Two days later, just before noon, Doc Carroll arrived, cantankerous, vehement and vindictive, with every reason to be all of these things, and the best man with a fighter that I have ever known. I have known many who led their fighters to titles, and some who took them right to the end of the rainbow. I have found, however, that Destiny controls the passes to these places, and I keep telling myself, trying to believe it, that it is not important, really, how far you go but how you make the trip. Doc always paid his own way.
“So you really think so, do you?” Doc was saying to Girot when I walked into the lobby.
He was white-haired and bespectacled now, tall and thin, neatly dressed in a dark blue suit and somehow emitting an intimation of another time. He was standing at the desk, while Girot stood behind it and, off to one side, standing next to an old black Gladstone, Vince DeCorso was waiting. He was a six-round fighter who, in a dozen years in which he must have lost half of his eighty or ninety fights, had made most of the small clubs and the small towns of the East.
“I don’t know,” Girot was saying, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Eddie is a good fighter, and such a nice boy. He never makes no trouble. He has manners.”
“Isn’t that nice?” Doc said, nodding. “What do you think this is, a popularity contest, and the judges should give him four points for neatness and four more for being kind to his mother? Ah, Girot, you stick to your hotel.”
“I don’t know,” Girot said.
“Hello, Doctor,” I said.
“Hello, Frank,” he said, turning and then shaking my hand. “How long have you been here?”
“All my life. Almost a week.”
“I told you.”
“I knew.”
“You know Vince DeCorso?”
“Hello, Vince,” I said, and we shook hands. He was a stocky, short-armed middleweight, starting to get bald, with the story of his career written over his eyes and under them and across his nose.
“I’m glad to know you,” he said.
“Girot, tell him where he sleeps,” Doc said, and then to DeCorso: “You can take your bag up. Johnny Jay’s around somewhere.”
“Sure.”
“You have room four,” Girot said. “You go to the top of the stairs and you turn right.”
DeCorso went into the sitting room, carrying his bag.
“He’s going to work with Eddie?” I said.
“Aah,” Doc said. “What can you do? You go to the gym, there’s nothing there. He’ll do for a while.”
“It’s a living.”
“Isn’t that dreadful? There’s a fella should have been talked out of it after a year. Going around and getting his brains scrambled. Dreadful. At least he won’t get hurt up here.”
“What do you give him, if I may ask?”
“Fifteen a day and his keep. For him it’s a break. Next week I’ve got the Memphis Kid coming up. You know Memphis.”
“Well, he’s still got the brain. Girot?”
“Yes, Mister Doc?”
“Come in and give us a drink, will you?”
It was too early in the day for me, and I don’t think Doc wanted to drink, either. I think he just wanted to talk.
“How’d you get here?” I said.
“My nephew. Thirty years old, with a college degree and a wife and two kids and a good job in a chemical plant in Jersey, and he wants to manage a fighter.”
“That’s your fault.”
“My fault? It’s my fault I put him through college.”
Doc had six months in the City College of New York himself. That is why the fight game gave him the honorary degree of Doctor.
“When did he get the fight bug?”
“Ah, he’s a kid, running around the streets in Brooklyn. I had Rusty Ryan then. You remember him.”
“You know that.”
“I’m getting old.”
“What about Rusty Ryan?”
“I had him in camp on that lake in Pennsylvania.”
“I remember.”
“I had the kid out in camp with us for three weeks. Get him off the streets in the summer. Great idea. He shadowed that Ryan like a dog. Rusty made a mascot of him, let him walk with him, fish with him, bought him ice cream. He got him a pair of kid’s gloves, and showed him a few punches. He never got over it.”
“I can understand that.”
“So, he wanted to be a fighter. That’s why I sent him to college. He’s out of high school then. I said: ‘I’m promising you, Tommy. If I hear of you pulling on a pair of gloves I’ll hit you right on the head with a baseball bat. I’m not kidding.’ I’d have done it.”
“I don’t doubt it, but there was always that one chance he could have made it.”
“Ah. If he could have been a good fighter, I’d have let him. Don’t you know that? He couldn’t make it. This is the worst business in the world for amateurs. They’re liable to get killed. How many fighters do you think I’ve turned down in forty years?”
“Dozens.”
“Dozens? I’ll bet I’ve turned down a hundred. I say: ‘Look, kid, you can’t make it. Be a half-baked plumber, you won’t get hurt. You’ll make a living. You’re a half-baked fighter, you may get killed.’ The kid goes away hating me. Goes to somebody else. He’s a better fighter because he hates me. He’s gonna show that Doc Carroll, but that doesn’t make him a fighter. Nothing can make him a fighter. The kid goes to one of those slobs who turns him over to one of those amateurs with a towel over his shoulder. He gets scrambled. There’s about twelve thousand fighters in the world today. You know how many of them belong in it?”
