Police are searching for a suspect in the shooting death of a man early yesterday in front of the Williams Club in Manhattan, police officials said.

Charles Ross, 29, was slain at about 7:30 a.m. as he and two coworkers were making their way to the subway after an overnight shift at a printing company in Midtown, police said. Investigators believe the suspect, who confronted the men steps from the club at 24 E. 39th St., was an acquaintance of Ross and that the attack may have been premeditated.

The suspect, who was said to have been wearing a sweatshirt with a hood that concealed the periphery of his face, sneaked up behind the three men and engaged Ross in a shouting match before brandishing a silver handgun, the companions told police.

Ross and the suspect traded another round of barbs, and moments later the suspect opened fire, shooting Ross once in the neck, police said.

At the time of the shooting, family members said, Ross was wearing a diamond-encrusted cross necklace, leading investigators to believe that because the jewelry wasn’t found during an inventory of the body, the suspect likely pilfered it before fleeing west on 39th Street.

Ross, who lived in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, did not have a criminal record, police sources said. He and his two companions worked at a company on 39th Street near Fifth Avenue that specializes in creating legal documents, the Darcel Group, the sources said.