“You kids got to give old Steve Cooley time to think this out,” I said. “Suppose I run along and see what I can do. I ought to be able to think of something.”
I patted the head of the kid on the bike as I walked back to my car. As I started to drive away, I looked back. Big John and Jeanie were still standing in the doorway. All the way back to the center of town, I cursed softly and yanked the coupe around corners.
The thing that was needed was time. Wing was pushing Big John. If Big John could leave the trucking alone for a few months...
At four o’clock in the afternoon I walked into the Harder Truck Terminal and opened the door of Harder’s office. Red was on the phone, yelling at some poor driver that had broken down eleven miles from nowhere, I stood and waited until he finished and slammed the phone back onto the cradle. The office seemed too small for Red. His grey-sandy hair fell over his forehead, and his white freckled skin was trying to burst out of his clothes. He had the energy and drive to turn a small wildcat outfit into big business and dozens of trucks.
He wiped his forehead and said, “Damn it, Steve, how do all the feeble minded drivers get onto my payroll? What can I do for you?”
I sat on the edge of his desk. “Red,” I said, “we’ve always gotten along, haven’t we?”
“Is this a touch?” he demanded.
“Yeah. But not for money. For a favor for a friend of mine.”
“What kind of favor?” he asked, growling at me.
“I got a friend, as I said, who’s got troubles. It’ll take him three or four months to clean up. He owns a small trucking business. He has two good contracts. I want you to take over his business, for a fee, of course, until he can come back and handle it himself.”
Red exploded out of the chair and shook a freckled fist in my face. “Are you nuts?” he shouted, “I can’t even take care of maintenance on my own wagons! Take care of a competitor! I got troubles enough and I got three big answers for you. No! No! And no!”
I let him rave and mumble for a few more minutes while I took a cigarette off his desk and lit it. When he had run down, I said quietly, “You know, Red, the newspaper business is damn slow these days. Not much local news. I’ve been thinking of an idea to hand the city editor. A review of old crimes that happened in Tyler City. Just to refresh peoples’ minds a little. Pictures and all.”
His fists uncurled and he seemed to sag. It was cruel, but I had to do it. He sat heavily behind the desk and all the fight had gone out of him. “Gawd, Steve! You wouldn’t do that. She’s happy now. People have forgotten, almost. You wouldn’t do that to a pal’s wife?”
“Is your definition of a pal a guy who refuses to do a friend a little favor?”
“It’s blackmail, Steve.”
“Don’t be silly. You’ll get paid for your trouble, but the fee has to be reasonable.”
I gave him a chance to think it over. We sat in the small office. Finally he grinned up at me and said, “I’m sorry, Steve. Send the guy in. Who is he?”
“Big John Washington.”
He rose halfway out of the chair and said, incredulously, “Take care of business for a...”
I stopped him with my hand out. “What difference does it make, Red? Turn me down and I’ll stick Sally’s picture all over the magazine section of the Sunday edition. That’s a promise.”
He held his head in his hands for a few moments. He said, “Send him in with his records, Steve.”
I couldn’t get Big John on the phone, but I got hold of Jeanie and told her the story. She listened and said, “I’ll tell him to take the papers over there, Mr. Cooley. But... this don’t mean he’s going to fight, does it?”
“I don’t know yet, Jeanie. Give me a chance to figure on it for awhile. You asked me to help you. Let me do it in my own way.”
She agreed and said she was sorry that she had questioned me.
I found Dicky Wing standing like a customer at his own bar in the basement of the Craylor Hotel. He has the concession on the bar and grill. He is a smallish man with a thin narrow head and faded blond hair. He has weak eyes, a little blond mustache to march his hair and a very deceiving air of vagueness and helplessness.
Dicky is about as vague as a French postcard and as helpless as the Russian infantry. He owns three horse rooms, a wire service, the football pool, the hotel bar and grill, a greyhound track, half a dozen stumblebum fighters, seven or eight crummy tenements, a cut-throat taxi company, a ten year old Duesenberg, several blondes and half the crooked politicians in town. He knows everybody, speaks to everybody and grabs every check in sight.
“Hello, Steve,” he said. “What are you drinking?”
“Scotch and water, Dicky. Thanks. How goes it with you?”
“Pretty good, I guess. Yes... maybe I could say pretty good. Yes indeed.”
“Heard a rumor, Dicky. Heard you were going to hoist Big John Washington back into the big time. Can you give me a line on it for the sports page?”
“My goodness, Steve. Things certainly do get around in this town. They certainly do. You can... ah, quote me. Yes, quote me. I believe that Big John will make a... a startling comeback. Yes... uh... startling.”
“Pretty old, isn’t he?”
“Big John! Why, Steve, he’s a young man. A young man. Lots of good fights left in him. Lots of good fights.”
“Go on, Dicky. Some kid’ll tear his head off. He’s been out of the game for six years.”
“They won’t hurt Big John, Steve No sir. Not Big John; he’s got a head like a rock. Yes sir. Like a rock.”
“What have you got lined up for him?”
“Nothing very definite. Not definite at all. Maybe two fights with some unknown boys that are on their way up. Good boys, you know. Just to get Big John back into the swing. Then I have spoken to my good friend in New York, Boots Hunger-fort, and he is willing to have his boy Sailor Henderson meet Big John in Philly during Christman week.”
“Henderson’ll kiss him! That boy’s good. Really good. Big John never was and never would have been in his class!”
“Look... uh... Steve. You know, as a favor to me, you ought to keep your personal views... ah... toned down a little in the paper. Big John will train out at my place on the lake. If I... ah... keep the big sportswriters out entirely, it would be worth... say fifty a week to you to drive up once or twice a week and give him a good writeup. You... uh... know what I mean.”
The bartender was down at the far end of the bar. I said to Dicky, “I get the picture. You make him look real good with your two bums and his past rep. Then I write him up as a killer. Then, you match him with Henderson and get a wad of dough down on Henderson. No thanks.”
He smiled at me softly. “Don’t say no so quick. If you don’t somebody else will. You know how it is. I like you, Steve. I’d like to see you making the extra dough.”
It gave me something to think about. I went back to my apartment and shut myself in the kitchen with a bottle of rye, hoping for inspiration to come. I am a solitary drinker only when I have a problem. It doesn’t help much, but I like to think that it does. Dicky was right. And Big John was right. It was the old merry-go-round. They’d build him up and match him with Henderson. Then they’d build him up again and match him with some other good boy. At the end of a year or so, Big John would be through — physically and mentally. It was a dirty business, but from Dicky’s point of view, it was good business. Big John could make him a lot of money — quickly. It would be much easier with Big John than it would be with some new boy. The crowd loves the idea of a comeback.