The Harder They Fall (20 page)

Vince laughed. Toro turned to Acosta again. ‘Give me ten dollar,’ he said. He handed the bill to Pancho solemnly.
He could not explain what had happened, but some simple peasant intelligence seemed to make him understand that the carefully nourished dignity of Pancho Diaz had been outraged.

While Toro was having his workout I dropped down to Abe Attell’s, the dark, narrow saloon and beanery that tunnelled under the gym. You could go in there at 10 a.m. for a beer and sit around until midnight, watching the old fights on a streaky movie screen. The pictures ran continually, pausing only long enough for one of the bartenders to change reels. A hoarse soundtrack of the noises fight fans make when things happen in the ring began to deafen you. Sometimes a young boxer or a sports writer would sit down to watch a fight, but most of the spectators, who must have seen these same films countless times, were jug-heads and shabby ex-fighters just hanging around, waiting for another break, another manager, a chance to pick up beer money sparring with somebody’s prospect or working as a second, or waiting to put the bite on an old pal or a newcomer on the way up with money in his pocket.

On the screen, Jack Dempsey, crazy with viciousness, fighting like a man who has tracked down a lifelong enemy, was swarming all over big, slow, flabby Jess Willard, smashing Jess down every time he got up and breaking his ribs, his nose and his heavy jaw. A seedy-looking wino sat down opposite me with his back to the screen and started muttering to himself. When my eyes shifted for a moment from the grainy violence of the screen he tried to smile but it was only the unhappy mechanical grimace of a man who
is ready to offer a spurious, tentative friendship in return for a fifteen-cent glass of Sauternes.

‘I seen you somewhere before, ain’t I?’ he said for openers.

‘I’ve never been out here before,’ I said.

‘Oh, I fought all over, KC, Louisville, Camden, New Jersey. Young Wolgast.’ He spoke the name proudly and stopped to watch the effect.

The only Wolgasts in my book were Midget, the flyweight champion, and the great Ad, who knocked out Battling Nelson in forty rounds and finally fought himself into amnesia. But Young Wolgast looked as if he needed a little moral support, and it didn’t cost anything to open my mouth and say, ‘Oh.’

‘Mushy Callahan,’ he said. ‘You know, the great Mushy, I shoulda knocked him out. I had him out on his feet, see, but I didn’t know how bad I hurt him and I let him jazz me out of it. I got him laying right on the ropes, all set up for the kayo and I don’t go in.’ The disappointment was still sharp in him, but he couldn’t stop himself from pressing down against the point of it with perverse torment. ‘If I put Mushy away I can write my own ticket. I’m the hottest thing in town, and like a jerk I let him bluff me out of it. I don’ know how bad I got him hurt, see …’

Mushy Callahan won what they call the junior welterweight championship from Pinky Mitchell back in the middle twenties. So the fight this Wolgast is worrying about must have taken place ten, maybe fifteen years ago. But time is all turned around in Wolgast’s head. For two or three seconds in his life he had a glimpse of glory, and down
through the shabby years of obscurity, those precious drops of time have grown and grown until they have blotted out the rest of his memory. ‘I rush him into a corner and clip him with a right uppercut,’ he was saying, his fist closing in reflex, ‘and then like a dope I step back, I let him get away, he’s out on his feet and I don’ even know it.’

His head hung down on his chest, heavy with wine and self-disgust. On the screen it was Dempsey and Carpentier now, the first million-dollar gate, curtain raiser on the Golden Age of boxing and gold-plated bunk and ballyhoo. A sharpshooter from Reno moved into New York with the big idea that a fight wasn’t just a contest of skill and brawn; it was a dramatic spectacle, and he proceeded to stage it accordingly. So it was Carpentier, the war hero versus Dempsey, the slacker; the fearless French light-heavyweight against the 200-pound bully; the clean-cut, smooth-shaven, gentlemanly veteran, representing patriotism, sportsmanship and boxing skill, and the glowering slugger with a three-days beard who had fought his way up from the hobo jungles. There were the 80,000 high-pressured fans screaming their lungs out for Carpentier because Tex Rickard and his press agents, taking advantage of their simple-minded morality, had been careful to present them a hero to cheer and a villain on whom to vent their volatile anger.

