The Harder They Fall

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’d like to win this one. I’d really like to beat that Lennert.’

  This had been Nick’s idea, to bring Danny back to his job by not letting him know the Lennert thing was in the bag. Danny knew Lennert hadn’t done any business before, so it wasn’t too difficult to convince him. And since he had never learnt as much about the fight business as he had about fighters, he bought the line that Nick didn’t care who won this time because he owned them both. Danny was a sucker for most of the fighters he had handled, but Lennert was the exception. Lennert was a businessman, not a miser exactly, just careful about his money. If some old pug came along whom Lennert had licked and put the arm on him for a sawbuck or two, Lennert had been known to stall on the ground that the guy was a boozer who would just drink the dough away. But Danny didn’t care what the guy did with the dough, figuring it was only money and that was none of his business. That was the difference between them. When Lennert made his comeback, he figured he knew as much about conditioning and strategy as Danny and insisted on being his own boss. Pretty pig-headed, Lennert was. When he came back he made no bones about being in it purely for the high dollar and not to take any unnecessary chances. Once in a while, for instance, Danny would want Gus to go in and carry the fight to an opponent whom Gus would be content to stay away from and counter-punch, winning an easy decision on points without extending himself when he might have been able to do something more spectacular. That wasn’t honest prizefighting, in Danny’s book, but then, even though one would never know it from some of the things he had had to do, Danny had a sense of purity, of real nobility about the game that an ordinary pro like Lennert wouldn’t understand. Lennert went in for boxing the way he ran his diner in Trenton, not robbing anybody, just cutting them as close as he could without stepping over the line.

  ‘You don’t really think Toro could take Lennert if they’re both sent in to win?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be too sure, laddie,’ Danny said. ‘Let’s not kid ourselves, Gus hasn’t got much any more. That beating he took from Stein didn’t do him any good.’

  ‘I never thought he could take that much any more,’ I said.

  Lennert had looked like his old self against Stein until he began to run out of gas. From the seventh on, Stein had had him down in every round, but couldn’t keep him there. The referee was just about ready to stop it when the fight ended. Lennert was still on his feet, but no longer able to defend himself. He had collapsed on his way to his dressing room.

  ‘He showed a hell of a lot more guts than I thought he had,’ I said.

  ‘That was business,’ Danny said. ‘He was figuring how much bigger the Molina fight would draw if Stein didn’t knock him out. So he let Stein beat his brains in, to make an extra ten or fifteen Gs. That’s Gus. I know him. He don’t care about being a hero. All he’s worried about is how much dough he can lay aside to retire on.’

  ‘You think Stein really slowed him up?’

  ‘I saw him the next day, when he came up to the office to pick up his money,’ Danny said. ‘I thought he was acting kind of funny, sort of slow-like, like something was hurting him in his head or something.’

  ‘I heard Stein hit him so hard Gus cracked his head on the floor,’ I said. ‘Gus is a pretty old man to take those potshots in the head the way Stein throws them.’

  ‘He’s lucky Toro can’t hit,’ Danny said. ‘I guess that’s why he picked him for the bow-out. He figures Molina can’t do any more ’n lean on him once in a while or maybe stamp on his toes with those size fifteens. But believe it or not, laddie, I think I got Toro working a little better. I been spending a lot of time with him this week. I got him throwing a pretty fair right uppercut, and he’s getting so he don’t just wave that left hand like it was a flag.’

  ‘Danny, you could teach a wooden Indian to box.’

  ‘Well, at least a wooden Indian wouldn’t buckle every time you tap him on the jaw.’ Danny laughed. ‘I think I got a pretty good defence worked out for Toro’s jaw this time. Only if he wants to look any good in there, he’s gotta pay a little more attention to his training.’ Danny rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek nervously. ‘That’s why I’m glad you came down, laddie.’

  ‘I’m just the word man,’ I said. ‘What have I got to do with it?’

  ‘You can talk to him. Maybe in his own language he’ll listen better.’

  ‘Sure I’ll talk to him. What do you want me to talk to him about?’

  ‘About Ruby. You better talk to him about Ruby.’

  ‘Ruby? What goes with Ruby?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Danny said, ‘but I got ideas.’

