The Harder They Fall

  What could you do with a dope like that except clam up and enjoy the scenery?

  Toro told Benny to drive to Green Acres. ‘Dat okay?’ Benny asked me. Maybe it was just nasty curiosity on my part, masquerading as high purpose, but I let him go.

  When no one answered the front door, we went around to the back and let ourselves in through the screen porch. There was no one in sight, so I followed Toro up the stairs. He seemed to know where he was going. At the end of the second-floor hall was Ruby’s suite – she and Nick had separate apartments – an upstairs sitting room decorated completely in white. At the far end of the room, facing us, was a white piano. A man was sitting on the bench at the piano, but he wasn’t playing. He had his back turned to it and his head was thrown back as if he were a mute going through the emotions of singing grand opera. We didn’t see Ruby at all until we were halfway into the room. From where we stood, her head had been hidden by the top of the piano.

  When he noticed us, the man jumped up and I saw it was Jackie Ryan, Jock Mahoney’s kid nephew. ‘Get outa here! Get the hell outa here,’ he was yelling. Ruby’s voice, shriller than I had ever heard it, screamed. Even quicker than I could, Toro seemed to grasp what had been going on.

  ‘¡Puta!’ he shouted. ‘¡Estás una puta, una puta!’

  He made a frenzied, awkward lunge for her, but Ryan who barely came to his shoulder, rushed forward and drove his fist into Toro’s stomach. The punch caught Toro by surprise and sent him reeling backward. Then he lowered his head, amazingly like a fighting bull, and started to charge.

  ‘Get out, get out,’ I ordered Ryan.

  ‘Yes, for God’s sake, all of you,’ Ruby screeched. ‘You too, Jackie.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m going,’ Ryan said and swaggered out with an air of casualness.

  ‘Come on, Toro. We better go, too,’ I said. But he didn’t hear me.

  The first wave of Toro’s fury was spent now. He turned to Ruby unbelievingly. ‘Puta,’ he said. ‘Why you do this? Why you do this bad thing? And all the time you tell me Toro is the only one …’

  ‘You lummox,’ Ruby shouted. ‘You filthy, sneaking lummox.’

  Her lips were unusually red in her pale, frightened face. But as she stood there in her silk lounging pyjamas, her superb, unimaginative self-control began flowing back into her.

  ‘Why you do this bad thing to Toro?’ he persisted. ‘Why? ¿Por qué?’

  ‘None of your business,’ Ruby said. ‘None of your goddam business. Just because I let you come up here a few times, you think you own me. All you men try to own me.’

  ‘But all the time we talk about Santa Maria. Maybe you go with me, you say.’

  Ruby looked at him without pity. ‘I had to tell you something, you baboon. Do you think I’d leave all this for a lousy little hole in Argentina? Spend my life with a dopey tenth-rate bum!’

  Toro stared in bewilderment. ‘Toro no bum. Toro fighter. All the time win. Best fighter Nick has in whole life.’

  Ruby laughed. She had to get back at him. After what had happened she had to do something to put him in his place.

  ‘Listen, you slob,’ she said slowly. ‘You couldn’t beat Eddie here if it wasn’t fixed. Every fight you had in this country was fixed. All those bums you’re so proud of beating, they were paid to take a dive, every one of them.’

  ‘Dive?’ Toro said, frowning. ‘I not understand. Explain me what you mean, dive?’

  ‘You poor sap,’ Ruby said. ‘Those guys you beat were letting you win – didn’t you know that? – letting you win.’

  Toro’s large eyes half closed in pain. ‘No!’ he roared. ‘No! No! I no believe. I no believe.’

  ‘Ask Eddie,’ Ruby said. ‘He ought to know.’

  Toro turned to me desperately. ‘Dígame, Eddie,’ he begged. ‘La verdad. Solamente la verdad. Dígame.’

  Having to stand there and swing that body blow to his simple pride suddenly seemed to compound my crime. But there was no room to weasel out. ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Your fights were fixed. They were all fixed, Toro.’

  Toro ran his hand slowly over his face as if his head held a terrible aching. Looking at him, you had the crazy impression that the whole front of his face had been beaten in.

