-1Philadelphia Mercy
By Marvin Rose
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Marvin Rose
Smashwords Edition
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Chapter 1
All The Things You Ain't
Nobody will say where Jane run off to and I am not making a fuss over it for I know a plot when I smell one. What I smell is, she run off with Snake Fagan, a bible thumper and only a welterweight who been sniffing around the last 2, 3 weeks that I been too busy to shoo off, a horseshit fly. I believe she is following the fight stable bus in her brand new 1940 Packard, 6 cylinders. More than one of the people around me are in on it, for Jane Skinner been my fiancee the last 9 years and would not skip without a note, good news or bad. We been saying the truth the whole 9 years because the truth is just as easy to work with as a lie.
I am Spots Spottswood, heavyweight, stuck home in Philly with a cracked right hand from busting Lem Franklin's head in Erie, Pa. 2 weeks ago, even tho he beat me in eight. Me and our trainer Whizzer Mead were playing tit-tat-toe without erasers, mostly because rubber is short not because we do not make mistakes, the rain falling hard outside which give me the double blues, Philadelphia in the first place being the grayest city in America even when the sun shines.
We had the radio on, Artie Shaw and his orchestra playing a peppy tune, but this song was broke in by an announcer who said Mr. Henry Stimson, Secretary of War just fished the very first number, No. 158 out of a glass bowl in the 1st draft lottery since Woodrow Wilson and before the day was over, October 29, 1940, 900,000 men between 21 and 36 would get their greeting.
Now this news about the draft it is not a laugh to anyone, but especially Whizzer & me and Mr. D'Ippolito because we would lose half our stable, maybe more before today was over. It even made me forget about Jane for an hour. Mr. Stimson has got a good job and Roosevelt is running against Willkie. What do they care about Mr. D'Ippolito's stable, or about me or Lem Franklin who has got the hardest head in boxing which somehow got him rated in the Top Ten September 1940, Ring Magazine, heavyweights?
I banged him 200 times at least with my very best and he said in a clinch, "Who is your next of kin?"
I said to Whizzer, "Do you realize we will probably lose a bantam, a feather, 2 lights, a middle & a heavy in the draft?"
"I been thinking about it, Spots, but Chicken Johnson is growing up and will be a heavyweight soon. I will train him."
"Chicken Johnson is only seventeen years old," I said.
"That's what I mean. He is too young for the draft."
"He don't want to be a fighter which is the best thing about him ever since me & Jane found him picking the garbage for his Sunday dinner, and that was 6 years ago."
Whizzer said, "He been carrying your bucket and sponge from that day to this. If you ask him, he'll do it. It will only be for a little while since the draft will catch him soon enough."
This is the prediction of our trainer, Whizzer Mead, who some people in the fight business say his reputation rates him double his real value. But that kind of opinion only comes from lowlifes and snakes who must look upwards to tie their shoes, for Whizzer Mead seen more, knows more and teaches more about boxing with a squinch of his eye and a bob of his head than lowlifes and snakes can understand in a year.
He says he is five-eight, but that is standing on the heel lifts he bought when he was courting a tall countergirl at Horn & Hardart's and never threw out even after she dumped him for a lawyer whose office was above the restaurant. After that, he said, "Spots, let me tell you, love is convenience, nothing more. The woman you love loves you back because your toilet is closer than the other guy's."
There are old clippings on the gym bulletin board of Whizzer in his own fighting days. He was an amateur who never turned pro because he said he knew too much for that game. A picture shows his arms thick and hard and his body built to match, and life has robbed only a little of it from him today. His hair is thin and yellow, and his face lopsides to the left an inch–too many hooks, he says–and there is a fuzz on certain letters when he talks in a hurry. His eyes are deep under eyebrows and scar tissue. We been together 19 years and took care of each other in bad times.
Whizzer stood behind with me in Philly this time while the stable is on tour since Mr. D'Ippolito said my busted hand encouraged a venereal activity by laying over till I healed and not occupying my mind with boxing and he could not afford to lose his first string heavyweight for more than a couple months in case I got loose in the neighborhood. This is a false charge for he knew that I was in love and getting ready to be married someday till Jane disappeared. I been a true-blue straight shooter for the whole 9 years since I met her at the WPA office fresh off a pickup truck from Kansas with her sister, Suzette, both come east to make their way in the Great Depression.
Another thing is, I am not the first string heavyweight anymore. He is Barney McIntyre who is on tour with the stable in another state looking over one shoulder at the draft catching up with him. I am 37 with knots on my head, waiting to retire but still fighting as the stable ringer in tank towns. Mr. D'Ippolito says Do not retire, Spots, keep the gloves on, Hitler will save you from the boneyard. Then he said, "There are billboards and electric lights and your future is before you."
Mr. D'Ippolito used to be boss of several businesses that changed addresses when the phone rung. He is not as nervous these days because the money he is in charge of is in the war effort for England, collecting steel and other metals he says can only be told by magnets that will not lift them. Managing a fight stable is a hobby, he says, which every businessman should have one against the pressure of responsibility. He is not exactly a straight-shooter, but can be if the odds are right. He comes in just under 6 feet, around one-seventy I'd guess, and wears the best suits I ever seen, made of cloth that won't shine up no matter how hard he sits in them, and hair black as a hole with thick pomade that smells like the girls who hang out under the Ben Franklin Bridge to Camden, New Jersey.
