Fight Card: AGAINST THE ROPES Page 2

  It was an off-balance punch without much power, but it had enough to force Genet to replant his right foot to regain his balance. But Quinn already had both feet firmly planted on the canvas. He threw a wicked left hook into the center of Genet’s face, straightening him up and almost lifting him off the canvas.

  As Genet’s whole body turned left from the impact, Quinn’s entire world slowed to a crawl and Genet looked almost frozen in time. Seeing exactly what he had to do, Quinn stepped forward and put his entire body – his entire being – into a massive right hand punch. It connected cleanly with Genet’s jaw as the big man’s momentum brought him right into path of the blow.

  Quinn knew the Frenchman was out before he hit the canvas, but the ref began the count anyway.

  Genet’s corner men were swarming around their fighter before the ref reached eight.

  Augie and Joey climbed into the ring, all smiles. Augie already had Quinn’s robe waiting for him. The green silk one with the white trim on it. Some boxers had their nicknames sewn into the back of their robes, with catchy nicknames like “Irish” or “Night Train” or “Lucky.” But that wasn’t Quinn’s style. His robe just had one word on it – QUINN.

  Augie and Joey wrapped the robe around Quinn’s shoulders. “So much for the fifth round, eh Terry?” Joey said.

  But Quinn wasn’t in a smiling mood. His tongue was still bleeding and his ribs were starting to throb. “So much for Frank Genet,” he replied.

  ROUND TWO

  After a fight, especially a grueling one like this, Quinn liked to spend some quiet time in the locker room with as few people as possible. Maybe even take a nap before he got dressed and went to work at the Kaye Klub.

  But Augie wouldn’t let him get away with that tonight. Augie was more than just his trainer. He was his manager, too, as well as his accountant, press agent, promoter and self-appointed guardian – all wrapped up in that scrawny little body of his. And what he didn’t have time to do, he had Joey do.

  Quinn got anything but peace after his fight that night.

  The locker room swarmed with reporters firing off questions. Shutterbugs snapped his picture while Joey did his best to pull off Quinn’s gloves as gently as possible in the crowded little room.

  “Were you ever in trouble in the fight, Terry?” one of the reporters asked.

  “You were there. You tell me.”

  Another question: “At one point, you took out your mouthpiece and said something to Genet that seemed to make him pretty sore. The crowd was too loud for any of us at press row to hear it. What’d you say to him?”

  “Why don’t you ask him when he wakes up?”

  A round of laughs followed by another question. “What made you go for the knockout when you did, Terry?”

  Augie answered that one for him. “Come on, Harvey. What kind of question is that? Genet’s a heck of a fighter. You go for the knockout against a guy like him when you get the chance.”

  As reporters shouted more questions and the shutterbugs took more pictures, one question sounded over all others – “Who’s next, Terry? You going to fight Whitowski next for a shot at Dempsey?”

  Augie started to answer, but Quinn beat him to it. “I’ll fight anyone they put up against me. And when I beat them, I’ll fight Dempsey.”

  “Even if it’s Whitowski?” another reporter shouted. “He’s no pansy, you know?”

  “Neither am I.”

  The reporters laughed again. Everyone laughed, except Augie. Quinn could tell by the look on his face he didn’t like that answer much, but Quinn was too tired to care. He still had to work the door that night at the Kaye Klub and he wanted to grab some dinner beforehand. If Augie was annoyed, he’d get over it.

  Augie cut the questions short and began to push the reporters out of the locker room, asking them to give the boy some air and let him breathe a little. When the last of them was gone, Augie flicked the lock shut and leaned against the door like he was keeping it from opening again.

  He ran his finger through the inside of his collar and said, “Thought I was gonna have to turn the hose on them there for a while. You really whipped them into a frenzy, kid. How’s the head?”

  Quinn’s vision was a bit foggy, but better than it had been in the ring. “Better than my ribs. I feel like I got hit by a train.”

