Hellhound on His Trail

The nation is steeped in violence—it is the curse of the land.

As he thought about his son’s present troubles, he was convinced that where Jimmy went wrong was in failing to heed his childhood lesson, the one Speedy ingrained in him over and over again—that the little guy can’t win, that the cards are stacked against him, that the best course is to keep your identity murky and aim low. “People try to get too much out of life,” he told the journalist George McMillan. “Sometimes I think Jimmy outsmarted himself. I can’t figure out why he tried to compete with all them bigshots. Life don’t amount to a shit anyway. Jimmy had too much nerve for his own good. He tried to go too far too fast.”