So that I didn't have to be reminded of Jane every minute, I had gave up our apartment and moved in with Whizzer for now.
The morning of the day Mr. D'Ippolito & the boys was expected home, I run down to Nevins drug store to put a nickel in a Bell phone and spin the dial for the operator to call Jane's sister's hospital's number in Pittsburgh that I had to get my wallet and dig in around after. She is a nurse like Jane, and her name is Suzette like a French maid.
"This is Charles," I said. "I am long distance."
"My God," she says.
"A long time since we spoke, Suzy. Do you know my voice?"
"Yes, I know your voice and I don't want to hear it ever again, and my name is Suzette. I know why you're calling and you are out of luck, which for you must be familiar."
"I forgot–Suzette. How can you know why I'm calling when I'm not even sure myself?"
"Jane is not here and I am on duty, you fool. This is a hospital. Where are you calling from?"
"How do you expect me to believe you know where Jane is not when she is home in Philadelphia as far as you're concerned?" I said.
"Where are you calling from, Charles?"
"Philadelphia, right here in Pennsylvania. And if Jane ain't with that cowshit Snake Fagan, then she surely is there in Pittsburgh with you. Please don't jerk me around."
She made a snuffle out her nose, "If you are in Philly, you are probably in some toilet fight club on your back on the canvas kayoed with somebody brought you a phone to call the undertaker, but no, you call me. Has the crowd gone home and the lights put out? I am surprised you are not riding on pink elephants. You are a loser, Charles, you always were."
"Help me, Suzy, I love her," I said.
And then she started in like she always done when she seen thru my strategy— in the ring it's called holding and hitting. She called me worse than a Nazi who was dirt under her sister's feet for not marrying her from the start, and I have gone lower ever since, and if I think she will tell me where Jane is I probably think Lana Turner is a virgin.
She hung up on me and I almost forgot to dial the operator to pay the charges. When I slung the booth door open the wind whistled in bringing grit & grime, and I had to hunch down all the way to the subway where I rode downtown to the Trans-Lux, all newsreels, until the afternoon when the stable will be back off tour.
* * *
"Weak invaders, peerless defenders," Mr. D'Ippolito said. "Them is the Russians taking our steel and rubber and oil, and the English too with their goddam lend-lease." He paced back and forth in the gym office where I was so tired I was dropping my snores on Whizzer's shoulder until he himself got up and also strided.
Mr. D'Ippolito gets mad if life snags him when his back is turned. It begun when he married Radio Ann. That name is because she has got a permanent gossip leak and a voice full of static. He owns & operates D'Ippolito Iron & Steel Scrap, also Scrapiron Management, Inc., the fight stable.
He said, "It is Russia. It's the war in Europe. It is the iron and steel problem with the Japanese. Soon there will be pay-as-you-go withholding on weekly wages for income tax to pay for the war effort."
Mr. D'Ippolito can not accept life for what it is but must always dress it up in stories looking for reasons until he works it around to something that lays in the open to be mad at. Whether it is a favored main-event boy who gets coldcocked in the 1st round or a rainstorm when the card is booked in an outdoor cow pasture and the weather man said clear no precipitation, he must always talk of food poisoning or muscle cramps in the fighter and low pressure Canadian isobars in the rainstorm. He talks a web around himself then can not find his way out, always talking & reasoning & supposing with maybes and perhapses and becauses. Richard D'Ippolito who behind his back the sports writers begun calling him "Dick Dip."
"We're not at war," says Whizzer, "and pay-as-you-go can not happen in a rich country like us."
"It is rubber, gasoline and spare parts," Mr. D'Ippolito turned on him. "Pay-as-you-go withholding is the only way to finance a war or the country will need chewing gum and rubber bands to keep from falling apart. Three of my boys lost in Youngstown to farmers and shop clerks and gas station kids, and you can blame loose morals and lack of perseverance if you want to, but it is the war in Europe that done it because we're pumping all our water over to their garden with nothing left for our own. It is the old hidden-ball trick our politicians are biting on, and the USA has lost its way. We are up shit's creek."
When I first come as a boy off the street in to his gym in '21, which Richard D'Ippolito owned then as he does now, he watched Whizzer run me thru some drills & sparring. "He has got a good left hand," he said to Whizzer.
I heard he carried a blank contract and a fountain pen in his pocket in case there was a good looking boy come in without a manager to his name.
"It is a good left hand," Whizzer said, then brand new to me as all of it was, "but he is lazy or else why is he here looking for a way out of honest work? Hasn't he heard of the land of opportunity? Why is this big dumbell not out looking for a job?" This is Whizzer's way of testing a new boy's temper and he has got very sly at the surprise insult.
"What is his name anyway?" Mr. D'Ippolito asked him like I was a ring stool standing there and not the subject of the question.
"Spottswood. Spots. They call him Spots, 18 years old, a orphan, lives alone."
