The Harder They Fall (18 page)

When Dave paused to refill our brandy glasses, I said, ‘Never heard that before. What is it?’

‘The prologue to
The Seven-Jewel Heart
,’ Dave said.

‘It’s—’ I was going to say ‘fascinating’ and then I remembered Miki. ‘It’s swell,’ I said. ‘Have you ever finished it?’

Dave’s face was flushed and his eyes went in and out of focus. There had not been a great deal to drink but suddenly his powers of coordination seemed to switch off. ‘Almost finished,’ he mumbled. ‘Jus’ one more canto. Thasall, jus’ one more canto. ’Fi c’d jus’ get this town off my back…’ He shook his head slowly and began to recite again, unintelligibly.

‘But why can’t you get out?’ I said. ‘What holds you?’

‘All I need is jus’ one good credit, an’ some o’ this gold. I need more gold, Eddie, and then I’ll – go to Mexico, six months, maybe a year, rediscover my soul, Eddie.’

‘But Dave,’ I said, ‘I can’t figure it. You’ve been making big dough for years. You must have enough to …’

‘This isn’t dough,’ Dave said. ‘Dough sticks to your palms. This is a handful of worms that slip through your fingers. Know what this house cost me, Eddie? Five hundred dollars a month, six thousand dollars a year for this unspeakable abortion. And then Louise, a thousand a month, my fine for committing premeditated matrimony.
And then there’s my daughter, Sandy, just starting at Wellesley, a lovely, intelligent girl whose mother refuses to let her contaminate herself by visiting her disreputable father but somehow brings herself to accept his disreputable lucre, a disreputable five thousand a year. And then there’s Wilbur, who is forty-one years old and who has finally decided what he wants to be – the brother of a Hollywood writer. One useless brother, three thousand per annum. And don’t let me forget my innocent-looking, white-haired mother-in-law with the cash register ringing in her brain, who stipulated a yearly retainer of five thousand dollars. These are the weeds, Eddie, that choke the life from the delicate, tender roots of the poetic impulse. The weeds, the weeeeeeeeds …’ He drew it out into an eerie chant. ‘That feeds and feeeeeeeeds upon these poor creative seeds …’

I had to go. I had to be away from this. I needed a drink. No, I had a drink. That’s what I always thought I needed when I needed something else. I needed air. I needed to get out.

‘Dave,’ I said, ‘I gotta run. Gotta be up early in the morning. Lot to do.’

He begged me to stay, implored me to stay with such repetitious insistence that I felt the great bird had some nightmare fear of being left alone in this little cage. When I kept saying, ‘Gotta go now, Dave, gotta go,’ he insisted on going along with me to help me find a cab. He staggered out into the night and walked me down to the boulevard. We waited under a lamp post on the corner, and as a cab pulled into the kerb, Dave stood with his legs apart, swinging slowly back and forth, muttering, ‘Wanna hear my lates’, my very
lates’ poem, jus’ written today, written on National’s precious time.’

His laugh mounted maniacally. As my cab pulled away, I could see him out of the rear window, lurching out of the glare of the lamplight back into the shadows of darkest Beverly Hills.

‘Where ya wanna go?’ The heavy, exasperated face of the cab driver turned to me.

‘Biltmore,’ I said.

‘Can’t make it da Chicago Biltmore?’ he said with angry humour.

‘What’s the matter, you don’t like this town?’ I said.

‘You c’n have this town and seven points. Gimme Chi. Hacking in Chi you c’n make yourself a buck. The customers wantcha to live back in Chi. They leave ya real good tips.’

Furiously he shot the cab into high. I was sorry for him. I was sorry for everybody, when you got right down to it. I was sorry for David Heming Stempel. I was sorry for Eddie Lewis. I don’t want to be a little sad at forty, and sadder at fifty and a tragic bum at sixty. What was it Beth said: Some day, two words for an epitaph. Who said that? Beth said that. Beth had the courage of her convictions. Why didn’t I call Beth? Why didn’t I marry Beth? Hello, darling, just wanted to call and let you know I’m getting out of this racket. That’s right, not even going back to the training camp. Yeah, I finally did it, made up my mind, rediscovered my poet’s soul, no – that’s Stempel. Rediscovered something anyway. Coming back on the next train, darling, coming back to you, and by the way, Beth, will you marry me?

