Double Play Read online

  “Starzinski.”

  “And the guy from Birmingham, Alabama?” Anthony said.

  “I go in the tank sometimes, too?”

  Anthony drank the rest of his whisky and gestured at the bartender. He smiled.

  “ ’Course,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  They hired a trainer and got him ready. He learned quickly, and after a time no one wanted to spar with him because he seemed not to feel pain, and he came at everyone with a kind of expressionless ferocity that scared even some of the thick-scarred aging Negroes who’d been doing this most of their lives. When they thought he was ready they put him in with a string of palookas. Burke never knew if the fights were fixed or not. It didn’t matter. In every fight he went out and attempted to kill his opponent. He won eighteen fights in a row and they began to have trouble getting him matches. Other fighters began to avoid him. Finally they put him in with a tall fighter named Tar Baby Johnson, who had a 35–22 record. For seven rounds Burke went implacably after him, absorbing every punch that Tar Baby threw. He landed very few of his own. Those he did land were mostly on Tar Baby’s arms. In the eighth round Tar Baby knocked Burke out with a combination that Burke never saw. Fighters who had beaten Tar Baby Johnson then agreed to fight Burke. Anthony and Angelo dodged them for a while and Burke pulverized several other fighters who fought as Burke did, straight ahead, getting by on toughness. But eventually they had to take another opponent who could box, another rangy black man named Kid Congo, who looked positively delicate opposite Burke’s thick white muscularity. Burke was KO’d in the fifth.

  “There’s fighting,” Anthony said to him, “and there’s boxing. You could beat both these guys up in some alley someplace. You’re like a fucking wolverine. But, you got no future in the sweet science.”

  Sitting in the reeking cinder block room, holding the ice bag against his face, Burke nodded. It hurt. Burke didn’t pay much attention to the fact that it hurt. Most things hurt. Burke was used to it.

  “It’s our fault,” Anthony said. “We shouldn’t have put you in with the Tar Baby yet. We was supposed to build you up until you got a rep, and then bet heavy and maybe you take a dive for us. But the Tar Baby fucked that up. Make big money on a dive you need to be a heavy favorite, you know?”

  Burke shrugged. He got dressed slowly. The scars from Bloody Ridge had faded into insignificant white lines across his belly. His face was swollen. One eye was closed. On the other side of the dressing room, Kid Congo was holding ice against his forearms where Burke’s heavy punches had landed. The arms were swollen. He saw Burke looking and grinned.

  “You got the heaviest punch I ever seen,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “But you can’t box for shit.”

  “I know.”

  “He’d kick your ass on the street,” Anthony said to Kid Congo.

  “Don’t know if he would or not,” Kid Congo said. “But kicking my ass on the street ain’t what this all about.”

  Anthony said, “Watch how you talk, black boy.”

  “He’s right,” Burke said to Anthony.

  Anthony shrugged. Kid Congo slipped into his pink shirt and nodded at Burke and walked out of the dressing room.

  “You know my brother Angelo books some bets now and then,” Anthony said.

  Burke nodded again.

  “He could probably use you to collect some of the proceeds.”

  “Okay.”

  “Most of the time they’ll just give it right up,” Anthony said. “Even if they don’t want to, you’ll scare them and they’ll do it.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  Anthony shrugged.

  “You reason with the fuckers,” he said. “Money’s good. Hours are good. Better than getting knocked on your ass every few weeks by guys like Tar Baby Johnson and this coon. Okay?”

  Burke shrugged.

  “Okay.”

  Bobby

  When I was a small boy and we still lived in Springfield my mother would disapprove of my behavior by saying it was as if I lived on Columbus Avenue, which was, in those days, a Negro neighborhood.

