No Star Is Lost

THE KID SAT IN A HARD, straight chair. The room was full of men, some in blue uniforms with bright metal on them, some in plain clothes, all watching the kid. It was hot. Smoke hung thick under the ceiling.

The kid sat forward a little, with his hands on his long, narrow thighs. He stared unseeingly at the men with their alert, hard faces. He had a strange look. A detached and shining look, the kind that is sometimes, but not often, seen in churches.

A heavy-set, gray-haired man in a neat dark suit leaned over him.

"Well?" he said.

The kid's gaze came back slowly.

"Sure," he said. "Sure, I'll tell you. I want to tell you. You oughta know how he found it."

"He? Found what?" The big man frowned.

The kid didn't answer.

"Come on, kid. Talk," the big man said roughly.

And again the kid said, "Sure. . . . "

I started going to Ackles' Gym about two months ago. Sure, my Pop had told me Ackles died a while back, but I figured somebody would keep the gym going like it was.

There was a bunch of these little zoot-suit guys fooling around out in front of the place. A couple of 'em were jigging to the juke-box just inside the beer joint on the right side of the entrance. Some older guys in the doorway to the bowling alley on the other side started laughing and throwing pennies.

I went on up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the sign said the gym was.

I went in through wide swing doors. The draft from them started another door to swinging way down at the other end of the big barny place. It seemed to go out on a back landing. There was that cold gymnasium smell–leather and canvas and old sweat.

There were four people in there, but none of them heard me come in. The Killer–that's the blond kid, Fikes is his name–and another guy were up in the ring. The Killer had his other kid down and was beating the stuffing out of him. I le wasn't fighting back at all, just covering up and yelling, I nit the Killer went on hitting him, and grinning.

Shriber was leaning on the apron watching them. Shriber was the big red-faced guy in the gray sweatshirt. I didn't know any of their names, then. Shriber was grinning, too.

The kid yelled every time a glove hit him. I never heard anybody yell that way before.

All Ibis time Muff was shoving his broom around the edge of the floor. He didn't pay any attention to anybody.

AII of a sudden Shriber slapped his hands on the apron and said, "Okay, Killer. Let'm up. You ain't gettin' paid for this." I laughed. "Sharp, kid. Plenty sharp. You oughta take the bonbon like Warren took the election."

The Killer slugged the kid two more good ones like he hated to quit and got up. The kid curled up and stayed on the canvas. He quit yelling. The Killer wiped the grease off his face with a forearm and laughed.

"Quicker," he said. "I won't have no opposition."

"Hey, you! Muff! What you think of my boy? Pretty hot in that workout!"

Muff, the guy with the broom, stopped pushing it and turned around, taking his time. He looked at Shriber. He looked at the Killer and the kid all piled up on the canvas, and back to Shriber. Muff had iron-gray hair and brown eyes kind of sunk in. There was a twitch in his cheek that kept pulling his mouth up on the left side.

"You know what I think of your boy," he said, and started pushing his broom again.

The Killer slipped down, out of the ring, walking catfooted with hips held forward.

"I'd like to know, too," he said politely, and showed his teeth.

Muff went on with the broom.

"You're giving away too much weight."

"I can handle it."

Muff pushed his broom.

The Killer stepped in front of him and said something I couldn't hear.

Muff stopped. All of a sudden he reached out and put his hand on the Killer's face and shoved. It didn't look like he put much into it, but the blond boy walked backward two fast steps and sat down, hard.

Muff started pushing the broom again.

Shriber laughed. I knew then he'd been needling the both of them. He went over quick and put his hand on the Killer's shoulder and slapped it, mauling him good-naturedly away from Muff.

"Lay off him, kid, he's a good janitor. Ain't easy to get a good broom jockey these days. Besides, think of the trouble gettin' rid of the corpse."

The Killer gave him a funny kind of a look. I saw him glance back at the door standing open on the back landing. Then he snarled something under his breath and went out. He passed close to me. There was no color in his face.

"You got a customer," Muff said, like he'd known it all along. "For Pete's sake!" said Shriber. "Why didn't'ja make a noise or something, kid? What can I do for you?"

I told him.

"Sure, sure. C'mon into my office. From outa town, ain't you?"

