So in the meantime, I had gone with Alice Nichols for some time, and I called her on the phone but she wasn't there, but I left the number on the pay phone for her to return the call, because I didn't want to keep the business phone tied up. And I hadn't spoken to her in maybe 9 months or a year. I don't know what I said to her, not many words, but just what happened.
I still remained around the club there. I am sure I was crying pretty bad. I think I made a long-distance call to California. This fellow had just visited me, and I had known him in the days back in Chicago when we were very young, in the real tough part of Chicago. His name is Al Gruber.
He was a bad kid in those days, but he is quite reformed. He is married and has a family, and I am sure he makes a very legitimate livelihood at this time.
He happened to come through a couple of nights prior to that to try to interest me, or 4 or 5 days prior to that, to interest me in a new kind—you follow the story as I tell it?
Chief Justice Warren. Yes.
Mr. Ruby. It is important, very important. It is on a new kind of machine that washes cars. You pay with tokens. It is a new thing. I don't know if it faded out or not. He tried to interest my brother, Sammy, because Sammy sold his washateria.
And my sister was in the hospital when he first came. I am going back a little bit. Sammy didn't go to the hospital, and we needed to tell Sammy about this particular thing, and that is the reason Al Gruber came into the picture, because he came to try to interest my brother, Sammy, in this new washateria deal to wash cars.
He left and went to California, but before he went to California I promised him my dachshund dog.
When this thing happened, I called him. He said, "Yes, we are just watching on television." And I couldn't carry on more conversation. I said, "Al, I have to hang up."
Then I must have called my sister, Eileen, in Chicago.