  I knew that a white fighter named Billy Conn almost beat Joe Louis at the Polo Grounds until he got careless in the thirteenth round. All of us rooted along with the rest of America, or almost the rest, that a white fighter would beat Louis (as long as it wasn’t Schmeling). Conn was the closest we got. Lou Nova failed, and Buddy Baer, and Two Ton Tony Galento. I knew that there was a race riot in Detroit in 1943 and President Roosevelt had to send in army troops. I was never clear how it worked in the war, but I was pretty sure Negroes and whites didn’t serve in the same units.

  I knew that my father would give me a nickel, every Saturday, and I would go up to Wolfe’s drugstore on the corner of my street and buy five licorice candies called nigger babies. I knew that the Brazil nuts in the nut mix my mother put out at Christmas were called nigger toes. I knew that there was a high lawn weed, which when it went to seed was called a nigger head. If something was brightly shined my mother would describe it as “shining like a nigger’s heel.” People who spent money foolishly on ostentation were nigger rich.

  In my childhood that was what I knew of black people. I had no personal contact. There were none at school. Until we moved to New Bedford, I don’t think I ever met a black person. I don’t remember my father ever working with a black person. To my knowledge my mother never knew one. Black racism was, thus, a kind of abstraction. One knew it was coarse to call someone a nigger. Impolite. But one didn’t worry that they’d move into the neighborhood. It was unthinkable. And no one, in my memory, ever thought about it.

  The more immediate threat was Jewish. They could often pass, if one wasn’t alert. In 1944 when my father was transferred to New Bedford they sold their Springfield home to a gentile for $500 less than they had been offered by a Jew. My father had no comment on that. My mother explained that selling to a Jew would betray our neighbors. On the other hand, our family doctor was my father’s friend Sam Feldman. I found this unsettling.

  In fact, long before I should have, long before I had any information to the contrary, I was suspicious of judgments based on race. I do not know why this was. When we were just barely postpubescent my friends and I, who had never had sex with anyone, and were years away from doing so, would discuss very seriously whether one of us would have sex with a good-looking Negress. Lena Horne was our most frequent example. I always insisted I would. Some of that insistence was merely an honest appraisal of my feverish hormonality. But there was also a sense that to do otherwise, for racial reasons, would be wrong. Embarrassingly that is, to my memory, my first public position on racial equality. The question of whether Lena Horne would have wanted sex with any of us was never considered.

  Later I would read Kingsblood Royal, and watch Home of the Brave and find my suspicions about racial attitudes confirmed. But the suspicions existed prior. Perhaps I simply exemplified a happy quirk of nobility. It would be pretty to think so. On the other hand, years past childhood, as an adult, in psychotherapy, I discovered that I was able to keep my most aggressive impulses in check because I identified with the object of my own aggression. I identified with the victim. Maybe that had something to do with it, too.

  5.

  FEW PEOPLE ARGUED with Burke about payments. They looked into his flat gaze and backed down. If they didn’t have money they made arrangements. Angelo liked him.

  “Anthony’s right,” Angelo said to him. “You got a nice way with this. You talk to people. They come around.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. I don’t want to hurt nobody if it ain’t necessary,” Angelo said. “Guy in the hospital ain’t earning money to pay me back. Dead guy is earning even less.”

  “ ’Less there’s life insurance,” Anthony said.

  “Well, ’a course,” Angelo said. “That’s a different story. We get it from the widow, that’s excellent.”

  “Not a lot
of widows going to give Burke any shit,” Anthony said.

  “Damn few,” his brother said. “Generally they cough it up.”

  “I don’t do widows,” Burke said.

  Angelo stared at him.

  “Whaddya mean?” Anthony said. “Why not?”

  “I don’t feel like it,” Burke said.

  Angelo kept looking at him. Nobody said anything for a time.

  “You work for me,” Angelo said finally, “and mostly it matters what I feel like.”

  “I heard that,” Burke said.

  Angelo looked at Anthony.

  “He’s your friend,” Angelo said, “whaddya think?”

  “Angelo,” Anthony said, “it’s what you call a hypothetical question, ya know? Burke’s done a good job so far. Let’s worry about the fucking widows and orphans when it comes up.”

