The Harder They Fall (33 page)

In his corner, Toro lay back against the ropes drooling blood from his torn mouth and gasping for breath, exhausted from the terrible punishment he was absorbing. His one half-open eye closed in an agony of weariness. Doc’s fingers did their best. With all their strength they pressed together the lips of the cut over the right eye to try to stem the bleeding. Then Doc patted collodion over the wound and it seemed momentarily to congeal. Meanwhile George tried to rub some life into the huge, muscle-bound, all-but-useless legs, and Vince shouted profane instructions into his swollen ears.

After all this preparation, Stein tore across the ring at the bell and knocked Toro down again with the first punch. All of Doc’s work had come undone and the cut above the eye dripped blood into the dirty canvas. There was no point, no honour in continuing this demonstration of a big man’s hopeless inability to compete in coordinated viciousness with a smaller man of proved superiority. When Toro got up again I don’t think he even intended to try. His face was a gory mess and he stumbled forward to receive more blows, a broken and battered hull of a man foundering on a sea of pain, relentlessly buffeted by the angry waves of blows, and borne up only by some unknown fund of pointless endurance.

The crowd was screaming for a knockout now, begging
for it, pleading for it, a wild-eyed cheering section of bettors who were riding on a Stein knockout, of fans inspired with an angry sense of misplaced justice who resented Toro for his fraud-fattened record and mistook this beating for the revenge of integrity, and finally the vast audience of the frustrated and the browbeaten who could not help taking a deep vicarious pleasure in being in on the final transformation of an overpowering giant into a pitiful wreck of human flesh.

Somehow Toro weathered that round, dragged himself back for first aid and staggered out glassy-eyed to offer himself up to Stein once more. Why didn’t they stop it? Why didn’t Doc stop it? Doc must have been under orders from Nick to let it run. What about the referee? Well, for one thing they don’t like to stop a heavyweight fight too soon because the big boys are supposed to be able to take it. And then I remembered another thing. Vince had said something about laying eight Gs to five that Toro would still be there for the eighth. Vince and the referee, Marty Small, had done business before. Marty didn’t have to do anything crooked, just let Toro keep going as long as he could. Vince would take care of the rest.

For three more minutes, with the roar of the crowd pitched to a manic fury, Stein cut the crippled giant down. Toro tumbled over and writhed to a kneeling position and when he rose with his knees shaking, Stein knocked him down again. He rolled over onto his knees with his battered head pressed against the canvas. Then with a perverse and useless courage, he struggled to his feet again. With one hand on the ropes, he kept himself from falling. His other arm
hung limply at his side. Blood poured from both eyes, and a new stream of blood gushed from his mouth. Swaying back and forth, in blind and helpless bewilderment, he waited for the little man to attack him again. Stein leapt in with a powerful right to the body that made Toro bend over. Then he straightened him up with a paralysing left to the jaw. Toro toppled over. He fell so awkwardly that his ankle twisted under him. With horrible concentration, he lifted himself to his knees. He crawled forward on his knees, slipping in his own blood, like a dying beast. His mouth was open and the lower part of his jaw hung hideously loose. ‘Jaw’s busted,’ I heard someone say. The big orange mouthpiece flopped out of his mouth and rolled a few feet ahead of him. For some reason he did not understand, he crawled painfully toward it and tried to stuff it back into his mouth in a slow-motion gesture of futility. He was still fumbling with his mouthpiece when the referee finished his count and raised Stein’s hand. Buddy danced around happily, mitting his gloves over his head to acknowledge the ovation of the crowd. Toro was still trying to stuff the mouthpiece back into his mouth when Vince, Doc and George dragged him back to his corner.

Satisfied and quiet now, the crowd was filtering slowly toward the exits. Going up the aisle I met Nick and Ruby, the Killer with one of his girls, Mr and Mrs Quinn and Barney Winch.

‘Did you ever see a worse bum?’ Nick said.

‘We should swap him to Harry Miniff for an old jock strap,’ Quinn laughed.

‘Nice talk in front of the girls,’ Nick said, taking Ruby’s arm.

‘But there goes your meal ticket,’ I said.

Nick drew me closer. ‘Don’t worry, kid. I made a deal with Kewpie Harris. We’ve got a piece of Stein.’

