The Professional

by W. c. Heinz

  “Can I see you a minute, Eddie?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll get out,” I said.

  “No,” Eddie said, and then to Penna: “You want to see me alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then we’ll go in the bathroom,” Eddie said.

  He stood up and led Penna into the bathroom. Penna turned and closed the door behind them. In less than a minute they came out.

  “I’ll see you,” Penna said, and left without looking toward me.

  “What’s eating him?” I said.

  “This,” Eddie said, and he handed me something. As it dropped into my hand I could see it was a ring. Then I turned it and saw that it was a man’s gold ring, with a ruby set in it.

  “What’s this?” I said, and then it came to me. “Was this Jay’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How about that? It was Penna after all.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t think he took it, either.”

  “You know I didn’t think so. So what made him bring it back?”

  “Who knows?”

  I gave the ring back to Eddie, and he looked at it.

  “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know. He said he doesn’t know why he did it. He said he was going to hock it, and then bet it on me in the fight. Then he said today he decided to give it back.”

  “What did you say to all this?”

  “I don’t know. I said: ‘Thanks, Al.’ What could I say?”

  “Nothing. I think I’ll take those tickets up now.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “Sure. I met you there the day we went up to camp.”

  “That’s right. I forgot. Thanks, Frank.”

  “Forget it.”

  I told the cabbie what I wanted, and made him feel better by telling him he could wait for me and bring me right back. He stayed off the West Side Highway to avoid the first of the evening exodus and went up through Harlem and across the river into the Bronx and onto North Broadway and worked in off that, so that we made much better time than I had thought we would.

  “Just leave it running,” I said, when I got out, “because I won’t even be going into the house.”

  There was a light on in the living room, but I had to ring the bell twice before she came to the door. She was wearing gray slacks and a light blue sweater.

  “Your tickets, madame,” I said, handing them to her.

  “Oh, hello,” she said. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “Don’t thank me. I got them from Doc.”

  “And broke his heart, I’ll bet.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Anyway, you know I’ll be rooting hard for all of you tonight. Eddie’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Well, I thought when I got back in the cab, I tried, anyway. At the hotel I went into the bar and was halfway through a drink when Doc and Freddie Thomas came in. Doc ordered a Scotch, straight with a water chaser, and Freddie Thomas ordered a Coke.

  “You all straightened out?” I said to Doc.

  “Yeah. Tickets make more trouble than the opponent. I’m sorry you had to get involved with that.”

  “You were right about Al Penna.”

  “What about him?”

  “He was up to see Eddie, and he gave him Jay’s ring back.”

  “He did?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When?”

  “Shortly after you two left. I should apologize to my candidate, Cardone.”

  “How about that no-good SOB.”

  “What happened?” Freddie Thomas said.

  I explained it to him. He kept shaking his head.

  “So what did he give it back for?” Doc said. “He’d already scored.”

  “Who knows?” I said. “I like to feel that, this day of the fight, he felt something for Eddie. Penna’s a screwball and a brigand, but when it came up to today he felt something. He found out he’s on your side. That’s just my theory, of course.”

  “Who needs him?” Doc said.

  “That’s right,” Freddie Thomas said. “Some business we’re in.”

  “Yes, but you’re wrong about the business here. If anything, it led him to give the ring back. That took a little guts.”

  “Let’s have one more drink,” Doc said. “I could use another one.”

  “If we can sit down, and you’ll take yours in the water. I don’t want you drinking it straight.”

  “I could finish a quart tonight and still be sober,” Doc said.

  I paid for the drinks at the bar and we went to a small black-topped table in a corner of the dark room. Doc went out once to be sure the phone was cut off in Eddie’s room, and we nursed that second drink for about forty-five minutes. Then we ordered again, and Freddie Thomas had a second Coke and we nursed those.

  “You feel all right?” I said to Doc, finally.

  “What do you think? Forty-five years comes down to one night.”

  “I know. I don’t know what I’m doing, getting involved with un-nice people like you and that fighter of yours. Right now I’d like to walk out of here and go to some remote bar and get drunk and not even see the fight. I’d read about it tomorrow.”

  “Believe me, I would, if I were you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “For four years I’ve watched that other guy every time I could. I knew they’d move him into that title. If he can find a way to lick the Pro tonight it just doesn’t add. Forty-five years don’t add. There has got to come a time in that fight tonight when that other guy will know that there’s nothing he can do to win, and when he knows it he’ll show it and everybody will know it. That will be the moment.”

  “It’s what the bull fighters call the Moment of Truth,” I said.

  “They do?”

  “There’s Eddie now,” Freddie Thomas said.

  Eddie was standing near the bar. A nicely dressed young man, with a girl, had turned on his bar stool and was holding his hand out to Eddie. Eddie avoided the hand by placing his two hands on the other’s shoulders and nodding and saying something. Then he turned and came over to our table and we made room for him and he sat down.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Doc said.

  “Nothing. I rested. I was looking for you guys.”

  “You sleep any?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I feel all right.”

  Under the slim, indirect lighting in the dark room I could see heads turning at the bar to look at him. The two bartenders were watching him, too.

