Which only revved the engine in me. “So, anybody else ever told you that?” I asked. “Having a doubt, I mean.”
Vinnie's right shoulder lifted slightly, then fell again. Beyond that, nothing.
“The thing I could never figure is, what would have been worth it, you know? To you, I mean. Even, say, a hundred grand. Even that would have been chump change compared to where you were headed.”
Vinnie shifted slightly, and the fingers of his right hand curled into a fist, a movement I registered with appropriate trepidation.
“And to lose that fight,” I said. “Against Douggie Burns. He was over the hill already. Beaten to a pulp in that battle with Chester Link. To lose a fight with a real contender, that's one thing. But losing one to a beat-up old palooka likeâ”
Vinnie suddenly whirled around, his eyes flaring. “He was a stand-up guy, Douggie Burns.”
“A stand-up guy?” I asked. “You knew Douggie?”
“I knew he was a stand-up guy.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Meaning what?”
“That he was an honest guy,” Vinnie said. “A stand-up guy, like I said.”
“Sure, okay,” I said. “But, excuse me, so what? He was a ghost. What, thirty-three, four? A dinosaur.” I released a short laugh. “The last fight of his, for example. With Chester Link. Jesus, the whipping he took.”
Something in Irish Vinnie's face drew taut. “Bad thing,” he muttered.
“Slaughter of the Innocents, that's what it was,” I said. “After the first round, I figured Burns would be on the mat within a minute of the second. You see it?”
Vinnie nodded.
“Then Douggie comes back and takes a trimming just as bad in the second,” I went on, still working to engage Irish Vinnie, or maybe just relive the sweetness of my own vanished youth, the days when I'd huddled at the ringside press table, chain-smoking Camels, with the bill of my hat turned up and a press card winking out of the band, a guy right out of
Front Page
, though even now it seemed amazingly real to me, my newspaperman act far closer to my true self than any role I'd played since then.
“Then the bell rings on Round Three and Chester windmills Douggie all over again. Jesus, he was punch-drunk by the time the bell rang at the end of it.” I grinned. “Headed for the wrong corner, remember? Ref had to grab him by the shoulders and turn the poor bleary bastard around.”
“A stand-up guy,” Vinnie repeated determinedly, though now only to himself.
“I was amazed the ref didn't stop it,” I added. “People lost a bundle that night. Everybody was betting Douggie Burns wouldn't finish the fight. I had a sawbuck that he wouldn't see five.”
Vinnie's eyes cut over to me. “Lotsa people lost money,” he muttered. “Big people.”
Big people, I thought, remembering that the biggest of them had been standing ringside that night. None other than Salmon Weiss, the guy who managed Chester Link. Weiss was the sort of fight promoter who wore a cashmere overcoat and a white silk scarf, always had a black Caddie idling outside the arena with a leggy blonde in the back seat. He had a nose that had been more dream than reality before an East Side surgeon took up the knife, and when he spoke, it was always at you.
Get the picture? Anyway, that was Salmon Weiss, and everybody in or around the fight game knew exactly who he was. His private betting habits were another story, however, and I was surprised that a guy like Irish Vinnie, a pug in no way connected to Weiss, had a clue as to where the aforementioned Salmon put his money.
“You weren't one of Weiss's boys, were you?” I asked, though I knew full well that Vinnie had always been managed by Old Man Melinas.
Vinnie shook his head.
“Spiro Melinas was your manager.”
Vinnie nodded.
So what gives
? I wondered, but figured it was none of my business, and so went on to other matters.
“Anyway,” I said. “Chester tried his best to clean Douggie's clock, but the bastard went all the way through the tenth.” I laughed again.
The bus groaned, shuddered in a blast of wind, then dragged forward again.
“Well, all I remember is what a shellacking Douggie took.”
Vinnie chewed his lower lip. “'Cause he wouldn't go down.”
“True enough. He did the count. All the way to the last bell.”
Vinnie seemed almost to be ringside again at that long-ago match, watching as Douggie Burns, whipped and bloody, barely able to raise his head, took punch after punch, staggering backward, fully exposed, barely conscious, so that it seemed to be a statue Chester Link was battering with all his power, his gloves thudding against stomach, shoulder, face, all of it Douggie Burns, but Douggie Burns insensate, perceiving nothing, feeling nothing, Douggie Burns in stone.
