From where we sat we watched the crowd that had gathered on the terrace and the lawn beyond. Nick’s partner, Jimmy Quinn, and his wife and Mrs Lennert, the wife of the old heavyweight champion, were chatting together. Quinn’s face and figure, his baldness, his clothes and the way he had of laughing from his belly, are what we have come to expect from too many Irish politicians. In his youth it must have been a strong, aggressive face, but years of ease and self-indulgence had softened the hard lines with fat and a hearty red complexion, which was really high blood pressure but gave him the cheery benevolent look of a beardless Santa Claus. He was ostentatiously good-humoured and, faithful to the conviction that all Irishmen are great wits, he was addicted to puns and hoary dialect stories. Quinn’s concession to country life had been to remove the coat of his single-breasted three-button suit, and now he was sitting with his collar open in white suspenders and white arm-garters that hiked up his sleeves, high-laced black shoes and a snap-brim straw hat. Quinn had just said something intended for humour, for he threw his head back and belly-laughed while the women smiled obligingly. When he caught me looking over he waved affably and said, ‘How ya, young fella?’ with his big vote-getting grin. There was nothing mechanical about the cordiality of Honest Jimmy Quinn. He slapped your back, shook your hand and made you chuckle as if he really enjoyed it. He was one sweet guy, Jimmy Quinn, that’s what everybody said, one sweet guy. There was nothing in the world Honest Jimmy wouldn’t do for you if you asked him, unless you happened to have the misfortune of being a yid, a jigaboo, a Republican or unable to return a favour.
Mrs Quinn was a formidable, bosomy lady. She always referred to her husband as ‘the Judge’ because he had had the boys put him up for the municipal bench in the early days when he couldn’t afford to carry the Party work without being on somebody’s payroll.
By contrast, Mrs Lennert was a plain, quiet woman who looked more like the wife of a truck-driver or a coal-miner than of a famous pugilist. She didn’t drink. She sat patiently with an attitude of polite boredom, only breaking her silence with an occasional, ‘Gus, a little quieter,’ or ‘Paul, not so much noise,’ as she kept a motherly eye on her three sons, aged fourteen, twelve and eight, who were out on the lawn throwing a softball around with their old man.
Big Gus was a good all-around athlete who had done a little pitching for Newark before he broke into the fight game. Boxing was just bread-and-butter. His real love was baseball. I don’t think the Yanks have played a doubleheader at home for years without Gus and the three kids being up there in their usual seats, behind first base. Gus wasn’t the most popular fellow in the sports world because word had gotten around that he would back up from a waiter’s cheque as if it threatened to bite his hand. Gus was a businessman. He knew he had just so many fights left in him, so many purses, and he wanted to make sure he had a little more than enough when he settled down to the restaurant business again.
On the lawn Nick was introducing Acosta and Toro to Danny McKeogh, who appraised them sourly, and to the Killer and the little pekinese-faced hat-check girl from the Diamond Horseshoe who had just arrived in the Killer’s yellow Chrysler roadster. Acosta kissed the doll’s hand and bowed easily to the others. Toro stood uncomfortably at his side. The Killer stepped into a fighting pose and feinted with his left as if he were going to lay one on Toro. Everybody laughed except Toro, who just stood there waiting for Acosta to tell him what to do.
When we sat down to lunch in the formal dining room, with its marble statue of Diana with her bow, I took a quick census that totalled twenty-three of us – a typical Latka Sunday dinner. Nick sat at one end of the table, still in riding clothes, Ruby at the other. Next to Nick were the Quinns who flanked a gentleman who maintained a strict anonymity. Then came Vince Vanneman, Barney Winch and his lieutenant. Farther down were the Lennerts, the Killer, the pekinese, Junior and his tennis partner, Danny McKeogh, then Toro and Acosta, with Beth and me on either side of Ruby. The men had not bothered to put on their coats, and Nick tilted back in his chair as he always did in the office, but if the butler, elegant in tuxedo, felt any contempt for this motley assembly, he hid his feelings behind a carefully cultivated deadpan and served each diner, regardless of posture or grammar, with the impersonal solicitude and excessive formality that mark his trade.
The anonymous gentleman had a thick, shrewd face, with dark, heavy jowls set in a permanent expression of inscrutability. Nick did not trouble to introduce him to the company and he sat silently rolling breadcrumbs. When Vanneman spoke to him it was with an awed deference and without any expectation of response. My first guess, later confirmed, that he was topman in a mob that had muscled in on Nick’s racket was based on no more than a hunch. I did learn, subsequently, a little about him. He was wanted for questioning in connection with a murder one of his boys was supposed to have pulled off on the Upper East Side. At one time he had just about cornered the market on first-rate middleweights and he was still a good man to have on your side if you wanted to get the breaks in the Garden. Just what he was to Nick or Nick to him, it would be healthier not to ask.
