The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (33 page)

At nine he made it to his feet, but he was shaky, and when he tried to bicycle away, Tony was on him with a stiff left, then another, then a right hook.

The terrific punch lifted him up and smashed him to the floor on his shoulder blades. He shook his head to clear it, crawled to his knees, and when he saw the referee’s lips shaping nine, he came up with a lunge.

Before him he saw the red gloves of Tony Gilman, saw the punch start. He felt it hit his skull. He tried to catch his balance, knowing that a whistling right hook would follow, and follow it did. He rolled to miss the punch, but it caught him and turned him completely around!

Something caught him across the small of the back and he felt his feet lift up. Then he was lying flat on his face on the apron of the ring, staring through a blue haze at the hairy legs of Tony Gilman. He had been knocked out of the ring!

He grabbed a rope, and half pulled, half fell through the ropes, then lunged to his feet. He saw Gilman coming, ducked under the punch, then dived across the ring and brought up against the ropes.

Then Gilman was there. Tony’s first punch was wild and Finn went under it and grabbed the blond fighter like a drowning man.

Then he was lying back on his stool and Mullaney was working on his eye.

“What round?” he gasped.

“The seventh, coming up!” Mullaney said quickly.

The seventh? But where—? He heard the warning buzzer and was on his feet, moving out toward Gilman.

Tony was disturbed. He had been sure of this fight; however, the clumsy, hard-hitting, but mostly ineffectual fighter he had met before had changed. Gilman was having the fight of his life. What had happened to Bernie Ledsham he didn’t know, but Mullaney now was in Finn’s corner.

A double cross? Was Spelvin going to cross him this time? Or was it
Spelvin
who was being crossed up?

He circled warily, looking Downey over. This called for some cool, careful boxing. He was going to have to cut Finn up, then knock him out. He would get no place slugging with him. How anything human could have survived that punch that took him out of the ring, he didn’t know, to say nothing of the half dozen he had thrown before and after.

Finn, on his part, knew he was going to have to slow Tony down. Gilman was still too experienced for him, and plenty tough. He was beginning to realize how foolish he must have sounded to Glen Gurney when he told the champ how he was going to knock him out. For Gurney had beaten Gilman, and badly.

Gilman circled and stabbed a left. Finn weaved under it and tried to get in close, but Gilman faded away from him, landing two light punches.

Finn crouched lower, watching Tony. Gilman sidestepped quickly to the right and Finn missed again. He circled. Twice he threw his right at Gilman and missed. Tony was wary now, however.

Downey went under a left, then let a right curl around his neck, and suddenly he let go in a long dive at Gilman! They crashed into the ropes. Gilman stumbled back, but Finn smashed a left to the body, whipped a cracking left hook to the chin, and crossed a right to Gilman’s head.

Tony broke free and backpedaled, but Finn followed him relentlessly. He landed a left, took a blow, then caught Gilman in a corner.

Tony turned loose both hands; toe-to-toe, they stood and slugged like wild men while the huge arena became one vast roar of sound.

Finn was watching his chance, watching that left of Gilman’s, for he had noticed only a moment before that Gilman, after landing a left jab, sometimes moved quickly to the right.

The left came again—again, and a third time. Gilman fell away to the right—and into a crashing right hook thrown with every ounce of strength in Finn Downey’s body!

Gilman came down on his shoulder, rolled over on his face.

At nine, he got up. Finn Downey couldn’t imagine the effort he used to make it, but make it he did. Finn walked in, feinted a right, then whipped a left hook into Gilman’s solar plexus and crossed a right on his jaw.

Tony Gilman hit the canvas flat on his face. Downey trotted to his corner. This time, Gilman didn’t get up.

Mullaney threw Finn’s robe around his shoulders, and he listened to the roar of sound. They were cheering him, for he had won. His eyes sought the ringside seats. Pamela was struggling through the crowd toward him.

When she reached him, she caught his arm and squeezed it hard.

“Oh, Finn, you won! You really won!”

“Nice fight, man!” Gurney said smiling. “You’ve shortened up that right!”

Finn grinned back. “I had to,” he said, “or somebody would have killed me! Thanks for the tip.”

