I put all the skepticism I could summon into a smile, confident now that I had him.
“You look at things from your own side,” I replied, “and in those days you were on the wrong side. Now I don't say that judges don't make mistakes now and then. They do. They're only human. But I never heard of a case where you could say that a judge had positively twisted the law around to —”
That turned the trick. He cursed and snorted and glared at me, and I grinned my insincere doubts, and the story finally came out.
“Me and 'Flogger' Rork was on the road together some years ago, with a gun apiece and a couple big handkerchiefs to hide our mugs behind when we needed to. All-night grease-joints was our meat, and we done ourselves pretty well. We'd knock over a couple a night some nights. We'd drift into them separate at three or four in the morning, not letting on we knew each other, and stall over coffee and sinkers until we was alone with the guy behind the counter. Then we'd flash the rods on him, take what was in the damper, and slide on. No big hauls, you understand, but a steady, reliable income.
“We work that way for a few months, and then I get an idea for a new racket —and it's a darb! Flogger —he's an unimaginative sort of jobbie—can't see it at first. But I keep jawing at him until he gives in and agrees to take a whirl at it.
“You never seen Flogger Rork, did you? I thought not. Well, he's a good guy—what 'Limey' Pine used to call a 'bene cove'— but he ain't no flower to look at. I seen a cartoon of a burglar once in a newspaper during one of these crime waves, and that's the only time I ever seen a face like
Flogger's. A good guy—but we had to be careful how we moved around, because bulls had a habit of picking us up just on account of his face. Me—nobody hadn't ever took me for a lamb, myself; though alongside of Flogger I look pretty sweet.
“These mugs of ours had been handicaps to us so far, but now under my new scheme we're going to cash in on them.
“We was in the Middle West at the time. We blow into the next burg on our list, look the main drag over, and go to work. Our guns are ditched down under a pile of rocks near the jungle.
“We make a drug-store. There's two nice little boys in it. I plant myself in front of one of them, with one hand in my coat pocket, and Flogger does the same with the other.
” 'Come through,' we tells 'em.
“Without a squawk, one of 'em pushes down the 'No Sale' key of the damper, scoops out every nickel that's in it, and passes it over to Flogger.
” 'Lay down behind the counter and don't be too much in a hurry about getting up,' we tell them next.
“They do as they're told, and me and Flogger go on out and about our business.
“The next day we push over two more stores and move on to the next town. Every town we hit we give our new racket a couple of whirls, and it goes nice. Having an ace up our sleeves, we can take chances that otherwise would have been foolish —we can pull a couple or even three jobs a day without waiting for the rumpus from the first one to die down.
“Pickings were pretty them days!
“Then, one afternoon in a fresh burg, we push over a garage, a pawnshop and a shoe store, and we get picked up.
“The bulls that nabbed us was loaded for bear, but—outside of running until we saw it was no use—we went along with them as nice as you please. When they frisked us they found the money from that day's jobs, but that was all. The rest was cached where we knew it would be when we wanted it. And our guns was still under that pile of stones three. States away. We didn't have no use for them any more.
“The guys we had stuck up that afternoon came in to look us over, and they all identified us right away. As one of 'em said there was no forgettin' our faces. But we sat tight and said nothing. We knew where we stood and we were satisfied.
“After a couple days they let us have a mouthpiece. We picked out a kid whose diploma hadn't been with him long enough to collect any dust yet, but he looked like he wouldn't throw us down; and he didn't have to know much law for us. Then we laid around and took jail life easy.
“A few days of that, and they yank us into court. We let things run along for a while without fightin' back, until the right time came. Then our kid mouthpiece gets up and springs our little joker on them.
“His clients, he says, meaning me and Flogger, are perfectly willing to plead guilty to begging. But there is nothing to hold them for robbery on. They were in need of funds, and they went into three business establishments and asked for money. They had no weapons. The evidence doesn't show that they made any threats. Whatever mo-1 tives may have prompted the persons in the stores to hand over the contents of the various cash registers to oblige them—the kid says—has no bearing on the matter. The evidence is plain. His clients asked for money and it was given to them. Begging, certainly—and so his clients are liable to sentences of 30 days or so in the county jail for vagrancy. But robbery—no!
“Well, son, it was a riot! I thought the beak was going to bust something. He's a big bloated hick with a red face and a pair of nose-pinchers. His face turns purple now, and the cheaters slide down his nose three times in five minutes. The district attorney does a proper war dance with the whoops and all. But we had 'em!”
The old man stopped with an air of finality. I waited a while, but he didn't resume the story, if there were, indeed, any more to it; so I prodded him.
“I don't see where that proves your contention,” I said. “There's no using of the law as a weapon there.”
