“Third row, over there,” Shelly said, no longer pointing but making such broad movements of his head that a few people took their eyes off the ring where the referee was counting and looked at this man at my side who was having a seizure. I followed the aim of the binoculars Shelly wore to a group of standing, chanting fans urging Sweets to get up off his knees. Sweets shook his head to clear it. The crowd thought he was shaking his head no. A half a hot dog sandwich came flying into the ring, missing the fallen warrior’s head by inches but catching the referee in the chest. He looked as if he were bleeding mustard.
Sweets got to his feet doing a confused shuffle dance as the referee wiped his gloves on his chest. The referee said something to the kid. Even if he had been able to understand English, I didn’t think he was close enough in time and space to answer.
Archie Moore was in the far corner, looking as if he were thinking of a high peak in Tibet. I glanced at Otis. He was thinking of the same peak. I looked at Shelly.
“Look, look,” he whispered.
I looked.
“That’s Sonny Tufts,” I shouted.
Shelly shook his head and shouted, “Behind him.”
At least that’s what I thought he shouted. There was too much noise to hear him. Sweets was about to fall on his face again without a punch. Moore ran over and caught the kid before he crashed and smashed his nose even more than Moore had done in the brief fight.
Sonny Tufts and the crowd sat back down in disgust. Then I saw. He hadn’t stood with the crowd. The man had remained seated, a rolled-up program in his hand. I wasn’t sure what the look on his face meant but anger came pretty close. He was lean, wearing a brown sports jacket, no tie. His hair was dark, combed to one side to make it look like there was more of it than reality told him in his mirror each morning. From here, he looked about my age, pushing fifty maybe, but that was the end of the resemblance. I’m reasonably solid, with a face that looks as if it had taken more punches than the battered pug who was standing just outside the ring, waiting for the official announcement of Moore’s victory before he stepped through the ropes to take a beating for a few bucks.
I look like a boxer or someone who ran into an industrial-size refrigerator one time too many. The angry guy with the rolled-up program looked like a crooked lawyer in the second half of a Monogram double feature. He had a little mustache and a little chin and something that was clearly bothering him.
“That’s him,” Shelly said.
“Sit down,” someone behind us called. He was talking to us. I didn’t sit down. I watched the pug climb into the ring as soon as the referee raised Moore’s hand in victory. The crowd applauded politely. The confused Swedish kid was helped out of the ring and the angry guy who looked like a movie lawyer made his way down the row he was sitting in. He was moving fast.
“I said, sit down,” the someone behind me said again. I turned. The guy speaking was one of the sailors. He wasn’t a kid. He looked like a retread from the Big War and probably was. He was also big. Big voice, big gut.
“You a cook?” I asked, watching the lawyer escape from the row he was in and start up the aisle, barely missing a fat woman juggling three beers.
The sailor was sitting with three younger guys in uniform. They all started to laugh. I had nailed him.
“Yeah, I’m a cook. Now sit the hell down. Your guy won. Now get out of the way.”
One of the young sailors tugged at the older guy’s sleeve. The older guy was obviously a line of beers into the night.
“That’s Tony Zale,” the kid said, looking at me. The lawyer was getting away.
“No,” said the navy cook. “He ain’t.”
“He is,” said Shelly. The crowd around Moore’s corner was watching us. Moore bounced back to the corner, waiting for the official announcement. Otis climbed slowly into the ring, handing him a towel.
The crowd around us was looking at the sailor and me. We promised to be more interesting than the fight that had just ended or the one that was about to begin. A rumble went through the crowd. Tony Zale was in the audience. I hurried after the fleeing lawyer, Shelly behind me.
We almost slammed into four men. Three of them were white and too old for war. They waited to start one of their own with a little Negro man arguing with them in the aisle. Shelly and I parted them in pursuit of the man I could no longer see ahead of us. One of the white guys grabbed my arm.
