Some Faces in the Crowd (33 page)

Mrs. Finneran looked at Vince. Vince wasn’t saying anything. “Vince, is this something you want to do?”

Vince’s old man looked at him hard. A good student, that was all very well, but you couldn’t buy a round at Paddy’s on the strength of a B-plus in chemistry. But another fighter in the family. That was something to throw out your chest about.

Vince looked at his old man and felt the pressure of it. He wanted to please Ma and get through St. Xavier’s, but he wanted his Pop to be proud of him, too. The summer was coming on and he had a half-day job. He wouldn’t have to train too hard for the amateurs. He was in pretty good shape from the basketball season.

“I’ll get you down to the C.Y.O. and I’ll work out with you.” Eddie talked fast. “It’ll do me good too. Get this blubber off me. You’ll be a cinch, kid, a cinch. The talk o’ the neighborhood.”

“Well, I guess it can’t do me any harm,” Vince said.

“All right, all right, now leave him alone, let ’im do his homework.” Ma broke it up.

Eddie was on time for his training dates with Vince at the C.Y.O. It was the only thing he had ever been on time for, except his own fights. He taught the kid how to stand and move, how to tie up an opponent in the clinches and how to turn his right toe in a little and get his body into it when he threw the right. He taught him to punch, not in single blows but in combinations, to an inner rhythm. He taught him how to weave and feint and pick off punches with his gloves, how to suck an opponent into leading and how to counter. Vince didn’t look like a natural fighter. He had never loved and lived fighting on the streets as Eddie had. But he studied his brother’s instructions the same way he tackled math or chemistry. And he was little and quick. Eddie saw he would never be as aggressive as he himself had been, but he had a faster, more accurate left hand, and by following Eddie’s tips on punching power he could hurt you with a right hand.

A perfectionist, Vince found himself enjoying the mastery of a new sport. It was good exercise, something like fencing. You fenced for an opening, you tried to draw your opponent off guard. It was fun to make him miss and step in to nail him before he recovered. There was something to it all right. It wasn’t just sock and be socked. It was science. It wasn’t so different from chemistry, in a way. You worked out a formula and then you experimented on the basis of it and then you adjusted the formula to the new facts. In a month he was stepping around Eddie, reddening his brother’s nose with his snaky lefts and smothering his bull-like rushes.

Eddie lost weight, looked younger, was beginning to find himself. For the first time since he had hung up the gloves, his life began to have focus. He would be the discoverer, the trainer, the manager of Vinnie Finneran, successor to the old, crowd-pleasing Honeyboy.

It was the talk of the neighborhood the way Vinnie breezed through the Golden Gloves, how he went eight straight bouts without dropping a round. He was a shade of the old Irish boxing masters, Slattery and Loughran and Tunney and McLarnin. In the City Finals he met a strong Puerto Rican boy who crowded him but every time the other boy rushed in Vinnie peppered him until finally a faint streak of red trickled from the Puerto Rican’s cheekbone and the bout was stopped. Eddie lifted Vinnie up and carried him around the ring and Pop climbed through the ropes and hugged him and shook his big hands together to salute friends in the crowd.

That night in the Finnerans’ flat it was like old times. Too much like them to please Ma. There were cronies of Pop’s, and Eddie and his crowd in their striped T-shirts, and Molly and her husband Leo, and Sally, the younger daughter, with a boy friend, all of them telling each other just how good Vinnie was and what he had done to this boy and that, as if they had not all been there and seen it with their own eyes. Drinking beer and wallowing in this new little puddle of glory, Eddie had the center of the stage. It reminded him of the days when he was a winning fighter and the guys made a circle around him to hear what he had to say. Even if this was only amateur stuff, they were beginning to listen again as Eddie talked up the prowess of his kid brother. “He did just like I told ’im, he’s got class, he’s cute, he could turn pro and make a bundle, a second Billy Graham.”

Then everybody was talking at once, each with his or her own small life made to seem a little larger through the magnifying glass of success. Eddie with his taste of the old prestige, and Pop crowing over his pals and feeling less of a failure for being able to show around the winning wristwatch with the inscription on the back. The brother-in-law Leo had brought a couple of his best customers to the fight—there was nothing like having a fighter in the family to help the liquor business. Everybody likes to know the fighters, an unconscious attraction to our brutal beginnings. Molly and Sally were enjoying it too; it was exciting, relief from the humdrum. Some of the silver light of Vinnie’s local fame had begun to spill over onto them. People kept asking them how it felt to have a champion in the family.

