The Harder They Fall

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I didn’t bother to go back to the dressing room. Danny had already drunk himself beyond companionship, and the realisation that I had drifted into Vince’s zone of intimacy had me back on my heels. I left the arena and started on a lonely prowl for a quiet place to buy myself a drink. But the first bar was too much of a crum-joint, the next too crowded, the third too desolate, and so it went until I found myself at the end of the short street that led right into the desert.

  It was a mild night with millions of stars in the sky. The quiet took me away from the meaningless noise of many mouths, away from the bars and the jukes. I had to think. It was a long time since I had tried to think. In the fight game, I didn’t think; I merely got bright ideas, hot flashes, used them, kept the wires burning. When I was a kid I used to raise turtles. I’d pick one out of its bowl and instantly it would draw in its head and feet and become a cold, dead lump. A moment before it had been a live, scurrying thing. I’d drop it down into another bowl and its head would pop out; its feet would shoot forth and it would be scrambling around again. It had no idea where the hell it was going, but moved with frantic, aimless haste, exactly as I had been dropped down and had kept going in the fight game. For some reason I couldn’t understand, and only at odd, out-of-the-way moments protested against, automatically my brain would begin to spark, my legs would start working, and I’d be off on my feverish, pointless journey around and around my little bowl.

  I put my hand to my mouth. I didn’t know why for a moment, and then I remembered Chief Thunderbird. I had no chicken wire pressed up against my gums, but I was flicking myself with steel-tipped self-reproach in a last-minute effort to hang on to what was left of my pride. The events of the evening passed before me in all their tawdry melodrama. Nick, Vince, Danny, Doc, and Toro, that monstrous figure I had helped create. I had to get away from all of them; I had to rack up on this rat race before the trap was sprung. How had Beth described my job? Interesting at thirty, a blind alley at forty, a last refuge for a bum at fifty.

  Beth’s words. Beth and her damned New England conscience following me all the way out here into the desert. How much had I ever wanted Beth? Were we ever ‘meant for each other’, like lovers on the screen? Had I ever wanted to marry Beth? Were my occasional marital tendencies merely the automatic reflection of Beth’s need for permanence? The tentative, the casual relationship was all against her upbringing. Back of all her dissatisfaction with me was her dread of uncertainty, aimlessness and impermanence. Far away from her in a world she could never make herself know, I was rootless and rotting.

  I wanted to hear Beth’s voice again. I think I even missed the brisk impatience with which she liked to dismiss me. I walked back along the neon-glowing street until I came to a little saloon called Jerry’s Joynt. I kept on walking past the bar to the phone booth in the rear. I gave the operator Beth’s number. The circuits were busy; it would be a few minutes, she said. I went back to the bar to wait. All the customers seemed either silently morose or garrulously unhappy.

  A fellow in cowboy boots down the bar was telling the bartender about our fight. ‘Best goddam fight I ever saw,’ he was saying. ‘The goddam bloodiest fight I ever saw. Boy, you shoulda seen it, Mike.’

  Next to me a seedy little drunk was confiding his domestic troubles to a half-listening truck driver with a union button on his cap.

  I turned the volume way down on everybody and tried to listen to my own thoughts. What a setting for a play a place like this would make! Gorky’s Lower Depths with an all-Las-Vegas cast. Beth would approve of my thinking in terms of a play instead of a fight fix.

  The phone was ringing. I rushed to answer it.

  ‘Hello. On your call to New York City. The circuits are still busy. Do you wish me to call you again in twenty minutes?’

  Another twenty minutes, another drink, another hard-luck story from the guy who didn’t want to go home to his wife. I don’t know why I drank. Drink makes some men talk honestly and well; it urges others to foolish lies. Drink slows my rhythm, depresses my nerves, releases fears that crawl inside me. I thought with envy of Toro sleeping up there at the hotel in serene ignorance, Man Mountain Molina, the Hyper-Pituitary of the Andes, who would remain asleep when he woke in the morning. As I thought of Toro I recalled, with that trick compartmentalisation of the free-associating mind, a reading assignment in Freshman English: John Milton’s Samson Agonistes, the great giant in the hands of his enemies who had put out his eyes and exhibited him in chains for the amusement of the Philistine crowds.

