Fight Card: AGAINST THE ROPES

by Jack Tunney

  “I heard plenty of other people at the club singing your praises, though. They used enough similes to make Shakespeare throw up in his hat. How you’ve got a jaw like granite. How you’ve got a telephone pole for a jab and a hammer of a right hand. And you were as light as a feather on your feet. And…”

  Bixby kept talking, but Quinn had heard enough. He knew he had to find Augie as soon as possible and straighten this whole mess out. If anyone could find a way to stop the Tammany boys cold, he could.

  Quinn tossed the five on the table and slid out of the booth. “Thanks for the information, scribbler. I owe you one.”

  But Bixby surprised Quinn by grabbing his arm as he was leaving. “I like you, Terry. I don’t know much about the fight game, but I know good people when I see them and you’re it. Maybe it’s because I don’t deal with so many good people in my business. Let me give you a piece of advice: if men like Archie Doyle don’t want you to fight Whitowski, they’ll find a way to make it happen. One way or the other. Legally…or illegally. If they say no, it means no.”

  Quinn looked at Bixby’s hand on his arm until the gossip monger took it away. And then he headed out the door.

  ROUND SIX

  Quinn stopped by Augie’s apartment on Twentieth Street, but his landlady said he hadn’t been home all night.

  That sick feeling returned to Quinn’s stomach, only this time, it wasn’t from the booze. It was because he knew Augie. He knew the little drunk liked to have a good time when he had something to celebrate and he’d had plenty to celebrate last night. When he got drunk, he wandered. He could’ve been in any of the dives along the piers or in a hotel room down at the Waldorf. He could’ve been in one of the colored whorehouses he liked to go to up in Harlem or at his girlfriend’s place up in the Bronx. Quinn had even gotten a call once to pull him out of some hellhole over in Hoboken the year before.

  Finding Augie could take a while. Maybe days. And Quinn didn’t have days to stop Doyle and his bunch from chintzing him out of a title shot he’d earned.

  With no other obvious places to look, and since his apartment was just around the corner on Ninth Avenue, Quinn decided go home and clean up a bit before looking for Augie in earnest.

  He climbed the three flights to the dump he called home at the back of the building. He’d never wanted or needed a fancy place to live because he was either working at the club, sleeping, or training. The place had come furnished, the rats kept the number of mice and roaches at bay, and the landlady didn’t break his chops about coming home at all hours of the night. He stripped off his suit and tie and started running the shower. He let the brown water run clear first before he stepped under the cold stream of water. He knew he should’ve complained that there was never hot water, but never did. At least he didn’t have to share a bathroom with the rest of the floor like some people in the neighborhood did. Besides, a cold shower was just what he needed to wash his hangover away.

  After about five minutes under the spray, he turned off the water and toweled himself off. He felt better, though his ribs were still sore from Genet’s punches. At least his tongue didn’t ache quite as much.

  He came out of the shower and realized the only clean clothes he had, other than his training clothes, was the suit he’d worn all night. He’d been too busy training to get his clothes washed.

  It was a rotten choice. Either the same clothes he’d gotten drunk in or the sweat-stained rags he wore while training.

  Reluctantly, he pulled on the black suit and white shirt and flipped the black tie back into some kind of knot. He dressed it up with the black fedora he’d forgotten to take with him to the fight the night before. Mr. Kaye always liked his doormen to wear black. And Quinn didn’t mind.

  He went down to the drugstore around the corner and broke a single for a roll of nickels. He went to the payphone in the back and started by calling Joey’s house. He still lived with his mother in Astoria, but the lady didn’t understand English, only Greek. She said her Joey wasn’t there, then started yelling in Greek, so Quinn hung up the phone.

  Then he started calling around to all the places he thought Augie and Joey might have gone. The kinds of places Augie liked to go on a drunk wouldn’t have admitted he was there even if he was sitting right next to the phone. He left the number of the payphone with them anyway. Word would get out that Quinn was looking for Augie and Joey. Eventually, one of them would get back to him.

