I said I hoped it was. I was awful tired now that it was all over. Usually I get awful hungry after a fight but this time I was just awful tired.
‘ 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 anyway 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.