  ‘You mean Ruby and Toro? No, Danny, I can’t buy that. Why, Toro doesn’t know enough…’

  ‘How much do you have to know, laddie?’

  ‘Jesus, are you sure, Danny? Toro is no intellectual giant but I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to fool around with what belongs to Nick.’

  ‘Well, all I know is he’s been driving over there in that goddam Lincoln of his every chance he gets. I been letting Benny take him out for rides. You know he’s worse than a kid with a new toy with that thing. Well, Benny told me the big sap’s been slipping him dough to drive over to Green Acres. And Toro goes inside and doesn’t come out for an hour. Well, I don’t know, maybe I got a dirty mind, but if Toro isn’t getting in, Ruby’s not the girl I’ve heard she is.’

  ‘Jesus!’ I said. ‘I hope you’re wrong. I’d hate to think what’d happen to Toro if Nick ever catches onto that one.’

  ‘It’s a funny thing,’ Danny said. ‘You’d think a guy as smart as Nick would keep a little closer check on a broad like that.’

  ‘They all got their weak spots, the smartest of ’em,’ I said. ‘And, for Nick, I guess it’s believing Ruby’s a real high-class dame.’

  ‘Well, you better talk to him,’ Danny said. ‘Even if Nick doesn’t catch, that kind of business won’t do him any good in there with Lennert. And I want to beat Lennert. I just want to see if I can do it with this lunk.’

  Doc came out on the porch. When he smiled he did not stop looking sad, but merely superimposed the smile over the permanently tragic lines of his face. ‘How about a little two-handed pinochle, Danny?’ he said. ‘You might as well lose it to me as to the books.’

  ‘Don’t gimme that,’ Danny said. ‘I’m the champion pinochle player of Pompton Lakes.’

  ‘Since when could a Mick ever beat a Jew-boy at pinochle?’ Doc said, and winked at me.

  I sat on the porch alone for a while, half listening to the guys inside talking to their dice. I thought of Toro and George walking out there on the back road and wondered what they found to say to each other, Toro with his pidgin English and his child’s mind and George making his own music deep in his throat. ‘There it is, boys, the hard way!’ someone called out, with the gloating laughter of the triumphant. I was tempted to go in and fade that guy. He sounded like the kind of fellow who took so much pleasure in winning that he pressed himself too far.

  But I supposed I should wait and talk to Toro. Goddamit, since when was I Toro’s keeper? What business was it of mine whether he hung the old horns on Nick? That’s just it; it was my business. It wasn’t my inclination; it wasn’t my personal interest; it was simply my job, my five per cent interest to see that Toro stayed away from trouble.

  ‘¿Qué tal, qué tal, amigo? ¡Buenas noches!’

  Toro had loomed up on me, his gums showing in a clownish smile. I hadn’t realised how glad he would be to see me. He seemed actually relieved to have me back. I hadn’t thought anything about it, but this had been the first time we had been separated since Acosta left. Toro didn’t speak enough English to have a real conversation with the others, and anyway those who bothered with him at all treated him with the belittling kindness one might bestow on a trained dog. We talked for a while about the little things, the quality of the food at the camp, the peace of the countryside after our hectic tour, how hard Danny an
d Doc were working him, the album of pictures of him in fighting poses I had promised to prepare for his family. In a little while Benny came out with the message, ‘Doc says it’s time fuh yuh tuh hit da sack.’

  ‘I’ll go up and sit with you while you’re getting ready for bed,’ I said.