  “What do you think Genet is sayin’ about you right now?” Joey asked. “You ain’t exactly no featherweight either, kid. I never saw you hit anyone as hard as you hit him tonight.”

  Quinn shrugged it off. He didn’t like thinking much about a fight after it was over. “He gave me an opening and I took it, is all. Besides, he got me sore.”

  “We gotta work on that temper of yours,” Augie said. “Because against an animal like Whitowski, gettin’ sore might get you killed.”

  Quinn knew Augie was right, but he didn’t want to think about the next fight either. He usually just liked to let his mind and his body rest for a bit after a fight. “Lay off, will you, Augie? We don’t even know if Whitowski will want to fight me yet.”

  “Oh, he’ll want to fight you, all right,” Augie said. “He’ll want to fight you whether he wants to or not. You heard those animals I threw out of here just now. They’ll call him yellow if he fights anyone but you. And Whitowski is a man who doesn’t like gettin’ called yellow.”

  That reminded Quinn of something. “Say, why’d you get sore at me over saying I’ll fight anyone they put against me. I thought that’s what you’d want me to say.”

  Augie slapped him on the shoulder. “I wasn’t sore, kid. Just a bit, what you might call, taken aback is all. How about you let me answer the questions about who you’ll fight next and I let you keep knockin’ them out in the ring, okay?”

  Quinn was in no mood for one of Augie’s circular arguments. He might have been a hell of a trainer, but he was an even better talker. Augie could argue for hours only to wind up right back where they started.

  He slid off the trainer’s table and hit the showers instead. He stripped, then turned on the water, hotter than he normally liked. But the spray of water felt good on his skin. It felt like he was washing the whole fight right off him. It helped him forget everything that had happened in the ring that night. The anger, the violence, all the pain and the training that had gone into preparing for that one fight.

  He knew a lot of guys in the fight game liked to rest on their laurels. They’d bathe themselves in glory after a big win like the one he’d just had over Genet. They’d go out for a big steak, maybe hit up a speakeasy or two and throw their weight around. Drink champagne, waste time with a couple of floozies and piss their money away, all the while bragging about what big men they were. He didn’t blame them. It was a hell of a thing for one professional fighter to beat another.

  But bragging wasn’t Quinn’s style and never had been.

  He preferred to leave a fight behind him after a win. Maybe that’s because all he’d ever done was win. He’d never lost a fight. Never lost a round as far as he knew. Thirty-six men had come up against him and all thirty-six had been sent back where they came from. Maybe if he’d lost more, he’d cherish the wins more, be more brash about it.

  But he’d struggled plenty even before he’d slipped on his first pair of boxing gloves when he was nine years old. Hell, he’d lost plenty before he could even walk. His parents had been young and unmarried when he’d been born. Both from respectable families, or so he’d been told. Too respectable for them to have a child before they were married. So they dumped him off at St. Vincent’s and he wound up under the care of Father Michael Frawley.

  Quinn had grown up faster than the other kids. Taller and bigger than kids his age. He’d could’ve easily been the school bully, but he always felt better when he left people alone. He preferred to be left alone, too, but never felt lonely.

  Other kids at St. Vincent’s had grown up angry that their parents hadn’t wanted them or couldn’t afford them, but not Quinn.

  Any
anger he had came from somewhere else. From people telling him he wasn’t good enough just because he didn’t have a mother and father. From people trying to keep him down or standing in his way. He was every bit as good as he thought he was and he knew it. He hated to hear the word “no.”

  Father Frawley had used boxing to help keep the anger at bay. He’d taught Quinn how to keep the lion caged and let it out for only three minutes at a time.

  It had been that way since he was a kid and he’d never changed. He’d never been much to look at while training in the gym. He put in his work, but he didn’t dazzle with speed or power.

  But on fight night – when it counted most – all the miles he’d run and all the punches he’d landed on the heavy bag and all the times he’d skipped rope came together to make him what he was. Quinn – a contender for the heavyweight championship of the world. One step away from Jack Dempsey.

