Garden of Beasts

twice he’d actually gone glove to glove with some of the greats. He’d spar at his own gym too, in the little building near the West Side docks. Yeah, Avery, it’s not so swank, but the dingy, musty place was a sanctuary, as far as Paul was concerned, and Sorry Williams, who lived in the back room, always kept the place neat and had ice, towels and beer handy.
    The kid now feinted but Paul knew immediately where the jab was coming from and blocked it then laid a solid blow on the chest. He missed the next block, though, andfelt the leather take him solidly on the jaw. He danced out of the man’s reach before the follow-through connected and they circled once more.
    As they moved over the canvas Paul noted that the boy was strong and fast, but he couldn’t detach himself from his opponent. He’d get overwhelmed with a lust to win. Well, you needed desire, of course, but more important was calmly observing how the other guy moved, looking for clues as to what he was going to do next. This detachment was absolutely vital in being a great boxer.
    And it was vital for a button man too.
    He called it touching the ice.
    Several years ago, sitting in Hanrahan’s gin mill on Forty-eighth Street, Paul was nursing a painful shiner, courtesy of Beavo Wayne, who couldn’t hit a midsection to save his soul but, Lord above, could he open eyebrows. As Paul pressed a piece of cheap beefsteak to his face, a huge Negro pushed through the door, making the daily delivery of ice. Most icemen used tongs and carried the blocks on their back. But this guy carried it in his hands. No gloves even. Paul watched him walk behind the bar and set the block in the trough.
    “Hey,” Paul’d asked him. “You chip me off some of that?”
    The man looked at the purple blotch around Paul’s eye and laughed. He pulled an ice pick out of a holster and chipped off a piece, which Paul wrapped in a napkin and held to his face. He slid a dime to the deliveryman, who said, “Thanks fo’ that.”
    “Let me ask,” Paul said. “How come you can carry that ice? Doesn’t it hurt?”
    “Oh, look here.” He held up his large hands. The palms were scar tissue, as smooth and pale as the parchmentpaper that Paul’s father had used when printing fancy invitations.
    The Negro explained, “Ice can burn you too, juss like fire. Like leavin’ a scar. I been touchin’ ice fo’ so long I ain’t got no feelin’ left.”
    Touching the ice . . .
    That phrase stuck with Paul. It was, he realized, exactly what happened when he was on a job. There’s ice within all of us, he believed. We can choose to grip it or not.
    Now, in this improbable gymnasium, thousands of miles from home, Paul felt some of this same numbness as he lost himself in the choreography of the sparring match. Leather met leather and leather met skin, and even in the cool air of dawn at sea these two men sweated hard as they circled, looking for weaknesses, sensing strengths. Sometimes connecting, sometimes not. But always vigilant.
    There’s no luck in the boxing ring. . . . 
    •   •   •
    Albert Heinsler perched beside a smokestack on one of the high decks of the Manhattan and hooked the battery to the wireless set. He took out the tiny black-and-brown telegraph key and mounted it to the top of the unit.
    He was slightly troubled to be using an Italian transmitter—he thought Mussolini treated the Führer with disrespect—but this was mere sentiment; he knew that the Allocchio Bacchini was one of the best portable transmitters in the world.
    As the tubes warmed up he tried the key, dot dash, dot dash. His compulsive nature had driven him to practice for hours on end. He’d timed himself just before the ship sailed; he could send a message of this length in under two minutes.
    Staring at the nearing shore, Heinsler inhaled deeply. Itfelt good to be up here, on the higher deck. While he hadn’t been condemned to his cabin, retching and moaning like hundreds of the passengers and even some crew, he hated the claustrophobia of being below. His past career as shipboard bookkeeper had had more status than the job of porter and he’d had a larger cabin on a high deck. But no matter—the honor of helping his surrogate country outweighed any discomfort.
    Finally a light glowed on the face plate of the radio unit. He bent forward, adjusted two of the dials and slipped his finger onto the tiny Bakelite key. He began transmitting the message, which he translated into