A stocky welterweight was beating the crap out of a sparring partner in Ring Two when Cassidy climbed the stairs to Stillman’s Gym and paid his quarter to Jack Curley who guarded the door, owl-eyed behind his steel-rimmed glasses. The man who followed Cassidy up the stairs tried to slip in without paying, but Lou Stillman, with his ex-cop’s eyes, spotted the move from his perch near Ring One.
‘Pay the quarter, you cheap bum,’ he yelled, and the man turned back sheepishly and dug in his pocket for change.
It was late afternoon, and the gym was hot and crowded. The lights were on, as they always were, because the windows were covered with thirty years of grime, and what daylight managed to work through them arrived defeated by the struggle. If there had been an exhibition scheduled, or if a big fight was imminent and name boxers were training, the folding chairs and the seats in the gallery would be crowded with silky women in furs and men with cashmere coats over their arms. But today was a workday at Stillman’s, and the East Side and Uptown crowds gave way to trainers and managers, matchmakers from the Garden and St Nick’s and the arenas in New Jersey. Most were aging palookas with lumpy faces, badges of honor won in the ring in younger days. A thin, old man with scraggly white hair and clothes he had bought when he was twenty pounds bigger muffled the receiver of a pay phone against his shoulder and called out, ‘Anyone got a lightweight for a six rounder on Friday in Newark? Anybody got a lightweight for Friday at Newark?’ Three men in old tweed jackets and fedoras broke from the crowd and moved toward him. Under one of the grimed windows a heavyweight with shoulders like a horse stood easy with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth while his trainer wrapped his hands. Boxers waiting their turns shadow boxed and shuffled in the narrow corridor past the rings.
Cassidy breathed in the familiar smell of sweat, coal dust, liniment, disinfectant, and tobacco as he moved through the fight mob. Some of the low hanging cigarette and cigar smoke had probably been exhaled before the war.
The former middleweight champion of the world, Rocky Graziano, broke away from a group of admirers and came toward him with his arm around the shoulders of Whitey Bimstein, his old cut man and trainer. He gave Cassidy a nod and paused and said, ‘Hey, Mike. How’re you doing?’ A couple of young fighters nearby began to hammer speed bags in attempt to attract Graziano’s notice.
‘Doing fine, Champ. How are you?’ He stopped to light his cigarette off Bimstein’s cigar.
‘Couldn’t be better.’
‘I hear that Paul Newman guy who’s playing you in the movie’s a lot prettier than you are.’ A movie about Graziano called Somebody Up There Likes Me was due to open in December.
‘Yeah? Well, he didn’t get hit in the face as many times as I did.’
Bimstein laughed, and Graziano ran an affectionate hand over the older man’s bald head.
‘Is Terry Mack around?’ Cassidy asked.
‘Yeah. The other side of Ring Two with that welter,’ Bimstein said. ‘He thinks he’s got something there. He may be right. The little fucker can punch.’
Cassidy found Terry Mack leaning with his forearms on the ring apron while he studied the sparring with educated eyes. Mack was a lean, dark-haired man with a narrow face and prominent chin that, he learned early in his career, could not take a punch. The discovery changed his dream from becoming the light heavyweight champion of the world to becoming the trainer and manager of a champion of the world, weight class not important. So far he had been disappointed, but he was an optimist. He nodded to let Cassidy know that he was aware of him, but he did not take his eyes off the fighters.
By the time Germany surrendered in the spring of 1945, Cassidy had served under eight commanding officers. Three had been wounded, two killed, and the rest promoted out of the company. Terry Mack had been the company commander for the last eight weeks of the fighting, and Cassidy had been his executive officer. Mack had proved to be a brave but cautious leader who understood that the war was winding down, the Germans were defeated, and that the most important part of his job was to bring home as many of his men as he could, an attitude Cassidy applauded.
Cassidy stood beside him and watched the action in the ring.
Bimstein had called Mack’s fighter ‘the little fucker’, so he had to be the shorter of two men, but he wasn’t little. He was short and broad with wide shoulders and thick, muscled legs. His sparring partner was a tall, light-skinned Negro. Both men wore headgear. The sparring partner’s ribs and stomach were mottled red, and when Mack’s fighter hit him, Cassidy understood why. The punch, a right hook, sounded like someone hitting a side of beef with a baseball bat. Mack’s guy hooked him again, and the sparring partner lurched sideways from the force of the blow. His hands came down, and Mack’s guy hit the side of his headgear and drove him into the ropes. As the man’s hands came up to protect his head, Mack’s guy hit him with a left and a right to the ribs, and the sparring partner spun away toward the other side of the ring. Mack’s guy went after him with short, balanced steps that took him across the canvas with surprising quickness. He walked through the sparring partner’s jab and hit the man twice in his reddened belly, and all the fight went out of him. He tied up Mack’s guy with his arms and leaned on him wearily. Mack rang the bell at his side, and the men broke and touched gloves. The sparring partner slipped through the ropes, eager to get away from the pain maker and lie down somewhere. Mack climbed through the ropes and crossed to where his fighter waited for him. Mack undid his gloves while he talked to him. He stepped back to demonstrate a jab, and then patted the boxer on the shoulder and held the ropes for him to make his exit easier. He walked back across the ring, climbed down, and picked up a leather jacket from a folding chair at ringside. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘He looks like he could knock down a wall,’ Cassidy said.
