The Harder They Fall (32 page)

By seven there was already a tremendous crowd milling around the ball park. There was the last-minute scramble for tickets, the scalping, the squatters’ rush for the unreserved section, the gamblers working the suckers right up to the opening gong. Walking up and down in front of one of the entrances was a blind man with a tin cup and a sandwich sign over his shoulders. ‘Kid Fargo,’ it said, ‘Former Heavyweight Contender. Used to Spar with Jack Dempsey.’

The smart money was going on Stein because it had to ride with him until he was licked. There hadn’t been a puncher like him since Dempsey. But there was plenty of Molina money, from people impressed by mere size, ballyhoo and the manslaughter of Gus Lennert.

Lumbering into the ring were the first of the brace of muscular mediocrities Uncle Mike always foisted on his public when he knew the main attraction was so good he didn’t have to bolster it with expensive preliminaries. The Stadium was a sell-out, all the way up to the gallery gods on the top tier who paid five dollars for the privilege of being able to say that they had attended a ring classic. And
even above them were the thousands of curious bargain hunters who paid top-storey dwellers a dollar to watch the spectacle from the windows or rooftops. And beyond them were the millions of radio listeners in swank metropolitan apartments, lower middle-class homes, slums, small-town houses and farms from coast to coast.

The ringside – or what Uncle Mike cagily called ringside – fanned out for three hundred rows, a true cross-section of the prosperous, including the Governor, the Mayor, the Chief of Police, Broadway headliners, Hollywood stars, and all the representatives of the best legal and illegal rackets, the Wall Street boys, industrial tycoons, the socialites, insurance men, advertising executives, judges, prominent lawyers, big-time gamblers and the top mobsters who never get their name in the papers. Nobody who was anybody was missing a chance to be seen at ringside.

The crowd was laughing at the antics of two barrel-chested incompetents who were waltzing through the
curtain-raiser
. ‘Turn out the lights, they wanna be alone,’ a big voice bellowed from the mezzanine. It still got laughs. Someone ought to write new material for the fight fans. The same old saws to express the old derision, the displeasure with bloodless, painless, actionless battle. ‘Can I have the next dance?’ … ‘What we got, da Ballet Russe?’ … ‘Are you bums brother-in-laws?’ … ‘Careful, you goils might hoit each other!’ But the protests were still relaxed and good-natured. The crowd was working up to its excitement slowly. The catcalls were still without real contempt. The most high-tensioned of all American sports crowds hadn’t
roused itself yet. It was still behaving as if this were merely a sport.

I went back to the dressing room to see Toro. Fernando and George were helping him get ready. Danny was there too. He was mumbling. He was trying to tell Toro something. But Fernando pushed him away. Toro removed his clothes slowly, as if reluctant to change into a fighter again. He didn’t say anything to me when I came in. He wasn’t saying anything to anybody.

‘I think he’s full of geezer tonight,’ Doc whispered to me. ‘He’s had the trots all day.’

‘Maybe he’s just scared this’ll be another Lennert,’ I said.

‘I just hope it isn’t the other way,’ Doc said.

Pepe came in with some of his Argentine pals. They all made a fuss over Toro, gave him the big embrace, told him how much money they had going on him and went out to enjoy the semi-final. They were full of ready laughter and carefree rooting-section enthusiasm. Toro didn’t say anything to them. It was just as George said: he wasn’t really there at all.

Nick came in with the Killer and Barney Winch. All three were wearing tailored camel-hair topcoats. Toro was sitting on the table in his bathrobe. Doc was rubbing his back.

Nick set himself in front of Toro. ‘Listen, you bum,’ he said in a hard, quiet voice. ‘I just wanted to let you know something. My wife’s told me all about you.’

Toro looked up slowly, waiting for the blow like a slaughter-house steer.

‘She told me you came over to the house one day and tried to get fresh with her. I ought to kick your head in,
you double-crossing crud, you. But I don’t have to take the trouble. This fight tonight is the first one you ever fought for me on the dead square. So I don’t have to mess up my manicure on you. I can just sit out there in the front row and have the pleasure of seeing Stein beat your goddam brains out. I hope he kills you.’

