Faces
A Collection of 12 Short Stories
Edward Sloan
Smashwords ebook edition published by Fideli Publishing Inc.
© Copyright 2011, Edward Sloan
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ISBN: 978-1-60414-473-4
All stories in Faces are works of fiction. All names, places, dates, characters, incidents, organizations, and situations are inventions of the author and/or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, or to actual events and organizations is purely coincidental.
Contents
Lost Cause
Whitey’s bar, located on the corner of Eighth Ave. and 48th St. — in the same building that housed Stillman’s gym — was jammed full Friday night. Must have been close to fifty fight fans standing five deep behind the bar, eyes on the television that blared from a shelf over the cash register. In those days, April 1954, it was important to get a spot up close to the TV if you wanted to see the fight. The screen was 17” or 21”, I don’t recall exactly. The big screen, flat screen, near life-size TVs they have in sports bars and casino sports books now didn’t exist back then.
Tony DeMarco was defending his welterweight title against Carmine Basilio. DeMarco was favored but Basilio knocked him out in the twelfth round and took the title. It had been a hard, close fight up until that moment. Those who had their money on Basilio cheered and pumped their arms. The ones who had bet on DeMarco were silent. Some were crestfallen having not only lost their money but also having watched their idol lose.
DeMarco was a good-looking, classy type, could have been in movies, and had a lot of fans. One or two were complaining about something or other that had happened during an early round and were calling for a rematch. Sort of like Leo Durocher shouting, “we was robbed,” whenever the Brooklyn Dodgers lost a close game. Does anyone remember the Brooklyn Dodgers? Yeah, I know, I have a memory problem — I remember too much.
I was merely a spectator enjoying a great fight — didn’t have money on either of them. A few Broadway sharpies, pimps and drifters remained at their tables or booths during the fight. I guess they weren’t fans or gamblers. The fight began at 10:00 p.m. and ended shortly before 11:00 p.m. Another hour and the sharpies and pimps would be out on the street, plying their trade. An occasional hooker, an early bird, could be seen passing in front of the window facing Eighth Ave. The cops usually left the women alone after midnight. Everyone has to make a living, one way or another. The cops, too, most of them on that beat were in for a piece.
I was standing behind the row of drinkers seated on the black leather, chrome-plated stools. The screen was too small to see clearly from the booth along the far wall where I had been sitting with three friends until the fight started. The bartender, a heavyset ex-pug himself, turned off the TV and the fans made their way back to their seats.
I’d hung my gloves up two years ago but still enjoyed watching a good fight. The crowd at Whitey’s consisted mostly of fans and fighters, what with its proximity to Stillman’s gym. Boxers have the sport in their blood and keep up with what’s happening in the ring long after they quit.
Two of the men I was sitting with were old ex-pugs, retired since the early forties — one a welterweight, the other a middleweight like I had been. The middleweight and welterweight divisions are the toughest and we always had a lot to talk about. The third was a young fighter, about 21. He had won eleven prelims in a row and it looked like he might get a main event soon. A main event at Madison Square Garden paid $3000 in 1954, $1500 at Eastern Parkway.
I fought almost one hundred professional fights, many of them ten-rounders, and had acquired something of a reputation — enough to have once been ranked number fifteen. I fought some contenders, too. Among some fighters, and especially among some managers, I was known for something else — having stood up to, and walked away from, an Outfit manager back in Chicago. The Outfit is what they call the Mob in Chicago where I first started fighting.
The managers, the fixers, the gamblers, the promoters — anyone important in the fight game was connected, one way or another. And it was the same way in New York and every other big city. If you wanted to fight, you couldn’t avoid the wiseguys. It was the gambling that attracted them. Fights were bet heavily in those days, all the main events, not just the championship bouts. Sometimes, even the eight-rounders that preceded championship bouts had a line, odds on the fighters.
I turned pro in 1939, fifteen years ago, when I was nineteen. My manager ranked high up in the Outfit. A mustache is what the ones like him were sometimes referred to in recognition of their rank — fat slob dago, he smelled from sweat even in the winter, and his pants hung under his gut. His shirts — he liked loud, long-sleeved, open-collar shirts — folded over his belt. He had a hat, a wide brimmed fedora, which he wore all the time, even when he was sitting at his desk. He owned the Addison Ave. Gym located a few blocks away from Wrigley Field.
His business office was in a building downtown on Clark St., but he also kept an office suite in the gym, just off the ring area. That’s where he spent most of his time. It had a thick wood door with a brass plate marked “PRIVATE.” One of his torpedoes stood outside the door to inspect visitors before permitting them to enter — a big, olive-skinned, particularly nasty bastard in a brown suit, white shirt and tie, about forty years old. I think my manager had him stand there more for show than anything else.
His receptionist, cute little blonde who tended toward short, tight fitting skirts and liked to piss-mouth people, sat behind a metal desk a few feet inside the door. Then you had to go through another door and another hood to get to him.
My manager’s real name was Frank Fiore and, like most mustaches, he didn’t like his name thrown around or even mentioned. Only close friends and important business associates called him Frank or Frankie. Underlings and politicians called him FF. Employees, stooges and fighters called him Mr. F. Only strangers and salesmen called him Mr. Fiore.
