The Harder They Fall (12 page)

‘Hello, Killer,’ I said, ‘who’s in there with the boss?’

‘Copper O’Shea.’

‘Oh, hell, and she calls that a conference. That isn’t even a meeting.’

Copper was just one of Nick’s legmen. He got that name from the time he put in on the Police Force before one of those seasonal reform shake-ups exposed his connections with the mob. After they took the shield off him, he made it official by going to work for Nick, or rather continuing to work for Nick.

I started into Nick’s office, but the Killer waved me back. ‘Better hold it up. The Boss is pinnin’ Copper’s ears back.
He don’t like nobody to go in when he’s runnin’ off at the mouth like that. I guess he likes everybody to think he’s a sweet, lovable character.’

‘What’s the matter with Copper?’

‘Aw, the Copper’s just dumb,’ the Killer said. ‘He don’ know howta adjust. That’s what the boss says. The Copper’s out sellin’ the music, see? Well, some of them hash joints, they don’ want the music. So Copper hangs one on the guy. He can’t get useta the new way a doin’ business, see? This burns the boss. The boss just won’t buy the rough stuff no more.’

The door opened and Copper O’Shea came out. Like so many of his former buddies on the Force, he was a big man with a hard, beefy face and a belly that hung over his belt. ‘I gotcha now, boss,’ he was saying. ‘I gotcha. I gotcha.’

Nick looked mean and aroused. ‘I only say things once. I don’t want you to hit nobody. One more time and you’re off my list. You know that, don’t you?’

Copper knew it. One thing about Nick, he always kept his word. Whether it was a promise to do you a favour, or to fix your little red wagon, Nick always came through.

Nick just turned away from Copper as if he weren’t there any more and put his arm around me. ‘Come on inside, Eddie,’ he said with a friendly wink, as he led me into his office. ‘Sorry to make so much noise about that. Those stupid bastards. All they know about psychology is to pull a guy’s coat off his shoulders to tie up his arms and then kick him in the nuts. They’d rather make four bits and crack somebody’s skull than make a legitimate buck.’ He took a Belinda from his silver-edged mahogany humidor,
and offered me one. ‘But I got my lesson learnt. Why waste all that time and dough messing around with the cops and the courts, putting in the fix here, paying off a guy there, when I can get richer playing strictly legitimate? Just the jukeboxes and the gambling, a couple of concessions and some big-money fighters – that’s all I need to get along. I don’t want to hurt nobody and I don’t want to wind up with a nice little room on the third tier. I had that already.’

A long time ago Nick had done a ten-month stretch on some kind of technical charge, one of those delicious legal fictions our Justice Department dreams up. Except for the temporary inconvenience, his business had been so well organised that he was able to conduct it smoothly right from his cell by means of visiting-day meetings with his lieutenants.

‘Nick,’ I said, ‘I’ve got no ambition to share that tier with you. That’s why I’m worried. If you stay with your idea of building this Molina into a big-time heavyweight, I think we’ve all got a good chance of being held as accessories to a murder.’

‘You mean Molina’s liable to kill somebody?’ Nick grinned.

‘I mean Molina’s liable to catch pneumonia and die from the draught he creates missing all those punches. Seriously, Nick, this guy is a joke. I watched him work this afternoon. He hasn’t got a thing. All those big beautiful muscles and he doesn’t hit hard enough to break an egg.’

‘Look, Eddie,’ Nick said, ‘I want you to go out and sell Toro Molina. Let me worry about how he lives up to his publicity.’

‘But you don’t seem to understand, Nick. I’m telling you this guy can’t lick a lollipop. Why, any professional fighter who knows his trade – even old Gus Lennert – is liable to murder Molina. And I mean the coroner stuff, not the kind you read about in
Variety
.’

‘Molina will get along all right,’ Nick said.

‘I don’t see how you figure that.’

‘You don’t have to see how I figure it.’ Nick was drawing in the slack of affability now. ‘Just take my word for it. You go out and plug Molina like you never plugged anything in your life. Man-Mountain Molina. The Giant of the Andes. That crap. And leave the rest to me.’

‘I can get him space,’ I said. ‘I can get him all the space you want, as long as he gives us something. I can alibi a loss here and there, but it’s only with consistent wins that we really get snowballing.’

‘We’ll have consistent wins,’ Nick said. And there was something about the flat, quiet way he said it that made me realise for the first time that Toro Molina, the Giant of the Andes, was going to have consistent wins.

