The Harder They Fall (21 page)

‘You wouldn’t trust your own mother, would you?’ I said.

‘Not if she was in the fight game,’ Leavitt said.

‘Come on out to Pat Drake’s and cool off,’ I said. ‘Pat’s throwing a little party – just four or five hundred people – up at his joint in Bel Air.’

Drake was an ex-chauffeur for Nick back in his boot days who wandered into Hollywood when things got hot in New York, started working extra and went to the top as a rival studio’s answer to Bogart.

‘Okay, I’ll come,’ Leavitt said, ‘but I’ll still tab it for an El Foldo.’

Drake’s party was complete with swimming pool,
floodlights, buffet, butlers, bartenders, a seven-piece orchestra, celebrities and all the other necessary ingredients of a successful Hollywood party. As usual, Nick had known what he was doing to choose Hollywood for Toro’s debut. The Hollywood crowd were sufficiently immersed in sentimentalism, hyperbole and hero-worship to go off the deep end for Toro Molina. Male stars whose faces were altars of a new idolatry crowded around to shake Toro’s hand and glamour-coated actresses whose pin-ups have become a national fetish flocked around like autograph hunters. Dave Stempel rushed up to congratulate me. ‘Terrific, Eddie, really terrific!’ he said. ‘Like nothing human. Hits like a sledgehammer.’

Toro looked astonished and ill at ease. A soulful-faced star who was known for her genteel, ladylike roles was smiling up at him over her drink. Ruby came up to me with a cocktail in her hand and said, ‘I’d better rescue him from that glamour-puss. I hear she’s the biggest she-wolf in town. Toro would be just dumb enough to go for her.’

A few minutes later Ruby was dancing with him. Nick was inside playing stud with Drake and some other boys. Quite a couple, she and Toro. He was wearing a sharp white Palm Beach, one of those new suits I angled for him. Ruby was wearing a black low-cut, semi-formal gown with a large, black onyx cross pointing down the valley between her full breasts. Around her head was a black velvet snood. Her dark eyes were half-closed and her body moved with self-confidence. She was not as symmetrical and fashionably underweight as some of the film stars who had made sex appeal their profession, but there
was a mature female luxuriance to Ruby that promised more than the slenderised narrow-waisted figures of the professional body-beautifuls.

I found Danny at the bar, which had been set up under a bright awning near the pool. He was waiting for the bartender to refill his glass. His legs were spread apart to balance himself and he was staring out over the crowd with pale, tired eyes. ‘Hello, laddie,’ he said when he recognised me. ‘You having fun, laddie? I’m getting drunk, laddie. Any objections?’

‘How do you think it looked, Danny?’

His face twisted to a bitter smile. ‘You know what I think, laddie, I think it looked putrid. I think he’s the goddamest saddest excuse for a prizefighter I ever saw. I think we’re all going to wind up with the Commish taking our goddam licences away.’

‘Don’t forget Jimmy Quinn and the Commission are like this,’ I said. ‘With Jimmy on top. He helps pick ’em.’

Danny lifted his next drink off the bar. ‘Happy days, laddie,’ he said.

Just then Luis Acosta came up to us, ready for more embracing and congratulations. ‘Is it not true now everything I have say?’ He couldn’t help laughing as he talked. ‘El Toro is
magnífico
, no? He give you a big surprise, hey?’

Danny turned away from him without saying anything. Acosta’s ebullience was suddenly checked. ‘I do not understan’, please,’ he protested to me. ‘Tonight we have the first victory. We celebrate. We are all on the way to a big success. I think perhaps it is time we all are become friends, no?’

Danny turned around and stared at him so long before he said anything that Acosta began to shift his eyes in embarrassment.

‘Go away,’ Danny said.

Acosta looked frightened, blinked rapidly as if trying not to weep and walked stiffly away.

Danny’s rare stands of hostility always left him with a sense of inner discomfort. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, laddie, but that little cheerleader is on his way home. He’s through tomorrow.’

‘Nick’s going to let him go?’

