Another classic here with Damon Runyon. They’re all about the narrator strolling down Broadway and bumping into one of the guys. Who tells him a story. There are so many good ones – ‘Dancing Dan’s Christmas,’ ‘Dark Dolores’ (I like this one so much that we named our daughter after it) – but I’ll pick this one because it’s slightly Scheherazade-like, about how a good story can ward off the death that’s waiting just outside the door. The plot is that Lance McGowan has perhaps foolishly edged in on Angie the Ox’s splendid trade in merchandise, and is now being pursued by three very crude characters with sawed-offs. He takes refuge in the living-room of “the richest old doll in the world,” and charms this Miss Abigail Ardsley so convincingly that, during Lance’s subsequent trial for the murder of Angie the Ox, she’s happy to appear in Lance’s defence, stating that “It is just twelve o’clock by my clock” when Lance is with her, so it cannot have been him throwing four slugs into Angie at exactly this time, five blocks away.
There’s a twist, as in every Runyon. And as in every story, his language is just so funny. Or, the language of the nameless narrator, who explains that “the reason I know this story is because Lance McGowan tells most of it to me, as Lance knows that I know his real name is Lancelot, and he feels under great obligation to me because I never mention the matter publicly.”
More and more it strikes me, on re-reading Runyon, that there’s a commodity even more important than money or booze (that’s, potatoes or wet goods) to the guys and the dolls, and that’s information. That’s what they’re all hustling for, trying to control the flow of, conceal, withhold, embellish, all the time.
First published probably in Collier’s Weekly during the 1930s. Collected in More Than Somewhat, Constable and Company, 1937 and On Broadway, Penguin, 1990
A Personal Anthology 