  He turned and rushed out. Downstairs, he charged out through the screen door, ran around the house and started wildly down the street. I jumped into the car and told Benny to follow him. We let him go for almost four blocks. He was beginning to run out of gas. He lacked the athlete’s coordination to run easily on his toes. Gradually he slowed down to an awkward workhorse trot. We parked the car about fifty yards ahead of him, and as he came abreast we tried to herd him into the back seat.

  ‘Go ’way, go ’way, you make me look like fool,’ he shouted.

  ‘G’wan, get in dere,’ Benny said. He pushed Toro toward the car. He had nothing but contempt for him. The exertion had sapped Toro’s power to resist. Wearily he submitted and climbed into the back seat.

  All the way out to the camp, Toro sat huddled in the corner, staring down at his massive hands.

  ‘Listen, for Christ sake,’ I said. ‘We were only trying to help you. Trying to get you that dough you wanted.’

  There was no response from Toro, no indication that he had heard me.

  This wasn’t in the script. Toro wasn’t supposed to have any sensibilities, any capacity for humiliation, for pride or indignation. He was merely the product: the soap, the coffee, the cigarette.

  ‘Honest, Toro, we weren’t trying to make a fool out of you. We just wanted to make sure you got the right start. It happens all the time.’

  But Toro wouldn’t hear me. He just sat sullenly in the corner, his eyes turned inward in shame.

  When we reached the camp, Danny and Doc were sitting out on the steps with George and some of the boys.

  ‘Hello, big fella,’ George said. ‘Have a nice ride?’

  Toro stood on the landing, dwarfing all of us. Looking up at this inept and angry giant, his inarticulate wrath was terrible to see.

  ‘You think you make joke of Toro, huh?’ he accused us all. ‘You make big fool of Toro?’ He went on into the house.

  ‘What’s eating him?’ Danny wanted to know.

  ‘Ruby just gave it to him straight about how he beat all those fellas,’ I said.

  ‘Serves him right for nosing around the Duchess,’ Doc said. ‘It serves him right.’

  ‘Maybe we shoulda told him,’ Danny reflected. ‘It stinks bad enough without smelling it up with more lies.’

  ‘Aah, you guys sound like a lot of old women,’ Vince said. ‘He’ll be all right. I’ll go in and slip him another five hundred. That’s the best kind of medicine.’

  But a few minutes later, when Vince returned, his fat neck was reddened with anger. ‘He says he don’t want the dough. The jerk. And six months ago his ass was hangin’ out. How d’ya figure a slob like that?’

  When it was time for supper Benny went up to call Toro, but he wouldn’t come down. Then George took a crack at it because he was closer to Toro than the others, but he came back alone too. So I went up to see what I could do. Toro was standing in front of his window, staring out into the gathering darkness.

  ‘Toro, you better eat something,’ I said.

  ‘I stay here,’ Toro said.

  ‘Come on, snap out of it. We’ve got a beautiful steak waiting. Just the way you like it.’

  Toro shook his head. ‘I no eat with you. You make joke of Toro.’

  Then he turned around and confronted me. ‘This fight with Lennert? This fix too?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘This one is on the level. So if you beat Lennert, you have nothing to be ashamed of.’

  I was sorry to have to keep on with it, but I was in so deep there was no way out of this circle of lies. We were in a tight spot. The mood he was in now, he was liable to do anything in that Lennert fight. If he thought the fight was in the bag, he might even spill it to the Commission and that would be the
end of the Lennert and Stein gravy. We could even wind up before a grand jury. I wish I could have had a choice, but there I was. I had to make him believe this fight was on the level.

  Toro drove his enormous right first into the open palm of his other hand. ‘I win this fight,’ he threatened. ‘I show you Toro no joke. You no have to fix for Toro. This time you no laugh behind me.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I said. ‘Now come on down and get yourself some steak.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  HEAVYWEIGHT RIVALS IN CRUCIAL BATTLE TONIGHT – MAKE FIGHT PREDICTIONS

  ‘Toro to Get Boxing Lesson And First Licking,’ says Ex-Champ

  by

  GUS LENNERT

  I feel confident I will snap the Man Mountain’s winning streak tonight. Although I have plenty of respect for his strength and punching ability, I expect to outbox and out-general him in our 15-round bout in the Garden. Giving away 75 pounds doesn’t frighten me. He may be a giant but giants have been licked before. Don’t forget Goliath. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. I have never been in better shape and am betting on myself to dispose of this Argentine invader and go on to become the first ex-champion to regain his crown.