As I got up from my beer, leaving another Sauternes for Young Wolgast, the almost-conqueror of Mushy Callahan, the screen had moved on to Philadelphia, with Dempsey and Tunney. Now it was Dempsey, the Horatio Alger boy, a colourful champion who was always in there giving his best, a friendly, quiet-spoken fellow outside the ring, but
a furious competitor from bell to bell, facing the aloof, bookish, cautious, undramatic, methodically effective Tunney. That was the Rickard pitch on that one, and the villain of Boyle’s Thirty Acres was transformed into the hero of the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial for whom 130,000 people were cheering themselves hoarse, taxing the
worn-out
sound equipment as I turned my back on this ancient history and came out into the light of the street.

Standing with the sidewalk fraternity outside the entrance to the gym was Harry Miniff. As soon as he saw me come out of Attell’s, Miniff ran over and buttonholed me. ‘Jeez, I gotta see ya about somp’n, Eddie. Walk down the enda the block with me.’ When he made sure we were far enough away from the others, he began, trotting along to keep up with me and talking up into my face feverishly.

‘Eddie,’ he says, ‘any time you want I should do something for you, you know me, kid, the shirt off my back.’

‘Keep your shirt on, Harry,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Leave my bum stay in there for a while, maybe seven, eight rounds, how about it, Eddie, for a pal?’

‘That’s not my department, Harry. You’ll have to speak to Mr Vanneman who does the choreography.’

‘That Vanneman, if he had a peanut factory he wouldn’t gimme the shells,’ Miniff said.

‘Do you realise you are speaking of one of my business associates?’ I said.

‘Associate,’ Miniff said. ‘You call that crumb an associate. Listen, Eddie, for a pal, talk to Vince, get him to leave my bum go six rounds, five, I’ll settle for five.’

‘But what’s the difference whether he goes in two or
five?’ I wanted to know.

‘Two, it makes him sound like a washed-up bum,’ Miniff explained. ‘Five, that’s more of a respectable bum. Five, maybe I can make a few dollars selling the bum to the smaller clubs, Santa Monica, San Berdoo, you know, five, it gives me something to talk about: he was giving the guy a helluva fight for four rounds and the streffis and the strallis, but two …’ he shook his head despondently, ‘two don’t give me nothin’ to work on. Me and my bum’ll starve on two.’

‘Harry,’ I said, ‘relax. Leave it alone. Let him go in two. Maybe we’ll do business again.’

‘Hey, I gotta idea,’ Miniff brightened. ‘I know a real good bum in Frisco. Tony Colucci. I useta handle him once. Great big bastard, almost as big as your bum. You put me on the expense account and I’ll hop up there and see if I c’n…’

‘Quit racing your motor, Miniff,’ I said. ‘One bum, I mean one fight at a time. Damn it, now you got me doing it.

Little Harry Miniff, beetle-faced and weevil-legged, was holding on for dear life.

‘Okedoke,’ Miniff said, ‘but I’m telling you, Eddie, this Colucci’ll be sensational …’

On the day before the fight I went down to meet Nick, Ruby and the Killer, coming in on the Super Chief. We drove uptown to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Nick had reserved a bungalow, and had lunch by the pool.

‘I’ve been promising Ruby this trip to California for years, haven’t I, baby?’ he said. ‘Nick never failed you yet, did he, baby?’

‘No, honey.’

She had a new up hairdo, a little fancy for daytime; Ruby was one of those women who belong to the evening and never look quite wholesome by light of day.

‘This is really our second honeymoon,’ Nick said expansively. ‘I always told you we’d have our second honeymoon in Sunny Cal, didn’t I, Ruby?’

‘I thought that’s what we were doing in Miami last winter,’ Ruby said.

‘Aah, that was nothing,’ Nick said. ‘That was just getting in practice for the second honeymoon.’ He bent over and kissed Ruby, a little roughly. She didn’t draw away, but she no longer thought it was ladylike to be kissed in public.