‘Yeah. He can punch. You know why I like him? He’s always moving forward, and he’s always busy. He crowds ’em. He drives ’em. He won’t let ’em up. He gets in close, and he hits ’em. You get a fighter who wants to crowd ’em and hit ’em, you’re halfway there. Now if only I could get him to learn the jab. He thinks the jab’s for sissies. Jesus. You get one who can jab, but he can’t punch, or he can jab, but he can’t take a punch, or he punches, but he can’t jab. It’s always some goddamn thing. But this one, this one I believe is going someplace. This one’s going up the ladder if he don’t turn out to be too dumb to learn.’ Cassidy offered him a cigarette and lit one for himself. ‘What’s up, Mike? A day off? You want to go a couple of rounds?’
‘I want to talk to you about something.’
‘My business or yours?’
‘Mine. I’ll buy you a drink.’
‘Bet your ass you will. Maybe two.’ He grinned and shrugged into his jacket. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
They went down the stairs and out through the big metal door to Eighth Avenue and up to the corner of Fifty-fifth and into the welcoming gloom of the Neutral Corner Bar and Grill. The walls were covered with framed photos of fights, fighters, managers, and handlers, some of the prints yellowing with age. Men who looked like they could have stepped from those photos drank and talked at the bar and at the tables on the floor. Tough men in a tough business.
Cassidy followed Terry Mack to a table against the wall. Cassidy asked the waiter for a Jack Daniels on the rocks, and Mack asked for a Jack neat with water back. When the waiter brought them, they clinked glasses and drank some liquor.
‘Terry, remember at the end of the war when we were supposed to be demobilized.’
‘Sure. We were stationed in Frankfurt. I haven’t had a hot dog since,’ he laughed.
‘And then you got transferred out to some special unit the day before we were supposed to go home.’
‘Yeah, because I spoke Kraut. Thanks for that, Mom. I stick around Germany while you go home to all the grateful, hero-worshipping virgins.’
‘Something about de-Nazification.’
‘Nah. That was some other outfit. I was assigned to this unit they called Alsos. You ever hear of that?’
‘No.’
‘A bunch of people looking for Hitler’s atomic research stuff, the scientists, the documents, records of tests, that stuff. But I was only with them a little while and then they turned me over to this other outfit that was looking for German rocket scientists, biological warfare experts, chemical warfare researchers, medical researchers, useful guys we could ship back to the States. The Russians were looking for the same people and hauling them off to Russia. I guess some people in Washington understood the Cold War had already started. It was like a fucking treasure hunt with guns.’
‘What happened to the guys you shipped back here?’
‘I only know about a couple or three of them. One’s up at MIT. The other works for DuPont. The third turned out to be a Nazi. The deal was that anyone who was a real Nazi couldn’t get clearance to come here. Of course if you wanted any kind of Kraut government job back before the war, you had to join the Nazi Party, so they were trying to figure out who was really gung-ho, and who just joined to get the job.’
‘And the third guy was a real Nazi?’
‘Yeah. Early party member. A real shithead.’
‘So he didn’t get to come.’ Cassidy signaled the waiter for another round.
Mack caught Cassidy’s eyes and then looked away and lit a cigarette. ‘Yeah, he came. A bunch of them came anyway, party member or not.’
‘What the hell?’
‘One day, some guys show up at our billet. A couple of jokers in uniform, but with no insignia, a couple of hard men in civilian clothes, and a general to give them some heft. There’s been a change. Some of the guys we rejected are needed in the States, and we can’t let them fall into the hands of the Reds. There’s a list of scientists they want. We’re going to change their job histories, erase their party memberships. They’re going to be our guys now, and we need them, so they’re good guys.’
‘Terry, you saw what those fuckers did.’
‘That war was done. This is the new one. I get it, even if you don’t. The Russians want to rule the world, just like Hitler did, and the only thing stopping them is this country. So these guys did some bad shit. If the Russians get them, they’re going to do some worse shit. With us they’re working for something good.’
‘You really believe that?’
‘Don’t give me that crap. We’re the good guys here. You want to compare us to the Russians? Fuck you.’
‘How can I find out who they brought over?’
‘I don’t know. It’s all classified stuff. You got a security clearance?’
Cassidy shook his head. ‘Do you remember any names?’
‘Uh-uh. I already told you too much. That’s it. No more from me. You want to come to the gym and work out, spar a couple of rounds, I’m happy to see you, but I’m done with this. I’m not talking to you or anyone else. It gets back to me, I lose my license in a second, maybe go to jail. Then what the fuck am I going to do?’ He shoved back his chair and stood up.
‘Terry—’
‘No, Mike, that’s it. No more. I don’t know nothing.’