  ‘I Will Knock Him Out in Five Rounds,’ says Argentine Giant

  by

  TORO MOLINA

  When I was in Argentina I have heard already of Gus Lennert. He was Champion-of-the-World then. Even though he no longer holds the title, I realise he is still a great fighter and the most dangerous opponent I have faced. But I will be surprised if he is still there for the sixth round. My advantage in weight, age and strength should wear him down in the early rounds. After that I am counting on my mazo punch to put him away. I predict that this fight will be one more step up the ladder toward my goal of achieving what my idol, Luis Ángel Firpo, came so close to doing – bringing the championship to Argentina.

  I read back over these brilliant pieces of creative writing I had just knocked out. Not bad, I thought. As convincing as this stuff ever is. Toro’s essay was a rewrite of one I had written a year earlier for a French middleweight, but who’d know the difference? Certainly not the suckers who read the stuff. The other one sounded more like Lennert than Lennert himself. Next thing I know he’ll begin to think he’s Tunney and want me to write his speeches on Shakespeare to give the boys at Harvard.

  Next, I dreamt up a follow-up piece for Gus on ‘How I Got Licked’, for the morning after the fight. Usually I had to knock out those first-person post-mortems in that high-tension interval between the end of the fight and the Journal’s deadline. But this time I figured I might as well clean up all the literary labours at once. So I batted out something that began, ‘In my thirteen years in the ring, I have stayed with the best of them. So I can honestly say this Argentine Giant is the most powerful puncher I ever faced. I look for him to take the mighty Buddy Stein and go on to the championship.’

  Most of the time you just threw this stuff together, slapped the guy’s name on it and shoved it in. But Gus was exasperatingly particular about the way his name was used. Wise to all the angles on how to gather unto himself that extra buck, Gus saw a profitable sideline for himself as a spot commentator on the big fights. He had even suggested that I might be able to work up a daily column for him. On the chance that there might be something in it for me, I had promised to take these byline pieces out to him to check them over before I sent them through.

  Gus lived in a modest white frame house in a middle-class section of West Trenton. His wife met me at the door in an apron. She was just getting the boys’ lunch ready, she said. With the purse from the Stein fight and his savings, Gus must have had at least a hundred Gs in cash and securities, but I don’t think they had ever had a cook. Gus liked to make you think it was because he was so fond of the missus’ cooking. But what he was really fond of was that lettuce in the cooler.

  Gus was sitting in the breakfast nook in a worn red bathrobe, an old pair of pants and bedroom slippers, with a lot of papers spread out in front of him. His hair, sharply receding from his forehead and showing signs of grey at the temples, was unkempt, as if he had just gotten out of bed. He hadn’t bothered to shave, in the old fighters’ tradition that the extra days’ growth was an additional protection to his face. He looked much older than when I had last seen him at Green Acres. You would have put him down for closer to forty than thirty. The Stein beating seemed to have taken something out of him. I could count where the six stitches had been taken after Stein had split his right eye in the fourteenth round.

  When I came in he frowned at me as if his head was hurting.

  ‘Goddamit, you sure take your own sweet time getting out here,’ he greeted me.

  ‘Sorry, Gus,’ I said. ‘I missed the ten o’clock train. Hope it didn’t inconvenience you.’

  ‘Well, we still got telephone service,’ he said. ‘Thank God I can still pay my phone bills. You could of called Emily. I got up at nine-thirty especially to be ready for you. What’s a matter, too much celebrating last night?’

  ‘Hell, no, I was in the sack before midnight. I wanted to be sure and be in shape for the fight tomorrow night.’

  I thought that might get a rise out of him, but he didn’t even smile.

  ‘I had a lousy night,’ he said. ‘Must a been three o’clock before I could get to sleep. Finished two whole murder mysteries. That’s why I coulda used the extra hour this morning.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I apologised again. ‘I guess I should have called you, Gus.’

