One-Eyed Jacks Read online

  He’d had a whiskey with Buzz before he started work, but had stayed away from the stuff since. And Buzz had mentioned that he expected Tommy to double as a bouncer if the need arose. The night was pretty quiet though, and Tommy wasn’t pressed into any strong-arm service. For that he was happy — throwing drunks into the street wasn’t Tommy’s idea of honest labour.

  After closing he and Buzz stood at the bar and had a nightcap, Irish for Tommy and cognac for Buzz, whose tastes were expensive enough to keep him on the verge of bankruptcy year in and year out. Buzz was a tall man, black-haired, and with a black goatee. He came from Prince Edward Island, where his family raised fat potatoes and fast standardbreds. In fifteen years Tommy had never heard him say a bad word about anyone. There were not many people Tommy could say that about.

  “I don’t figure it’s my life’s calling,” Tommy said when Buzz asked him how he liked the job. “But it was all right.”

  “The photographer was a good idea,” Buzz said. “We’ll do it again next Saturday. People love to get their picture took.”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said, “but I got a feeling that ten years from now these people are gonna be wondering who’s the knucklehead mick standing beside them in the snapshot.”

  “Well, they say that fame is fleeting,” Buzz said and he smiled. “How old are you, Tommy?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “How old do you feel?”

  “Well... I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it.”

  “I’m thirty-eight,” Buzz said. “And I feel like I’m twenty-two. And I’ve always felt that way. Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to feel as old as I really am.”

  “You’re awful philosophical tonight, Buzz.”

  “I guess I am.” Buzz finished his Courvoisier. “You know what I’m going to do, Tommy? I’m going to go home and fuck my wife.”

  Tommy downed his Irish. “You twenty-two-year-olds — that’s all you ever think about.”

  Buzz offered him a ride, but Tommy said he wanted to walk and he set out on foot. It was twenty blocks to where he was bound, but Tommy was happy with the walk, content to be alone in the city, although it had never been his city.

  There were a lot of people who thought different, he knew. Fighting those years in the States, he was always known as Tommy Cochrane from Toronto. Never Tommy Cochrane from Marlow, Ontario, population twelve hundred, not counting cats, dogs, goats, and whatever else was around.

  There’d been a time, he guessed, when Toronto was his city. In the early days, when he had the world by the ass, he was pretty well known around town. His face would even open a few doors that might have otherwise remained closed to a mick roughneck from the boonies. When he and Lee had been together they’d been out on the town a lot. He couldn’t say why now — remembering back it seemed the best times were when they stayed at home. And he was betting that Lee, if you asked her, would say the same thing.

  Tommy’s first manager, Karl Krone — whose kraut soul was now twisting in hell — liked a fighter with a high profile. And Tommy, when he was with Lee, was definitely high profile. The newspapers always called her the ‘beautiful Lee Charles’ and the papers ran pictures of them together at ball games, nightclubs, wherever they went. They were living together on Spadina Road, and the story was that they had apartments in the same building, a little lie that Lee always said stopped them all from going straight to hell.

  But that was a while back. Tonight he had these empty streets and nothing much else to call his own. He walked by Oscar’s Diner on Sherbourne and remembered that the first time he’d set foot in the place had been by way of the back door, delivering milk. He’d come to the city when he was twenty, fresh from his grandfather’s farm and fresher yet from winning a pair of three rounders in the old Kitchener arena, fighting in an exhibition Karl Krone had set up, looking for talent.

  The war was just over and people were anxious to be living again. Things were available now — gasoline and nylons — hell, you could even buy food without coupons. Entertainment was available too, and boxing fell somewhat loosely in that category. After all, two men knocking each other around a ring was pretty tame stuff compared to the horrors reported in the newspapers every day for the past six years.

  Tommy Cochrane didn’t arrive in Toronto as any result of these sage sociological observations. He was just a man-sized farm boy who was ready to leave the farm, at least for a while. There was nothing new in that — farm boys had been doing it since there were farms to leave and open-armed cities to run to. The difference was that Tommy Cochrane found out he could fight.