I was a scrappy kid and everyone said that I had a good future in the sport. Mr. F liked me and let me hang around his office after my workouts. I ran errands for him and picked up and dropped off envelopes filled with money. I didn’t know what the money was for and didn’t ask. Once, I took two envelopes to a church. That was hard to understand because Mr. F wasn’t much for philanthropy.
When he celebrated his fiftieth birthday, he threw a party in his downtown office, attended by friends, a few politicians and a lot of businessmen. The attendees were told that all presents would be donated to a charity and most of them kicked in. I found out later that he kept every dime. It was more than the money. Making suckers out of his friends, and anyone else, fed his ego.
Sometimes, he had me hang around his downtown office to wait for a drop-off or a package, and I met a lot of people there — hoods, women, businessmen. He handed me a few bucks for running errands and taking care of those drop-offs and I thought I was on the way up. Maybe it was having some money that made me think I was smart. What the heck, it was the Depression, and money was hard to come by.
Things were cheap if you had cash to spend. A new Chevy cost less than a thousand bucks. And I felt flattered to be around Outfit people, which shows you how “smart” I really was. Most fighters are no-brainers and, at that age, I was no different. Maybe I’m still not any different, but I like to imagine that I’ve learned something since then.
The old-timers I was sitting with knew better than to ask personal questions, but the twenty-one year old — Vince — brought up a matter that I preferred to leave buried. He’d bugged me about it several times before. Why, I don’t know. Maybe he thought he was being clever. One of those times, I asked him if he’d heard about the cat that curiosity killed. He said he’d heard the story. I told him it wasn’t a cat, it was a young guy asking questions. But that didn’t stop him and now he brought it up again.
“How come you went through so many managers? I heard the one in Chicago got pissed.”
I couldn’t tell if his voice was snotty or sarcastic but it wasn’t a subject I wanted to discuss. I didn’t want it to come back to haunt me — or worse. “Best you don’t ask so many questions.”
“Why not? Maybe I can learn something from you old guys.”
“I’m not an old guy, I just don’t fight anymore. Asking questions about shit that doesn’t concern you can get you in trouble.”
“I’m not afraid of trouble,” Vince pressed.
“That’s because you’re not an old guy, like you called me. Don’t be a jerk and you can get to be an old guy, too.”
“You calling me a jerk?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was, too, when I was your age.” I’d known Vince for about 6 months. We had a few beers and watched a few fights on television together, always in Whitey’s. I didn’t know what Vince had heard about my previous problems. People talk, repeat what they hear and hardly ever get it right. I suggested he concentrate on winning his fights.
The gates were getting bigger, TV sweetened the pot, and he had a good shot at making serious money if he kept his mind on what mattered. Vince didn’t like the way I talked to him, so he slouched in his seat, the inside corner of the booth, and glared at me. He was a lightweight. Little guys usually talk too much.
The matter Vince was curious about revolved around a jewelry heist, a second-story job. There was this safecracker, supposedly the best boxman in Chicago, doing twenty years in Joliet. My manager got him out, but it cost him fifty large. I’m not sure what the safecracker’s name was, but I heard “Harry” mentioned two or three times around the office and I think that was his name.
Anyway, Harry and two helpers were supposed to hit a diamond importer, a company that dealt in all sorts of gems and had recently received a big shipment. The importer had a showroom on the ground floor of the Jewelers Building at 5 S. Wabash, and offices on the twelfth floor of the same building. In fact, the tenants in that building were mostly jewelers and diamond dealers, along with a smattering of insurance agencies and stockbrokers.
The safe containing the diamond shipment, and a lot of other jewelry, was located in the upstairs office. My manager had the details — knew when the shipment came in, the layout of the office, had access to the building and a key to the alarm system. It was an inside job, everything except the safe itself. That's why he needed a boxman, Harry.
The job went fine. Late night, no one around and no one hurt. The papers said they got over a million bucks, possibly two million. You have any idea how much money that was back in 1940, before inflation? Even after fencing it, my manager would come out with half a mil. Probably more, because I’m sure the fence was Outfit and maybe the inside man as well.
Harry was supposed to get twenty thousand over what it cost to get him out of the pen. The two helpers were from out of town, outsiders hired by my manager, and that was it. They couldn’t have cost very much. All Mr. F had to do was pay Harry and the helpers, and then go count his money. But, that’s not how he did things. Paying people what he owed them hurt his pride.
The two helpers, aside from assisting on the job, were supposed to take out the safecracker. The way I understood it, the helpers were to drive up to a lake house on the Chain of Lakes, about sixty miles northwest of Chicago, out in the boonies. That’s where they were to turn over the diamonds and whatever else they bagged and get paid.
I don’t have all the details, but I know that they were supposed to kill the safecracker somewhere along the way, put his body in the trunk of the car, and pick up another car that would be waiting for them. Someone else would get rid of the body and Harry would disappear. The Outfit had a swamp up in Wisconsin since the Prohibition days just for that purpose. The cops could go on a hunt for Harry and the diamonds, and the newspapers could write about it. Like — everybody have a good time.
