The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulberg Read Free Book Online Page B

inside pocket, Nick drew a handsome leather wallet, initialled in gold, N.L. Jr. ‘Here’s what I’m giving Junior for his graduation – he finishes the lower form up at NYMA next week.’
    I took the wallet and turned it over in my hand. It was from Mark Cross, the best. Inside was a brand-new hundred-dollar bill. ‘He’s a smart kid,’ Nick said. ‘Been skipped twice. He’s the company commander’s orderly or adjutant or whatever the hell it is. Pretty good athlete too. Plays on the tennis team.’
    You couldn’t help liking Nick sometimes, the way he said things. That tennis, for instance. The awe and the wonder of it. Nick, who played punchball on Henry Street againsttenement walls decorated in chalk with a childish scrawl of grown-up obscenities, the ball bouncing back into the crowded streets, over pushcarts, under trucks honk-honking drivers’ hot disgusted shouting
Git
outa there you little
son-of-a-bitch
; and Junior white as the saints in his flannels and sports shirt with the school crest over his heart, the warm silence broken only by the sharp crack of racket and ball and the gentlemanly intrusion of the judge on his high cool seat,
Game, to Mr Latka. He leads, first set, five games
to two
. Old Nick and Young Nick, Henry Street and Green Acres, the military school on the Hudson and PS 1 on the corner of Henry and Catherine Streets battleground of Wops and Yids invading Polacks and crusading Micks energetic young Christians brandishing rock-filled stockings crashing down upon the heads of unbaptised children falsely accused of murder committed nineteen hundred years ago.
Your serve. Sorry, take another. Please take two.
    ‘Killer,’ Nick called into the outer office, ‘hang up on that broad and get Ruby on the phone. Tell her to hold that steak for me, I’ll be out ina nour.’
    He tapped me lightly on the side of the jaw with his knuckles. It was one of his favourite signs of affection.
    ‘See ya mañana, Shakespeare.’
    After Nick left I sat down at his desk to call Beth. There was a small telephone pad near the phone, with Nick’s name printed in the upper left-hand corner. There was something in Nick that desired constant re-establishment of his identity. Shirts, cufflinks, cigarette lighters, wallets, hatbands were all smartly initialled. The matchbooks he handed you said ‘Compliments of Nick Latka’.
    Nick had been doodling. The top page of the pad was full of large and small ovals representing punching bags: the long sand-filled heavy bags and the smaller, inflated light bags. All the bags were covered with little pencil flecks that looked like miniature s’s. I looked at them more carefully and saw that two thin vertical lines ran through them. All the punching bags had broken out in a hive of dollar signs.
    As I left, the Killer was just putting on his coat, a form-fitting herringbone with exaggerated shoulders. ‘Jeez, have I got something lined up for myself tonight,’ he was saying. ‘The new cigarette girl at the Horseshoe. Knockers like this. And loves it like a rabbit.’
    ‘Killer,’ I said, ‘have you ever thought of writing your memoirs?’
     
    Hacking down Eighth Avenue, past the quick lunches, the little tailor shops, the second-hand stores, honest prices for gold, past the four-bit barbershops, the two-bit hotels, the Chinese laundries, the ten-cent movies, I thought of Nick, and of Charles and his Jackson-Slavin fight, the magnificent ebony figure of Peter Jackson with his great classical head, his innate dignity, poised and magnanimous in his moment of triumph. Jackson, black athlete from Australia, a pugilist in the great tradition, worthy descendant of the ancient Sumerians, whose boxing contests are depicted in frescoes that have come down to us through six thousand years; and of Theagenes of Thasos, Olympic Champion, who defended his honour and his life in fourteen hundred contests with steel-pronged fists four hundred and fifty years before Christ; of the