It had been done before. Not every fight, but enough to fatten up the record and put them in the money. Young Stribling had knocked out his chauffeur (known variously as Joe White, Joe King, Joe Sacko, Joe Doktor, Joe Clancy, Joe Etcetera) in practically every town in America.

‘But even making them look good is a big order for this barrel-lifter. No kidding, Nick, our god not only has feet of clay, the feet are size sixteens and probably flat at that.’

‘That gives me an idea,’ Nick said. ‘Take him down to Gustav Peterson and get him measured for half a dozen
pair of special built shoes. Get ’em made up even a couple of inches longer’n he needs. Get the newspaper cameras down to shoot him trying ’em on. Now that’s the side of the street I want you to work. Leave the guy’s ring work to Danny. He’s a master, even if he hates my guts. Leave the opponent’s performances to Vince. You and I both know him for a grifter but that’s why he’s right for the job. The little guy—’ He meant Acosta. ‘Keep him along for the ride. Someone for the big guy to talk to. But lemme know if he makes any trouble.’

‘He’s all right. He means well.’

‘The hell with that,’ Nick said. ‘That don’t sell any tickets. The first time he gets in the way we put him on the boat.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Jesus, I gotta go down and try on a suit.’ He went to the door and called, ‘Hey, Killer, tell Jock to pick me up in front of the door right away.’

‘Okle-dokle,’ the Killer said. ‘Where we goin’?’

‘Down to Weatherill’s. For that fitting you was supposed to remind me of.’

‘Jeez, boss,’ the Killer said. ‘I always remember them things. But I don’ know, today I got a lot on my mind.’

Nick put on his Chesterfield and winked at me. ‘Hear what he calls it, Eddie, his mind.’ He made a fake pass as if to let him have one where he lived.

In the rear seat of the Caddy, Nick leant back against the seat and blew smoke against the roof. From the fitting he would go to the Luxor for a rub and a steam bath and then he was meeting Barney and Jimmy for ribs at Dinty’s before going up to see the ball game.

On our way to Walker’s, where Nick was dropping me off, he said, ‘You got the pitch now. Anything else on your mind?’

‘We haven’t even started,’ I said. ‘How do you think I’m going to be able to sell this guy if everybody gets a line on him at Stillman’s? All you have to do is take a quick gander and you can see he is from Dixie in B flat with the emphasis on flat.’

‘Where you want to take him?’ Nick asked.

‘As far from the wise boys as possible, where the sharpshooters like Parker or Runyon don’t knock us off before we get started.’

‘Ojai,’ Nick said.

‘Where the hell is that?’

‘A couple hours out of LA. We had Lennert up there for the Ramage fight once. Nice quiet joint. Nobody t’ bother you. And now that I think of it, the West Coast is the place to interduce the Man Mountain. They don’t get too many good fights out there anyway. They probably won’t know the difference. They’ll go for stuff like this. They matched Jack Doyle, that Emerald Thrush, and Enzo Fiermonte, one of Madeline Force Astor Dick’s husbands. Anybody who paid to see that one will do anything.’

‘LA is all right,’ I said. ‘I’ve always wanted to get a look at LA.’

‘I’ve got a couple addresses I’ll give you out there,’ the Killer said. ‘Stock girls.’ He gave the wolf call.

‘Leave Eddie alone,’ Nick said. ‘He’s got to work out there.’ He put his hands on my leg just above the knee and squeezed the tendons until I jumped. It was a sign of
affection. ‘You’ve got to really sock it to them out there, kid. Take a nice big cut at the ball. Spend dough. Make them sport editors so goddam sick of your Man Mountain Molina that they’ll spread him over a page to get rid of you. Make out like you can’t get an opponent for him the first month or so because nobody around there’s got the guts to get in the ring with him. You know the routine. Then bring somebody out from the East, a nice soft touch that’s never been west of the Rockies before, so nobody knows what a dog he is. Then give him the big build-up about how he’s come out to California because he’s so tough none of the name-fighters in the Garden want to have anything to do with him. Let Vince find you a bum.’

I thought of Harry Miniff. This would be a nice way to make a couple of bucks for Harry. ‘I know a good bum,’ I said. ‘Cowboy Coombs.’

‘Jesus, he still alive?’ Nick said.

‘Harry was up at the gym trying to sell him this afternoon. He’d be very grateful to make a buck, Harry would.’

‘How does that Coombs look these days? Will the fans take him serious?’