The only quiet ones at the celebration that night were Vinnie and Ma. Vinnie didn’t see what all the shouting was about. He had won, and it hadn’t been too difficult but it didn’t feel much different from coming home after a winning basketball game. He didn’t feel like fighting the short rounds over and over again in conversation. He looked on with detached amusement as Eddie demonstrated to a crowd of admirers exactly how Vince had opened the other boy’s cheek. “He’ll go t’ the top,” he kept repeating in a kind of self-hypnosis, “if he keeps doin’ like I show ‘im he’ll go right to the top, we could make a bundle if he ever turns pro.”

Ma helped serve the beer and the coffee and was polite when she was spoken to, but she would have liked to have tossed the whole bunch of noisy fair-weather parasites out of the place. Backslappers and spongers. She remembered the flattery and the free loading when Eddie was in the money. Of course Vince had more common sense, more character, but she was afraid of this fight world with its quick fame and quick money. Oh, there was always Tunney to point to as the West Side boy who had made good, but right here in her own neighborhood, on the docks working alongside Pop and lounging around with Eddie she knew how many ex-pugs there were who had had a taste of four-figure money for a year or two and then had slipped back into the crowd, some of them with foolish gummy grins on their faces, and some like Eddie spoiled for everyday work at ordinary money.

Next morning Eddie clipped out of the paper the squib on the bottom of the third sports page: “Brother of Honeyboy Finneran, Ex-Boxer, Wins Amateur Title.” Then he put on his sports jacket over his wine-colored T-shirt and went uptown to the Forrest Hotel to look up his old manager, Specs Golders. Specs was crying the usual managerial blues. Except for a Robinson or a Marciano, there were no big draws anymore. And no young blood. The kids you got didn’t want to train; give them a few big wins and you couldn’t tell them anything. “I’m so disgusted I’m ready to go into the shoe business with my brother-in-law,” Specs summed it up.

Eddie told Specs about the kid brother and made it sound big. “You know I’d level with you, Specs. You know I ain’t just shittin’ ya ’cause he’s the kid brud. Vince is sharper ’n blue blades. Like the good old days. How many good white boys around these days? Vince is money in the bank.”

Specs said he was buddies with the Garden crowd again. Next time his light-heavyweight got a main event he could probably spot Vince in the six-round special.

“How much?”

“Five.”

Five hundred. Honeyboy had started at fifty and clubbed his way up, but now with the Finneran name and Specs’ connections it was half a G. Then a semi-windup, fifteen hundred, a few of those and up into the feature bout, three or four thousand, maybe five with the television. He keeps winning and he’s fighting for a percentage, 20 per cent of $60,000, 30 per cent of $90,000, title fights, and maybe some day, if they got the breaks, a real pay night in six-figure money. Eddie would have tailor-made suits, $175 and up, a big suite in a plush hotel, fur coats and ice for the pick of the broads, big men would call him for tickets, Toots Shor would slap him on the back and insult him with affection, the columnists would press him to recall some favorite anecdotes, he’d take Vince to Paris to fight this Humez or whoever they had over there, there would be French broads and a Jaguar and champagne wine and a big night in the casino, there would be sucker tours against soft touches from Boston to Seattle, they’d move, they’d live, Eddie and Specs in partnership, good new kids would beg ’em to manage them, they’d find a heavyweight and finagle a jackpot.

“How’s about we cut like this,” Eddie said. “Fifty for Vince, twenny-five for you, twenny-five for me.”

“For me, because you made money for me and you’re a friend of mine, I’ll only take one-third, point three three three,” Specs said. “The rest you and the kid split as you see fit.”

He and Vince could take the two-thirds and cut it down the middle, Eddie figured. After all, this was his idea. He was opening the doors. And he’d do the teaching, the worrying, the greasing. Vince was a careful kid, a saver. One third of five- and ten-thousand dollar purses would add up for him.

“A deal,” Eddie said.

“And expenses off the top,” Specs added.

“You would steal your own mother’s glass eye,” Eddie said, with admiration.

“If he’s as good as you say, we’ll make a few dollars,” Specs said.

“On the head of my mother,” Eddie said. “Right now he’s better ’n I was when I was good.”

