The Harder They Fall

  The cocktail party is America’s favourite form of seduction, arranged by press agents, full of gin and bourbon, paying off in news-space. The plot is always the same. Come up to my room and have a drink. And whether the object is physical passion or getting your client’s name into the headlines, the method is standard: to weaken their resistance with let-me-pour-you-another-one, until they open their arms or their columns to you in an alcoholic daze. Of course there will always be some ladies, and members of the working press, who bounce back regularly after each seduction, holding out their empty glasses eager to sacrifice themselves again. Often the girls are nice girls and the representatives of the press are good men who had some talent and some standards once upon a time.

  The little tea party we threw in our suite at the Biltmore to introduce Toro to the local sports fraternity followed all the rules. Columnists who arrived as sceptics were ready to take my word for it after an hour of the amber. There was only one who gave me any trouble, a lank, dyspeptic-looking fellow from the News, the afternoon tabloid, Al Leavitt, who ran a column called ‘Levelling with Leavitt’. He took his work seriously. ‘I’ll wait and see this guy before I buy him,’ he told me. ‘I’ve never seen an oversized heavyweight yet who could get out of his own way. Back in the seventies there was a guy called Freeman, seven feet tall and three hundred pounds, and he couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag.’

  A historian yet! In every town you hit, there’s always one jerk like that, the natural enemy of a press agent, the guy with integrity.

  ‘Write anything you want, Al,’ I said, pouring him a drink, because in this business you’ve got to like everybody. ‘But remember the farther out on a limb you get the sillier you’ll look when Toro comes through the way I know he’s going to.’

  Leavitt gave me a slow, knowing smile. But the rest of the boys were willing to play. I latched Acosta onto Joe O’Sullivan, who ran the Examiner’s fight column. Luis gave him the full treatment, the whole 7000 miles from Santa Maria to LA, at three words a mile, and Joe bought it for a Sunday feature. Charlie King, who ran a little weekly magazine for the fight fans called Kayo, sold at the arenas on fight nights, promised us a front-page picture and a full-column plug. Lavish Lew Miller, who covered fights for the Times, passed out, and I had Toro pick him up like a baby and put him to bed. Everything worked out fine. It was a good party. We were off to a good start.

  In the morning we hired a car for the drive up to Ojai, all except Vince who was staying in town to work out details of the match with Nate Starr, the matchmaker for the Hollywood Club.

  Ojai turned out to be a long valley, full of fruit trees and lots of other kinds of trees I never learnt the names of. Mountains rose steeply on both ends of the valley, like the head- and foot-boards of a giant bed. If you were a country lover, Ojai had it. Its air was the kind you breathe in deeply and hold in your chest, feeling yourself growing healthier every second. We had a couple of cottages at a rich-man’s health camp which catered chiefly to business executives who took it into their heads to work a couple of inches off their paunches, and motion-picture directors taking four weeks off to get back into shape to start another picture. The layout was just what we needed: a good gym, an indoor and outdoor ring, a steam bath, good rubbers and plenty of room for road work.

  After everybody had unpacked, Danny called the group together on the porch of his cottage and laid down the law. He looked businesslike and athletic in his grey flannel pants, old blue sweater, boxing shoes and baseball cap.

  ‘From here on,’ he began, ‘we quit kidding around. I’m in charge as of now. You, Acosta, if there’s anything he can’t savvy, tell him in your own lingo. Molina, this is your schedule. Up at seven. Road work, six or eight miles, alternately running and walking as fast as you can take it without getting exhausted. Then a shower and a brisk rub-down. No monkey business on the road. I’ll usually be along with you to show you how I want it. Breakfast at eight sharp, as many eggs as you want, but no pancakes or soft foods. That’s out. After breakfast a long rest. You’ll walk a mile or so before lunch. After a light lunch, you sleep for an hour and then begin to limber up. Shadow-boxing and a couple of rounds of sparring with George come next. Then a session on the light bag and another on the heavy bag, practising the punches I’ll show you. Then about fifteen minutes of rope-skipping and some calisthenics. Doc’ll give you the ones I like best, exercises that’ll loosen you up, get you to move around a little faster. No other kind of exercise is worth a damn. Then you’ll get on the table for a thorough rub-down. You’ll rest from three to five and then take a long walk. Supper will be at six. After supper you can take it easy for a couple of hours. Cards, anything you like. Then a mile walk and lights out at nine-thirty. No liquor. No eating between meals. No women. That’s it. Any questions?’