‘Everything you’re gonna eat came right off this place,’ Nick shouted down the table. ‘It’s all our own stuff, even the meat.’
‘Your own steer, huh?’ Quinn said. He turned to Barney and the other gambler, beginning to laugh already. ‘Hey, fellers, you don’t think Nick would give us a bum steer?’ He roared with laughter, looking around at everyone to see that they were with him, then repeated himself and was off again. Toro ate his fruit salad hungrily, keeping his head down like a child who has been told not to intrude on adult conversation.
Nick looked down at Toro and nodded. ‘You’re lucky you don’t understand English, kid. The rest of us have to laugh at Jimmy’s lousy jokes.’
The Killer began the laughter like a claque. Everyone looked at Toro, nodding and snickering. Toro stopped and stared around questioningly. From where he sat, it must have seemed as if they were laughing at him. He pressed his thick lips together and his eyes sought Acosta with confusion. Acosta said a few hurried words in Spanish and Toro nodded and went on eating. I watched his big face work as he chewed. It wasn’t the face of Colossus, noble and magnificent. It was essentially a peasant face with soft brown eyes, heavy-lidded, a bulbous nose, a big, sensuous mouth with dark hollows pressing in on either side of it, suggesting some unhealthiness, glandular perhaps, and an elongated jaw. It was a head for El Greco to have painted in his dark, moody yellows, with the model already magnified and distorted by the artist’s astigmatism. If he looked up at all, I noticed, he stole quick, furtive glances at Ruby. This was understandable, for Ruby had magnetism in her white diaphanous silk, with back-swept hair and jade earrings swaying as she talked animatedly, half Park Avenue, half Tenth.
‘Isn’t that a swell book?’ Ruby was saying. ‘I can hardly wait to see the movie. Who do you think oughta play Desirée? I read in Danton Walker where it says Olivia de Havilland. Can you see her as Desirée? Paulette Goddard, all the time I was reading I could see Paulette Goddard.’
Beth caught my eye for a second but she didn’t say anything. I mean she didn’t say any of the obvious things you could have said to Ruby. There was something touching about Ruby’s discovery of literature, and Nick’s pride in this, that made the easy wisecrack catch in your throat. It was like the Dead End Kid who glides up and down in the gutter crying out in wonder Look at me, I’m dancin’! I’m dancin’! For Ruby it was Readin’! I’m readin’!
‘I’m just nuts about history,’ Ruby said. ‘It’s so much more interesting than what’s going on today. I try to get Nick to read sometimes, but he’s hopeless.’
‘Hey, baby,’ Nick yelled down from the other end of the table, gesticulating with a big cob of yellow corn in his hand. ‘Everything under control on your end, baby?’
Ruby gave him an indulgent smile and looked at us apologetically. You had a pretty good idea of what there was between them in that smile and that look.
Nick was a wonderful husband, a good provider and still nuts about Ruby. She wished he would begin to get over these crudities. All these books, the decorum of social life, the polished manners of the cavaliers had given her a point of view from which to criticise Nick and his loudmouth friends.
‘Look at Ruby,’ Nick laughed. ‘She thinks I’m making a bum out of myself in front of Albert.’ Albert was passing the roast beef around again. Not a muscle in his face betrayed his having heard his name brought into this. As he lowered the big silver platter to Nick’s place, Nick said, ‘Just because I eat with my fingers and don’t put my coat on, you don’t think I’m a bum, do you, Albert?’
‘No, sir,’ Albert said, and moved on to serve Quinn, who took three more pieces of roast beef and two large potatoes.
‘There, whaddya think of that, Ruby?’ Nick shouted down the table. ‘The best-dressed guy in the joint and he takes my side.’
Nick knew better than this, a little better than this, but he liked to put the mug act on sometimes to show off for his friends and annoy Ruby. It didn’t exactly fit with the clothes, the ‘class’ he always wanted or his attitude toward Ruby. I used to wonder at this at first, but I finally decided why Nick seemed to delight in publicly degrading himself sometimes. It provided measurement by which to judge his progress. For he timed these gaucheries to the moment of his most lordly circumstance, such a moment as this when he sat at the head of a twenty-three-place table, presiding over a lavish feast that would have satisfied the greediest tyrant. ‘Look,’ his actions seemed to say, ‘don’t forget that the master of this mansion with the marble statue, the formal butler, his own beef hanging in his own cold-storage plant, is still Nick Latka the hustler from Henry Street.’