Mr. D'Ippolito looked right at me and rubbed his chin. "Too bad there is Dempsey in your road and Wills and Firpo hanging around, Spots," he said, "and Tunney on the way up." Then he made a loud roostery laugh covering it with his hand which had a ring on it that would choke a volcano. "And besides Dempsey, there is Mr. Volstead's Prohibition with bathtub gin and the FBI and gangsters in Chicago. A new boy will not attract much attention with that kind of competition in the newspapers unless lightning strikes him dead on Broad street at midnight New Year's Eve. Why, soon you will see a radio in every other home with words and music, no time left for ironing and cooking and intimate diversions of leisure. Imagine that. You will be less important to the world than a mosquito or an ant. You will have to be busier than you ever dreamed of. You can not stand still in any business especially the fight business where if you don't fight every six days it is the same as getting kayoed in the first by a club bum, your career is finished. You must stay pretty in your face and you must never get out of the ring or else everybody will forget your name. That's why we have a stable and tour the east making a name for ourself which is like an investment in future security. You must dig up your imagination and do what it tells you, no matter what. A young man must have a wagonful of dreams, but it is the imagination which pulls the wagon."
His speech excited me. "How do I get in the stable?"
"Why you must sign a contract which nothing could be easier," he said, and in a minute he yanked one out of his pocket while unscrewing a fountain pen pointing & saying, "Just sign here," which I done right away before lightning struck me dead.
His speech reminded me of the orphan asylum on 58th & Whitely where I tried learning to ride a Monarch Silver King bicycle I was too small to learn on, a 24 inch wheel, cracking my jewels on the frame every time I jumped down to stop from crashing. I wanted to learn so I could ride it to school, 1st grade elementary, where I cried to the teacher and she said, "It is too soon for you, Charles. It is too soon to have a bicycle and the care it brings. What will you do when it rains? Who will fix it when it breaks? No, Charles, you must draw a picture of a horse and imagine you ride him to school. Imagine you ride him away from all your troubles."
So I knew what Mr. D'Ippolito meant about imagination, because I drew a picture of that horse and imagined him almost every day till I become a man and still imagine him when my troubles beat me down, for Philadelphia always been a town which if you die before you wake, it is mercy.
Chapter 2
Wang Wang Blues
Jane got me thinking, the things you have when you have them for a long time, they go in a space in your head where sooner or later they equal the same to each other. Your fingers, your nose, your pet dog, your car, the woman you love, your job— after awhile they're all important the same way as long as they're there because you never, never handicap them. In fact, you never hardly give them a thought at all. For instance, do you have a favorite toe or do you love all your toes the same? Did you ever even think about that? Now that she run off, Jane shown me that your head is not the place to keep the most important things.
I begun to call her up after she got settled in Philly with her sister and they both picked up jobs being nurses. When she got used to me, I found where the bands played and took her out to dances because she loved it so and she brung Suzette to dance with since I did not. Once I caught her watching me tap my foot to the music.
They looked alike, Jane being older, a little taller and filled out, dark brass hair showing sparks that picked up some red in the sun. They were good lookers, with strong noses and jaws that come around the chin in a pretty hoop like I seen once on a china doll. In the worst of it, the Depression, Jane's eyes still give up a smile tho her lips trembled. Suzette spit fire instead and turned sour little by little seeing her sister fond of a man who hit people for a living while she went without a man at all. They never got over being poor where they come from and couldn't shed the skin of it, buying cheap and wearing it or eating it, happy to be alive and healthy in Philadelphia that never give a shit because that is the way of the people who live there.
She come to watch me fight and stayed over when I got hurt, then stayed when I knit because good times are better than bad times, then stayed for keeps because she seen I would kill a bear to protect her. I seen her give up her own meals and take them over to her sister when nursing thinned out at the hospitals Suzette worked in. Once, when I told her she should be looking out for herself, she said, "It's the same blood, Spots," like my sister eats the food and I get the good of it.
She picked up a stray pup one day and brung him home and I seen by their eyes they were the same blood too. So we both give up a part of our meals to feed him and he give back himself which taught me love in fur is the same as love in skin. We named him The King of Swing after Benny Goodman who plays the clarinet and practically invented jitterbug music. The dog grew fast and we ended up calling him Swing for short. He is the only dog I ever met who smiles at people.
Jane got promoted to head nurse at St. Mary's but was put on part time duty when business dropped off, sick people dying rather than spend the money their family needs for food. The same when I was laid up and not bringing in wages, Jane seeing to it that I and the dog et first with nothing left for her. When I could fool her, I pretended to be asleep–rest being more important than eats, the doctor said–so she could have dinner that night.
And that was it, giving and taking, hooked by the arm and by the heart of them days, on our own in Philadelphia with a dog and a kitchen table on a linoleum floor with one lightbulb on top. I used to say nothing was too good for her, and when the time come to prove it, nothing is what I brung. These days I'm thinking she shown me how somebody can break a promise by not making one at all.
Chicken Johnson was feeding me advice as I hit the speed bag left-handed and feinted with the right which still hurt after a month when Mr. D'Ippolito called me into his office where I seen Whizzer already there who was now reading a comic book. Out in the gym, the boys went on with their sparring and sweating it off with the bags and jump ropes.
Mr. D'Ippolito stared at me and begun to talk but changed his mind then looked around the office like a fly with interesting colors was flying through. Finally he said, "I been thinking about Billy Chicken."
I glanced quick at Whizzer who looked up from Captain Marvel and suddenly opened his eyes big as pie plates and I knew it was him put the bug in Mr. D'Ippolito's ear.
"That's nice," I said. "His mama and papa would be glad to hear it if you would dig her up and then find him."
"Don't play Mortimer Snerd with me, Spots. Billy Chicken is right for the light-heavy slot."
"He won't fight. He's not a fighter and will never be."
Mr. D'Ippolito went to the door and peeked out. He said, "Look at him, he been around the gym and around fighters since the day he give up the nipple."
