by Brad Smith
Tommy stood and drank and waited. He was happy now that he’d decided and he didn’t mind the waiting. The good things in life were worth waiting for. Besides, Mac Brady could never stand in one place too long and Tommy knew he’d get his chance, sooner than later.
“Too bad you couldn’t just give me the ranking for old times’ sake, Tommy,” Mac said.
“Mac, we never had any old times.”
“Ah, what the hell.” Mac called for Lucky Ned to bring him some nickels for the telephone. “I’m a businessman. I still got my theatre interests,” he told Tommy and he went off to phone.
Tommy watched him go and then picked up his Jameson’s and moved down the bar to stand beside Nick Wilson.
“You want something, pops?” Wilson asked.
“Thought we could make peace.”
“Go away. Your face bothers me.”
“Hey,” Tommy said. “There’s no reason for you and me to be like this. We’re not in the same boat anymore. I’m washed up and you’re on your way. You’re going places, kid. Believe it or not, I’m pulling for you.”
“That what happens when you lose your nerve?”
Tommy showed a sheepish grin. “Let’s just say I’ve been around long enough to read the writing on the wall. I’ve seen you spar, kid. There’s no way I could’ve stayed with you, I’ll admit that now. And maybe you’re ready for the big time, but there’s a couple things —” Tommy stopped and threw an annoyed look at the band. “Damn it, that music’s loud,” he said. He turned back to Wilson. “Maybe you’re ready for the big boys and maybe you’re not. There’s a couple tricks I could show you though.”
Wilson laughed in his face. “You’re going to tell me how to fight?”
“Well, I’ve been around,” Tommy said lamely.
“Yeah, too long,” Wilson said. “What kind of tricks you talking about?”
“What?” Tommy cupped his ear and leaned in, then looked darkly at the band again. “I can’t hear a damn thing over this racket. Been hit in the head too many times, I guess.”
Wilson stood smirking, like Tommy was some punch-drunk palooka looking for attention.
“Let’s go back here,” Tommy suggested, indicating the back door. “We can hear ourselves think.”
Wilson’s waitress was working now. He looked at her, across the room, and then shrugged, holding the grin.
Tommy led the way. If he’d glanced up as he passed the stage he’d have seen Doc Thorne’s smooth brown face break into a smile around his saxophone.
Wilson carried his glass of beer with him, out the back door and into the alley. Doc Thorne’s Packard was parked there, like most nights, and Tommy noticed that Doc had put brand-new tires on the old sedan. Doc had gone for the wide whitewalls.
Wilson was holding his glass between his thumb and forefinger and he was still smiling; it seemed to Tommy that the kid was born with that insolent look.
“You know what you got going for you, kid?” Tommy began. “You’re a mean son of a bitch. And that’s what you need if you want to go anywhere. You want to be champ, you have to be mean.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I’ve seen it,” Tommy said. “Maybe that was my problem, who knows? Maybe I wasn’t mean enough, maybe I wasn’t willing to hurt people.”
“I am.”
“Oh, I know,” Tommy agreed. “Like when you were sparring that day with Pike, the nigger. When you had him down, you finished him.”
And Wilson was shaking his head in wonderment. “I thought he was your pal.”
“I keep him around for laughs,” Tommy said. “Nice to have a nigger around, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“But when I heard that — I knew you were mean enough. You put him down, and then you finished him off. A kick in the mug, that’s the way to finish a guy.”
“To finish a nigger anyway.”
“Right.”
Now Tommy’s pulse was pounding and he was trying to keep it in check. He wanted to do this right. He shook his head in mock admiration.
“That is mean, no doubt about it,” he said. “You’ve got it, kid. It’s a goddamn shame you’ll never get to use it.”
Now Tommy looked the kid straight in the eye and in that split second the kid knew. Tommy kicked with his right leg and the heavy brogue caught Wilson squarely in the balls and then Tommy was on the kid at once, clubbing with short right hands to the face. Wilson never had a chance; his beer glass fell and shattered as he went down on the concrete, and Tommy stayed right with him, throwing punches with both hands now — but not wildly, not like the kid he was hitting. He took his time with the punches, landed every one.
Wilson went out and Tommy continued to hit him, spreading his nose across his cheekbone and deliberately breaking the jawbone with a right cross.
When Tommy got to his feet the kid rolled over onto his back, his arms spread wide, the classic knockout pose. Tommy straightened his coat and walked to the door of the Parrot. Then he stopped and looked back at the man on the cement.
