The Big Fix - Ed Lacy

     “Becker, cut it. I'll be up there yet,” Tommy said, taking off his robe, trunks, and protector. His red hair was getting thin, there was a growing bald spot on the top of his head. He had hairy arms and legs but his chest was smooth, and there was a dried-up look to the flat white stomach, the narrow hips, skinny backside. Even the too sharply defined shoulder and back muscles seemed drawn. Cork's thin one hundred and forty-six pounds reminded Becker of one of these medical drawings in a TV ad showing the various veins, muscles, and joints. As the fighter bent down to remove his shoes, Becker noticed the wedding ring tied to the laces. Annoyed, he said, “And how did that look, taking your ring into the fight? Told you before, never have to worry about anything being stolen in my club.”

     “You should have seen the characters in here tonight. If there was a way of doing it, I'd have taken my suitcase into the ring.”

     “That old wedding ring. If it was worth anything, you would have hocked it long ago. A cheap...”

     Tommy straightened up, a fast movement that increased the pounding in his head. He held on to the table for a second. But his eyes narrowed and his face turned cruel and hard. Then he relaxed, said gently, “Bobby, you know better than to call it cheap. You really know.” He sat down to take off his ring shoes and socks, dropped the wedding ring on the table, atop the pile of money. Slipping on the wooden shower shoes and taking the towel, he clopped toward the coffin-like shower, calling out, “Watch that for me.”

     “I have to go back up....”

     “Only be a few minutes,” Tommy said, turning on the water.

     Biting on his cigar holder, Becker stared at the wedding ring, silently cursed it. He heard steps in the hallway and turned to see Alvin Hammer stoop to walk through the dressing room door. Hammer was five inches over six feet tall and weighed less than one hundred and forty pounds. His clothes were casual and expensive, and heavy framed glasses gave his lean face an owlish look often considered intellectual. His nervous face still held a trace of an actor's good looks despite his baggy eyes and receding hair, which was dyed black. (On TV he always wore a hairpiece, of course.) He was now smoking a handsome pipe and an amazingly deep, clear voice managed to come out of his skinny frame as he said, “My boys are all cleared away, Becker. How's the kid?”

     “Taking a shower. Watch his stuff, I have things to do upstairs.”

     The announcer sat on the rubbing table. “He was completely tragic in there tonight. A magnificent display of... This all he gets?”

     Al's eyes counted the money under the ring, then looked over abruptly at Becker, who snapped, “Stop it, Al. Go peddle your shaving soap and cut the do-good act. I'm running a business here.”

     “He would have been a famous champ if you hadn't thrown him in with Robinson!”

     “What do you know about it? Tommy wanted the fight.”

     “I know he never recovered from that beating,” Al said, his voice clean and ringing.

     Becker cleaned his cigar holder again and wrinkled his face as if about to spit. Then he remembered that in a fashion Alvin was his boss. He had so many bosses these days. Heading for the door he said, “I can remember when you screamed at him to go out, with his eye half open from a butt, to fill up a few minutes of open TV time! Leave me alone, Al, I have my own problems. Believe me.”

     Alone in the dreary dressing room, Alvin stared at the pathetic pile of money, the wedding ring and enjoyed his pity. He glanced around the room, as if drinking in the horrible atmosphere. After many years as an unsuccessful actor and part-time spieler on sight-seeing buses, then a minor success on radio, Al had rung the bell as a TV fight announcer.

     “Money-wise” he wasn't big, but he made a fair salary and far more important, thoroughly enjoyed his work. Having been a sickly kid who grew too fast into a painfully thin man, Al was fascinated by muscles, by athletes, by men able to give and take punishment. He liked being “a part” of the fight game. “I indeed consider myself fortunate to play any role in this intense drama of courage and skill, in this age-old contest of man against man,” Alvin would say— and often. His open excitement and sincere admiration for pugs wasn't cynical, as is the case of most sports writers, and a great deal of Alvin's sincere feeling came through the mike, making him most effective with his listeners. Although some of his descriptions of movements and precise blows were entirely wrong, the average TV fan never knew the difference and at times Al's vivid description sounded as if he were up there in the squared circle—as he undoubtedly was, in his mind.