Danny nodded. ‘Nick’s gonna tell him in the morning. How d’ya say it in spic talk,
adios
? It’s
adios
tomorrow for Señor Acosta.
Adios
.’

I watched Acosta puffing up with pride again as he rejoined the party. A famous director and his divorced wife who had starred in his last picture were inviting Acosta to sit down with them. Soon Acosta was doing the talking. The gestures were where I had come in. ‘And so now my great discovery, El Toro Magnifico, is on his way to the championship of the world,’ he was undoubtedly saying. He had hitched a ride on a flying carpet and now he was soaring up into the heavens, happily unaware that the carpet was being pulled out from under him.

I wandered over toward the pool. Several couples were in swimming. The Killer was poised on the high-board, showing off his chest development, proud of his muscular little body. Knifing into the water he stayed under a long time. The little mouse who was his for the evening screamed and he broke surface, laughing. She pretended to be insulted
but he dove down again and in a moment she was laughing too. In the morning I would hear all about it.

On my way over toward the dancers I passed Toro and Ruby, sitting on a stone bench in the garden. Toro was laughing at something Ruby was saying. It occurred to me that I had never seen him laugh before. ‘We’re having a wonderful time,’ Ruby said. ‘I talk to him in English and he answers in Spanish. I’ve promised to start giving him English lessons.’

‘She teach me the English,’ Toro said cheerfully.

‘Swell,’ I said. ‘Only don’t forget Danny’s lessons come first.’

It was just a very light jab and it didn’t seem to hurt her. ‘He learns very fast,’ she said. She smiled at him and he became flustered and ran his hand through his hair.

‘Hey, Molina, I been looking all over for you,’ a voice called from across the garden. It was Doc. ‘I’ve had a cab standing by for half an hour to take you back to the hotel.’

Toro looked at Ruby. ‘I no tired. I stay.’

Doc shook his head. ‘Know what time it is, after one o’clock. The only fighter I ever saw who could stay up all night and win was Harry Greb. And you ain’t Greb.’

Toro pushed his big lips out in his child’s pout. ‘But I ask Luis. Luis say I can stay.’

‘Sorry, brother, Luis has nothing to say about this. I’m the bugler in this outfit and I’m blowing taps.’

‘I’m leaving in a couple of minutes, Doc,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ll drop him off if you like.’

‘It’s all the way downtown, Mrs Latka,’ Doc said. ‘I’ll take him home with me.’ He started to pull Toro to his feet. ‘Let’s go, Molina.’

I sat on the bench with Ruby as the hunchback led his charge toward the house. She asked for a cigarette and as I leant toward her to light it for her I was conscious of an evil covetousness in her eyes. And it wasn’t for me.

‘Nick still in the game?’ I said.

‘You know Nick. He’ll stay there till he comes out a winner if it takes him till tomorrow afternoon.’

Nick played everything for blood, a penny-a-point gin game as seriously as no-limit poker.

‘I never knew a guy who hates to lose as bad as Nick does,’ Ruby said. ‘When a horse he likes runs out or something, for a week or so there’s just no living with him.’

‘I’d hate to be around when he finds he’s backed a wrong horse,’ I said.

Next morning, while Toro went to church with Ruby, I took Acosta up to see Nick. With nothing else to write about, the sports pages had given Toro a big play, with one write-up spotting Acosta’s running patter of exhortation through the ropes. This public recognition fattened his pride. All the way out to Beverly Hills I had to listen to his vainglorious variations on an already too familiar theme. ‘You see, Luis tol’ the truth when he say El Toro will make us all very rich and famous,’ Acosta said as we walked along the row of palm trees to Nick’s bungalow.

Nick was having breakfast with the Killer in the patio. He was sitting in his monogrammed bathrobe, smoking a cigar and reading the papers. Acosta gave him his cordial little bow and his most ingratiating smile and began to word one of those flattering greetings when Nick cut him off. Nick always took the quick way.

‘Killer, did you find out when that boat leaves for Buenos Air-ees?’ he said.

‘Thursday midnight from Pedro,’ Killer said.

‘That’s the boat you go home on,’ Nick said.