"Yeah."

"Been here long? Know anybody?"

"Nuh uh."

"You'll like it here, then. Nice bunch of boys. Siddown."

The office was little and dark. It smelt of dead cigars. The walls were papered solid with pictures of fighters, all the box kings from Choynski to Joe Louis and a lot more I didn't know.

Over the roll-top desk was a motto, one of those corny things they used to hang around. "No Star Is Ever Lost We Once Have Seen; We Always May Be What We Might Have Been."

"Funny thing for a place like this, huh?" Shriber laughed.

"Sort of."

"Barney Ackles, he used to run this gym, he put it there. Sentimental Sammy, he was. Always urgin' kids on to Bigger and Better Things. I left it there. Maybe I'm sentimental, too, huh?"

I wondered if the kid out there was up on his feet yet, and I almost walked out. Then I thought, maybe I been seeing too many Humphrey Bogart pictures. So the Killer's tough, so what? There's lots of room.

Besides, Shriber cut the price way down.

I went out of the office thinking he was a swell egg. The kid was gone out of the ring. I looked around at the equipment, sniffed at the sweat-and-leather smell and began to think fight-game again. Mom wouldn't mind it if I started sending big money home and got my picture in the papers like Joe Louis. Shriber was going to personally give me boxing lessons.

This Muff was standing way down at the other end of the place, by the door to the back landing. He wasn't pushing his broom. He was staring out through the door. He must have heard me, because he turned around. He made me think of this guy Bogart when he's been real tough and nasty. I thought I'd like to see him really tangle with the Killer.

When I was out on the sidewalk again I looked up at the top floor of the building, where there were iron steps leading up from the back landing. It was all boarded up and said "Loft for Rent."

I went to the gym about five or six weeks. Sometimes I would work out by myself, but mostly there would be other guys around, guys my own age. A lot of them I didn't like much. They were these jitterbug apes with long hair who just fooled around at gym work. But there were some pretty nice guys and we got so we would work out together when we could make it from our jobs.

The Killer wasn't bad when you got to know him. Cocky-like but a real bearcat in the ring. Only sometimes he would start beating up on a partner in real earnest. Everybody was scared to spar with him.

Shriber was swell. He made it like there was something special between us, like he took a fancy to me and we had a nice little secret. He gave me boxing lessons.

He would tell me to come around late when there was nobody there, and he'd work out with me some more and not let me pay him. He didn't say it exactly, but I could tell he thought I had something, something he could build up for real business in the ring.

Muff just went around sweeping and washing windows and cleaning up the locker room. He never spoke to anybody. Sometimes some of the guys would kid him. He would give them that sour deadpan, twitching his mouth up on one side, and they would think all of a sudden they weren't very funny, and quit.

That's why it got me when Muff spoke to me one morning, early, when we were all alone in the locker room.

"Come here a minute."

He was standing over in a clear space at the end of the lockers. I did like he said.

"Throw a couple at me, kid. Come on!"

I threw a couple at him.

Gee, that guy was fast! I never even saw his hands. I sat there on the floor looking up at him, and him looking down. "Wide open," he said, like he was talking to somebody else. "No footwork. No steam. A miserable arm puncher."

"Shriber says. . . . "

"Devil with Shriber. Get up."

I got up. In about fifteen minutes I was shot dead. Muff grunted. "I get here around six," he said, and went on out. After that I got there at six, too. It was just between me and Muff. Nobody else knew about it. Other times he didn't know I was alive. Funny guy. I used to wonder where he got that name. But could he box!

I liked the gym. The only thing was that sometimes I would get the idea there was something going on I didn't know about. The way the guys looked at each other, like they do in gangster movies to show they know a lot they aren't telling. And every once in a while they'd turn up kind of dragged out and talking too loud, and they'd have new clothes and maybe a flashy watch.

There was something about the way they acted with Shriber and the Killer, too. Nothing you could put in words. You just felt it. Like the movies, when the mobsters are around the Big Shot, only it was all hidden somewhere way in behind their faces.

Eddie–that was Eddie Nazarian–well, he and I got to be sort of pals, like. He'd been going there longer than I had. "You ever get the feeling there's something, well, funny going on?" I said to him one day.