Next, the plan was for two torpedoes, Mr. F’s most trusted hit men, to wait at the lake house, hit the helpers, leave the bodies at the lake house — someone else would dispose of them — and bring the goods home. That way there’d be no loose ends and only my manager’s own people would be left.
But that’s not how it worked out. The helpers fucked up. Harry caught wise, or maybe the helpers weren’t quick enough. And Harry wasn’t supposed to have a gun, but he did. He took two bullets, but he killed both the helpers and left their bodies in the ditch. He didn't know about the car switch, but he knew about the lake house because that’s where they were all supposed to be going, and he headed up there — with two bullet holes in him. I never met Harry, never saw him in the office or the gym, don’t know how old he was or what he looked like, but this safecracker had to be one tough man.
He arrived at the lake house, parked off in the woods, left the loot in the car and hiked up to the house. Figure, he doesn’t know who’s in the house or how many. And he can’t just walk up and knock because he knows he isn’t expected. So … he hid in some shrubbery near the front door and waited the rest of the night, maybe four hours. It was winter, late November or December. I remember because it was near Christmas and there was snow on the ground. It gets cold up there. One tough man, had to be. He left blood in the snow and on the ground.
By morning, the bodies of the helpers had been found and Mr. F got a call. I was sitting in his office when the call came in. I don’t know who the caller was but he must have been talking fast because Mr. F kept telling him to “slow down.” They talked for several minutes and by the time my manager hung up, his face was pale, his eyes wide, and his mouth hung open as if he were in a daze. I hadn’t ever seen him like that.
He must have figured that the boxman took off with the goods, so he called the torpedoes waiting at the lake house and told them to come back. There was another fighter in the room at the time, and several of his associates. Mr. F had been in a good mood, joking and talking a lot until the call came in, but now he gestured with one hand as his way of ordering us out of his office.
When the two at the lake house came out the door, one was carrying a briefcase, which Harry probably thought contained the payoff money. He had no way of knowing that these hitters were there to whack the helpers who were supposed to have taken him out. He got up out of the bushes and blew the two of them away. But the briefcase didn’t contain any money, only some guns.
He went into the house looking for the money he thought would be there to pay his helpers — it wasn’t there. At this point Harry must have realized that his helpers weren’t scheduled to be paid — a double-cross all around. But, what’s important was getting some money. He went outside and emptied the wallets of the hit men he had killed.
It came to a few hundred bucks, which wasn’t going to take him very far. So, he went back into the house and called the gym. By this time, it was mid-morning. My manager had calmed down and was sitting in his office as though it were just another day at the gym, but he had put the word out and had people looking for the safecracker. The last thing he expected was a phone call from him.
I was waiting to be sent on an errand when the phone rang. Mr. F picked up the phone and it must have been quite a shock because he dropped the phone on the desk and fumbled it before getting it back to his ear.
Mr. F kept saying, “Harry, Harry, you’re my friend, my friend. I got you out of the pen. I got you out of the pen. It cost me big bucks, big bucks. Calm down. There’s been some kind of misunderstanding. I don’t know how this happened. We can straighten it out.”
Between that conversation, and bits and pieces I’d picked up before, I had a pretty good picture of what was going on. It didn’t occur to Mr. F how much someone could put together from a few words here and there. And he liked to show off. What’s the use of being a big boss if he can’t impress the flunkies around him and the fighters in his stable, even if it means talking more than he should?
Yeah, “stable,” that’s what managers called their fighters. Managers had a stable. We called ourselves “stable mates,” and it didn’t bother us. No wonder the managers, promoters, gamblers, everybody, treated us like dummies; we were dummies. Of course, I didn’t see it like that back then.
Mr. F’s friend — “Harry, Harry, you’re my friend” — told him that he’d iced everybody, including the two at the lake house, and he wanted money. I remember a hundred thousand number thrown around. FF was to go get the money and wait for a call, which, he was told, would come in about two hours. At that time he’d be told where Harry wanted to meet and make the exchange. And if FF didn’t do as he was told, Harry would take off with everything and come back at some other time to get even. Then, get this, my manager asked him, “How do I know I can trust you?” Can you believe? But, that’s how mustaches like him think. They can do no wrong even if they try to kill you. You still have to take their word but they don’t have to take yours. That aside, my manager was plenty worried. Anyone who could come out of the situation the boxman was in, and do what he did, was not to be laughed off. On top of that, I think Mr. F had made commitments to other people, people like him, regarding that job and didn’t want to tell them that he blew it.
My manager agreed to Harry’s terms. He got the money and waited for the call, but the call didn’t come. Two hours went by, three, four and no phone call. Mr. F started thinking that Harry had changed his mind about trading for the goods and run, taking it all with him. Or that Harry hadn’t intended to trade the goods in the first place, and used the negotiation as a ruse to gain some time to run.
He began calling his “friend” names like “crazy bastard and fuck’n liar,” and said that he should never have trusted him, as if he had a choice. He knew that the safecracker didn’t have much money, just an advance for expenses and whatever he might have found on those he killed. But he started wondering to whom Harry could make a partial sale in order to get some running money. No way could he fence the whole package without someone hearing and calling it in. Or maybe Harry was on his way to the gym to get revenge right now? There was no telling where he had gone. Turned out it was none of the above.