  But how could Samson’s plight be compared to Toro’s, with all those stumble-bums flopping on their flattened faces for him? What danger was he in? Danger? A red light flashed in my mind. I was seized by an inescapable foreboding, and yet, for the life of me, I could not imagine what could possibly happen to him. Was that red light really in my mind or was it just the flashing red tubing outside the window spelling out the words ‘Jerry’s Joynt’?

  The bell in the booth was ringing insistently. I lurched toward it and finally had the receiver off the hook. Yes, yes, this was Mr Lewis. Could I have my party now?

  With the door closed I could hardly breathe in the booth. The closeness made me dizzy, made the walls float around me, around and around in my head.

  ‘Hello, hello, darling.’

  ‘Hello, Eddie. What’s been happening to you?’

  ‘I know, I know. I’ve been meaning to write you … But this has been such a rat race … I started a long letter to you in LA …’

  I didn’t need television to see Beth shaking her head on the other end of the phone, half amused, half resigned.

  ‘Eddie, sometimes I think you just want to be a character.’

  ‘How’s everything been, Beth? You could have written me too, you know.’

  ‘Things have been awfully calm, Eddie. Nothing much has been happening. I’ve just been working and coming home early. Doing a lot of reading.’

  ‘You weren’t home reading the Saturday I called you up at 2 a.m.’

  ‘Oh, I was probably away for the weekend. I’ve been going out to Martha’s a lot.’

  Martha was a room-mate of Beth’s at Smith who had made quite a splash as a fashion designer. Martha had never been very subtle about what she thought of me. I knew it wasn’t going to help my cause any to have Beth out at Martha’s.

  ‘Martha’s finally decided to give up her job and get married. An awfully nice boy from Brookline. You wouldn’t know him. She actually wants to settle down and raise a family.’

  ‘What the hell are we talking about Martha for? How about us, baby? All this time away from each other and we haven’t even started talking about you and me.’

  ‘Is there anything new to say about us, Eddie?’

  ‘Well, I’ve missed you like all hell. But you’re right, I guess that isn’t very new.’

  ‘I’ve missed you too, Eddie. I really have. I wish I didn’t, though. I feel it’s kind of a weakness of mine … to want you any more.’

  ‘Now listen, Beth. Why make a problem out of it? We’re in each other’s hair for good. Why don’t you relax and admit it?’

  ‘You sound awfully sober. Are you sober tonight, Eddie?’

  ‘More than sober, baby. I’ve been thinking. This fight we had tonight just about gave me a bellyful. I’m just about ready to tell Nick to find himself another boy.’

  ‘Just about ready, Eddie? Eddie, aren’t you ever going to be ready?’

  ‘Sure, sure. I’m ready, but you know how Nick is. You just don’t go up to him and quit. You’ve got to ease yourself out.’

  ‘But you’ve been easing yourself out ever since I’ve known you.’

  ‘Just wait, Beth. I’ll prove it to you. I ought to be back in a few months. Wait for me, Beth.’

  ‘Wait for Nick, you mean. Oh, Eddie, walk out on him. Please. It’s easy, believe me.’

  ‘I will. I’m going to. But I’ve got to feel my way. You don’t understand
. I’ll need every nickel I can get out of it. Then …’

  ‘All right, Eddie. Get all the nickels you can. Keep on kidding yourself.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Beth, what else can I do? Just wait and you’ll see.’

  ‘I don’t know what else you can do. I honestly don’t. Let me know when you’ve had enough. Goodbye, Eddie.’

  She hung up while I was saying ‘Goodbye.’ I pulled the folding door of the booth open and stepped back into the hubbub of Jerry’s Joynt. I moved over to the bar to have another drink. Maybe I shouldn’t have called Beth. Maybe I should have gone straight to Nick to turn in my uniform, climb down off the gravy-train and head east. Maybe I should have talked only to myself and made up my mind, once for all, to do what I had to do. Well, after all, there were a few things still to be said to Nick, and this was the time to get them off my chest before making my getaway.