He wouldn't look at me.

"Funny like what?"

"I don't know. Crooked, maybe."

"You oughta quit seein' them movies."

"Well, what are you so jittery about?"

"Jittery? You're nuts, I'm not jittery. Oh, the heck with it! Here comes Shriber."

I knew he was lying, and I knew he was scared. But he was excited, too. He was all of a sudden different from me. I caught on for a certain then.

I stayed away from there a week. But I went back.

When I came past the alley I noticed a big crowd and an ambulance down back of the gym. The ambulance started to pull out just as I came up. I couldn't see who was in it. Shriber and the Killer were talking to a couple of cops, who were ma king notes. There were a couple more cops up on the fire escape.

Shriber saw me, but he was busy with the cops.

I went around and in the front way. Muff was leaning on the window-sill in the locker room, looking down into the alley. There was nobody else there.

"What happened, Muff?"

He turned his head around. He looked like a cougar I saw once, snarling at the hounds.

"Blast your soul," he said, so soft I could hardly hear him. I felt like somebody slugged me when I wasn't looking. "Hey, Muff. . . . "

"I thought maybe you had sense. I thought maybe you wouldn't come back. I–Oh, the devil with you."

He meant it. Gee, the look he had in his eyes!

He picked up his broom and started pushing it. Over his shoulder, like he was telling a stranger where Hill Street was, he said, "Eddie Nazarian got killed. He went off the fire-escape and broke his neck."

I sat down on a bench. I could hear Muff's broom knocking up under the iron lockers. It sounded like somebody laughing in a tunnel.

I got up quick and went in the washroom.

When I came out Shriber was there. He nodded his head at me and smiled a little. I went out with him into his office, and Muff didn't look up from his broom.

Shriber shut the door onto the gym. There was a bunch of the kids out there in sweat-shirts and shorts, huddled around talking. Shriber got a bottle out of the desk and two glasses, and poured about a tablespoonful into one of them. He gave it to me.

"Get your blood moving again."

He poured himself a bigger shot and put the bottle away. "You and Eddie were sort of pals, weren't you?"

"Yeah. What happened?"

"Nobody saw it. He went out on the fire escape, alone, and I guess his foot slipped or something."

A lot of the kids go out there, for air or a smoke. "He never knew what hit him."

We sat there for a minute. Then Shriber spoke, real easy-like. "Been sick or something, kid?"

I knew he meant about the week I stayed away. I nodded. He laughed a little.

"Feeling okay now?"

"I don't know."

He leaned back in the swivel-chair and looked at me. He had pale eyes, sort of a steel blue.

"Let's talk sense, kid. You ain't no palooka. I know why you stayed away. Okay. You came back. Now we can get somewhere."

He lighted up a cigar. He took his time about it. I began to sweat.

"Way I look at it, kid, is this. A man's got a right to get by. The system won't let him, well then, he can make his own. Now don't get me wrong. I don't go for no strong-arm stuff, understand. But I figure this way. A guy eats maybe one meal a day. He's maybe got somebody else dependin' on him, so he can't save even a dime. He can't have a girl, or a new pair of pants, or even a candy bar. And why? It ain't because he don't work. It's the filthy system."

I didn't know from any of that system stuff, but the rest I knew all right.

"So there's another guy up the street. He's got plenty. A house, a car, a bunch of extra suits. Okay. So who's gonna cry if he loses a couple tires off his car? Nobody gets hurt. It's just a few bucks out of a kick that's got plenty in it. And the first guy I was talkin' about, he's got dough now to buy breakfast two three times a week. You think that's wrong?"

I couldn't think of anything to say.

"We got a little club here, kid. We work together, and everybody gets taken care of. Sure, there's a little danger maybe, but we got no lilies around here. I handle all the business end, and there's plenty dough for everybody."

He leaned forward.

"I ain't said this to anyone before. I like you, kid. You got something. I can make a big ring name out of you if you play it right. Most of those guys out there, they're palookas. But you're different, kid. You can go places."

I knew he meant I could be a big shot like the Killer. "Yeah," he said, settling back. "You can go places. And why wait? Ask yourself that, kid?"

Shriber knocked the ash off his cigar and didn't look at me.