‘Killer,’ Nick said, ‘go back to the bungalow and get me some cigars.’

The Killer, a short, trim figure in his fancy Hawaiian shorts, obeyed.

‘You should have brought Toro over for lunch,’ Ruby said. ‘How does he look in his new clothes?’

‘Haven’t you been reading the papers?’ I said.

‘You’ve been doing good, Eddie, real good,’ Nick said. ‘That Sunday supplement with the full-page picture of Toro opposite that Greek god, that was very okay. I knew what I was talking about, didn’t I, kid? That guy is money in the bank.’

The Killer was back with the cigars. They came in individual aluminium containers. Nick opened his with tender care. The Killer held the match for him. ‘New cigar,’ Nick said. ‘Made special for me in Havana. Dollar’n a quarter a piece. Go ahead, Eddie, take all you want.’

‘Honey, don’t you know it’s not polite to tell people what everything costs?’ Ruby said.

‘Listen to her,’ Nick said, leaning back, crossing his legs and holding that big cigar like a sceptre. ‘Did you ever see a kid from Tenth Avenue get so smart?’

‘Nicholas,’ she said. She put her sunglasses on in a gesture of annoyance and began reading the book she had brought with her.
Three Loves Hath Nancy,
it was called, and from the cover you could see that Nancy was a
high-chested,
red-headed wench who helped win our country’s independence by diverting Cornwallis’s attention from one kind of conquest to another.

Three cute-looking girls with slender, tanned young bodies in little dabs of bathing suits walked past us toward the pool and stretched out in the hot sun. ‘Oh, brother,’ the Killer observed, ‘how wudja like to take care of them?’

‘How many times I have to tell you, don’t talk dirty around Ruby?’ Nick said.

‘Aw, I’m sorry, Ruby,’ the Killer said.

‘You never did know how to talk in front of a lady,’ Ruby said pleasantly.

The Killer took it smilingly.

‘Nate Starr says he coulda filled the ball park for this fight. Even with Coombs,’ Nick said. ‘That shows you what publicity’ll do, eh, kid?’

‘I wonder what’ll happen after they’ve seen him once,’ I said.

‘They’ll come again and like it,’ Nick promised.

‘What if they get wise to us?’ I said.

‘Then I’ll fire you,’ Nick said cheerfully.

The night of the fight we started off at Chasen’s, the place the Hollywood biggies go when they want food, drink or to be seen. There were Nick and Ruby, the Killer and a little stock-girl with a cutie-pie face, the kind that always seems to be in stock. We got down to the stadium in time to see old George box the semi-final. He was fighting a chunky, battle-scarred club-fighter, Red Nagle, who came into the ring wearing a faded Golden Glove bathrobe, on the back of
which the numerals 1931 could barely be made out. George climbed through the ropes, worked his feet in the rosin and sat down in his corner with a deliberate casualness, an old-timer getting ready to go to work, neither frisky nor afraid.

At the bell the white fighter came out of his corner with a rush that brought a shriek of excitement from the crowd. Red got plenty of work at the club because he scorned any pretence at self-defence and went in swinging. But George calmly sidestepped that first charge and put a sharp left to Red’s eye. Red was the kind who takes two to land one, swinging all the time, and George was methodically riding with the punches or slipping inside, countering nicely. But from a distance it must have looked as if Red was murdering George, for the cheers of the gallery gods shook the place with every wild, futile swing. They were pleading with Red to put him out in a hurry.

In the seat next to me sat a broad, beefy-faced fellow with a high-blood-pressure complexion and a big mouth. ‘Come on, Red, send that boogie back to Central Avenue.’ He hunched forward in his seat, jerking his shoulders in time with Red’s blows. Whenever Red landed, he’d let out an excited, deep-bellied laugh.