“What the hell,” he said and he went back to stomp on Wilson’s right hand. He could feel the bones breaking under his shoe and he knew that Nicky Wilson would never have to worry about being ranked again.
Inside, Mac Brady returned to the bar as the band was beginning its break. Mac’s heart sank when he saw that Tommy and the kid were gone from the bar. Right away he headed for the back door but he was stopped by Doc Thorne, who threw an arm over Mac’s shoulder and offered to stand him to a drink. Mac tried to beg off, but horn players are stronger than hucksters and he had no chance. He accepted the drink and waited, hoping he was wrong.
Maybe half a minute later Tommy Cochrane wandered back into the room and Doc released Mac. Tommy had his right hand in his pocket like he was hiding something there.
“Buy you a drink, Tommy C?” Doc asked.
“I’ll buy you one, Doc.”
“What’d you do to your hand?”
“Oh, maybe bruised a knuckle.”
“Is it all right?”
“It’s all right, Doc.”
What was left of the heavyweight Nicky Wilson was coming around when Mac reached him. The kid was on his knees and he was holding his right hand before him in shock. Mac pulled up short and looked at the kid a moment, his mind already clicking, then he peeled a hundred from the roll in his pocket and dropped it on the concrete where Wilson knelt.
“This’ll get you home, kid,” he said and he walked away.
In the doorway he had to stop for a last look. The kid was probably the best prospect he would ever have.
“You know, you could have beaten him in the ring,” Mac said. “But not out here — never in a million years. You can think about that when you’re looking at nothing but wheat fields and dreaming about the big time in New York.”
The kid looked up, his eyes swollen, his nose damn near in another county.
“You gotta help me, Mac.”
In the doorway, Mac pulled his vest down. “Can’t do it, kid. I’m a businessman.”
She didn’t do much the next couple of hours, just wandered around the city a little — the city she’d be leaving soon, maybe this time for good — with her collar turned up against the cool night air and her thoughts turned into herself. The leaving part didn’t bother her — everything had a beginning and an end, even her.
It seemed that she knew that better with every day that passed.
There was no commotion at all when she left the hotel, no sign that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. Maybe a single gunshot in that neck of the woods wasn’t a big deal. To Lee, it meant that T-Bone would get out safely and that was all she cared about.
Then it was past one in the morning, and she was sitting on the front step of the Jasper Hotel. In the shadows there, with her mussed auburn hair and her man’s leather jacket and shapeless pants, no one could know of her great beauty, and no one could know that she held in her pocket
five thousand dollars — the fate of more than a few this past week.
When Tommy walked into view he had his head down and his hands in his pockets and from the step she couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad or somewhere in between. She stood up, and he saw her, and she came down the steps into his arms.
“I was getting worried about you,” he said. “Where you been?”
“With your friend,” she said and she began to cry. “Your great and true friend.”
He had never seen her cry.
“What’s going on? Where’s T-Bone?”
“He’s gone,” she said. “He had to leave the city.”
“What do you mean, he had to leave?”
“There was some trouble, and he had to get out of the city. He took a train to Detroit.”
For some reason she turned when she said it and pointed in the direction of the train station, a city mile away. As if she could see the terminal and the westbound train, Thibideau Pike’s smiling face.
Brown hand waving goodbye.
“He left something for you,” she said to Tommy.
“What did he leave?”
She took his arm and kissed him, then held him there a long time.
“A place to put your feet up,” she said.
About the Author
Brad Smith is a Canadian author from Dunnville, Ontario. His books include One-Eyed Jacks, which was nominated for the Dashiell Hammett Prize, Big Man Coming Down the Road, Busted Flush, All Hat, Red Means Run, Crow's Landing and Shoot the Dog.
About the Publisher
280 Steps is an eBook publisher of hardboiled originals and classic crime reprints from around the world.
For more information about 280 Steps please visit 280steps.com
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by Brad Smith
First eBook edition: April 2014
Published by 280 Steps. Visit us at 280steps.com
Cover design by Risa Rodil
eISBN: 978-82-93326-12-0
Publishers note:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
If you would like to use material from the eBook (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher:
[email protected].
Thank you for buying this eBook, published by 280 Steps.
To receive special offers, bonus content and news
about our latest eBooks, sign up for our newsletter.
Sign up
For more about this book and author, visit us at 280steps.com