  It was a large, sparsely furnished room with a comfortable-looking old-fashioned wrought-iron double bed. As soon as he came in Toro turned his radio on with the volume up. An elocutionist for the NAM was talking about the unique opportunities for self-made men who believed in the American Way. But Toro didn’t seem to care what it was, as long as it was loud. I wandered over to his bureau. There was a pile of papers under his comb and brush. I picked them up and looked at them. They were quick pencil sketches that Toro had drawn, primitive in perspective but with surprising force and humour. The first was obviously Vince, all neck and fat in the face with little eyes and a large cruel mouth. The next one was Danny, with an exaggerated flattened nose and with Xs for eyes. He was bent over a bar. The next was Nick, looking considerably more hard-boiled and sinister than I had thought him. It made me realise for the first time what Toro must have thought of him. Toro had always seemed perfectly docile in his presence, as if he had no feelings in the matter. But the sketches seemed to bespeak a resentment, even a kind of understanding of these men that Toro either had hidden or was unable to express. No matter how crude these sketches were, they showed a certain limited talent that no one would have expected from this lumbering giant. But the artistic quality of the next picture was considerably lower. It was a schoolboy’s amateurish and sentimental attempt to draw a beautiful woman. The woman was obviously meant to be Ruby, though a younger, more slender, more ethereal and completely romanticised version of Ruby. The snood she wore around her head, instead of creating an effect of the exotic as Ruby actually intended it, gave her in Toro’s picture a spiritual, almost Madonna quality. It was clearly a work of love, marred by the mawkishness that such works often have.

  When Toro caught me looking at it, I thought he was going to be angry, but he was only embarrassed. There seemed to be no anger in Toro. All the violence in his nature had shot out into big bones, into girth and heft.

  ‘You draw very nicely, Toro.’

  Toro shrugged.

  ‘Where did you learn to draw so well?’

  ‘In my school when I am a little boy. My teacher show me.’

  I held up the sketch of Vince. ‘This one very good,’ I said, finding myself mimicking Toro’s basic English. Then I looked at the one that was supposed to be Ruby. ‘This not so good.’

  ‘So beautiful as the Señora I cannot make,’ Toro said.

  ‘And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t try to make the Señora either,’ I said.

  ‘No me comprende,’ Toro said.

  He wasn’t just an overgrown lummox now; he was all the natives I had ever known who retreated into the convenient dodge of not understanding the language. ‘No me comprende,’ they say, and they look at you with what is clearly designed to be their most stupid expression, though their eyes betray them with a faintly mocking defiance.

  ‘You’ll comprende all right if Nick catches you fooling around with his wife,’ I said.

  A deep hurt came into Toro’s eyes. ‘No fool around. The Señora my friend. She treat me very nice. She like talk with me. She no laugh at the bad English. With the Señora I am not, not … solitario.’

  ‘Lonely,’ I said. ‘Why should you be? Who the hell is lonely when they’re with the Señora?’

  Toro’s large, passive eyes brightened with resentment. ‘No es verdad, no es verdad,’ he broke into Spanish. ‘No one else is with the Señora. The Señora herself has told that to me.’

  ‘Listen, you stupid bastard,’ I said, ‘I’m trying to help you, the way Luis would have tried to help you. Help you, help you! Understand?’

  Toro’s face became sullen and unfriendly. ‘Luis no help. Luis no friend. Luis leave me here alone. He sell me like a novillo to the butcher. Only the Señora, she treat me like a man.’ Only he used the word hombre, which has a special ring of pride in it.

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ I said. ‘That she’ll treat you like too much of a man.’

  ‘The Señora my friend,’ Toro insisted. ‘The Señora and you and George my only friend.’

  And none of them can do you any good, I thought. Your only friend is the man who puts you back in the wine-barrel business in Santa Maria before it’s too late.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The next afternoon, while Toro was pawing his way through his workouts with George, Gussman and a couple of other obliging carcasses, I decided to run over to Green Acres and take a personal reading on Ruby. Driving up the long, winding approach to the house I passed the chauffeur, Jock Mahoney, in an old turtleneck sweater and cap, looking as if he had just run right off a page of Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday. Jogging at his side was a tall young fellow in gym pants and a dirty sweatshirt.

  ‘What you doing, Jock, getting in shape for Delaney?’

  Mahoney grinned good-naturedly. ‘Delaney wouldn’t be so tough now. But, Jesus, fifteen years ago …’ He shook his head and smiled at his memory of a bad thirty minutes. ‘I thought I was back in my old man’s saloon, fighting three-four guys at once.’

  The young man doing road work with Jock had a fresh, neatly chiselled face that would have been handsome enough for Hollywood. But its symmetry was marred by an expression of disdainful self-confidence. ‘Eddie Lewis – meet the kid nephew, Jackie Ryan,’ Jock said.

  ‘Come on, Jock, for Chris’sake, ya want me to catch cold?’ Ryan demanded.

