Fight Card: AGAINST THE ROPES

by Jack Tunney

  As the ref tried to get between them, Quinn landed a crushing left followed by a stunning right to Whitowski's undefended temples. The big man fell to the canvas in an unconscious heap.

  The ref didn’t even bother counting. He dropped to Whitowski's side as the ring quickly filled with people scrambling to help the fallen fighter.

  But Quinn wasn't one of them. He'd done what he'd come there to do. He’d broken Whitowski. He’d killed Whitowski’s career the same way Whitowski had killed Joey.

  Quinn knew he’d killed his own career in the process, maybe even himself. But he could live with that consequence. Just how long he’d have to live with it was beyond his control.

  Augie scrambled behind him as he stepped between the ropes and stood on the ring apron. The entire area around ringside had flooded with people standing and craning their necks to see what was going on in the ring.

  Only three men in the front row were still seated. Howard Rothman, Fatty Corcoran, and Frank Sanders. Tammany's finest. All three of them looked at Quinn with that same bland expression they'd looked at him with back at the Kaye Klub.

  And Quinn looked right back at them the same way.

  Then Quinn noticed the seat on their right was empty.

  Archie Doyle was nowhere in sight.

  ROUND TWELVE

  Back in the locker room, Augie wept quietly on a stool in the corner while Quinn sat on the trainer’s table.

  Alone.

  His boxing gloves sat on the table next to him like two sad, useless things.

  This wasn’t how Quinn had dreamed this special night would be – the night he’d beaten the one man who stood between him and a shot at the title. The announcer calling out his name as the ref raised his hand in victory. The crowd cheering. Flashbulbs popping while the boys in press row fired questions at him about how he’d be sure to beat Dempsey.

  Augie beaming. Joey, too.

  Quinn had never doubted this night would come. He’d always known how good he was and what he could do in the ring. It was always just a matter of time before he got a shot at the belt.

  Whether or not he was good enough to win the title wasn’t even the point. Just having the chance to go up against a champion was almost as good as winning it. In Quinn’s mind, there was no disgrace in losing to the best.

  But losing like this? Even though he’d won? Because of lousy politics? On account of a bunch of fat cat thugs telling him he wasn’t allowed to win?

  Quinn could never have stomached it, he couldn’t throw the fight. He couldn’t live the rest of his life knowing he’d gotten this close, but wasn’t allowed to go any further. Father Frawley had been right about a lot of things and he’d been right about that, too.

  Quinn knew the boys would kill him for not taking a dive.

  Let them.

  They’d be doing him a favor. He’d rather be dead than stuck in the middle like this. Somewhere between a contender and a has-been was nowhere at all. He didn’t regret what he’d done to Whitowski. He’d had it coming for what he’d done to Joey. But he regretted having to hurt him in the first place. Four lives ruined all on account of four fat cats looking for an easy payday on a prize fight.

  Quinn had lost count of how many times Augie had apologized to him since they’d gotten back to the locker room. However many times it had been, he did it one more time. “I’m sorry, Terry. So, so, sorry. Sorry I let them drive you to this. Sorry I let you fight. I should’ve been strong enough to take the dive on my own. I should’ve just thrown in the towel at the opening bell. Then you would’ve been spared. But I didn’t. It’s all my fault. I’m so, so, sorry.”

  Quinn was already feeling rotten as it was. Augie’s whining wasn’t helping any. “Knock it off. We didn’t get this far by accident. No one forced us to do anything we didn’t want to. Whatever happens, we’ve got it coming. Both of us.”

  Augie dropped his head in his hands and began to cry all the more.

  Quinn let him cry. He didn’t have any tears left.

  They both looked up when the locker room door opened and Archie Doyle strode in. He was wearing a brown double-breasted suit. Snappy brown tie and pocket square to match. His shoes shone even in the dim light of the locker room. He had a black Cuban cigar tucked in the corner of his mouth instead of his usual cigarette and his jaw was cocked up at the same sharp angle he’d had at the Kaye Klub.

