John D. MacDonald

The Gentle Killer

We had hacked up the Cleveland purse, the short end of it, and a week later, after bailing out the convertible and paying the back alimony to Myrna, the leech, and catching up on my rent and adding a few necessary numbers to the wardrobe, I was down to a slim fifty bucks; the next bout for the Tailor was set up for three weeks ahead, and there was my other bum, Joe Zamatchi, eating off me while his busted hand knitted.

As a direct consequence, I was giving the Beach the jaunty ‘hello’ and making like I had an in on the sweepstakes which is standard procedure when you feel the wolf fangs, but usually fools nobody at all, at all. Every time I thought of the fifty bucks it seemed smaller and it seemed like every time I turned around there was fat Barney Gowdy clinging to my lapels and breathing in my face, indirectly advising me of what he had had for lunch. Even though the salami was in top shape, I was chewing it like sawdust and smiling in pain and wondering when I’d have to listen to Barney Gowdy when, like rubbing the lamp, he slid into the opposite side of the booth and said: “Danny boy, I’m weary of your evasive tactics and it is high time we consulted each other on a proposition which I want to make you out of the goodness of my heart.”

I gave him the wealthy smile. “Barney, I’ve got no time for propositions. Everything is like silk with me, and I don’t want to change the dice.”

He sighed patiently. Barney Gowdy has been pitching pennies at the cracks in the boxfighting profession ever since the days of John L. He is somewhat like an obese penguin with extra chins, and it is said that if you come up behind him on the street and say, “Eight to five,” he’ll say, “Seven to five,” and make you take it because he is persuasive in his hedge betting on both sides of any sporting picture.

“Danny,” he said, “it is difficult to do you a favor. I like you, Danny; I’ve always liked you. It is people like you, with an education and all, who elevate the profession. I want to give something away to you and for the last week you have been putting a shoulder in my face and walking off. My feelings are hurt and this is maybe the last time I will show you the attention.”

“You’re a pest,” I said, “and the only way I’ll find peace is to let you give me your chiseling proposition so that I can say no. Go ahead.”

I thought his eyes were going to fill with tears. He gulped. “Danny, you have doubtless heard of Spencer Leslie, who, as the coming light-heavy has amassed a string of twenty-one knockouts, three decisions and a draw?”

“Yes. Whitey Burd owns him and Whitey is stupid to change the name. I understand that this Leslie is a good boy.”

“You are right, except on one point, Danny. Ten days ago Whitey indulged in a game of chance and felt so happy about his full house that he put his contract with this Leslie in the pot and my four little threes made him very sad indeed. I am now the owner and manager of said Spencer Leslie and though no one enjoys boxfighting like I do, I have no desire to handle one of the bums. You see my point?”

It baffled me and I nibbled at the last bit of salami while I thought. “Barney, couldn’t you sell the contract? Somebody would pay good dough.”

“That is the trouble. They would pay good dough and the contract would be recorded and the Department of Internal Revenue would take all the joy out of it. It is not good business. I have had offers, going as high as forty.”

“You want to give him to me? I’ll take him.”

“Not so quick, Danny. There is a bit more detail. I won forty percent of this Spencer Leslie and it is my understanding that you own thirty percent of the Tailor. Now Tailor Rowe has been around many years and he is less valuable than Spencer Leslie.”

“That’s open to question, Barney. The Tailor is a good boy.”

“Let me make my point, Danny Watson. I have a friend who owns a small but profitable business property. This friend is very conservative. He can see a good deal of merit in proven property like Tailor Rowe, but he has little interest in an up and coming young man like Spencer Leslie. You and I know that this Spencer Leslie will be clubbing his way around the circuits long after the Tailor is selling neckties in Dubuque.”

“Again you raise a debatable point.”

“Be that as it may. I wish to trade my forty cut of Leslie for your thirty cut of Rowe. Then I can trade my cut of Rowe for a forty-nine percent cut of this small and profitable business in which I will be a silent partner, providing O’Dwyer permits it to remain open and in business.”

“When does Spencer Leslie fight again?”

“Next week in Toledo. A match with Hymie Bruin who is popular out there and the gate should be around ten with fifty-five for the winner.”

