Fatherhood by Thomas H. Cook Page A

punch-drunk by the time the bell rang at the end of it.” I grinned. “Headed for the wrong corner, remember? Ref had to grab him by the shoulders and turn the poor bleary bastard around.”
    â€œA stand-up guy,” Vinnie repeated determinedly, though now only to himself.
    â€œI was amazed the ref didn’t stop it,” I added. “People lost a bundle that night. Everybody was betting Douggie Burns wouldn’t finish the fight. I had a sawbuck that he wouldn’t see five.”
    Vinnie’s eyes cut over to me. “Lotsa people lost money,” he muttered. “Big people.”
    Big people, I thought, remembering that the biggest of them had been standing ringside that night. None other than Salmon Weiss, the guy who managed Chester Link. Weiss was the sort of fight promoter who wore a cashmere overcoat and a white silk scarf, always had a black Caddie idling outside the arena with a leggy blonde in the back seat. He had a nose that had been more dream than reality before an East Side surgeon took up the knife, and when he spoke, it was always at you.
    Get the picture? Anyway, that was Salmon Weiss, and everybody in or around the fight game knew exactly who he was. His private betting habits were another story, however, and I was surprised that a guy like Irish Vinnie, a pug in no way connected to Weiss, had a clue as to where the aforementioned Salmon put his money.
    â€œYou weren’t one of Weiss’s boys, were you?” I asked, though I knew full well that Vinnie had always been managed by Old Man Melinas.
    Vinnie shook his head.
    â€œSpiro Melinas was your manager.”
    Vinnie nodded.
    So what gives ? I wondered, but figured it was none of my business, and so went on to other matters.
    â€œAnyway,” I said. “Chester tried his best to clean Douggie’s clock, but the bastard went all the way through the tenth.” I laughed again.
    The bus groaned, shuddered in a blast of wind, then dragged forward again.
    â€œWell, all I remember is what a shellacking Douggie took.”
    Vinnie chewed his lower lip. “’Cause he wouldn’t go down.”
    â€œTrue enough. He did the count. All the way to the last bell.”
    Vinnie seemed almost to be ringside again at that long-ago match, watching as Douggie Burns, whipped and bloody, barely able to raise his head, took punch after punch, staggering backward, fully exposed, barely conscious, so that it seemed to be a statue Chester Link was battering with all his power, his gloves thudding against stomach, shoulder, face, all of it Douggie Burns, but Douggie Burns insensate, perceiving nothing, feeling nothing, Douggie Burns in stone.
    â€œStayed on his feet,” Vinnie said now. “All the way.”
    â€œYes, he did,” I said, noting the strange admiration Vinnie still had for Douggie, though it seemed little more than one fighter’s regard for another’s capacity to take inhuman punishment. “But you have to say there wasn’t much left of him after that fight,” I added.
    â€œNo, not much.”
    â€œWhich makes me wonder why you fought him at all,” I said, returning to my real interest in the matter of Irish Vinnie Teague. “I mean, that was no real match. You and Douggie. After that beating he took from Chester Link, Douggie couldn’t have whipped a Girl Scout.”
    â€œNothing left of Douggie,” Vinnie agreed.
    â€œBut you were in your prime,” I told him. “No real match, like I said. And that … you know … to lose to him … that was nuts, whoever set that up.”
    Vinnie said nothing, but I could see his mind working.
    â€œSpiro. What was his idea in that? Setting up a bout between you and Douggie Burns? It never made any sense to me. Nothing to be gained from it on either side. You had nothing to gain from beating Douggie … and what did Douggie have to gain from beating you if he couldn’t do it without