  And, once again, it was aimed straight at Quinn.

  The door quietly closed shut behind him, but it might as well have been a thunderclap in the tense little room.

  Quinn noticed Doyle’s hands were in his pockets. The pants were too tight for him to have a gun without it being obvious.

  But Doyle looked just as dangerous, whether he was armed or not. There was a finality about the man, an assured quality Quinn had never seen in anyone else.

  Doyle removed the cigar from the corner of his mouth and said, “You put on one hell of a show out there tonight, kid. Never saw a prize fighter take a beatin’ like that and I’ve seen a few in my day.”

  But Quinn was in no mood for compliments. “Want me to sign your autograph book?”

  Augie whimpered from the corner. “Don’t make it any worse than it already is, Terry.”

  But Doyle just smiled. “You’ve got guts, kid. In and out of the ring. I’ve seen plenty of guys who had it in one place, but not the other. You’ve got it in both places, and that’s rare.”

  “Maybe they ought to put me in a museum. Charge admission to have people come take a look at me.”

  Doyle flicked his ash on the floor. “Nah. That’d be a waste. I’ve got bigger plans for you.”

  Quinn swallowed hard and fought like hell to keep the tremble out of his voice. “I’ll just bet you do.”

  Doyle looked over at Augie. “How about you dry yourself off and go grab some air, Augie? Do you a world of good.”

  Augie looked up at Doyle, his red eyes wide and wild. “Archie, I …”

  Doyle jerked his head toward the door. “Go on. It’s fine. No one’s gonna touch you without my say so. And I haven’t said, so drift.”

  Augie slowly got off the stool and looked at Quinn. His eyes were as red and as wide as they could get.

  “It’s fine,” Quinn told him. “Go ahead.”

  Augie made his way to the door, opened it reluctantly, then went out into the hall, closing the door behind him.

  “We’ve got to work on his nerves,” Doyle said. “He’s an anxious boy.”

  “He’s got reason to be. He thinks you’re going to kill us.”

  Doyle flicked his cigar again, then struck a match to relight it. “Now, where did he get a fool notion like that?”

  “From Rothman. And Whitowski. In the alley off Lefty’s, two months ago, or don’t you remember that far back?”

  The glow of the match cast shadows on Doyle’s face. “I remember just fine. But I’m the one who’s standing here now, not Rothman. And certainly not Whitowski. Doc says he’ll never be the same, much less fight again.”

  Quinn knew he should’ve felt remorse, sorry, something. But he didn’t feel anything other than pride. “That’s too bad.”

  Doyle shrugged as he fanned out the match. “He knew what he was getting into when he stepped through the ropes. Same as you.”

  Father Frawley’s words came back to Quinn. “All of our choices cost us something.”

  “True,” Doyle agreed. “I’ve gotta remember that. Say, where’d a pug like you learn so much, anyhow?”

  Quinn’s nerves were already thin and getting thinner “What do you care anyway? Let’s just get this over with. Who’s going to do it? You or one of your boys?”

  Doyle made a show of looking around the room. “You see anyone else in here but me? I’ve got no boys. And besides, even if I did, I do my own hiring and firing. Mano-a-mano as they say. That way, I know the message comes across loud and clear, the way I like it.”

  “Hiring and firing,” Quinn smirked. “So, that�
��s what they’re calling it these days.”

  “That’s what they’ve always called it. I ain’t here to kill you, kid. I’m here to give you a job.”

  Quinn heard the words, but they didn’t make much sense. He’d been building himself up to stop a bullet for months. But the only thing Doyle was pointing at him was a job.

  Doyle opened his double-breasted suit wide as if to prove his point. “No guns, no knives. No machine gun in a violin case, either. Just a chance for you to come work for me.”

  A lot of questions flooded Quinn’s mind at once, but one broke through the noise. “Why?”

  “Good question.” Doyle puffed on his cigar. “What do you know about me, kid? And don’t be gentle. I know what folks say and, as you can see, I don’t really care.”