“Yeah,” Pat Skehan said, “it was a nice fight.” He grinned fleetingly, then brushed by.

“Will you take that ride in the morning?” Pamela asked.

“Okay, yeah,” Downey said. His head was spinning and the roaring in his ears had not yet died away.

In the dressing room, Mullaney grinned at Finn as he cut the strings on the gloves.

“Pal,” he said, “you should have seen Cat! He dropped sixty G’s on this fight! And that ain’t all! Walt McKeon was here tonight. Walt’s an investigator for the state’s attorney. He was curious as to why Bernie was in your corner when Bernie works for Cat and Cat owns Gilman’s contract. After some discussion, we rectified the situation!”

T
HE MORNING SUN WAS
bright, and Finn leaned back in the convertible as it purred over the smooth paved roads.

He had no idea where he was going, and didn’t care. Pamela was driving, and he was content to be with her.

The car turned onto gravel, and he rode with half-closed eyes. When the car came to a halt, he opened them and looked around.

The convertible was in a lane not far from a railroad track. Beyond the track was a row of tumbledown, long-unpainted shacks. Some housed chickens. In one was a cow.

At several of the houses, the wash hung on the line and poorly clad youngsters played in the dust.

“Where are we?” he demanded.

“In Jersey,” Pamela said. “There’s a manufacturing town right over there. This is where a lot of mill hands and railroad workers live, many not too long on this side of the water.”

Not over fifty yards away was a small house that once had been painted green. The yard was littered with papers, sticks, and ashes.

A path led from the back door into a forest of tall ragweed.

“Let’s get out,” Pamela said. “I want to walk around.” There was an odd look in her eyes.

It was hot and close in the jungle of ragweed. Pamela stepped carefully over the spots of mud. Finn moved carefully; he was still cut and bruised from the fight. The path led to a ditch that was crossed by a dusty plank. On the other side, the ragweed finally gave way to a bare field, littered with rusty tin cans, broken boxes, and barrels.

Pamela walked swiftly across it and into the trees that bordered the far edge. Here the path dipped to a small open space of green grass. A broken diving board hung over what had been a wide pool. Now the water was discolored by oil.

Pam sat down on a log in the shade. “Like it?” she asked curiously.

He shrugged, looking around. “How’d you know all this was here?”

Her smile vanished. “Because I used to live here. I was born in that house back there. So was Glen. Glen built that diving board. In those days, the water was still clean enough to swim in. Then the mill began dumping there and spoiled it. Even after that, I used to come here and sit, just like this. We didn’t have much money, and about all we could do was dream. Glen used to tell me what he would do someday. He did it, too. He never went to school much, and all the education he got was from reading. All he could do was fight, so that’s how he made it—by fighting. He paid for my education, and helped me get a job.”

Finn Downey got up suddenly. “I guess I’ve been a good deal of a sap,” he said humbly. “When I looked at you and at Glen, I figured you had to be born that way. I guess I was mighty wrong, Pam.”

Pamela got up and caught his hand. “Come on! Let’s go back to the car. There’s a drugstore in town where we used to get cherry sodas. Let’s go see if it’s still open!”

They made their way back across the polluted ditch and through the overgrown lot. The convertible left a haze of dust on the road for some minutes after it departed.

Far off there was the sound of a ball bouncing, then a pause and the sound of a backboard vibrating and the
whiff
as the ball dropped through the net. A gangly youngster dribbled down an imaginary court and turned to make another shot.

The crowd went wild.

The Rounds Don’t Matter

Y
ou get that way sometimes when you’re in shape, and you know you’re winning. You can’t wait for the bell, you’ve got to get up and keep moving your feet, smacking the ends of your gloves together. All you want is to get out there and start throwing leather.

Paddy Brennan knew he was hot. He was going to win. It felt good to weigh a couple of pounds under two hundred, and be plenty quick. It felt good to be laying them in there hard and fast, packed with the old dynamite that made the tough boys like Moxie Bristow back up and look him over.

