“And if it doesn’t work out,” said McCloskey, “we both walk away with no hard feelings?”
Green rested his hand on his knee. “You telling me you won’t be committed, Killer? A fighter’s got to be committed.”
“I’ll be committed, all right. But I got my limits, just like any man. I know that now.”
Green shifted his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other and studied McCloskey through the smoky cloud that hung between them.
“Don’t think I’m not grateful for the opportunity,” continued McCloskey. “It’s just that I’ve had a bit of a rough time since I got back from overseas. I found my feet but I still need to set a few things right.”
Green squinted at him, like squeezing his eyes would squeeze the truth out of McCloskey. “You in any kind of trouble, Killer?”
McCloskey straightened in his chair and, thinking of his father and brother, said, “I have some debts to pay.”
“Well, what better way to do it? So, do we have ourselves a deal?”
Green extended his hand again and the expression on his face told McCloskey that this time he had better take it. Green was a compelling figure and the slightest change in his body language or tone of voice would convince anyone he meant business.
“Yes, sir — deal.”
“Good. Now let’s drink a toast.”
— Chapter 4 —
REDEPLOYMENT
McCloskey got himself a room in a boarding house on Cadillac Street, a couple blocks up from the Drive, behind Our Lady of the Lake church. His landlady was a tough old bird who lost both her sons in the war and so doted on McCloskey, keeping him well fed and under strict curfew. It wasn’t necessary, but Green slipped her a few notes every now and then as a token of his appreciation.
When he wasn’t loading engine blocks into vehicles on the assembly line, McCloskey was training in the local gym or running laps alongside the Lieutenant’s Packard around the park on Belle Isle. It was a cobalt blue, twin-six roadster and its every line was ingrained in McCloskey’s mind. It was a beautiful car and McCloskey often thought the Lieutenant was baiting him with it.
One day, son, you could own a car like this.
Needless to say, McCloskey never made it to Jersey City for the Dempsey fight. He remained in the Border Cities all summer long, making good money going the distance with middleweight, sometimes heavyweight, contenders from up and down both sides of the Detroit River.
All of this activity and all of these distractions made it easy for him to ignore the fact that he still hadn’t made contact with his father or brother. What was the compromise he had made with himself? He would get a job and settle in, then play the prodigal son. They had to know by now that he was back in the Border Cities. Was he making things worse for himself by putting it off? Probably. But whenever it weighed heavily on his mind, he noticed how he worked that much harder, ran that much faster, and threw a punch that much more forcefully.
On Labour Day weekend he fought in a match downriver in a warehouse adjacent to where Ford was building another blast furnace for his River Rouge plant. The street felt hotter than the surface of Mercury that day, but McCloskey was as ready as ever. And so was his opponent. “Eagle” Eckhardt got his nickname building Eagle Boats at Rouge during the war. The patrol boats were steel-plated with a cement-filled bow made for ramming and sinking vessels, and Eckhardt had since sunk more than his share of enemy craft.
They beat on each other for a solid four rounds before they started staggering around the floor, suffering from heat exhaustion and looking for the opening that might mercifully bring it to an end. Off in a corner Green fanned himself with his straw hat while watching his fighter wither under the strain. The audience took pity on the two but held on tightly to their betting slips.
McCloskey was hallucinating. He was looking down at him and his father, just as they were that fateful morning. He was in another one of his blind rages, and his father was trying to calm him. Billy entered the room, pulled him off his father, and pinned him against the wall.
Eckhardt noticed McCloskey was slowing up and letting his guard down. The golden opportunity was presenting itself and Eckhardt responded with a series of quick blows to McCloskey’s torso, sending him stumbling into the ropes. Then Eckhardt moved in for the kill. Green clenched down hard on his cigar, almost biting it in half, and shouted something at the referee.
McCloskey wasn’t in the ring anymore; he was in the front room back at the house. And he was ready to take a crack at Billy. He shook the sweat off his face and in an explosion of energy sent his brother tumbling back over the low table.
Eckhardt didn’t know what hit him. McCloskey shook the sweat off his face and was swinging hard at him. McCloskey grazed his face and then drilled a hard left into his gut. Eckhardt was already sore from dehydration and instinctively tried to protect his belly. He handed McCloskey the opportunity to hammer his skull with a series of lightning-fast hooks. Red, amber, and then black.
Eckhardt’s eyes rolled back and then he folded onto the floor. McCloskey stood over him, cursing Billy and blathering nonsense about the war, their dead mother, Mary, who had died of influenza while they were en route home from the war. Frank told his boys as soon as they got in the door and that was what finally pushed them both over the edge. Billy retreated into a bottle and Jack flew into a blind rage. He spent some nights literally bouncing off the walls. It got so bad his father had to hold him down to keep him from hurting himself.
McCloskey saw himself turn and move towards his weakling father who had failed them. He remembered swinging, and then the sound of an ambulance and men in white taking Eckhardt away on a stretcher. He came face to face with the fire deep inside him, and in this sweltering furnace it gave him chills.
By the middle of September, McCloskey had fought nine times in fifteen weeks and suffered only one loss — his first to date. He lost that match only because to win it he would have had to kill his opponent. McCloskey had become a fighting machine. Green himself quietly wondered what the eventual toll might be.
On the surface McCloskey remained cautious. He saved his winnings and kept his job at the factory. Fighters had short careers, and the ones who didn’t have anything to fall back on had proportionately shorter lives. All the same, he threw himself headlong into the fight world that Green had opened to him.
But Green’s world was starting to change. The bootleg business was gathering momentum and required his undivided attention. He began to regret starting something with McCloskey he probably knew all along he couldn’t finish. He felt he either had to find McCloskey a real manager or something equally as challenging and lucrative. It occurred to him that there might be a place for McCloskey in the outfit. McCloskey had grit and character; he also knew what it took to get a job done. He had talents that were being wasted in the ring, and Green could see that now.
“You’re smart,” said Green to McCloskey one day. “You could really go places if you wanted.”
They were standing on a street corner trading racing tips with a newsboy. It was the middle of September and an unseasonably warm day, what some folks call an Indian summer.
“C’mon. I’ll buy you a drink.”
It was time to talk business again. They walked over to the pool hall.
“I’m not telling you to leave the ring. You do what your gut tells you. All I’m saying is there’s work here for you if you want it.”
McCloskey was sort of relieved. He felt that he had turned a corner with the fight down at Rouge and was now stuck in a dead end. He wasn’t getting anything out of it anymore. He didn’t really care about the money, or about