  Only Acosta spoke up. ‘Eight miles a day? I think this is too much for El Toro to run. Since he already is very strong.’

  ‘Look, Acosta,’ Danny cut in, pronouncing his name with an r on the end, ‘get this in your head once and for all. Strength has nothing whatever to do with it, at least the kind of strength Molina’s got. It’s speed, headwork, timing, even with the big fellows. Those big, bulging, weight-lifting muscles of his will just get in the way.’

  Acosta said nothing. The eager, glowing face with which he had first told me his story was glum and disappointed now. Only occasionally, as at the station when the cameras were trained on him, did he show any of his previous animation. The big dream of bringing Toro to America in triumph was rapidly losing its quality of personal achievement for him.

  That afternoon they let Toro off easy with a brisk two-mile run. Danny asked me if I wanted to go along, but I told him I wasn’t quite ready for suicide yet. Climbing on and off a bar stool was exercise enough for this athlete. Danny always accompanied his fighters on road work. It certainly was one for Ripley. How a guy of his age and his habits could pace a healthy young athlete for six miles was one of the mysteries. Either Danny’s guts were made of reinforced steel or an alcoholic diet is not as injurious as its detractors claim it to be. Except for a slight middle-age bulge at the waist, Danny’s figure was still lithe and athletic. He ran easily, with a relaxed, springy motion, which was like the movement of a gazelle compared to Toro’s heavy lumbering behind him. George followed them, jogging along in a way that made it look as if it were no effort at all.

  When they came in, about fifteen minutes later, Danny and George were still running easily, but Toro was all in. He seemed to be favouring his right leg. So Doc put him right on the table and looked him over. ‘Here it is,’ he said, fingering Toro’s enormous calf. ‘Just a little Charley. I can rub it out in a few minutes.’ His long skilful fingers worked Toro’s taut leg muscles. ‘Better take it easy on running him for a while,’ Doc said as he worked. ‘Y’see, these muscles of his are knotty from all that lifting. They go into a Charley easy. They don’t slide over each other like you need ’em to in running and boxing.’

  ‘What’s Nick Latka trying to do to me?’ Danny said. ‘See how much I can take? All that weight and no legs.’

  ‘It is perhaps the change of climate,’ Acosta suggested. ‘El Toro is not use …’

  ‘Shut up,’ Danny said.

  He hadn’t had a drink all day and his face looked drawn. I knew sooner or later Acosta was going to get on his nerves. Danny left Doc to finish rubbing out the charley horse and went back to his cottage to smoke a cigarette. I followed him. He drew on his cigarette a couple of times and crushed it out impatiently. ‘Son of a sea-cook,’ he said. ‘All my life I wanted a good heavyweight and what do they send me? A big oaf with no legs.’

  That evening after supper I took a stroll with Toro and Acosta. We walked slowly along the edge of an orange grove. The valley heat still hung in the air. The large, rose-tinted moon was a fifth carbon of the close, hot sun that had beat down on us all day. I walked quietly half a pace to the rear of them, and after a while they began to talk to ea
ch other frankly, as if they had forgotten my presence, or perhaps that I could understand. In Spanish, I noticed, Toro wasn’t nearly the halting, inarticulate ox he seemed in English. He was able to express himself clearly and with considerable feeling.

  ‘You did not tell me the truth, Luis,’ Toro said. ‘You told me I could make much more money and not work so hard as I must in Santa Maria. But to train like this man wants of me is much harder than I have ever worked for my father. And I do not like it as well.’

  ‘But the work you do in Santa Maria you must do all your life, until you have perhaps sixty or seventy years,’ Acosta argued. ‘Here you must work very hard, it is true. But when you have boxed one or two years you will have enough money to live like a lord in Santa Maria the rest of your life.’

  ‘That I could be back in Santa Maria right now,’ Toro said. ‘Even without the money.’

  ‘You must not talk like that,’ Acosta scolded. ‘That is a very bad way to talk. After all I have done for you, to bring you to this country, to put you in the hands of such important managers. How many poor village boys would like to have your opportunity!’

  ‘I would let them have my place, with much pleasure,’ Toro said.

