The Professional

by W. c. Heinz

  “Now I’m not a very big guy, see, and this guy don’t know we’re all together. So when he says that, Louie is sittin’ next to me and he ain’t big either, but Pretzel leans behind Louie and he puts that big paw of his on the guy’s shoulder and he pushes him right back in his seat. Ain’t that right, Pretzel?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “So Pretzel says: ‘He don’t know what he can do, Mister, but you know what you can do?’ The guy says: ‘Whatta ya mean?’ Pretzel says: ‘Put up or shut up.’ The guy says: ‘All right, if you wanna bet.’

  “So I say: ‘How much?’ He says: ‘I’ll bet ten bucks.’ I said: ‘Are you kiddin’? All that noise you’re makin’ and you’re gonna bet a lousy ten. I’ll bet you fifty, even.’ The guy says: ‘I ain’t got that much with me.’ I said: ‘Whatta ya got?’ He says: ‘I’ll bet twenty.’ I said: ‘You’re on.’”

  “So what happened?”

  “So what happened? Eddie knocked that other guy out in the fifth round.”

  “Good punches,” Louie said, and the rest nodded. “Eddie kept hittin’ him in the belly and in the fourth round he raised up and hit him a hook on the chin and I said: ‘Oh boy, here it comes.’ He let him go then, but in the fifth round he raised up again and that guy’s head went right under the bottom rope. What a punch Eddie hit him.”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said. “I took the guy’s twenty. He wasn’t a bad guy.”

  “No,” I said, “not after Pretzel leaned on him.”

  “We bet all of Eddie’s fights. We always place some before the fight and then we always find some sucker at the fight, makin’ noise or somethin’, so we oblige him. You know?”

  “Except in Philadelphia,” Pete said.

  “Yeah,” Pretzel said. “That wasn’t right.”

  “I understand that was a bad decision,” I said.

  “A bad decision?” Frankie said. “That’s what you call it?”

  “It was the worst decision there ever was,” Louie said. “Two of the officials give it to the other guy and, believe me, Eddie won eight of the ten rounds. Absolutely won them.”

  “How about Harry that night?” Frankie said, looking at Harry.

  “Don’t embarrass him,” Louie said.

  I looked at Harry and Harry looked at me and shrugged and looked away.

  “After the fight we’re comin’ out to catch the train back to New York and we look and we don’t see no Harry.”

  “I had to go to the men’s room,” Harry said, looking at me and shrugging again.

  “So Louie and I go lookin’ for him, and we find him in the men’s room. Tell him, Louie.”

  “Ah, forget it.”

  “No. We find him in the men’s room, and he’s the only guy there by now and you know what he’s doin’?”

  “No.”

  “He’s cryin’, I mean Harry had tears in his eyes.”

  “And he’s the only guy don’t bet,” Louie said. “He didn’t even bet the fight.”

  I looked at Harry. He was facing the bar and he had his head down a little and he was sipping his drink.

  “Well,” I said, “that just shows what Eddie means to Harry and to all of you.”

  “Right,” Frankie said. “Eddie is the greatest, and after he becomes champion and people get to know it they’ll see. How come them sports writers don’t write better about Eddie?”

  “They don’t knock him.”

  “I know, but they write what a fighter the other guy is. Eddie’ll knock him out. Why don’t they write that about Eddie?”

  “Well, the other guy is champion and he’s had most of his fights in New York. Doc has moved Eddie around the country and brought him along slowly. They haven’t seen Eddie in many of his fights, and they haven’t seen him in his best ones.”

  “They’ll see him,” Frankie said. “He’ll show ’em. He’ll show all the wise guys.”

  “Tell me about Eddie when all you guys were growing up.”

  “How do you mean?” Louie said.

  “Was he a tough kid?”

  “We didn’t live on no Park Avenue,” Frankie said.

  “Eddie could always fight,” Louie said. “He liked to fight. I mean he didn’t go lookin’ for fights, but he had what you call a temper.”

  “Yeah, you remember what a temper he had?” Frankie said. “Wow! And now he don’t have it no more. You ever notice that?”

  “Now he’s a pro,” I said.