  And that’s why he liked to shower after a fight. To wash off all the crud and misery that had caked on him in the days and weeks leading up to a fight. So, by the time he stepped out of the shower and toweled himself off, he was clean of all that had been and ready for what was ahead. Because every fight was different. Every fight was a new chance to either win or lose. The past didn’t count for much except to remind you of what was at stake.

  But as he turned off the water that night, Quinn didn’t feel as clean as he usually did. Something from the Genet fight remained with him. He tried to tell himself he didn’t know what it was, but Quinn had never been good at lying, especially to himself.

  The thing that was bothering him was Augie.

  Augie had never gotten sore at him for anything he said to the press boys before, and he’d said some stupid things in his time. Getting the name of his next opponent wrong. The city where they were fighting. Even the date.

  Augie had never said a word any of those times. He always just let them go and corrected the mistakes with a phone call to the reporter or by buying the scribbler a drink later on.

  But the look in Augie’s face that night in the locker room was different than ever before. There’d been a flash of something different in his eyes when Quinn said he’d beat Whitowski. It wasn’t there long, just for an instant, but long enough for Quinn to see it before Augie quickly folded it back into his good natured mix.

  It bothered him the whole time he toweled off and got dressed for work. Augie seemed to be back to normal, kidding around with Joey as usual, but Quinn felt something different.

  It took a while for him to figure out what that look had been. At first, he thought it was anger. But it wasn’t.

  It was fear.

  Quinn wanted to ask him more about it, but didn’t. Augie would just brush him off anyway and tell him to forget it.

  But Quinn wouldn’t forget it. And, in time, he’d make it a point to find out why Augie was afraid.

  ROUND THREE

  By the time he was dressed and ready to leave the Garden, it was already going on ten o’clock. Augie and Joe wanted him to go out with them for a steak dinner to celebrate the win, but Quinn backed out. He was scheduled to work the door up at the Kaye Klub at eleven and didn’t want to rush through a big dinner.

  Augie wasn’t happy. “When are you gonna ditch that two-bit gig and let me find you somethin’ where you don’t have to work so hard?”

  “I don’t have to work so hard,” Quinn said. “And when you get me better paydays, I won’t have to work at all.”

  Augie was too short to throw his arm around his shoulder, so he patted him on the back instead. “Better days are comin’, kid. Comin’ right around the next corner and right at us. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. Leave it all to your Uncle Augie here and we’ll all be in the clover, soon.” He rustled Joey’s floppy cap. “Even this little miscreant we got right here.”

  Joey just smiled like he always did. The little man had always been around Augie for as long as Quinn had known him. Wherever Augie went, Joey followed. Whenever Augie needed something done, Joey did it. And when Augie got drunk, Joey kept him out of trouble as best he could.

  Quinn put them in a cab and let them go on their way.

  Despite his sore ribs, he decided to walk the few short blocks from the Garden on Fiftieth and Eighth Avenue to the Kaye Klub on West Fifty-Fourth Street. It was a cool October night and he hoped the air might clear his head. Give him perspective.

  He hadn’t meant what he’d said to Augie about not working. He liked to do something besides training and he liked working the door at the Kaye Klub. Most of the customers treated him nice and tipped him well. He knew they were nice to him mostly because of his size and reputation as a boxer, but he only cared about results, not reasons. Nice was a lot better than being nasty.

  Since they’d passed the Prohibition laws six years before, hundreds of places popped up all over town where a guy or gal could sneak a drink. But some places sold tainted rotgut booze that could make a man go blind if he drank too much of it.

  But the Kaye Klub was different. Unlike other speakeasies, you didn’t need a password to get in and you didn’t have to worry about going blind once you got there. It was a nice place where people left their troubles at the door while they watched dancing girls dance and singing girls sing while they had a drink or two. Sure it was illegal as hell, but that never bothered Quinn. He felt part of something and that was important. Even if that something was illegal.

  And the owners – Larry Kaye and Texas Guinan – had always been real fair with Quinn. They understood he couldn’t work the door the week before a fight. There were plenty of guys in line for a job like that, but Larry and Tex stood by him. And for that, he’d always be grateful.