“Watch where you’re going,” he said. He wasn’t big, but he had friends. Everyone wanted a fight. It was contagious, an arena of frustration.
“Watch who you’re talking to,” Shelly said. “This is Tony Zale.” The three white guys looked at me unsure. 1 didn’t look much like Zale, but where had they seen Zale? In a ring? In a little newspaper photograph? The guy let go of my arm. The Negro man was holding his ground. I grabbed his arm and hurried him along with us.
“Don’t need your help, Mr. Zale,” the little man said. He looked older with his face a few inches from mine.
“I apologize,” I said. The little Negro looked back at the three guys in the aisle. Two of them stood with their arms folded, glaring at us. We had the audience. Even the pug with the smashed face who had climbed into the ring for the next fight was looking in our direction.
“You know what he said?” the little man shouted.
“No,” I answered, hustling him into the corridor behind the seats and looking around in both directions.
“He said the big sailor took a dive, that Archie didn’t hit him that hard. You believe that?”
“I believe he said it,” I said. “I saw the punch. The kid didn’t dive.”
“You should know," the man said with satisfaction. “You should know.”
“There,” shouted Shelly, pointing to my left. The angry guy with the bad hair was bucking the light traffic moving back toward their seats as the bell sounded for the introductions. The crowd booed. Shelly waddled. I ran. I had a bad back. Sometimes 1 coddle it. Sometimes I challenge it with handball games and workouts with the punching bag at the Y on Main. For someone who’s hit the bag and looked the way 1 looked and loved the sport of boxing as much as I did, I should have a better record in my occasional battles for my clients. I looked like a better fighter than I am but I had one advantage. I didn’t give up. I didn’t give up when I was being beaten for a client who had paid me fifty bucks to cover his back and I didn’t give up when I went to my knees. Archie Moore had never punched me but I knew I was dumb enough to get off my knees if I had been that kid.
I didn’t give up. That’s what people paid me for. That’s what Archie Moore was paying me for. I ran. There was a row of taxis waiting with cabbies standing around talking. The crowd wouldn’t be getting out for another couple of battles. The angry guy got in the first taxi in line. I caught up with him as he closed the door. I opened it. I could hear Shelly in the distance behind me gasping.
“Who the hell are you?” asked the guy, looking at me at an angle like a bird. I slid in next to him as the cabbie got in and looked back at us with “Where to?” The cabbie needed a shave. He didn’t need trouble.
“Why’d you leave before the last fight?” I asked.
The angry guy touched his head to be sure the few strands of hair were still Wildrooted down.
“What?”
“Where to?” the cabbie repeated.
“Why did you leave?” I repeated.
“This man is crazy,” the guy in the backseat said to the cabbie. The cabbie looked at me and shrugged.
“Could be,” he said. “I’m turning on the meter. You want to sit here and talk? Jake by me. You decide you want to go somewhere? Let me know.”
“I’m getting a cop,” the man next to me said, reaching for the door. “Fine,” I said. “Then you can explain why you looked angry when Moore won the fight.”
“None of your damned business,” he said, looking at the cabbie, who was humming and looking out the front window.
“Let’s find that cop,�
� I said, opening the door.
“Okay. I lost a lot of money,” the guy blurted out. “If you plan to rob me, I’ve got twelve dollars which I’ll get back from this cab company if I have to sue them right up to the Supreme Court.” I closed the door.
“You bet on the kid,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why? He didn’t have a chance.”
“I was told otherwise,” he said.
“By who?”
“By whom,” the man corrected. “Look, my name is Jerry Litwiller. I’m a writer at Paramount. A guy at the Wilshire Bar and Grille said Sweets was going to win. He was sure. I’m down to my last twelve dollars after losing fifty on that fight. I’m having a bad night.”
“Turn it into a screenplay,” I said. “Who was this guy who told you to bet on the Sailor?”
Shelly was at the window now, leaning over and looking in, his breath steaming the glass. He was breathing hard and heavy.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” the writer said.