     One time on the air, talking about a hard gut wallop, Alvin had said, “Oh! Oh! Frank rips a terrible right deep into Brown's stomach. Brown is clinching, his eyes rolling. Our mouth is desperately open, fighting for air. Now our stomach muscles grow numb, our legs go deadly tired. I feel as if I'm sinking into a numbing fog. Hold on! My heart cries out. Hold on for dear life!... Ah, now our nerves and reflexes respond, we shake off the lifeless feeling, energy and strength are flowing back into our trained muscles. The fog lifts from our brain and... There! Brown is fighting back like a wounded tiger....”

     The sports writers razzed Al without mercy, but the fans like it, showered the stations with letters.

     If Alvin's blind worship of “courage” made him fail to understand the stupidity and commercialized brutality of the fight racket, he could feel and understand the tragedy, the violence. Now, remembering the beating the nineteen dollars represented, he was moved to tears.

     Alvin, after two failures at marriage, only saw women out of need and was “married” to his job. This marriage worked for him. People on the fringe of sports often adopt an athlete (often not aware they are doing it), one they may feel close to for any one of a hundred different reasons. Al was very fond of Tommy. “The little fighting cock,” as he loved to call him (although not on the air where it might possibly be misconstrued) had once saved a show for Alvin. From that moment on he was Alvin's favorite pug.

     Tommy came out of the shower stall dripping wet, rubbing himself vigorously with the towel—the hotel name too faded to be legible. The cold shower had washed most of the dizziness and pain from his body. He waved and said, “Hello, Al. Sorry I stunk up your show. I couldn't get started.”

     “He was a strong youngster.”

     “Muscle-bound dummy. In the old days I wouldn't have let him carry my bag.”

     “You would have cut him to ribbons with your left in a round,” Alvin said, although he'd never seen Tommy box before a year ago, when Cork had been way past his prime. Indignation shook his voice as he asked, “I thought you were paid sixty dollars for an emergency bout?”

     “That's the price,” Tommy said, powdering his crotch and between the toes. It often made him nervous the way Al stared at him. He sometimes wondered if the announcer was a queer.

     “Then why these few dollars?”

     “Well, fifteen bucks I owed Bobby. Six went for the seconds, and Bobby gets his one-third cut, like a manager, for getting me the bout,” Tommy explained as he put on his torn underwear.

     Al banged the rubbing table, a tremendous thump. “The cheap bastard! Where does he come off taking a manager's cut? He knows it's against the law for a matchmaker to be a manager, too. I'll have a word with him!”

     Tommy looked up, surprised. “Look, Bobby gives me the breaks.”

     “Ice in the wintertime!”

     “Don't forget, he used to be my manager,” Tommy said, slipping on socks and badly cracked shoes. “It isn't easy for him to get me on the card. Plenty of mob managers are after Bobby to give their boys the cellar fight. Old Becker's been a pal to me.”

     “With a pal like him you don't need enemies, as the joke goes.” Alvin put a hand in his pocket. “Irish, you need a-few bucks?”

     “Naw, I'm into you for near a hundred now. This dough will last me until I get another bout.”

     “You may not fight for weeks. Got any money beside this nineteen dollars?”

     “Yeah!” Tommy fingered the change in his pocket as he buttoned his baggy pants.

     “Irish,” Alvin began, hunting for the right words, “maybe you ought to... take a rest? I mean for a few months....”

     “Listen, AL you don't have to tell me I was pure lousy tonight. We all have our off-nights. Bobby says the commission wants to take away my license. I'm only thirty-two. Archie Moore and Jersey Joe, and old Fitz—they never hit the big time until they were forty. Things been rough for me, I haven't been training right and...” Tommy almost said he hadn't been eating most of the time, but somehow he couldn't tell Al that. Al was the “press” and one always put up a front for the press. “You know I got the fastest left in the business. I have the experience. Hell, I'm no sixty-buck fighter. I made seven grand fighting Robinson. I ain't got any doubts. You wait, with the luck of the Irish I'll be up on top again, where I belong.”

     “Of course, you'll be a champ. I merely thought that if you had a rest, it might be what you need.”

     Tommy thought, How dumb these reporters are! He slipped on his ring, pocketed the money, and quickly packed his old suitcase. He put on an old windbreaker under an older heavy coat. “Al, resting isn't what I need. This was my first fight in nine weeks. I need more bouts. Hell, it costs to rest.”

     “Suppose I give... lend you twenty-five dollars?”