  ‘But you do not understand,’ Acosta said, a little impatiently. ‘None of them have your magnificent physique. This is what you were born for. It is your destiny.’

  When I got back to the cottage, George was sitting outside on the porch steps by himself, half singing, half mumbling a song that seemed to have no end.

  Doc was inside, sitting at a little desk in the front room, his deformed body hunched intently over something he was writing.

  ‘Catching up on your fan mail, Doc?’

  Doc turned toward me, slung a thin, angular leg over the arm of his chair, and took a half-smoked cigar from his mouth. ‘Aw, I’m just making some notes.’

  ‘What kind of notes, Doc?’

  ‘Pathological,’ Doc said, ‘I guess you call it.’

  ‘About punch-drunks?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right. Case histories of punchy fighters. There hasn’t been much technical stuff written about it.’

  ‘How many really wind up punchy?’

  ‘Well, maybe half the guys who stay in over ten years, but I’d only be guessing,’ Doc said. ‘You see, Eddie, the trouble is, nobody’s made a scientific survey. Lots of boys are wandering around cutting up paper dolls and there isn’t any kind of medical record. Every case I hear about, I write it down in my notebook. Maybe some day I’ll do something with it.’

  ‘Why not try to put it in an article?’ I said. ‘It’d make a damn interesting piece.’

  Doc rubbed his damp, high forehead reflectively. ‘Not without that MD,’ he said. ‘I know what doctors think of laymen who write books on medicine. If there’s anything I don’t want to be, it’s one of those loud-mouthed quacks with a few fixed ideas. So I’ll just stick to my goddam fight racket and let my brother write the books.’

  He took out a handkerchief, mopped the perspiration that seemed to be constantly on his face and turned back to his notes.

  Danny was inside on the bed, studying Racing Form with a pencil in his hand and a half-empty bottle of Old Granddad on the table beside him.

  ‘Help yourself, laddie,’ he said.

  ‘No thanks, Danny,’ I said. ‘I’m in the desert for a week. I do this to myself once every year. It’s like banging your head against a stone wall. Feels so good when it stops.’

  Danny reached for the bottle and raised it to his lips. ‘I was on the wagon when I had Greenberg and Sencio. I stayed on it pretty good when I had Tomkins too, bless his black heart. But I’ll be split down the middle if I’ll come off the stuff for a big muscle-bound lummox of a weightlifter.’

  He set the bottle down on the edge of the table, so that it threatened to fall at the slightest vibration. Danny absorbed his liquor so well that you had to watch for things like that to realise how far along he was. He returned to the Form studiously and encircled one of the names.

  ‘Something good for tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m just checking workouts and speed ratings,’ Danny said. ‘Then if they post one of the horses I’ve spotted, I bet him.’

  ‘Your system work?’

  ‘There’s only one system that works, laddie. To know who’s gonna win.’

  ‘What do you play it for, Danny? What’s in it for you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Same reason you put salt on your eggs, I guess. Spices things up a little bit.’ He reached for the bottle again. ‘A weightlifter! At my age I get a weightlifter!’ His mouth went to the bottle with desperation.

  Danny slept it off in the morning, something he never did when his mind was on his work, but Doc put Toro through his paces. Toro did everything he was told, but there was none of the zip and spring of a man whose body likes to move. His rope-skipping was awkward and heavy-footed, with the rope constantly catching on his ungainly feet.

  After lunch Danny gave Toro some exercises on the light bag, and then, with the heavy bag for a target, he began to give him pointers on the jab. ‘I claim a man can’t even begin to call himself a professional boxer until he can jab,’ Danny said. ‘A good stiff jab throws your opponent off balance. When he’s off balance he’s a better target for your other punches. The jab isn’t just waving your left hand in the other guy’s face. You’ve got to step into your jabs, springing off your right toe and going forward on your left, like a fencing motion or a bayonet thrust. It’s all the same idea, straight from the shoulder, with your body behind it always keeping ’em off balance. Like this.’

  Danny faced the bag, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and even when he wasn’t actually moving his body undulated with a weaving, shifty motion, automatically prepared to slip inside a straight right or snap away from a left. His jabs bit sharply into the bag and he recoiled so rapidly into position again that it all became one motion. Then he called George over and demonstrated on him. George allowed the jabs to connect with his face, rolling with them slightly to absorb the shock, but at the same time letting himself be hit hard enough for Toro to be able to see the effect. Then, with George still the target, Danny told Toro to imitate him. Toro lurched forward, drawing his left fist back before pushing it out ineffectually toward George’s jaw.