“I’ve been told that before,” I said. “The guy in the bar. His name.” The writer laughed twice and shook his head.
“Colley Tillman,” he said. “Works at the Madison Square Athletic Club. Knows all the fighters. Trains some.”
“Sweets?”
“Sweets, yeah,” Litwiller said.
“He thought his boy was going to beat Moore?”
“Let’s put it this way, he thought Moore was going to lose. He didn’t just think it. He said he knew it.”
“Fix?”
Litwiller shrugged. “Who knows? What difference does it make? He was wrong. You going to tell me what’s going on?”
“You going to turn it into a movie?” I asked, opening the door again.
“Who knows?” he said. “I’m desperate and I’m nearly broke.”
And you’re losing your hair fast, I thought and got out, nudging Shelly out of the way. The door closed and the cab pulled away.
“He the guy?” Shelly asked.
“No, but he gave me a lead.” I headed back toward the arena.
“A clue?” asked Shelly, following me.
“A lead.”
“I’m hungry,” said Shelly.
“Get a hot dog and a beer,” I said, hurrying back through the open gate and into the corridor. The crowd inside groaned. They were getting a lot to groan about and not much to cheer. I headed for the dressing room, leaving Shelly to consider his options, a hot dog and beer or his loyalty to our job. Moore was in Dressing Room Three. It was small, a dozen full-length metal lockers, a low wooden bench at an odd angle, a table with a tattered and padded leather top. Moore sat on the table, Charlie Otis taking off his gloves.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Kid can’t fight,” Moore said. “I couldn’t have carried him three rounds even if I had wanted to. I think I broke his jaw. I’ll check when I get changed. You find...?”
“I’m close,” I said. Otis turned to look at me.
“Crazy damned business,” he said. “How many kids you think died in the Pacific today? Guess. Seventy? Hundreds? And this happens?” I guessed the ‘this’ was the threat to his fighter. I didn’t stop to find out. There were a few guys smoking in the hallway. No reporters, no fans. It wasn’t like the movies. There were no beautiful girls in tight dresses. There were no girls.
I tried Dressing Room Two. Before I opened the door, I heard a woman’s voice behind it scream, “Henry!”
I went in. The old pug with the face flatter than mine who was supposed to be in the fight after Moore’s sat dazed on a table like the one I had just seen. He was alone, wearing a shiny purple robe and a towel over his head. His eye was swollen shut.
“Henry Aldrich!” called the woman from the little plastic Philco radio on the table next to the pug. He was listening to The Aldrich Family.
“Coming, mother,” came the cracking teenage voice on the radio.
“I love this show," the pug said and then added, “You ain’t Zale,” pointing a gloved hand at me.
“No,” I said.
“Damn,” the pug said, shaking his head. “You see what I did.”
“No,” I said, starting to close the door.
“1 won the damned fight is what I did,” he said. “Won the damn fight. One round. 1 go in there raw meat for a kid with seven wins and no losses and flatten him. And who saw it?”
“Missed the chance of your career,” I said.
“I’ll get more,” he said. I closed the door and went for Door Number One. There were five people in the kid’s locker room, which was smaller than the other two I had just been in. The Swedish kid was lying on his back, eyes open, blinking from time to time and admiring a squashed bug on the ceiling.
“Tillman?” I asked, looking at the faces.
“He’s not here,” said a big, older version of the kid looking at the ceiling. The accent was clear. One of the people in the room was a woman. She held the dreamy kid’s gloved hand. She was obviously Mom, and Mom had clearly had enough of boxing and people who lived in and near it. She glared at me and said something in Swedish to the three men near her.
“Tillman,” I repeated.
“I think you go now,” said the father. 1 nodded and left the room.
Bluff, I told myself. The threat against Moore was just a bluff. Tillman, or someone he knew, put down a few bucks on the kid and made the call to Moore. There would be no follow-up, no knife or bullet in the back and there would have been no wad of bills in Archie Moore’s pocket if he had dived. That’s what 1 told myself. It made sense, but that wasn’t what I was being paid for.