  He worked at a dairy in the west end when he first came to the city, loading trucks at four in the morning with milk and cream and cheese and butter. Three nights a week and Saturday mornings he took the streetcar all the way to Cabbagetown and worked out under the trainer Gus Washbone. He won his first five fights and didn’t get paid for four of them. That’s when he decided to be shed of Karl Krone and he asked Gus to become his manager.

  “What do I know about managing?” Gus had said.

  “More than me,” Tommy had told him.

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Just teach me how to fight and make sure I get paid.”

  Gus had looked at the clumsy kid and said all right. They went to New York together, and Gus kept his word on both counts. And Gus was in New York even now, he was managing other kids, teaching them how to fight and making sure they got paid, and Tommy was walking alone, these streets of this city that had never been his.

  “We had a hell of a run though,” he said to Gus and to the empty sidewalk at his feet.

  The apartment — the bedroom anyway — hadn’t changed one whit that Tommy could see. Same creaky bed, same dresser piled high with clothes and whatever, same clown painting (on same tilt) on same wall. Same antique hairdryer salvaged from some salon. Same lips on his cock (limp now, just recently so), same dark blonde head at his waist. Same fingernails digging into his thigh.

  Same her.

  Same him.

  “You were one I never expected to see again,” she said. Her lips on his stomach now, coming closer. Nipples sliding over his chest, legs between his legs, her wetness upon his. “What made you call, Tommy Cochrane?” Her lips on his chin, his cheek, her small tongue in his ear.

  “What do you think?” he said after a moment.

  “Did you miss me? After all this time, did you miss me?” Straddling him, full breasts swinging down to touch the hair on his chest.

  “Yeah.”

  “You missed me? Tell me you missed me.” Reaching behind her for his cock, her juices slick on his stomach.

  “Well, yeah. I missed you.”

  “Why did you wait so long then?” Fingernails digging lightly into his growing cock.

  “I been away. You ask too many questions.”

  “You never liked to talk much.” Sliding down now, lifting herself up.

  “You and I never had much to talk about.”

  “You son of a bitch.” Crying out, pulling him inside. “I could fuck you forever.”

  She was half asleep as he began to dress. Grey light was showing through the dirty window pane. He put his tie and his socks in his jacket pocket.

  “What’re ya doing? You leaving?”

  “Gotta go.”

  “Don’t go. Tommy, don’t go.”

  “See ya later.”

  “Stay with me. You never stayed all night.”

  Tommy walking to the door.

  “You bastard. What about Lee Charles? You stay all night with her?”

  Tommy in the doorway. “Yeah.”

  “Why, you fucker? Why?”

  Tommy walking out. “I guess because she never asked me to.”

  T-Bone woke up when Tommy came into the room. Tommy turned the light on, then realized it was daylight and shut it off. T-Bone sat up in bed and ran his long brown fingers down his cheeks.

  “Lawdy, what’s the time?”
<
br />   “It’s late, Bones. Or early maybe.”

  “How your new job, Thomas?”

  “It’s a job, Bones. That’s all.”

  “Better than no job — right, Thomas?”

  Tommy stripped to his shorts and took a pint of Bushmills from the nightstand and had a drink. Then he laid down on the bed.

  “Where you been, Thomas?”

  “I don’t know. Out visiting, I guess.”

  “You got some strange visiting hours.”

  “Get some sleep, Bones.”

  “Don’t you worry, Thomas. Everybody do it from time to time.”

  “Do what?”

  “Do their thinkin’ with their pecker.”

  Later Tommy decided he would go to the gym with T-Bone. He didn’t want to go but he figured he had to make sure Mac Brady and his gang were treating his friend with respect. With Tommy standing by, Bert Tigers taped T-Bone’s hands and gave him freshly laundered trunks and a near-new supporter.

  “Never did that yesterday, Mr. Bert,” T-Bone reminded him.

  “So how you doing, champ?” Bert asked Tommy. “You stayin’ in shape?”

  “Well, I’m still alive,” Tommy told him.