“You were never good,” Specs said. “You drew the money because they liked to see you laugh when you got hurt.”

Eddie was hurt this time, too, so he laughed and they shook hands. “You watch, we’ll make a bundle,” Eddie said.

Eddie had to start working for his money right away. He had to go down and talk the kid brother into turning pro. Vince said, What about school? He had promised his mother to finish. He didn’t like the idea of turning pro. In the long run a high-school education could even mean more money.

Eddie said, “Who’s knocking the school? You go to school and you train in the afternoons. You can’t read them books all the time. ’Stead of going out for basketball or something you spar ’n punch the bag. Fidel La Barba, the flyweight champion remember?, he went to college ’n boxed and you take this kid Vejar, he’s at N.Y.U. right now and he’s making nice money boxing. Look kid, here’s the clincher, for one Garden main event—and Specs ’n me ’ll get you there, believe me—you’ll make more money than twelve months in a job.”

“And you really think I’ll have as easy a time in the pros and I did in the amateurs?”

“If you work,” Eddie said, “if you keep practicing what I learn you, a breeze, a romp, there’s nobody around c’n box anymore, you’ll be too fast ‘n too clever for ’em, they won’t lay a glove on you.”

“I guess the family could use the dough,” Vince said.

“Now you’re thinkin’,” Eddie said. “I’ll tell Specs to make the six-round Garden match for you. Don’t worry, we’ll dig up some crud to make you look good. And tell you what, kid, the first fight you take the whole purse, the whole five hundred except for expenses. After that Specs and I’ll take a regular cut.”

“Five hundred,” Vince said. “I wouldn’t have to work after school.”

“Peanuts,” Eddie said. “When it rolls in it’ll roll in big. Plenny for everybody.”

Ma didn’t want to believe it when she finally heard. She said she knew Eddie would try anything but she couldn’t understand Vince. Vince said he was doing it partly for her. “Not for me,” she said. All he had to do was finish high school for her. So he could amount to something. Vince said she didn’t understand, he would only have enough fights to salt some money away and then he’d quit. Ma looked at him hard. “I know these leeches. Eddie and that chiselin’ manager Specs. You win, you make money for them and they’ll never let you go. Not until your face is beaten in like Eddie’s and that good head you’ve got on your shoulders is …” A lump in her throat saved her having to say it.

“I won’t be like Eddie,” Vince said. “For one thing I’m a boxer, he was a slugger. I duck and slip away and pick the punches off with my gloves.”

His mother said, “I don’t want to hear about it. It’s that Eddie. My own flesh and blood, but he’s a no-good. You think he worries about you? You think he stays up nights worrying what might happen to you? He’s thinking about silk shirts and winters in Miami. People who work for their money, he calls them suckers.”

Just the same, the match was made and Vince went into training at the C.Y.O. gym. Vince was classy in the gym, he could make the light bag sound like a snare drum now and the sparring partners crowded him foolishly while he snapped their heads back with lightning jabs and moved in for rapid combinations.

Eddie went uptown and ordered a suit from Nat Lewis on the strength of Vinnie’s promise. He felt good, full of bounce, no more street-corner loafer and fringer of the mob. He was the old Honeyboy. The way he came into places, he already looked like money. A few big wins and he could swagger into Shor’s and get one of the choice tables against the front wall.

Pop was feeling pretty chipper, too. He wasn’t bothering to shape for the afternoon shift because he was over at the gym every afternoon presiding over Vinnie’s workouts. He’d take his pals with him, including Bart McGann, the business agent of his local and a political wheel. He had promised Bart a couple of ringsides. McGann was beginning to treat Pop like an equal now. “Well, with a chip off the old block fightin’ in the Garden I don’t expect we’ll see you in the shape much longer, Finneran.”

Old Man Finneran didn’t expect so, either. Nice break having a neighborhood hero and a big breadwinner in the family again. Not that Pop would ask much of Vinnie. Just grub and beer money and maybe a little house in Florida to retire in after a while.

Leo, the brother-in-law, called Eddie to hold half a dozen ringside tickets for him; he was taking two good prospective customers and their wives. “If the kid is really as good as Eddie says,” Leo told Vince’s older sister, “I’m liable to double my sales. Take the boys out to the training camp, get Vinnie to have dinner with ’em at Moore’s—it’ll give my business a shot in the arm.”