What Makes Sammy Run? Read Online Free PDF Page B

Glick Broadcasting.” I always suspected that Sammy sold the editor that title so his name could be in fatter type than any by-line could possibly be. That may not be one of the things you or I would think of doing but it meant plenty to Sammy.
    The funny part of it was the kid’s stuff wasn’t bad. He was just smart enough never to crib from the same writer twice. He was glib. When it came to wisecracks he rolled his own. I had gone through so many emotions with Sammy that I felt as if I had to have my emotional valves ground but now I was reaching the stage of loathing him so much I was beginning to admire him. Every other copy boy in the place was just a nice guy. At least if you bent over, they’d ask you to stand up and turn around before stabbing you. But Sammy Glick was teaching me something about the world. Of course, I hadn’t found out what made him run, and, lucky for him, I had no idea just where he was running. And if I had, I suppose I might have spent the rest of my life serving time for committing premeditated mayhem. And I suppose there’s no use kidding myself. Somehow Sammy would have capitalized on that as he did everything else. It looked as if Sammy Glick had the drop on this world.
    As a columnist, Sammy had no scruples about printing what he overheard. He always managed to get on the inside with the keysecretaries. He had a well-developed talent for squeezing news out of victims by pretending he already had it. He had no qualms about prominently featuring what he knew to be lies and then printing the truth a day or so later in an inconspicuous retraction at the bottom of the column.
    He even found a way of turning those retractions into a good thing. For instance, if some big shot happened to demand a correction, Sammy would call him by some private nickname and say, “Sorry, Jock,” or “Pudge” or “Deac, thanks for the help.” He learned to play all but the most complex and suspicious minds like a harp. He pumped and he promised and he did small favors. He managed to get near the best of them and he picked up much of his hot news from the worst. He overcame the fact that he had absolutely no literary ability whatsoever by inventing a lingo which everyone mistook for a fresh and unique style when it was really plain unadulterated illiteracy. But all of these achievements were overshadowed by one stupendous talent; his ability to blow his own horn. He blew it so loud, so long, and so often, that nobody believed all that sound could possibly emanate from one person and so everyone really began to believe that Sammy Glick’s name was on everyone else’s lips.
    There was the occasion of Sammy’s birthday party which was also (though I always suspected him of tying these together conveniently to make a better story) the anniversary of “Sammy Glick Broadcasting.”
    I hadn’t been on exactly chummy terms with Sammy for quite a time now but one afternoon he came up to me at Bleeck’s and, without taking his ten-cent cigar out of his mouth (this was a new addition to the evolving personality of Sammy Glick), he said, “Hello, Al, can I buy you a drink?”
    I didn’t like the idea of his buying me a drink, so I offered to play him the match game to see who got the check and I lost. There’s no use making myself out a hero about this. I was pretty generally considered the King of the Match Game down at Bleeck’s and I didn’t like the way Sammy was starting to beat me.
    After I finished my drink I started to edge away, but Sammy was too quick for me.
    “Say, Al,” he said, “next Monday is my birthday, and since you sorta gave me my start I thought maybe you’d like to have dinner with me and my girl, at the Algonquin.”
    “Gave you your start!” I said. “I did everything I could to get you canned.”
    “No kidding, Al,” he said, just letting that roll off him. “I know birthday parties are old-fashioned, but I want you with us at dinner Monday night.”
    “Monday night?”