“Wait, sonny, wait,” he promised. • “You'll see before I'm through . . . They put their witnesses back on the stand again, then. But there was nothing to it. None of 'em had seen any weapons, and none of 'em couldn't say we had threatened 'em. They said things about our looks, but it ain't a crime to be ugly.
“They shut up shop for the day, then, and chased me and Flogger back to the jail. And we went back as happy a pair as you ever seen. We had the world by the tail with a downhill pull, and we liked it. Thirty days, or even sixty, in the county jail on a vag charge didn't mean nothing to us. We'd had that happen to us before, and got over it.
“We were happy—but that came from the ignorance of our trustin' natures. We thought maybe a court was a place where justice was done after all; where right was right; and where things went accordin' to the law. We'd been in trouble with the law before, plenty, but this was different—we had the law on our side this time; and we counted on it stickin' with us. But —”
“Well, anyway, they take us back over to court after a few more days. And as soon as I get a slant at the beak and the district attorney I get sort of a chill up my back. They got mean lights in their eyes, like a coupla kids that had put tacks on a chair and was a-waiting for somebody to sit on them. Maybe, I think, they've rigged things up so's they can slip us two or three, or even six, months on vag charges. But I didn't suspect half of it!
“Say, you've heard this chatter about how slow the courts are, haven't you? Well, let me tell you, nothing in the world ever moved any faster than that court that morning. Before we had got fixed in our chairs, almost, things was humming.
“Our kid mouthpiece is bouncing up and down continuj ous, trying to get a word in. But not a chance! Every time he opens his mouth the beak cracks down on him and shuts him up; even threatening to throw him out and fine him in the bargain if he don't keep quiet.
“The man we'd gone up against in the garage was the proprietor, but the ones in the hock shop and the shoe store were just hirelings. So they leave the garage man out of the game. But they put the other two in the dock, charged with grand larceny, have 'em plead guilty, sentence 'em to five years apiece, and suspend the sentences before you could shift a chew from one cheek to the other. “ 'If,' the beak says in answer to our mouthpiece's squawk, 'your clients simply asked for the money and these men gave it to them, then these two men are guilty of theft, since the money belonged to their employers. There is nothing for the court to do, therefore but to find them guilty of grand larceny and sentence them to five years each in the state prison. But the evidence tends to show that these men were actuated simply by an overwhelming desire to help two of their fellow men; that they were induced to steal the money simply by an ungovernable impulse to charity. And the court, therefore, feels that it is justified in exercising its legal privilege of leniency, and suspending their sentences.'
“Me and Flogger don't understand what's being done to us right away, but our mouthpiece does, and as soon as I get a look at him I know it's pretty bad. He's sort of gasping.
“The rest of the dirty work takes longer, but there's no stopping it. This old buzzard of a judge has our charges changed to 'receiving stolen property'—a felony in that state; we are convicted on two counts, and he slips us ten years in the big house on each, the hitches to run end to end.
“And does that old buzzard feel that the court should exercise its legal privilege of leniency and suspend our sentences? Fat chance! Me and Flogger goes over!”
HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER
I KNEW what a lot of people said about Loney but he was always swell to me. Ever since I remember he was swell to me and I guess I would have liked him just as much even if he had been just somebody else instead of my brother; but I was glad he was not just somebody else.
He was not like me. He was slim and would have looked swell in any kind of clothes you put on him, only he always dressed classy and looked like he had stepped right out of the bandbox even when he was just loafing around the house, and he had slick hair and the whitest teeth you ever saw and long, thin, clean-looking fingers. He looked like the way I remembered my father, only better-looking. I took more after Ma's folks, the Malones, which was funny because Loney was the one that was named after them. Malone Bolan. He was smart as they make them, too. It was no use trying to put anything over on him and maybe that was what some people had against him, only that was kind of hard to fit in with Pete Gonzalez.
Pete Gonzalez not liking Loney used to bother me sometimes because he was a swell guy, too, and he was never trying to put anything over on anybody. He had two fighters and a wrestler named Kilchak and he always sent them in to do the best they could, just like Loney sent me in. He was the topnotch manager in our part of the country and a lot of people said there was no better anywhere, so I felt pretty good about him wanting to handle me, even if I did say no.
It was in the hall leaving Tubby White's gym that I ran into him that afternoon and he said, “Hello, Kid, how's it?” moving his cigar further over in a corner of his mouth so he could talk.
“Hello. All right.”
He looked me up and down, squinting on account of the smoke from his cigar. “Going to take this guy Saturday?”
“I guess so.”
He looked me up and down again like he was weighing me in. His eyes were little enough anyhow and when he squinted like that you could hardly see them at all. “How old are you, Kid?”