  Old Bert smiled and nodded like Tommy had asked him something and he was being real agreeable. Tommy knew Bert Tigers. He was an ass-kissing puke who didn’t have the moxy to show the truth — and that was that he didn’t much like Tommy Cochrane. Not since the time ten years ago when Tommy had put the nix on Bert working his corner in a big fight in Jersey. Tommy had always known Bert’s game — he was a man who had his price and it wasn’t too damn high.

  Before the sparring began Tommy took a walk around the gym. The place was falling apart, but then Tommy had never seen a gym that wasn’t. You never saw a new gym because nobody ever built a new gym; they converted warehouses and factories and sweatshops. The kind of guy who might be inclined to build a new gym was the kind of guy who would never have the money to pull it off.

  Tommy walked around and he didn’t touch anything and he didn’t really see anything. What he could see and what he could hear were so familiar they weren’t even there, these things. Like an old salt who doesn’t notice the rolling of the ocean, Tommy didn’t notice the gym, because he was — after all this time — of the gym.

  But he noticed the kid Nicky Wilson working the speed bag in a far corner and he stayed away. The kid was all flash on the bag, showing off for a bunch of guys in suits who had to be, to Tommy’s eye, sportswriters. Showing off on the speed bag was easy — any twelve-year-old could do it. The bag was a patsy; it didn’t hit back and it always came back for more. The kid finished with three looping right hands that had the suits wide-eyed at his power. Tommy moved on.

  T-Bone Pike was standing on the apron of the sixteen-foot ring, wearing ten-ounce gloves, his mouthpiece clenched sideways between his teeth. When he looked at Tommy he smiled happily.

  When Bert came out of the back room, he had Mac Brady with him, Mac in his shirt sleeves and vest, a cold cigar in his mouth. He stopped by the reporters a minute, then brought the kid over to the ring and the sparring began. The kid Wilson and T-Bone went an easy three minutes and then broke. Mac came over to stand beside Tommy while Bert Tigers talked to his fighter in the corner. T-Bone sat alone on his stool, hands folded in his lap, like he was sitting on a park bench, watching the day go by.

  “What do you think?” Mac asked of Tommy.

  “What do I think about what?”

  Mac gestured with the cigar. “My boy.”

  Tommy smiled. “He looks real good on the speed bag, Mac.”

  The fighters went three more rounds, sloppy and slow paced. Wilson was throwing half-ass jabs and holding back with the right.

  T-Bone knew what was happening and he had himself some fun, working the kid to the body, scoring with hooks that didn’t look like much but hurt like hell. Tommy knew from experience. When T-Bone went back to his corner after the last round, he winked over at Tommy. Easy money today.

  Tommy watched quietly, figuring the angles, and pretty soon he was approached by Ted Sears from the Telly. Mac made a big production of lighting his stogie, then edged closer.

  “How you doing, Tommy?” Sears offered his hand, and Tommy took it. “You made up your mind yet?”

  Tommy saw Mac Brady trying to look away. One thing about Mac, Tommy thought, his schemes were easy enough to spot. Like birdshit on a windshield.

  “About what?” Tommy asked the writer.

  “Why — you gonna fight the kid?”

  That was Mac’s cue, and he came rushing in. Like most men dedicated to theatrical behaviour, he was a lousy actor. “Wait a minute now,” he warned the writer. “We haven’t even approached Tommy yet.”

  Sears looked confused and he wasn’t acting.

  “Somebody been telling you stories, Ted?” Tommy said and he laughed. “Now I wonder who that could be.”

  “Yeah, I wonder. What the fuck is this, Mac?”

  Mac the actor was reluctant to reveal his plans. He agonized over his decision for maybe five seconds.

  “We may offer Tommy a fight,” he admitted at last. “But he’s not our first choice. We’ve got something cooking in Miami right now, and it could be big.”

  “With who?”

  “A name you know. A fighter in the top ten.”

  “You won’t tell me his name?” Sears asked.

  “Not at this time, no,” Mac said. He made a face like he was in pain. “We’re at a very delicate point in negotiation.”

  Tommy, watching the performance, was about to split a gut. Mac should be on the television, he was better than Milton Berle.

  “If this Florida deal falls through, you might go after Tommy here?” the writer wanted to know.