He slapped Toro once sharply across the face. Toro just stared at him. For several minutes after they went out, Toro continued to stare stupidly into space. Chick Gussman, who was fighting the six-round special, came in after a win by TKO in three, exhilarated by his showing. He tapped Toro playfully and said, ‘Looks like a big night for the Latka stable, kid.’ But Toro didn’t even see him. The semi-final was over, in a hurry, and it was Toro’s turn to go down. For the first time since I could remember Danny wasn’t in shape to work the corner, so Vince took over with Doc and George, who was holding the bottles.

‘Well, good luck, Toro.’ I tried to put something into it, but my voice sounded flat and hollow. My hand was extended and Toro took it in a soft handshake. That was when I noticed he was trembling.

Buddy Stein entered the ring first. The crowd roared and screamed its approval as he danced around in a blue silk bathrobe with a white bath towel draped over his head. He reached down over the ropes with his taped hands and shook hands with lots of people, Jack Dempsey, Bing Crosby, Sherman Billingsley … A beautiful blonde in the third row pursed her lips as if she were kissing him, and he winked. There were more women than usual tonight. Both fighters were good draws with women. Stein was dark, curly-haired,
unusually handsome for a fighter. He had one of those broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped builds, tapering down to surprisingly graceful legs. He was a vain bully boy with the personality of a show-off and the stage presence of the matinee idol accustomed to adoration. He had often been complimented on his smile – the Stein grin, it was called sometimes – though actually it was the nasty smile of a man who had found a way of channelling his natural cruelty into a profitable career.

In spite of the hamming and clowning with the crowd, Stein was a serious practitioner of assault and battery, trained to a sharp fighting edge. He pranced around the ring with an ominous, pent-up vigour, warming up with short, shadow-boxing hooks that shot viciously into the air.

The reception for Toro was friendly but reserved, and there were a few scattered boos from sceptics and from old Lennert fans who clung to the primitive notion that the ex-champion’s death was in some way due to an excess of brutality on Toro’s part. Actually, as Doc and George pulled off his flashy bathrobe, I was reminded once more of the enormity of the joke nature had played on this giant. His colossal shoulders, bulging muscles and record chest expansion would seem too great an advantage against even the most formidable opponent, and yet his menacing physique contained a gentle, placid disposition with less fighting instinct than the average ten-year-old boy, and considerably less aptitude.

The huge floodlight system over the stadium dimmed out and the ring became an intense white square cameoed in the vast darkness. The announcer requested one minute of silence for ‘Old Gus, a real champion who went down
fighting, with the Great Referee counting over him the Fatal Ten.’

The stadium went black as the impatient fans stood up in a touching demonstration of bogus bereavement, while the bell tolled ten with sound-effect impressiveness.

As the lights over the ring came on again, and the announcer had finally introduced all the famous fighters and identified the contestants with needlessly elaborate formality, the mass tension surged, and a barbaric roar rose from 80,000 throats. The referee gave them final instructions and sent them back to their corners to await the opening bell. As their handlers drew their robes from their shoulders at last, the contrast in their sizes brought an excited gasp from the crowd. Toro, almost six feet eight, weighing nearly two hundred and eighty pounds, looking a little fleshy around the waist, crossed himself and waited for the bell in a kind of docile bewilderment. Stein, an even six feet, with a hard, lithe, rippling body, weighing one-
ninety-six
, shuffled his feet back and forth with restless impatience and worked his shoulders from side to side as if he were already in there flailing away at his mammoth adversary.

‘Kill ’im, Buddy,’ the blonde in the third row begged in a shrill, unpleasant voice.

The bell brought Stein streaking across the ring to face Toro moving slowly out of his corner. Toro held his left out in the mechanical defence Danny had taught him. Stein felt him out carefully, showing considerable respect for Toro’s advantages in weight and reach. He flicked stinging jabs into Toro’s face, feinted with his right and held his famous left as if he were going to let it go, but he wasn’t taking any chances
yet. Toro was boxing rigidly, pushing his long left toward Stein’s head and keeping the smaller man at a distance. Toro had finally learnt the rudiments of boxing, but his execution was clumsy and had no zing. His footwork was slow but correct, and once he followed up a left jab with a right cross that managed to reach Stein’s ribs. Stein smiled and snapped Toro’s head back with a sharp jab. Stein’s jab looked harder than Toro’s best punches. Buddy pressed his lips together and a sneer came over his face as he shot another jab in. The pain aroused Toro slightly and he tried a one-two with elementary timing. The left reached Stein’s face, but the right, the
two
, lobbed harmlessly into the air as Stein slipped it neatly and drew Toro into a clinch. Nothing much seemed to be happening in the clinch, but when the referee came between them Toro’s eye was reddened and blinking. It looked like a thumb job. Stein had been around; he was very cute. As they separated, Stein held out his gloves in a broad gesture of sportsmanship. Toro, momentarily blinded, failed to reciprocate and touch gloves. The crowd booed his ungentlemanly conduct. In tonight’s drama they had cast him for the villain.