“Going on nineteen.”
“And you'll weigh about a hundred and sixty,” he said.
“Sixty-seven and a half. I'm growing pretty fast.”
“Ever see this guy you're fighting Saturday?”
“No.”
“He's plenty tough.”
I grinned and said, “I guess he is.”
“And plenty smart.”
I said, “I guess he is,” again.
He took his cigar out of his mouth and scowled at me and said like he was sore at me, “You know you got no business in the ring with him, don't you?” Before I could think up anything to say he stuck the cigar back in his mouth and his face and his voice changed. “Why don't you let me handle you, Kid? You got the stuff. I'll handle you right, build you up, not use you up, and you'll be good for a long trip.”
“I couldn't do that,” I said. “Loney taught me all I know and—”
“Taught you what?” Pete snarled. He looked mad again. “If you think you been taught anything at all you just take a look at your mug in the next looking-glass you come across.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and spit out a piece of tobacco that had come loose. “Only eighteen years old and ain't been fighting a year and look at the mug on him!”
I felt myself blushing. I guess I was never any beauty but, like Pete said, I had been hit in the face a lot and I guess my face showed it. I said, “Well, of course, I'm not a boxer.”
“And that's the God's truth,” Pete said. “And why ain't you?”
“I don't know. I guess it's just not my way of fighting.”
“You could learn. You're fast and you ain't dumb. What's this stuff getting you? Every week Loney sends you in against some guy you're not ready for yet and you soak up a lot of fists and —”
“I win, don't I?” I said.
“Sure you win—so far—because you're young and tough and got the moxie and can hit, but I wouldn't want to pay for winning what you're paying, and I wouldn't want any of my boys to. I seen kids—maybe “some of them as promising as you—go along the way you're going, and I seen what was left of them a couple years later. Take my word for it, Kid, you'll do better than that with me.”
“Maybe you're right,” I said, “and I'm grateful to you and all that, but I couldn't leave Loney. He —”
“I'll give Loney a piece of change for your contract, even if you ain't got one with him.”
“No, I'm sorry, I —I couldn't.”
Pete started to say something and stopped and his face began to get red. The door of Tubby's office had opened and Loney was coming out. Loney's face was white and you could hardly see his lips because they were so tight together, so I knew he had heard us talking.
He walked up close to Pete, not even looking at me once, and said, “You chiseling dago rat.”
Pete said, “I only told him what I told you when I made you the offer last week.”
Loney said, “Swell. So now you've told everybody. So now you can tell 'em about this.” He smacked Pete across the mouth with the back of his hand.
I moved over a little because Pete was a lot bigger than Loney, but Pete just said, “O. K., pal, maybe you won't live forever. Maybe you won't live forever even if Big Jake don't never get hep to the missus.”
Loney swung at him with a fist this time but Pete was backing away down the hall and Loney missed him by about a foot and a half, and when Loney started after him Pete turned and ran toward the gym.
Loney came back to me grinning and not looking mad any more. He could change that way quicker than anybody you ever saw. He put an arm around my shoulders and said, “The chiseling dago rat. Let's blow.” Outside he turned me around to look at the sign advertising the fights. “There you are, Kid. I don't blame him for wanting you. There'll be a lot of 'em wanting you before you're through.”
It did look swell, Kid Eolan vs. Sailor Perelman, in red letters that were bigger than any of the other names and up at the top of the card. That was the first time I ever had had my name at the top. I thought, I'm going to have it there like that all the time now and maybe in New York sometime, but I just grinned at Loney without saying anything and we went on home.
Ma was away visiting my married sister in Pittsburgh and we had a nigger woman named Susan taking care of the house for us and after she washed up the supper dishes and went home Loney went to the telephone and I could hear him talking low. I wanted to say something to him when he came back but I was afraid I would say the wrong thing because Loney might think I Was trying to butt into his business, and before I could find a safe way to start the doorbell rang.
Loney went to the door. It was Mrs. Schiff, like I had a hunch it would be, because she had come over the first night Ma was away.
She came in laughing, with Loney's arm around her waist, and said, “Hello, Champ,” to me.
I said, “Hello,” and shook hands with her.
I liked her, I guess, but I guess I was kind of afraid of her. I mean not only afraid of her on Loney's account but in a different way. You know, like sometimes when you were a kid and you found yourself all alone in a strange neighborhood on the other side of town. There was nothing you could see to be downright afraid of but you kept halfway expecting something. It was something like that. She was awful pretty but there was something kind of wild-looking about her. I don't mean wild-looking like some floozies you see; I mean almost like an animal, like she was always on the watch for something. It was like she was hungry. I mean just her eyes and maybe her mouth because you could not call her skinny or anything or fat either.