Mr. F decided to send me and one of his dumb hoods — an ex light-heavy, about 45 years old, with a flat nose and a little punchy — to the lake house to see what had happened. He used Punchy as a bill collector and probably figured we were both expendable, in case Harry was still there. We found the car backed in off the road, the two dead hit men near the front door, an empty briefcase on the ground near them, and we found the safecracker sitting in the easy chair by the phone — dead. He had a .38 tucked into his belt, two .45’s on the telephone table and another .38 lay on the floor. Seems like he intended to keep the guns he found on the hitters and now had enough firepower to carry out his threat.
The chair was full of blood. He probably passed out and bled to death soon after calling the gym. Next, we went back to Harry’s car and found the jewelry in a briefcase, lying on the back seat. Punchy pulled the zipper on the briefcase and we stared at what was inside, eyes wide.
Punchy looked at me, his mouth open, then back at the briefcase, back at me, and it wasn’t hard to see what was on his mind. I shrugged and waited for him to make the first move. He reached into the briefcase and took out a gold bracelet, kind of a rope design with some colored stones, and stuck it in his overcoat pocket. After taking another look at me, he reached in again and pulled out a heavy man’s signet ring with a Roman helmet design. Neither of the pieces was particularly good, but I could see why he liked them. He stuck that in his pocket, looked at me again, and waited.
I pulled the briefcase out of the back seat and put it on the trunk lid where I could see the contents better. I remember that it was starting to get dark. I pulled out a pair of earrings. Each one had, what I swear, looked like a five-carat diamond on a little chain of smaller diamonds. Young as I was, I knew that those earrings were special, like something out of a movie. I grabbed a half dozen of the loose diamonds lying in there like glass beads, and started to close the briefcase. Punchy pushed me aside, reached in again and came out with another man’s ring, one with a diamond in the center.
He closed the briefcase and started to return it to the back seat. I suggested that we put it in the trunk and let someone else find it. Best if no one knew that we had seen the goods. He agreed, but we didn’t have the key so I told him to go back to the house and get it from the dead safecracker. He was twice my age, but I guess he was used to taking orders, or figured that I was smarter than he was since putting the briefcase in the trunk had been my idea. He grunted and did what I told him to.
While he was gone, I purloined another three or four items. One was a gorgeous butterfly pin. It had diamonds set in platinum wings that moved on hinges. This thing was about three inches across and had about fifty diamonds in it, much smaller than the ones in the earrings, different sizes, but very nice. Anyway, he came back with the keys and we put the briefcase in the trunk. I noticed blood on both the front and back seats of the sedan. They must have shot Harry in the car, and he probably got them the same way and then dragged the bodies out and left them in the ditch were they were found.
We returned to the house, put the keys back, and I called my manager. Needless to say, he was much relieved when I told him his boxman was there and was dead.
“Did you find anything else?”
“What?”
FF paused. “The shit I paid him to get.” He sounded angry.
“No, just him, two other dead guys and some guns.” I didn’t mention the car or the name, “Harry.” I knew Harry’s name but the first time I had heard Mr. F himself mention it was that morning when Harry called. I felt it best to play dumb, or that I forgot.
Another pause. “Just wait there, I’m coming to see for myself.” No longer worried about Harry, his concern shifted to the loot, and he no longer sounded angry, just impatient. He must have left right away because it wasn’t much more than an hour before he arrived, along with two of his hoods.
They found the car just as we had, got the keys, looked in the trunk and found the jewelry. With the hitters dead as well as the safecracker and his helpers, Mr. F had the goods and didn’t even have to pay anyone. He was so happy that he promised Punchy and me a reward. Of course, we never got it. But, we had selected our own rewards. Mr. F took the briefcase and I drove him and Punchy back to the gym. The other two remained behind to take care of the details — probably up in Wisconsin.
The way the story went down, Harry did the job, killed his two accomplices and took off with the loot, never to be seen again. The torpedoes at the lake house, no one knew about or asked about publicly. The cops searched, the insurance company paid off, and that was it. Messy deal, but Mr. F came out smelling like a rose. Fat animal always came out smelling like a rose, not like the sweaty pig he was.
I fought prelims for another six months, one every two weeks, sometimes every week. Four rounds, six rounds, there were a lot of small fight clubs in those days, before television ruined them. Mr. F used to pack four of us into a station wagon, along with a trainer and a second — I don’t recall him ever going along on one of those trips — and send us off to New York, with a stop in Detroit and Cleveland. Madison Square Garden, Eastern Parkway, Sunnyside Gardens, St. Nicholas Arena and then off to Philadelphia or Holyoke near Boston, and Detroit again on the way back.
Most fights in the small clubs paid $25 or $50, $100 sometimes for a six-rounder. Didn’t matter — between the manager, trainer, second, locker fees and expenses, it hardly left anything, but the experience was important. And money wasn’t the same back then. By the end of the year, I was fighting semi-finals and, soon after that, main events, ten rounds, and there was a line on my fights — pre-set odds and betting. Actually, my manager was pushing me along too quickly, but he thought more about the fast buck than about his fighters.
