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him.
    I wanted to do it now so bad that it was like hot waves in my stomach. I kept the gun pointing at her, and I pulled back the hammer with my thumb till it clicked. Then I started pulling on the trigger, but careful, so the gun wouldn’t go off. And then all of a sudden, baby Gertrude stopped crying and I felt everything loosen up in me so I didn’t want to kid around any more.
    But now I had the hammer back and I didn’t know how to get it closed again. I couldn’t think of what to do, and I was afraid to put the gun in my pocket that way because it might go off. All I could think of was putting the safety on, and that was better than nothing even though I would rather have the hammer back where it belonged. And just then I heard Mrs Ehrlich coming up the stairs. I shoved the gun away in my pocket and tried to pull my coat straight, and I stood by the crib looking at baby Gertrude so that when Mrs Ehrlich came in she would find me like that. She came in with two big bundles in her arms, and right away she looked scared.
    â€˜What’s wrong, Georgie? What happened?’ She dumped the two bags down on the bed and started to pat her hand all over the baby’s face.
    I said, ‘She was crying so I came in to see what it was. Then she stopped right away.’
    Mrs Ehrlich said, ‘Oh, I got scared.’ Then she smiled all over and said, ‘You’re a real little father, Georgie. The girl who gets you, she’ll be the lucky one all right.’
    Then she patted the kid some more and pulled her straight. After that she turned out the light and got her packages to take in the kitchen. In the hall she said, ‘And tell your father, Georgie, he should feel better, and he’s got a wonderful, wonderful boy.’
    All the way down the stairs I was worried about the guys standing around, but when I came in there was only one left, and he was reading the paper and didn’t even look up. Mr Ehrlich gave me a dime and I put it in my overcoat pocket. He said, ‘Give your father my best, Georgie, and tell him to take care of himself,’ and I said, ‘Okay, Mr Ehrlich,’ and I went out into the street.
    I pushed up my coat collar and I shoved my hands into my overcoat pocket and started walking as fast as I could away from the candy store and the bar. I figured it would be better to take a bus a block away in case Flanagan or my father was by the window upstairs.
    Down the block was Mr Triola’s barbershop where I got haircuts, and there was a clock in back of the store. I tried to see what time it was, but it was too dark inside. I figured it must be getting pretty near time for the big fight, because it started at ten o’clock after the preliminaries.
    The big fight always went on at ten o’clock so they could broadcast it over the radio. I always used to listen to them over the radio and wonder what it was really like to see them, and now I was going to find out. That was all right, but it was even better when I thought how Al Judge would be sitting by the ringside maybe writing something about the fight, and I would be sitting up in the first row of the mezzanine watching him, and any time I wanted to kill him I could. I was his boss only he didn’t know it.
    But I didn’t want to kill him there. I wanted to get him in the right spot and then it would be easy. That was one thing I found out when I was kidding around with baby Gertrude. It was going to be easier to kill somebody with a gun than I ever figured.

Chapter Seven
    As soon as I got off the bus at Fiftieth Street at the back end of Madison Square Garden, I tightened up. Al Judge was somewhere around here. Maybe he was inside watching the preliminaries wind up, but you couldn’t be sure. He might be walking right behind me looking down my neck. He could be standing in a dark spot by the building watching me go by and I wouldn’t know. He could be anywhere around me now, and