"So have you, yet I never seen you in a jock strap."
"He practically adopted you and he will do whatever you say," says he.
"Then you haven't paid attention to him for six years nor to me for nineteen. I don't tell people what to do since I give up taking my own advice, and Billy Chicken been making his own mind up from age 11 when he come home one day and found his mama died on him."
"He is not yet 18 and already 6 foot 2 and hard as a fencepost. He moves like a fairy toe dancer. You got no right to keep him away from fame and fortune."
If you are good enuf to have a rating and you have a bad year, it shows you really don't bring a leg to stand on when the time comes to talk purses. Mr. D'Ippolito says his stable must get the win in the papers whether his boys get the decision or not by making arrangements with the sports writers to put a slant on their stories in case it is a L. That is what the W/L records mean, Win/Lose. My stable ringer record was all W's no matter what name I'm fighting under that night—names like Nelson Eddy and Eduardo Cianelli and Charlie McCarthy. These are radio stars which sports writers never heard of because it means they must stop gassing and listen for a minute which they never do. And that's why the papers leave these fights out of the sports news. It is when I lose a big fight using my own name like to Lem Franklin they remember and put it in. I kayo most of the tour town boys in my weight class while using these various names and I even hunch over to fight their middles & light-heavies to make myself look smaller when one of our boys gets sick or shows up drunk. I am 6 foot and a fraction going in at 192 my best weight exactly like Joe Louis himself even if they give him a extra bulge on his measurements. I run every 3rd day and lay off beer, still hard as salt pork. I will hunch over to fight a smaller man but I am not willing to hurt a good boy no matter what is his weight.
We have in our stable–Mr. D'Ippolito buying and selling contracts by the dozen so you hardly have a chance to get to know somebody much less the fighters theirself fighting for anybody who says he owns their contract and not knowing the difference because they can not read–we have Al Nettlow the lightweight a fine addition to our stable, and another lightweight named Johhny Buff from Atlantic City who I knew from the amatures, and another lightweight called Lefty Patucci also from Atlantic City as was the junior welterweights (135-140) Red Rossi and Jackie Sheppard who choked to death on hot peppers and spared ribs a few weeks back in Carolina, north or south I do not remember which as we were fighting in three towns on one day that day. I mean Jackie Sheppard. I mention him out of respect altho he is dead.
Sheppard had a careless style and got hit too much. His eyes always got bloodied on the flanges of his eyelids even in training, never mind the blood-piss by blows to the kidneys mostly when we fought in the Cambria Boxing Club up in North Philly under the El on Front St. The Cambria fight club featured the Forte brothers, all 3 of them.
Vincent Pimpinella, the welterweight (135-147) was from Pittsburgh I think I remember. He got his ear mostly bit off by a big black dog whilst he was playing dog himself chasing on all fours a pretty lady on her front lawn who come to the fights in time to catch him sober and got him home but not past the dog. Vince actually lasted ten rounds against Fritzie Zivic last year on Dec 7. Snake Fagan, the dogshit welterweight I am chasing, come on a tour now & then when he run out of puppies and kittens to eat. The Cambria Club pulled in Billy Maher, a lightweight I always loved his courage. Mr. D'Ippolito tried to sign him a hundred times, but Maher was controlled by the white-haired man, Felix Staffieri, matchmaker & promoter at the Philadelphia Arena.
From closer in to Philly came Phil Furr and Jimmy Reilly, McKeesport, Pa., Phil Furr always high on smoke and rum he attacked the referee twice last month instead of his scheduled opponent.
From Hollywood, California we got Frankie Blair and Mickey Serrain our middleweights (147-160), Mickey Serrain the son of Nicky Serrain who controlled all the small fight clubs west of the Sierra Madres and who recently shot his wife in the head, who died.
A fighter named O'Dell Pollee from San Diego was our light-heavyweight (160-175) getting KO'd by Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom by arrangement on May 20, 1930, Slapsie Maxie otherwise not able to strangle a canary. These days between fights O'Dell hangs out with the American Ladies Fighting For Defense, because they are ladies right off the Society Page on the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer getting ready to do the welding and riveting, getting ready for the war. They think fighters are exciting. Half the time, O'Dell misses the bus from drinking whiskey, and when you miss the bus you miss the tour. Sometimes we do not see him for 3 or 4 months and then he will show up on time one day as we are boarding for Milford, Delaware or Atlantic City, trim, sober and ready to fight. Mr. D'Ippolito always took him back, glad to see him because he is smooth as Vaseline. O'Dell helped me out a couple times when I was sick by taking my fight.
Light-heavy is a good division because the boys are big enough to punch for the crowd, yet shy the weight that slows down the heavies. But it is not a popular division, for people like to watch men as big as California redwoods stand in one place and axe each other until one man falls on the other. There are names in this weight division passed through our stable I recall named Al Ettore who once lost to John Henry Lewis the greatest light-heavy there ever was bar none including Billy Conn who is the champ right now. Bud Tow, from Philadelphia hisself, lost to John Henry April 4, this year. Bud Tow was in and out of Mr. D'Ippolito's stable whilst looking for a job to support his wife and kids though always worried and rarely able to fight like a professional. He had a face flat as a enema bag and was a whiskey drinker also.
