Some Faces in the Crowd (13 page)

The two officers looked at each other suspiciously.

“Maybe they’re saving us for the invasion,” Pierce suggested.

“Or maybe they’re saving the invasion for us,” Schofield said.

Pierce asked Schofield if he were married. Schofield said he was. “I’ve been hitched to the same woman for twenty-three years,” Pierce announced. They didn’t come any finer than Mrs. Pierce, he said. And his son, a shavetail in the Marine Corps, was a regular chip off the old block. One of his daughters was married to an insurance man in Minneapolis who cleared fifteen thousand in ’43. “Not that money means anything, the way this government is going.”

Pierce signaled to the waiter with his empty glass. “I tell you, Captain,” he said, “I’m old enough to be your father, so I know what I’m talking about. No matter how much jack you’ve got in the bank you’re a pauper if you haven’t got the love of your own family.”

He reached into his billfold and pulled out a snapshot of a family group. Mrs. Pierce reminded Schofield of the typical Brookline matron. “Mrs. Pierce is a very handsome woman,” he said, and held the photograph the polite length of time before handing it back.

A Wac lieutenant appeared. She was small and rather plain, with a figure that was tidy if not pin-up. Pierce studied it critically. “I hear these service gals around Washington don’t mind giving it away if you’re going overseas,” he said.

Captain Schofield smiled to show that he was one of the boys, but his mind was far away from Lieutenant Colonel Pierce and his observations on wartime morality. He was thinking about his wife, Mignon, in Greenmeadow, Massachusetts. He was wondering if perhaps he weren’t going to be around long enough to make it worth-while for Mignon to come down and stay with him. Pierce was again talking about legs. A beribboned Free French officer with a slight, erect figure limped stylishly down the steps.

“Sort of gives me a kick to see the Free French here in the Mayflower,” Schofield said.

“I still don’t trust ’em,” Pierce said. “From de Gaulle up or down.”

Schofield said nothing. He was not an argumentative man and things he felt strongly about he preferred not to discuss with Lieutenant Colonel Pierce. The future of the civilized world lies in our trusting those fellows and their trusting us, he thought.

“Now that’s the kind of legs I was talking about,” said Pierce, eyeing a pair that were moving past the table.

After a while, when Lieutenant Colonel Pierce and Captain Schofield kept on meeting at the Mayflower, they stopped joking about still being in Washington. They stopped talking about the war because they weren’t heroes any more. They didn’t talk politics because after all there was no sense getting into an argument. They just sat down with each other because people don’t like to sit down alone these days and there weren’t many other men in Washington they knew to sit down with. Like a couple of fellows who find themselves thrown together in the same foxhole, Schofield thought. The Mayflower Lounge was a Washington foxhole papered with dollar bills, where officers going overseas any minute or any year were sweating out the war.

“I know what let’s do,” Pierce said one evening after a longer silence than usual. “Let’s play a game. I’ll bet I can count six silver leafs entering this place before you count twelve bars. And the loser picks up the check.”

“Fine!” Schofield said. He thought of Mignon, pregnant in Greenmeadow, Massachusetts. He thought of the invasion and when it would open up and how much he wanted to be there in time for it, not because he aspired to heroism but because this was going to be the biggest fire the world had ever seen and men are still small boys chasing after fires. He wondered how much longer he would have to sit around the Mayflower while the orchestra played something called “Mairzy Doats” and Lieutenant Colonel Pierce tossed off old-fashioneds without sugar and commented on the good legs and the bad legs passing back and forth.

A youthful Air Force Captain with a string of ribbons, a young lady and a cane, appeared on the landing. Schofield pulled out a pencil and drew a cross on his paper napkin. “That puts me in the lead,” he said. “One to nothing, Colonel.”

The Colonel was watching the Wac lieutenant he had been eyeing for days. He rose so suddenly that he spilled a little of Schofield’s drink into the captain’s lap.

“The hell with this,” he announced. “I’m gonna go over and see if I can get into that Wac’s drawers.”

For a moment, as the two men looked at each other, one of those private little wars within wars was being waged.

“And the hell with you, Captain, you prim, pious son of a bitch,” Pierce said. Then he straightened his uniform, making sure his home-front ribbons were in place, and walked away.

