‘This jig comes back after the first round cocky as hell, see,’ Benny began in an injured tone. ‘“Christ, I didn’ know that big fella was such a bum,” he says. “An’ I thought I was layin’ down to save myself punishment.”
‘“Don’t get no fancy ideas,” I tells him, “or you’ll get a helluva lot more punishment ’n you figured on.”
‘But when the jig goes out for round two, he’s still full of wrong ideas, see? “This guy’s got nothin’,” he says, “I c’n stiffen this guy. The hell with them five Cs,” he says to Mathews. “We c’n make more flattening this joker.”
‘Well, I tries to tell him if he keeps up the wise talk he’s sucking around for a hole in the head, but the jig don’t scare so easy. He’s got this giant-killin’ on his mind. So when I’m massagin’ him I try to squeeze his muscles so they’ll go dead on him and when I wipe off his face I accidentally rub some alcohol in his eyes, so when we send him out for Three he’s brushing his eyes and he ain’t quite the weisenheimer he was when he came in from Two. But even then he’s beatin’ your guy real bad when he goes down from that slip. So I figures, what the hell, this jig is just wrong enough to get up off the floor and belt the big jerk out. So I sees my chance and throws in the towel.’
Danny sucked out the last of a pint bottle of rye. ‘I don’ like it,’ he said. ‘Twen’y years in the racket I never have a run-in with the Commish. All that’s gotta happen now is I lose my licence.’
‘Aah, shet up your bellyachin’,’ Vince said. ‘Always cryin’ about your goddam licence. Shove the commissions, both of ’em. Leave Jimmy and Nick take care of ’em.’
‘But damn it, if you’re gonna set these fights up, why don’t you do it right?’ Danny demanded. ‘The woods are full of bums ready to fall down for a price. But you, the great fixer, gotta pick a guy who likes to win.’
‘Aah, go shove yourself, spithead,’ Vince said in rebuttal. ‘What am I, a mind reader for Chrisake? How the hell should I know what goes on in that dinge’s double-crossin’ brain?’
‘If I lose my licence, I’m dead,’ Danny said. ‘You, you can always go back to pimping.’
‘Why you son-of-a-bitch!’ Profanity spewed from Vince’s fleshy mouth as he lunged heavily toward Danny, starting a wild punch that Danny blocked neatly. Danny made no effort to retaliate as Benny, George, Doc and I grabbed parts of Vince’s aroused anatomy and pulled him away.
‘Never do that,’ Danny said quietly, his face strangely white, his thin lips drawn to an angry line.
‘Yeah, well, no jerk is gonna call me them names like that,’ Vince blubbered.
‘Whatta you wanna do, wake Molina?’ Doc said. ‘Let the guy sleep. He needs his sleep.’
‘Aah, shove him too,’ Vince said. He settled back on the couch with a crumpled copy of Crime he had picked up on the train down to San Diego.
I went outside to smoke a cigarette in peace. Across the highway the surf pounded on the beach with relentless monotony. The sky was clear and moonlit. Looking up into it, the tension of the smoke-filled motel room seemed as foolish and far away as an argument you had with your brother when you were eight. In a few minutes George Blount came out and joined me. ‘Man, oh, man!’ he said and chuckled softly.
‘One of these days Danny’s going to clip him,’ I said.
‘Mister McCuff’s like me,’ George said. ‘Don’ want to fight nobody ’cept for money.’
‘Why do you think it is, George?’ I said. ‘Why is it most you guys don’t go in for these grudge matches?’
‘I don’ know,’ George laughed. ‘Maybe you go roun’ punchin’ fellows and catchin’ punches so long you just get it all outa your system. Maybe every man’s got just so many punches in him and when you get rid of ’em all in the ring you just don’t want to hit nobody no more.’
I walked down the road a quarter of a mile or so with him, not saying much of anything but conscious as always of his deep serenity.
‘Boy, we really stank up the joint tonight,’ I said.
‘That fella oughta go home,’ George said. ‘That fella oughta go home before something bad happen.’
That was easy to say, when all you were getting out of it were three squares and a little pocket money. But Toro Molina had already turned them away in two cities. He was an oil well just beginning to come in and you don’t turn off a profitable flow just because your hands are getting a little dirty, not where I come from.