Now we are in the heavyweights which is Barney McIntyre and me, altho too old to be doing it anymore. I rather be seeing Henry Fonda movies with Jane like Drums Along The Mohawk, and listen to "Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie" by Charlie Barnet recorded December 1939. Or reading Life magazine. On the cover of Life magazine there is a little girl in a bed with head bandaged holding a rag doll called Air-Raid Victim this week.
William Johnson is his right name, but he got called "Billy Chicken" by nearly everybody, dark-skinned and all elbows and knees really looking like a barnyard foul, yet even at age 11 when I first seen him, he was moving on the glide like riding smoke. He was living in a cardboard box under the Frankford El in the Kensington section of Philly–Fishtown, it was called, from all the Catholics who settled there. Colored people were not welcome in Fishtown which is one reason me and Jane finally moved to West Philly after we sort of begun to look after him.
William Johnson was born in Birmingham, Alabama in the Fall of 1923, Warren G. Harding president. He has two older brothers, no sisters, one brother stood in Birmingham, Alabama, and the successful brother of the two going into farming watermelons and peppers in Tifton, Georgia. Chicken's mother brung him to Philadelphia looking for work but got sick & died. His brothers didn't want him, and he run away from foster homes which is when me and Jane found him.
A few years ago, when my career was something you could still call a career, Mr. D'Ippolito got me on the semi-windup of a Sammy Angott card in New Orleans where I kayoed a boy named Lorenzo Pack using my right name. I had a brainstorm and brung Billy Chicken along on that trip, him earning his keep doing the bucket and water bottle between rounds while listening to everything Whizzer had to say. There was only one "between rounds" tho, because I hit Lorenzo Pack right off the bell going into Round 2 with a left hand that would of iced a milk cow. So while Billy already begun to turn up at the gym after school
where I forced him to go when he let me, he showed understanding of why some boys can fight and others can not, New Orleans the beginning of him coming on the road back then, always with me and at my side. And sometimes actually living with me and Jane and Swing the dog, not moving in but camping on the sofa when the weather got too cold and the pickings lean here in the Great Depression, paying his way by cleaning, shopping, fixing, for he was handy with tools. He was always pleasant with good manners and knew when to keep his mouth shut.
When still a little boy walking down the street with me and Jane he raised a few eyebrows in Fishtown hopping and somersaulting and showing an athlete quality. Them eyebrows is what caused us to move to West Philly where Billy only got beat up every other day whenever I could get him to school. I think Fishtown never to this minute was ready for Billy Chicken, not Billy Chicken himself or any other colored boys who went under the Frankford El and used it for hat-holding and handouts, making sure to leave before the sun set down. When he was 16, Billy Chicken pulled on a pair of boxing gloves for the first time.
I was just breaking into the iron and steel business working at Mr. D'Ippolito's scrapyard for side money between fights, out near the same little school where I used to go when I learned to read, so I was not in the gym much and begun to lose my trim. Barney McIntyre had come into the stable by then and Mr. D'Ippolito give him a fight or two that would of been mine if I'd of been working out. He has got a mean streak colored green for money. Barney was bigger than me also stronger and faster but dumb and raw as a snail.
Sometimes when I did show up there was Billy Chicken working buckets and towels and tapes. He give me the once over but never razzed me when he seen my middle soft and puffing for wind after 2 or 3 rounds sparring. One day Mr. D'Ippolito sent me in to work with a strong new middleweight he signed up for a semiwindup at the Arena, the big time in Philadelphia. The white-haired man was with Mr. D'Ippolito, squat like an icebox, a snappy dresser like he got Esquire every month and not for the Petty girl drawings, but for the men's fashions, smooth like the pinstripe suit was painted on him. He was Felix Staffieri, the man you had to see if you wanted your boy to fight at the Arena. Mostly, people just called him the white-haired man and quite a few called him dangerous. Last month, the coroner looked at one of his boys laid out on a table and said, "This man has died of assisted drowning."
I thought they wanted to see what I had in my tank and I give them a good show for a couple rounds, moving and feinting, covering and slipping punches not throwing much myself, for I had fifty pounds on the new middleweight and did not wish to hurt him. But it was not me they was looking at, it was the middleweight, Lefty Dixon, 18 years old, a southpaw, which I hate to fight as do all right-handers with good sense as they are awkward and backwards and always stomping on your lead foot. Dixon was quick doing steps to the right then steps to the left and coming at me from the side when I was slow turning to him, hooking the right hand to my headguard as my gas run out. There was a radio playing in the back with Frank Sinatra singing a love song.
After round 2, I was sucking for air. Mr. D. yelled up at me, "You done two rounds, Spots, and you hardly thrown a punch. Are you afraid Lefty will hit you back?" The white-haired man laughed at that one.
Mr. D'Ippolito was wearing his quiet plaid suit, his hair shining with Vaseline and a cigar in his mouth which he chewed not smoked. I palmed my mouthpiece and said, "I am waiting till round 6 when this wind-up toy will run down. Then I will remind him what it is to be in with a heavyweight. Also, if this is the hardest he can hit, you better see if you can get a match with Judy Garland or Shirley Temple—"
"If you could ever get to round 6 you will be fighting on your knees," says Mr. D'Ippolito. "I never seen you so out of shape. You are a disgrace. Get out of there before I call the Old Boxer's Home and have them truck you away." He didn't mention I am out of shape because of working at his scrapyard.
Felix Staffieri was grinning and bobbing his head like Mr. D. was Jimmy Durante when Billy Chicken ducked through the ropes and come to my corner. He had his shirt off and 12 ounce sparring gloves on, laced up. Whizzer slunk along the ring apron talking in his ear.
