The Professional

by W. c. Heinz

  “What’s goin’ on?” Jay said.

  “Somebody’s in there,” Memphis said, above the pounding.

  “Hey! Let us out!” Polo’s voice came through the door.

  “Go get your scissors,” Doc said to Jay.

  “How about that?” Eddie said to me, laughing.

  When Jay came out with the scissors, Penna showed in the hall, with DeCorso. As Jay started for the door, Penna, shirtless but wearing a pair of slacks, grabbed the scissors from him.

  “Here, let me do it,” he said.

  “Come on,” Jay said, trying to get the scissors back again.

  “Let us out!” Polo’s voice came through the door, and now the pounding started again.

  “Oh, no,” Penna said, holding the scissors away from Jay. “Those are my pals in there. I’m the guy to let ’em out.”

  “You’re the guy did it,” Jay said.

  “Come on! Come on!” Polo was hollering. “Let us out!”

  “Relax, relax,” Penna said, shouting it at the door. “I’ll rescue you.”

  “I’ll get you for this, Penna,” Polo’s voice came back. “Open it!”

  “What is it? What is it?” Girot said, coming around the corner from the stairs.

  “Let us out! Let us out!”

  “I’ll handle it, Girot,” Penna said. “I got friends in there.”

  “We’re no friends of yours,” Polo’s voice came back. “Open it!”

  “Look at this,” Penna said, pointing with the scissors to the rope. “Some genius must have done this. He soaked the rope, so it would shrink and be tight. The guy had to be a genius.”

  On the sill and in front of the door on the floor there was a small puddle of water.

  “Open the door!” Polo was shouting, pounding again.

  “Open it, Penna,” Doc said.

  “Sure, Doc,” Penna said, slowly, looking at Doc. “I’ll open it.”

  “Open this door!”

  “This’ll take a little time,” Penna said, sawing at the rope and calling to the door. “Just relax, friends. Al Penna’s got everything in hand.”

  “Open it!” Polo said, pounding on the door.

  “Please. You’ll make me nervous,” Penna said, sawing. “There.”

  When he cut the rope the two-by-four fell and Penna turned the knob and pushed the door open. As he did, Polo, in a pair of striped, rumpled pajamas came through and Penna, backing off, held the scissors in front of himself and pointing at Polo.

  “What a minute, friend. I rescued you.”

  “If you didn’t have those scissors,” Polo said, still moving toward Penna, “I’d kill you.”

  “Why me?” Penna said, circling a little now, the scissors in front of him as Polo still moved at him.

  “Polo, back off,” Doc said. “Jay, take those scissors.”

  “Here, I’ll take them,” Eddie said. He walked between the two and took the scissors from Penna and held Polo off with the other hand.

  “I oughta kill you,” Polo said to Penna.

  “No thanks. No thanks a guy gets,” Penna said, addressing the rest of us, but watching Polo.

  “I’ll give you thanks,” Polo said, pressing against Eddie’s arm.

  “Whatta you so sore about?” Penna said. “I didn’t do it. Besides, you weren’t gonna get up to run, anyway.”

  “You did it all right,” Schaeffer’s voice came out of the room. He was still lying in one of the beds. “We know you did it.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you,” Polo said, cooling a little now. “Suppose the place caught fire and we were caught in there? Did you ever think of that?”

  “You and your fires. I rescued you from one, didn’t I? I’d rescue you again, but in case I died trying, you could jump out the window. What’s to worry about?”

  “Yeah?” Polo said. “You can get killed jumping from this high.”

  “What’s get killed? Let Schaeffer jump first, and you jump on top of him. He’s soft.”

  “I ain’t so soft,” Schaeffer said, from the bed.

  “Oh, you hear that?” Penna said, addressing the rest of us again.

  Doc had gone back into his room and shut the door and Barnum had disappeared from the other doorway although Memphis and Booker Boyd still stood there watching. Polo turned to me.

  “I’m glad we’re leavin’ tomorrow,” he said. “I got enough of this guy.”