I did some mental arithmetic. Conservatively figuring the gate to be seventy-five hundred rather than ten, and figuring on a loss by Leslie, his end would be thirty-three seventy-five, and my forty cut would be thirteen hundred and fifty.

I looked hard at Barney Gowdy and there was nothing but loving-kindness in his big damp eyes. “Has Leslie broken his leg or something?” I asked.

His underlip quivered. “Danny boy, you wound me. You really do. I wouldn’t make this offer to anybody else.”

“Nobody else has a hunk of the Tailor.”

“You have a small point there. What is the answer?”

“Hold it open for twenty-four hours and give me a chance to talk to this Spencer Leslie and then I will give an answer.”

He beamed at me. “You will never regret it, friend. You will always thank Barnard Gowdy for presenting you with this opportunity. Spencer has a room at the Brainard Hotel — 515, and I would suggest that you call at about ten tomorrow morning. He gets up early. I will see you here at noon tomorrow in this same booth.”

As usual the Tailor took in two double features in the afternoon and I didn’t see him until after six. He has a standard schedule. He works out slow and easy all morning, sees movies all afternoon and practises his magic tricks until he goes to bed. He doesn’t drink, smoke or stare at women. He is a lean, knobby guy, about thirty-three and we both worry about his legs. He got the name of the Tailor because of his left. It is always out there like a needle. Stitch, stitch, clip, clip. His specialty is turning faces to hamburg and winning on technical kayos. He has no color, no right hand, no bad habits. Just that left like a needle.

I sat on the bed and he stood in front of me and said, “Now look at this, Danny. Here is a handkerchief. See? I take it like this and stuff it down into my other hand, a little bit at a time. Then I wave the other hand over it and... Pooof! Gone!”

“Tailor, when you say it is gone I see something run up your sleeve, like a small flesh-colored mouse. Could it be that it was carrying the handkerchief?”

“Damn it all, Danny. The man said nobody would see it. I must have stood wrong or something. Or maybe the elastic isn’t tight enough.”

“Tailor, I got a proposition to unload you on Barney Gowdy in return for a forty percent slice of a kid named Spencer Leslie.”

Tailor looked mildly interested. “Okay by me, Danny. But I want the same clause in the contract. You know: the handling expenses charged against my end will never in any one year run over eight percent of my gross take.”

“Sure. I’ll see it goes in. But look, Tailor, aren’t you sore at me or anything?”

He looked blank. “Should I be? All I care is I got somebody who gets me fights. I figure I got maybe two more years, maybe three, before I get out. I’ll see you around, won’t I. Hey, watch this one. See here? I got a coin. A quarter. I hold it tight in my fist and I pass the other hand over it like this...”

I arrived at 515 a few minutes after ten. All the world has a funny look that early in the morning. It smells different, too.

He opened the door when I knocked and I liked the looks of him. He shook hands and that gave me a chance to see that he had thick, square hands with strong bones. Good wrists. He was one of those boys with a small head set close against his shoulders, a big chest, no hips at all and a springy way of walking. Outside of a vague suggestion of a shelf over the left eye and a little knob on one ear, he wasn’t marked. He had a snub nose, a nice grin, and cold grey eyes.

“I’m happy to know you, Mr. Watson,” he said quietly.

There was a big table in the room and it had books opened on the top of it, a pencil next to an open notebook, a slide rule. He saw where I was looking and said: “When I got out of the army, I got into school and they took six months to toss me out. I couldn’t concentrate. I’m learning the hard way.”

I sat on the bed. “Very interesting. What sort of stuff are you doing?”

“Mechanical engineering.”

“What is it, a hobby?”

“Sort of. With the way the schools are jammed, and with my record of busting out, I haven’t got a prayer of getting back in.”

We stared at each other. He laughed nervously and said: “Barney told me about this deal of his. I feel like a chorus girl applying for a job.”

“You like fighting?”

He frowned. “That’s a toughie, Mr. Watson. I hate it until I get into the ring and get a glove in my face. Then the only thing I want to do is drop the other guy; I hate him until I hear that ten count and then he’s just another guy.”