Schofield checked an impulse to call after him, “I hope I never see you again.” Instead he toyed with his drink and thought of Mignon and the waiting French and the petty careering that would always blemish the nobility of war.

“We’ll win something out of this in spite of you, you silly bastard,” he actually said under his breath. And then, feeling a little better, he ordered another drink and went on waiting.

N
O, NOTHING FOR ME
thanks. You boys go ahead, I’ll just sit and talk with you a coupla minutes. Say, listen, I’m not
on
the wagon, I’m
driving
the God-damn thing. For life? If I wanna have any life left, the doc says. Yeah, ulcers. You know, the old belly bite. Oh that reminds me, I ain’t had my milk yet today. That’s a laugh, huh, Rocky Evans on the cow juice. Well let me tell you, chums, this here ulcer is no joke. I’d take cancer and seven points any day in the week. The hell it is my own fault. Well maybe I was pretty much of a sauce-hound in my day, but so was my old man, he still has to have his quart a day or he don’t feel like he’s accomplished anything. And you never seen an
alter kocker
in better shape than my old man. No boys, it ain’t the amber that give me ulcers. It’s the fight business. The aggravation. The mockies you got to deal with every day. The crooks all the time trying to pull a fast one on you, with one hand on your shoulder and the other in your pocket. And the bums, oh Jesus, how I wish I had as much money as I can’t stand them bums. They are so ignorant, so unsensitive, like a bunch of mules. No wonder I got the bite in the breadbasket, now, Rocky Evans, a man who went three years to high school, a fella what has associated with plenty of class people in my time, screwing around with a bunch of stumblebums.

For instance, you want to know why I got ulcers, you take one of my bums, Tony Colucci, for instance. Every time I think of Tony, I want to get out of the fight business. There must be an easier way, I says to myself. You beat your brains out trying to make a dollar for yourself and your bum and what happens? Your bum turns out to be an ingrate who almost gets you run out of the business. Like this Tony Colucci I started to tell you about. The first time I caught Tony in the amateurs, it must be ten, twelve years ago, I almost broke a leg trying to beat the other managers back to the dressing room. Rocky, you old bastard I says to myself when the kid tells me nobody in the business has got to him yet, all aboard for the gravy train. He was a good-looking kid then, six-three or four, weighing around two-twenty, shoulders that went from here to over there, and not too heavy in the legs. It looked too good to be true.

Yeah, and that’s just the way it works out. I win a couple with Tony out of town, and then when I bring him in I shoot my mouth off all over the street how I got the coming world’s champion, so what does Tony do to repay me? He gets himself knocked out in the first round. So it turns out all I got is another bum on my hands. One of those big clumsy guys with two left feet and a right hook that’s so wild every time he throws it I expect to see him knock himself out. Sure, you’ll hear a lot of fellas around here tell you that Tony was a great prospect and might of got somewhere if I hadn’t brought him along too fast and thrown him in with Louis and Charles and boys like that before he was ready. But that is strictly b.s. The way I figure it, Tony was just one of those guys God put on this earth to be punished, I can’t see no other reason, because Tony couldn’t of beat boys like Joe and Ez if they was dying of old age. So maybe he was overmatched. Only it’s like I say, a guy as dumb as Tony is born to be overmatched, and I don’t see how it makes much difference whether he winds up on Queer Street next year, or the year after next.

One thing I will say for Tony, he didn’t seem to care how soon he got there. He would just get out there in the middle of the ring and lead with his jaw and stand there and grin and get his eyes cut and his lips split and his nose busted and keep on grinning until the other guy would finally take mercy on him and put him away. Oh what a bum! Sometimes I’d see the dames sitting ringside holding their programs up in front of their faces because they couldn’t stand the slaughter. Well there were plenty of times when I wanted to hide my face, too, only it wasn’t because I was a sissy, it was because I was so ashamed at the disgrace of having to be known as the manager of such a poor excuse for a fighter.

After a while I didn’t have to worry very much about that, though, because I couldn’t get matches for Tony any more. They said I’d have to wait for the next generation of heavyweights to grow up so we’d have somebody new to beat us. So the only work I could get for Tony was sparring with some of the name boys in the gym, three, four dollars a round. A little tough on his profile, maybe, but pretty good money for Tony if he worked every day.