“Stayed on his feet,” Vinnie said now. “All the way.”
“Yes, he did,” I said, noting the strange admiration Vinnie still had for Douggie, though it seemed little more than one fighter's regard for another's capacity to take inhuman punishment. “But you have to say there wasn't much left of him after that fight,” I added.
“No, not much.”
“Which makes me wonder why you fought him at all,” I said, returning to my real interest in the matter of Irish Vinnie Teague. “I mean, that was no real match. You and Douggie. After that beating he took from Chester Link, Douggie couldn't have whipped a Girl Scout.”
“Nothing left of Douggie,” Vinnie agreed.
“But you were in your prime,” I told him. “No real match, like I said. And that ⦠you know ⦠to lose to him ⦠that was nuts, whoever set that up.”
Vinnie said nothing, but I could see his mind working.
“Spiro. What was his idea in that? Setting up a bout between you and Douggie Burns? It never made any sense to me. Nothing to be gained from it on either side. You had nothing to gain from beating Douggie ⦠and what did Douggie have to gain from beating you if he couldn't do it without it being a ⦠I mean, if it wasn't ⦠real.”
Vinnie shook his head. “Weiss set it up,” he said. “Not Mr. Melinas.”
“Oh, Salmon Weiss,” I said. “So it was Weiss that put together the fight you had with Douggie?”
Vinnie nodded.
I pretended that the infamous stage play that had resulted from Weiss's deal had been little more than a tactical error on Vinnie's part and not the, shall we say, flawed thespian performance that had ended his career.
“Well, I sure hope Weiss made you a good offer for that fight, because no way could it have helped you in the rankings.” I laughed. “Jesus, you could have duked it out with Sister Evangeline from Our Lady of the Lepers and come up more.”
No smile broke the melancholy mask of Irish Vinnie Teague.
I shook my head at the mystery of things. “And a fix to boot,” I added softly.
Vinnie's gaze cut over to me. “It wasn't no fix,” he said. His eyes narrowed menacingly. “I didn't take no dive for Douggie Burns.”
I saw it all again in the sudden flash of light, Douggie's glove float through the air, lightly graze the side of Vinnie's face, then glide away as the Shameful Shamrock crumpled to the mat. If that had not been a dive, then there'd never been one in the history of the ring.
But what can you say to a man who lies to your face, claims he lost the money or that it wasn't really sex?
I shrugged. “Hey, look, it was a long time ago, right?”
Vinnie's red-rimmed eyes peered at me intently. “I was never supposed to take a dive,” he said.
“You weren't supposed to take a dive?” I asked, playing along now, hoping that the bus would get moving, ready to get off, be done with Vinnie Teague. “You weren't supposed to drop for Douggie Burns?”
Vinnie shook his head. “No. I was supposed to win that fight. It wasn't no fix.”
“Not a fix?” I asked. “What was it then?”
He looked at me knowingly. “Weiss said I had to make Douggie Burns go down.”
“You had to make Douggie go down?”
“Teach him a lesson. Him and the others.”
“Others?”
“The ones Weiss managed,” Vinnie said. “His other fighters. He wanted to teach them a lesson so they'd ⦔
“What?”
“Stay in line. Do what he told them.”
“And you were supposed to administer that lesson by way of Douggie Burns?”
“That's right.”
“What'd Weiss have against Douggie?”
“He had plenty,” Vinnie said. “'Cause Douggie wouldn't do it. He was a stand-up guy, and he wouldn't do it.”
“Wouldn't do what?”
“Drop for Chester Link,” Vinnie answered. “Douggie was supposed to go down in five. But he wouldn't do it. So Weiss came up with this match. Between me and Douggie. Said I had to teach Douggie a lesson. Said if I didn't ⦔ He glanced down at his hands. “⦠I wouldn't fight no more.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I wasn't supposed to lose that fight with Douggie. I was supposed to win it. Win it good. Make Douggie go down hard.” He hesitated a moment, every dark thing in him darkening a shade. “Permanent.”