As soon as we read the papers next morning we knew we had troubles. The State Boxing Commission had tied up the purses of both fighters, pending an investigation. The fight we had lined up for Oakland was postponed. Toro couldn’t read the papers well enough to learn what had happened, so at least he was happy. Only he wanted to know where the money was that he had earned. Vince slipped him fifty dollars. He had never had a large American bill of his own and he seemed content with it. ‘Feefty bocks, hokay,’ he kept saying.
You could have chipped the air up for ice cubes when Nick came in.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘this is great. This is just great. This is just what we needed, like a hole in the head.’
Vince started to blubber and bluster through an explanation, but Nick’s hard, sharp voice knifed through his defence.
‘I’m not inarested,’ he said. ‘When I was a kid I learnt one thing and I learnt it good. Never do nothing halfass. Whatever it is, if you’re gonna do it, do it. The kid who stole an apple off the pushcart and ran away, he’s the dope the cop always caught. The guy who followed the old man home, bopped him in the hallway and took his whole goddam pushcart, he’s the one who got away. That’s been a principle with me ever since. Like this build-up we’re giving Molina. You say you slipped the nigger two-fifty to lay down.’ (It had been five hundred when I heard it, but maybe Vince held out the other half.) ‘Hell, make it worth his while. It’s worth it to us. Don’t be a piker. Think big. Give ’em a grand. Only give it to ’em after the fight. No dive, no dough. You got that? Now this time I let it go. Maybe this sun is making me soft in the head, but I let it go. Next time you fumble you’re out on your ass.’
‘Yeah, but we gotta contract,’ Vince pouted.
‘Sure we gotta contract,’ Nick agreed, ‘But give me trouble and see how quick I tear up the contract. I got Max Stauffer,’ he said, mentioning the Darrow of corruption. ‘You louse me up and rightaway Max has ten reasons why the contract’s no good that’ll stand up in court.’ He opened his closet drawer and paused discriminatingly over his impressive collection of hand-painted ties. ‘Now screw, both of you,’ he said. ‘Pat Drake is bringing a couple of big men over from the studio, and you guys don’t look dressed good enough.’
The investigation dragged on for a couple of weeks and I had a job on my hands trying to make it look as good as possible in the papers. One of the things working for us was the convincing way Toro reacted to the charges. ‘Me no fight feex,’ he insisted. ‘I no crook. I try hard.’
Vince also expressed indignation that his professional integrity should be impugned. The whole thing wound up with the Commission exonerating Toro and his managers completely, but finding Benny Mannix guilty and suspending his licence to second fighters in the State of California for twelve months. Benny had admitted throwing in the towel because he had placed a large bet on Toro, which he was afraid he might lose. This handful of verbal sand in the eyes of the Commission hiked our overhead up five hundred bucks, which was Benny’s price for taking the rap. The Commission ruling was only binding so far as California was concerned, so Vince sent Benny on to Las Vegas, where we had a date with a full-blooded Indian Miniff had dug up for us by the name of Chief Thunderbird. Chief Thunderbird, Miniff was insisting with characteristic whimsicality, was the heavyweight champion of New Mexico.
Now that the Commission loosened the strings on the San Diego purse, Toro wanted his money. He wanted to send a chunk home to the family in Santa Maria. He wanted them to realise down there what a rich man he was becom
ing in North America. But Vince explained to him that there couldn’t be any pay-off until Nick’s bookkeeper Leo figured out Toro’s net take after overhead and managerial cuts had been deducted. ‘Meanwhile here’s another fifty,’ Vince said. ‘Any time you need money, just ask me.’
Toro was very pleased. He had all the money he wanted. All he had to do was ask Vince. And as soon as his percentage was figured out, he would send enough to his father to begin building that home that was going to put the de Santos mansion to shame. Perhaps he would even go back for a vacation – I held out the hope that this was possible when he was well-enough established – and sanctify his relationship with the lovely Carmelita.