‘Come on over to the Bolero, Eddie boy,’ Quinn said. ‘Just ask for my table.’

‘I don’t feel like it tonight,’ I said.

‘I can get you fixed up with something nice in the show,’ the Killer said.

‘I’m not in the mood tonight,’ I said.

I went back to the dressing room. Toro was sitting on the rubbing table with a bloody towel over his head. Doc was still trying to check the flow of blood from his nose and mouth. Toro’s smashed and swollen face hung limply on his chest. He was trembling. The reporters pressed around him, oblivious of his condition in their eagerness to round out their stories.

‘When was the first time he hurt you, Toro?’

Toro muttered through his torn mouth. ‘Jesus Christo …’

‘What punch was it that gave you the most trouble?’

‘Jesus Christo …’ Toro said.

‘Like to have a return match?’

‘Jesus Christo …’

‘Where the hell is Grandini?’ Doc said. ‘George, go down the hall and see if you can find Dr Grandini. He better have a look at this jaw.’

Toro’s head shook slightly from side to side like a man with palsy. The lumpy, sliced flesh over his eyes was turning purple and the broken jaw hung open.

‘Lie down,’ Doc said. ‘Better lie down.’

Toro just sat there in blind agony, shaking his head slowly. ‘Jesus Christo …’ he whispered.

They took him up to Roosevelt Hospital, and set his jaw for him. I went over to see him in the morning. His upper and lower jaws had been wired together; his cuts had been stitched; he was taking liquids through a glass straw. The lumpy discoloured bruises on his face made him look more like a huge gargoyle than ever.

There was something he was trying to say to me. He
tried to mutter through his wired teeth and his swollen, lacerated lips, but no sound came. Finally I caught some of the words forced from his throat. ‘I go home now. My money … money …’

‘I’ll get it for you,’ I said.

On the way out I passed Vince in the hall.

‘Well, this is the last place I ever expected to see you,’ I told him.

‘Aah, what’s-a-matter with you, you think you’re the only white man in the outfit? You think you got an exclusive on seeing the guy?’

‘What’s your angle, Vince? Don’t tell me you’re just coming in to cheer him up. That’s not my Vince.’

‘I just thought maybe I could help the guy,’ Vince said.

‘I didn’t know you knew that word,’ I said.

‘There’s a lotta things you don’t know, chum,’ Vince said and went in.

Well, it was a funny racket, I thought. I’ve seen boys beat each other so that neither would ever be as good again and then throw their arms around each other in an embrace of genuine affection. I’ve seen a father sit tight-lipped in a corner and let his son bleed like a pig for ten rounds and then, when it was all over, take his boy’s disfigured face in his hands and burst out crying. They were unpredictable, the toughest of them, whimsically and inconsistently tender. Maybe that was Vince. Maybe somewhere in that fat, coarse face, in that fat, lewd brain, was a hidden core of humanity I had missed, or that had never been tapped before.

I went up to the office to see about the money for Toro. Nick was home sleeping off a late night, the Killer said.
‘That’s where I shoulda stayed,’ he complained. ‘Christ what a night! Didja ever have a Chinese acrobatic dancer, Eddie? I thought I seen everything, but …’

‘Killer,’ I said, ‘how can I get Toro’s dough for him?’

The Killer looked disappointed. ‘Talk to Leo,’ he said. ‘He’s in this morning.’

I went down the hall to see Nick’s bookkeeper. He was working over a ledger. He looked small, pale and devoted, the way bookkeepers are supposed to look, except for his eyes, which were put there to warn you.

‘Busy, Leo?’

‘Well, I’m breaking down the take on the fight,’ he said.

‘What was the exact gross?’

‘One million, three hundred and fifty-six thousand, eight hundred ninety-three and fifty cents.’

‘I promised Toro I’d pick up his money for him,’ I said.

‘I’ll have to look it up in the file,’ Leo said.

He thumbed through his file professionally,
LATKA
,
LEWIS
,
MANN
,
MOLINA
… ‘Here it is.’ He licked his forefinger and removed several sheets from the file. He studied them carefully.

‘There’s a small balance,’ he said.

‘A small balance? Are you kidding?’

‘It’s all down here in black and white,’ Leo said.