"What the hell do you think you are doing?" I asked them both.
"Billy wants to work out with Dixon," Whizzer said. He sort of threw his head when he said it like telling me to get out of the ring.
"Billy is sixteen and is no fighter." I don't know why but my feelings was hurt.
"You are two times his age and are not much of a fighter yourself."
"I was in the top twenty last year and fought Gus Dorazio, number 9."
"You did not fight him, you was his sparring partner and he busted you up."
"There was something wrong with my eye."
"I know, his left hook was in it all afternoon," Whizzer said. He angled me out of the corner with his hip and spread the ropes for me to go down the stairs, but I stepped back.
I seen Mr. D'Ippolito laughing a little around his cigar. "Do you want Dixon to get a workout or not?" I hollered, backing off the ropes and punching my gloves together. "You got two weeks to put him in shape and you will get noplace using a sixteen year old boy with no miles on his tires."
Mr. D'Ippolito took the cigar out of his mouth. "It ain't the miles that count, Spots, it is the desire. Get out and let them go one round," he hollered back.
"All Billy knows about fighting is buckets and towels. He never been inside the ropes with gloves." I could see that Whizzer had him greased already.
"Let's have your head guard, Spots," Whizzer held out his hand.
The white haired man said, "Get out and leave the colored boy do a round."
I pulled off my headguard and threw it on the canvas. Rosin bounced up and powdered it where it hit. The hell with them all, I will take care of myself and Jane. I am making progress in the iron and steel business. Whizzer picked up the headguard and give me his "I am puzzled by your behavior" face as I ducked thru the ropes and trotted back to the showers not looking at anybody nor saying more, but stayed at the locker room door in the shadows where nobody could see me. I wanted to have a look at this and hoped Lefty Dixon would show Billy Chicken what stupid feels like. I knew Mr. D'Ippolito does it for the money and Staffieri does it for the power and Whizzer does it for the love of one more contender he needs to make his life worth something–the contender that is always just around the corner. But I didn't know why Billy Chicken Johnson was doing it.
Whizzer clicked his stopwatch and said, "Ding," like he was a bell.
Lefty Dixon who had not said 2 and 1/2 words during the whole argument crossed himself and come out all business because he needed the work. He was young, but whatever he must of done in the amatures stuck to him, for when he danced left he knew when to quit and start dancing right. He leaned forward, crouching to get extra sling on his punches and at the same time giving him defense two ways. A straight-up fighter can only move his feet to get away from a flurry, but a croucher can move his upper body and his feet too.
Billy circled left, natural for a right-hander but turning him direct into a southpaw's lead hand full of jabs and hooks. He got a mouthful of those and more to the eyes and anybody could see he did not know a thing about the fundamentals of boxing. His nose started to bleed after a minute, and I could see his five & dime mouthpiece bright and bloody even from where I stood. Still Whizzer and Mr. D'Ippolito let it go on while the white- haired man looked interested.
Lefty Dixon, only 18 himself worked like he was on the heavy bag for there was nothing to fear from a sixteen year old boy with only alley fighting experience. I thought of the idea that Chicken was doing it to get me out of there and save me from showing bad and digging my grave in front of Felix Staffieri. He was throwing one punch at a time, lunging and reloading, and when I seen enough I went in and took my shower. This was a year ago and ever since, Staffieri been dropping hints about Chicken.
Chapter 3
All The Western World
I asked around, sly and double-backing to catch the liars, but finally figured Snake Fagan never went on the last tour and Jane never followed him. So after a month of no word, I cut out of training early one day, rode the trollies back to Whizzer's, picked the mail off the floor where it falls from the door slot, looked thru it for a last chance and then called the police to tell them she disappeared.
After I give her name and mine, the officer said, "You have to come down to the station house and fill in a form, but there is 1 or 2 questions you can answer now. Did she take her clothes with her?"
"Yeah, she did."
"I am writing it down," he said. "Do you know what was her transportation?"
I said, "When somebody disappears, what's the difference of transportation? I never heard of transportation when you are disappearing."
"Let me say it another way. Wherever she is, how did she get there from where you are at?" the officer said. He seemed tired but polite.
"She took her God damn new 1940 Packard 6 cylinder."
The officer breathed heavy and said, "Packing your clothes and taking your own car is not disappearing, it is premeditated. You can't premeditate disappearing."
"Then what is disappearing?"
He was quiet a second, then said, "Never coming out of the toilet for 6 hours because you ain't in there. That is disappearing."
"Look up the right name for it and then go find her," I said, for it was clear and simple in my mind.
"You will have to come down to the station & fill out the forms," he said.