  Angelo nodded slowly, staring at Burke.

  “Okay,” he said. “Makes sense, but he got to know that I mean what I say. He don’t feel like something that I feel like doing—we’re gonna have some trouble.”

  Burke made no comment. For all his face showed they could have been talking about Douglas MacArthur.

  “Sure,” Anthony said. “That’s fair. Ain’t that fair, Burke?”

  “That’s fair,” Burke said.

  “Probably won’t come up anyway,” Anthony said. “You know? Probably not really a problem, anyway.”

  “Probably not,” Angelo said.

  Neither Burke nor Angelo mentioned the matter again. Later that week Burke got a copy of the final papers ratifying the divorce that he had not contested.

  On a Monday evening Angelo took him to dinner. They sat in a dark booth in a place called Mario’s, and had spaghetti with marinara sauce, some sliced bread in a basket, and a bottle of Chianti.

  “Guy I know,” Angelo said, “political guy. He needs somebody to watch his back for a while.”

  “Because?”

  “Because he does,” Angelo said. “I want to give you to him.”

  “What are friends for,” Burke said.

  He poured some more Chianti into the short water glass provided and drank some.

  “I told him you was tough as a five-cent mutton chop,” Angelo said. “That you kept your word, and that you didn’t have much to say.”

  Burke nodded.

  “Pay’s good,” Angelo said. “And you step up a level.”

  “Guy legit?” Burke said.

  “ ’Course he ain’t legit,” Angelo said. “He’s legit, he don’t need his back watched. But he’s more legit than I am.”

  Burke nodded again. The Chianti was cheap and sour. He drank it anyway.

  “You and me are going to have trouble you keep working for me,” Angelo said. “You know it and I know it. You ain’t good at taking orders, and I’m really good at giving them.”

  “True,” Burke said.

  “Anthony says he owes you from Guadalcanal, and he’s my brother.”

  Burke didn’t say anything.

  “You want the job?” Angelo said.

  “Sure.”

  6.

  JULIUS ROACH had no visible means of support. He was often consulted by borough presidents. He was often identified in newspapers as a City Hall regular. He sat frequently in the owners’ box at Ebbets Field, and the Polo Grounds, and Yankee Stadium. He was photographed with Branch Rickey. Toots Shor knew him, and Walter Winchell. When Mayor O’Dwyer spoke at a banquet, Roach was frequently at the head table, dressed very well.

  “My daughter needs looking after,” Roach said to Burke. “Mr. Mastrangelo says you’d be just right for it.”

  “Angelo told me it was you,” Burke said.

  “I thought it seemly to mislead Mr. Mastrangelo,” Roach said. “Family matter, you know?”

  “How old is your daughter?” Burke said.

  “Lauren is twenty-five,” Roach said. “Lovely and accomplished, but foolish in her choice of men.”

  “And you want me to help her with the choices?”

  Roach was a tall man with too much weight on him and white hair that he wore long and brushed back. His clothes were expensive and cut to make him look slimmer.

  “I want you to protect her from the consequences of her choices,” Roach said.

  “Such as?”

  “Lauren seems to have a proclivity for, ah, violence-prone men,” Roach said.

  “Why me?”

  “I am a man of some public reputation, and some political prominence, and I want this to be very discreet. The usual sources, private detectives, the police, that sort of thing, would seem to risk public disclosure.”

  He always talks like he’s addressing a jury, Burke thought.

  “What, you think I won’t blab?”

  “Mr. Mastrangelo says you’re not a talker. He says you don’t care about publicity.”

  “Did he say what I do care about?”

  Roach smiled. He seemed to purse his lips when he smiled.

  “Nothing.”

  Burke nodded.

  “How do you happen to know the Mastrangelos?” he said.

  “Angelo and I have met in the course of our work.”

  “I need a gun for this?” Burke said.

  “You might. I can get you one.”

  “I have one,” Burke said. “Your daughter want a bodyguard?”