     Tommy shook his head. “Al what you can do is get me a part-time job, something which won't interfere with my training but give me eating dough. I could work out evenings, like most pugs do now. Ought to be lots of things around a TV studio to do.”

     “Well, I'll ask.” Alvin couldn't hide the doubt in his voice.

     “Something where I'd get a workout at the same time. Like pushing chairs and stuff around, physical work.”

     “Irish, all those jobs are highly unionized.”

     “I'll even be a porter or a messenger—just a couple hours a day,” Tommy said, putting on his cap, turning off the light. “Watch your head in the doorway, Al. I'd only need the job for a few weeks. If I hadn't run out of steam I'd have flattened this rough kid, been on the way up. AL wasn't it comical, the way he telegraphed his right?”

     “He's a clumsy oaf, should quit now, while he's ahead,” Alvin said, his arm around Tommy's shoulder. They walked up the wooden steps and into the dark arena, their Mutt and Jeff shadows dancing ahead of them. In the dim light the empty arena, filled with an unreal fog of stale smoke, always gave Al a nightmarish quality. They passed Becker in the box office with his bookkeeper. Alvin stopped at the main entrance. “I forgot my coat. Irish, if I should hear about a job—and I'll try but can't promise anything—how do I get in touch with you? Haven't seen you around the bar lately.”

     “Leave word with Bobby.”

     “Or I'll see you at the gym?”

     “Well... eh... best you tell Bobby,” Tommy told him. He owed three months' rent at the gym—fifteen dollars all told—hadn't been around there in weeks. “Hey, Al, how did you like that talking ref? Must have been afraid to work, get his hands dirty. Talk, talk... I was busy enough with the kid without listening to a lecture.”

     “He should work in England, where the referee is outside the ring and only gives voice commands,” Alvin said. “Okay, old cock, I'll keep in touch. And, if things get too rugged, don't hesitate to look me up for a few bucks.”

     “Thanks,” Tommy said politely, thinking, Why the devil doesn't he stop treating me like a bum? I'm Irish Cork, the welterweight contender!

     Outside, it was a raw, cold night. Tommy started walking, needing food and a good hooker of whiskey, and not sure of the exact order of need. The cold air stung his battered face, cleared his head. Almost copying a hackneyed scene from a B movie, a flashy sport car, parked on the deserted street, sounded its horn. Tommy knew it wasn't for him and continued to walk. He decided to get the drink first—only one— then head for a cheap cafeteria down around the skid-row area where he could put away a filling meal for about a buck.

     Continuing the motion picture scene, the horn pierced the night again and a stocky young man in a well-fitting overcoat, wearing a sharp hat, crossed the sidewalk and stopped in front of Tommy. “You Irish Cork?”

     “Sure.” In the dim light Tommy could make out the hard, handsome features, the thick shoulders.

     “There's a guy who wants to see you in the car. May have a good deal for you, Pops.” The voice was flat, casual, yet from the way the younger man was blocking him, Tommy had a fast feeling it was more of an order than an invitation.

     “He wants to see me?” Tommy put his bag down so his mitts would be free, never taking his eyes off the other's hands.

     “That's it. Kind of a fan of yours.”

     Tommy chuckled. “Think he wants my autograph?”

     “Why not ask him?” Jake lowered his voice to a supposedly confidential whisper. “Pops, this guy's a fight nut And a rich one. Let's go, huh?”

     For a split second Irish hesitated. It wasn't exactly fear. Tommy really believed he could lick any man in the world, including the heavyweight champ. Rather, it was a cautious curiosity. He vaguely wondered what this heavy-shouldered guy would do if he told him to go to hell; and what he could do himself, considering how weak and exhausted he was. Then he told himself, I'm thinking like a clown. What am I, a millionaire they're trying to kidnap? And I'm too poor to be sued. They must mistake me for somebody else. But he called me by name? One thing, I sure don't look like ready money.

     Picking up his battered suitcase, Tommy followed the man to the car, deciding he'd see what this was all about but he'd be damned if he'd get in.

     There was a plump man sitting on the front seat. He was bundled in an expensive coat. The features of the fleshy face were sloppy and the light from the dashboard showed a veined nose, wide mouth, and quick, clear eyes. Sticking out a gloved hand the man said, “I'm Arno Brewer. I'm thinking of managing you. You've already met Jake—Jake Watson, one of my fighters.”