"There's just one thing. I know you ain't the squealin' kind, so don't get sore. But well, you ain't got a thing but your own word, and it won't weigh much against mine. You get me."

I got him. I didn't stay that morning for a workout.

Two days later I came back.

I guess it was the third day after that that Muff turned up at my rooming-house. He caught me just as I was coming in from work, turned me around and walked me back down the street. He didn't say much for a couple of blocks. I didn't want to go with him. But he wasn't kidding, and I knew what he could do with his fists.

"You're in, aren't you?" he said all of a sudden.

"What's it to you?"

"I been asking myself. I still don't have an answer."

We walked some more. It got cold, but I was sweating like July. I could see the side of his face. I never knew a guy's face could get that hard. It was like iron.

We got over toward the railroad yards. The sunlight got pale. Once in a while a locomotive would whistle in the yards like somebody dying alone of a bad cold and calling out for company.

All of a sudden Muff stopped, raised his head and just stood there, scowling. I looked up where he was looking, and there was a star in the sky. A little star, dirty with dust and smoke, but riding high on the last light of the sun.

Then Muff turned, and stared me straight in the eye. "Shriber told you you're good."

"Yeah."

"You are. You're a natural, about the best I've seen. If you stick with the ring and take it clean, you can be somebody."

"Well?"

"Grown up, haven't you? Ah, you sap kid! Sure you're good. That's why he wants you. He'll manage you like he does the Killer, straight or crooked by the deal, and he won't take more than half your purse. But there's another reason he wants you.

"Brains don't come a dime a dozen, and you got 'em. The Killer's getting too big for his britches, and Shriber needs somebody to take his place. He wants you more for that than lie does for the ring, because his smelly little gang is his real business. The gym and the rest of it are just a front."

I didn't say anything.

"Maybe you like that, though. Maybe you'd get a kick out of being a big shot."

I didn't say anything. Muff pulled his lip back.

"What are you going to change your name to? Humphrey or Edward G.? Listen, you sap! You're not tough. If you were, it wouldn't matter. Think you can go up against the Killer? I le doesn't just have his dukes, you know. He packs a gun."

"I can take care of myself."

"Sure, sure. Eddie thought so, too."

"What do you mean, Eddie.... "

"Eddie got cold feet. They were scared he'd talk. So somebody shoved him off the fire escape."

I stared at him. He laughed.

"Gets you, doesn't it? No, I can't prove it. Only it happened once before, before you came. That locked-up loft that nobody rents is a big convenience. A guy can use the back steps and nobody ever sees him. You could hide a body up there for quite a while."

He leaned forward.

"You know what's up in that loft."

I started to walk away. He caught me and banged me up against a building wall. When, I tried to get loose he gave me a couple across the face, and he didn't pull 'em much.

"Get this straight, kid. You're sticking your fool neck clear out, and don't think you won't get it there! You're already in too deep to change your mind. But there's one thing you can do. You can go to the cops and spill."

"What do you think I am?"

"A chump. A nice, clean, decent, fuzz-tailed chump! What's your mother going to think of you?"

I tried to get away again. He gave me one in the wind this time. It was funny how gentle his voice got all of a sudden. "Go ahead and cry, sonny. Aaah! I guess I'm playing this whole thing wrong. I know why you're doing this. I been there myself."

He took my arm. We went over and sat down on some steps and he shoved his handkerchief at me, without looking. "Don't worry. I know it's not because I hurt you." He spread his big scarred hands on his knees and looked at them. "Yeah. I know. Maybe you wonder why all of a sudden I got to mount the pulpit."

"Yeah, kind of."

"Would you believe me, kid, if I say I don't know? I got what I need–a soft job, a clean flop, and cash enough to keep me not-too sober. What do I care what a bunch of punks do with themselves? I start fooling around, I'll wind up in a gutter with my head cracked open. Yeah. But I've got so I can't lay in bed with myself nights."

He scowled at his hands like he hated 'em.

"It ain't my business what anybody else does. Only I used to know Barney Ackles. He gave me my job there, a little while before he kicked off. He always used to say that with kids it was everybody's business. That's part of it, I guess."

He gave me a funny sideways look. I thought he was going to slug me again.

