“Guy you’re talkin’ about,” Papa said, “sounds to me like Tony Flanagan.”
A couple of years earlier, Papa went on, a fight manager named Curly Snider hired him at a day rate to teach Tony Flanagan ring refinements. The lessons didn’t take. Tony was a natural brawler. But he had guts, Papa said, and he wasn’t a bad kid once you got past the bravado. Papa didn’t say bravado. He said bullshit.
“The kid gets main events down east,” Papa said. “They bring him in, Truro, Sackville, them five-hundred-dollar towns, Tony’s the opponent, fights whichever’s the local comer. Name looks good on the posters, y’know, Irish from Toronto. He doesn’t lose all the time, Tony. The kid stands up.”
Papa said Tony trained at a gym on the Danforth. “Place’s got some swank lately, I hear,” he said. “Barbells, machines, kind of shit tightens up a boxer’s muscles. Marty’s it’s called, used to be a real nice rathole.”
I thanked Papa and said I’d drop by soon and talk. Papa said sure, as long as I didn’t make it next year.
I drove down Bayview and took the cutoff to Danforth Avenue. Past Broadview, Danforth blossoms into a corner of Athens. The restaurants and travel agencies and produce stores are Greek and so is the lettering on the top half of the street signs. Greeks own the businesses, but not many live in the neighbourhood. They got prosperous and moved out to the suburbs. Yuppies are buying up the roomy old turn-of-the-century brick houses. They’re installing rock gardens on the front lawns, parking BMWs in the driveways, and striking a truce with the last of the working folk who’ve stayed on in the Danforth family homesteads.
Marty’s Gym was in the fifth block east of Broadview. I parked on a side street outside a house that had been done over with metallic grey shutters and brick painted a raspberry shade. The gym was on the second floor over Koustopolos Video. Fifty per cent off on Irene Pappas movies. A double flight of stairs covered in worn linoleum led up to a large space, more loft than room, that smelled of sweat and last week’s socks. There were peeling George Chuvalo posters on the wall and a hand-lettered sign that admonished patrons to mind their language and their valuables. A ring with thick ropes dominated the space, though it was getting competition from a silver Nautilus in one corner. The young man whose biceps were locked into the machine seemed more intent on attaining Mr. Universe’s title than Thomas Hit-Man Hearns’. The other men at work, nine or ten of them, were pursuing more boxerly activities. Skipping rope, punching bags, shadowboxing, breathing through the nose.
Tony Flanagan stood out in the surroundings. He was the only white boxer and the bulkiest. The rest, skinny and black, were lightweights and welters, quick, bouncy kids. Tony was dogged and stolid and was administering vicious damage to a heavy bag. A grey-haired black man with a moustache like Count Basie’s was holding the bag in place and offering encouraging words. Tony didn’t need encouragement. His fists hit deep and solid into the bag. I admired from the sidelines until five minutes went by and the black man pulled the bag away.
“Enough, man,” he said.
I stepped into Tony’s line of vision. He took ten seconds to make the connection.
“Reggie,” he said to the black man, “get that guy outta here.”
The black man put his hand lightly on my arm. “Hey, mister, Tony say leave, best be you split.”
I said, “Papa Anderson, you hear the name, Tony, Papa Anderson told me where to find you.”
Tony frowned.
He said, “How’s an asshole like you get off talkin’ to Papa?”
“He trained me, too,” I said.
The black man looked from me to Tony, took his hand off my arm, and began to peel away the small gloves that Tony wore to punch the heavy bag.
“College fighting, Tony,” I said. “Not like you.”
Sweat stood off Tony’s face in hot little beads. He had on a grey T-shirt, purple boxing shorts, and black boots laced up to his shins. The T-shirt was dark at the armpits.
The black man said to Tony, “Can’t stand around, man.”
“I’ll wait till you finish, Tony,” I said. “All I’m asking is talk.”
“You know Papa?” Tony said. He needed time to compute the information.
“Since I was nineteen.”
The black man prodded at Tony.
“You want, stick around,” Tony said. “I might talk to you. Might not.”
“I’m a spellbinding conversationalist.”
“Might put my fist in your face like Mr. Nash wanted me.”
“Take my chances.”
Tony skipped rope. He lay on a bench and caught a medicine ball that Reggie the black man tossed onto his stomach. He threw punches at the air in front of a floor-length mirror while Reggie chanted beside him.
“Jab, hook, jab, hook, bap, bap, bap.” Reggie’s voice had a light Caribbean lilt. “Upstairs, downstairs, chigga, chigga, chigga.”
After thirty minutes of labours, Tony put a towel around his neck and went into a room that said “Men” on the door. I didn’t see any women on the premises. Two black lightweights wearing head protectors as formidable as space helmets flitted around the ring tossing punches at one another in blurs. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. By the time I was beginning to grow impatient, Tony emerged from Men looking fresh and sleek. His hair was damp and his straw hat sat on top of it.
I resumed my Papa Anderson pitch. Tony brushed past me at a swift clip and made an abrupt gesture with his hand. The gesture said to follow him and it struck me as a trifle smug. I followed.
We crossed Danforth to a restaurant called the Willow. It had Stevie Wonder on the sound system and plants hanging from the ceiling. The guys leaning on the bar that ran along one wall looked more Waylon Jennings and hubcap decor. If the neighbourhood was a mix of yuppie and working class, the Willow had a foot in both camps. The menu was Tex-Mex.
“So what about you and Papa?” Tony said. There was no mistaking the tone in his voice. Smug.
I said, “Papa trained pros, but he used to pick up walking-around money at the university. He coached the boxing team in the winters.” Tony and I sat at a table in the Willow’s window. I went on, “I made the team, middleweight, and whatever I learned, it came from Papa. I got to the intercollegiate finals one year. Lost the decision to a left-hander from Queen’s. The guy had this incredible reach. Jabbed me silly.”
“Yeah,” Tony said, pushing, “what else?”
“Not much,” I said. “I liked Papa. Who doesn’t? He must have seen something in me, and we’ve kept in touch ever since.”
Tony spoke in a tumble of words. He said, “Nights when Papa’s guys are on the card down the St. Lawrence Market, you’re there, right? At the fights?” Tony looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. Better, the tiger that swallowed the crow.
“You astound me, Tony,” I said. “Is mind reading your sideline?”
“I asked Papa on the phone,” Tony said. “You think you’re dealin’ with some kind of dummy. Shit, listen to this, at Marty’s they got a pay phone in the dressing room. I’m back there, I call up Papa and ask about this lawyer comes into the gym, wants to talk to me. I got you figured out, man.”
Chalk up one for Tony.
The waitress brought menus and Tony ordered without consulting it. Mexican black-bean