  Mac considered this one at length, as if the option had never crossed his mind. “I guess it’s possible we could approach his people.”

  “I don’t have any people,” Tommy said.

  Mac pretended not to hear. “The question is whether or not the Nick is ready for a fighter of Tommy’s calibre,” he said to Sears.

  The writer smiled at Tommy. “What do you think about it, Tommy?”

  Tommy smiled. “I see you’re wearing new wingtips, Ted. I’d watch my step if I were you — there’s a lot of horseshit around here, you wouldn’t want to ruin those twenty-dollar shoes.”

  “Then you’re not interested in fighting Nicky Wilson?”

  “I’m not interested in fighting Nicky Wilson,” Tommy said. “And I’m not interested in fighting Woodrow Wilson, and I’m not interested in fighting your old grandmother either, Ted. I’m through.”

  “But we heard —”

  “Damn it, Ted,” Tommy laughed. “You should know better than to listen to rumours from an old horse thief like Mac Brady. I’ll give you a tip, Ted — if his lips are moving, chances are he’s lying.”

  And he walked past Sears and past Mac Brady — who had skin like a goddamn alligator and wasn’t in the least offended — and went into the dressing room, where T-Bone was climbing into his street clothes.

  “They’re playing games, Bones,” Tommy said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  When they were leaving they passed by Nicky Wilson, who was holding forth in the midst of reporters. As they went by, the kid reached out to place two fingers on Tommy’s lapel.

  “How ‘bout you, mick?” he asked. “You want to go a couple?”

  “No, thank you,” Tommy smiled. “I got my good clothes on.”

  “You sure now? I could put you down for a nice afternoon nap. Man your age must appreciate a nice nap, eh mick?”

  Tommy stopped a moment in the doorway. The kid was wearing his shitty grin, his eyebrows up, mocking Tommy. But Tommy just shook his head and went out the door with T-Bone Pike behind him.

  Back in the room Tommy lay on the bed and had a drink, wearing only his pants, no shoes, no socks, nothing. T-Bone was across the room, standing at the window, his hands ab
ove the framework there, and he was looking down onto Parliament, the afternoon traffic.

  “So Mac calls the papers and starts this rumour,” Tommy was saying. “And these sportswriters got nothing better to do and they come down to check it out. Then Mac gets real lucky — I walk in the door. So right away, him and Tigers — that little creep — get to the kid and tell him to lay back in the ring, to fool me into thinking the kids got nothing.”

  “He didn’t show it today, that for sure,” T-Bone agreed. “Easy fifteen dollars for T-Bone.”

  “Well, you’ll pay for it tomorrow, Bones,” Tommy said. “You were hooking him plenty hard in the ribs, I could see it in his face. He’ll be out for blood tomorrow. But you knew what you were doing.”

  T-Bone smiled broadly. “Jus’ trying to give Mr. Brady his money’s worth.”

  Tommy decided he didn’t want a drink and put the whiskey away.

  “And then there’s this story about a fight in Miami, which is one hundred percent Mac Brady bullshit. He’s got no fight in Florida.”

  “You don’t figure?”

  “He’s just getting some ink for his boy,” Tommy said. “Tomorrow the papers will be full of Wilson and Florida and me, too. I’ll tell ya, that Mac’s a cutie — he’s promoting a fight he hasn’t even got yet.”

  “What he gonna do next though?”

  “Oh, he’ll let it simmer awhile, then he’ll approach me with an offer. He’ll lowball me at first, so when he comes with his real price, I’ll jump at it. He thinks.”

  “What you gonna do, Thomas?”

  “I’m not fighting, Bones. That’s all there is to it.”

  Down on the street a boy in a cloth cap was running through the thin traffic, clutching something in his hand, a white-aproned grocer in hot but fading pursuit. T-Bone smiled as the kid shot between two streetcars and made his escape.

  “That what the doctor tell you, Thomas?”

  Tommy sat up and swung his legs around to plant his bare feet on the floor. He put his elbows on his knees and looked at the wall across the room.

  “That’s what he told me.”

  TWELVE