  “I heard you’re a bootlegger who’s tight with the boys down at Tammany Hall. You’ve got cops and politicians in your back pocket to keep your operations from getting raided. I also hear you’ve got a thing for blondes.”

  “That’s a lie. I’m a brunette man and always will be.” Doyle winked. “You know more about me than I thought you did, but not everything. Sure. I’ve run rum, booze, beer, broads, guns, hemp, dirty pictures, even phony real estate. If there’s a buck to be made, I’ve probably done it at one time or another. Made a pretty good livin’ at it, too, and I’m still alive to tell the tale.”

  “Swell,” Quinn said, “but I don’t know what any of that has got to do with me.”

  Doyle took the cigar from his mouth. “You’re pretty cocky for guy with a price on his head. A lot of people want you dead for what you done tonight. Bad enough you beat their boy, but you had to go and break him in the bargain.”

  “That was for Joey. And a lot of other things, too. But you still didn’t answer my question. What’s this business about me coming to work for you?”

  Doyle pointed his cigar at the locker room door. “You threw away a very good payday out there tonight. I offered Augie …”

  “Five grand in cash this morning,” Quinn said. “He told me before the fight and it didn’t make a blind bit of difference.”

  Doyle waited for Quinn to say more, but more did come. He just looked the fighter over again, like he had during their first run in at the Kaye Klub. “Yeah, I believe you do. You’re the type of mug who has his own reasons for what he does and why. Fatty Corcoran would probably say you’re ‘a man who holds his own counsel’, or something fancy like that.” Doyle grinned. “Ever hear the fat man talk? Boy, he’s got a way with words. That fat slob could make ordering a ham sandwich sound like an edict from the king of England.”

  Quinn shook his head. “What’s any of this got to do with me?”

  “Why, it’s got plenty to do with you,” Doyle said. “After all, you’ve got a right to know who you’ll be working with, don’t you? Fatty’s my oldest and dearest friend, next to Frank Sanders. We all came out of Five Points at the same time. Worked our way up. Been together ever since, with a few absences courtesy of the criminal justice system of course.”

  “Never been to jail in my life,” Quinn said. “Never broke the law either. I hardly even drink, even when it was legal. You need a crook, not a fighter, so I’ll be passing on your offer.”

  Doyle waived him down with his lit cigar. “Now don’t be so hasty. That’s the trouble with kids today. They’re all in a great big hurry to go nowhere and you’re a man who’s going nowhere fast. Because, let’s face it, you ain’t exactly a prime property right now. All you know how to do is box, and you know that part of your life dies with beating Whitowski.”

  Quinn knew it was true, but that didn’t make hearing it any easier to take. “I earned a fight with Dempsey for the title fair and square.”

  “Maybe, but you also broke the wrong man in the ring tonight,” Doyle said. “It cost a lot of powerful men a lot of money in the process. You think they’re going to reward you by allowing you to get a shot at the title?” Doyle shook his head. “Not a chance in a million years, kid. If you’d just beaten Whitowski or knocked him out, maybe. But you made an example of him for what he did to your friend Joey. And they know it. They respect you for it, in their own way, but they’ll never let you fight for a title. Tunney will get the shot instead.”

  Quinn smiled. “I must’ve cost you a lot of money tonight, too.” The scorn wasn’t much, but it was all he had going for him.

  “Hell, no, you made me a wealthy man,” the gangster said. “When I saw the look in your eye when I told you Joey had died, I knew there was no way you’d ever throw this fight and I was right. I made a fortune off you tonight while the rest of those dopes bet on Whitowski. Well, not all of them. I warned Fatty and Sanders against it, but Rothman bet a ton. Now he’s down quite a penny. Figured he had it comin’ on account of threatenin’ Augie and Joey like he did.”

