The Harder They Fall

by Budd Schulberg

  They killed the lights, we all bowed our heads and the band gave us ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, with one of those dramatic baritones on the lyrics.

  At the bell Coombs tore out of his corner as if he were going to make short work of Toro and fell ferociously into a clinch. They pushed and pulled and pawed their way through the round. All of Coombs’ violence was in his face, which he worked pugnaciously, and in the aggressive way he breathed through his busted nose. Toro floundered around, trying an occasional jab and now and then throwing his wild right before his feet were set. The most energy expended in the round came from Acosta, who bent forward as if he were going to jump into the ring himself and kept up a running patter of semi-hysterical instruction, which was far more entertaining than the fight. As the round ended, he leapt into the ring, got in the way of Danny and Doc, put his mouth against Toro’s ear and gesticulated excitedly. I could see Danny’s face grow taut with irritation.

  In the second round they wrestled each other for the first minute, and then Toro pushed his right glove toward Coombs’ chest and Miniff’s warrior sank slowly to the canvas and stretched out comfortably. At ten he made a half-hearted effort to rise and flopped down again. Toro looked surprised and dragged Coombs back to his corner. That was all in the act too, though Toro didn’t know it. I just told him in case he won by a knockout, it was considered good sportsmanship up here to help the man back to his corner yourself.

  There were scattered boos from the more observant, but the fans, collectively, seemed to be satisfied that they had seen a quick and decisive knockout. As I pushed my way up the aisle the cash customers were happily expressing their gullibility. ‘What a build!’ ‘He’s got King Kong beat!’ ‘Ya couldn’t hurt that guy with a sledgehammer!’ ‘That last one musta hurt!’

  But I heard someone behind me say, ‘How did you call it, Al?’ and the answer snapped back, ‘They ought to give Coombs an Oscar for the Best Supporting Performance of the year.’

  I looked around and saw it was Al Leavitt, the wise guy from the News. I kept going as if I hadn’t seen him. Why bother with him? He wasn’t even syndicated.

  In the corridor, outside the dressing room, a large crowd of hero-worshippers, curiosity-seekers and bandwagon boys were gathering. Inside were the reporters, celebrities and the usual visiting firemen who always manage to find their way to a winner’s dressing room after a fight.

  As soon as he saw me, Acosta ran over and threw his arms around me. His eyes were wild and he looked as if he were on the stuff, but it was just the overstimulation of personal triumph. ‘He win! He win!’ he shouted. ‘My El Toro, is he not everything I say?’ Then he ran back and kissed Toro who was lying on the rubbing table. Toro seemed pleased with himself too. ‘I hit and he go boom,’ he said several times.

  Danny was standing off to one side, eyeing the scene coldly. ‘Come on, Doc, get him into a shower,’ he said irritably. ‘Whatta you want him to do, catch a cold?’ His face was very white and his eyes had that washed-out look that always settled in them when he was drinking.

  Acosta looked like a busy little tugboat towing a great liner as he led Toro to the showers. ‘Please, out of the way, out of the way,’ he shouted importantly, pushing through the dressing-room crowd. At the entrance to the showers, Toro paused and turned to Doc. ‘This man I knock out, he is not hurt, no? He is okay?’

  Doc assured him that Coombs was going to recover. Toro had dropped it in there as if it had been rehearsed. I noticed several of the reporters scribbling it down. ‘You see, he’s scared to death he’s going to kill somebody,’ I explained. ‘Ever since he almost knocked that guy off back in Argentina.’

  Al Leavitt was leaning against the door with an unwholesome smile on his face. ‘As a fighter that Coombs does a beautiful one-and-a-half gaynor,’ he said.

  ‘You wouldn’t trust your own mother, would you?’ I said.

  ‘Not if she was in the fight game,’ Leavitt said.

  ‘Come on out to Pat Drake’s and cool off,’ I said. ‘Pat’s throwing a little party – just four or five hundred people – up at his joint in Bel Air.’

