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Read Ebook: Jingle in the Jungle by Giunta Aldo
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Ebook has 419 lines and 15857 words, and 9 pages
"When we fight the Champ, I'll send a couple tickets around free. See ya'...." Charlie Jingle went out.
He stopped in front of Hannigan's Gym, looked up and down the street, and cautiously spat into the gutter. Then he went past the swinging doors into the building's interior.
Inside the door, he breathed deep the stale smell of oil and leather that permeated the atmosphere. Opening his eyes, he looked into the flat, grinning face of Emil McPhay. McPhay had been chalking schedules on a blackboard when he spotted the rapt expression of Charlie Jingle's face.
"As I live and panhandle!" exclaimed McPhay, his eyes rolling in their fat sockets.
"Anybody to see me, Emil?"
"Well you know as well as me somebody is, Charlie. The lovin' picture-makin' people 're here. Got a whole staff wit 'em." He leaned close, rolling his eyes shyly. "You gonna give 'em the story of yer bloody life, Charlie?"
Charlie strode toward his shop at the back of the gym.
He went past a row of smoked-glass doors to the last one with C. JINGLE, TRAINER printed on it, opened it, and went in. As Emil McPhay had said, the room was mobbed with smoking, suntanned Californians. An elegant-looking man rushed forward and jerked his hand up and down.
"Glad ... so glad.... Pictures.... Hope.... Contract.... Of course. Your boy.... Mister Jingle.... Famous...."
Nobody had called Charlie Jingle mister for ten years. In one night, he'd graduated from flop to mister. He rubbed his fingers together, feeling the sweat on them. His eyes took in the walls painted their flat, drying green, the racks of tools on them, the pictures of great fighting machines all over them, the electrical diagrams, the Reflex-Analyses Patterns mapped out next to each one. Then he lowered his eyes to take in the grinning, smooth-faced men around him, doing nervous things with their faces and hands. He looked at the man in front of him, his mouth flapping open and closed, contorting this way and that, and suddenly Charlie shut his eyes tight, drew in a blast of air, screwed his mouth open, and yelled "Shaddap!" good and loud.
There was stunned silence. Charlie looked around at them, at their poised, waiting faces.
"Scram!" he yelled, and jerked his finger to the door.
Slowly, the suntanned Californians drifted out of the room, watching him closely lest he maul them or loose another violation of the success story at them. One man broke the spell.
"Of course, Mister Jingle, one's life history is certainly something to be treasured. Not to be treated lightly. But I assure you we--my company, that is--we will make certain that we adhere to the facts, in our fashion. There will be no unnec--"
Charlie Jingle grabbed the man's jacket-front with his left hand, his trouser-seat with the other, and, taking advantage of the man's total unpreparedness, threw him bodily out of the room, in the same motion kicking the door shut so hard, the glass cracked and a piece jumped out of the upper left hand corner.
Then Charlie Jingle stormed into his shop, where Tanker Bell awaited him.
When Tanker saw Charlie come into the room fuming mad, he shut off the reflex-machine and turned to watch him. Charlie Jingle paced back and forth in the room, in the small space between work-bench and wall. Suddenly he stopped, spun savagely to face Tanker. "Well? What the hell you lookin' at?"
Tanker Bell grinned. "You, Charlie. I like to watch you when you're mad."
"You do, eh?"
Tanker watched the rage build up to a good healthy flush on Charlie's skin.
"Jeez," Tanker jibed, "you look as red as those beets they sell over in the Old-Methods Market."
"Listen you! Just because you dropped that flashy character last night. Don't let it go to your head! You get me sore, by God, I'll have you piled up in the yard along with yesterday's rusty pugs!"
Tanker laughed.
Charlie Jingle glared at the Tanker a moment, drew a deep breath, snorted it out, and paced twice. Then he faced the Tanker again.
"Sorry, kid. They got me goin' today. First the fight commission. Then these soap-peddlers from Hollywood. Sorry I blew off."
"How'd it go with the Commission?"
"Okay, okay. Jergen knows about me. He's just hungry for a bust, you know? Wants to nail the Fixers."
The Tanker took a step toward Charlie.
"The Champ call?" he asked, voice trembling. Charlie shook his head in the negative.
"Why don't you sucker him, Charlie? Force his hand!"
"You want a bout with the Champ?"
"Sure! Don't you?"
Charlie sat down on the work-bench and pulled the Tanker down next to him.
"Listen, Tank. Last night was a freak, you understand? Something happened last night, I don't know what. But you ain't the boy to fight the Champ--My God, boy, you're older than me!"
Tanker Bell looked at Charlie, his face puckering like a child's.
"No, now wait. Lemme make it clear, Tank," said Charlie Jingle softly. "You'n me been together fourteen years. We've fought in some pretty ancient Tank-towns. We've fought young and old alike, and you know as well as me that it was always an even toss whether or not you would get knocked cold. We're mediocrities, Kid. When I bought you, you'd already seen your best days. Am I right?" Tanker Bell nodded, his head down on his chest.
"Look, Tanker, I ain't tryin' to hurt you. I just don't wanna see you get killed!"
"Well who said anything about gettin' killed, for God's sake!" bawled the Tanker.
"Look at it this way. You've been knocked to pieces a dozen times, and I've gone to work and put you back together a dozen times. I've twisted your wires, re-shaped your reflex plan, doubled your flexibility and your punch-power, co-ordinated and re-co-ordinated you and re-analyzed your nervous-pattern until I've exhausted every possible combination. You're a fighting machine, and a good one, kid. But machines grow old. They get outdated, like me. I'm a Mechanical Engineer. Okay! There's lots of new stuff I don't know that these college kids know. What happens to them? They go to work for Pugilists Inc., inventing new machines with new systems. They got systems that I never dreamed of. Do you know that?"
"Well what's that got to do with me fightin' the Champ, for God's sake?"
"Everything! They put machines in the ring now that are worth Five Hundred Thousand dollars! They're almost indestructible!"
"How come that punk I fought last night wasn't so indestructible, then? How come about that, Charlie?"
"I dunno, I dunno. Somethin' musta gone wrong. Maybe he shorted out."
"But Tanker! Use your head! The Champ's brand new, spankin' young. He's the newest-styled fighting machine in existence. What chance you think we stand against that?"
"Listen. I fought that bum last night with ease, you know that? There I was, just glidin' around him, punchin' him at will--"
"Maybe it was an accident! Maybe somethin' went wrong with his system last night...."
"And maybe I dropped him on the square, too...."
"OKAY!" shouted Charlie Jingle in desperation. "Maybe you did. And maybe, if you go in against the Champ, maybe he'll kill you! Maybe he'll smash you so hard I won't be able to put you together again. You wanna take that chance? Or you wanna settle down nice and quiet in some Pug factory, supervisin' young fighters?"
"Naw!" yelled the Tanker. "I wanna take that chance! I want you to get me a fight with the Champ!"
"Are you dumb, or what? Don't you know they never come back?"
"You mean it, don't you, Tanker?"
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