by Jack Tunney
’Course, since we’d sailed into port in early afternoon, Cap’n Slidell figured we still had four or five hours of daylight left and he’d make sure he got every minute of those before he cut us loose. He was a fair man, but he liked getting his money’s worth.
Them mooks was trouble and I knew it. I could read trouble the way a con man on Halsted Street hustling three-card Monte in my old Bridgeport, Chicago, neighborhood could read a mark. I ignored them, though, figuring I’d let them make their play and see what was what.
It was easy to see them two was known along the docks ’cause sailors and fishermen got out of their way as they came over. The docks was busy then. I supposed a lot of ships must have come in or put in while the squall churned the ocean white and deadly. The smell of fish and the salt of the sea blew over me and dragged some of the teeth out of the hot sun burning down on me. Lines popped against masts as the wind clawed at the furled sails. Men’s voices – shouting orders or yelling at each other, or singing – rolled over the port.
Them two looked like they was about my age, and I’d turned twenty-seven back in December. They wore suits, but they didn’t look like no port authority I’d ever laid eyes on. Both of them was American, judging from their color and their clothing.
I’d almost got to Havana before I signed on with the Marines for the Korean War in 1950. I’d put in three hard years there, saw a lot of friends get killed or shot up, or freeze to death in the winter along the Chosin Reservoir after the Chinese joined up. I’d spent my twenty-third birthday fighting on bloody ground too frozen to dig proper graves in.
Major General Oliver P. Smith had led us through that battle, and we’d been outnumbered more than two to one by the Chinese. I’d landed with the Big Red One, the 1st Marine Division, and stayed through the thick of it. I’d never been one to walk away from a fight, which was why I usually ended up in trouble when I was a kid, and why I’d ended up with the Marines for that nasty bit of business.
Major General Smith wasn’t a man to quit on a fight neither. Even in the worst of it, when we was fighting for our lives with bayonets and rifle butts ’cause we was outta ammo, when we was chewing boot leather ’cause we was outta rations, we remembered what he said there at that battle when someone asked him if we was gonna retreat.
“Retreat, hell! We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction.”
We’d been surrounded and there wasn’t no way to get out of it. Just had to go through it.
I respected that. Getting through something, not running away from it, had been one of the first things Father Tim had taught us at St. Vincent’s Asylum for Boys. ’Course, most of us boys called the church Our Lady of the Glass Jaw. The nuns hated us for it, and they didn’t care for Father Tim much neither ‘cause he let us get away with it.
While I continued straightening the rope like I had nothing better to do, them two mooks stood there and tried to stare holes in my back. I ignored them, but I noticed that nearby local fishermen, cargo handlers, and sailors fought shy of us when they’d been coming around for gossip only minutes ago. I just concentrated on making sure that hawser was knotted right to the mooring cleat. The rope had clean lines and was wound tight. Wide Bertha was settled in snug as a bug against the dock.
Eventually, them two got bored. I would have too. I didn’t like standing around while other people was working. Always made me feel like I had to do something too.
“Hey.”
I stood and turned around, and them boys took a big step back. I was six feet tall, and both of them was taller than me. But I worked off-the-books as a longshoreman down at the Chicago River bridges from the time I was fourteen. The bridges was too low for cargo ships to get through and cargo got unloaded and disbursed at the bridges. Times was hard then, and I worked long days. I got broad shoulders and a build like an ape out of it.
Some of that was my old man’s fault, though. He’d been built the same way. My younger brother Patrick looks better in a suit than I do. As best I could remember, Pat favored Mom, in her looks and in her book smarts, but she wasn’t with us long enough for me to remember much of her.
I was shirtless because of the heat. I wore stained dungarees that I’d patched myself. I kept my hair short so it wouldn’t get infested with vermin that shared rack space on Wide Bertha with us, and I hadn’t shaved in about a week. So I probably looked like I was worth about two cents. Maybe less.
I looked at the two men. “Something I can do for you gents?”