Moxie was over there in the corner now, stretched out and soaking up the minute between rounds as if it were his last chance to lie in the warm sunlight. You wouldn’t think to look at him that Moxie had gone the distance three times with the champ when the champ was good. You wouldn’t think that Moxie had a win over Deacon Johnson, the big black boy from Mississippi who was mowing them down.

You wouldn’t think so now, because Moxie Bristow was stretched out on his stool and breathing deep. But he knew that all his breathing wasn’t going to fix that bad eye or take the puff out of those lips.

Paddy was right. He was going good tonight. He was going good every night. He was young, and he liked to fight, and he was on the way up. He liked the rough going, too. He didn’t mind if he caught a few, because he didn’t take many. He liked to see Caproni down there in the ringside seats with Bickerstaff. They handled Tony Ketchell, who was the number-one heavyweight now. And in the articles for tonight’s fight, there was a clause that said he was to fight Ketchell on the twenty-seventh of next month if he got by Bristow.

The bell clanged, and Paddy went out fast. When he jabbed that left, it didn’t miss. It didn’t miss the second or the third time, and then he turned Bristow with a left and hit him on the chin with a chopping right. It made Moxie’s knees buckle, but Paddy Brennan didn’t pay any attention to that. Their legs always went rubbery when he socked them with that inside right cross.

Moxie dropped into a crouch and bored in, weaving and bobbing. The old boy had it, Paddy thought. He could soak them up, but he was smart, too. He knew when to ride them and when to go under and when to go inside.

Paddy had a flat nose and high cheekbones, but not so flat or so high that he wasn’t good-looking. Maybe it was his curly hair, maybe it was the twinkle in his eyes, maybe it was the vitality, but he had something. He had something that made him like to fight, too.

He moved in fast now, hooking with both hands. Bristow tried a left, and Paddy went inside with three hard ones and saw a thin trickle of blood start from over Moxie’s good eye.

Moxie was watching him. He knew it was coming. Paddy walked in, throwing them high and hard, then hooked a left to the guts that turned Moxie’s face gray. He had Moxie spotted for the right then, and it went down the groove and smacked against Bristow’s chin with a sickening thud. Moxie sagged, then toppled over on his face.

P
ADDY TROTTED
to his corner, and when he looked down he could see Caproni and Bickerstaff. He was glad they were there, because he had wanted them to see it. He wished Dicer Garry were there, too. Dicer had been Paddy’s best friend, and he might have guessed more of what was in the wind than anyone else.

Brennan leaned over the ropes, and Caproni looked up, his face sour.

“Now Ketchell, eh?” Paddy said. “I’m going to take your boy, Vino.”

“Yeah?” Caproni said. His eyes were cold. “Sure, sure…we’ll see.”

Paddy chuckled, trotting across the ring to help Moxie to his corner. He looked down at Bristow, squeezing the other fighter’s shoulder.

“Swell fight, mister. You sure take ’em.”

Moxie grinned.

“Yeah? You dish ’em out, too!” Paddy squeezed Moxie’s arm again and started away, but Moxie held his wrist, pulling him close. “You watch it, look out for Vino. You got it, Irish. You got what it takes. But look out.”

Sammy came out of Brennan’s corner. “Can it, Mox. Let’s go, Paddy.” He held out Paddy’s robe. Sammy’s face looked haggard under the lights, and his eyes shifted nervously. Sammy was afraid of Vino.

Paddy trotted across the ring and took the robe over his shoulders. He felt good. He vaulted the ropes and ducked down to the dressing rooms under the ring. Sammy helped him off with his shoes.

“Nice fight, Paddy. You get Ketchell now.” But Sammy didn’t look happy. “You don’t want to rib Vino like that,” he said. “He ain’t a nice guy.”

Paddy didn’t say anything. He knew all about Vino Caproni, but he was remembering Dicer Garry. Dice had been good, but he hadn’t got by Ketchell. Maybe Dicer could have whipped Ketchell. Maybe he couldn’t. But he fought them on the up and up, and that wasn’t the way Caproni or Bickerstaff liked to play.

Dicer and Paddy had worked it out between them three years ago.

“Give me first crack at it, Paddy?” Dicer suggested. “We’ve been pals ever since we worked on the construction crew together. You’ve licked me three times, and you know and I know you can do it again.”