  Larry Kaye was the brains behind the Kaye Klub, but Texas ran the show. No one got into the club unless she said so. And guys like Quinn stood next to her to make sure people understood that whatever she said went.

  It was already ten-thirty by the time he turned the corner on to West Fifty-Fourth Street and he wasn’t surprised to see that the line to get into the club ran halfway up the block. It was a Friday night, one of the club’s busiest nights.

  Even from half a block away, Quinn could still hear Texas boom her usual greeting to all her customers.

  “Hello, suckers!” she said as they quickly filed in as tables

  became available. “We’ve got plenty of gin, gals and giggles to keep you jumpin’ ‘til the cows come home. So leave your troubles curbside and come on in and take a load off.”

  The crowd ate it up, despite waiting on a long line in a city where people didn’t wait for anything. Because the Kaye Klub wasn’t just any club and Tex treated everyone the same. It didn’t matter whether you were in a top hat and tails or a guy in a threadbare suit down to his last couple of bucks. Everyone could use a little bit of humility. Texas Guinan dished it out by the bowlful every single night.

  As he got to the front of the place, he saw Tex was wearing her favorite outfit: a red sequined dress as bright as it was tight on her fleshy frame. A head full of bleach blonde hair topped off the look, which was so bright Quinn thought it would hurt his eyes if he looked at her for too long. She was barely five feet tall, but in a get-up like that, you’d have to be a blind man to miss her.

  When she saw Quinn coming, she threw her fleshy arms around his neck and pulled him down to plant a big, wet kiss on his cheek. It was the way she always greeted him. Every day. Yet it never got old, and it never felt fake. And it was one of the reasons why Quinn loved going to work every day.

  His ribs ached as she grabbed him by the elbow and raised his right arm as high as she could. “Ladies and gents and all the rest of you who don’t qualify as either, meet our doorman, Terry Quinn, the next heavyweight champion of the world!”

  The suckers all smiled and cheered, more out of hope he’d let them into the club than anything else.

  Tex pulled a long gold chain around her neck until a gold pocket watch was lifted out of her dress
from between her breasts. She checked the time and said, “Hell, kid. You’re half an hour early. What happened?” Her eyes went wide as she let the watch drop back beneath her dress. “You didn’t lose tonight, did you? I’ve been too busy to listen on the radio. Did you…”

  “No, I won. I just wanted to get here early, that’s all.”

  She looked at him closely, ignoring the people at the front of the line clamoring for her attention. “Something’s eatin’ at you, ain’t it? Don’t lie! Texas Guinan sees all.”

  Quinn smiled because he knew he could never hide anything from her. He shook it off and said, “I’m fine. Really. But since Tex sees all, does she see me having a quick drink inside before I start my shift?”

  The little lady played to the crowd as she made a show of shutting her eyes and holding the back of her hand dramatically to her forehead. Men and women on the line giggled as she weaved back and forth as if going into some kind of trance.

  “I see many things, my boy … I see a heavyweight belt in your future…I see fame and fortune and women … Yes … a whole lot of women … And I see you drinking no less than three drinks this evening at the finest nightclub in New York City. But the name of the place escapes me.” She weaved some more. “I can’t see the name of the club through the fog … it is …” She popped open her left eye and spoke to the couple at the front of the line in a stage whisper: “Come on, dummies. Help me out here.”

  “The Kaye Klub,” the couple said in unison, laughing.

  Tex resumed her trance and sighed, “I can’t hear you.”

  More people on line yelled, “The Kaye Klub!”

  Tex came out of her trance and said, “That’s it! The finest club in New York. The Kaye Klub!” The crowd cheered as Tex slapped Quinn on the ass and pushed him inside. “Get on in there, stud, and have your fill.”

  And to the line, she said, “When you boys and girls get in there, you’d better buy him a drink. That way you can tell your grandkids one day that you bought a drink for Terry Quinn, heavyweight champion of the world!”