  ‘Never draw back on a punch,’ Danny said. ‘That’s what you call “telegraphing”. And you lose part of your force.’

  Toro tried again. His enormous fist floated slowly into George’s face. Danny shook his head dismally and led Toro back to the heavy bag. With his legs spread apart, Danny stood behind the bag, doing his best to transfuse a few drops of his ring wisdom into this dinosaur.

  ‘Mr Lewis,’ George said, ‘you gonna be careful who the big boy fights?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll be careful,’ I said.

  ‘That’s good,’ George said. ‘He’s a pretty nice fella. I wouldn’t want to see him get hurt too bad.’

  ‘He won’t get hurt,’ I said.

  I went over to Danny, who was demonstrating the left jab in shadow-boxing now. ‘Danny, I’m going into town,’ I said. ‘Anything I can do for you?’

  Danny wiped his forehead and took a look at Toro. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I’m going in with you.’ He called over to Doc, who was sitting on a bench, reading the papers. ‘Keep him working on the bag for a while. George can show him what I mean. Then move him around the ring for ten-fifteen minutes, no punches, just feeling things out with George. Then give him some good stiff exercises, as much as he can stand. Try to keep him up off his heels on the rope-skipping. I’ll be back some time in the morning.’

  ‘Okay,’ Doc said. ‘Say, Danny, if you see one of them outa town news stands, see if you can pick up a New York paper.’

  ‘The Giants are still hanging on,’ Danny said. ‘What more do you want to know?’

  ‘A guy likes to keep in touch,’ Doc said.

  ‘Learn to relax, Doc,’ I said. ‘This is a vacation s
pot. Make like you’re on a vacation.’

  Doc had a way of smiling that always made me sad.

  As we drove out of sight of the camp, Danny said, ‘Laddie, I just had to get out of there for a while. There’s nothing drives me nuts like trying to teach a man with no ability. And with that other little guy babbling Spanish at my elbow all the time, I feel like I’m going off my noodle.’

  ‘Think you can get him to go through the motions of looking like a fighter?’

  ‘Aw, I don’t know. I guess I can teach him one or two little things. But I don’t want to think about it till I get back there in the morning.’

  When we turned off Ventura Boulevard, where the unadorned, rural gas stations begin to give way to more elaborate lubritoria with an unmistakable Hollywood influence, Danny gave me the address of a barbershop on Cherokee Avenue.

  ‘But you just had a haircut, Danny.’

  ‘This is the address of a fella who will take a bet for me,’ Danny said. ‘I guess I get clipped one way or another, laddie.’

  After I dropped Danny off, I went up to our rooms at the Biltmore and got to work. I was making out a list of people I had to call when Vince came out of the bathroom in his pyjamas.

  ‘Hi ya, lover?’ he said.

  ‘Hello.’

  Vince said, ‘Everything’s all right with Starr. We’re matched with Coombs the 26th of next month. That gives you plenty of time to goose the people, doesn’t it, lover?’

  ‘Jesus, six more weeks in this town!’

  ‘What’s the matter with this town, honey?’ Vince said. ‘You should see the poontang down in this cocktail lounge every night. Like shooting fish in a barrel.’ He broke wind noisily. ‘Did you say something, dear?’ He pulled the seat of his pyjamas away from his beefy rump and disappeared into the bedroom again.

  I settled down to the phone and the business of selling my product. I got Wicherley’s Clothes for Men to outfit Toro from head to foot in return for the plugs I promised to give them. I arranged with a furniture store to build an extra-size bed for Toro which I planned to photograph as it was carried through the Biltmore lobby. I sold the Western editor of a national weekly supplement on the idea of a two-page spread, comparing Toro’s physical measurements with those of Hercules, Atlas and the giants of antiquity. The angle was to reach out beyond the sports pages, beyond the fight fans to the great public of curiosity-seekers. For lunch I took Joe O’Sullivan to Lyman’s, where, after the second highball (padded to four on the expense account), I confided the important news that we were considering either Buddy Stein or Cowboy Coombs as the first West Coast opponent for Toro Molina.