I won my first three main events in a row, two by knockout. I was a puncher and the crowd liked that. Next, I was matched against an aging fighter, but one who was ranked twelve or thirteen. The bookmakers had it at six to five, pick-em — even money. My manager called me into his office two days before the fight and told me to go into the tank; look good in the early rounds then go down in the eighth.
I remember the empty feeling in my gut. I was 22 years old, had been training hard, and was in the best shape I had ever been in my life. My opponent was 32 or 33, and if I beat him, I’d be in line to be ranked. I just sat there like the dumb kid I was and let this fat, money-grubbing hood tell me what to do.
It took the heart out of me, but I did as I was told and he slipped me a few hundred — I think it was $500 – extra, after the fight. Yeah, my end of the purse was $1200 and he gave me another five. I don’t know how much he made, but I’m sure it was a lot more than I did, and no one laid a glove on him. Plus, he took his usual share of my end of the purse, a third.
I won my next four fights in a row, two in Chicago, two in New York — ten-round main events, one by knockout, one TKO, and two decisions. The last one was against a tough Black fighter from Detroit, with a 19-1-1 record. I knew that whichever of us won would have a chance to be ranked, and I fought my heart out. I won a split decision, split, but I won. Sure enough, the rankings had me fifteenth.
My next fight was a scheduled ten round main event at the Garden in New York. The fighter I was matched up against had once been a highly ranked contender, number five or six, but was on a losing streak and fell off the list. It was another even-money fight, and with enough betting to be able to bury some serious money without moving the odds much, or attracting attention. FF called me in and, well, same shit. I told him how hard I had been training, started to argue, and he gave me a look that made me understood how slaves standing on the auction block must have felt.
Another man was sitting in the office with us. He was older than FF, shorter, thin, hatchet-faced, wearing a gray silk suit, white shirt, blue tie and black shoes that shone like mirrors. Somehow, I was sure that he didn’t shine those shoes himself. I didn’t know who he was, but I’d seen him before and knew my manager did business with him, like a partner.
He was one of the few people who called FF, Frankie. And I had the feeling that he was important. Maybe even more important than my manager, judging from how polite everyone was toward him. He sat in an easy chair, a little to the side, and leaned forward as though he had trouble with his hearing. I remember having the impression that he could flick out his tongue and catch a fly — like a lizard or a frog.
He laughed when he heard me argue and lit a cigar. That was it. They didn’t want to hear a thing I had to say. To FF, the purse and the gate were secondary. The gambling and the fix were what he lived for, demonstrated his power and put him above ordinary people. Sure, it’s money to people like those two, but it’s more. It’s something in their heads. And, as far as some consideration for how the fighters felt — surely, you jest.
I tanked, just the way they told me to. I didn’t want to wind up in a swamp in Wisconsin. And there’s no quitting. First off, they have you on contract. Second, no other manager would touch me if I broke away. It’s a tight little circle and they don’t step on each other’s toes. You have to accept your helplessness and look ahead. All I have left of it is a bitter memory, faded by the intervening years, and anger, diluted in a pool of many subsequent angers. But I was ashamed, and I decided that there would be no more of that stuff.
I figured out what I thought was a way around the problem if it happened again, and I was sure it would happen again. When I was first introduced to Mr. F by a coach I knew from my amateur days, I was much impressed. I thought being in with someone like him was the fast track. Now I knew better and wanted to find a way out. Hey, how is a kid supposed to know what a bunch of shit Outfit people really are? They steal all they can and screw anyone who trusts them. Those rats never kept their word in their lives except to someone they were afraid of.
Well, I thought I had come up with a solution. I was dating a girl who worked for a lawyer. She was a legal stenographer, a few years older than I was. She made an appointment for me with her boss. What I did was, I wrote down everything I knew about the jewelry burglary, including what had happened to the safecracker, his helpers, the hit men whose bodies weren’t found, and as much as I knew about the way my manager had gotten the safecracker out of the Joliet pen.
I put most of the jewelry I had taken into one of those padded envelopes, but kept the earrings and four of the loose diamonds. I figured I would need something if things didn’t work out as planned. I sealed the envelope and left it with the lawyer, gave him $500, a retainer it’s called, and agreed to pay him an additional $20 a month for keeping it in his safe. If anything happened to me, he was to open the envelope, read the letter inside and send copies to the boxing commission, the cops, the papers, everybody.
I had an important fight coming up in two weeks and my gut feeling was that my manager intended to make me throw it. I planned to tell him about the letter a day before the fight, then go in and win, and I didn’t give a damn about how much he had bet or with whom.
I think I got the idea from some bullshit Hollywood movie. I used to go to the movies a lot. Everybody did. It was the only thing people could afford in those days. But, can you imagine being that fuck’n stupid as to leave something with a lawyer, thinking to protect myself, and expect the lawyer to do what I paid him for? Yeah, I was that stupid! I don’t believe I was out of his office ten minutes before he opened the envelope and saw what was in it.