There was one man who had been in the Swede’s corner who was not among the people in his dressing room. I figured him for Tillman. He had been wiry, probably around forty and tough looking. He wasn’t in the hall. I started opening doors, closets and a small office with no windows. I could hear a roar of voices, moans and phlegmy laughter ahead of me. Another early finish. There were nights like that. The fights were over.
I went back to Archie Moore’s dressing room. Moore was up now, coming out of a small shower stall with a thin curtain, a white towel around his waist. Otis wasn’t there but Shelly was, sitting on the wooden bench finishing off a hot dog, a beer perched on the bench next to him.
“He’s protecting me,” said Moore with a small smile Shelly couldn’t see.
“I can protect your teeth too when this is over,” Shelly said. “I’ve got an idea for a rubber thing you can put in your mouth, protect your teeth when you’re fighting. Doesn’t interfere with your breathing.”
“I can’t afford to have people laughing at me when I’m in the ring,” said Moore, toweling himself off.
“You can’t afford to lose more teeth,” said Shelly. “Let ’em laugh. Win the fight. Show great protected teeth. We can make thousands. We’ll call them the Archie Moore Mouth Protectors. You get five percent on each protector sold.”
“No thanks,” said Moore.
“Shell,” I said. “We’re looking for someone, remember.” To Moore I said, “You know a guy named Tillman?”
“I know him to nod to,” said Moore, reaching for a locker door. Moore opened the door. Tillman fell out, missing the boxer by inches. Moore stood in his towel, looking down at the fallen cornerman. Shelly jumped into action. The corpse’s eyes and mouth were open, looking in awe at a spot on the wall.
“Let me take a look,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I’m a dentist.” I looked at the door and then at Moore. “He’s dead,” said Shelly.
I stepped past the corpse, looked in the empty locker and kicked the locker shut.
“We can see that, Shel,” I said. Shelly stood up.
“Why’d you open that locker?” I asked Moore.
“I thought...my things. I thought my clothes were in there.”
I opened the next locker. There were Moore’s clothes. I pushed it shut.
The dressing room door opened, letting in the soun
d of the departing, disgruntled crowd. They were going home at least an hour earlier than they had expected.
Otis stepped in and looked at the corpse, nothing showing on his face, and closed the door. He had a couple of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer bottles in his hand.
“You see someone come in here?” I asked Otis and Moore. Both shook their heads no.
“He’s very dead,” said Shelly, looking down at the corpse.
“This is bad,” Moore said, looking at the dead man.
“Worse than you think,” I said. “Tillman was the guy who called you and told you to throw the fight.”
“Nothing for it,” said Moore with a sigh. “We call the cops.” “I’ll get ’em,” said Shelly, moving toward the door past Otis, who just stood looking down at the dead man.
“Hold it, Shel,” I said.
“How’d they stuff a man in a locker?” said Otis, shaking his head. “And when? I ain’t been gone two minutes and Archie...”
“I was in the shower. Someone must have killed him while I was in the shower. Curtain closed. I didn’t hear anything but water.” Shelly had his hand on the doorknob. He looked at me and pushed his glasses back up his nose.
“Okay, come back with a cop, Shel,” I said.
“Right. Why don’t I just tell them they want a cop in Archie Moore’s dressing room and then I’ll go home,” said Shelly, opening the door.
“Come back with them, Shel,” I repeated firmly.
“I’ll come back. I’ll come back,” he said and left the room, closing the door behind him.
“I better get dressed,” Moore said, moving toward the locker with his clothes. “What are we gonna tell ’em?”
“The truth,” I said.
“You put things together and figured Tillman for trying to get me to dive. The cops will figure it too. Then they’re going to come up simple. Two and two makes me a killer.”
Otto Penzler (ed) - Murder 06 - Murder on the Ropes raw Page 25