‘The Cowboy has the most menacing scowl of any heavyweight in the business today,’ I said.

‘Okay, I’ll tell Vince to get Coombs for us,’ Nick said.‘Come up tomorrow afternoon and pick up the tickets.’

‘What tickets?’ I said.

‘The railroad tickets,’ Nick said. ‘I’ll get you out on the Limited tomorrow night.’

‘That’s kind of on the quick side, isn’t it?’

‘Why not the quick side?’ Nick said. ‘You tell me the
smart boys will begin to catch if we let him hang around here. Then let’s make our move fast. I’ll have them tickets at four o’clock. So any last-minute business, last-minute humping or anything else you got on your mind, you better get it done tonight.’

The shiny black Cadillac dropped me in front of Walker’s and cut through law-abiding traffic to shoot out into the clear. Nick carried an honorary badge from the Police Department, so the boys in blue wouldn’t give him any trouble.

Things were still pretty quiet along the bar. Just the bums and the strays. The guys who dropped in for the quick ones on their way home from work and the boys who came to spend the evening would be along after a while. Now it was just me and a guy down the bar who looked as if he were studying to be his own worst enemy. The cat that occasionally walked along the bar brushed against him and he patted it absently while staring over the bar with his eyes turned inward in a lonely trance. A couple of ladies of the evening were resting their feet in one of the booths.

Charles set me up with the usual and then slowly wiped the bar in front of me, which was his way of coming around to conversation.

‘Well, how are you today, Mr Lewis?’

‘Great, great,’ I said. ‘One more and I’ll be walking around on my knees.’

‘I’ve never seen you take one you don’t need,’ Charles said, which was always the way he put it when a customer anaesthetised himself beyond reason.

‘Celebrating,’ I said. ‘Going to California tomorrow.’

‘California,’ Charles said. ‘I was out there a good many years ago. Worked as helper to a bartender at the old California Athletic Club. That was before you were born.’

He drew a couple of beers for two newcomers and came back to his story. ‘Yes, sir, the California AC. The greatest heavyweight scrap in the history of the ring was fought at the old CAC. I’ll never forget it, sir, if I live to be a hundred. Corbett and Jackson. The greatest white champion and the greatest black champion that ever drew on a glove. Fix the picture in your mind, sir. Black Prince Peter and Gentleman Jim. Marvels of science, both of them. As fast as lightweights they were, and for sixty-one three-minute rounds they went at it that night, four hours and three minutes, enough to kill off a dozen ordinary men. When the referee finally stopped it for fear one of the men would drop dead of exhaustion before he’d holler quit, there was hardly a mark on Peter and him for ducking, slipping and catching each other’s punches. Like pieces of quicksilver they were, and neither one of them slowed down until they had fought thirty of the fastest and most evenly matched rounds anyone will ever see.’

Charles wiped the bar shiny where my glass had left its damp imprint. ‘And all this before five hundred people for a purse of ten thousand dollars, winner take all.’ He looked at me significantly. ‘Today the same fight would draw two million dollars into the ball park. But they weren’t fighting for money in those days. All the loser got was his carfare home. It was a sport when I was a lad, Mr Lewis, a rough sport, but a sport nevertheless. None of these ring-around-the-rosie, you-hit-me-and-I’ll-hit-you affairs like these heavyweights are often having in the Garden.’

‘Just a minute, Charles,’ I said, ‘I just thought of something. Wasn’t that Corbett-Jackson fight a year or so before the Slavin fight you were telling me about?’

Charles looked off vaguely. ‘I’d better see what that gentleman wants,’ he said, leaving me to ponder the problem of how Charles could have been in California a year before he left England.

‘Charles,’ I said, when I finally got him to answer my finger, ‘how can you lie like that? You never saw the Corbett-Jackson fight.’

‘It’s not a lie, sir,’ Charles insisted.

‘Well, what would you call it?’

‘A mere stretching of the truth, Mr Lewis. I did work at the CAC, in Oughty-ought. And some of the old members were still talking about that fight, arguing who’d’ve won if they had let it go the distance. One day Mr Corbett stood right up at the bar himself, when he was champion of the world, and gave me his own first-hand description. “Charles,” Mr Corbett says to me, and he’s standing there just as close to me as you are, “Jackson had everything. He could beat any heavyweight I ever saw. Try to box him and he’d outbox you. Start slugging and he’d slug you right back. He was the Master, that black wizard, the genuine Nonpareil.”’