  ‘Okay, okay. You jog on, I’ll catch up to yuh,’ Jock said affably. He looked after him proudly. ‘He’s gonna be the best fighter we ever had in the family. You shoulda seen him win the Golden Glove welterweight champeenship of Joisey. Nick’s got him on the payroll. Just wants him tuh fill out’n develop for a year. He’s a comer, Mr Lewis. But, Jesus, he’s a hot-headed young son-of-a-bitch. Thinks he knows all the answers awready. He ain’t a bad kid when you get to know him, a course. And a comin’ champ if I ever seen one. If I c’n just keep him away from the broads. You know how them kids are when they’re seventeen – too big for their britches.’

  I started to inch the car forward. ‘Well, take care, Jock. The kids okay?’

  ‘They’ll be beatin’ up their old man any day,’ he called after me happily as I drove off. Ryan didn’t acknowledge my wave as I passed.

  I found Ruby out on the chaise-longue on the sun-porch, reading a book. She was wearing ornate lounging pyjamas, and even though this was just a weekday in the country, her glossy black hair was elaborately dressed. A half-filled box of dates was on the nearby table.

  ‘Hello, Eddie,’ she said. ‘Long time no see.’

  I looked around for a chair. She made room for me beside her.

  ‘Good book, Ruby?’

  She held it up. The title was Maid-in-Waiting; its wrapper displayed a dashing-looking fellow in a beplumed hat looking roguishly over the shoulder of a young lady with impudent breasts. ‘I liked last month’s selection better,’ Ruby said. ‘But it’s in my favourite century. I’d’ve just loved to live in the seventeenth century. All those off-the-shoulder gowns. The women were so much more – distingay. I think the men were a lot more attractive too.’

  I wondered what Ruby would have been doing in the seventeenth century. Probably pretty much what she was doing now, only maybe as the mistress of a big madeira king or a power in the spice racket in the Indies. But actually, Ruby’s was a seventeenth-century marriage. Or even a fourteenth. Boccaccio had followed her into more than one boudoir.

  ‘Nick coming out tonight?’

  ‘You know Nick. He usually calls half an hour before he’s coming and expects me to have a big roast-beef dinner waiting for him.’

  ‘I guess Nick’s a pretty demanding fella.’

  ‘Oh, Nick’s okay. I haven’
t got any kick against Nick. I never have to ask him for things, like some of the girls I know. Nick’s sweet in a lot of ways. But …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘What do I tell you all this for? You’ll probably just repeat it to Nick.’

  ‘Now wait a minute, Ruby, I …’

  ‘I don’t know why you should be any different. Everybody else does. That little louse Killer, I’m afraid to open my mouth when he’s around.’

  ‘You’re not comparing me with the Killer, for Christ sake?’

  ‘No, you’re a gentleman, Eddie. At least if you have an affair, you don’t go around telling everybody about it, play by play. That’s what I like about this seventeenth century. Everybody had just as good a time, but they had some manners about it.’

  There was something about the way her full, red lips moved that was for adults only. Somehow, everything Ruby did became a sensual act. She looked at me with her enlarged pupils, possibly just a physical affliction, some sort of astigmatism commonly mistaken for passion. Again I had the feeling – just a vibration as they say in the mental-telepathy racket – that it could be managed. That it was there if I wanted it.

  ‘You know, you stimulate me,’ she said. ‘Nick brings home nothing but ignoramuses. Me, I’m different. I like people I can learn something from.’

  ‘Just what do you figure you can learn from Toro, Ruby?’

  The look in Ruby’s eyes hardened. ‘Just what do you mean by a crack like that?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. If the shoe fits, I guess …’

  ‘And I considered you a gentleman,’ she said. ‘I thought you were different. But he’s got you stooling for him just like the rest of his mob.’

  ‘Now listen, Ruby, this is strictly between us. Nick doesn’t even know I’m here.’

  ‘Not much! And I thought we were just having a nice little talk about books and stuff. And all the time you’re just snooping around like a private dick.’

  ‘Nick will never know I was here,’ I insisted. ‘I just wanted to remind you, Ruby, Toro is just a big, awkward goof. I hate to see him stumble into something he can’t handle.’