“You tell me.”
“About a hundred. Maybe less than a hundred.”
“It’s that way in anything.”
“Hello, Doc!”
It was Polo. He walked up to Doc and pumped his hand, and smiled for the first time since I had been there.
“Hello, Polo,” Doc said. “How are you?”
“All right. I’m glad to see you. You’re gonna win the title, hey?”
“How’s your fighter?”
“My fighter?” he said, sobering. “You tell me. He don’t want to train. He don’t want to do nothin’ he should do. The way the heavyweight division is today I tell him: ‘Look. You got a chance. Do what I ask you to do. Please, do me a favor, will you?’ It’s no good. All he wants to do is eat and sleep.”
“Sure,” Doc said.
“Eddie can work with him, if you want it. I mean my guy’s big enough he’ll just move around and Eddie can throw them in there, if you want it.”
“All right, Polo. I’ll let you know.”
“Anything, Doc. You just tell me what I can do with my fighter. What can I do with him?”
“Sure, Polo.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“What can he do with him?” Doc said, when Polo had left, and then he mimicked him: “‘Please, do me a favor. Do what I ask you.’ Can you imagine asking a fighter to do you a favor? Do what he asks him? Ask a fighter nothing. Tell him. You know what he should do with that Schaeffer?”
“I have several suggestions.”
“That’s no fighter.”
“That’s no manager, either.”
“Dreadful.”
He had a way of sliding the word out, as if it were a product of pain. His face would narrow and his eyes would grow smaller and sharper and he would slowly bare the word.
“How did he get in the business?” I said.
“I don’t know. He can’t manage a corner newsstand, but they all think they can manage a fighter. Who cares how he got in?”
“I do.”
“How do they all get in? A kid is a street fighter, and he’s got a pal. The kid goes into the amateurs and his pal goes into the corner with him. The kid wins a dozen fights and wants to turn pro, so he brings his pal along. His pal’s gonna train him, maybe even manage him. They’re friends, and it’s a beautiful thing. The kid has a half-dozen fights and gets flattened. He quits, but does his pal quit? Oh, no. Of course not. He’s a trainer now. He’s up in the gym. He’s got a towel over his shoulder. He’s in for life. Some innocent kid comes walking in, wants to be a fighter. Now he’s got another fighter.”
“Do you think, for a moment, that I’m making this up? Amateur fights don’t make fighters. They make trainers and managers. Trainers? They know nothing about training. They’re rubbers. Valets. They’ve got a towel and a lot of gall. Dreadful.”
“What can you do?”
“Do? Nothing. All you need to be a trainer or a manager is fifteen dollars and a license. This entitles you to ruin a kid’s life, maybe end it. You know this Al Penna who’s up here?”
“I can’t help but know him.”
“You know who manages him?”
“No.”
“A guy named Klein, from Long Island.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Of course not. Guess what he does for a living?”
“Oh, he’s a glass blower.”
“Aah!”
“All right. He picks the dead petals off petunias in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.”
“He’s a manufacturer. He’s worth maybe a quarter million, but he manufactures falsies.”
“It has never even occurred to me to wonder who did.”
“Figure what he’s doing in boxing.”
“I pass.”
“Say he’s worth a quarter of a million. Wherever he goes, though, somebody says: ‘Who’s that?’ Somebody else says: ‘Klein. He’s got money.’ The first guy says: ‘What’s he do?’ The other guy says: ‘He makes falsies.’ He could make ten million dollars, and they’d still laugh. So poor Klein—get this, poor Klein—he’s gonna manage a few fighters now. Then they’ll say: ‘There goes Klein. He manages fighters.’ Isn’t that nice?”
“It’s pathetic. There are a couple of people up here—Girot and Polo—who would prefer Klein’s product to his pugilist.”
“They’re right, but Klein is staking him. Puts him up here. Pays his bills. Lets him work with Barnum’s fighter. Gets him a fight when he can. Buys a hundred tickets and gives them to his friends.”
“And teaches him nothing.”
“They ought to teach him to throw his cup and his ring shoes and his gloves and his mouthpiece in the lake, and flag a bus home.”
“Speaking of buses, where’s that nephew who brought you up? Talking with Eddie?”
“He’s halfway home by now.”
“You kidding?”
“I didn’t even let him get out of the car. I gave him two ringside tickets to the fight and I said: ‘Turn this thing around and get going.’”
“You’re a hard man, Doc.”
“I told him once: ‘Look at yourself, and look at me.’ He put in four years in that lab, and now they’ve got him in the front office. I said: ‘In ten years, with your ability, you can own a piece of that place. What have I got? Forty-three years in the business and what have I got? Let’s say I started out selling cars. By now I’ve got a Ford agency in Westchester. I’ve got a manager. I’ve got salesmen. I’ve got mechanics. I sit back. In the winter I go to Bermuda for a month. In the summer I go to Europe.’ He wants to manage a fighter.”