Some of the bleacherites began to clap their hands rhythmically to show their impatience. ‘Quit stalling,’ they yelled. Stein, with the sensitivity of the vain, moved in to satisfy them. He started a right to Toro’s body, and when he saw the big arms go down, he suddenly pivoted and let the left hand go for the first time. It caught Toro hard on the side of the jaw. Toro sagged. I was sitting close enough to see how his eyes turned in. Stein danced back to his corner at the bell, hamming it up a little with his chest out. Toro
walked back to his stool slowly and sat down like a man with a bellyful of beer.

Stein was waiting for him as soon as he got up again. He was speeding up his tempo now. Toro tried to box him again, but Stein feinted, exactly as he had done before, sucked Toro out of position and crashed his left into Toro’s reddened eye. A lump was swelling over it with abnormal rapidity. At that moment I wanted to be away from this, away from what could only be the relentless tormenting of a helpless freak. But something gripped me with terrible fascination, just as did all 80,000 of us, waiting in a kind of death-watch for what already seemed inevitable.

It had ceased to be a contest; it was a bullfight, a thrilling demonstration of man’s superiority over the beast, the giant, the great shapeless fear. The voices of the onlookers were growing tight with excitement. ‘Work on that eye!’ ‘Get that eye!’ ‘Close that right eye for him!’

Stein obliged. Measuring Toro coolly, he smashed the swollen eye. Toro’s heavy lips parted in pain, revealing the ugly orange mouthpiece. Staring balefully at his attacker with his one good eye he had suddenly become a grotesque and incredible throwback to Cyclops. Stein was working him over with methodical viciousness now. The short, savage blows pounded Toro with sickening monotony. When the bell ended his punishment for sixty seconds, Toro hesitated foolishly for a moment, trying to decide in which direction his corner lay. The referee guided him back to his stool.

Doc’s fingers digging into Toro’s limp neck, the water George poured over Toro’s head and the smelling salts Vince
held to his nose gave the giant a semblance of recuperation with which to face the next round. But Stein was stabbing him with animal fury now. His lips were drawn tight over his mouthpiece and his eyes had a homicidal intensity. You could almost feel the pressure of the accumulating cruelty of the crowd closing in on the ring. ‘Get him! Get him!’ ‘Knock him out!’ ‘Kill ’im!’ the cries mounted in hysteria. The lump over Toro’s right eye had risen to the size of an egg. Stein drove Toro back with another straight left that was beginning to split Toro’s mouth. Then, with all his might, he jabbed at the lump, smashing it as if it really were an egg, but an egg full of blood. Instantly the right side of Toro’s face was a crimson splotch.

‘That’s the way, Buddy. Kill ’im!’ the blonde in the third row screamed.

I looked over at Nick, who was sitting with Ruby in the front row, directly across the ring from me. He was just sitting there, pulling calmly on a long cigar and watching the proceedings with a kind of bored attentiveness I had seen on his face hundreds of times at the training camps. Ruby was wearing a spectacular black felt hat with a band of spangles around the crown, framing a powder-white face with fierce dark eyes and a deep red mouth. From where I sat, she seemed to be enjoying herself.

Another savage shriek was torn from the throat of the crowd and people all around me jumped up to see Stein catch Toro in a corner, where he rained rights and lefts at his head until Toro began sliding down the ringpost to squat ludicrously on the floor. Some people laughed. The referee pointed Stein to a neutral corner, where he bounced crazily,
waiting to get at Toro again. ‘Stay down, Toro, stay down,’ I shouted. But for some inexplicable reason of that dogged, semi-conscious brain, Toro pulled himself up and tottered heavily toward Stein. The bell postponed the slaughter for another minute.