The next morning I did my roadwork, four miles, and went to the gym at my usual time, about ten a.m. The hood who stood guard in front of the office called me over and told me that my manager wanted to see me before I started my workout. I remember thinking, here’s where he tells me to throw the fight. And I remember telling myself how sharp I was to have protected myself.
As I came through the door to the inner office, someone stepped out from behind and shoved me forward toward the desk. Two more goons came over, one on each side of me. There were two or three more people in the room, including the hatchet-faced, silk suit partner. My manager was sitting behind his steel desk, leaning back in his wood swivel chair.
On the desk in front of him lay the padded envelope, torn open, my letter and the jewelry. He waved his arms from side to side, palms up, over the desk and jewelry as if he were confused and couldn’t understand what was going on. “What are you doing with my property?” he asked me. “This looks like my property. Did you steal from me?” He shook his head from side to side and broke into a smile. Everyone in the room laughed. Mr. F was putting on a little show and they knew that they were supposed to laugh. Then he scowled, his face reddened and they stopped laughing.
I felt betrayed and stupid, but mostly I felt fear and a sense of helplessness. Strong hands on my shoulders pushed me down to my knees. As I went down, I noticed, off to one side against the wall, Punchy, the ex-pug who I had been sent out to the lake house with.
He was sitting on a wooden locker room stool, motionless. I remember his face — it was yellowish. Then Mr. F leaned across his desk and looked down at me. He held my letter up with two fingers and waved it in front of my face. “First you steal from me, then you threaten me,” he spoke softly, almost as if he were asking a question.
One of the goons who pushed me down had one arm around my neck and was squeezing. My manager saw that it was hurting me. He held up one hand and said, “Don’t hurt him, he has to fight. He thinks I won’t let him fight, so he wrote things and talked to a lawyer.” He pointed a fat finger at me and broke into a grin. “That’s blackmail.” The grin was a cue for those in the room to laugh and they did.
Then he leaned forward again. “You think I’m going to hurt you?” I remember the way he shook his head, his mouth drooping down. “No, I’m not going to hurt you. You have to fight next week. People are depending on it — the other fighter, his manager, the fans, and the club. I don’t want to disappoint anyone by canceling the fight. You have to be dependable in this business if you want people to work with you.”
Then he leaned back and just sat there for about thirty seconds. “OK,” he said, making a little motion with his hands, “that’s all I got for you. You can go work out.”
The goons backed off and allowed me to get up. I glanced at Punchy and felt sorry for him. I may have gotten him killed. I don’t know, I never saw him again. My manager still needed me because money was involved. Commitments had been made and he wasn’t going to throw away money. But he wasn’t going to let it ride, either.
Three days before the fight — guess what? The fighter I was scheduled against hurt his hand, they said, and the only fighter available to replace him was the second ranking contender. Naturally, my manager said it was fine with us and we’d fight him. Get that? “We,” would fight him, like he was going to be in there with me. Incidentally, this fighter “we” were going to fight went on to win the championship a year later.
“You want to fight?” my manager said. “You don’t want to listen, so here’s your chance.” I wasn’t ready for this opponent, but I did the best I could. I took a beating and the ref stopped it in the seventh round.
I hadn’t fully recovered yet, one week later, but my manager already had me matched up against another ranking contender. “Hurry up and get ready,” he told me. The fight was scheduled to go in two weeks, not enough time for me. I was stopped in the eighth. The ref looked me over several times before stepping between us. No one expected me to last that long. I put up a good fight and the crowd loved it.
Those two fights, so close together and against fighters I wasn’t ready for, took a lot out of me. Another two years and it might have been different, but Mr. F’s game plan was to burn me out fast. That way he could get revenge and make money at the same time. Money was the name of the game and I was still worth money to him. Maybe, after he fought me into the ground and I couldn’t make any more money for him, I’d be found in an alley.
I was just 22 and that wasn’t in my plans, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. Then God took a hand — Pearl Harbor.
Confusion reigned. People were getting drafted or joining up — including fighters — and it was hard to schedule fights or make plans. I enlisted right away, the Army, and told Mr. F that I had been drafted. This was the government so there was nothing he could do about it.
I spent three years in the Pacific. Caught some shrapnel from a mortar round in the Philippines and was awarded a Purple Heart. Got a Bronze Star later on. When the war ended, well, I was among the first in and among the first out, staff sergeant when I was discharged.
I drifted around San Francisco for a few months and enjoyed myself until the separation pay and money I’d saved ran out. I have an antipathy to being broke and I only knew one thing, so I gravitated around the gyms, picked up a small-time manager and started fighting out on the West Coast — Seattle, Portland, San Francisco.
I started with prelims again and assumed an Italian name, hoping I wouldn’t be recognized. No one did until my second main event, a fight in San Francisco. I don’t know who spotted me, but all of a sudden no club would book me and my new manager, who thought I was the best thing he’d ever latched onto, didn’t want to know me.
So, I took off for New York where the fight game was best. That was around June or July of 1947. I remember how hot it was when I got off the bus in Manhattan.
TV was just coming in strong and that gave the fighters more money, but it put most of the small clubs out of business. That made it more difficult to get fights, even preliminaries. The fans stayed home or at the bar and watched ranking fighters on television instead of going to the local fight club. Still, I thought maybe New York was big enough for me to work in without being noticed by the mustache in Chicago, but I was wrong. Same thing — a new manager, a couple of fights, and dead all over again.