“That’s a good way to be, Spencer. If you haven’t got that, you never make much of a fighter. The press boys call it the killer instinct.”

He grinned. “That’s a harsh word.”

“You want to make a career of fighting?”

“No. A man hits his optimum mental efficiency at age forty-five. You can’t keep fighting much beyond thirty-two or three; your reactions go bad.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-four.”

I added it up in my head. Nine years with a good boy. Maybe champ in another year or two. He seemed as open and honest as the day is long, but there was something about him, some coldness in those grey eyes of his that told me to be on guard.

“You can get fights for me?” he asked.

“Sure. I can get fights. I’ve spent a few years doing favors for the right people and I can get fights. How many of those knockouts of yours were setups?”

He frowned again. “The first five. Then Whitey found out that in two cases I had put the boys away before they were ready to drop. He tried three level ones and I got a decision in one and knockouts in the other two. From then on I was on my own. It cut expenses and gave me better training. I didn’t like the setups; it made me feel ashamed. But Whitey said they were necessary.”

“I don’t like ’em myself. Once in a while it’s okay with a fading bum that you want to ease into a big bout so he can grubstake himself for the future. But it hurts the business in the long run.”

“You make sense,” he said. “I hope the deal goes through.”

The deal did go through. I went out to Toldeo and sat in his corner. In the fifth round Bruin dropped his left shoulder a fraction of an inch too far. Spencer Leslie put a right down the slot and followed it up with a left hook that bounced Bruin off the ropes. As Bruin bounced, his arms limp, Leslie put two meaty rights and a left on the button. Bruin landed face down and they could have counted up to seventeen hundred.

Whitey had made some tentative arrangements for the future and I followed them up. In the swing we got a decision over Bannock in Detroit, Stankiewitz in Chicago, a knockout off Dormer in Memphis and a technical over Hailey in Atlanta. I nearly needed a suitcase to carry the dough in. We came back to New York and the press boys were screaming about my boy. No wonder. Perfect timing, a perfect build and good endurance. I saw my legal eagle and he got Myrna to accept a cash settlement instead of alimony. I bought eight or nine complete outfits, paid my income tax, and put a few hundred in a checking account. All was well with the world.

The next go-round was with Angel Adams in the Garden and it was two weeks away. The only bad habit I had found in my boy was the bug on engineering.

On the second day I ran into Whitey and said “Sure was tough about you losing that boy.”

He grinned at me in a nasty way and said, “You think so? Brother you have been lucky, you don’t know how lucky. Maybe you haven’t heard, but I’ve got the Tailor. There’s a boy I like.”

I angled him over against the wall of a building. “What are you driving at, Whitey?”

“Nothing, kid. I just said you’d been lucky as hell. My timing was off. I should have held him another two months before the switch.”

“I thought you lost him.”

“Did you? Gowdy made an easy five bills pulling the switch.”

“Damn it, Whitey, what’s wrong with Leslie?”

“Why don’t you ask him, sucker? Or maybe you could try to fix him up to train at Stayman’s Gym.”

He wouldn’t tell me any more. I went to see Ike Stayman and said that I wanted to make arrangements for Spencer Leslie to train there. Ike snickered. “You keep that crazy man the hell away from here.” He would not tell me any more.

I went to Leslie and asked him what was up. He said, “I thought you’d heard, Danny. I didn’t want to bring it up; I just get a little excited when I get sore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I sort of lose control of myself.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I can’t Danny. It isn’t very clear in my mind. I got sore a couple of times when I was training at Stayman’s, and Ike said I couldn’t use the gym any more. I guess I hit a couple of the wrong people or something.”

They call him Angel Adams because he is the dirtiest fighter known to man. He makes the referee earn his money. There was a good crowd at the Garden, not packed, but a nice house to add up in your head. In order to get a shot at the champ, we’d have to lick Angel, and then Stick Mobray and then Kid Willows.

We were the final, and Leslie was nice and loose in the dressing room. He got a good hand when we came down the aisle and he bounded in, scuffing his feet in the resin, grinning at the public.