That’s where Tony was when I got my brainstorm, an inspiration I guess you’ll have to call it, so when I tell you what happened you can see why I got so sore at the dope for almost throwing away the first chance we have to get ahold of a little folding money in over a year.

God-damn it, when I just think about it I get my bowels in such an uproar I … Hey, waiter, it’s bad enough you got to drink milk without you should wait all day for it.

Well, as I was saying, that was the year they was beating the drums for Chief Firebird, the Apache Assassin they were ballyhooing into a spot for the title match. The Chief had a couple of real money boys behind him with connections, but the best, and they were touring around the country, piling up a knockout record that would read good in the books and give the p.a.’s something to suck the public in on.

So as soon as the idea hits me I hotfoot it over to see Bad News Harry Hoffman, who is one of the Chief’s half a dozen managers.

Harry and I have a powder together, for old times’ sake, because we used to do quite a bit of business together, and then another one and pretty soon we are feeling pretty chummy and I am ready to begin.

“Harry,” I says, “I hear where you are taking the Chief out to K.C. next month,” I says.

“Well,” he says to me, “I been thinking about it, if I can make the right match.”

So I says, “How does the champeen of Italy sound?” I says.

“The champeen of Italy,” he says. “Who the hell is the champeen of Italy?”

I look him straight in the eye and I says, “Tony Colucci,” I says.

“Tony Colucci,” he says. “You mean that broken-down bum of yours? Since when has he been the champeen of Italy?” he says.

“Since I sat down with you,” I says. “Harry, we know each other too long to fart around. I am not one of these shyster managers who would rather make a crooked dime than an honest dollar. When you talk to Rocky Evans you know you are talking with a man of his word,” I says.

“Put it to music and send it to me on a record,” he says. But I know I’ve got him going. “Even the dopes will know he ain’t the champeen of Italy,” he says.

Then I give him the convincer, I says, “Do you know who the champeen of Italy is?” I says.

“Nah,” he says.

“Then how do you know it
ain’t
Tony Colucci?” I says. I got him on the ropes now. He’s weakening fast. “And if you, a smart guy in the business, don’t know,” I says, “how in Christ’s sweet sake do you expect the dopes in K.C. to know the difference?”

So we do business. Two-fifty for the fight and a G on the side to splash in the third round. I run right over to the gym to tell Tony the good news. Tony was stretched out on a rubbing table with his eyes closed. There was an egg over one eye and his kidneys looked like a rare cut of roast beef. “That new fella from Chicago was tryin’ out his left hook,” says the jig rubber. “From the way Tony drops, it looks like the fella is back workin’ in the slaughter-house.”

“Tony’ll feel better when he gets a load of the match I just made for him,” I says, and I tell the rubber to park his fat ass somewhere else. Then I pull Tony up to a sitting position and rub the back of his neck to bring him around. He lets his legs dangle over the side of the table and holds his head in his hands.

“Jesus,” he says. “That sonofabitch can bang.”

“Cheer up, kid,” I says. “We hit the jackpot again. Twelve hundred and fifty smackeroos to box Chief Firebird in K.C.”

“Twelve-fifty?” He raised his head slowly and looked up at me. I’m a sentimental bastard, I guess, but I couldn’t help thinking how different he looked from the first time I seen him, back in the amateurs. He was a pretty good-looking kid then, high, straight nose, shiny, black eyes, always kind of, well, kind of proud-looking. Kind of cocky, the way he carried himself, only not the kind to annoy you, cocky and quiet at the same time, like he was saying, Look, I don’t want to sound like I’m boasting, it simply happens to be a fact that I am the next champeen of the world. And I guess the dope really believed that too, before I brought him into town and he started kissing the canvas like it was his only girl. That Roman schnoz with the high bridge is fallen down now, he’s got an ear on him that would look like a cauliflower even to a cauliflower and his eyes is sunken in and pulled back kind of Chink style the way most the boys’ eyes get after they been in the business awhile. He is something to scare babies with if I ever seen one. Only the inside of his eyes is the same, the eyeballs, big and kind of moist-looking, and he’s got a way of looking at you too long with them, sort of proud-like and melancholy that makes you want to look away. That’s the way he was looking at me now when he says, “Twelve-fifty?” he says. “For twelve-fifty I gotta do tricks. What tricks I gotta do for twelve-fifty?”