I tipped the cab driver from Chi a dollar to brighten his evening and hurried into the lobby to place my call. Person-to-person to Miss Beth Reynolds, R as in righteous, E as in elevate, Y as in yearning. I’m not drunk, my brain rejoiced. I’m not drunk this time. Just a little wine and some brandy, but I’m not doing this because I’m drunk. I’m doing it because I can’t stand the failures any more, the fakes, the frauds. I’m doing it because I don’t want to be another David Heming Stempel, a poor man’s, less-talented David Heming Stempel. I don’t want to wander around on my hands and knees searching every corner for my soul as if it were a lost collar button.

‘Hello, hello … There’s no answer?’ It was three hours later in New York, which made it two o’clock in the morning there. She had to answer. Where could Beth be at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning? ‘All right, then cancel the person-to-person. I’ll talk to anybody at the hotel desk. Hello … Do you have any idea where I could reach Miss Reynolds? She’s away, away for the weekend? … Oh … well, will you take a message? Just tell her that … Oh, never mind, never mind. I’ll call again some time.’

All the excitement was left behind me in the phone booth. There was a dull, twisting pain in my stomach. I never realised before that jealousy was something you could actually feel in your belly like a green and indigestible apple. Beth was my girl, and now that I wanted and needed her I couldn’t even get her on the phone.

I wandered into the cocktail lounge. The muzak was playing Guy Lombardo. A couple of drunk out-of-town businessmen who thought they had to be comic as well as
spendthrift were pawing a couple of ladies who received their attention with bored, businesslike acceptance. A woman in her thirties was sitting alone at a little table, drinking beer. She looked over in unenthusiastic flirtation as I stood at the entrance. Just another bar, another night, another meaningless woman. I turned and went upstairs.

There were empty whisky and soda bottles on the table in the sitting room, and a stale, sour smell in the air. I looked into the bedroom. All the windows were shut, and the shades drawn, and it was hot and close in there. Vince’s clothes were scattered around the room, his shirt on the bathroom doorknob, his shorts on the floor, while piled rather neatly on one chair were the clothes of a woman. Her silk stockings were folded carefully over the foot of the bed.

Their inconsequential lust had spent itself and they were asleep now, with their heads close together on the pillow. How peaceful they looked together! In the morning they would rise as strangers, with not even a kiss or perhaps a kind word, but tonight they were enfolded together in serene sleep. What misfortune or perversity led this woman to wander so casually into the bed of Vince Vanneman? Vince groaned and rolled over, pulling most of the bedclothes with him. The woman, momentarily uncovered, moved toward him in her sleep, fitting herself against his fat back and rump. It was an instinctive, primeval action, the female seeking warmth and protection from the male, and there was something about its performance in this room under these conditions that bore me down into a bottomless depression.

I couldn’t face the morning with this abandoned couple.
So I phoned an all-night car-for-hire and drove out of the silent city into the dark, rolling countryside. I drove into Ojai just as dawn was filtering into the valley. Crickets were chirping and the birds were awakening. I tiptoed into the cottage and the room I shared with Doc. Doc was sleeping on his stomach, snoring rhythmically, the covers outlining his deformity. As I slipped into my bed wearily, I remembered it was a good thing I had come out here because I had some photographers due in the morning to cover Toro’s training routine. As I sank into sleep, I was thinking of gags and catchy poses I could use for the layout. Just before I went off completely, I remembered somewhere earlier in the evening having told myself I was through with this racket. But it hadn’t even entered my mind again as I drove up. Like a well-trained homing pigeon, I had headed straight for my Giant of the Andes. Well, I had made my bed, I guess, and here I was, lying in it.

‘I got a good idea,’ the photographer said. ‘Sit him down on the ground and photograph him with his feet close to the camera, so they’ll look a mile high.’

We sat him down.

‘How about this?’ I said. ‘Stand him up and shoot up at him – the skyscraper angle.’

‘That’s a honey,’ the photographer said.

We stood him up.

‘Now let’s get a big close-up, one of those distortion jobs. Shove that big puss right into the lens.’