After the words of wisdom in the middle of the ring, where my boy looked like beauty and the beast along beside the swarthy scowling Angel Adams, Leslie came bounding back. The stool had been yanked and the second took the robe. He grabbed the top ropes and it made me feel good to see those long, loose muscles in his shoulder. At the bell, he whirled, ran out and touched gloves with Angel and started to feel with his left.

Angel stamped on his foot and swung a booming right into the breadbasket. Les managed to get in a high hard left to the head before the clinch. In the clinch, Angel rubbed the laces up across Leslie’s nose and gave him a good butt on the cheekbone.

Artie Mosher, the ref, pulled them apart and told Angel to cut it. I saw that Les had turned a little pale.

In the next mixup, they got over near the ropes. Angel grabbed the top rope with his right hand and used the leverage to drive a heavy left into Leslie’s throat. In the next clinch Angel spun fast, jamming a hip into Leslie’s cup. When Les bent over, Angel chopped him behind the ear and Les went down hard on his face.

The bell sounded just as Les came up to his feet. Angel walked away. Les looked after him for a few seconds, then turned and came back to his corner like a sleepwalker.

I jumped up and, while Joe was working on him, I said; “Don’t let him rile you, boy.”

“Shut up!” Les snarled. I noticed that the cords of his neck were taut and strained. His face was still white.

Joe jumped down at the whistle and Les went out at the bell. Angel clinched clean the first time, but on the break he looped a high right across that staggered Les.

It happened.

Les roared like a bull and went after Angel with both fists swinging, his legs planted like oak stumps. Angel blocked a few and slipped a few but he couldn’t keep out of the way of all of them. The crowd was screaming. A right dropped Angel to his hands and knees. While he was down there, Les leaned over and hooked a left under his chin, lifting him two feet off the canvas. Artie Mosher came running over and tried to pull Les away. Les spun on him and slammed a hard right into his mouth. Artie spun across the ring and dropped. Angel was trying to get up. As he came off the canvas, Les jammed a knee into his face, knocking him back so that he hung half in and half out of the ring. By that time I was in the ring and so was Angel’s second.

Les kicked Angel in the side, toppling him out of the ring and then slammed Angel’s second through the ropes. The crowd was screaming. As I got to Les he turned and I got a quick glimpse of eyes as cold and grey as broken iron before the boom was lowered and the lights went out.

I sat on the bed holding a cold towel against my throbbing face. Jenks, my legal eagle was pacing up and down the room. Spencer Leslie sat in the corner by the windows, silent and moody. He didn’t have a mark on him except for the cut on his cheek where Angel had butted him.

Jenks said, “I’ve got the whole picture now. Net only does he knock out three of Arthur Mosher’s teeth, but he smashes Angel’s nose with his knee, fractures the jaw on Angel’s second, busts the nose on a salesman from St. Louis who had a ringside seat, closes both eyes on a bookie named Moralli — and it takes seven guys holding him hand and foot to get him boot to the dressing room. He doesn’t stop roaring and struggling until they hold him in a cold shower for ten minutes. And now he can’t remember a thing.”

I looked at Leslie. “Is that right?”

“I remember knocking Angel down but that’s all. The next thing I know some people are holding me in the shower and I still got the gloves, trunks and shoes on,” he said sullenly.

Jenks said wildly, “Judgements! Everybody’s got judgements they want. The Garden gets sued by the salesman and the bookie and Artie, Angel’s second and even Angel for that knee in the face business. And the Garden turns around and gets a judgement against you for the whole mess plus a fat fee for hurting their business. Brother!”

“The judgements’ll stick?” I asked him.

“Hell, yes. And the total will probably be around a hundred thousand.”

Without a word, Spencer Leslie got up, opened the door and walked out. He slammed it behind him. Jenks and I looked at each other. “What a mess!” he moaned.

On the Beach at four P.M. I got the sympathy usually reserved for a case of ulcers at a clambake. Dear old friends gave me the clammy paw, the sad shake of the head and the maybe-things-could-be-worse philosophy.

I had the Word inside of an hour. No more bouts for my boy. Nobody wanted to take the gamble. All of a sudden everybody seemed to know that he had blown up twice in training and that the second time the boys in white coats had to come and throw a net over him and give him a wet sheet treatment.