While we were waiting for the Commission to make up their minds about that San Diego business, I was walking down Spring Street with Toro one afternoon. Toro could never go by a music store without stopping to press his nose against the window and gaze wonderingly at the radios, phonographs and musical instruments. This time he said, ‘I come back pronto,’ and darted into a music store. In a few minutes he returned with a portable radio in his hand, loudly broadcasting a swing band. ‘Feefty dollar. I buy,’ Toro said happily. People kept turning around to stare at us, not only for Toro’s size but for the volume of the unexpected music.
‘Toro, turn that thing off,’ I said. ‘Nobody plays a radio in the street.’
‘I like carry music,’ Toro said.
Beth should see me now, I thought, playing nursemaid to an elephantine idiot. Everywhere we went, Toro carried that silly radio around, always turned on with the volume up. When we went to a restaurant he placed it tenderly on an empty chair and smiled at it lovingly as he ate while it filled the room with the nasal music of cowboy songs. ‘In Santa Maria no music in box,’ he said. ‘I bring back many to my village for give away.’
I don’t think Toro knew there was any way of changing those bills. You either had to buy something for fifty dollars, it seemed to him, or you might as well throw it away. He blew the second fifty all at once in the arcade of the hotel and hurried to show me his latest acquisition. It was a tiny gold key in a miniature heart-shaped gold lock.
‘Who’s this for?’ I said.
‘For Señora Latka,’ he said.
I looked at it more closely. On the back of the lock was engraved in small letters, ‘The key to my heart.’
‘You can’t give her this,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ Toro wanted to know. ‘She nice lady. I like very much.’
‘Her husband likes her very much too,’ I said.
‘I like her too,’ Toro protested. ‘She nice to me. Good lady. Go to church every Sunday.’
Well, finally there was nothing to do about it but take him up to Beverly Hills, so he could present his little trinket to Ruby. Nick was out playing golf with Pat Drake, as it happened, and she was home alone. Although the sun was shining, we found her inside drinking her way through a batch of sidecars. ‘Why, Toro, that’s sweet of you, that’s awfully sweet of you,’ she said, and she pinned the locket over her heart in a provocative gesture.
While I drank along with her for a little while, Toro just sat there silently staring at her in simple-minded shamelessness. She was a stunning woman, with the agelessness of the full-blown voluptuary. Though her behaviour was above reproach and almost studiously ladylike, I wondered if it was the influence of the sidecars which made me sense that Toro’s presence was stimulating her to a more animated charade than usual.
Just as we were leaving, Nick came in with Pat Drake and he seemed pleased to be able to show off his giant protégé to the film star. If he were at all disturbed by Toro’s present to Ruby there was no hint of it in his reaction. ‘The guy shows pretty classy taste,’ he said good-naturedly, looking at the locket. He poked Toro playfully in the ribs. ‘All set for that guy in Oakland, Man Mountain?’
‘I ponch. He go boom,’ Toro said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In Oakland we polished off in four a character called Oscar DeKalb and in Reno an alleged heavyweight by the name of Tuffy Parrish collapsed from a vicious slap on the chest, which added another five thousand to the take of the corporation. By the time we came into Las Vegas, ‘with the new scourge of the heavyweights, the Giant of the Andes, seeking his fifth straight knockout victory’, the East was beginning to rise to the bait and AP wanted fifty words on the outcome of the Chief Thunderbird fight.
‘Turn that goddam radio off,’ Danny said on our way up to the hotel. The more success we had the more irritable Danny seemed to be getting. Larceny just didn’t come naturally to him the way it did to Vince. He fought it all the time.
Toro was still hanging on to his radio. Jazz, cowboy music, spirituals, Latin songs – he didn’t seem to care what it was as long as it was something that came out of a box he could carry around.
As soon as we were settled, Doc and George took Toro out to stretch his legs. Danny ducked out to find a place to bet a couple of good things he thought he had at Belmont. Vince was on the phone trying to get hold of a broad he used to know in Las Vegas and I was in the bathtub reading the New Yorker when Miniff popped in.
By the time I finished the story and came out with a towel around my middle, they were already in an argument.
‘But this Mex is no second-rate bum,’ Miniff was insisting. ‘He’s a first-rate bum. Why, he coulda been a contender if he was managed right.’
‘You mean back in the days of Corbett?’ I said.