We tilted his head. We posed him with wine barrels, hung him from the branch of a tree like Tarzan. We had him putting away six fried eggs, being massaged by two rubbers at one time. We photographed him with his enormous gloved fist in the foreground, sighting along his forty-inch reach. We caught him ‘in action’ with George, ‘landing
his famous
mazo
punch’, which, our caption was going to inform the unsuspecting reader, Toro had developed back in his little Andean winery when he used to drive the bung into the barrel with a single blow of his heavy mallet.

The
mazo
was just a wild roundhouse right swing, which any third-rate professional could parry with his left, and counter with a right that would have caught Toro exposed and off balance. But fortunately for this racket, the fight fan who knows the finer points of the sport is a rare item. Most of them just come for the massive pleasure of seeing one guy beat the hell out of another guy, and if you give them something like a
mazo
punch to chew on, they’ll turn cheerfully to their neighbour and say, ‘Boy, here comes that old
mazo
again.’

When we had enough pictures, Danny put Toro through a couple of rounds of shadow-boxing. Shadow-boxing, working through all the motions of offence and defence, against an imaginary opponent, can be beautiful to watch. With a fast, skilful boy who knows what he’s doing, it becomes a kind of modern war dance. The fighter weaves and feints, shoots his punches sharply into the air, pivots and circles. But Toro just plodded dully around the ring, pawing the air.

‘Faster, snap it up,’ Danny snarled.

Toro looked over with the white of his eyes showing in fear. He was afraid of Danny. He knew Danny had no use for him. He made an effort to move faster and sharpen up his punches, but it was just as Danny said: the big knotty muscles were in his way. He breathed hard with the effort of impressing Danny.

‘Jesus H. Christ,’ Danny said.

‘But this shadow-boxing, it is not natural for him,’ Acosta hurried to explain. ‘This does not mean that when he is in the ring with …’

‘Will you dry up and blow away?’ Danny said. Acosta’s eager face drew back into a subdued pout. Danny rang the bell impatiently. ‘All right, George,’ he called. ‘Let’s go two three-minute rounds.’ As George shuffled into the ring, Danny said, ‘Keep him working, keep him busy, don’t give him a chance to loaf.’

George pushed one glove against the other casually. ‘You want me to do everything but hit him, that right, chief?’

‘Tag him when you see an opening. That’ll teach him to cover up. But don’t lean on them,’ Danny said. Then his voice took on the tone of exasperation with which he always addressed Toro now. ‘Now keep working that left in his face like I told you. And when you see an opening for your right, don’t forget to turn your left foot in a little bit and twist your body at the waist. Like this.’ He demonstrated on Toro. ‘Now, do you think you can remember that?’

‘Okay, I think, yes,’ Toro said, looking to Acosta for encouragement.

Maybe Danny was too close to see it, but Toro was beginning to bear some resemblance to a fighter. At least he didn’t have the stiff, flat-footed stance of an old bare-knuckle bruiser any more. He stepped out on his left foot to jab, still rather mechanically, but you could see he was beginning to get the idea. But the jabs didn’t seem to jar George at all, and even when one of Toro’s rights connected, George absorbed it effortlessly.

‘Arms,’ Danny emphasised when the round ended, ‘you’re still punching with your arms. How many times do I have to tell you it’s body and shoulders and shifting that makes a puncher? Like this.’ He was a full foot shorter than Toro, but he set his feet, dropped his right shoulder and snapped a straight hard left that landed exactly where Danny meant it to, right under Toro’s heart. Toro staggered back, injured and amazed. Knowing Danny, I realised that exasperation and impatience had driven him to throw a much harder punch than he intended.

Toro’s large eyes looked hurt. He rubbed the red blotch that was spreading below his heart. ‘Come on, come on, that didn’t hurt you,’ Danny said. ‘Now let’s see another round. And punch this time.’

In the next round Toro threw right hands as hard as he could and George caught some of them just to show Toro how it feels to land solidly, but there still wasn’t anything behind them. Toro brought up another of his looping rights and George caught it on his arm, drawing Toro off balance, and then moved his left in a straight line toward Toro’s chin and Toro staggered back. Danny rang the bell in disgust.

‘He can’t beat an egg,’ Danny said.

‘I’m worried about that button,’ Doc said. ‘That’s the damnedest glass jaw I ever saw. Must have his nerves right on the surface there. A lot of these oversized guys have that trouble.’

