“It’s all protein. Brain food. It go right to his head.”
Elijah suddenly lunged forward and swatted his sparring partner with a quick right hand. He seemed more alert now that the bell had rung. The sparring partner danced away from him and bobbed his head from side to side. I noticed this kid was built the same as Terry Mulvehill, the current light heavyweight champ, who we’d be fighting in the fall. Same big head, wide shoulders, and narrow hips. I wondered if Elijah had the strength and stamina to keep up with someone half his age.
“Is he going to be able to defend himself come October?” I asked John.
“Look at his legs,” John said proudly.
I looked at Elijah’s legs. They were like tree trunks. The most powerfully developed part of his body by far. You could break a chainsaw on them.
“Legs like that, he won’t never go down. They’ll keep him standing all night.” John elbowed me.
“Great,” I mumbled. “It’s just the rest of him that’ll get destroyed.”
But I had to admit Elijah was more than holding his own in the ring. He threw a fast jab and a cross combination and then backpedaled in a half-circle. The sparring partner staggered for a moment and had to steady himself against the ropes. It was like a scene from a Bruce Lee movie where the old Kung Fu master teaches his young charge some new tricks. Elijah took a run at the kid and clapped him with a right on the ear as he soared past him. The crowd, which had grown to about one hundred fifty people, laughed and began to applaud.
I started to relax and enjoy my surroundings. The glass chandeliers, the red damask curtains, the gold embroidered wainscoting along the walls. This was where I belonged. Not under some grubby Boardwalk, firing a gun. I fell into a daydream of what it would be like to run a place like this. Men in gray suits running up to ask my opinion about things I didn’t really care about. People at the slot machines taking a break to shake my hand.
But then a side door opened and snapped me out of my reverie. In walked the reigning champ Terry Mulvehill with his father Terrence Sr., who was also his trainer, and a stocky bald white man wearing an expensive suit. Even sitting fifteen yards away, you could feel the heat coming off this Terry. He wore a bright red T-shirt that was straining at the seams, like the manufacturer had never intended for it to be filled with muscles this big. Dreadlocks fell over eyes that didn’t move or widen. His whole presence was like a fist, with all the parts drawn together and clenched for the purpose of annihilating another man. I went back to being nervous about Elijah fighting him.
The white man at his side had a shaved head that gleamed like the tip of a missile. I made him for about fifty years old, but he was bursting with good health. He had the bull neck and rounded torso of a weight lifter and the bearing of a Roman senator. He wore the same double-breasted brown Armani suit that I’d coveted months before in GQ magazine. It grabbed him across the chest and seemed to declare, What a man this is!
“Who’s that?” I whispered to John B.
“That Frank Diamond,” he murmured. “He’s the promoter for the fight.”
“Why haven’t we met him yet?”
“Oh, he’ll go along with the other people we been dealing with ...” But when John swallowed the rest of what he was saying, I knew we had trouble.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the round. Elijah went over to his corner and stood there breathing heavily. Terrence Mulvehill walked across the room to look up at him.
“Old man can’t catch his breath,” he said loudly.
Elijah ignored him and just stared straight ahead with his gloves resting on the top rope.
“I say old man fight like a old woman!!” Terrence taunted him again, even louder this time.
There were scattered giggles in the crowd and then a long silence. Terrence put his hands on his hips and waited for Elijah to respond. You could hear the squeaking sound of people shifting uncomfortably in their seats. I looked over at John B., who had his head bowed. Finally Elijah spit out his mouthpiece and looked down at Terrence at ringside.
“Next time I appreciate if you call me by my proper name,” he said slowly and deliberately.
“Kiss my black ass, motherfucker!” Terrence turned back to the spot near the side door where he’d been watching with Frank Diamond the promoter.
The bell rang and Elijah stuck his mouthpiece back in. I realized I was rooting for him in the way I rooted for Vin to get off the barroom floor after he was shot. Elijah walked right to the center of the ring, dropped his hands to his sides, and stood stock-still in front of his sparring partner. It was a defiant gesture, meant more for Terrence Mulvehill than his immediate opponent. Terrence smirked to show he wasn’t impressed.
“C’mon, champ!” John B. shouted. “It’s your show, E.! It’s your show!”
Elijah threw a head fake, offering his chin, but his sparring partner didn’t take advantage of the way he dropped his guard. So Elijah did the head fake again, almost as if he were teaching the kid a lesson. When he did it a third time, the kid hit him squarely on the jaw.
Elijah’s mouthpiece flew out and he fell backwards into the ropes. The crowd gasped as the mouthpiece landed like a bloody grenade on the canvas. He turned halfway toward us, and through his headgear I could see his eyes rolling back in his head. If he wasn’t actually knocked out, he was on his way to oblivion. My future was struggling on the ropes beside him.
“He all right, everything gonna be all right,” John B. mumbled uselessly as he jumped to go help his brother.
“Old man oughta stay in the old man home,” Terrence announced as he turned to leave with his promoter.
32
“CAN I EXPLAIN, TED?” said the attorney named Burt Ryan. “A majority of these lawyers and judges are known as erudite, professorial, ah, ‘egghead’ types. They will not accept words in a brief to the effect, ‘Go fuck yourself!’”
“So don’t do our work then,” said Teddy, leaning forward in the leather armchair. “Don’t do my fuckin’ work.”
“No, I’ll put it in.” Burt took a shot of asthma spray. “That’s not the problem. But the court won’t accept it.”
That was what was wrong with these fucking pansies, Teddy fumed. Why couldn’t he have one of those good old-time mob lawyers like Albert Krieger or Bruce Cutler? Someone who’d stand up and holler back at a judge. These soft-spoken types like Burt made him nervous. With their Scandinavian office furniture and their brusque young secretaries staring into computer screens.
And then there was Burt’s manner. A weedy small man in a gray suit with constantly blinking eyes, he wasn’t effeminate exactly, but something about his fey voice and precise little hand gestures made Teddy’s anxiety level rise steadily like the line on a fever chart.
“Anyway,” said Teddy. “Where the fuck were you the other day? They had me in lockup twelve hours before you bailed me out.”
“I had other appointments.” Burt twirled his index finger in a small arc.
“My ass. You were wearing goddamn jodhpurs, for fuck sake. What were you doing, playing polo?”
They were sitting in Burt’s spacious office in Pleasantville, just a few miles outside Atlantic City. Sunlight streamed in through the window and reflected off the top of Burt’s balding head, causing Teddy to squint when he looked back at him.
“What I was doing is immaterial,” said Burt, drawing a line through the air. “What we need to focus on is the case the prosecution is preparing. So far you’ve only been charged with racketeering. But my sources at the U.S. Attorney’s office tell me there’s a strong possibility they might bring a superseding murder indictment.”
Before Teddy could respond, Burt Ryan’s phone purred and his secretary told him he had Dave Kurtzman the casino owner on line one. Burt put up his hand to indicate the call would take less than a minute.
“Yeah, yeah,” he told the phone in a high, wheezy voice. “No, that’s not in your contract.. . No ... No, Dave ... Dave, no . . . That’s not an option ... I’ll get the doctor and tell them to back down.”
Teddy simmered in his seat, like a sorority girl waiting for a date to show up. He felt that tender ache down