  He’d gotten about halfway through the nickels when the phone began to ring. “Quinn here.”

  A deep voice unlike any he’d ever heard before came over the line. It was a voice too deep for any white man he’d ever known, so he pegged the caller for a Negro. “So this is Terry Quinn, huh? Same Quinn who’s been calling all over town for Augie Terranova?”

  Quinn felt himself standing straighter in the tiny phone booth. “Maybe. What’s it too you?”

  The voice on the other end laughed in a deep, musical way that Quinn didn’t find funny. “Calm yourself, white boy. Ain’t no reason to get yourself all worked up in a tizzy. Augie’s just fine. Had himself a little bit too much to drink last night is all. Wound up in a place he usually likes to go when he gets like that, but he wasn’t in what you might call a loving mood.”

  Quinn closed his eyes and sank against the glass wall of the phone booth. Augie was in one of those colored whorehouses up in Harlem. Those places could be dangerous enough for a white man when he was sober, much less when he was drunk. “He all right?”

  “He’s just fine,” the voice said. “The girls got scared on account of him not acting like his usual self is all. So they called me since Augie and me go back a long ways. Other than a pretty bad hangover, he’s doing just fine.” The voice got quiet for a moment. “Well, maybe not fine, but better than he was. Your name came up. A lot.”

  “Me? What for? And who the hell is this anyway?”

  The voice laughed that deep laugh again. “I’m not much for talking on these things more than I have to. For my sake and for Augie’s. Yours too. You best come on up here and find out for yourself. That way, we can talk and you can take Augie home with you when you’re done.”

  “Just tell me where and when and I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  There was that laugh again. “Even if you happen to find a cab that’ll take you up here, which you won’t, the drive’ll take longer than five minutes. Just get here when you can. Come on up to the Cotton Club. You know where it is?”

  Quinn closed his eyes. “Yeah. I know where it is.”

  “Then I’ll see you when I see you. And don’t worry about asking for anyone once you get here. You’re expected.”

  Quinn slowly put the earpiece back in the cradle on the side of the phone. He had heard of the Cotton Club before. It was the closest thing Harlem had to rival the Kaye Klub, except many people said it had better music and food. From what he’d heard, people were right.

  It wasn’t going up to Harlem that bothered him. It was the Cotton Club itself. Because doormen like Quinn heard a lot of things while they worked a shift. And he’d heard that the Cotton Club had a new owner.

  And that owner was Archie Doyle.

  But the man on the phone didn’t sound like Doyle. So who was he and why did he have Augie?

  There was only one way to find out. Quinn scooped up the rest of the nickels and dumped them in his pocket. He headed outside and hailed a cab.

  ROUND SEVEN

  It wasn’t until he was standing in front of the Cotton Club that Quinn realized something: he was walking in there blind.

  No weapon.

  No idea of who was in there.

  No idea of why they’d asked him to come up there to pick up Augie. Why not just put him in a cab and send him home?

  Quinn paid off the nervous cabbie and sent him on his way back downtown.

  Quinn walked toward the club. It was only nine-thirty on a Saturday morning, so the streets were deserted. The weather was turning colder, and the few
trees in the area had already begun to shed their leaves, which blew down the street along with discarded sections of yesterday’s newspaper.

  He tried the front door, but found it locked. He knocked on the glass portal and waited. A cold wind gusted down the street and chilled him to the bone. The door opened inward, and a shrunken old black man in a white jacket stepped aside and beckoned him in.

  The place looked like any other night club did in the cold light of day. Gaudy and silly. Too many mirrors on the walls. A dirty carpet stained with old cigarette butts and spilled drinks. The air was heavy with the unique odor of hair tonic, perfume, stale booze, and cigarette smoke.

  During the day, no one in their right mind would ever think about going into the place. But at night, with the lights turned low and all the fancy men and ladies gliding around to the best music in town, it was a different world. The worst things always looked better at night.