Miniff’s ferret eyes turned on me reproachfully. ‘Aahh,’ he said in rebuttal. ‘He’s oney twenty-eight year old. Whaddya thinka that?’
‘I think in that case he must have fought his first professional fight when he was six,’ I said. ‘I looked him up in the record book.’
‘He’s a real tough bum,’ Miniff said. ‘Six-four, weighs two-twenny-five. He’s a man-mountain hisself. He’ll look real good in there with your guy. Lettum go for seven, huh boys?’
‘One round, pal, one round,’ Vince said.
‘One round!’ Miniff wailed. ‘Nail me to the cross, go ahead crucify me, one round! Seven rounds, it looks like your bum is knocking over real opposition. One round, it’s a farce. That’s what it is, a lousy farce.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I said. ‘Do you want the whole town to know what round we got it greased for?’
‘Seven rounds, I could maybe make myself some money with this Indian,’ Miniff whimpered. ‘Whatsa matter with you guys, you never wanna let me make no money?’
‘For Chrisake you’re gettin’ a thousand from the club and another five from us for the act,’ Vince said. ‘Three months ago your ass was hanging out. What more d’ya want?’
‘For goin’ so quick I wanna grand,’ Miniff said. ‘One grand for the hoomiliation.’
‘Listen to him, he wants,’ Vince said to me with righteous derision. ‘A punched-up greaseball he picks up in a poolroom and alluva sudden he wants!’ His mouth opened in a mocking laugh.
Miniff did want. He wanted desperately. He never seemed to be able to get out of the petty-cash department.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you,’ Vince turned to Miniff in sudden imitation of Nick. ‘I’ll give you an extra two-fifty you c’n keep for yourself. Your bum don’t have to know anything about it. That way you come out the same as when you split an extra five down the middle.’
And that’s the way they settled that, with Vince saving us two-bits (which he probably pocketed) by convincing Miniff to hold out on his fighter. The next afternoon I was in our room sipping a rye highball and bending over a hot typewriter whipping up some porridge about this fight’s being for the Latin Heavyweight Championship of the World when Miniff came in crying the blues louder than ever. It was a hot fall day, but he still kept his hat on and the heat of the sun plus his own internal fires brought the shine of perspiration to his small, unhealthy face. All the way through the bedroom Miniff kept up his miserable soliloquy. ‘No wonder I got the bite in the belly. It’s thes
e bums, these stinking bums. Oh, Jesus, I wish I had as much money as I can’t stand them bums.’
‘What’s the matter, Harry?’ I said. ‘Relax.’ I pointed to the bottle. ‘Help yourself.’
‘The amber?’ He recoiled in horror. ‘I haven’t got enough troubles! Why, my ulcer is havin’ ulcers! You wanna know why, you take this bum of mine, this Chief Thunderbird he calls hisself.’
Vince was still lying in bed, in his underwear, sleeping off a big night. He rolled over irritably. ‘Whatsmatter? Whatsmatter?’ he said.
‘My bum, he’s off his nut,’ Miniff said. ‘He says he don’ wanna quit to your bum. Alla sudden he talks like he ain’t already been belted out thirty-eight times already.’
‘What’s the matter, doesn’t he think he’s getting enough dough?’ I said.
‘It ain’t the dough,’ Miniff said, and then he hesitated as if he were ashamed to say it. ‘He says it’s his pride.’
Vince sat up in bed, scratched his hairy chest and reached for a cigar. ‘Pride, for Christ sake! Whaddya mean, pride?’
‘That’s what he says, pride,’ Miniff shrugged. ‘He hasn’t got to eat, he has to have pride yet. The whole trouble starts when he sees this Molina work out in the gym yesterday. “Why, he’s a bum like me,” he says right away. And then, you know these punchy guys, he begins to get sore about it. He’s almost as big as your guy, so he gets to thinking how different things’d been if his managers had greased things for him the way you’s doing with Molina. Gets to feelin’ real sorry for hisself, see? An’ on toppa that, some a his relatives off the reservation is comin’ in to see the fight. He says he’s ashamed for ’em to see a dog like Molina belt him out in one. He says for dough he don’ want it, he says. He says he’s still got his pride.’