When we finally managed to get up from the table after an hour of overeating, Nick came over and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Want to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Let’s go out to the sun-house.’
The sun-house was just behind the swimming pool, a circular stucco job with no roof. Inside were sun-mats and rubbing tables. Nick took off his clothes and stretched out on his back on one of the mats. He inhaled deeply, seeming to take sun and air in at the same time. His body had a dark even tan and was in wonderful condition for a man in his early forties. It looked lean and energetic everywhere except at the belly, where there was the beginning of a paunch.
‘Tell the Killer I want him,’ Nick said.
I went out and shouted up to the Killer. He came right away. ‘Wot’s on yer mind, boss?’ he said.
‘That sun oil,’ Nick said, ‘that new stuff I got. What’s it called?’
‘Apple erl,’ the Killer said.
‘Yeah, rub some on me. And bring an extra bottle for Eddie,’ he called when the Killer had reached the medicine chest.
The Killer handed me a bottle and began to anoint Nick’s chest and shoulders. I looked at the label. ‘Apolloil’ it was called. ‘This not only gives you a tan but it puts vitamins into yer skin,’ Nick said. ‘Works right into yer pores. Real high-class stuff. Put out by the same outfit that makes that toilet water I gave yer.’ He took another deep, healthful breath. ‘Now lower, Killer. Pour some down there.’ He looked at me and winked. ‘It’s supposed to be good for that too,’ he said.
While the Killer rubbed the oil into Nick’s thighs, Nick said, ‘Well, let’s get down to business. Acosta give you any ideas?’
‘Well, the way he found him is colourful enough,’ I said.
‘I don’t want this long-winded crap,’ Nick said. ‘You know the fight business as good as I do. It’s show business with blood. The boys who fill the house aren’t always the best fighters. They’re the biggest characters. Of course nothing helps your character like a finishing punch. But the fans like a name they can latch on to. Like Dempsey the Manassa Mauler. Greb the Pittsburgh Windmill. Firpo the Wild Bull of the Pampas. Something to hit the fans over the head with. A gimmick.’
‘Well,’ I said, half-kidding, ‘I suppose we could call Molina the Giant of the Andes.’
Nick sat up and looked at me. ‘Not bad. The Giant of the Andes.’ He repeated it. ‘It’s got something. We’re making money already. Keep thinking.’
‘You mean this kind of stuff,’ I said. I ad-libbed: ‘Up from the Argentine charged the Wild Bull of the Pampas to knock Dempsey through the ropes and come within a single second of bringing the world’s championship home with him. Now comes his protégé, the Giant of the Andes, to avenge Luis Ángel Firpo, his boyhood idol.’
‘Keep talking, baby,’ Nick said. ‘Keep talking. You’re talking us into a pisspot full of dough.’
I thought this would be as good a time as any, so I said, ‘By the way, Nick, Acosta doesn’t seem too happy about the split.’
‘There’s a law says he has to be happy?’ Nick said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but the little guy did put a hell of a lot into this. He really discovered Molina, gambled on him, and …’
‘You feel so sorry for him maybe you want to give him your ten per cent.’
Life was much less complicated when you agreed with Nick.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but …’
‘How do you like that little greaseball!’ said Nick, a great non-listener when you weren’t speaking for his benefit. ‘He hasn’t enough connections to get Molina into a pay-toilet in the Garden. Any more crap out of him and we take him down to the boat and kiss him off.’
He rolled over and let the Killer massage his back. ‘Keep your mind on your racket,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of mine.’
When we came out, everybody had moved down to the pool. The gamblers were at it again, at a table under the awning. Barney Winch, the fatter one, was finally winning. ‘Only two,’ he was protesting to the world. ‘When I gin, he’s got only two. What’ve I done to anybody I deserve such punishment?’ Gus Lennert and the three boys were back on the lawn tossing the ball around. ‘Alla way, Pop,’ the youngest one was shouting. Quinn was sleeping in a deckchair with his straw hat pulled down over his face. Junior and his guest had apparently gone back to the court. Beth was in the water, swimming a relaxed crawl. The Killer’s little pekinese blonde was lying on the edge of the pool working on her tan. She wore black, modern-shaped sunglasses and she had untied the bra of her dainty two-piece bathing suit so as to expose to the sun as much of her provocative little body as possible. Danny McKeogh was talking to Acosta. He looked a little more alive since he had eaten, but from where I stood his watery light-blue irises hardly stood out at all from the white of his eyes, giving his face a deathly quality. He was back on his favourite subject, training. He really knew how to train fighters and liked to work them hard.