I reached for the sheets and stared at the rows of figures, all neatly typed and itemised. My eye ran down a column of astronomical figures. There was $10,450 for training expenses, $14,075 for living expenses and $17,225 for publicity and entertainment. There were items, all beautifully padded, for equipment, sparring partners,
transportation, personal amusement, phone calls, telegrams and good old miscellaneous. There was a little matter of $63,500 in cash, alleged to have been advanced to Toro by Vanneman. And, finally, there were the managerial commissions, the Federal and State taxes and ‘personal gratuities for favours rendered’. By the time all this had been duly subtracted from purses which totalled almost a million dollars, there was a small balance, all right. Exactly forty-nine dollars and seven cents.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘This is highway robbery. Vince never advanced Toro any sixty-three thousand. You must mean six thousand.’

‘That’s the way I got it from Vince,’ Leo said. ‘He gave me all the tabs.’

‘So Toro winds up with forty-nine dollars and seven cents,’ I said. ‘What are you guys so generous for? What do you leave him the five sawbucks for?’

‘You can add it up yourself if you want to,’ Leo said.

‘I know you can add, Leo. I’ve seen you add for Nick before. I’ve seen you subtract too.’

‘Everything is in order,’ Leo said. ‘I can show these books to anybody.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You’ve got those numbers trained, Leo. You got those numbers jumping through hoops for you.’

‘If you have any beefs, talk to the boss,’ Leo said. ‘But you can’t find no bugs in my books. I’ll show my books to anybody, any time.’

I jumped into a cab and hurried over to Nick’s apartment on East 53rd. It was around noon. Nick was having his breakfast, alone in the dining room in a silk midnight-blue
bathrobe with a large N.L. embroidered over the breast pocket in Spencerian script.

‘Nick,’ I began, ‘I’ve just been talking to Leo.’

‘Yeah?’ He was crumbling his toast carefully into his soft-boiled eggs. ‘Did you get yours all right, kid? You should be in for around seventeen Gs.’

‘But, Nick. What about Toro? All Toro’s got is
forty-nine
bucks. A broken jaw and forty-nine lousy bucks.’

‘What’s it got to do with you, Eddie?’

‘What’s it got to do with me, I …’ What
did
it have to do with me? Where were the words to bridge the unbridgeable? To reconcile the unreconcilable?

‘You just can’t do that to a guy, Nick. You just can’t let him get beat to death and then leave him with a hole in his pocket.’

‘Listen, Eddie, the slob got paid off. You can see it on the books.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I just saw the books. I know Leo and his books.’

‘Then it’s just tough titty, isn’t it?’ Nick said.

‘Jesus, Nick, after all, the poor son-of-a-bitch is human. He’s …’

‘It’s just tough,’ Nick said.

‘For Christ’s sake, Nick. For the sake of Jesus Christ, you can’t do this.’

‘Go back to bed, Eddie,’ Nick said, reaching calmly for his coffee. And the terrible thing about it was the way he said it. I knew he still liked me. I knew, God forgive me, he thought I had class. He was always going to count me in. ‘Go back to bed and sleep it off. You’re spoiling my breakfast.’

I went back to the hospital to see Toro. ‘You mustn’t stay very long,’ the nurse said, outside his room.

‘How is he getting along?’

‘He’s under sedation. Still suffering from shock. His left side is partially paralysed, but the doctor is confident it’s only temporary.’

Toro was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. His face was a mass of blue and purple blotches. He turned his head slowly when he heard me enter.

‘¿Mi dinero
? My money … my money?’

I shook my head. I didn’t know what to say.

His eyes searched me frantically.
‘¿Mi dinero … dinero?’

I don’t know why I should have been the one to tell him. But I figured I was the only one who would take the trouble to break it to him easy.

‘Toro, I … I don’t know how to tell you this, but … it’s gone. Toro, it’s all gone.
Se fué.’

‘¿Se fué?
’ Toro muttered through his wired teeth. ‘No.
No es possible
.
¿Se fué?
’

‘
Lo siento
,’ I said. ‘Toro,
lo siento
.’ That’s what the Spanish say for ‘I’m sorry’, but it means literally, ‘I feel it’, and that was the way I meant it.