‘Pardon me, if I may say one thing, please,’ Acosta began, ‘I think perhaps you make the mistake to change Toro’s style. This big swing of his which you do not let him do, this is the punch that Lupe Morales …’ 

‘Goddam it, you little Argentine windbag,’ Danny cut in, ‘if you butt in once more I’m going to bounce you right out on your can. Stop jabbering at me. And for Christ sake stop trying to sell me. You can’t change this bum’s style any more than you can change the hair-dress on Mike Jacobs’ head. You can’t change what you haven’t got.’

‘From the first day you are not sympathetic to Toro and me,’ Acosta said. ‘You are jealous because all your life you have look for a great heavyweight and it is me, Luis Acosta, who has find him.’

‘Keep away from me,’ said Danny, who had a temper but did not like to fight. ‘Keep away from me. Eddie, get him away from me.’

‘I have to go into town right away,’ I said to Acosta. ‘Miniff and Coombs come in today. Want to ride in with me?’

‘Yes, I will come,’ Acosta said. ‘I am tired of the insults. I am tired of being push around like a beggar. They do not appreciate me and my El Toro. Maybe they will think different when El Toro has knock out this man Coombs.’

Acosta hadn’t been told that Coombs was set to make like a swan. The fewer people who know these things, the less loose talk. Toro didn’t know either. A fighter usually gives a more convincing performance when he thinks he’s on the level.

As we were walking back to the cottage to pick up our things, Toro caught up with us. ‘Luis, do not leave me here alone,’ he said in Spanish. ‘If you leave, I wish to leave too.’

‘But you cannot leave. You must train for your fight.’

‘I have trained enough for many fights. I am tired of all
this training. When we left Mendoza, did you not promise not to leave me?’

Acosta looked up at him and patted his arm. ‘Yes, that is what I promised in Mendoza,’ he said. He smiled sadly. ‘All right, I will stay.’

Toro’s big, simple face relaxed into a grateful smile. ‘And when we have made enough money we will go home together?’

‘Yes, we will go home together.’

‘It is possible that we will go home together this year?’

‘Maybe this year, maybe next year.’

‘Hey, Molina,’ Doc yelled over, ‘you know better than to stand around when you’re sweating. Hurry up and take a shower. Then get dressed for road work.’

As I was getting into the car, Danny leant his elbow on the window and said, ‘Expect to be talking to Nick soon?’

‘Probably tonight,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d call and let him know how things are going.’

‘I’d lay two to one he knows more about it than you do. He can outfox foxes. But listen, laddie, if you talk to him, tell him I want to lose this Acosta bird. I haven’t punched anybody for serious since I quit the ring. If I see a fight coming in a saloon I run a mile. But something tells me if I don’t get that little squirt out of here, I’ll forget myself.’

‘But Toro’s lost without him, Danny. He needs him for morale.’

‘If he could only wise up to what a bum he found,’ Danny said. ‘It’s his walking around with his head in the clouds that drives me nuts. Keeps reminding me what a crook I am.’

‘You’re not a crook,’ I said. ‘Whenever you get a free choice, you level. Your real larceny guy is happier when he takes it off the bottom.’

‘I’ll tell you how full of larceny I feel, laddie. This Sunday, I’m going to mass, right along with Molina. First time in over a year. I only go when I do something I don’t like.’

I didn’t go down to the station to meet Harry Miniff and his formidable Eastern heavyweight because sometimes discretion is the better part of public relations. But there was quite a delegation on hand to greet the prominent Broadway sportsman, as Miniff was blithely identified that morning by one of the columnists I had drinking out of my hand. I would like to have seen it, though. Little Miniff, the hungriest of the hungry, as ignored and insulted a man as ever faced daily humiliation on Jacobs Beach, being greeted by Nate Starr, the promoter, and Joe Bishop, the matchmaker, as if he had a stable full of champions; and old Cowboy Coombs, who always looked a little surprised to find himself still on his feet, being treated with the respect usually reserved for more vertical pugilists.

I had given Miniff the pitch by airmail, writing most of his dialogue and warning him urgently not to refer to Coombs as ‘my bum’ in public, as he was inclined to do. ‘That is all right for those of us who know and love you, but I don’t think it will contribute to the success of Toro’s debut,’ I had written. To which Miniff had answered graciously, ‘Okay, I will give my impersonation of a guy what has all his bills paid and his IOUs called in. And I’ll try not to call my bum a bum.’