‘When I was a kid the boys were in much better shape,’ he was saying. ‘Imagine any of these punks today going thirty, forty tough rounds like Gans, Wolgast or Nelson? They’d drop dead. They don’t like to work as hard as we used to, and they haven’t got the legs. Too much riding around, taxis, subways…’
Ruby was lying in the hammock reading The Countess Misbehaved. Who would play Desirée? On the opposite side of the pool a portable radio was blaring loudly, but nobody seemed to be listening to the comic whose formula jokes were punctuated by the feverish applause of an enthralled studio audience.
I wondered where Toro was. I looked around for him, but I didn’t see him right away because he was standing so quietly, staring into the lattice archway of the grape arbour beyond the pool. His enormous head almost reached the top of the arch, and with his back to the sun his extraordinary size cast a mountainous image that overshadowed the entire arbour. I wondered what was in his mind. Did these dark ripe grapes evoke the sight and smell of home, of friendly Santa Maria, of his mother and father, of Carmelita, of the cheers that rose from the throats of fellow-villagers when he lifted his wine barrels, of the warmth and security of being born into, working and dying in an isolated, intimate community? Or was Toro’s mind computing the conspicuous riches of the Latka estate and dreaming of the day he would re
turn to Santa Maria in triumph to build the castle that would rival the very de Santos villa which the barefooted peasants of his village had always looked up to as the ultimate in luxurious shelter, at least in this life and perhaps in the next?
CHAPTER SIX
Americans are still an independent and rebellious people – at least in their reaction to signs. Stillman’s gym, up the street from the Garden, offers no exception to our national habit of shrugging off small prohibitions. Hung prominently on the grey, nondescript walls facing the two training rings a poster reads: ‘No rubbish or spitting on the floor under penalty of the law.’ If you want to see how the boys handle this one, stick around until everybody has left the joint and see what’s left for the janitor to do. The floor is strewn with cigarettes smoked down to their stained ends, cigar butts chewed to soggy pulp, dried spittle, empty match cases, thumbed and trampled copies of the News, Mirror and Journal, open to the latest crime of passion or the race results, wadded gum, stubs of last night’s fight at St Nick’s (managers’ comps), a torn-off cover of an Eighth Avenue restaurant menu with the name of a new matchmaker in Cleveland scrawled next to a girl’s phone number. Here on the dirty grey floor of Stillman’s is the telltale debris of a world as sufficient unto itself as a walled city of the Middle Ages.
You enter this walled city by means of a dark, grimy stairway that carries you straight up off Eighth Avenue into a large, stuffy, smoke-filled, hopeful, cynical, glistening-bodied world. The smells of this world are sour and pungent, a stale gamey odour blended of sweat and liniment, worn fight gear, cheap cigars and too many bodies, clothed and unclothed, packed into a room with no noticeable means of ventilation. The sounds of this world are multiple and varied, but the longer you listen, the more definitely they work themselves into a pattern, a rhythm that begins to play in your head like a musical score: The trap-drum beating of the light bag, counterpointing other light bags; the slow thud of punches into heavy bags, the tap-dance tempo of the rope-skippers; the three-minute bell; the footwork of the boys working in the ring, slow, open-gloved, taking it easy; the muffled sound of the flat, high-laced shoes on the canvas as the big name in next week’s show at the Garden takes a sign from his manager and goes to work, crowding his sparring partner into a corner and shaking him up with body punches; the hard breathing of the boxers, the rush of air through the fighter’s fractured nose, in a staccato timed to his movements; the confidential tones the managers use on the matchmakers from the smaller clubs spotting new talent, Irving, let me assure you my boy loves to fight. He wants none of them easy ones. Sure he looked lousy Thursday night. It’s a question of styles. You know that Ferrara’s style was all wrong for him. Put ’em in with a boy who likes to mix it an’ see the difference; the deals, the arguments, the angles, the appraisals, the muted Greek chorus, muttering out of the corner of its mouth with a nervous cigar between its teeth; the noise from the telephones; the booths ‘For Outgoing Calls Only’, Listen, Joe, I just been talking to Sam and he says okay for two hundred for the semi-final at … the endless ringing of the ‘Incoming Calls Only’; a guy in dirty slacks and a cheap yellow sports shirt, cupping his hairy hands together and lifting his voice above the incessant sounds of the place: Whitey Bimstein, call for Whitey Bimstein, anybody seen Whitey …; the garbage-disposal voice of Stillman himself, a big, authoritative, angry-looking man, growling out the names of the next pair of fighters to enter the ring, loudly but always unrecognisably, like a fierce, adult babytalk; then the bell again, the footwork sounds, the thudding of gloves against hard bodies, the routine fury.
The Harder They Fall Page 9