The shorter one was the mouthpiece of the pair. He gave me the hairy eyeball like that was supposed to make me curl up in a dead faint right there on the dock. I figured he didn’t know I’d been fighting wind and water for the last three days during a storm that had seemed determined to kill ever’ man of us.
Even if he’d looked like something I didn’t want to tangle with, I was just plumb worn out and didn’t have it in me to be afraid of nothing. Yes sir, I was tuckered and there wasn’t nothing I was gonna let get between me and the evening I had planned.
So the short guy yanked his thumb at Wide Bertha and sneered. “Yeah, mac, you can do something for us. You can move your boat.”
I looked at him for about a minute, then shook my head. “That ain’t no boat. She’s a ship.”
“Don’t matter.” The look on his face got harder and I guessed I was supposed to be impressed.
I wasn’t. I grew up around nuns at St. Vincent’s who could glare paint off a wall and raise welts the size and color of strawberries with a ruler.
The taller man spoke up then. “Maybe you should go check it out with your boss. Let him know Mr. Falcone says he should move this scow.”
Okay, I knew then that the tall guy knew more about sailing, but he didn’t know me. Scow was a hurtful term, and any sailor worth his salt was proud of his ship. I was proud of Wide Bertha. She’d just braved everything the Atlantic and the Caribbean could throw at her to make sure I got to sleep in a bed tonight.
“You don’t talk bad about a man’s ship. Especially not to his face.” I spoke in a low, soft voice, not trying to rile anybody yet. But them two took another step back and that was fine with me.
Around us, several sailors, fishermen, and folks walking through the market area at the docks had stopped to watch. I didn’t know what all the interest was and didn’t particularly care for all the stares. It wasn’t good to draw attention while you was in a port. Sailors ain’t always real welcome in most places. Locals wanted to shake a ship’s crew loose of every nickel they got, then kick them right back into the sea.
The tall man tried throwing his weight around again. “This here’s private parking, swabbie. Mr. Falcone does his business here.”
I put my fists on my hands and took a deep breath. I run short on patience on good days, and there hadn’t been any good days for over a week. “This is a public portage. First come, first serve. Cap’n Slidell already checked with the harbor master.”
“The harbor master’s wrong.”
“Then you take that up with the harbor master. Not me.”
“Maybe we should take it up with your captain.”
“It’s a free country, bud.” I laughed at the thought of them two mooks bracing Cap’n Slidell.
The cap’n was sixty years old, was meaner than a gutshot alligator, and had a wooden leg he picked up after losing the real one in World War II. I’d already seen him take that leg off in a bar fight in Singapore and whale the tar out of three German sailors that thought they was gonna buffalo an old man. That evening the cap’n cleaned house with that leg and them beat-up Germans carried each other outta that bar. Me and the rest of the crew just watched because the cap’n would have cleaned our clocks if we’d tried to interfere.
“Hey, Mick.”
I looked up and Sandbag Pete was hanging over Wide Bertha’s rail. Sandbag was a skinny redhead with a head that looked too big on him and arms and legs that looked like pipe cleaners. He was older than me
, gray bearded, but he could climb a ship’s rigging faster than any monkey I’d ever heard tell of. He wore dungarees too, and a sleeveless shirt, but his skin had already pinked up something fierce from the sun.
Sandbag nodded at the two mooks. “You having trouble down there?”
I waved him off. “No trouble.”
“Mick?” The big one squinted at me.
“Mickey Flynn.” I didn’t see any harm in them knowing my name.
“You Irish?”
“Irish as green beer and St. Paddy’s Day.” A lot of people still didn’t care for us Irish. I’d grown up with that dislike all my life in the old neighborhood where we fought with the Italians and the Poles.
Maybe that was another reason I didn’t care for them two men. I’d figured them for Italian, especially with the mob moving into Havana and buddying up with Fulgenico Batista the way they was. I guess probably I liked the Italians about as much as the Italians liked the Irish. Hearing the name Falcone had just sealed the deal.