  “You’re going tomorrow?” I said.

  “Sure. Who’s there to work with here? That one heavyweight Keener brings up? The fight’s next Thursday, so we go into Stillman’s for a couple of days. What my guy needs is a lot of work.”

  “Is that what he needs?” Penna said.

  “Why don’t you shut up?” Polo said.

  “Yeah, Penna,” Jay said.

  “Take your shower,” Doc said to Eddie. He was standing in his doorway again. “Don’t stand around out there.”

  “Yeah, take your shower,” Jay said to Eddie.

  15

  The next morning Eddie and Memphis and I walked up the driveway with Polo and Schaeffer to see them off on the 9:25 bus. After a day and a half of rain the world was washed clean. The sky was a spotless blue, but there was a cool, steady breeze blowing out of the northwest to mean that, at least by noon, we would be getting those high-piled banks of swift white clouds.

  To anyone seeing us and not knowing us we would have appeared a curious group. Polo, worrying about missing the bus, led us, carrying his suitcase. Eddie walked with his hands in his pants pockets, his jacket zipped to the neck. Memphis, walking behind Eddie and me, carried the smaller of Schaeffer’s two suitcases, and Schaeffer trailed us carrying the big one loaded with his gear.

  “Maybe we missed it,” Polo said.

  “No,” Eddie said, looking at his wrist watch. “They run like trains. They’re late, but they’re never early.”

  We had crossed the road, and stood in the lee of the hillside and in the sun.

  “Here it come now,” Memphis said.

  We saw it coming, blue in the sunlight, down the rise of the road to the north.

  “So good luck,” Eddie said, shaking Schaeffer’s hand. “You can lick that guy.”

  “Thanks, Eddie,” Schaeffer said.

  “He better lick him,” Polo said. “The money it cost me up here.”

  “Good luck, Paul,” I said, shaking his hand, and then Memphis shook his hand and I could see that Schaeffer was pleased that we had walked up to see him off but that he was trying to cover his embarrassment like a big child. Then we all shook hands with Polo and he remembered to wish Eddie luck, and that was the way we bundled them off, with the little guy in the almost threadbare topcoat and old brown fedora and the big one in a new gray tweed topcoat and bareheaded following him down the aisle of the half-filled bus, the two of them lugging their bags and lurching together as the bus started off.

  “Well, that’s that,” Eddie said as we watched the rear of the bus going away, the blue-gray exhaust swirling back from the flatulent bursts.

  “That’s that,” Memphis said. “You’re right.”

  We walked back down the driveway and I noticed then for the first time that the seed pods of the swamp maples had put out their dark red dollhouse chandeliers and that the forsythia along the driveway was chartreuse, ready to break out into yellow. Beyond and above the roof line of the hotel the long, thin, crowded branches of the top of the big willow by the lake hung in yellow fronds so that the whole, moving in the breeze and the bright sun, seemed a golden fountain.

  “You just lost two customers,” Eddie said to Girot when we got to the porch.

  I had seen Girot come out onto the porch and then just stand there, his arms folded across the front of his butcher’s apron, and watch us ambling down the driveway toward him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Some customers.”

  “What’s the matter with them,” Eddie said.

  “What’s the matter with them?” Girot sai
d. “When it comes time to pay the bill this morning, that Polo he says: ‘I am sorry, but I don’t have the money now. I will pay you after my fighter fights on Thursday.’”

  “So he’ll pay you,” Eddie said.

  “So he’ll pay me. Now when my meat man comes today I suppose I am to tell him: ‘Don’t worry. I will pay you after Schaeffer fights someplace on Thursday.’”

  “In Holyoke,” Eddie said.

  “Yes. My meat man would be happy to hear that. Holyoke.”

  “Ah, Girot,” I said. “You are indeed one of the world’s privileged minority.”

  “I am privileged?”