  He spotted Augie in a booth at the far left of the dance floor on the second level. He was slumped over on his side, snoring. Looking paler and even worse than normal.

  Next to Augie sat a large black man Quinn had seen many times, but had never met. Growing up, he’d seen his bald head and wide, smiling face on magazine covers and newspaper articles and on posters plastered on billboards.

  As a kid back at the orphanage, he’d always dreamed of seeing the great man fight. However, Father Frawley would never allow it because you never knew what might happen at a Jack Johnson fight. The black man was just too unpredictable, too wild for anyone to know what he’d do or how the white people in the crowd would respond to him.

  Instead, Quinn was forced to follow his hero’s exploits through news articles and dime store boxing magazines. And while most of the other kids in the orphanage hated Johnson for beating white men in the ring, Quinn had always admired him.

  Back in 1915, he’d beaten a white man to become the first black heavyweight champion of the world. He went where he wanted. Dressed how he wanted and dated who he wanted, especially white women. Color mattered to everyone but Jack Johnson – he simply did as he liked.

  Maybe it was why Quinn had always admired him.

  Johnson was nursing a bottle of scotch and had two glasses on the table in front of him. The morning sunlight came in weak yellow beams through the dirty window behind him, making the black man look even darker than he already was.

  Johnson’s voice filled the empty club. “You going to stand there all day like a fool or are you going to come up here and drink with me?”

  Quinn walked up the stairs and sat down in a chair at the end of the table. Johnson had watched him the whole way up, appraising him. When he got there, Johnson hadn’t offered to shake hands, so neither did Quinn.

  He poured a drink from the bottle for himself and one for Quinn. A three fingered pour in each glass. He didn’t hand over the glass once he filled it. He just put the cork back in the bottle and set it on the table.

  From what he’d known of the champ, he didn’t give anyone anything. You had to take it.

  So Quinn reached for the drink and pulled it closer to him.

  Johnson looked at him over the rim of the glass as he drank. He licked his lips as he set the glass back on the table cloth and let out a long, deep breath.

  “I needed that,” the champ said. “You got any idea why?”

  “No, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to tell me.”

  Johnson smiled that same smile Quinn had seen in dozens of pictures of the champ over the years. “Yes, sir. Yes I am. I’m going to tell you something that our friend Augie here should be telling you, but can’t. He doesn’t have the heart to tell you because it reminds him too much of the past.” He pointed a thick thumb back at himself. “About what he went through with me a long time ago.”

  Quinn didn’t like the way Augie was looking. He’d seen his trainer drunk many times before, but Augie was twitching in his sleep and he looked like he’d been drooling.

  “How about we just get to the point, sir, so I can get him the help he needs.”

  Johnson put a hand across Augie, as if to protect him from Quinn. “This man is getting all the help he can right now, white boy. I owe him more than you’ll ever know and I’d kill anyone who tried laying hands on him. Best you know that now before we go down this road any further.”

  Quinn didn’t like the sound of that. “Who wants to hurt him?”

  “We’ll get to that.” Johnson slowly took his hand away from Augie and folded his hands on the table cloth. Quinn had never realized how big they were before then.

  “You’re up here today because Augie came up here last night. And it wasn’t just on account of him being drunk and looking for sporting ladies of a certain persuasion. He really came up here to see me, though he didn’t know it at the time. So, I got him out of that place and brought him over here to get him sober in private. All he did was talk about one thing and one thing only.” Johnson pointed one of those thick fingers at Quinn. “You.”

  Quinn didn’t see the big deal. “Augie always talks big about me after a fight.”

  Johnson lowered his finger. “He sure does. He’s prouder of you than he is of his own son, who don’t speak to him any more on account of his drinking.” Johnson folded his hands again and cocked his head at Quinn. “He told me how much alike we are, you and me. How we both came from nothing. How you’ve got a chance to be every bit as big as I was. Maybe even bigger than Dempsey.” He cocked his big head the other way. “You have any idea why he got that drunk last night?”