  “He had a temper all right,” Louie said, “but he was right. He wasn’t a mean guy. If some guy did somethin’ wrong then Eddie would blow his top. He licked a lot of guys that way, especially in some of them fights we had with guys from the other neighborhoods.”

  “Was Eddie the toughest guy on your block, then?”

  “Eddie?” Frankie said. “No. Tony was. He was a couple years older than Eddie, and Eddie was never crazy like Tony.”

  “Tony?”

  “Tony Marino,” Louie said. “Dom, that couldn’t come here today—the guy that works on the tracks—was Tony’s younger brother. Tony was the toughest.”

  “I remember now,” I said. “Eddie has mentioned Tony.”

  “The toughest that ever was,” Frankie said. “There was nobody as tough.”

  “Except his brother,” Pete said. “Angelo.”

  “Go on,” Frankie said. “Angelo wasn’t tough. Them guys pack guns ain’t really tough. Tony was ten times tougher with just his fists.”

  “Angelo was two years older than Tony,” Louie said to me. “He’s in Sing Sing now.”

  “Twenty to life,” Frankie said. “He killed some poor slob run a candy store. They shoulda juiced him, but they give him twenty to life. Just a hood.”

  “Tell me more about Tony.”

  “He was the leader,” Louie said, laughing.

  “What a guy,” Frankie said. “You remember that day we’re all up on the roof and that cop come down the street lookin’ for us?”

  “Yeah,” Pretzel said.

  “He’s walkin’ along lookin’ around and we’re all lookin’ down. Tony—like Louie says, he was the leader—he says: ‘Watch me drop this on his potata.’ You know what he done?”

  “No.”

  “There was this brick there. He dropped it right on him.”

  “Hit him?”

  “On the shoulder. Lucky for us he don’t hit him on the head. He might of killed him, he hit him on the head.”

  “How we run,” Louie said.

  “Right over the roofs. We come down where Harry lived.”

  “Were you in on this?” I said to Harry.

  “Not that day.”

  “He was probably readin’,” Louie said. “Harry used to read a lot.”

  “I’m all for readers,” I said.

  “I still like to read,” Harry said.

  “The cop knew who done it,” Frankie said. “About a week later he catches us on the street and he grabbed Tony. Remember?”

  “Sure.”

  “He made a pass at him with the stick and Tony ducked under it and give the cop the knee. He give him the knee as hard as he could and that cop went white. He grabbed himself and doubled right over and went into a store. He went into that Dutchman’s. You remember? We all run.”

  “I remember,” Harry said. “I said: ‘Tony, he’ll get you for this. He’ll take you in.’ Tony said: ‘Take me in? If he takes me in it’ll be a joke in the station house. They’ll laugh at him, that a kid like me give it to him. He don’t dare take me in.’”

  “He was right,” Louie said.

  “Tony was always right,” Frankie said. “He had a good head. What a fighter he could have made. He could punch like Graziano. He’d have been champion of the world.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He’s dead,” Louie said. “He got killed in the war.”

  “On Iwo Jimi,” Frankie said.

  “Iwo Jima,” Louie said.

  “Jimi Jima,” Frankie said. “Tony was t
here. He was a hero. Can you imagine? Tony was a hero.”

  “I can believe it.”

  “He was a sergeant,” Frankie said. “Some guy come back told us. At night he used to go around where they had the guys posted to see if they were all right. Everything was dark and quiet, you know? The guy said them Japs used to come out of some caves, or somethin’, at night, so this one night Tony sees this Jap sneakin’ up on one of Tony’s guys and Tony didn’t want to make no noise because he didn’t know how many Japs there were so he just sprung on this Jap and the guy says he choked him to death with his bare hands. What a fighter Tony was.”

  “That’s not how he got killed, though,” Harry said.

  “He got killed helpin’ a guy. Some guy was wounded and layin’ out in the open and Tony run out and picked him up and started to bring him back and the Japs opened up with a machine gun and killed Tony.”

  “It’s a screwy thing,” Louie said. “A lot of people didn’t think Tony was any good, because of Angelo and the way Tony acted wild. I mean the old people on the block.”

