THE GRAY (smiling affably): Oh no. Nothing like that. But I can easily see that you gentlemen don’t know a great deal about that case.
THE BLUE: You kind of got me there.
THE BROWN: Hold on now. A guy don’t have to be able to take a machine gun apart to understand a murder, and believe me it looks like the same thing here. No. All I know about the case is what come out in the papers, but there it is, just the same. You can’t get away from it. It’s here, in black and white.
THE GRAY: Boys, let me tell you something. On little stuff, stuff that nobody’s got time to fool with, anybody can make mistakes. But on big stuff, like this Capone case, the United States Government knows what it’s doing. It don’t make mistakes, and it can see a long way ahead.
THE BLUE: You with the Government?
THE GRAY: Department of Justice. Fact of the matter, I had a hand in the preparation of that case. I didn’t want any of it, but before they got through they had me in it, plenty.
THE BROWN: Funny how he pats that briefcase. I never seen a government guy pat a briefcase like that that I didn’t feel guilty of something.
THE GRAY: Ha-ha. Well, unless you stole a couple of railroads this stuff’ll never get you in any trouble.
THE BLUE: Go on with what you was saying.
THE GRAY: Oh yes, about Capone. Well now, what was this “real stuff” you wanted them to get him for?
THE BLUE: A few murders, for instance.
THE GRAY: Local authority. What else?
THE BROWN: Hold on. What was that?
THE GRAY: If he was guilty of murders, the Government has nothing to do with them. They were Chicago cases. Chicago and New York. That is, if you want to count that Brooklyn case before he came to Chicago. Government can’t touch them. What else?
THE BLUE: Why... I don’t know. Al had a hand in about every racket there was. Like... like—
THE BROWN: The milk racket. Wasn’t he in that?
THE GRAY: Local authority. What else?
THE BLUE: Well, now you’re asking me. I can’t—
THE GRAY: All right. Then I’ll tell you. The only thing the Government had on Capone was beer — outside this other. And so far as his rackets go, he only had one head and two hands and two feet, and I can tell you that most of those rackets were fairy tales. What caused the murders, what he made his money out of, what he kept a mob for, was beer. Of course, Al liked to think he was king of the earth, but when you come down to what he was king of, why it spelled B-E-E-R, and that’s all it spelled.
THE BROWN: Then what was stopping the Government for sending him up for beer stead of sending him up for not giving the Government a cut?
THE BLUE: Wait a minute. This guy has got a funny look in his eye. All right. I’ll bite. What was wrong with hanging it on him for beer?
THE GRAY: I’ll tell you. Suppose, now, they did hang it on him for beer. Suppose they got him on about five counts, and the court said consecutively, stead of concurrently, and he’s doing a stretch. He’s in for long. Now what?
THE BROWN: Well, he’s in.
THE GRAY: No he’s not. He’s out before the robins get their eggs hatched.
THE BLUE: How you figure that out?
THE GRAY: We’ve got beer, haven’t we? Or will have, any day now? Then what law did he break?
THE BROWN: The beer law. Anyway, the beer law that was.
THE GRAY: Oh, we’re not talking about the law that was. You want to keep a man in jail, you better put him there for breaking the law that is. What law, gents?
THE BLUE: You mean to tell me that soon as we got beer they’re going to let all them bootleggers out of jail?
THE GRAY: The beer bootleggers. And Capone, remember, ran beer. Soon as we get repeal, then they let all the bootleggers out.
THE BROWN: Something wrong about that. Believe me, you’ll wait a while for that. That’s one of those things that just don’t happen.
THE GRAY: It has happened.
THE BLUE: Where?
THE GRAY: For one place, California. Soon as they repealed the Wright Act out there, they had to pardon the bootleggers. Nothing else to do.
THE BROWN: In California? You mean California did that?
THE GRAY: Listen, suppose you’re a bootlegger in jail for selling liquor. They repeal the law. What do you do now? You get yourself habeas corpused into court, and you ask the court, What law did I break? And the court will turn you loose. Because that’s one principle of law that’s written right into the Constitution of the United States. You can’t put a man in jail for doing something that wasn’t against the law until after he did it, and you can’t keep him there for doing something that’s not against the law now. So the Executive branch saves the courts the trouble, that’s all.
THE BROWN: Well say, I never thought about that.
THE BLUE: Me neither.
THE GRAY: But this baby, this Capone now, this killer that ought to been fried in the chair twenty times before the Government stepped in to settle his hash — he stays. See? Oh yes. When the United States government gets ready to settle your hash, and not just play papa spank, why your hash is cooked, and it stays cooked for a while. Don’t ever fool with your Uncle Sam. You’re just monkeying with the buzz saw.
All sit for a few moments, in silent admiration for the serpentine wisdom of the federal authority. The porter appears and rubs their shoes. They rise.
THE BLUE: He gets out when they repeal the Income Tax Law. Is that it?
THE GRAY: That’s it.
THE BROWN: Haw-haw-haw-haw!
ALL: Haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw!
2. Light Fiction
Introduction
From that day in 1932 when he was laid off by Paramount Studios after his first effort to become a screenwriter, Cain considered himself a free-lance writer, although he would work intermittently for the studios and eventually earn considerable money doing it. But during his years in Hollywood (1931–1948) he supported himself as a writer, and naturally he wrote a lot of what they used to call “commercial fiction,” much of it humorous.
In 1932, after he had written his eminently successful story, “Baby in the Icebox,” for Mencken and The American Mercury, he also wrote two short stories — “The Whale, the Cluck and the Diving Venus” and “Come-Back” — which his agent tried to sell to magazines but could not. “The Whale” is about an Eastern Shore carnival hustler who manages to get a whale into a swimming pool, and then his troubles really begin; “Come-Back” is about a fading Hollywood cowboy who tries to make a comeback after his silver horse dies. Both are light, amusing, and written in the inimitable Cain style.
In 1934, after The Postman Always Rings Twice was published and he was suddenly the hottest writer in the country, every editor wanted something by James M. Gain. In addition to Knopf, three other publishing houses were asking him to write another novel; The New York Herald Tribune and American magazines wanted a serial; Liberty, Redbook, and The New Yorker wanted short stories. “Please don’t go for articles at this point,” wrote his New York editor, Edith Haggard. “Editors are crying for short stories.”
But Cain wrote neither. After the sale of “Baby” to the movies, he felt the time was right for breaking in as a screenwriter; then, suddenly, he was offered a studio job with MGM. When that fizzled out, as did most of Cain’s studio jobs, he went back to his typewriter and was soon “working like a wildman,” he wrote Mrs. Haggard, but on everything except the short stories she wanted — food articles, his Hearst column, speculative movie scripts, and an idea for a serial about an insurance agent who conspires with a rich man’s wife to murder her husband. But to satisfy Mrs. Haggard, he revived “The Whale” and “Come-Back,” and they quickly sold to Redbook.