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 taking his fight skills to another level and pursuing a title. He had been looking for a way to break it to Green, but now he didn’t have to. Green continued.
“I feel sort of responsible, like I talked you into something. I hope you don’t have any regrets. I know I don’t.”
Green had believed in him from the start and helped save McCloskey from himself. And McCloskey not only wanted to pay him back, he wanted to do him proud.
“A guy should take advantage of every opening that presents itself, both in and out of the ring. If there’s a place for me in the outfit, I’ll give it everything I got.”
Green smiled and pulled his best bottle and a couple glasses from a desk drawer. He filled them and then passed one to McCloskey.
“To Wheeler.”
“To Volstead.”
Green explained how business had been building steadily since the referendum.
“I’m telling you, kid, as long as people are drinking we’ll be selling. Dry? What a fucking joke that is. Queen’s Park and the Methodists ought to go into vaudeville together.”
Green leaned back in his chair and took a drag on his cigar. He punctuated every sentence with a big blue smoke ring.
“We’re fortunate to be living here in the Border Cities, Killer. It represents an incredible opportunity for us. All these towns are lined up like kegs behind a bar, just waiting to quench the thirst of each and every American between here and Chicago.” He leaned back in his chair. “And then there are the peripheral activities — gambling, money-lending, women, you name it. We play our cards right and by the end of the year we’ll have turned this place into an oasis — our oasis.”
McCloskey was well aware of how quickly folks were developing a taste for the money, not to mention the thrill that came from bootlegging. Almost overnight the pond had become full of little fish — little fish that were only going to get chewed up by the first big one to come along. Now here was McCloskey, sitting across from that big fish and being asked to be its teeth. An hour and several whiskies later he found himself a sworn member of the outfit, Green’s new Big Six.
Green took McCloskey’s hand and looked into his eyes. “I know you won’t let me down, Killer.”
“Thanks, Green.”
Green held his grip. “I’m your Lieutenant now. You’re one of my soldiers.”
McCloskey stood firm. “Yes, sir.”
He had never met anyone like the Lieutenant. He had encountered street fighters, hardened criminals, mercenaries, and business types before, but never someone who was all of these things put together. The only person who even came close was his father. But his father didn’t have the style and the worldliness. He didn’t have a platoon of soldiers behind him, either.
— Chapter 5 —
COLLISION COURSE
The referendum results had a sobering effect on Billy McCloskey. When at the end of the summer there began to be supply issues at his local roadhouse and his liver finally got a day off, he took the opportunity to ask the proprietor what all the fuss was about.
Pierre explained it to him, and Billy, being fairly lucid, took it pretty hard, like he was just handed a prison sentence. He asked Pierre how he planned to remedy the situation. Pierre told Billy not to worry — everything would be taken care of. He was in good with Windsor’s biggest bootlegger.
This took Billy by surprise. There were plenty of smugglers out here on the Ojibway shores, and lots of folks making moonshine, including his pa. He told Pierre he didn’t have to go to Windsor to get his liquor. Pierre saw it a little differently.
“I didn’t have any choice, Billy.”
The barfly smelled a rat. “Oh yeah? Who was it set you up?”
Pierre hesitated. He should have kept his big mouth shut. He braced himself before uttering the words. “Your brother.”
After Billy climbed back on his barstool he started with the questions. “When did my brother get back? Who is he working for? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“We tried,” said Pierre, “but you’ve been drunk since Armistice.”
This