  “I saw his mother a couple of weeks ago,” Harry said. “One Sunday afternoon my mother said to me: ‘Why don’t you go see old Mrs. Marino. Since Dom got married she lives alone now and she’s not so well.’ So I went up to her flat and she was just sitting there in a rocking chair and she’s got Tony’s picture there on the table, in his uniform, and right by the picture she’s got the Purple Heart and the Silver Star that they sent her.”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said. “Tony got the Silver Star.”

  “What’s the matter with the drinks?” Louie said.

  “Pretzel and me have been puttin’ in this beer,” Pete said.

  “Girot’s making another round now,” I said. “Tell me about Helen.”

  “Who?”

  “Eddie’s wife. Helen. She lived on the block.”

  “You ever meet Helen?” Louie said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “To tell you the truth,” Frankie said, “I was surprised when Eddie started goin’ with Helen. Eddie never paid too much attention to girls.”

  “Yeah, not like you,” Pete said.

  “Helen never paid too much attention to Eddie, either,” Louie said, “until he became a fighter. Then he became somebody in our neighborhood.”

  “Her old lady didn’t think so,” Pete said.

  “Louie was the best man when Eddie got married,” Frankie said. “Right, Louie?”

  “Where did they get married?” I said.

  “In City Hall,” Frankie said.

  “No,” Louie said. “In the Municipal Building.”

  “How did they happen to get married there?”

  “They were gonna get married by a justice of the peace,” Louie said. “Helen’s old lady wasn’t too hot for Helen gettin’ married to Eddie, so Helen had the idea they should go up some place in Westchester and get married by the justice of the peace. You know? Real romantic?”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said.

  “So Eddie had this secondhand Ford, and one night in the summer he got the car out and picked me up and then he picked up Helen. They had their blood test certificates and everything, and we drove up to Yonkers. You know Yonkers?”

  “Yes. An old vaudeville joke.”

  “We’re in the north part of Yonkers, a nice neighborhood, and we don’t know where we’re goin’. Up ahead there’s this Good Humor ice-cream guy got his truck parked under a street light and Helen says: ‘Stop and ask him. He’ll know where there’s a justice of the peace.’

  “Now Eddie stops the car and the guy comes over and stands there. I’m sittin’ on the side by the guy, and Helen is sittin’ in the middle and I’m waitin’ for Eddie to say something. The guy says: ‘What’ll it be, folks?’ So Helen says to Eddie: ‘Go ahead. Ask him.’”

  “Wait’ll you hear this,” Frankie said to me. “This is Eddie for you.”

  “So Eddie says: ‘What flavors you got?’ I’d like to die.”

  “How do you like that?” Frankie said to me.

  “So the guy reels off a whole list of flavors and Eddie says to Helen: ‘What’ll you have?’ Helen says: ‘Nothing.’ She was steamin’. So Eddie says to me: ‘How about you, Louie?’ I said: ‘No, thanks.’ Then Eddie says to the guy: ‘I’ll have a toasted almond.’ I’ll never forget he said a toasted almond.

  “While the guy went to get the Good Humor I figured I better do something. Eddie and Helen are just sittin’ there and sayin’ nothing, and I feel sorry for Eddie. When the guy comes back and gives Eddie the ice cream I said to the guy; ‘Say, where’s there a justice of the peace around here?’ The guy says: ‘I don’t know. I don’t live here. I just work here, and I never saw any justice of the peace.’

  “So we drove back home, nobody saying anything, and they dropped me off at my place and the next morning Eddie came around and picked me up and we picked up Helen and we took the subway down to the Municipal Building and some judge married them. I don’t remember his name. Then they went to Atlantic City for a couple of days.”

  “When they come back, Helen’s old man had a blowout at his bar,” Frankie said. “We all went. It was a pretty good party.”

  “Eddie’s got his own home in the Bronx now,” Pete said. “You ever been there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I met him there the day we came up here.”

  “It’s a real nice place, ain’t it?” Frankie said.

  “Yes, it is. Do you guys visit him up there?”

  “We been there once,” Louie said.