"Mostly it's you. You're so much like I was, it makes me sick to my stomach. Why the devil did you have to come there?"

"You know so much, why don't you go to the cops?" I said. "I'd look cute, wouldn't I? All I have to give 'em is a couple of words I overheard, maybe a noise I heard upstairs. With what they can dig up against me, and weighing my word against Shriber's, I'd be better off to go down and jump off the pier. I got to have something like you, something definite, something the cops can get a search warrant on."

"Are you through?"

"In a minute. I suppose Shriber sold you with that 'system' gag. It's malarkey–you know that. Most of the jitterbugs never d id a day's work in their life. The ones that did didn't like it. They've been lucky so far, because Shriber's no fool, and in her's the Killer. But they'll wind up in the can some day. You want to go there with 'em?"

"I'll take my chances."

"Sure, you're tough. Most of the reason you're doing this is so you'll have big dough to send home to Mama. You think she wants it like that?"

I got up. I was going to slug him first this time, but he didn't move a hand. He got up, too.

"Well, I got what I asked for."

"Don't worry. I won't tell Shriber."

"Thanks, pal."

He gave me that hard deadpan twitching a little. He turned around and then said over his shoulder, "Next time you're in the office look at that motto over the desk. It ain't so, kid. And if you don't believe it, hunt up that picture of Dude Moffatt on the wall. Maybe you never heard of him, but ask anybody. So long, kid."

I didn't have to ask anybody about Dude Moffatt, the best light-heavy in the ring, Pop used to say. He had a mother and a couple of kid sisters to take care of, he was broke all the time, and he fell for a girl. Then he got in with a bunch of gamblers, hoping for quick dough. All he got was the bounce from the State Boxing Commission and his career blown up in his face, and a jail sentence.

Moffatt. That wasn't so far to Muff.

I started to walk home. It was dark now. The sky was fogged up and you couldn't see any stars at all.

Next time I saw Shriber he was pretty sore. We were supposed to pull a job that night, my first one.

"The cops been nosin' around here," Shriber said. "I showed 'em all over–that last batch of hot stuff was moved out of the loft two-three nights ago. But somebody tipped 'em and that means we got to lay off a while."

All of a sudden he threw it into me.

"You seen Muff?"

"Muff? No, I haven't seen him."

"He's skipped."

"You mean he. . . . "

"Yeah. Tipped the bulls and beat it."

The Killer smiled.

"We'll get him, though. There's a bunch of gangs in this town and we all hate each other's gall. But with a guy like Muff. . . . Somebody'll get him." He looked straight at me. "Remember that, kid."

"I'll remember. Him, and Eddie, too."

"Yeah," said the Killer softly. "And Eddie, too."

Shriber laughed and slapped my shoulder.

"This is a man's game, kid. You'll grow into it."

He bought me a swell dinner. For two weeks we didn't do anything. Nobody got Muff. Two weeks. Gee, it was like two years! And then this morning Shriber tipped me.

"Tonight, kid. Your first caper."

We were sitting around up in the boarded-up loft, waiting for the guys to trickle in. There was three cars of us going. The others–Shriber, the Killer, and three or four of the young guys–were smoking and kidding each other. Shriber would toss a word and a grin my way. I didn't eat any dinner. I wanted them to get started so I'd have something to do besides think.

A kid in a green zoot suit came in the back way, the way we were using, and said there was no sign of a stake-out.

And then all of a sudden there was this racket from up in the front of the loft, like somebody was breaking that door down.

We all jumped up. The only light we had was one bulb hanging down over the packing box they used for a table, and it was awful dark up in the front. We heard the door go in. Somebody yelled, and all of a sudden the Killer pulled non.

"Hold it!" Shriber said.

The Killer was smiling, some of the guys flashed brass knucks, and one guy grabbed a tire chain from somewhere and was swinging it, and all of them fading back from the light. I heard the back door open.

Muff walked in from the shadows, just far enough so you could see who it was.

He stopped. Everybody stopped. Nobody even breathed, listening to hear if there were more people coming in after Muff. Cops. There wasn't a sound anywhere. It was like being deaf.