Acosta looked at him unbelievingly. ‘Please? I do not understan’…’

Nick looked at me. ‘You wanna tell him in his own language?’

‘No, no,’ Acosta said, desperate-eyed, ‘I understan’ the English. It is just that I do not understan’…’

‘Well, if you understand English, that’s it,’ Nick said. ‘Thursday at midnight we put you on the boat.’

‘No, no, I will not go. You cannot do this. I belong with El Toro. I stay with him!’ Acosta cried.

‘Shhh,’ Nick quieted him with his hand. ‘This is a classy joint. The guy next door is a bigshot. What d’ya want him to think I am, a bum?’

‘But El Toro and I, we come together, we stay together, or he goes back with me,’ Acosta insisted.

‘That’s not the way it’s gonna be,’ Nick said quietly. ‘Jimmy Quinn and me, we own Molina. If you want to take your five per cent back with you, that’s your business. But ninety-five stays here with me.’

‘But he’s mine. He belongs to me. You took him from me. You cannot push me out like this,’ Acosta screamed.

‘We put you on the boat Thursday night,’ Nick said.

‘But why you make me go?’ Acosta demanded. ‘What I do, what I do wrong?’

‘You’re a pest,’ Nick said. ‘You’re not satisfied to sit back and take your lousy five per cent.’

The blood of anger was rising into Acosta’s face. ‘I stay here,’ he yelled, ‘I fight. I see a lawyer. I get El Toro back.’

Nick calmly poured himself another cup of coffee. ‘No, you go Thursday. Your visa runs out next week. You can’t get an extension on your work visa because we don’t need you. My partner’s already explained that to a friend of his who’s got an in with the State Department. So we only got an extension for Molina. My bookkeeper’ll mail you your five per cent.’

I was sitting off a little to one side, watching the conflict rise to its sorry climax as if it were a play I was seeing from a front-row seat. It would have been nice if my involvement in the action had been cut off cleanly at the fall of the
third-act
curtain. Nice, but unprofitable. No, I wasn’t in the audience, I was on stage, no matter how close to the wings I tried to inch my chair.

‘No visa,’ Acosta said, the fight gone out of him, pursing his small lips as if he were going to cry. ‘You fix it so I get no visa. You fix it so I must leave El Toro here.’ The little eyes were moist with frustration now. The jaunty arrogance, the elaborate self-importance had been torn away from him, leaving him as small and scrawny and absurdly pathetic as a defeathered bluejay.

‘Now I’ll tell you what I’m going to do for you,’ Nick said. ‘I’m going to give you a five-thousand-dollar advance against your percentage. You’ll get that in cash on the boat Thursday if you tell Toro you want him to stay here with us and that we’ll look after him. Have we got a deal?’

Acosta looked at him dully.

‘Don’t forget, if you don’t tell Toro, he stays, and you go just the same,’ Nick said. ‘Only without the five Gs.’

‘I understan’,’ Acosta said.

I couldn’t look at his face. Somehow I had the crazy feeling my complicity would increase the more I looked at that face.

‘Well, you want that dough?’ Nick said. His voice was unemotional, businesslike. ‘Is it a deal?’

Acosta nodded slowly, almost as if he had become disinterested. ‘All right, a deal,’ he said with the boredom of the defeated.

Nick indicated me with his cigar. ‘Eddie’ll sit in with you when you tell Toro,’ he told Acosta. ‘Just so I’ll know.’

Acosta turned around to include me in his distrust of Nick. I could feel myself being dragged from the wings onto the middle of the stage. I looked down at my lap. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, that I wouldn’t have done this, that I understood what identifying himself with Toro had meant to him. But what was the percentage? Was there any use dealing myself out of Nick’s favour when I couldn’t do anything for Acosta anyway?

Some day, if I played my cards right, things would be different. By then, maybe I’d have bought myself enough time off to finish my play. And if it clicked, Beth and I could … But meanwhile, here in the hot sun of the patio in Beverly Hills, things were happening the way Nick wanted them to happen and all I could do was vote
Ja
.