George fought in spurts, moving with bored relaxation, pacing himself carefully, never wasting a punch unless he saw an opening and winding up each round with a
twenty-or
thirty-second flurry to catch the referee’s eye. In the fifth round George nailed his man with a right hand as he rushed in, and Red dropped to the canvas with blood dripping from his left eye. But he was up again without a
count, brushing the blood away with his glove and rushing George fiercely into the ropes, where he whaled away at him with both hands, not doing much except wearing himself out, for George was catching them on the arms and the shoulders. But the fans loved it. They were on their feet, with their hands megaphoning their violent encouragement, ‘Attaboy. Get him! Knock him down! Murder that nigger!’ A movie-comedian’s girl in tan make-up, styled sunglasses and a large black straw hat that tormented spectators for three rows behind her lifted her voice to a screech that pierced the general roar, ‘Kill him! Kill him, Red! Kill him!’ And the man next to me added his gravel-voice, ‘In the breadbasket, Red. Those shines don’t like it down there.’

Working quietly in the clinches, and manoeuvring his opponent around so he could look over his shoulder at the big clock that told him how many seconds were left in the round, George was giving that bad eye an unspectacular but thorough going-over. But the white boy kept boring in, forcing the fighting, weak on brains but strong on heart, the kind who have to show how brave they are by jumping up after every knockdown without bothering to take advantage of the count, the kind the fans go crazy about for a while and then don’t recognise when they’re buying peanuts or papers from them a year or so later outside the stadium.

When the bell ended the last round, Red kept on swinging until the referee grabbed him, but George dropped his hands automatically and shuffled back to his corner to sit down and wait for the decision. George had four of the six rounds on my card, but the referee called it a draw. With his eye a bloody smear, Red threw his arms around George
in a broad gesture of sportsmanship and mitted the crowd happily. They gave him a big hand as he left the ring. Most of them thought he had won. There were scattered boos for George as he climbed out through the ropes.

‘Nice work, George,’ I shouted over to him as he passed on his way up the aisle, and he turned for a moment to give me that easy smile. The boos and the cheers, the glory and the name-calling, it was all in a night’s work to George. Five minutes from now he’d be in the showers humming one of those songs. An hour from now he’d be down on Central Avenue with his own people, eating fried chicken and chips and laughing softly about the fight, ‘If that white boy could fight like them people out there thought he could, I wouldn’t be sitting here enjoying this bird.’ Something like that he’d be saying.

The lights were on all over the arena and everybody was standing up, waiting for the main-eventers. The loudmouth next to me pulled the seat of his pants where it had creased into his buttocks and said, ‘That jigaboo was lucky to get a draw.’

Ruby waved across the ring to a platinum-haired star she had known back in the chorus. ‘Look at Jerry,’ she said to Nick, ‘doesn’t she look marvellous? I hardly knew her with that new hair.’

The air was foul with cigar and cigarette smoke. The ringside crowd were sleek, prosperous actors, directors, movie executives, theatrical agents, songwriters, politicians, insurance men, and their sleek, stylised women and the
big-time
lawyers who helped to reshuffle them from time to time. I noticed Dave Stempel and Miki, who were sitting nearby with
a young, tired-eyed heiress and her current Number One boy.

Cowboy Coombs came down the aisle, his broad, scuffed-up puss split with a silly grin of showmanship. Miniff hurried along beside him with a half-smoked cigar clenched in his mouth. The Legion Band, which had been tearing itself apart with a ludicrous version of popular swing that never lost its military influence, stopped for a moment and took off on ‘The Hall of the Mountain King’. That was the cue for Toro to make his entrance. Just one of the little gimmicks I thought up to help the show along. Toro was wearing a white-satin bathrobe with an Argentine flag on the shoulder, a symbol of a mountain peak on his back and the gold-lettered words: THE GIANT OF THE ANDES. Danny and Acosta were both wearing white T-shirts with the word MOLINA on their backs. The other two seconds, similarly attired, were both Acosta’s size, selected for their diminutiveness to accentuate Toro’s height. The staging looked even better than I had hoped. Towering more than a foot and a half over the seconds who flanked him, with the enormous expanse of white satin emphasising his superhuman size, he moved toward the ring like a strange throwback to the giants of prehistoric time. When he reached the apron of the ring he didn’t climb through the ropes in the usual fashion; he stepped over the highest strand. It got the hand I figured on. But Toro forgot to do as we had told him to. This was his first appearance before an American crowd – a North American crowd, as he would say – and he looked nervous and bewildered. He knew he hadn’t made a good showing with George or satisfied Danny, and he and Acosta had probably swallowed all that
big talk we had planted about the formidability of Cowboy Coombs.