I felt a chill. “Permanent,” I repeated.
“So Weiss's fighters could see what would happen to them if he told them to take a dive and they didn't.”
“So it wasn't a fix,” I said, getting it now. “That fight between you and Douggie. It was never a fix.”
Vinnie shook his head.
The last words dropped from my mouth like a bloody mouthpiece. “It was a hit.”
Vinnie nodded softly. “I couldn't do it, though,” he said. “You don't kill a guy for doing the right thing.”
I saw Douggie Burns's glove lift slowly, hang in the air, then drift forward, soft and easy, barely a punch at all, then Irish Vinnie Teague, the Shameful Shamrock, hit the mat like a sack of sand.
The hydraulic doors opened before I could get out another word.
“I get off here,” Vinnie said as he labored to his feet.
I touched his arm, thinking of all the times I'd done less nobly, avoided the punishment, known the right thing to do, but lacked whatever Irish Vinnie had that made him do it, too.
“You're a stand-up guy, Vinnie,” I said.
He smiled softly, then turned and scissored his way through the herd of strap-hangers until he reached the door. He never glanced back at me, but only continued down the short flight of stairs and out into the night, where he stood for a moment, upright in the elements. The bus slogged forward again, and I craned my neck for a final glimpse of Irish Vinnie Teague as it pulled away. He stood on the corner, drawing the tattered scarf more tightly around his throat. Then he turned and lumbered up the avenue toward the pink neon of Smith's Bar, a throng of snowflakes rushing toward him suddenly, bright and sparkling, fluttering all around, like a crowd of cheering angels in the dark, corrupted air.
THE LESSON
OF THE SEASON
A Christmas Story
I
t was the final minutes of the final day before Christmas, and Veronica Cross wanted only to pass these last moments sitting silently behind the register, her attention fixed on the book that rested in her lap. She had worked at the Mysterious Bookshop for almost ten years, but only on Saturdays, when the owner was at his house in Connecticut, and the store's full-time employees were scattered about various apartments throughout the city. Her job was simply to buzz customers into the store, answer whatever questions they asked, take their money, bag their purchases, then buzz them back out onto 56th Street. Almost no intellectual energy was required on Veronica's part, and the small financial supplement her salary added to her “real job” as a freelance copy editor made it possible for her to buy books from other stores, along with an occasional dinner out, or perhaps a discount ticket to a Broadway show.
The dinner and show might be enjoyed along or with one of her friends, someone like herself, who read good books and could articulately discuss them. As for romance, she'd more or less given up on that. Most men were little boys, needy and selfish, and none had ever struck her as worth the effort it took to dress up and preen and put on a happy face when she well knew that after the first few minutes she'd want only to hail a cab, return home, crawl into bed and open a book.
As for dress, she opted for modest elegance, long solid-colored skirts and dark-hued blouses for the most part, though black jeans with an accompanying black turtleneck sweater were not beyond her. Physically, she was tall, lithesome, and incontestably attractive, but for all that, she preferred to blend into whatever woodwork surrounded her. That other people chased distant stars, felt imperial urges, sought fame, or at least notoriety, all of that was a mystery to Veronica because she wished only to be left alone with her books.
She glanced at the clock at the rear of the room, then at her watch to verify the clock's correctness. Both sentenced her to fifteen more minutes of minding the store, and given the heavy snow that had begun to fall outside, she thought it quite likely that she might be able to pass those final moments lost in her book, the store silent all around her, with nothing but the soft tick, tick of the clock to remind her that she was part of an all too human world.
Then it happened.
Someone buzzed.
Veronica glanced toward the door, recognized the mild, faintly hang-dog face she saw behind the glass, then pressed the buzzer and let him in.
His name was Harry Bentham, and he came to the store every Saturday, though usually not during the final minutes of the day, and never during the final minutes of the final day before Christmas when a heavy snow was falling outside.
“Hi,” Harry said quietly as he stepped into the shop.
“Hi,” Veronica replied in a voice that was not without welcome, but which did nothing to encourage a more extended greeting.
Harry slapped the melting flakes of snow that had accumulated on the shoulders of his worn gray overcoat and stepped nearer to one of the shelves.