The Harder They Fall (27 page)

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.

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.’

‘Maybe Nick won’t know you’re here,’ Ruby said. ‘But just the same you’re doing Nick’s work. You’re seeing that nothing happens to Nick’s property. Just like all the rest of his mob. Well, goddam all of you. That goes for Nick too. Leaves me out here all week, with no one to talk to but a punch-drunk chauffeur and a fairy butler.’

‘Ruby, I don’t care what you do. That’s your pleasure. I’m just trying to look after Toro.’

‘You can keep Toro,’ Ruby said. ‘Tell you the truth, I’m sick of Toro. I’ll admit I was a little curious about him at first, but you have nothing to worry about any more. If you came here to tell me not to lead your little boy astray, you can go back to your office and grind sausage about how your great Man Mountain is going to wipe the floor with poor old Gus Lennert.’

‘When’re you going to leave our fighters alone?’

‘You will please get out of this house at once,’ Ruby said with imitation hauteur, and then something gave way in her mind and she began to scream, ‘Get out of here, you cheap louse, you cheap, little louse! Get out of here, you bastard!’

Ruby’s shrill profanity followed me through the house as I hurried to the marble hallway. But the butler opened the door for me and bowed me out with a wise smile.

When I saw Nick a couple of days later in New York, having lunch at Dinty Moore’s with Jimmy Quinn and the Killer, he was in high spirits. Off the advance sale it looked
as if we were going to get our $150,000 house, just as he had figured. Even the Garden fans who suspected Toro’s record was padded with tankers were curious to see how he’d shape up against a first-rater like Lennert.

As part of the build-up, I brought an ex-champ down to the camp to be photographed looking Toro over. Afterwards I’d write up a little statement we’d plant in the papers about how he had visited both camps and picked Toro to win by a knockout because of his superior punching power and the streffis and the strallis and the voraspan.

The joker on our junket was Kenny Waters, ex-heavyweight champion, but definitely a third-road-company champ, a clown who would have been back digging ditches if he hadn’t come along just at the time when the line on the heavyweight chart had flattened out. The title had been awarded to him while reclining flat on his back, crying foul. A year later he had lost his crown to Lennert, on a night when Gus still retained some of the vigour of youth. This defeat, ignominious as it had been at the time, still entitled him to speak with authority – no matter how counterfeit – about any contest in which his conqueror was involved. For this ex-champion it was a chance to bask for one more precious moment in the warm sun of publicity. To see his name in print just once more with his four-star civilian rank
former-champion-of-the-world
, I’m sure he would have been glad to pay us for his services.

I was up in my room writing Kenny Waters’ eyewitness comparison of Toro and Lennert when Benny came in to tell me that some gee from Argentina was here to see me.

‘Damn it, I’m busy,’ I said. ‘I promised the
Journal
I’d
have this crap in by four o’clock.’

‘Well, dis guy’s a big dealer,’ Benny said. ‘He’s got a car, it looks like they put wheels on a speedboat. He drove it alla way up from Argentina.’

‘Tell him I’ll be there in a minute. Keep him happy till I come down.’

I finished up Waters’ piece in a hurry. This is great, I thought, a ghostwriter for a ghost, a stooge for a stooge. While I laughed at this idea, a thousand little gnats of conscience whined in my head.

Waiting for me in the sitting room was a tall, swarthy, smoothly groomed fellow with two neat little mousetails of a moustache, in his early thirties, and a squat, dark-complexioned, stolid-faced, middle-aged companion in a baggy brown suit.

‘Allow me to introduce myself, Carlos de Santos,’ the younger man said, rising gracefully and speaking English with barely a trace of Spanish intonation.

‘This is Fernando Jensen,’ de Santos said. ‘He is the sports editor of our famous newspaper,
El Pantero
. We have come to root for our countryman in the big fight.’

