“Wait a minute!” he yelled, “Wait for .
But his plea was lost by the screaming bombs. The screams got higher and higher and louder and louder. .
“La-d-e-e-e-s and gent-ul-men, your attention pu-lease. This is the main event of the evening. Fifteen rounds of boxing for the heavyweight cham-peen-ship of the world. In this corner, wearing black trunks and weighing two hundred twenty-one pounds, the U-lan of the Rhine, from Berlin, Germany, the challenger, M-a-a-x Schmeling!”
There was a chorus of boos and catcalls from all over Yankee Stadium as the brutish, glowering, unshaven fighter stood up. He sneered at the insults from the audience.
“He looks like a Nazi,” Beerbohm said.
“He’s got a head like a rock,” Keegan answered. “But Joe’s got the hammer to crack it.”
He looked around. There were almost a hundred thousand people in the special stands built especially for this grudge fight between the pride of the Aryan race and the Negro from Detroit. It was the largest crowd ever to see a prizefight.
The mob had long since peeled off jackets and ties. Everyone was sweating in their shirtsleeves but nobody cared. This was a fight to sweat for.
“And in this corner, at two hundred twelve pounds, wearing white trunks, the Brown Bomber from Dee-troit, Michigan, heavyweight champeen of the world . . . Joe Louis!”
The crowd went berserk and Beerbohm and Keegan were with them. Everyone was on their feet as the lean American strode loosely to the center of the ring, one arm raised. They were still screaming as the tuxedoed referee called the fighters to the middle and gave them their instructions.
There was electricity in the air. Two years earlier at the Olympics in Germany, Hitler had insulted America’s running pride, Jesse Owens, by refusing to attend Owens’s gold medal ceremony because he was an “American
Now, two years later, it was get-even time and the crowd knew it. Grudge fight? Hell, thought Keegan, this is the grudge fight of all times. This is bigger than David and Goliath.
Louis looked great. Louis looked ready. Louis had death in his eyes.
“It won’t go five rounds,” Keegan said.
“I don’t know, kid. Schmeling’s no pork chop.”
“You want to talk or bet?” Keegan said from their second- row seats, squinting up at the two fighters.
“Name your poison.”
“I got twenty says Schmeling’ll answer the bell at the sixth.”
“Let’s see it,” Keegan said, peeling off a twenty. Beerbohm took out two tens. Keegan snatched them out of his hand, wrapped them in his twenty and tucked them in his shirt pocket.
“How come you hold the money?” Beerbohm asked with mock suspicion.
“Because I’m rich, Ned. I’m not going to abscond with a measly forty bucks. On the other hand you are, how can I put it...?”
“Poor,” Beerbohm said.
“Yeah,” said Keegan with a nod. “Poor’s good. That covers it.” They both laughed. Keegan was feeling good tonight for a change.
A year after Keegan returned, his Uncle Harry had died suddenly of a heart attack, willing him the Killarney Rose. Dispirited, Keegan spent almost a year focusing his energies on renovating the top floor of the building, turning it into his private luxury apartment. Jenny Gould remained paramount in his mind. It was an open wound that would not heal. It was with him when he awoke in the morning and it stayed with him until sleep temporarily eased the ache. Although he knew his anguish was partly caused by uncertainty—was she alive or dead?—he could not push it from the forefront of his mind. Nor did time ease the hurt. He gradually retreated into himself, avoiding old friends, ignoring phone calls. He went to Hong Kong on business, spent months at a time alone on his horse farm in Kentucky and spent the rest of the time in the back booth of the pub, which he used as a kind of ex-officio office.
Beerbohm came into the Killarney Rose every day, Tuesday through Saturday, at almost the same time—4: 10. He sat on the same stool near the back of the bar and drank two boilermakers—Seagram’s Seven and Schlitz on tap—always left at 5:40 to catch the 5:50 E train to Jamaica, where he lived alone in a two-bedroom duplex. There was no reason for him to rush home except that Beerbohm was, first of all, a man of habit— catching the 5:50 was part of his daily ritual; and second, he was a potential alcoholic. Two boilermakers was his limit. It put him right on the edge. After downing his two drinks a mere whiff of blended whiskey would have made him a slobbering, falling- down drunk.
Keegan had known Ned Beerbohm for twenty years, since Keegan was fifteen and had first worked the bar at the Killarney and Beerbohm was a young reporter. Beerbohm had gone the usual route—reporter, columnist, drunk. He had taken the cure and started over on the copy desk, working his way back up the ladder to news editor. But he still had the haunted eyes and spare frame of the alcoholic. Beerbohm was one of the few people Keegan did not share his tragic story with. Why bother— Beerbohm was a walking encyclopedia of current events. He had heard it all.
He was usually in a rumpled blue or gray suit, red tie hanging down from an open collar, twisted and destroyed, the late edition curled up and jammed in his suit coat pocket, gray homburg perched on the back of his head. Beerbohm was always the first one in, followed shortly by reporters and editors from the
The dialogue rarely varied:
“Phew,” Beerbohm would say, dropping like a sack of rocks on the bar stool. “This has been one hell of a day,” to which Keegan would reply, “You say that every day.”
