He looked startled for a second, but then crushed out the butt carefully so he could watch it instead of me. "Yeah? How so?"
"You've been too scared by poverty to take a chance. You know you could do all right acting, but you don't dare giving up this crummy job. Carry that far enough and you try to stop spending money, then cut out eating, and finally wind up dead of starvation in a cheap room."
"Me? I'd never get that scared of being broke!"
"At the age of 70 or 80?"
"Especially then! I'd probably tear loose for a while and then buy into a home for the aged."
I wanted to grin, but I didn't. He'd proved my point. He'd also shown that he was as bothered by these old people as I was.
"Tell me, Lou. If somebody kept you from dying, would you give him any dough for it, even if you were a senile psychotic?"
I could see him using the Stanislavsky method to feel his way to the answer. He shook his head. "Not while I was alive. Will it, maybe, not give it."
"How would that be as a motive?"