A wrenching groan came up out of Toro’s throat. He stared at me unbelievingly for what seemed at least a full minute. Then he turned slowly away from me and stared into the wall. Suddenly his great shoulders began to heave and he was shaken by dry, guttural sobs. It was a terrible thing to see a man of such size crying so desperately.

Finally I said, ‘Toro, I’m terribly sorry. I wish there was something I could do.’ Then I thought of my own seventeen
thousand. ‘Say, I’ve got an idea! I can let you have five thousand dollars.’ I was going to say ‘ten’, but some little bookkeeper in my brain cut it in half for me. ‘At least that would get you home.’

‘But it … is all my money … all … all … I make it all …’

‘Sure, sure,’ I agreed, ‘but what can you do? They’ve got you coming and going. Be smart and take the five, Toro.’

He turned from the wall and glared at me.

‘
Vaya,
’ Toro whispered hoarsely. ‘Go. All of you… Go away from me.’

All of you
. What did Toro mean,
all of you
? He must have me mixed up with the others. I was Toro’s friend, the only one who cared, the only one who sympathised. And yet, he had said
all
. He had said
all of you.

‘But, Toro, I’m your friend, I want to help you, I …’

‘Go,’ Toro whispered. ‘Go … go… go …’

As I walked slowly down the corridor, Vince appeared. He was wearing a big wrap-around camel’s hair overcoat.

‘Hello, lover,’ he said.

‘Vince,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe it. Don’t tell me you’re coming to look in on Toro again.’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘He’s my boy now. I gotta see how quick I can spring him. We got big plans together.’

‘You mean, you and Toro?’

‘Yeah. I just bought his contract back from Nick this morning. Just because he loused himself up in town doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of scratch to be picked up in the sticks.’

‘But he’s through, Vince. He’s all washed up.’

‘For the Garden, sure. But I figure we can still pick up a nice piece of change going back over the same territory, in reverse. This time the home-town fans’ll put their bucks down to see the local boy beat hell outa the Giant. We got a name that’s still a draw and we don’t even have to bother to rig anything. I already got him booked with Dynamite Jones for the Bull Ring at Tiajuana. We’ll let the people guess maybe last time it was a tankeroo and this time Jones is going in without the handcuffs. I bet we do twenty thousand.’

‘Vince, you’re crazy! What makes you think Toro wants to go on fighting, after last night?’

‘You’re not thinking so good today, lover. He’s got to fight. He’s broke.’

I thought of Speedy Sencio. I thought of all the broken and burnt-out fighters the Vince Vannemans of the world were forever patching up and shoving back into the ring. But I was too disgusted to think of anything to say.

‘You know, I’d like to cut you in, kid,’ Vince was saying. ‘After all, me and you ’re good pals. But, well, to level with you, Eddie, you been on the flit too much this last trip. I haven’t got the dough to throw around like Nick. I just don’t think you’re worth it any more. But if I change my mind, I’ll let you know.’ He reached out and pinched my cheek. ‘No hard feelings, though, huh, lover?’

He sauntered down the hall toward Toro’s room. I stood there helplessly. I wasn’t good enough for Vince.

There was only one more little thing I could do for Toro, I thought. Pepe and Fernando could take him home with
them. Pepe would provide for him. I ducked into a phone booth in the hospital drug store and called the Waldorf Towers. The hotel operator transferred me to Information. The De Santos party checked out at noon, I was told. Their forwarding address was the Hotel National in Havana.

I wandered back to my room. Something led me to the closet. I opened my trunk. The bottom drawer was full of old stuff, articles, press clippings, letters – I couldn’t even remember why I had kept them – and down in the middle of all this mess, there it was,
And Still Champion
by Edwin Dexter Lewis, three names, to give it class.

The pages were yellowing. But that didn’t matter. I could get them retyped. As I looked at the title page I had a dream’s-eye view of the Theatre Guild poster in front of the theatre. I started to read the first act. I tried to make myself believe in it. But what was the use? How long could I go on kidding myself? The dialogue was forced. The characters were props. The bones of the plot stuck out all over. And this was the blank cheque to fame I had been holding out for myself all these years. The Pulitzer Prize number! All I had written was the first act of a bad play. Just twenty-three pages of a play that was going back into the bottom drawer of my trunk, where it belonged.