The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulberg Read Free Book Online

came up from the Argen
tine
, or
teen
or however the hell you say it, and dropped Dempsey into the ringside seats.’
    ‘But where’d you get this Molina, who sold him to you?’
    ‘Vince Vanneman.’
    ‘Vince Vanneman, for Christ sake!’
    As Kid Vincent, Vanneman had been a pretty fairmiddleweight back in the twenties until he crawled into the wrong bed one night and crawled out again with a full set of
spirochaeta pallida
, known to the world as syphilis and to the trade as cupid’s measles. The docs didn’t know how to clean it up in five and a half seconds, more or less, the way they do today. As a result Vince’s case was developing into what the medics called the tertiary stage, when it begins to get to your brain. Pardon me, Vince’s brain. But a little thing like a decaying brain cell or two didn’t seem to have anything like a deleterious effect on Vince’s ability to turn a dishonest dollar. So I was a little surprised that Nick, whose larceny was on such a high level that it approached the respectability of finance capitalism, would get himself involved with a minor-league thief.
    ‘Vince Vanneman,’ I said again. ‘A
momser
from way back. You know what the boys call him – The Honest Brakeman. He never stole a boxcar. When Vince Vanneman goes to sleep he only closes one eye so he can watch himself with the other.’
    When Nick was impatient he had the habit of snapping alternately the thumb and second finger of each hand in nervous staccato rhythm. I’ve seen him do that when he wanted his man to start carrying the fight to his opponent and the boy couldn’t seem to get going. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me about Vanneman. The day I can’t handle Vanneman I turn over the business to the Killer. I made a nice deal with Vince. We only give him five Gs for Molina and he rides with us for five per cent of the profits. The South American jerk, who brought the boy up here, Vince gives him twenty-five hundred and we also cut him in for five per cent.’
    ‘But if this – what’s-his-name, Molina? – is such a find, what’s Vince doing selling out so fast?’ I asked. ‘Vince may be suffering from paresis, but he’s not so dumb he doesn’t know a meal ticket when he sees one.’
    Nick looked at me as if I were a high-grade moron, which, in this business, I was. ‘I had a little talk with Vince,’ Nick said.
    I could picture that little talk – Nick cool, immaculate, quietly implicit; Vince with his tie loosened so he could open his shirt and let his fat neck breathe, the sweat coming out of his fleshy face as he tried to wriggle off Nick’s hook – just a talk between two businessmen concerning lump sums, down payments and percentages, just a quiet little talk and yet the atmosphere tense with unheard sounds, the blackjack’s thud, the scream torn from the violated groin, the spew of blood and broken teeth.
    ‘Anything I want to do is a hundred per cent okay with Vince,’ Nick said.
    ‘But I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘Why all this trouble about Molina? Who’d he ever lick? What’s so special about Molina?’
    ‘What is so special about Molina is he is the biggest son- of-a-bitch who ever climbed into a ring. Six feet seven and three-quarters inches tall. Two hundred and eighty-five pounds.’
    ‘You all right, Nick?’ I said. ‘Not on the stuff or anything?’
    ‘Two hundred and eighty-five pounds,’ Nick said. ‘And no belly on him.’
    ‘But he could be a bum,’ I said. ‘Two hundred and eighty-five pounds of bum.’
    ‘Listen for Chri’sakes,’ Nick said. ‘The Statue of Liberty,does she have to do an adagio to draw crowds every day?’
    ‘Come one, come all, see the human skyscraper,’ I said. ‘Captured alive in the jungles of Argentina – Gargantua the Great.’
    ‘You laugh,’ Nick said. ‘Maybe I never went to college, but I sure in hell can add better ’n you. Not two ’n two neither. Two hundred Gs and two hundred Gs. Tell you what I’m