The way Acosta continued to sit there after Nick had said everything he had to say reminded me of a badly punished fighter who remains in his corner after the last
round is over, waiting for enough strength to rise and climb out of the ring.

‘All right,’ Nick said. ‘I guess that’s it.’ He beckoned to the Killer. ‘Take Acosta back to the hotel and stay with him until Eddie comes down.’

‘But, Meester Latka, this is not right. El Toro …’

Nick nodded to the Killer. Menegheni took him by the arm and moved him toward the gate. All the formality was crushed out of Acosta now. There were no goodbyes from Nick. The Killer opened the gate with his free arm and pushed Acosta through it.

Nick stretched luxuriously and lit a fresh cigar. He had forgotten all about Acosta. The moist eyes, the crushed look hadn’t touched him. He tipped his chair back from the table and opened his robe to let the sun beat down on his chest. ‘This sun is for me,’ he said. ‘Take your clothes off and get comfortable, Eddie. I got some shorts you c’d wear.’

‘I’m afraid they wouldn’t fit me any more,’ I said.

‘I been noticing that,’ Nick said. ‘You oughta take care of yourself, kid. There’s a swell Finnish bath up on Sunset Boulevard. All the stars take their hangovers there. Sweat all that poison outa your system.’

A little while later we were alone together in the steam room, basking in the pleasant enervation of the moist, hot atmosphere. Nick picked up a limp sports section from the level below him and reread the account of last night’s fight. I had done a little business with the guy who had the byline, and the story read the way we wanted it to read.

‘Well, Eddie, we’re on our way,’ Nick said. ‘The write-ups read good this morning. Real good. Let ’em say Toro’s a
stinking boxer, call him clumsy if they want to, long as they make the public think he really clouts those guys. That’s what they come for, that, and to see some little guy cut him down.’ He stretched out on his back in an attitude of exaggerated well-being. ‘This is living, isn’t it? California, loafing in the afternoons, money coming in. Latka doesn’t throw you any bad ones, does he?’

This was the best job I ever had all right. More money, less to do, and the kick of putting something over. Even Acosta didn’t have too much to complain about. Already he had cleared ten thousand, which added up to a lot of pesos for a two-bit circus manager on the village circuit.

‘Did I tell you about that kid of mine?’ Nick was saying. ‘He and his partner won the New England scholastic doubles championship. You should see the size-a the cup he got. Must be this big. And it says Nicholas Latka Junior, right on it.’ His face softened with an expression of parental pride. ‘How d’ya like that, Nicholas Latka Junior, right along with all them high-class handles?’

‘Have you picked out a college for him yet, Nick?’

‘I’m gonna try to get him into Yale. I’ve heard a lot about that Yale. It seems to be a real class joint.’

The heavy-muscled Swedish masseur opened the door and stuck his head in. ‘Ready for your massage now, Mr Latka.’ I lay there a few minutes longer letting the heat draw the poison through my pores. Later, when I came out into the air after the massage and the cold shower, I felt refreshed. But that feeling only lasted until I got back to the room in the Biltmore that Toro and Acosta shared.

Acosta was sitting at the window looking out. Toro was
reading the funny papers, to which he had recently become addicted. The Killer was playing solitaire. He picked up the cards quickly when he saw me come in. ‘Boy, am I glad to see you! I had a matinee on this afternoon.’

He ducked out. Acosta didn’t look up from the window.

‘Tell him yet?’ I said.

He shook his head.

‘You better tell him,’ I said.

He looked at me helplessly. Then he turned to Toro, his face dull with resignation. ‘El Toro,’ he said in Spanish, ‘this Thursday, I must go home.’

‘But how is that possible? I fight again next week,’ Toro said.

‘You must stay here after I leave,’ Acosta said.

Toro’s comic section slid to the floor. ‘Luis, what are you saying? Why should I stay without you?’

‘Because … because it is better that way,’ Acosta said heavily.

‘How – how can it be better?’ Toro protested. ‘You promised we would always stay together. And now you would leave me here with these strangers?’

Acosta rubbed his small hand over his face. ‘I am sorry I cannot stay with you, Toro.’