“I wouldn’t mind managing a fighter named Eddie Brown myself.”
“Not today. With that television today, you’ve got no chance. You’re not a manager, you’re an agent. They tell you who you have to fight and where you’re gonna fight him and when.”
Doc had a name for Eddie. To his face he called him Edward, but to others he always referred to him as the Pro.
“Suppose the Pro gets licked,” he said. “In the old days you could take him to Chicago or Des Moines or St. Louis, and bring him back. They never saw him before. Today, if you get licked, you get licked in front of the whole country. Where are you gonna take him? They all say: ‘Ah, we saw him get licked in his last fight on television.’ You want another drink?”
“I’ll have one more, if we can find Girot.”
Doc walked out to the lobby and came back with Girot. Girot made the drinks and stood listening now.
“Television,” Doc said. “Four weeks ago the Pro is in the Garden. Fifteen million people see it, and we get four grand for the TV and half that off the gate. In the old days we’d have put a hundred thousand dollars in there, and come away with twenty-five, at least. You put nine years of your life into a fighter, and the pay-off is in Indian beads.”
“That’s supposed to be progress.”
“Progress? You read that story in the papers after the fight, about the guy on Central Park West?”
“What guy?”
“A big shot. The Pro is fighting in the Garden, so this guy is gonna be a big shot. He and his wife invite a half-dozen friends in to watch the fight. In the old days a guy like that would buy eight ringsides. Today what do we get out of him? Nothing. He pours out some whiskey, and that’s all it costs him.”
“I read the story. Somebody turned him over for $25,000.”
“Well, that’s what the papers said, but it’ll probably come to fifteen. They’re in there watching the fight and somebody works the fire escape and gets into a bedroom and lifts three fur coats and the dame’s jewels.”
“I refuse to celebrate the conquests of the forces of evil.”
“I celebrated it. It serves him right. I read it in the paper the next day, and I called the guy up. I said: ‘My name is Doc Carroll, and I manage Eddie Brown, who fought in the Garden last night. It serves you right.’ He said: ‘What?’ I said: ‘If you’d brought your friends to the fight this wouldn’t have happened. Let that be a lesson for you.’ He said: ‘What? Who is this?’ I said: ‘Doc Carroll, and I manage Eddie Brown. It serves you right.’ And I hung up.”
“The poor guy probably thought it was all part of the plot.”
“Poor? Like I’m rich, but you’re right. He thinks I brought the Pro along and finally got him into the Garden just to set up the heist.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t have visitors from the law.”
“Cops? Cops can’t find anything. They can’t even find their shoes and socks in the morning.”
“I thought they sleep with them on.”
“I had a brother was a cop. My old lady thought that was great. One of New York’s Finest. I was a young fella, living home then. My brother and I slept in the same room, and he was a great cop. Handsome. Upright. A great parader, and with a twelve-inch eye. You know the twelve-inch eye?”
“No.”
“He could walk along a sidewalk and tell whether a guy was parked twelve and a quarter inches from the curb, and give him a ticket. That takes talent. One night I came home, feeling a little high, and he’s in the hay, getting his good nine hours, and he’s got the uniform and everything laid out for the morning. I took his shoes and his socks and I tied them together and I hung them on the light in the middle of the ceiling.
“When I wake up it’s just about getting light and he’s making this racket, moving things around the room. He’s on his hands and knees, looking under the bed, and he’s in and out of the closet. I said: ‘What are you doing, Sherlock?’ He says: ‘I can’t find my shoes and socks. I put them right under that chair.’ By now the old lady’s there, too, looking.
“I’m lying in bed, and I said: ‘Don’t panic. Remember what they taught you. Make a systematic checkout.’ He says: ‘I did. I always leave them under that chair. I looked everywhere they could be.’ I said: ‘That’s the trouble with you cops. You can’t cope with the unexpected. Look someplace where they shouldn’t be. Look up there on the ceiling. Maybe they’re hanging from the light. Look.’ He looked up there, and there they were. My old lady blew her top.”
“But with that lesson he made a great detective.”
“He died a detective. On West Forty-ninth Street, at one o’clock one morning, with a slug in his guts.”
“Your brother was killed?” Girot said.
“Sure,” Doc said, sipping his drink. “That was his kid drove me up here today.”
Girot just shook his head.
“Speaking of law and order,” I said after a while. “A couple of months ago I saw that an old friend of yours died.”
“Who?”
“Pete Martin.”
“Yeah,” Doc said.
“I suppose you sent flowers.”
“You want to know the truth?”
“Yes.”
“I did.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I sent him a wreath marked ‘Bon Voyage.’ I’m not kidding. It cost me twenty-five fish.”
“I like that for a finish.”
“Do you remember that night?”
“I’ll never forget it,” I said.