  “It’s about time to go to the Garden, isn’t it?” he said.

  “What time is it?” Doc said.

  “Up there,” Eddie said, pointing. “A quarter to eight.”

  Where he pointed there was a clock on the wall above and behind the bar. It was set flat into the dark wall, just gilded hands and small rectangular markers, like second lieutenant’s bars, for the numbers, that part of the wall serving as the face of the clock.

  “In a few minutes,” Doc said. “We’ve got time.”

  “I got the tickets to Helen,” I said to Eddie.

  “Gee, thanks. I called her again and she said you were there. She put the kid on the phone.”

  “How is he?”

  “Fine. Helen promised him I’d buy him something tomorrow.”

  “He didn’t want you to guess the name of his playmate’s cousin?”

  “No,” Eddie said, smiling. “Thank God he forgot that.”

  The young man from the bar came over with a postcard for Eddie to sign. Then a woman came over with another card.

  “We might as well get out of here,” Doc said.

  “I’ll go up and get the bags,” Freddie Thomas said.

  Eddie signed two more cards and we walked out into the lobby. Eddie stood at the newsstand, scanning the front-page headlines and looking at the magazine covers until Freddie Thomas came down carrying the two zipper bags.

  “Get us a c
ab,” Doc said to the doorman on the sidewalk.

  “Right away,” he said, walking to the curb and giving a big motion for the cab to pull up from the stand.

  “Madison Square Garden,” Doc said to the cabbie, and he followed Eddie into the back seat. “Go over to Ninth and come back on Fiftieth Street. We want that entrance.”

  “Thanks, and good luck, Eddie,” the doorman said, closing the door.

  Freddie Thomas and I were on the jump seats. At the corner the driver had to stop for the light.

  “You fellas going to the fight?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I hope it’s a good one,” he said. “Some of them they had lately have been lousy.”

  25

  When we stepped out of the cab onto the curb I could feel the surface tension that held the crowd. Invisible, untouchable, nowhere but everywhere, fragile but all-imprisoning, I have felt it hold an infantry company before an attack, the witnesses before an execution, a courtroom before a verdict, a family before the moment of death. Now it held this crowd, the moving bodies milling on the sidewalk and the still bodies and the turning faces, black and white, in the balcony line. It held the mounted cop and horse walking the gutter and confined the low murmur, rent only by the police whistles and the car horns, that is distinctive of fight mobs. Inside the Garden and within two hours, a little more or a little less, something would happen and then this thinnest unseen film of oneness would burst and it would all come out.

  “There’s Eddie Brown!” ... “Hey, Eddie!” ... “Eddie Brown!” ... “Eddie Brown!” ... “Get him, Eddie!” ... “Good luck, Eddie!” ... “Eddie Brown!”

  We pushed through quickly, Doc and Freddie Thomas leading the way, Eddie with his head down, the crowd parting and calling. Ahead of us the ticket taker signaled and a man stepped quickly aside to let us by. Then another shook his finger at Eddie, and called after him.

  “Hey, Eddie! I got all my dough goin’ on you! Remember that, Eddie!”

  In the molecular movement of the crowded lobby a path opened, some of them calling, and then we were out of it, walking the long gray catacomb and up the step into the dressing room at the Ninth Avenue end. Behind us the uniformed guard closed the door.

  This is the place, I was thinking, the gray walls and the steel lockers, the rubbing table in the middle of the rectangular room, the benches against the walls. There it is, the door to the toilet and the shower, and that is all.

  “They keep it plenty warm in here,” Eddie said, looking around.

  “Good,” Doc said. “Take off your coat.”

  “Here, I’ll take it,” Freddie Thomas said.

  “Doc!” the uniformed guard said, his head through the partially opened door. “Somebody out here.”

  Doc went to the door and looked out. The door opened and Louie came in, in a dark blue suit and forcing a smile.

  “How are you, kid?” he said, walking up to Eddie.

  “Fine,” Eddie said. He was sitting on one of the benches. “Good. I thought you’d come up to the hotel.”

  “I couldn’t. My old lady’s sick, so when I got away from the place I went over to see her. I’d rather see you here, anyway.”

  “Good.”

  “Some difference from the first fight I put you in, hey?” Louie said, looking around and saying it to the room and then sitting down next to Eddie.

  “That’s right,” Eddie said. “Remember that night?”

  “The whole mob’s here. They all send their best.”

  “Thanks, Louie. Tell them thanks.”

  “So we’ll be in after the fight, and we’ll all go over together, hey?”

  “Good.”

  “You’re all invited,” Louie said to the rest of us. “A real blowout.”

  “Thanks, Louie,” I said.

  “So I better go,” he said, standing up and then looking down at Eddie and slapping him once on the shoulder. “Good luck, champ.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We’re all with you, and we’re not worried, either. You’ll lick him.”

  “I’ll see you, Louie,” Eddie said, looking up at him. “Don’t worry.”

  “Who’s worrying?”

