladders were stored, he helped us to lash them together and carry them to the exit. In order to protect him, we then tied him up.
Loosely. In order to protect ourselves, we made him promise to give us as much time as he felt he could before “breaking loose” and sounding the alert.
There was still the steel door to be dealt with, and it was a ponderouslooking thing. But, you know, it doesn’t matter how formidable a door may look, when you put a lock into it, it’s still the same lock. And it wasn’t that formidable at all. A couple of manipulations of my picklocks and I had it.
Although the searchlights lit the yard up far more than I had thought possible, the towers themselves are always kept dark. They don’t want anybody to be able to look up there and see what the guards are doing. We had to take the trusty’s word that the rear tower was empty. The only thing I could be sure of, looking up, was that the railed catwalks surrounding the towers were empty. Since the towers on either side of it weren’t that far away, we also had to count on a general lack of alertness on the part of the guards there. Sitting all night in a dark tower is a miserable job; it’s more or less punishment duty, nobody wants it. With no lights, they can’t read. They can’t do much of anything except call in to the main office every twenty minutes or so to let them know they’re still awake.
Crouching as low as we could, we pushed the ladder along the forty feet or so to the wall and, even more gingerly, raised it up to the tower. Barely breathing, I started up, expecting the machine-gun fire to start every step of the way. Up in the tower, we got lucky. Right there, hooked to the rail, was the rope which the day shift used to hoist their supplies from the ground. We weren’t going to have to run the final risk of spraining an ankle or something while dropping to the ground. To make sure the rail wouldn’t collapse under our weight, I wrapped the rope completely around the tower before we lowered ourselves down.
A second after I hit the ground I was scrambling up the steep hill, practically on my hands and knees. It was about a hundred yards to the road, and when we were about twenty yards away I could make out the silhouette of my Buick waiting there, exactly where it was supposed to be. At that moment, a feeling of exhilaration came over me beyond anything I had ever experienced before. A feeling of freedom and release that was so strong it was as if I could spread out my wings and fly. I felt so good that I stood up, like the King of the Hill, and looked down on the searchlights and the general panoramic view of the sleeping prison. And then I did something very childish. I shook my fist at it and I said to myself, I beat you, you bastards! And then we were running for the car, and I could hear the motor starting up.
Louise had come up to visit me in Sing Sing a week after I arrived. I told her that if my appeal didn’t come through I was sure I’d be able to buy a pardon, a thought that had been in the back of my mind from the time I’d gone back to being a criminal. Back in my early days in New York, when Al Smith was governor, everybody was doing it. Smith didn’t have too much money at that stage of his career, and whenever he was out of the state it seemed as if his lieutenant governor was issuing them by the hundreds. That’s the way, it seemed, they had decided to work it. During Smith’s first term as governor, there were probably more pardons issued than at any other time in the history of the state.
The times had changed, Vitale told me. As who should know better than he. The Seabury Commission had frightened everybody off. Roosevelt was governor, and Roosevelt was a rich man with his eyes on the White House.
Money wouldn’t do it, and you couldn’t buy that kind of influence from anybody else. All Vitale could suggest was that I sit tight, hope Roosevelt became President, wait for a couple of changes in Albany, and, sooner or later, Tammany would be back in the saddle. At which point, I knew, the question would arise: How much money did I have to put up? The answer by then would be: Not enough. Not unless I was outside where I could earn it.
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