  “Certainly. You are one of that small but all-powerful group of holders who control the destinies of the rest of us. By exacting the privilege of extending credit to Polo you will on Thursday, without lacing on a glove or throwing a punch or selling a ticket, become a party to the profits of a prize fight. Schaeffer will now be fighting for you, too, and it’s in exactly that fashion that all of the world’s great fortunes have been amassed.”

  “Sure,” Girot said, disgusted.

  “From Schaeffer you may branch out into railroads or munitions or whatever. You’ve got to decide what you’re going to do with all your money.”

  “That’s right, bon ami,” Eddie said. “What will you do with all your money?”

  “Money? You think I make any money on that Schaeffer?”

  “Sure,” Eddie said. “Why not?”

  “The way he eats? Who can make money?”

  “Now you’re trying deception,” I said. “You know you’re flattered.”

  “I am flattered?”

  “Absolutely. Every time you see Schaeffer eat you know he is paying his most sincere compliments to the wonders of your wife’s cooking.”

  “Compliments. With him that’s no compliment. Schaeffer would eat anything.”

  “Let’s go around and sit in the sun,” Eddie said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Memphis?”

  “Thank you,” Memphis said. “I’d like that.”

  “I would like it, too,” Girot said, “but I have to work.”

  “But remember you’re holding,” I said. “We’re not.”

  The gray, weathered dock reached about fifteen feet out into the water, and moored to the end of it was an old, heavy-planked, flat-bottomed rowboat that had been freshly painted in Girot’s hotel colors, white with dark red trim. At the land end of the dock there was an unpainted single-plank bench, and we sat there, sheltered from the wind by the hotel and warm in the sun.

  “Holyoke,” Eddie said. “I fought there four times.”

  “How many times did you fight there, Memphis?” I said.

  “Oh, seven-eight times, I guess. I don’t rightly remember.”

  Along our shore the water was calm, but the rest of the lake was alive with small, sun-dappled waves.

  “How many fights have you had, anyway?” Eddie said.

  “Oh, maybe a hundred fifty-sixty. I had a lot that’s not in the book. I fought a lot in the bootleg amateurs and a lot of fights in Australia, more than it shows in the book. I never did figure it out exactly how many I got.”

  “How come you went to Australia?”

  “I couldn’t get no fights around here so my manager at that time booked me a couple of fights in California—in San Francisco, California—and, after I knocked those two boys out, there wasn’t anybody would fight me around there either. Then I figured I had just enough money left from my purses to get back to New York, so I sent that money to my wife and I found me a job as a mess boy on a freighter ship and I went to Australia.”

  “Who managed you there?”

  “I manage myself. There was this gentleman work on the ship, ’way down in that engine room, and he was a fight fan and he been to Australia before so when we got to Melbourne he took me to the gym, where he’d been to visit before, and I found me the promoter there and I told him I was a fighter. He said to me: ‘Just comin’ off that ship can you fight six rounds the day after tomorrow?’ I said: ‘Mister, I can fight six rounds right now.’

  “So I told my friend from the ship, I said: ‘How about you gettin’ one of them other gentlemen from that engine room and you two be my seconds?’ So he said: ‘Me? I just like to watch fights. I don’t know what you supposed to do in the corner.’ I said: ‘You just get another gentleman and I’ll tell you what to do. It’s easy.’

  “Then the night of the fight there must have come, I guess, more than a dozen gentlemen from the ship that come to the club. When it come about time to go down to the ring my friend he was scared. He had this other gentleman from the ship with him and they’re in the dressin’ room with me and I said: ‘What make you worried? There’s nothing to be scared.’ So he said: ‘But we don’t know what we’re supposed to do.’ I said: ‘I’ll tell you what to do. You gentlemen just follow me down to the ring, carryin’ that pail there with that bottle in it and with the sponge and my mouthpiece and my towel. Then I’ll tell you what to do.’ Then he said: ‘But supposin’ you get cut? I don’t know what to do.’ I said: ‘Get cut? Gentlemen, I never been cut in my whole life. I ain’t gonna get cut tonight. You got nothin’ to worry about that.’ That was the truth, too.”