It didn’t help any to find that Whitey had matched Tailor Rowe with Stick Mobray and stood to clear maybe six, maybe seven.

I stood on the Beach and jingled the change in my pockets and made the habitual, unthinking appraisal of the ankles that waltzed by. Jenks had said a hundred thousand. I wondered how I’d like working on a banana boat, and if there was a fight arena in Rio. Back at the suite were my assets. Forty or so suits and a couple dozen pair of shoes. Two hundred and eighty in the checking account. Of course the leech had been paid off and that helped. But I would have traded back for the chance of climbing out from under the hundred thousand. I had even asked Jenks if I could tear up the contract with Leslie and climb out from under that way. He had given me some legal double talk about the responsibility of an agent and said no. A big no. A hundred thousand dollar no.

The shades of night were bringing out the neon when, heavy in heart, I started for the suite. I had gotten Les a single down the hall and hoped he’d be in. I wanted to get some one syllable words off my chest.

Ahead of me I saw Barney Gowdy duck into a doorway. In three seconds I had a big wad of his shirt in my left hand and I had the right drawn way back. He looked at me with his big sad, damp eyes and said, “Why slug a guy for making a buck, Danny boy? You just had your guard down. That’s all.”

He was right. I pocketed the right fist and contented myself with helping him trace his ancestry back through three or four generations. I also made a few terse comments regarding his state of personal cleanliness, his philosophy in life and his habits.

When I walked in, Les was on his back on the bed in the darkened room, staring up at the ceiling, his hands linked behind his head.

“Hello, Danny,” he said softly.

I didn’t turn the lights on. I went over and sat by the windows and looked out at the fine fancy night of Manhattan.

After a bit he said, as though talking to himself, “It’s always been that way. Since the war I mean. I was with the First Raiders and after a year I finally got it. I wasn’t wounded, really. Just blown about eight feet in the air. Shock, they called it. Six months in the hospital and a medical discharge. I think the shock had something to do with not being able to stick in school when I got in.

“Hell, the only other kind of a job I could get would be with my hands — washing dishes or swinging a pick. I know I can fight good. I could even be champ if it wasn’t for... this other thing. When I get sore something goes click in my head and I black out. I guess maybe I ought to find something to do where I won’t get sore.”

He stopped talking. All of a sudden I wasn’t sore any more. All I had for a problem was a stack of judgements coming up. I suddenly realized that Les really had a problem, that there was something in his head that frightened him and made him lonely. He was a good kid; I liked him.

“You’ve got it figured right, kid,” I said. “The fight game’s not for you. You might kill somebody in one of those blackouts. Do you ever get riled at anything else?”

“No. Just in the ring or sparring with some wise guy in a gym.”

“Look kid, I got a brother that’s head of a place where they do a lot of mechanical drawing. Drafting work. You done any of that?”

“Some. Not a lot.”

“Suppose I give him the word and there ought to be a spot for you. You could mark time there until you can get into a. college. And you’d be learning, too. Just forget the fight game. Hell, nobody’d give you a bout anyway.”

He sat up suddenly, and I heard the eagerness in his voice. “Danny, that’d be swell!”

“Okay, kid. I’ll call him in the morning.” I stood up. “Get yourself some sleep and don’t worry about it. If you saved any dough from the fights I booked for you, you might use it to help me pay off some of the hundred grand they’re going to stick me with.”

His voice sounded puzzled. “Stick you? Didn’t that guy find you?”

“What guy?”

“The guy from the insurance company.”

“Kid, you’re driving me nuts. What insurance company?”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you. After the first time I went off the handle and started socking everybody in sight, I went out and paid a hundred bucks for an unlimited, comprehensive personal liability policy. Three years worth. The adjuster was here late in the afternoon looking for you. So was Mr. Jenks. The insurance company will defend the case and pay off if we lose.”

They told me that I had a good time that night. I don’t know where I went or what I did. All I know for sure is that when I woke up at noon there were three strange guys sleeping on the floor of the suite. They told me later that I had bought drinks for them all night long. They also told me they were insurance agents.

Content

John D. MacDonald
The Gentle Killer