“So what?” Brennan said.

“So…” Garry mused. “You let me get the first crack at the champ. You let me take the big fights first. You come along after. That way maybe I can be champ before you get there. You can have a fight for the belt anytime. You’ll beat me eventually if I’m still there. We’ve been pals too long. We know what’s up.”

And Garry had almost made it. He knocked out Joe Devine and Bat Turner, got a decision over Racko and a technical kayo over Morrison, all in a few months. Then they matched him with Andy Fuller, who was right up there with the best, and Dicer nearly killed him. So he was matched with Ketchell.

Caproni and Bickerstaff had worked a few years on Ketchell. He was in the big money, and he had been taken along carefully. He was good. But could he beat Dicer?

Paddy Brennan peeled the bandages and tape from his fists and remembered that last note he had from Garry.

THEY TRIED TO PROPOSITION ME
.
I TURNED THEM DOWN
.
THIS VINO AIN’T NO GOOD
.
HE GOT TOUGH WITH ME AND I HIT HIM
.
I BROKE HIS NOSE
.

DICER

Sergeant Kelly O’Brien stopped in, smiling broadly. The sergeant was father to Clara O’Brien and Clara and Paddy were engaged. You could see the resemblance to Clara. O’Brien had been a handsome man in his day.

“’Twas a grand job, son. A grand job. You’ve never looked better!”

“Yeah,” Paddy said, looking up. “Now I get Ketchell, then the champ.”

Brennan picked up his soap and stepped into the shower, put his soap in the niche in the wall and turned on the water. With the water running over him, he reached for the soap. All the time he was thinking of Garry.

If it hadn’t been for that truck crashing into Dicer’s car, he might be fighting his best pal for the title now, and a tough row it would have been. If it hadn’t been for that truck crash, Tony Ketchell might have been out of the picture before this. Dicer Garry would have whipped Ketchell or come close to it. Vino Caproni had known that, and so had Bickerstaff.

The worst of it was, he might never have guessed about that truck if he hadn’t seen the green paint on Bickerstaff ’s shoe sole. He’d been out to see Dicer’s car, and seen the green paint that had rubbed off the truck onto the wreck. And it was almost fresh paint. Then later that day, he had talked with Bickerstaff.

The gambler was sitting with one ankle on the other knee, and there was green paint on the sole of his shoe, a little on the edge.

“That was tough about Dicer,” Bickerstaff said. “Was his car smashed up pretty bad?”

“Yeah,” Paddy told him, and suddenly something went over him that left him outwardly casual, but inwardly alert, and deadly. “Yeah, you seen it?”

“Me?” Bickerstaff shook his head. “Not me, I never go around wrecking yards. Crashes give me the creeps.”

I
T WAS
a little thing, but Paddy Brennan went to O’Brien, who had been a friend of Garry’s, too.

“Maybe it don’t mean a thing,” Paddy said, “or again maybe it does. But when you figure that Ketchell’s had a buildup that must have cost seventy grand, you get the idea. Ketchell’s good, and maybe he would have beat Dicer, but then again maybe he wouldn’t. It was a chance, and guys like Vino don’t take any chances.”

O’Brien nodded thoughtfully.

“I’ve wondered about that. But it all looked so good. You know how Dicer used to drive—anything less than sixty was loafing. And he hit the truck, that was obvious enough. Of course, it would have been a simple matter to have had the truck waiting and swing it in the way. Garry drove out that road to his camp every morning.

“If you are right, Paddy, it was an almost foolproof job. The driver, Mike Cortina, he’d never had an accident before; he’d been driving for three years for that same firm. He was delivering that load of brick out that road, so he had a reason to be there. They had a witness to the crash, you know.”

W
HEN HE HAD FINISHED
his shower, he dressed slowly. The sergeant had gone on ahead with Clara, and he would meet them at a café later. Sammy loitered around, looking nervous and cracking his knuckles.

“Look, Paddy,” he said suddenly, “I don’t want to speak out of turn or nothing, but honest, you got me scared. Why don’t you play along with Vino? You got what it takes, Paddy, an’ gosh—”

Paddy stopped buttoning his shirt. “What is it? What d’you know?” he asked, staring at Sammy.