  “Him and Joey celebrated too much. It’s happened before.”

  “But Joey’s never wound up in the hospital before, has he?”

  Quinn felt himself tighten. “Hospital? Why? What…”

  “On account of being beaten half to death. Word is he might not make it.”

  Quinn felt his right hand ball into a fist. Joey had always been a quiet, meek little guy. He got even quieter and meeker when he was drunk. He never bothered anyone and didn’t deserve to get hit by anyone, much less wind up in the hospital. “Why?”

  “On account of some Tammany boys taking a run at Joey and Augie last night when they came out of Lefty’s. Seems they were already three sheets to the wind and these two found them at just the right time.”

  Quinn was already on his feet. “Just tell me who they were and I’ll take care of it.”

  Johnson looked him up and down. “What you need is some common sense, son. So sit back down and listen.”

  Quinn had never been good at doing what he was told. But there was a force and understanding in Johnson’s voice that made him want to hear more before he avenged poor Joey. So, he sat down.

  “Augie was babbling pretty bad when I got him, but I’ve been able to piece some things together. After your run-in with Whitowski at the Kaye Klub last night, Rothman and Whitowski split off from the rest of the group later on. They ran into Augie and Joey over at Lefty’s and braced them in an alley. I take it you know where Lefty’s is.”

  It was a speakeasy off Broadway in the theater district. “Yeah, I know the place.”

  “Rothman and Whitowski told Augie they were going to see to it the commission wouldn’t let Whitowski fight anyone but you. They’ve pushed them hard, but it seems the commission won’t budge. So, they told Augie you were going to have to take a dive to Whitowski.”

  Quinn pounded the table, making the scotch in the glasses jump. “I don’t take a dive for anyone.”

  “That’s what Joey said before Whitowski took to slapping the boy around. Looks like he hit him too hard because Joey hasn’t woken up since the beating.”

  Anger began to flood Quinn’s chest. He didn’t know who to be angry at, but figured Augie was the best choice he had at the moment. “Why the hell didn’t he come to me? He knew where I was. He could’ve come to my place. He’s got a key. Why…”

  “Because Rothman threatened him too,” Johnson said. “Told him either you throw that fight with Whit
owski, or Augie, Joey and you will all be dead. Augie figured Rothman would never cause trouble up here, so here’s where he came.”

  Everything in Quinn wanted to get up, to move, to do something. But all he could do was just sit there while everything the former heavyweight champion of the world had just told him sank in.

  Johnson surprised him by reaching across the table and edging the glass of scotch closer to Quinn. “Drink it, boy. Scotch has a way of making bad news go down a whole lot easier. Believe me, I ought to know. I’ve been in your chair more than once.”

  Quinn took the glass, but he didn’t feel much like drinking. “I know the fight game’s a dirty business, but why’d they hurt Joey like that? Or threaten to kill us? Usually they throw money at you first, or…”

  Johnson poured more scotch for himself. “Now you’re acting silly. You’re trying to figure out whys and wherefores where there ain’t none. My guess? The boys talked it all over a couple of bottles of champagne at the Kaye Klub, then Rothman and Whitowski ran into Augie and Joe. Everyone was drunk and things got out of hand. You know how booze has a way of making a man feel even more like a man, especially when he comes up against two other drunks a lot smaller and older. Don’t make it more than what it actually was.”

  “I’m not making it less than what it was either. I don’t care why it happened, but I’m not going to let them get away with what they did to Joey.”

  Johnson shook his large bald head. “I didn’t say anything of the kind, son, but you need to separate the two things in front of you right now before you make things worse. If the Tammany boys had decided they wanted all of you gone, you’d all would be dead right now. That’s why I think what happened to Joe was on account of too much booze and not enough sense. Now, that stuff about them wanting you to throw the fight? That’s as real as it gets. And that’s what you have to concern yourself with now. For your sake.” He tilted his head toward Augie. “And for his. Joe’s too, if he pulls through.”