I came back after three years in the Pacific, fought for my country, I was wounded, won a medal — and what? This fat gangster, who didn’t do a thing during the war except stay home and make money, kept me from working, kept me jumping around the country in order to avoid him, and made me afraid of what else he might do.
Funny thing about being afraid and the stomachache that goes with it. Eventually, you get tired of looking over your shoulder and the fear turns to pure hate. What with the Army, then knocking around the West Coast and New York, I was 29 or thirty, and getting nowhere. I knew I didn’t have much time left. And being broke most of the time didn’t help my disposition.
It got to where all I wanted to do was hit back and I began to entertain thoughts of killing the fat bastard. I blew away people in the Army. Why not one parasite? It was coming to look as though that was the only way, and I began trying to figure out a way to do it. Then things came to a head without me having to go back to Chicago.
I didn’t have a manager, didn’t have a fight, but I was still working out in Stillman’s Gym and sparring for five bucks a round with contenders in any weight class. And I helped prelim fighters, too, at the same price. That, and a part-time job on a beer truck is how I paid my bills.
The way the gym was built, you came off the street through a wooden double door into a small vestibule, then up a long flight of stairs to the second floor. A landing at the top of the stairs and another door led into the main area, which housed two rings for sparring, a small seating area for visitors and a snack bar. A doorman collected $2 from visitors who came to watch the fighters spar. The lockers and showers were in the back and a balcony, accessible by way of a flight of stairs, housed the bags and other exercise equipment.
I had finished my workout, hit the showers, and was on my way down the stairs to the front door. Two men stood on the landing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me. One was short, slender, middle-thirties, with dark wavy hair, wearing an expensive brown sports coat, tan slacks and a yellow shirt with a pointed collar that overlapped his lapels. The jacket bulged on his left side.
The other man was about the same age, big, overweight, and wearing a black jacket with the zipper open and a driving cap. Looked like muscle — the usual combination. I knew they weren’t fighters or trainers and had a feeling that they were waiting for me.
As I reached the bottom of the stairs, the muscle stepped in front of me and put his hand on my chest but didn’t say anything. The dapper character stood just to the right of me and said, “Someone in Chicago wants to see you. I’m taking you back.”
That was the wrong thing to say, to the wrong person, at the wrong time. Here I was, trying to work out a way to kill the pig, and he sends these two to collect me.
I threw a left hook that caught the muscle on the side of the jaw, picture perfect. He fell back against the door and stood there, dazed. The dapper asshole reached for his gun at the same moment that I landed a right hand straight across his nose and mouth. I felt his nose move. I followed with a left to the side of his mouth. His teeth cut my hand. The gun clattered to the floor, him with it.
The muscle pulled a sap out of his pocket and swung it — a roundhouse right. I blocked with my left to his forearm, stepped in and put my right hand into his left eye. He went up against the door again and I closed his other eye with a left, then landed a solid right and left to his jaw. He was big and he slid down slowly, giving me a chance to pound away with both hands.
I threw everything to the head and face, then kicked his ribs and gut a few times as he lay on the floor. Bare fists, you know what that does. He was lying face up, one eye resting on the bridge of his nose.
The dapper guy was a mess, too, out cold, blood running from his nose and mouth onto his yellow shirt, and he was going to need some bridgework. My left hand was bleeding from cutting my knuckles on his teeth, so I wrapped a handkerchief around it. I picked up the gun, a blued .38 caliber revolver with a 2” barrel, typical, put it in my jacket pocket, and went next door to the phone booth in Whitey’s.
I tried to call the gym in Chicago but the operator wanted $2 and something. Those days, we didn’t have credit cards. We used coin-operated phones for long distance. I went to the bar for change and the bartender, an ex-pug himself, saw the bloody handkerchief and asked me what happened.
I told him that I hit someone in the mouth and his teeth cut me. He wanted to see my hand so I took off the handkerchief. The teeth marks were clearly visible and deeper than I thought.
I didn’t know the bartender well, but he knew that I was a fighter, and he laughed. He picked up a bottle and poured whiskey over the teeth marks, told me it would be fine and made change. That calmed me down and I thanked him, but when I got back in the phone booth and heard my ex- manager’s voice, I lost control.
I had already lost all fear. Any fear I might still have had was left on the floor with his two stooges. I don’t remember all the names I called him, but it was everything I could think of. I told him FF stands for fat fuck and that that’s what everyone thinks of him. I told him that dagos were niggers turned inside out. And I was loud.
The mid-afternoon crowd filled most of the barstools and some of the tables, and I was the center of attention. They could hear me right through the phone booth. I remember seeing the bartender looking at me and smiling, as if he understood.
The money FF could still make on me had to be trifling compared to what he was raking in, considering all the things that he was into, but I knew his ego was involved. Strange how some of the most disgusting cowards have the biggest egos.
