James Chase - Strictly For Cash

“Okay, okay, don’t bother me, Henry,” I said, and stretched out on the rubbing-table. “Lock the door. I don’t want anyone in here.”

He locked the door, then came over and began to work on me.

“Are you going to win this fight?” he asked presently.

“How do I know? Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I don’t think so.” He went on kneading my muscles for a while, then he said, “Mr. Petelli’s been around too long. I reckon he’s done a lot of harm to the game in this town. Is this another fixed fight?”

“You know it is. I should have thought the whole damned town knows it by now. What else can you expect when Petelli lays ten grand on the Kid? I’ve been told to go in the third.”

Waller grunted. We didn’t look at each other.

“You shouldn’t get sore with Mr. Brant,” he said. “He’s a good guy. What can he do against Mr. Petelli? If Mr. Petelli says for you to dive in the third, what can Mr. Brant say? If he says no, those two gunmen will fix him. Mr. Brant’s got a wife and kids to think of.”

“Lay off, Henry. Maybe Brant can’t help it, but I’d just as soon not have him around. You can take care of me, can’t you?”

“If you’re going in the third, you don’t need taking care of,” Waller said sadly.

There was some truth in that.

“Suppose I don’t take a dive?” I said. “Suppose I fight the Kid and lick him? What chance have I got of getting out of here alive?”

Waller looked uneasily around the room as if he feared someone might be listening.

“That’s crazy talk,” he said, his eyes rolling. “Get that idea out of your head.”

“No harm in wondering. Where’s that window lead to?”

“You relax. There’s no sense talking this way.”

I slid off the table, crossed the room and looked out of the window. A good thirty feet below me was the car park. I leaned out. A narrow ledge ran below the window to a stack pipe, leading to the ground. It wouldn’t be difficult to get down to the car park, but that didn’t mean I could get away.

Waller pulled me from the window:

“Get back on the table. This ain’t the way to act just before a fight.”

I got on to the table again.

“Think those Wops would shoot me, Henry, or is it bluff?”

“I know they would. They shot Boy O’Brien for pulling a double-cross a couple of years back. They bust Bennie Mason’s hands when he got himself knocked out after Mr. Petelli had bet he’d go the distance. They threw acid in Tiger Freeman’s face for winning in the seventh. Sure, they’d shoot you if that’s what Mr. Petelli wants them to do.”

I was still churning it over in my mind when Brant yelled through the door it was time to get down to the ring.

Henry helped me into the scarlet and blue dressing gown Petelli had sent over for me to wear. It was a gaudy affair, with Johnny Farrar stitched in big white letters across the shoulders. At one time I would have been proud and happy to have worn it, but right now it made me feel bad.

As I reached the top of the ramp leading into the arena, they played the Kid in with a fanfare of trumpets. The crowd was giving him a big hand, and when he vaulted over the ropes into the ring, they howled their appreciation.

Brant joined me. He was sweating and worried.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said. “You first; the rest of us behind you.”

The rest of us consisted of Brain, Waller, Pepi and Benno. I walked down the ramp towards the ring. It was a long walk, and the crowd stood up and yelled all the way. I wondered bleakly what kind of noise they’d be making on my return trip.

I reached the ring, decked under the ropes and went to my corner. The Kid, in a yellow dressing gown, was clowning in his corner, making out he was bow-legged, and then pretending to throw punches at his handlers. The crowd enjoyed it more than his handlers did.

I sat down, and Henry began putting on the tapes. The Kid’s fat manager stood over me, watching, and breathing whisky and cigar fumes in my face. It was because of his vile breath that I turned my head and looked at the crowd just below me, and it was then that I saw her.

The announcer, a bald-headed little runt in a white suit a little too big for him, was bawling into a hand mike, but I didn’t hear what he was saying. Even when he introduced me Waller had to prod me before I stood up to acknowledge the yells of the crowd.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off the woman who was sitting just below my corner: near enough, if we both stretched out our arms, for us to touch fingers. Even as I waved to the crowd, I continued to stare at her, and she was worth staring at.

I’ve seen a good many beautiful women in my time, on the movies and off, but never one like this. Her hair was jet black and glossy, parted in the centre, a thin white line as exact as if it had been drawn with a sharp-edged tool and a ruler in marble. Her eyes were big and black and glittering. Her skin was like alabaster, and her mouth wide and scarlet. She was lean and lovely and hungry looking.

Unlike the other women sitting at the ringside, she wasn’t wearing an evening gown. She had on an apple-green linen suit, a white silk blouse and no hat. Her shoulders were broad, and to judge from her long, slim legs, she would be above the average height when she stood up. Under that smart, cool and provocative outfit was a shape that drove the fight, Petelli and the rest of the set-up clean out of my mind.

She was looking up at me, her eyes wide and excited, and we exchanged glances. The look she gave me turned my mouth dry and sent my pulse racing. Even a Trappist monk would have known what that look was saying, and I wasn’t a Trappist monk.

“What’s the matter with you?” Waller mumbled as he laced my gloves. “You look like someone’s already socked you.”

“Could have,” I said, and smiled at her, and she smiled back: an intimate, we-could-have-fun-together kind of smile that hit me where I lived.

I turned to see who she was with: an expensive-looking item in a fawn seersucker suit. He was handsome enough with his dark, wavy hair, his olive complexion and his regular features, but his good looks were marred by his thin, hard mouth and the viciously angry expression in his eyes as he returned my curious stare.

“Get out there,” Waller said, and shoved me to my feet. “The ref’s waiting. What’s the matter with you?”

And the referee was waiting, and the Kid was waiting too. I joined them in the middle of the ring.

“It’s all right, chummy,” the Kid sneered. “You don’t have to hug your corner that long. I ain’t going to hit you just yet.”

“All right, boys,” the referee said sharply, “let’s cut out the funny stuff and get down to business. Now, listen to me...”

He started on the old routine I had heard so often before. While he was talking, I asked myself why she had looked at me like that. I don’t claim to know much about women, but I knew that smile was an open invitation.

“Okay, boys,” the referee said when he was through with the routine stuff, “back to your corners, and come out fighting.”

“And, chummy, you’ll know you’ve been in a fight when you leave feet first,” the Kid said, slapping me on the back.

And so would he, I thought, as I returned to my corner.

Waller took off my dressing gown and I turned to get a last look at her.

She leaned forward, her eyes sparkling.

“Knock that smug smile off his face, handsome,” she called. “It’s time someone did.”

Her escort put his hand on her arm, scowling, but she shook it off impatiently.

“And good luck...”

“Thanks,” I said.

Outraged, Waller got between her and me.