  “How was the fight?” Eddie said. “What happened?”

  “They had me fightin’ some red-headed boy that I guess he didn’t have more than ten or twelve, maybe, fights. By now I only been in Australia a couple of days, but I kinda like it—the people they seem nice to me—so I have it in my mind that I might like to stay here a while. Then I figure that, if I’m gonna stay here and get work, I better be careful in this fight. I mean that this better look like it’s a good fight—you know what I mean—and that I better not hurt this red-headed boy too much because he was just like a child, almost, when you come to think about it.”

  “So what did you do?” Eddie said.

  “So I make it a real good fight. This red-headed boy he was a professional fighter there, but he was like what we call an amateur here.”

  “Can you imagine?” Eddie said to me. “Memphis in with an amateur?”

  “I wish I’d seen it,” I said. “What about the fight, Memphis?”

  “Well, that boy was game. When the bell ring he come out punchin’ and lookin’ to knock me out. The people, they like that right from the start. They was hollerin’, and I figure that if they like this, I go along with it, too. I let him come to me, but you know how you do it. You make it look like a war, but those punches he was throwin’ they only look good to the people because yourself you’re catchin’ most of them on the arms or with a part of the glove, and once in a while I would let one through to me to see how much this boy could punch. You know how you do it.”

  “I know,” Eddie said, grinning. “Nobody could do it like you, Memphis.”

  “The people, they love it, but when I come back to my corner each round I like to laugh. I would take my mouthpiece out myself and just sit there and hold it in my glove until it time to put it back in and my friend from the engine room would say: ‘But what do we do now? What are we supposed to do now?’ So I would say: ‘Now one of you gentlemen give me the bottle to wrench out my mouth, and then the other sponge my face a little, if you don’t mind.’ Then I remember my friend lookin’ at me scared and he said: ‘But are you all right? Don’t get hurt now, will you? That other fella’s tough.’

  “They were so scared, I like to laugh. I said: ‘Now don’t you worry. I be all right.’ So at the end of the fourth round I figure I better do somethin’. By now I make that red-headed boy look so good that, to win, I got to knock him out, but I got to be careful how I do that if I’m gonna stay here in Australia. I mean you can’t offend the people, can you?”

  “No, Memphis,” I said. “You can’t.”

  “That’s right, and also I don’t want to hurt that red-headed boy none. I mean he seem like a nice boy, so I start pressin’ him a little more in the fifth round, and the people are goi
n’ crazy and stampin’ their feet and then I stepped inside him and I hit him a right hand in the body as hard, real solid, as I could. Well, his hands they come down and he just start to fold forward and then, for the people, I hit him a hook on the chin, but not hard because the body punch already done for him, and he went down on his face and the referee he just count him out.”

  “How did it go over?”

  “It go over fine. I mean the fight it was so close in the eyes of the people that they like it even if their boy don’t win. In Australia they’re nice people, and now they’re all standin’ and cheerin’ me.”

  “How about your friends from the ship?”

  “They was shakin’ hands with one another in the corner and jumpin’ up and down, they was so happy. After the fight I guess there was a dozen of them gentlemen from the ship that come to the fight and I guess they bet on me because they all took me out and we went to a restaurant and they bought me a dinner and they had a time. They wanted me I should stay with the ship and they had it figured that every time we’d go to some port I’d get me a fight and they’d all go to it and second me and bet on me like they did that night. They really wanted me to do that.”

  “I’ll bet they did,” I said. “They had it figured that, in time, they could sack every seaport in the free world.”

  “They were even gonna speak to the captain. They were gonna find me a place to train on the ship. They figured that even the captain he’d like that, too, and I sure was sorry, when they treated me like that, to have to disappoint those gentlemen on that ship.”

  “You told them you wouldn’t do it?” Eddie said.

  “I explained to those gentlemen that I couldn’t train on no ship, and that I was really a fighter. I just had to stay someplace and fight, and I was gonna stay, I made up my mind, in Australia.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “I guess I was there almost two years. The people they were real nice to me.”