I told him what I had done to his stooges just minutes ago, told him that I was sorry I didn’t kill them with their own weapon. But it wasn’t his stooges I was after, it was him, “I’m coming back to kill you no matter what it takes,” I said, and told him I’d catch up with him at the gym, his office, a restaurant, at home, anywhere. It wouldn’t matter how many hoods he had around him because I didn’t care what happened to me, just so I got him.
Nothing could stop me. I screamed it all into the phone, and added that I intended to gut shoot him because that was the worst way to die. I wasn’t bluffing and he knew it. If he were here, or if I were there at that moment, he’d be a dead man. I told him that I was on my way and hung up. Last thing I remember him saying was, “Wait a second, let’s talk.”
I never realized what chicken-shits guys like him are. People are afraid of them because they use guns and have the clout to fix almost anything. But if an enemy is coming after them with a gun, then it’s — “let’s talk.” They know that a hitter willing to die can get to anyone, anyone in the world, much less a person as easy to find as him.
Suddenly, FF wasn’t god anymore. Fear makes us predictable, makes us run from the danger, but fear suffered for too long blows one out of it. I just got tired of being afraid.
The next day I showed up at the gym on my regular schedule. I didn’t know if the sweaty pig would send anyone else after me and I didn’t care. The only thing I did differently was that I began carrying the gun I took from his hood. I didn’t use a holster, just dropped it into a pocket or tucked it in under my jacket. There was no doubt in my mind as to whether I’d use it if necessary.
The cook behind the counter at the snack bar called out to me and said, “Your manager in Chicago called and wants you to call him back.”
“I don’t have a manager in Chicago,” I told him and went on to the locker room. My hands were still sore from hitting heads bare fisted, so I didn’t spar, just skipped rope, shadow boxed and pulled my punches on the heavy bag.
I waited three days and decided to call Chicago. I called the gym, collect, and his secretary told me that “the boss,” wanted me to call him at his home. Turned out that he hadn’t been to the gym since the day I called. In fact, he hadn’t been out of his big house in Lincolnwood, just stayed home with his bodyguards.
Yeah, he stayed home for fear I’d pop him. In fact he asked the operator, twice, where the call was coming from, relieved to learn that I was still in New York.
“I’m washing my hands of you,” is what he said to me. If I could talk to him “that way,” then he no longer wanted to have anything to do with me. Someday, he told me, I would realize how much he had done for me and appreciate him. It was his way of saving face, but I didn’t care.
To rub it in, I mentioned that I still had some of the best pieces from the jewelry job. “Yeah, I stole from you and I kept some.” Stealing from a mustache is the ultimate crime, worse than murder. Don’t believe me? Ask a mustache. I told him that I wrote it all down again, about the fights I dumped, too, and this time it wouldn’t be left with some slimy, ass-kissing piece of shit who would sell me out, but with someone reliable, someone he didn’t know. He left me alone after that.
The part about still having some of the goods was bullshit, as was the story about writing everything down again. The earrings, the rest, got lost in the shuffle. I remember having the stuff at the Army induction center, but don’t know exactly when it all disappeared, or whether it got lost, left somewhere, or stolen. Anyway, the word got out that I was free and my New York manager came around to tell me about the fights he had lined up. I told him to blow it out his ass. Not that the new manager I picked up would have done any differently, but at least he wasn’t the one who ran out on me.
I fought a few more fights but didn’t get very far. Four years in the Army, away from training, hadn’t helped. Going too long between fights because of my problems didn’t help either, and maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. Probably all three, and getting older, that’s four. But I made a few bucks and my mind was at ease.
I lost a tough one to the fifth-ranking contender and decided to quit. I had absorbed enough punishment. Win or lose, those beatings take a lot out of you and the damage is cumulative. That was two years ago, 1952. Now I drive a beer truck full time, a big semi, and I have a helper. And I hang around Whitey’s in the evening, watch the fights on television and talk to the old pugs who hang out there.
It’s not a bad life, but I have a hollow feeling in my chest. I still wonder what might have been. Of course, it could have been worse. Some of the people I knew, friends I grew up with, are alcoholics, homeless, in jail or dead. Several fighters I fought or worked out with now walk on their heels and shuffle from side to side.
No one that I knew became what people would call a success. Who knows? Some of them might consider me a success. After all, I did get my name and picture in the sports section. I daydream, even when I’m sitting with people, but I’m not punchy. I know when I’m doing it.
Vince pounded his empty beer bottle on the Formica tabletop. “What? Are you asleep?” he asked me. “It’s your turn to buy.”
I wasn’t asleep, just wasn’t paying attention. Rude of Vince to pound his beer bottle on the table. Most fighters are polite. “Yeah, it’s my turn,” I said, rising from my seat at the booth. J&B Scotch was the special that night and that’s what the old pugs and I were drinking. Vince was the only one of us drinking beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon from the bottle. I walked up to the bar, ordered and waited for the bartender to put our drinks on a tray.
I turned to the window and watched the passing parade on Eighth Ave. One of the sharpies who had been sitting at a table walked by, only now he wore dark glasses, tapped a white cane on the sidewalk, and held a tin cup in front of him. Usually, the tin cup operators worked Broadway, a block away, or the theaters and restaurants on the side streets, and I wondered why he was off his reservation.