  Louie went out. Doc was hanging his jacket in one of the lockers and Freddie Thomas was hanging Eddie’s robe on a hanger over an open locker door. It was a dark blue satin robe with white collar and cuffs and the name Eddie Brown in white letters on the back. He took two white coat sweaters out of the other bag and then he started placing his gauze and tape on the rubbing table.

  “Here,” Doc said to Eddie, handing him new white woolen socks and the ring shoes and a pair of long, new white laces. “You might as well start on this.”

  It is a time-killer that some of them use. Eddie took the old laces out of the shoes and then, slowly and carefully, he started a new lace in one shoe. He flattened the lace at each turn, always measuring the two ends. He did a half-dozen turns, and then put the shoe on the bench beside him and started on the other.

  The guard opened the door and the commissioner came in, followed by a tall, smiling man whom the commissioner introduced as the lieutenant governor, and by one of the people from the Garden. Eddie stood up when the commissioner introduced the lieutenant governor to him and then to Doc, the smile never leaving the lieutenant governor’s face.

  “There’s a fine crowd out there, Brown,” the commissioner said. “So good luck to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The best of luck to you,” the lieutenant governor said, and he was still smiling when they walked out and he nodded to the guard.

  “Politicians,” Doc said. “Everything that’s wrong in this business you can blame on them. Amateurs.”

  Eddie sat down again and slipped out of his loafers and took off his socks. Freddie Thomas took them and put them in the locker, and Eddie pulled on the new white woolen socks. Then he put on the left ring shoe and swung around on the bench and put that foot up on it and carefully and slowly laced it. When he reached the top he brought the laces around the back and to the front again, certain that they were flat, and then knotted them. Freddie Thomas bent down and cut the laces near the knot with his gauze and tape scissors and then he cut a length of the one-and-a-half-inch tape and handed it to Eddie. Eddie placed the tape around the shoe near the top so it covered the laces and, in the front, the knot, smoothed it so that it was a neat white band and then put on the right shoe and started on that.

  Freddie Thomas’ brother came in, carrying the pail with a bottle in it, the bottle freshly taped around the neck. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old and he smiled and nodded around the room.

  “Hello,” Eddie said, looking up.

  “Hi, Eddie. Doc.”

  “Make some strips of that tape, Joey,” Freddie said to him.

  “Where do you want them?”

  “Right along the edge of that table. Make some extras, too.”

  “What are you doing there?” Doc said, looking down at Eddie.

  “It’s Jay’s ring,” Eddie said. He had laced the second shoe up to the last pair of eyelets and now he held the ring up to Doc in the palm of his hand. Doc took it and turned it over and looked at it.

  “What are you doing with it?”

  “I thought I’d just put it on the lace. It won’t be in the way. I just thought I’d carry it for luck.”

  “Never mind that luck stuff,” Doc said, still holding the ring. “You know better than that.”

  “I know. I just thought of it this afternoon in the room, that Jay was with me for all those fights.”

  “Put it on if you want to,” Doc said, handing the ring back to Eddie and walking away. “I don’t care what you do with it.”

  Eddie looked at me and smiled and shrugged. He put one end of the lace through the ring and then crossed the laces and put the ends through the last two eyelets and finished the shoe. Freddie Thomas cut the ends and handed him another length of tape.<
br />
  When he finished with the tape he stood up and walked up and down, the shoes squeaking a little. Then he did a couple of deep knee bends, letting his heels come up off the floor, the weight forward on his feet to settle them into the shoes.

  “What bout’s on now?” he said.

  “The second bout was just starting when I came in,” Freddie’s brother said.

  “Memphis Kid?”

  “Yeah, I saw him climb in.”

  “Find out how he makes out, I mean, when it’s over, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  Now and then we could hear the crowd noise, distant and low. When Freddie’s brother finished stripping the tape and sticking the ends to the side of the rubbing table he went out. In about five minutes he came back.

  “Memphis won it. A decision.”

  “Good,” Eddie said, still walking. “A good fight?”

  “I don’t know. I just saw the last round and a half. Some of the crowd was booing for more action.”

  “Dreadful,” Doc said.

  “Get Memphis in your story, will you?” Eddie said to me. “He’s a great guy.”

  “Sure, Eddie.”

  One of the commission deputies came in. He had a sheet of paper in his hand and on his face was the harassed look all subordinates wear at such times. He nodded around the room.

  “When you going to tape?” he said to Doc. “It’s about time.”

  “I’ll tape right now,” Doc said. “Tell one of the other guy’s people to come in.”

  “I have to stay here.”

  “I’m going down there to watch,” Freddie Thomas said. “I’ll tell him.”

  “And you stay right with them until they’ve got the gloves on in that ring,” Doc said. “We’ll see you down there.”

  “Right. Joey’ll get some ice for you later.”

  “He doesn’t have to stay there,” the deputy said. “Once the tape is on and stamped and initialed he can come out.”

  “He can stay, too.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I’m protecting my fighter.”

  “Have it your way,” the deputy said, shrugging to me and sitting down on the bench.

  Joey moved the tape and gauze to one side and Eddie boosted himself up onto the rubbing table, his feet dangling. A couple of minutes after Freddie had gone, the champion’s man came in, tall and dark, nodding and smiling and big-voiced.