They killed the lights, we all bowed our heads and the band gave us ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, with one of those dramatic baritones on the lyrics.

At the bell Coombs tore out of his corner as if he were going to make short work of Toro and fell ferociously into a clinch. They pushed and pulled and pawed their way through the round. All of Coombs’ violence was in his face, which he worked pugnaciously, and in the aggressive way he breathed through his busted nose. Toro floundered around, trying an occasional jab and now and then throwing his wild right before his feet were set. The most energy expended in the round came from Acosta, who bent forward as if he were going to jump into the ring himself and kept up a running patter of semi-hysterical instruction, which was far more entertaining than the fight. As the round ended, he leapt into the ring, got in the way of Danny and Doc, put his mouth against Toro’s ear and gesticulated excitedly. I could see Danny’s face grow taut with irritation.

In the second round they wrestled each other for the first minute, and then Toro pushed his right glove toward Coombs’ chest and Miniff’s warrior sank slowly to the canvas and stretched out comfortably. At ten he made a half-hearted effort to rise and flopped down again. Toro looked surprised and dragged Coombs back to his corner. That was all in the act too, though Toro didn’t know it. I just told him in case he won by a knockout, it was considered good sportsmanship up here to help the man back to his corner yourself.

There were scattered boos from the more observant, but the fans, collectively, seemed to be satisfied that they had seen a quick and decisive knockout. As I pushed my way up the aisle the cash customers were happily expressing their gullibility. ‘What a build!’ ‘He’s got King Kong beat!’ ‘Ya couldn’t hurt that guy with a sledgehammer!’ ‘That last one musta hurt!’

But I heard someone behind me say, ‘How did you call it, Al?’ and the answer snapped back, ‘They ought to give Coombs an Oscar for the Best Supporting Performance of the year.’

I looked around and saw it was Al Leavitt, the wise guy from the
News
. I kept going as if I hadn’t seen him. Why bother with him? He wasn’t even syndicated.

In the corridor, outside the dressing room, a large crowd of hero-worshippers, curiosity-seekers and bandwagon boys were gathering. Inside were the reporters, celebrities and the usual visiting firemen who always manage to find their way to a winner’s dressing room after a fight.

As soon as he saw me, Acosta ran over and threw his arms around me. His eyes were wild and he looked as if he were on the stuff, but it was just the overstimulation of personal triumph. ‘He win! He win!’ he shouted. ‘My El Toro, is he not everything I say?’ Then he ran back and kissed Toro who was lying on the rubbing table. Toro seemed pleased with himself too. ‘I hit and he go boom,’ he said several times.

Danny was standing off to one side, eyeing the scene coldly. ‘Come on, Doc, get him into a shower,’ he said irritably. ‘Whatta you want him to do, catch a cold?’ His
face was very white and his eyes had that washed-out look that always settled in them when he was drinking.

Acosta looked like a busy little tugboat towing a great liner as he led Toro to the showers. ‘Please, out of the way, out of the way,’ he shouted importantly, pushing through the dressing-room crowd. At the entrance to the showers, Toro paused and turned to Doc. ‘This man I knock out, he is not hurt, no? He is okay?’

Doc assured him that Coombs was going to recover. Toro had dropped it in there as if it had been rehearsed. I noticed several of the reporters scribbling it down. ‘You see, he’s scared to death he’s going to kill somebody,’ I explained. ‘Ever since he almost knocked that guy off back in Argentina.’

Al Leavitt was leaning against the door with an unwholesome smile on his face. ‘As a fighter that Coombs does a beautiful one-and-a-half gaynor,’ he said.