According to the evening paper, Miniff had played his part faithfully, if somewhat ungrammatically. There was a picture of Coombs’ puffy, flattened face, captioned, ‘giant-killer?’ and under it a brief interview with Coombs’ mentor, in which he said, ‘This giant don’t scare us. We don’t fear nobody. We give up a big money match in the Garden to take this fight, that’s how confident we are we can walk all over this Man Mountain. The bigger they are the harder they fall.’

Late that afternoon Harry came up to the hotel. He had bought a new hat to celebrate his change of fortune, but the way he had already twisted it, with one side up and the other side down, it looked exactly like his old hat. To this day the top of Miniff’s head and I are complete strangers. I am sure if you were to look in on Miniff taking a bath you would find him with his hat on. Miniff seemed as determined to go into his grave with his hat on as other adventurers were about their boots.

‘Well, how was your trip, Harry?’ I said.

‘Terrible,’ Miniff moaned. ‘Why’d they haveta put this place so far from New York? My ulcers don’t like to travel.’

‘This is the healthiest climate in the world,’ I said. ‘This’ll make a man of you, Miniff. All this fresh air and sunshine.’

‘I get dizzy in the sun,’ Miniff complained.

‘Wanna shot?’ Vince said, pouring one for himself.

‘Whatta you wanna do, kill me?’ Miniff demanded. ‘The milk, I’m strictly on the milk.’

‘Tell room service to send up one Jersey,’ I told Vince. ‘We can keep it in the bathroom while Miniff’s here. Anything to eat, Harry?’

‘Gimme a sturgeon sandwich on rye,’ Miniff said.

‘Sturgeon,’ I said. ‘Where the hell do you think you are, Lindy’s? This is California.’

‘Don’t they eat in California?’ Miniff wanted to know.

‘Only nutburgers and cheeseburgers,’ I said. ‘How about a nice fruit salad?’

‘Fruit gives me hives,’ Miniff said. From his breast pocket, he took out three short, fat cigars, stuck one in his mouth and passed the others around.

‘Ten-cent cigar,’ I said. ‘Don’t let these write-ups go to your head, Harry.’

‘I like my old ones better,’ Miniff said, ‘but I gotta keep up a front.’

‘How’s Cowboy?’ I said. ‘He understands he’s to tell everybody he’s betting on himself to knock Toro out? I want to build this up so it sounds like he’s fed up with giving a foreigner so much publicity and out to knock his head off.’

‘But don’t get him so steamed up he can’t go in two,’ Vince said. ‘Got that, I want him to go in two.’

‘Two!’ Miniff said. He pushed his hat back with a quick motion of his hand. ‘That’s too quick. The fans don’t like it. They don’t get their money’s worth. I gotta better idea.’

‘Shove your ideas,’ Vince said.

‘Gimme a chance,’ Miniff begged. ‘Whatsamatter, we ain’t got free speech in this country no more?’

‘What the hell office you running for you wanna make a speech?’ Vince said. ‘Run as spittoon cleaner and ass wiper and maybe I’ll vote for you.’

‘Aaaaaaaah,’ said Miniff in rebuttal. It was a gutter sound, a harsh, embittered protest against bigger men with
better connections. ‘I gotta weenie for improving the take and you dial out on me.’

‘All right, let’s have it,’ Vince said magnanimously. ‘Ten to one it stinks, but let’s have it.’

‘My bum and your bum,’ Miniff began, ‘they fight even …’

‘Take it away, it stinks,’ Vince cut in.

‘Going into the seventh, eighth, ninth, it’s still even,’ Miniff continued. ‘Then in the tenth, with thirty seconds t’ go, your bum lands and my bum rolls over and plays dead. D’ya buy that?’

‘You couldn’t give it to me with Seabiscuit for a bonus,’ Vince said.

‘But your bum comes in right under the wire,’ Miniff’s voice rose and accelerated. ‘It makes more talk. The guy’s a hero.’

‘Just because it’s the Hollywood stadium, we don’t haveta give ’em a movie,’ Vince said.

Miniff mopped his forehead with his short fingers in a nervous gesture. ‘But my way we get a rematch. Eddie writes it up how my bum is convinced he lost on a fluke and wants revenge. Then in the rematch my bum goes in two like you want. What’s wrong with that, tell me what’s wrong with that?’