  “She hasn’t been consulted,” Roach said. “I have little control over her behavior. But I do control her income. She’ll do what she must.”

  “Is there a mother?”

  “My wife is not at issue here,” Roach said. “For a man who cares about nothing you ask a lot of questions.”

  “I care about whether I want to do something or not,” Burke said.

  “Do you want to do this?”

  “Why not,” Burke said.

  7.

  LAUREN THOUGHT he looked like some kind of football player with his thick neck. But she knew he wasn’t. He was something else entirely. Though she didn’t know what.

  “This is Joseph Burke,” her father said.

  “And a fine figure of American manhood he is,” Lauren said.

  Burke said, “How do you do.”

  “And what do you do, Mr. Burke?”

  Burke smiled and nodded at her father.

  “Ask him,” Burke said.

  Lauren looked at her father.

  “I’ve asked Mr. Burke to look out for you during this nasty business with Louis.”

  “Look out for me?”

  “Look out for your safety,” Roach said.

  She stared at her father.

  “You’ve hired a fucking bodyguard?” she said.

  “Watch your mouth,” Roach said, “when you speak to me.”

  Lauren looked at Burke.

  “You mean this . . . I’m expected to let this, this unwashed thug along everywhere I go?”

  “I washed this morning,” Burke said.

  “I do mean that,” Roach said.

  “And if I say no?”

  “As long as you live here and spend my money you’ll do as I say.”

  Lauren took a cigarette out of a box on the coffee table behind her. She put it in her mouth and looked at Burke. Burke didn’t move.

  “Do you have a match?” Lauren said.

  Burke took a packet of matches from his shirt pocket and offered them to Lauren. She stared at him for a moment and then took the matches peevishly and lit her own cigarette. When she had finished she dropped the matchbook on the coffee table.

  “How do you feel about this?” Lauren said to Burke.

  Burke picked the matches up and put them in his pocket.

  “Fine with me,” Burke said.

  “You’re prepared to spend every day with me even though I can’t stand your presence?”

  “I am,” Burke said.

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Not enough,” Burke said.

  “What would bother you enough?”

  Burke almo
st smiled.

  “If you paid me more than your father.”

  “Oh God,” she said. “Another flunky. My father buys them by the carton.”

  She set her cigarette into a big abalone shell ashtray and let it burn.

  “Mr. Burke will be here at nine in the morning,” Roach said, “to take you where you want to go.”

  Lauren looked Burke up and down slowly.

  “At least,” she said, “get rid of that suit.”

  She turned and walked from the room.

  8.

  WEARING HIS OTHER SUIT, a dark blue flannel, with a polka dot tie and a white shirt with a Mr. B collar, Burke was outside the Roach apartment on Fifth Avenue at Eighty-first Street when Lauren came out and walked across the sidewalk. The doorman hurried to open the back door. She ignored him and walked around and got in the front seat next to Burke. She had big violet eyes and a wide mouth and honey-colored hair that she wore in a long pageboy. Her clothes cost more than Burke had to his name and she smelled of perfume that Burke knew he couldn’t afford. Burke caught a momentary flash of stocking top as she swung her legs into the passenger side and closed her own door. She punched in the lighter on the dashboard. She took a silver cigarette case from her purse and took out a cigarette. When the lighter popped she lit the cigarette. Cigarettes always smelled best, Burke thought, that first moment, with a car lighter. She put the case away, and crossed her legs and shifted a little in the seat so that she could look at Burke.

  “Well,” she said, “you look better, at least.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you know where the Waldorf Astoria is?” she said.

  “Park Avenue,” Burke said. “Fiftieth Street.”

  “I’m impressed,” she said. “I’d have said you were more the flophouse type.”

  “I am,” Burke said. “I just know where it is.”

  At Seventy-sixth Street Burke went east for a block to Park Avenue and turned downtown. He could feel Lauren’s gaze.

  “Are you carrying a gun?” she said.