‘You must stay,’ Toro said. ‘You must stay or I go too. I will not stay without you. I will not stay.’

‘El Toro, listen to me,’ Acosta said, speaking in a flat, measured voice. ‘You have to stay. It will still be good for you. You will come home as rich as I have always promised. I will come to meet you at the boat.’

‘Luis, do not leave me, please do not leave me,’ Toro
suddenly begged. ‘I do not like these people. I am afraid of these people. If you go, I go too.’

Acosta looked at me pleadingly. There was nothing left to do but tell him everything, his listless eyes seemed to say.

‘El Toro, you cannot go with me. You cannot go because these men own you. They own you now.’

Toro’s big face studied Acosta, foolish with confusion. ‘They – own me?’

He had never been aware of the deals and percentage cuts by which Luis had sold part of his contract first to Vince and then to Nick and Quinn. Acosta had thought it would only bewilder him. Now he looked at Toro with the shame of betrayal and did not know what to say.

‘How do they own me, Luis?’ Toro asked again.

‘I sold them your contract, El Toro.’

‘But why – why did you do that?’

‘Because I did not have enough importance to get you up into the big money by myself,’ Acosta explained. ‘This way you will fight in the Madison Square Garden – maybe for the championship. This I did for you, El Toro.’

Toro’s lips puckered. His eyes betrayed a quick, instinctive fear and then narrowed with suspicion. ‘You sold me, Luis. Then you can buy me back again, please.’

‘No, that is impossible – impossible,’ Acosta said, his voice rising irritably. ‘You must stay here. You must.’

Bewildered, Toro shook his massive head. ‘I thought you my friend, Luis.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ I interposed. ‘We’ll look after you.’

Toro turned to look at me in surprise, as if he had forgotten that I was there. He looked at me for several seconds,
without saying anything, until I began to feel embarrassed. He shook his head again, this time with a kind of pity. He said nothing more to either of us. Slowly he went to the window, where he stood, his huge back to us, and looked out at the downtown traffic.

That Thursday night Vince and the Killer came to take Acosta to the ship. Up to the last moment he had been begging me to get Nick to change his mind. He even offered to cut himself down to two and a half per cent, if he were allowed to stay. My promises to talk things over with Nick kept him quietly hopeful until the end. What was the use of letting Acosta know there were never any appeals from Nick’s decisions? His word was always good, for you or against you.

Neither Vince nor the Killer liked the idea of driving Acosta all the way out to San Pedro, and they treated him more like a man who was being deported for a crime than a man who had been systematically double-crossed. I found myself thinking of a dozen other places I’d rather have been when Acosta said goodbye to Toro. Acosta put his short arms as far around Toro’s great waist as they would go.

‘Adios, El Toro mio,
’ Luis said almost in a whisper.

Toro just turned away. I stood there trying to think of something to say. He muttered hoarsely, ‘I thought he was my friend.’

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘I’ll take you to a movie.’

Toro liked our movies. He was especially fond of music and seemed to enjoy most those big musical extravaganzas with a hundred girls dancing on a hundred pianos in which Hollywood excels.

The newsreel included a feature on Toro himself, training at Ojai, with the inevitable newsreel gags showing him square off against a flyweight chinning himself on Toro’s arm, and ending with his huge face grinning into the camera in a gargoyle full-head close-up. As we left the theatre a group of kids surrounded him and asked for his autograph. But neither the dancing girls nor the little taste of glory seemed to do anything for Toro’s state of mind. He withdrew inside himself. On the way back to the hotel, when I tried to break through his silence by saying in Spanish, ‘Don’t worry now. We’re all going to be looking out for you,’ he answered me haltingly in English, as if he refused to share with me the intimacy of his own language. ‘I wish I go home,’ he said.

The next day we all took the train down to San Diego for the second fight on Toro’s itinerary. Vince had lined up a coloured heavyweight by the name of Dynamite Jones, a local pugilist of established mediocrity who had been winning in the border city. In return for five hundred dollars, Jones had agreed to leave in his dressing room what Dynamite he possessed and to accommodate us with a diveroo in the third.