Loney went across to where he had hung his coat and put it on over his sweater, and when he put it on the tail of it caught and I saw he had a gun in his hip pocket. That was funny because I never knew him to carry a gun before and if he had had it in the ring everybody would have been sure to see it when he bent over working on me. I could not ask him about it because there were a lot of people in there talking and arguing.
Pretty soon Perelman came in with his manager and two other men who were strangers to me, so I guessed they had come down from Providence with him too. He was looking straight ahead but the others looked kind of hard at Loney and me and went up to the other end of the room without saying anything. We all dressed in one long room there.
Loney said to Dick, who was helping me, “Take your time. I don’t want the Kid to go out till he’s cooled off.”
Perelman got dressed pretty quick and went out still looking straight ahead. His manager and the two men with him stopped in front of us. The manager was a big man with green eyes like a fish and a dark kind of flat face. He had an accent, too, maybe he was a Polack. He said, “Smart boys, huh?”
Loney was standing up with one hand behind him. Dick Cohen put his hands on the back of a chair and kind of leaned over it. Loney said, “I’m smart. The Kid fights the way I tell him to fight.”
The manager looked at me and looked at Dick and looked at Loney again and said, “M-m-m, so that’s the way it is.” He thought a minute and said, “That’s something to know.” Then he pulled his hat down tighter on his head and turned around and went out with the other two men following.
I asked Loney, “What’s the matter?’
He laughed, but not like it was anything funny. “Bad losers.”
“But you’ve got a gun in—”
He cut me off. “Uh-huh, a fellow asked me to hold it for him. I got to go give it back to him now. You and Dick go on home and I’ll see you there in a little while. But don’t hurry, because I want you to cool off before you go out. You two take the car, you know where we parked it. Come here, Dick.”
He took Dick over in a corner and whispered to him. Dick kept nodding his head up and down and looking more and more scared, even if he did try to hide it when he turned around to me. Loney said, “Be seeing you,” and went out.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Dick.
He shook his head and said, “It’s nothing to worry about,” and that was every word I could get out of him.
Five minutes later Bob Kirby’s brother Pudge ran in and yelled, “Jees, they shot Loney!”
I shot Loney. If I was not so dumb he would still be alive any way you figure it. For a long time I blamed it on Mrs. Schiff, but I guess that was just to keep from admitting that it was my own fault. I mean I never thought she actually did the shooting, like the people who said that when he missed the train that they were supposed to go away on together she came back and waited outside the armory and when he came out he told her he had changed his mind and she shot him. I mean I blamed her for lying to him, because it came out that nobody had tipped Big Jake off about her and Loney. Loney had put the idea in her head, telling her about what Pete had said, and she had made up the lie so Loney would go away with her. But if I was not so dumb Loney would have caught that train.
Then a lot of people said Big Jake killed Loney. They said that was why the police never got very far, on account of Big Jake’s pull down at the City Hall. It was a fact that he had come home earlier than Mrs. Schiff had expected and she had left a note for him saying that she was running away with Loney, and he could have made it down to the street near the armory where Loney was shot in time to do it, but he could not have got to the railroad station in time to catch their train, and if I was not so dumb Loney would have caught that train.
And the same way if that Sailor Perelman crowd did it, which is what most people including the police thought even if they did have to let him go because they could not find enough evidence against him. If I was not so dumb Loney could have said to me right out, “Listen, Kid, I’ve got to go away and I’ve got to have all the money I can scrape up and the best way to do it is to make a deal with Perelman for you to go in the tank and then bet all we got against you.” Why, I would have thrown a million fights for Loney, but how could he know he could trust me, with me this dumb?
Or I could have guessed what he wanted and I could have gone down when Perelman copped me with that uppercut in the fifth. That would have been easy. Or if I was not so dumb I would have learned to box better and, even losing to Perelman like I would have anyway, I could have kept him from chopping me to pieces so bad that Loney could not stand it any more and had to throw away everything by telling me to stop boxing and go in and fight.
Or even if everything had happened like it did up to then he could still have ducked out at the last minute if I was not so dumb that he had to stick around to look out for me by telling those Providence guys that I had nothing to do with double-crossing them.
I wish I was dead instead of Loney.
This Little Pig
Collier’s, March 24, 1934
Max Rhinewien’s telegram brought me back from Santa Barbara. He glared at me over his bicarbonate of soda and demanded, “And where’ve you been?”
“Where’d you wire me? I’ve been trying to finish a play.”
“Is there a picture in it?”
“Why not? You bought Soviet Law, didn’t you? And that’s a bibliography.”
“Never mind,” he said, “it’s a good title anyway. Listen, Bugs, I want you to hop over to Serrita and—”
“Nothing doing. I’ve still got nine days coining to me and I want to get the play finished.”
“As a favor to me, Bugs. It won’t take over a week, I promise you. Is a week going to hurt? You can take your nine days afterwards — take ten days — take two weeks if you want. I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t in a hole. My God, I’d be the last person in the world to interfere with your play. But maybe it’ll be better for you this way. Maybe you’ll come back to your play with a clear mind — you know — better perspective. You got some problems, haven’t you, that you ain’t been able to clear up yet? Well, you get away from it for a little while and give your self-conscious mind a chance to work and—”
I never had much luck arguing with Max. I said, “All right, I’ll go.”
“Thanks. That’s fine. I knew I could count on you. Did you see the Go West! script?”
“No.”
“Well, I said all along it needed something, but it wasn’t till last night I could put my finger on it. It ain’t a bad story at all — this Blaine’s got something — but it needs just that one thing; and you know what it is? Sexing up.”
“You mean you’re going to put sex in a Western picture?” I asked.
“Yep!”
I shook my head.
He beamed on me. “Can’t see it, huh? I guess a lot of people can’t, but stick around and you will. And you’ll see Westerns grossing in the first-run houses instead of just in the neighbs and the sticks. Listen, Bugs, is Sol Feldman a dope?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Exactly. Not that anybody knows of. Well, I happened to hear only last night that they’re sexing up this The Dogie Trail plenty.”
“Why don’t you let him? Why don’t you wait and see how—”
He slapped a hand down flat on his desk. “You know that ain’t my way,” he said. “I got to be always first in the field. You know that. And we can beat ’em to release by a week or two easy.”
“It’s all right with me. It’s not my baby. What do I do?”
“I want you to sex up Go West! Keep it clean, see, but cram it with that stuff. You’re the boy to do it. You’ll have to get over there right away — take a plane — and you’ll have to work your stuff up as they go along, because they already been shooting a couple days, but you can do that all right. This fellow Lawrence Blaine that wrote the script is out with them and you can either make him help you or send him back, whichever you want. And you won’t have any trouble with Fred.”