When I hung up I seen there was a message in a yellow envelope on the floor that I missed the 1st time, not a telegram nor a letter with a 3 cent stamp cancelled by the US Post Office. Like it was a shot to the kidneys I knew it was a message from the white-haired man, delivered in person by one of his runners in a plain yellow envelope with my name on the front, for this was the way he stayed in touch with people not to be accused of using the US mail for threats and bribes, his business. There was another envelope in the pile of mail I carried up with my name on it sent ahead from the old place I had with Jane. It was marked War Department that also said Official Business, with Penalty For Private Use To Avoid Payment Of Postage, $300 where the stamp should of been. This turned out to be a note with filled-in blanks from somebody named Major George F. Slack, Selective Service. I figured he was the plantation nanny for the local draft board because his name was stamped with a rubber stamp, smeared and whiskery where it said major and almost invisible where it said slack. It looked to me like he was a person never left Washington, D.C. letting strangers use his name-stamp sending letters from Maine to Florida, to men in towns he never heard of. They all wanted to know why I had not registered for the draft since they seen I voted once or twice and my name was in the voter's book so they guessed I must of passed 18. They listed the penalties I would get if I didn't answer in 5 days including jail, fines and notify my employer. The envelope had a postmark of three weeks ago since they could not find me at the old place and the post office took their time tracing me tho I had give them Whizzer's address to forward. I found a pencil Whizzer uses to draw beards on the girls in his comic books and wrote on the back of Major Slack's letter: "I am 37 with flat feet and almost wore out. Please look up your own rules like I did and you will see the draft ends at 36." Then I put it back in its own envelope and wrote NOT AT and RETURN TO SENDER on the front and sealed it with adhesive tape from Whizzer's medicine chest. If they caught me for using the envelope for private use to avoid payment of postage they would have to send me to jail since I did not have $300 for the fine. The longer they keep me in jail, the safer past 36 I am so the joke is on them. I been in jail since Jane left anyway.
Staffieri's message said meet him at his office in the Arena any business day between 9&4, sooner the better. I begun to think maybe I made a mistake about him, and he was a good man and a fine judge of talent for he must of remembered me from my work-out with Lefty Dixon that day a year ago or got hold of my correct win/lose record and this call was to tell me he had a fight for me, or why else would he be sending? Dixon had won that fight he was training for and a dozen after it, learning to move like soap the same as I showed him it was done the day he worked out with me. The word around the gyms was he was getting close to being noticed and could easy make somebody's top 20 list if the army did not catch up with him. Staffieri had bought Dixon's contract from Mr. D'Ippolito and bumped Whizzer for a younger trainer. Neither Mr. D'Ippolito nor Whizzer liked it much, but you give Staffieri what he asks for and say Yes sir, thank you.
I took a bath. Bing Crosby was on the radio singing Sierra Sue and I sung it with him. An announcer come on and gave the news while I made a sandwich or two, lettuce, tomato and lots of mayonnaise, my favorite, and a pot of coffee. Outside the window there was a smeary sky and a drizzle, Philadelphia's face. I got dressed and went out to take the Broad St subway to Market where I would end up at the Arena to see Felix Staffieri.
On Broad St a few blocks from City Hall hundreds of men hung around in the drizzle. You would never know there was a war in the world and a draft in the US. They were mostly laid off men, laid off from the trolley factory and Stetson hat and the docks 2 miles east on the Delaware, and the distilleries where they made whiskey. They gabbed, whistled and made dirty remarks to girls coming out of Temple, the college. Cars come past and the men cursed the drivers who they could see had money for a car and for the gas to run it. They hiked and dragged theirself in one bar and out another, clumped upstairs to the pool halls every other building, fell asleep in doorways, pissed on their own shoes in the alleys and snuck into the movies to sleep. Those with a nickle went to a diner or cafe where they took the window seats by the radiators to get warm and nobody could see them in back of the steamed-up windows. The liquor stores kept their front door wide open no matter the cold and them with 4 bits went in for a bottle of wine. Cop cars and paddy wagons toured around and I seen 2 police carry a dead body out of a row house by wrists and ankles and slide it on the floor of a city ambulance. Men fell down tired or drunk and some stayed down. Radios and juke boxes played and I could make out a dance band doing a stomp song. Halfway down the subway steps I heard fire sirens and bells. I once seen them toss a whole bed on fire out a third story window with a drunk still in it. At the bottom of the steps was a Salvation Army lady with her bell. She was small and scared or sick, or maybe just very tired. I chunked a quarter in her basket which is a lot for me.
"How are you feeling, Spots? I hope you have been well since the last time I seen you. How is the mitt? Sit down and take a load off," said Felix Staffieri as soon as I walked into his office somewhere inside the Arena, but not sitting down even tho being invited. I was still looking at Bingo and Bongo, two of his quireboys, real names Ray Langella & Bobby Matarrazzo—Matzo Matarrazzo for short. Langella is so dumb he once got arrested for trying to hold up a public library. They met me at the bottom of the elevated when I come down the stairs off the train and took me inside the building, the Arena, then around many dark corners with railings and the sound of iron you walked on, up and across and up and around and then across again till I would of burned to death before figuring my way out if somebody yelled Fire.
"The Arena is a God damn big place," I said, "Mr. Staffieri."
"Sit down anyway," he said in his Vaseline voice, which is his hustle voice that now give me the idea he was not angry at something, an idea in the back of my head that made sense in case I was wrong that he sent for me because he wanted me to fight for him. He was wearing a pinstripe blue with no cuffs on the pants, the latest style saving material for army uniforms. He waved at the gorillas and they sat down.
"It is very big, with offices and railings everywhere. I always wanted to fight a feature in the Arena."
"It's all right for not being Madison Square Garden. But then this is not New York. Joe and Mike got New York sewed up as you know, for you have not fought in the Garden neither. In Philadelphia, the Arena is big enuf."
Joe and Mike is the brothers Jacobs, Joe the manager of Max Schmeling and Mike the matchmaker and promoter at the Garden. The Jacobs brothers steered boys to title fights and nothing happened in New York that did not go thru them first. On the street they say God must get permission from them to send down rain.