  That didn’t make sense to Quinn. “But Rothman’s your friend. Whitowski’s your boy. He …”

  “Whitowski was my boy,” Doyle said. “Things change. He’s finished and you’re not. You’re the one who finished him because you’ve got skills he never had. You’ve got brawn and the brains to know how to put them to work for you. That’s what I need right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m goin’ places fast, and I’ll need good men to help me get there even faster. I’ve got a pipeline of booze from Canada straight down here to Manhattan. I’ve got a brewery that can churn out enough beer to fill every speakeasy in the city. With Fatty as my brains and you as my brawn, I can run half this city inside of a year. After that, who knows how big we’ll get?” He put the cigar back in his mouth. “That’s why I want you to join up with me. Tonight.”

  Quinn’s hands ached. The taste of blood was still in his mouth and he knew the blood wasn’t his own. “That’s an awful lot to tell a man who hasn’t agreed to work for you yet.”

  “It won’t matter,” Doyle laughed. “You turn me down, you’ll be dead by midnight. Augie too.”

  “I thought you said you did your own dirty work.”

  “I do and I don’t want you dead. You made me a lot of money. But I can’t speak for Rothman. He told a lot of his friends about the fix and since you didn’t dive, he’s gonna look like a fool to a lot of important people. He’s not likely to let that go.”

  “But if I join up with you, then he won’t touch me.”

  Doyle winked at him. “Like I said, kid, you’ve got brains.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about your business.”

  “You know more about it than you think, kid. You proved that tonight by standin’ up for yourself, to hell with the consequences. And you didn’t run out of here, either, knowing full well you’d probably get killed. You stood your ground like a man and that’s all it takes to start. The rest, I’ll teach you.”

  Quinn had never been one to make decisions quickly. He’d never had to. Everything in his life had always revolved around the ring. Training, eating right, fighting, healing and doing it over and over again. A predictable easy pace he’d not only grown to love, but to depend on.

  But now that was all over, and he realized he wasn’t fit for much. He’d never known any other life other than fighting. But what Doyle was offering was another kind of fighting, too. Fighting to build something, even if that something was crooked. It was better than nothing.

  “What would I have to do?”

  “Stuff that comes naturally to you. Enforcement, mostly. Making sure people who owe me money pay up on time. Make sure beer and booze orders keep coming in and keeping competition to an absolute minimum. It’s not much right now, but it’ll get there. Between you, me, and Fatty, we’ll run this town and more before we’re through. And that’s a promise.”

  Quinn tried to think of every reason to turn Doyle down. And he couldn’t come up with a single one. Fighting was fighting, after all. Inside the ring and out. He’d rather fight for something than for nothing.

  Besides, he didn’t have a whole lot of op
tions.

  “Alright, Mr. Doyle. You got yourself a deal. When do I start?”

  Doyle smiled. It wasn’t a grin or one of those cocky sneers, but an actual smile. “Good boy. Come by the Longford Lounge tomorrow around lunch time. It’s not much to look at now, but before I’m through, it’ll be the classiest joint in town. Oughtta put what I did at the Kaye Klub and all the other places to shame.”

  Quinn watched Doyle dig his hand into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, pull out a gold cigarette case and toss it to him. It was the same cigarette case he’d seen him use at the Kaye Klub the night Whitowski took a swing at him.

  “I saw you oglin’ that after your go ’round with Whitowski that night. Figured you might want to have it. Think of it as a bonus for signing on.”

  Quinn had never been much of a smoker. Cigarettes always damaged his wind, so he’d always stayed away from them. But now the ring was through with him, he figured that wouldn’t matter anymore.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll earn it. See you tomorrow, kid.” Doyle was halfway to the door before he stopped. “Just one more thing. In a few years from now, when you look back on tonight and remember you came to work for me, I want you to remember one thing. You were already a killer before you came to work for me. I didn’t make you one. You did that all on your own.”

  Quinn hadn’t really thought of that before Doyle had said it. It should’ve bothered him, but it didn’t. “See you tomorrow, boss.”

  With that, the bootlegger was out the door and on his way to do whatever bootleggers did. Probably a night on the town.

  Quinn set the cigarette case on the table and caught his reflection in the mirror. He still looked the same as he had before the fight, but there was something different about him now. Maybe something around the eyes. Maybe something deeper.