Muff was all alone, and he didn't have anything in his hands. The Killer said something real soft I couldn't hear and moved his gun hand. It was a big shiny revolver. Shiny. The light flashed off it. It looked as big as a cannon.

I reached out and whacked the Killer's wrist. The gun went off and somebody hit me. I heard Shriber say something about a hot rod. Then Muff came in closer and laughed. I was still groggy, but even so I thought he was pretty drunk.

"You missed me," Muff said. "Been looking for me, haven't you? All right, here I am. What are you going to do about it?"

Shriber laughed.

"Shut that door, Mike." Mike shut it. "What do you think we're gonna do about it?"

The other guys snickered and they began to close in. They were walking on their toes, kind of, and their eyes were all shiny. The one guy was swinging the tire chain so it made just a round blur in the air. The Killer had the gun back in his pocket. His fists were doubled up. He was smiling, and he licked his teeth the way you see a dog do when it's going to fight.

I don't know, I guess I got up and started to yell or something, because Shriber grabbed me and said, "Shut up, kid. This is business." I shut up, but I tried to get away and he looked at me and all of a sudden he clipped me. Only I learned a lot from him and a sight more from Muff, and I got my chin out of the way in time. It hurt, but I could still see, and I gave him a couple back.

And then things began to go fast. I got loose from Shriber and over to Muff, and I saw he wasn't drunk at all. He and the Killer were tangling, the others standing off till they could see where to hit.

Was that a fight! It only lasted two-three minutes but it was beautiful. Gee, the way Muff moved around, the way his face looked. . . .

The Killer went down, and he wasn't smiling any more. Muff shot me a look–his eyes weren't mean any more, they were big and bright.

"Beat it, kid," he said. "Down the front way, and call the cops!"

He gave me a hard shove and started to run behind me. Shriber and the other guys closed in. We had to turn around and fight them, trying all the time to get back to the door. We took a lot from those brassies, but Muff–I didn't know anybody could fight that way. Finally the guy with the tire chain hit him. He fell down with his scalp hanging over one eye and I thought he was dead.

I ran for the door. I guess Muff planned it that way, because I was close to it and the rest of them were too far away to grab me.

I heard the Killer's voice telling them to get out of the way. I ran, but I looked over my shoulder. The Killer was up on one knee and he had his shiny big gun out, and there wasn't anything between us.

And then Muff got up.

His face was mostly bloody, but he was smiling. "Go on," he said.

I don't know; the way he said it, I had to. It all happened too fast. He got up and said that, and the gun went off right on top of it. I heard the slug hit him and knock him forward, and he slumped down. I was through the door and falling down the steps, and when I came out on the street yelling, there was a cop down on the corner, and. . . .

That's all. That's all I can tell you. Only I killed him. I killed Muff. I ought to choke for it, like the Killer's going to. That's all.

• • •

The hot, smoky room was quiet. The kid sat doubled over with his face in his hands.

"That's putting it too strong, kid," the gray-haired man said awkwardly. "You said he found something. Will you explain that?"

The kid didn't answer. His shoulders heaved, but there was no sound.

A uniformed cop cleared his throat.

"I rode the ambulance down here with the dead man. He lived long enough to make a–statement. I think. . . . " "Go ahead and read it."

The cop took out his notebook and found the page. He cleared his throat again. Everybody listened. "Moffatt said: 'I didn't do it for the kid. Tell him that. I did it for myself. I didn't have anything to live for. I did it for myself, and for Barney Ackles because his gym was always run clean and he wanted kids the same way. Tell the kid it wasn't his fault. You got to tell him this, make him understand. Tell him thanks because he gave me something to die for. I'd of done the Dutch years ago, only I didn't have any reason one way or the other. He gave me one. It's the way I want it. I guess this makes me the Champ. Yeah, the Champ. Tell that to the kid. He'll get it. The Champ. Tell him thanks–he showed me how to find. . . . ' "

The kid raised his head. He said clearly, drowning out the cop, " . . . how to find–my star."

The cop stared at him.

"Yeah. How did you know?" He shook his head. "I don't get it. What's he mean, find a star?"

The kid didn't answer. Once again he stared ahead of him, at something not in the room, and his face had a detached and shining look–the kind that is sometimes, but not often, seen in churches.