I turned to amble back to the boardwalk because I had things to do and I knew the cap’n wasn’t one for tolerating goldbrickers. The cap’n had taken me on because I was a war veteran, but he kept me on because I was a hard worker.
“Nobody said you could leave.” One of them dropped his hand on my shoulder and pulled to turn me around.
I went with the pull, came around, and stepped inside the tall guy’s reach. I gripped his left wrist in my right hand, then closed my left hand around his throat. I squeezed hard enough to make his bloodshot eyes bulge and I saw the surprise and fear dawn on his sallow face.
I put my face into his, almost nose to nose. “I don’t know who you think you are, mister, but you’d better keep your meat hooks off me or you’re gonna draw back a nub.”
That was when Shorty reached under his jacket and pulled out a pistol.
FIGHT CARD: THE CUTMAN
JACK TUNNEY
AVAILABLE NOW IN ALL E-READER FORMATS
BONUS PREVIEW
FIGHT CARD: FELONY FISTS
JACK TUNNEY
ROUND 1
LOS ANGELES 1954
I was leaning back against the ring ropes, elbows tucked in, arms up, gloves protecting my face and head. Lester Killer Carter was banging away at me, thinking he could finish the fight fast, and I was letting him. Not because I didn’t have a choice, but because I had a plan.
It was still early and the Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium was less than a quarter full. My fight with Carter wasn’t even listed on the night’s card, just a middleweight amateur three round bout to get the evening rolling.
Still, Mickey Cohen, a squat toad of a man, was there ringside. His bodyguards sat behind him, while on either side there were a couple of expensive looking ring Jezebels – the kind of women who liked to get a man’s blood splattered across their dresses. Sitting stoically next to the frail on Cohen’s left was the huge black bulk of Solomon King – Cohen’s current light-heavyweight contender.
Word was, King was the real deal. His tall frame was packed with massive muscles. Long arms were capped by fourteen inch fists, which King used to club his opponents relentlessly. Boxing reporters speculated Cohen had King on track to fight Archie Moore, the current light-heavyweight champion, later in the year. But King would have to decisively win at least one more fight, against a viable contender before Moore’s people would allow the championship belt to be put on the line. King was the kind of fighter champions dodged for as long as they could.
I shot out a left jab, rocking Carter’s head back. It was just hard enough to make him mad. Carter started swinging wildly, and I went back into my defensive shell.
Cohen had a lot of much more lucrative, if illicit, businesses, but he loved the fights. Carter was reputed to be headed into Cohen’s stable, but I was going to make sure the big man was disappointed in this particular prospect.
I rolled off the ropes and scooted away to Carter’s left. He followed throwing a right cross, which I batted easily away. He should have thrown a left to drive me back to the ropes, but Carter didn’t have a left worth writing home about. I let him chase me for a bit and then stopped and threw a triple combination designed to sting, but not hurt. All three punches scored, drawing more embarrassment for Carter than pain.
The bell ran to end the first round and I swayed back to avoid Carter’s late left hook. It went past me like a weak breeze. The ref, a short fat man in black pants, white shirt, and red bow tie, jumped between us.
In my corner, Pop Hawks was waiting with my stool. Before I sat, I looked directly at Cohen. Catching his eye, I pumped my left arm up and down in a mocking motion, rubbing in his fighter’s weakness. I didn’t like Cohen. Most cops didn’t unless they were on his payroll.
That Cohen shared a first name with my older brother was a disgrace.
Cohen had filled the organized crime void in L.A. in ’47 when mobster Bugsy Siegel ate a bullet sandwich in his home – all because he wouldn’t play ball with the east coast crime families. While Cohen did pay token respect to the east, he was tougher and more violent than Bugsy ever dreamed of being. Most everyone, made-men included, gave him a wide berth.
“What are you doing out there?” Pops growled, taking out my mouthpiece and tipping water in my mouth before I could answer. I was slick with sweat, but felt instantly cooled when Tina Hawks, Pops’ thirteen year old daughter, squeezed a sponge across my shoulders. She then held a bucket for me to spit in. Growing up around a family full of older brothers, Tina was a tomboy and a half. Tall and skinny now, she’d be a beauty someday, but she wouldn’t want to hear about it now.