  “Eddie called us up one night,” Frankie said. “Helen was going out and he called us and we all went up. It’s a nice place.”

  “Give us another round, will you, Girot?” Louie said.

  “What are you guys talking about, anyway?” Eddie said, walking up to us.

  “Who’s that dame you been sittin’ with?” Frankie said. “You can do better than that.”

  “Television,” Eddie said. “She’s from television.”

  “You’re gonna be on television?”

  “On Monday afternoon.”

  “What time?”

  “Two o’clock. The Bunny Williams show.”

  “I heard that name,” Frankie said.

  “We’ll all get away and watch it,” Louie said.

  “Hey!” Frankie said to me. “You’ll have to come down to the neighborhood right after the fight. When Eddie wins that title we’re gonna have a real blowout that night. Be sure to come.”

  “It’ll be a real blowout, too,” Eddie said to me.

  “Where do you have it? At Helen’s father’s bar?”

  “Hell, no,” Frankie said. “We got another place.”

  “You can come down with me, Frank,” Eddie said. “You’ll see these guys as they really are.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “How come you guys came up today?” Eddie said.

  “It’s Saturday, ain’t it?” Louie said.

  “Is it?” Eddie said. “That shows you. Up here I don’t have any idea what day it is. Every day is the same.”

  17

  By Monday it was raining again. It was just a fine mist when Jay got me up and Eddie went out on the road with the others, but by the time they had all come back and Eddie had cooled out and we had had breakfast it had turned into a steady spring fall.

  We left just before nine o’clock, in Eddie’s car, and Doc sat in front with Eddie and I sat in the back with Jay. The change of routine and of scenery seemed to spark Jay and he talked almost incessantly, about a car he once owned until the finance company claimed it, about his trip up to camp with his friend Stanley, about the kind of camp he would run if he were Girot, about the kind of place to buy if you want to live in the country and, when we crossed the bridge at Bear Mountain, about the George Washington Bridge and the hazards of being a steel-worker. Now and then, while Jay was talking, Doc would say something to Eddie and Eddie would nod and say something to D
oc. I doubt that they heard much of what Jay was saying.

  When we got to New York, Eddie finally put the car in the new lot on the corner west of Shor’s. It was 11:45, and in the rain, we were lucky to get a cab to go the six blocks to the commission.

  “This is better than the old place,” Jay was saying, as the four of us rode up in the elevator. “You remember the old place, where you had to go all the way down to Foley Square?”

  “Yes. I remember.”

  “I remember once—”

  The elevator stopped and we followed Doc out. Mel Nathan, from the Garden, was sitting on the bench and when he saw us stepping out he stood up and shook hands all the way around.

  “Gee, I’m glad you’re here,” he said to Doc.

  “Ah. What were you worried about? That we wouldn’t show?”

  “No, but Eddie’s gonna be on that television show this afternoon, right?”

  “No,” Doc said. “He’s not.”

  “What? He’s not gonna be on? I was just talking this morning to some gal over there who said it was all set. She was up to see you.”

  “Relax, Mel,” Eddie said.

  “Then you’ll be on?”

  “Sure.”

  “What are you trying to do, kid me?” Mel said to Doc.

  “Kid you? The smartest publicity man in boxing? Where would I get off trying to kid you?”

  “We might as well go in. The doctor’s in there.”

  There were three photographers sitting on the bench inside, their cameras in their laps, and they got up and shook hands with Eddie and with Doc. Doctor Martin was sitting on the corner of a desk, talking to a mousy middle-aged Civil Service secretary, who kept nodding as he talked, and when he finished he walked over to us and shook hands.

  “You look good,” he said to Eddie.

  “Thanks. So do you.”

  “He should,” Doc said. “He dies his hair. He’s as old as I am.”

  “But I’m in shape,” Martin said.

  “His name’s not Martin, either. He’s a dago, but he won’t admit it.”

  “Who won’t admit it? Listen, I saved a few of your fighters.”

  “I know you did,” Doc said, smiling. “You’re all right.”

  “Let’s go in.”

  “Where’s the other guy?” Doc said.

  “He’s not here yet. I’ll look at Eddie, and get it over with.”