“I don’t know a damn thing. Honest, I—”

“Do you know Cortina?” Paddy asked, deliberately.

Sammy sank back on the bench, his face gray.

“Shut up!”
he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t go stickin’ your neck out, Paddy,
please
!”

Paddy stood over Sammy, he stared at the smaller man, his eyes burning.

“You been a good man, Sammy,” he said thickly. “I like you. But if you know anything, you better give. Come on,
give
!”

“Farnum,” Sammy sighed. “One of the witnesses—he runs a junkyard in Jersey. He used to handle hot heaps for the Brooklyn mob.”

Brennan finished dressing. Then he turned to Sammy, who sat gray-faced and fearful.

“You go home and forget it, Sam. I’ll handle this!”

S
OMEHOW THE DAYS
got away from him, in the gym, and on the road, getting ready for Ketchell.

“It’s got to be good, Clara,” he told her. “I got to win this one. It’s got to be a clean win. No decision, nothing they can get their paws into.”

He liked the Irish in her eyes, the way she smiled. She was a small, pretty girl with black hair and blue eyes and just a dash of freckles over her nose. Paddy held her with his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes.

“After this is over, we can spend all the time we want together. Until then I’ve got work to do.”

“Be careful, Paddy,” she begged him. “I’m afraid. Daddy’s been talking to someone about that man—the one with the yellow eyes.”

“Vino?”

“Yes, that’s the one. A friend told Daddy he used to work a liquor concession for Capone when he was young. And now he is in with some bunch of criminals who have a hot car business over in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn?” Paddy’s eyes narrowed. Car thieves in Brooklyn…?

Paddy Brennan went back to the hotel and started for the elevator. The room clerk stopped him.

“Two men came in to see you, Mr. Brennan. They were here twice. They wouldn’t leave their names.”

“Two men?” Paddy looked out the door. “One of them short and fat, the other dark with light eyes?”

“That’s right. The dark one did the talking.”

If Vino was looking for him, it meant a proposition on the Ketchell fight. He picked up the phone.

“If anybody calls, I’m not in, okay?”

Let them wait. Let them wait until the last night when they couldn’t wait any longer, when they would have to come out with it. Then—He dialed the phone.

T
WO NIGHTS LATER
Paddy Brennan sat on his bed in the hotel and looked across at the wiry man with the thin blond hair.

“You found him, did you?” he asked.

The man wet his lips.

“Yeah, he quit his job drivin’ the truck six months after the accident. He’s been carrying a lot of do-re-mi since then. I trailed him over to Jersey last night, drunk. He’s sleeping it off at a junkyard right now.”

Paddy got up. He took out a roll of bills and peeled off a couple.

“That’s good,” he said. “You stand by, okay? Then you go tell O’Brien about six o’clock, get me? Don’t tell him where I am, or anything. Just tell him what I told you and don’t miss. There’s going to be a payoff soon. You do what I tell you, and you’ll get paid a bonus.”

At about nine-thirty tonight he would be going into the ring with Tony Ketchell, and the winner would get a chance at the title. In the meantime, there were things to do—the things Dicer Garry would have done if it had been Paddy Brennan whose broken, bloody body had been lifted from the wreckage of his car. They were things that had to be done now while there was still time.

T
HE JUNKYARD WAS
on the edge of town. A light glowed in the office shack. Behind it was the piled-up mass of the junked cars, a long, low warehouse, and the huge bulk of the press. It was here the Brooklyn mob turned hot cars into parts, rebuilt cars, or scrap. Farnum, the convenient witness, ran the place. He had testified that Dicer Garry had hit the truck doing eighty miles an hour, that the driver hadn’t had a chance to get out of the way.

Paddy Brennan’s face was grim when he stopped by the dirty window and peered in. Cortina—he remembered the man from the inquest—was sitting in a chair tipped back against the wall. He had a bottle in his hand and a gun in a shoulder holster.

Farnum was there, too, a slender, gray-haired man who looked kindly and tired until you saw his eyes. There were two others there—a slender man with a weasel face and a big guy with heavy shoulders and a bulging jaw.