  The party at Nick’s suite looked like a Cecil DeMille production of how modern robber barons entertain themselves. Coming in cold out of the loneliness of my one-man jag I had an impression of big, prosperous thick-skinned mammals of the masculine variety laughing loudly from expansive bellies, of women who were Aphrodites of the make-up box, all eyebrow pencil, eyeshadow, lipstick, hairdos and perfume that incited you to conventional passions. Floating toward me, cool and ladylike, was Ruby, wearing a black tulle evening gown and a Spanish comb in her hair, sensual in a removed and stately way. Ruby’s eyes had a strange lustre and she walked with a telltale but successful effort at steadiness.

  ‘Well, it’s about time you showed up, Eddie,’ she said, and she kissed me affectionately on the cheek. ‘Come on over and I’ll pour you a drink.’

  Looking at Ruby and then hearing her talk never failed to surprise me. She was like a common showgirl who walks on stage into a high-born, glamorous part, but for whom the dramatist has neglected to write any lines.

  ‘We were all hoping you’d bring Toro,’ Ruby said.

  ‘Toro’s a country boy,’ I said. ‘He needs his rest. This stuff won’t do him any good, Ruby. He’s confused enough as it is.’

  She looked up at me, but I wasn’t sure whether she got it. That was another thing about Ruby. She could look at you steadily with those enlarged dark pupils in what would appear to be a reaction of profound intelligence, but it was only an elaborately convincing charade of intelligence.

  ‘He’s such a sweet boy,’ she said. ‘Takes his religion so seriously. I just love to go with him Sundays. Honestly we can all learn a lot from people with simple faith like that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, reaching for my drink, ‘I guess we can. Where’s Nick, Ruby? I’ve got something to tell him.’

  ‘Over there,’ she indicated with her head. ‘With that fat fella in the corner.’

  Nick had a glass in his hand too, but he must have been nursing it all evening. Nick was too smart and too organised; his pattern was woven too tightly for promiscuous drinking. Nick drank when he needed a drink to put someone at ease. Now in the small, sloppy, unravelling hours of the morning he managed to remain remarkably dapper, sober and wide awake. His tailor-made sharkskin suit fitted him almost too perfectly, and his lean, closely shaven dark face seemed even sharper than ever in contrast to the bleary, sagging countenances of his guests.

  ‘Hello, Shakespeare,’ he said, glad to see me.

  ‘Nick,’ I said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘So do I, kid,’ he said. ‘Let’s go out on the balcony for a couple of minutes.’

  He stood on the balcony with his legs apart, blowing smoke into the night.

  ‘I wish these jerks would start clearing out of here,’ he said.

  He offered me a cigar, but I refused it. I had been smoking Nick’s cigars for years and blowing smoke rings to spell Nick Latka or Toro Molina or whatever he had on his mind.

  ‘Nick, I …’ I tried to begin.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Nick interrupted. ‘And I’m ahead of you. You think you ought to have a raise. Well, you’re not going to get a fight out of me. You’ve done a hell of a job, Eddie. You actually have the public believing this bum’s a great fighter. I’m a bullish sort of a guy, but I didn’t think the fans would buy him so fast. You been away from the East, so you don’t know what’s been happening. We’re ready to get out of this chicken-feed circuit. Charley Spitz in Cleveland says he’s got five thousand on the line for Toro to fight anybody – Joe Floppola. The customers just want to see him. In Chi, we can get a fifteen-thousand guarantee against forty per cent of the gross for him to go with Red Donovan. Red’s manager, Frank Conti, owes me a favour. Then with a win over Donovan, who’s beaten some pretty fair boys, Uncle Mike will be ready to bring us into the Garden. Quinn was out to see Mike already and they talk about putting Toro in with Lennert two months after the Lennert-Stein fight Thursday night.’

  ‘But you own ’em both,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it bad business to let one eliminate the other, when …’

  ‘I’m still ahead of you,’ Nick said. ‘Don’t forget I haven’t got nothing to do with Toro yet, officially. I’ve still got Vince and Danny fronting for me. So after Toro gets a win over Lennert, Gus retires – which he wants to do anyway – and you announce that Quinn and me have bought up Toro’s contract from Vince and Danny. Could anything be simpler?’