  ‘Well, that’s the way it is,’ Gus said in a voice surly with self-pity. ‘When you’re on top the phone never stops ringing. But when you’re on your way out, nobody gives a damn.’

  From the kitchen came a loud, boyish screech, and then a general hubbub. Gus jumped up, opened the door and shouted in, ‘For God’s sake, Emily, how many times do I have to ask you to keep them quiet? I knew I shoulda gone to the hotel last night. Now are you gonna make ’em shut up or do I have to come in there and knock their heads together?’

  He came back to the table, closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against the right side of his forehead.

  ‘Feeling okay, Gus?’

  ‘Just a lousy headache,’ he said. ‘Hell, no wonder, the racket those kids make around here.’

  He squeezed his eyes together and massaged the triangle between his eyebrows.

  ‘Jesus, it looks like I have to do everything.’ He picked up some of the pages in front of him, on which there were long rows of figures. ‘I pay a business manager two hundred bucks a month to handle my investments and he can’t even add right.’ He tapped the papers irritably. ‘Found two mistakes already. And these fifty Gs I make tonight, he’s trying to sell me on the idea of putting it in annuities. Annuities is a lot of bunk. I been figuring it up and it don’t pay. I carry a hundred thousand straight insurance. That’s the only kind to have. If I got fifty thousand to invest, I’d rather put it in something like Treasury Bonds.’

  He was starting to figure out how 2.9 per cent of fifty thousand compared with setting up a trust fund. You could see he loved to write those big figures down and multiply them.

  ‘Look, Gus,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a lot to do yet today. Want to take a gander at this stuff?’

  He read it over as if he were Hemingway guarding his literary reputation, with his pencil poised critically over each word, occasionally shaking his head and rereading a sentence. ‘This line here,’ he quibbled, “Don’t forget Goliath.” That don’t sound good. Maybe some people don’t even know who Goliath is.’

  ‘Anybody who reads the Journal and doesn’t know who Goliath is,’ I said, ‘deserves to read the Journal.’

  ‘If you wanna succeed in this writing business,’ Gus insisted, ‘you gotta write so everybody can understand you.’

  ‘But since you’re comparing Goliath to Toro, it’ll remind everybody who he is.’

  ‘Goddamit, why does everything have to be an argument,’ Gus said, his voice r
ising. ‘My name’s going on this, so I guess I can have it the way I want it.’

  He took my copy and began correcting it, erasing several times. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s a little more like it.’

  I looked at it and said nothing. What he had written was, ‘Don’t forget how David overcame Goliath.’ He went through the rest of the copy, making his petty and niggling changes and handed it back without looking at me.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘Every goddam thing I’ve got to do myself.’

  I kept quiet. But I couldn’t figure why he was under so much pressure for a fight he was going to throw.

  He stood up, rubbed his head again, and walked me to the door. ‘How does the house look?’

  ‘Even Jacobs can’t kick. Nothing but some three-thirties left and they’ll be gone by fight time. It’s a hundred and fifty easy.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for those goddam taxes I’d make myself some money,’ Gus said.

  ‘I wish I were paying those taxes,’ I said. ‘Well, see you, Gus. Take it easy.’

  ‘I just hope it looks all right,’ Gus said. ‘That big clown better fight enough to make it look good. All I need now is for the Commish to smell a rat and tie up our purses.’

  ‘Stop worrying,’ I said. ‘It’ll be all right. It’s money in the bank. You haven’t got a thing to worry about.’

  As the front door closed behind me, I could hear the Lennert kids cutting up in the kitchen again. ‘For God’s sake, will you keep those damn kids quiet?’ Gus shouted. ‘How many times do I have to tell ya? I got a headache!’

  Toro had driven into town with Pepe and Fernando. He wanted no part of us. Fernando, moving in, took him up to the suite at the Waldorf. We didn’t see him until the weigh-in at noon.

  ‘Howya feeling?’ I said.

  Toro looked away. He wasn’t talking to any of us.

  ‘Don’t forget now, a good lunch around three o’clock,’ Doc said. ‘But remember, no fats, no gravies and no lemon-meringue pie.’