  Drake was an ex-chauffeur for Nick back in his boot days who wandered into Hollywood when things got hot in New York, started working extra and went to the top as a rival studio’s answer to Bogart.

  ‘Okay, I’ll come,’ Leavitt said, ‘but I’ll still tab it for an El Foldo.’

  Drake’s party was complete with swimming pool, floodlights, buffet, butlers, bartenders, a seven-piece orchestra, celebrities and all the other necessary ingredients of a successful Hollywood party. As usual, Nick had known what he was doing to choose Hollywood for Toro’s debut. The Hollywood crowd were sufficiently immersed in sentimentalism, hyperbole and hero-worship to go off the deep end for Toro Molina. Male stars whose faces were altars of a new idolatry crowded around to shake Toro’s hand and glamour-coated actresses whose pin-ups have become a national fetish flocked around like autograph hunters. Dave Stempel rushed up to congratulate me. ‘Terrific, Eddie, really terrific!’ he said. ‘Like nothing human. Hits like a sledgehammer.’

  Toro looked astonished and ill at ease. A soulful-faced star who was known for her genteel, ladylike roles was smiling up at him over her drink. Ruby came up to me with a cocktail in her hand and said, ‘I’d better rescue him from that glamour-puss. I hear she’s the biggest she-wolf in town. Toro would be just dumb enough to go for her.’

  A few minutes later Ruby was dancing with him. Nick was inside playing stud with Drake and some other boys. Quite a couple, she and Toro. He was wearing a sharp white Palm Beach, one of those new suits I angled for him. Ruby was wearing a black low-cut, semi-formal gown with a large, black onyx cross pointing down the valley between her full breasts. Around her head was a black velvet snood. Her dark eyes were half-closed and her body moved with self-confidence. She was not as symmetrical and fashionably underweight as some of the film stars who had made sex appeal their profession, but there was a mature female luxuriance to Ruby that promised more than the slenderised narrow-waisted figures of the professional body-beautifuls.

  I found Danny at the bar, which had been set up under a bright awning near the pool. He was waiting for the bartender to refill his glass. His legs were spread apart to balance himself and he was staring out over the crowd with pale, tired eyes. ‘Hello, laddie,’ he said when he recognised me. ‘You having fun, laddie? I’m getting drunk, laddie. Any objections?’

  ‘How do you think it looked, Danny?’

  His face twisted to a bitter smile. ‘You know what I think, laddie, I think it looked putrid. I think he’s the goddamest saddest excuse for a prizefighter I ever saw. I think we’re all going to wind up with the Commish taking our goddam licences away.’

  ‘Don’t forget Jimmy Quinn and the Commission are like this,’ I said. ‘With Jimmy on top. He helps pick ’em.’

  Danny lifted his next drink off the bar. ‘Happy days, laddie,’ he said.

  Just then Luis Acosta came up to us, ready for more embracing and congratulations. ‘Is it not true now everything I have say?’ He couldn’t help laughing as he talked. ‘El Toro is magnífico, no? He give you a big surprise, hey?’

  Danny turned away from him without saying anything. Acosta’s ebullience was suddenly checked. ‘I do not understan’, please,’ he protested to me. ‘Tonight we have the first victory. We celebrate. We are all on the way to a big success. I think perhaps it is time we all are become friends, no?’

  Danny turned around and stared at him so long before he said anything that Acosta began to shift his eyes in embarrassment.

  ‘Go away,’ Danny said.

  Acosta looked frightened, blinked rapidly as if trying not to weep and walked stiffly away.

  Danny’s rare stands of hostility always left him with a sense of inner discomfort. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, laddie, but that little cheerleader is on his way home. He’s through tomorrow.’

  ‘Nick’s going to let him go?�
��

  Danny nodded. ‘Nick’s gonna tell him in the morning. How d’ya say it in spic talk, adios? It’s adios tomorrow for Señor Acosta. Adios.’