"The war will certainly take away a lot of good young boys from the gyms," I said.
"What war?" said Staffieri. He did not look happy to start a new subject.
"The one that they just begun drafting for, which will empty out the gyms. I wonder where the Garden will find enuf good boys to put on a card."
Staffieri give a make-believe sigh and said, "You sure had me worried, Spots. I was thinking I might have to put you in a match if all the good young boys got took. But you said war and then you said draft and they are not the same thing, for one is about money and the other is about politics. What takes the good young boys is quiff and whiskey and too much publicity too soon. And also God who makes lazy boys like the ones lost 3 bouts for Dick Dip in Youngstown, Ohio."
Then a commotion at the office door made Bingo and Bongo get up off their puppy ass and run into each other till their brains could catch up to their ears. A bald fat man in a rubber sweat suit under a soaking polo shirt and pink boxing shorts that used to be red and seen their last day of making it around his waistline busted in. Two secretaries followed him, pecking and chirping.
"I am paid up, Staffieri," the fat man yelled, or rather started out to yell and fissled down to nothing like a leaky balloon by the time he got out "Staffieri" because he seen the look in Felix's eye. When the two secretaries seen that look they closed their own eye halfway and leered for there was satisfaction knowing what it meant. "I just worked out my boy and we was going in the lockers where I see somebody put a big Yale on mine. Rastus says you got me closed up because I am not paid up."
"Hello, Blinky," I said.
"Nice to see you, Spots," he said back but didn't mean it for he is the number one shitface in the boxing business, the champion of shit in all rankings, even the NBA. "How is your flipper? Sorry about the Franklin fight."
"I told you to call me Mr. Staffieri," Felix said to him and nodded the secretaries out of his office, now giggling, "but since you are the dumbest white man I know and that includes a lot of niggers I will tell you in a way that you will understand. If you do not pay up I will take that Yale off your locker and put it on the end of a chain around your neck which at the other end will have a weight so heavy all the prayers of your mother and father, if he is out of San Quentin, will not lift you off the bottom of Delaware Bay."
Blinky is not dumb the way Ray Langella the library robber is dumb, but a man who does not know when to be afraid is dumb another way. His name is Orlando Messina, "Begin with a "O" and end up with a "O"," he says. And he says his family is a 1000 years old and so important they named a city after it in Sicily, the island. He says it so much he believes it himself and how can anybody prove it is not the truth? "How much is my bill you say?"
"$1500," says Felix Staffieri soft, like whenever money needs his voice to say its name.
"You already paid that to yourself when you cut the purse on the last show," Blinky said.
"We will not discuss our business in front of somebody whose business I won't discuss in front of you," Staffieri said. He twitched an eye and Langella & Matarazzo stood up.
Blinky turned his head around this way and that. "Somebody here has business? I don't see nobody here but Spots Spottswood."
"It is his business I am talking about."
"Spots? Old Bam-Bam?" Blinky let a little laugh come out. "He has got no business—he is out of business. Lem Franklin
closed up his business."
"You want him out of here, Mr. Staffieri?" I said. "I will be glad to bounce his ass the trolley tracks."
Felix stretched his hand halfway to me then pulled it back like he was afraid I might think he was thinking I was a dog. "Keep your seat, Spots. If I want him out of here I got specialists to do it. No sense you should risk your duke."
"I also just took a bath."
He laughed. It was not the vaseline voice or the money voice, but the boss voice instead that laughed loud and sharp, ugly, not caring what anybody thought about it. "Then you will not be wanting to sweat."
"You are serious," said Blinky Messina when the apes put their hand on his shoulder.
"You will very soon see," Mr. Staffieri said.
"How much again?"
"$1500."
"I will owe it to you," said Blinky. Then he took a breath because he seen it was about to make Felix laugh and he said, "I am good for it."
"You already owe it to me."
"But now I am admitting it. I said I am good for it."
Staffieri got up and pointed a crooked finger at Blinky. "You want credit for admitting you owe me something I have to tell you you owe me, is that right?"
"You will never get it," come a sweet voice from the door and in like wax paper slipped Shine Thomas, a girl once seen never forgot. The Daily News done a foto feature on her singing at Ft. Dix the day after the draft when all the lucky ones called begun showing up, some scared, others not, but all glad to see Shine Thomas from Philadelphia. One of the pictures caught Felix ducking behind his Daily Telegraph, but only us close to the fight business knew it was him, always alongside Shine Thomas and maybe a little ahead of her. Now she did not pussy up to Staffieri but stood away from him making him blink his eye which by this time I knew is the way he give orders. She didn't make a move until his pinstripes went stiff or so it seemed for he tensed solid and firm in his chair and had to blink the other eye. I was very impressed that she played him for two blinks, one eye each and did not think there were many people who could get away with it. She come closer but sat in a chair on the other side of the desk letting him know even two blinks would not bring her close enuf to touch.
Blinky Messina said, "I am good for it, Mr. Staffieri." The apes begun to pull him out.
"Boys, you all know Miss Thomas here," said Felix, and the apes stopped and flashed a smile. "I trust Miss Thomas's business advice. Spots Spottswood meet Shine Thomas," he introduced us, "and visa versa."
I already knew from reading papers all day when there is no big bands on the air that Shine Thomas used to be Sheila Tomasso from South Philly. She is always in the papers. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Thomas."