“Easy, Pops,” I said. “He’s punching himself out and I’m not even breathing heavy.”
“Don’t mess around in a fight. He could lucky punch you and you’re on your back being counted out.”
Ex-navy swab, Pops Hawks had left the Los Angeles Police Department after eight years and a bullet in his leg to run Ten Hawks Gym – named for him and his nine kids. All the Hawks were fighters either in the ring or out.
Pops had the cauliflowered ears and eye scarring of a palooka, but he still had his brains if not his looks. Ten Hawks Gym was just down the street from Central Division Station, where I was assigned to the night watch felony car. Pops coddled part time fighters like me, and dreamed of training a contender.
I looked over at Cohen and his following again. The gangster was chatting away, but Solomon King wasn’t paying any attention. He was staring straight at me. His eyes were dead pools of hate. I’d seen that look before from other Negros I’d been with in the Navy – it was a look of them against the world. King’s burned harder.
I noticed another large Negro sitting behind King. He was perhaps an inch shorter, but had the same ebony carved expression. A comma of straight, short, white hair stuck out on the left side of his forehead, stark against the wiry curls of his otherwise tar black hair.
“Who’s sitting behind King?” I asked Pops.
He didn’t even turn to look. “Focus, Flynn. Get out there and put this guy down.”
The bell sounded. I popped up off the stool and into a barrage of punches. Carter had obviously been fired up in his corner. He knew Cohen was watching and he wanted to look good. As long as he was progressing, Cohen would fund his rise. One setback and Cohen would lose interest.
I backed into the ropes, rolling easily with one of Carter’s right hooks. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught one of the frails with Cohen, the redhead, watching me intently. For a second I thought I recognized her, but then I had to get busy fending off Carter.
I wrapped Carter in a clinch. Over his shoulder I could see Cohen was watching, waving his arms around and getting animated.
King just watched.
I let Carter push me away and went back to work counterpunching.
I knew a lot about Cohen. When he was a teenager, he began boxing in illegal prizefights in Los Angeles. In 1930 he turned pro against Patsy Farr in Cleveland, Ohio
. He’d been a pretty good featherweight – even got a shot in ‘31 against World Featherweight Champion Tommy Paul. In that real fight, he hadn’t lasted long. Paul knocked out Gangster Mickey Cohen, as he was known even then, at 2:20 into the first round.
Cohen’s last fight in the ring was in ‘33, twenty one years ago, against Baby Arizmendi in Tijuana, Mexico. It was another beat down. Now, he fought in the streets where there were no rules, using guns and blades and other men as deadly punches to climb another type of championship ladder. Cohen was a heavyweight, out of my league as a beat cop, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take down one of his puppets.
I fended off a couple more strong rights from Carter and then walked into a weak left hook – only it wasn’t. It was fast and hit with the force of a boulder. I staggered and reeled away, suckered like some tin can just waiting to be knocked over. Carter followed relentlessly, throwing combinations I couldn’t answer. I hated being a sucker. My brother Mickey would have razzed me. He always said I didn’t take fighting serious enough.
I clinched, wrapping my arms around Carter, burying my head in his shoulder. He tried to push me away, but I held him tight like I’d paid a dime for the dance.
The ref tapped me on the shoulder and yelled, “Break!”
My head had cleared a little and I covered up as I pulled away. Carter threw another of those sucker lefts, but I was ready for it – slipping it and stepping in to throw a couple of weak jabs. They didn’t do much damage and Carter came back at me again.
I clinched again and was still waltzing with him when the bell rang.
“Stupid!” Pops said, as I sat on the stool. “I taught ya better . . .”
I was waiting for Tina to sponge my back, but instead she popped up next to Pops and handed him a folded piece of paper. Pops knew Tina didn’t fool around, so he took her serious and opened it.