‘In our country, there is very great interest in this fight,’ Jensen began ponderously, drawing from his pocket a folded and finger-worn clipping from
El Pantero
to show me his feature article on Toro’s career. ‘El Toro Brings New Glory to Argentina’, it was headed. ‘I wish to send back a daily report on El Toro’s condition and activities,’ he continued. ‘You see, our country is a very proud country. We have a Strength-and-Health programme to build up the bodies of our young men. Before I left I have written an editorial in
which I consider El Toro Molina as the symbol of Young Argentina.’

‘Fernando here is a very serious fellow,’ de Santos added jokingly. ‘You shouldn’t pay too much attention to everything he says.’ His brown eyes seemed to be laughing. ‘Can we see El Toro now? I have a gold watch I want to present to him in behalf of his fellow Santa Marianos.’

Toro was just drawing on his running togs when we came in. He looked surprised when de Santos embraced him so warmly. Even though the young
estanciero
was obviously accepting Toro as an equal now, Toro still treated him with the shy deference of an obedient
paisano
. While de Santos gave Toro the latest home-town news, with a breeziness that did not succeed in overcoming Toro’s obvious unpreparedness at this sudden familiarity, I went out to round up the reporters and photographers. News had been pretty slow around the camp and this was just what we needed to cover up the general sluggishness of Toro’s workout.

We even got the newsreels out that afternoon for de Santos’ presentation of the gold watch. The fantastic strength of the Molina barrel-makers had long been a legend in Santa Maria, de Santos said, and now the entire village was praying and burning candles for El Toro to bring back the championship of the world. If El Toro defeated Lennert, the de Santoses were going to fill the village fountain with wine and declare a two-day holiday.

That had everything. It couldn’t have had more schmaltz if I had dreamt it up myself. And I noticed that young de Santos, for all his playboy chatter, had managed to work
in his commercial for de Santos wines, which were just beginning to hit the North American market.

While the newsreel men wrapped up their cameras, and de Santos and Jensen were telling the reporters they had also brought with them fifty thousand dollars raised by a group of de Santos’ wealthy friends to bet on Toro, Toro just stood there in a daze.

‘Well, this must be a pleasant surprise,’ I said to Toro. ‘Now you’ll have someone to talk to.’

‘He wishes me to call him by his nickname, “Pepe”,’ Toro said unbelievingly. ‘Imagine me, an
aldeano
, addressing a
de Santos
as Pepe!’

He showed me the gold watch with its sentimentality engraved on the back. ‘To El Toro with pride and affection from the House of de Santos.’

‘And he asks me to call him Pepe,’ Toro repeated. ‘In his whole life my father has spoken to Carlos de Santos only once. But you have heard his son with your own ears asking me to call him Pepe.’ It was more than he could comprehend. ‘I have much luck, Eddie. Just like Luis promise, and young Carlos de Santos asks me to call him Pepe. I have everything I want – money, honour, people like me.’ He pressed his lips together in a simple gesture of determination. ‘I must beat this Lennert. I must show my countrymen they have not come all this way for nothing.’

‘You’ll beat Lennert,’ I said. ‘You’re a cinch to beat Lennert.’

‘One ponch, I hope he go boom,’ he said.

The camp was too quiet for Pepe that evening. There was nothing doing but the regular nightly crap game. So
he suggested that I take him and Fernando into town and show them the sights. The three of us squeezed into the Mercedes-Benz he had brought up from BA. Pepe, it developed, was a dirt-racing driver as well as a polo player and pilot, and the way he pushed that M-B into the city seemed to combine all those accomplishments. It was not without a certain fear that I realised I was in the hands of a playboy. A playboy in my book is not the carefree, luxury-loving character that word usually calls to mind. It is someone trying to escape from the neurotic riptide of an overabundance of money and an insufficiency of responsibility.

First we had to go up to the suite they were keeping in the Waldorf Towers so Pepe could change into more suitable clothes. He indicated an impressive display of bottles on the table. ‘I’ll be out in a jiffy, old fellow. Help yourself.’ The Scotch was Cutty Sark. There was also some champagne brandy, some Holland gin and a couple of bottles of Noilly Prat.