The Harder They Fall Read Online Free Page A

something in it. Shirley was all right. I liked the way she was about men. She never really let you forget that there were anatomical differences between you, and yet she didn’t make a conflict of it. I liked the way she had been about Sailor Beaumont, even if he was a wrongo. There were so many American wives who gave most of their energy to trying to make their husbands vice-presidents or head buyers or something. Twice a week they did him a big favour. That was called being a good wife. Shirley, if she hadn’t fallen in love with an irresponsible, physically precocious kid who came in wide-open but had a knockout punch in his right hand, would have made somebody in West Liberty an exceptional wife instead of making Eighth Avenue an exceptional madame.
    ‘Favour us with your presence this week, Eddie,’ she said. ‘Come in early and I’ll have Lucille fry us some chicken and we’ll play a little gin.’
    ‘Maybe Friday night, before the Glenn-Lesnevich fight,’ I said.
    ‘That kid Glenn! A jerk thing Nick did, bringing him along so fast,’ Shirley said. ‘Those overgrown boys who get up in the heavy dough because they can sock and can take it – thinking they’re King of the May because they got their names in lights outside the Garden, when all they got is aone-way ticket to Queer Street. Glenn draws four good gates to the Garden because the customers know he’s going to try, gets himself slapped around by men he’s got no business in the same ring with, goes back to LA to be a lousy runner for a bookie or something, and the manager gets himself another boy. That’s what he did with Billy. Nick Latka, that crumb!’
    ‘Nick isn’t so bad,’ I said. ‘Pays me every Friday, doesn’t look over my shoulder too much, kind of an interesting feller, too.’
    ‘So is a cockroach interesting if it’s got Nick’s money in the bank,’ Shirley said. ‘Nick is marked lousy in my book because he don’t look out for his boys. When he has a good one, he’s got the dough and the connections to get him to the top, but down under that left breast pocket, he’s got nothing there for the boys. Not like George Blake, Pop Foster. Their old boys were always coming back for a touch, a little advice. Nick, when you’re winning nothing’s too good for you. You’re out to that estate over in Jersey every weekend. But when you’re out of gas, that’s all, brother. You got about as much chance of getting into that office as into a pay toilet without a nickel. I know. I was all through that already, with Billy. And how many has he had since Billy? And now Glenn. And next week maybe some skinny-legged speedball from the Golden Gloves. They’re so pretty when they start, Eddie. I hate to see ’em run down.’
    Now that Billy was gone, I think Shirley was in love with all fighters. She loved them when they were full of bounce and beans, with their hard trim bodies moving gracefully in their first tailor-made full-cut double-breasteds with peg-top trousers narrowing at the ankles in a modified zoot. And sheloved them when the shape of their noses was gone, their ears cauliflowered, scar tissue drawing back their eyes, when they laughed too easily and their speech faltered and they talked about the comeback that Harry Miniff or one of his thousand-and-one cousins was lining up for them. Lots of ladies have loved winning fighters, the Grebs, the Baers, the Golden Boys, but it was the battered ones, the humiliated, the washed-ups, the TKO victims with the stitches in their lips and through their eyelids that Shirley took to her bosom. Maybe it was her way of getting Billy back, the Sailor Beaumont of his last year, when the younger, stronger, faster boys who did their training on Eighth Avenue instead of on 52nd Street were making him look slow and foolish and sad.
    ‘Well, first one today,’ Shirley said, and tossed it off, exaggerating the shudder for a laugh.
    She reached into her purse again and took out a very small