  ‘But Gus has always been on the level,’ I said. ‘Gus never went into the bag for anybody in his life. What makes you think you could get Gus to …’

  ‘I already been through all that with Gus just before I came out,’ Nick said. ‘Gus is thirty-three next month. He’s been in the ring fifteen years. He’s not thinking of his career any more. What he wants is a couple of real money fights, enough for him to take things easy the rest of his life, good investments, a couple of good annuities, so his kids will be all right. We got his financial set-up all figured out to his satisfaction and Mrs Lennert’s. You know, she’s always been a little sore at me for talking him into coming back. She wanted to keep him in that hamburger stand of his, even if he was making peanuts. Well, we showed her how in two fights Gus can make himself around a hundred thousand dollars. With Stein in the ball park, Uncle Mike figures to gross around four hundred Gs, with Gus getting twenty-five per cent. That’s a hundred divided between us and Jimmy. I decided on account of it’s Gus, and he’s racking up we’ll leave him take two-thirds without deductions. That’s around sixty-five thousand for openers. Then with Toro in the Garden we ought to do a hundred ’n fifty Gs easy. On account of Toro’s getting such a build-up from knocking over Lennert, I figure he ought to be satisfied with ten per cent, which puts Lennert’s cut at fifty-five thousand, leaving Gus around thirty-six Gs.’

  A couple of times I tried to break in on this overwhelming flow of grosses and percentages with the beautiful speech I had worked out on my way over to Nick’s after my talk with Beth. But this was like trying to fight an Armstrong – leaning on you, crowding you, never giving you a chance. It was no use. Nick’s adding-machine mind kept right on computing each fight in dollars and cents.

  ‘So sixty-five and thirty-six, Gus has got his hundred thousand fish. The win over Gus makes Toro a logical opponent for Buddy Stein and then we’re really in the tall grass, with a million-dollar gate, if we play it smart. So, Eddie, I want you to know I realise what you mean to this deal. Of course, five per cent of Toro’s slice of a million bucks – if we make it – that isn’t Chiclets. But meanwhile I’m putting you down for one-five-o per week, and we’ll push it to two hundred right after the Lennert fight.’

  Six hundred a month, that was a respectable improvement over my old job on the Trib, and with Lennert and Stein coming up after Cleveland and Chicago, Toro could stand to gross around $250,000 for the year, which would mean a nice little $12,500 on top of my regular $7,500. $20,000! How many guys in America would throw up a job that averaged them four hundred bucks a week just because the job pinched their souls a little bit? Hell, even Beth could see the wisdom of that. An
d it wasn’t as if I were mortgaging myself to Nick for life. Why, another couple of years of this, with maybe a hike to $25,000 the second year, and I’d have enough of those little green coupons to take things easy, get that play out and wrap it up, if I feel like it. And meanwhile, think of all the valuable material I was getting. Why, my plans weren’t changed, my integrity was still intact, I was just racking up gradually instead of all at once, like Gus Lennert, who figured to take an awful beating from Stein for his sixty-five thousand, coast through the Toro fix for an easy thirty-six and then live out his days on a farm like a country squire. I was just thinking like a moonstruck freshman when I was out there on the edge of town deciding to blow Nick off.

  This wasn’t selling out. This was just playing it smart.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  With Dynamite Jones and Chief Thunderbird finally salted away in the record books as early knockout victims of Toro Molina, we thought we needed an easy one. So for Denver Toro’s opponent was a ‘Negro protégé of Sam Langford’s who has faced the best in his division’. Of course, he turned out to be our own Georgie Blount.

  But I had to start earning my dough again when a local reporter – another Al Leavitt – came up with the discovery of George’s identity. That is what makes a press agent’s ride so nerve-racking. Just when you think you’re freewheeling down a four-lane highway, some jerk tosses a handful of tacky truths in your path.

  But a smart guy takes trouble in stride and puts it to work for him. So right away I gave out a story, capitalising on the fact that George had been a sparring partner who had had a row with Toro when he claimed that Toro had knocked him out when they were only supposed to be having a light workout.