  I watched Acosta puffing up with pride again as he rejoined the party. A famous director and his divorced wife who had starred in his last picture were inviting Acosta to sit down with them. Soon Acosta was doing the talking. The gestures were where I had come in. ‘And so now my great discovery, El Toro Magnifico, is on his way to the championship of the world,’ he was undoubtedly saying. He had hitched a ride on a flying carpet and now he was soaring up into the heavens, happily unaware that the carpet was being pulled out from under him.

  I wandered over toward the pool. Several couples were in swimming. The Killer was poised on the high-board, showing off his chest development, proud of his muscular little body. Knifing into the water he stayed under a long time. The little mouse who was his for the evening screamed and he broke surface, laughing. She pretended to be insulted but he dove down again and in a moment she was laughing too. In the morning I would hear all about it.

  On my way over toward the dancers I passed Toro and Ruby, sitting on a stone bench in the garden. Toro was laughing at something Ruby was saying. It occurred to me that I had never seen him laugh before. ‘We’re having a wonderful time,’ Ruby said. ‘I talk to him in English and he answers in Spanish. I’ve promised to start giving him English lessons.’

  ‘She teach me the English,’ Toro said cheerfully.

  ‘Swell,’ I said. ‘Only don’t forget Danny’s lessons come first.’

  It was just a very light jab and it didn’t seem to hurt her. ‘He learns very fast,’ she said. She smiled at him and he became flustered and ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘Hey, Molina, I been looking all over for you,’ a voice called from across the garden. It was Doc. ‘I’ve had a cab standing by for half an hour to take you back to the hotel.’

  Toro looked at Ruby. ‘I no tired. I stay.’

  Doc shook his head. ‘Know what time it is, after one o’clock. The only fighter I ever saw who could stay up all night and win was Harry Greb. And you ain’t Greb.’

  Toro pushed his big lips out in his child’s pout. ‘But I ask Luis. Luis say I can stay.’

  ‘Sorry, brother, Luis has nothing to say about this. I’m the bugler in this outfit and I’m blowing taps.’

  ‘I’m leaving in a couple of minutes, Doc,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ll drop him off if you like.’

  ‘It’s all the way downtown, Mrs Latka,’ Doc said. ‘I’ll take him home with me.’ He started to pull Toro to his feet. ‘Let’s go, Molina.’

  I sat on the bench with Ruby as the hunchback led his charge toward the house. She asked for a cigarette and as I leant toward her to light it for her I was conscious of an evil covetousness in her eyes. And it wasn’t for me.

  ‘Nick still in the game?’ I said.

  ‘You know Nick. He’ll stay there till he comes out a winner if it takes him till tomorrow afternoon.’

  Nick played everything for blood, a penny-a-point gin game as seriously as no-limit poker.

  ‘I never knew a guy who hates to lose as bad as Nick does,’ Ruby said. ‘When a horse he likes runs out or something, for a week or so there’s just no living with him.’

  ‘I’d hate to be around when he finds he’s backed a wrong horse,’ I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Next morning, while Toro went to church with Ruby, I took Acosta up to see Nick. With nothing else to write about, the sports pages had given Toro a big play, with one write-up spotting Acosta’s running patter of exhortation through the ropes. This public recognition fattened his pride. All the way out to Beverly Hills I had to listen to his vainglorious variations on an already too familiar theme. ‘You see, Luis tol’ the truth when he say El Toro will make us all very rich and famous,’ Acosta said as we walked along the row of palm trees to Nick’s bungalow.

  Nick was having breakfast with the Killer in the patio. He was sitting in his monogrammed bathrobe, smoking a cigar and reading the papers. Acosta gave him his cordial little bow and his most ingratiating smile and began to word one of those flattering greetings when Nick cut him off. Nick always took the quick way.

  ‘Killer, did you find out when that boat leaves for Buenos Air-ees?’ he said.

  ‘Thursday midnight from Pedro,’ Killer said.

  ‘That’s the boat you go home on,’ Nick said.

  Acosta looked at him unbelievingly. ‘Please? I do not understan’…’

  Nick looked at me. ‘You wanna tell him in his own language?’

  ‘No, no,’ Acosta said, desperate-eyed, ‘I understan’ the English. It is just that I do not understan’…’

  ‘Well, if you understand English, that’s it,’ Nick said. ‘Thursday at midnight we put you on the boat.’

  ‘No, no, I will not go. You cannot do this. I belong with El Toro. I stay with him!’ Acosta cried.

  ‘Shhh,’ Nick quieted him with his hand. ‘This is a classy joint. The guy next door is a bigshot. What d’ya want him to think I am, a bum?’

  ‘But El Toro and I, we come together, we stay together, or he goes back with me,’ Acosta insisted.

  ‘That’s not the way it’s gonna be,’ Nick said quietly. ‘Jimmy Quinn and me, we own Molina. If you want to take your five per cent back with you, that’s your business. But ninety-five stays here with me.’

  ‘But he’s mine. He belongs to me. You took him from me. You cannot push me out like this,’ Acosta screamed.

  ‘We put you on the boat Thursday night,’ Nick said.

  ‘But why you make me go?’ Acosta demanded. ‘What I do, what I do wrong?’

  ‘You’re a pest,’ Nick said. ‘You’re not satisfied to sit back and take your lousy five per cent.’

  The blood of anger was rising into Acosta’s face. ‘I stay here,’ he yelled, ‘I fight. I see a lawyer. I get El Toro back.’

  Nick calmly poured himself another cup of coffee. ‘No, you go Thursday. Your visa runs out next week. You can’t get an extension on your work visa because we don’t need you. My partner’s already explained that to a friend of his who’s got an in with the State Department. So we only got an extension for Molina. My bookkeeper’ll mail you your five per cent.’

  I was sitting off a little to one side, watching the conflict rise to its sorry climax as if it were a play I was seeing from a front-row seat. It would have been nice if my involvement in the action had been cut off cleanly at the fall of the third-act curtain. Nice, but unprofitable. No, I wasn’t in the audience, I was on stage, no matter how close to the wings I tried to inch my chair.

  ‘No visa,’ Acosta said, the fight gone out of him, pursing his small lips as if he were going to cry. ‘You fix it so I get no visa. You fix it so I must leave El Toro here.’ The little eyes were moist with frustration now. The jaunty arrogance, the elaborate self-importance had been torn away from him, leaving him as small and scrawny and absurdly pathetic as a defeathered bluejay.

  ‘Now I’ll tell you what I’m going to do for you,’ Nick said. ‘I’m going to give you a five-thousand-dollar advance against your percentage. You’ll get that in cash on the boat Thursday if you tell Toro you want him to stay here with us and that we’ll look after him. Have we got a deal?’

  Acosta looked at him dully.

  ‘Don’t forget, if you don’t tell Toro, he stays, and you go just the same,’ Nick said. ‘Only without the five Gs.’

  ‘I understan’,’ Acosta said.

  I couldn’t look at his face. Somehow I had the crazy feeling my complicity would increase the more I looked at that face.

  ‘Well, you want that dough?’ Nick said. His voice was unemotional, businesslike. ‘Is it a deal?’

  Acosta nodded slowly, almost as if he had become disinterested. ‘All right, a deal,’ he said with the boredom of the defeated.

  Nick indicated me with his cigar. ‘Eddie’ll sit in with you when you tell Toro,’ he t
old Acosta. ‘Just so I’ll know.’

  Acosta turned around to include me in his distrust of Nick. I could feel myself being dragged from the wings onto the middle of the stage. I looked down at my lap. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, that I wouldn’t have done this, that I understood what identifying himself with Toro had meant to him. But what was the percentage? Was there any use dealing myself out of Nick’s favour when I couldn’t do anything for Acosta anyway?

  Some day, if I played my cards right, things would be different. By then, maybe I’d have bought myself enough time off to finish my play. And if it clicked, Beth and I could … But meanwhile, here in the hot sun of the patio in Beverly Hills, things were happening the way Nick wanted them to happen and all I could do was vote Ja.