“That’s a reach.”
“Anyway I’ve been thinking about what we should do next and it occurs to me that true perfection—”
“Next? Are you mental? I have a detective up my ass and you want me to plan the next insanity?”
“Relax will you? Besides if you want to worry about something shouldn’t you worry about the two individuals who we are certain, without speculation, do know we were involved. Especially when one of those two individuals saw our faces quite well and appears to be the sort of entity that has no regard for life or limb, its own or others, and respects no laws, natural or otherwise?”
“At least those two can’t put me in prison.”
“Which brings me to a question. Why are you still working? Did you not hear what I said about the eleven million, twenty-two if you accept my share?”
“I heard you but it’s not that easy. I have certain responsibilities, as do you, which I cannot just drop like a hat.”
“Like what?”
“Like a hat.”
“No like what responsibilities?”
“Like a yellow-eyed pregnant woman, a rhyming fool, and a guy who thinks the devil is the detail keeping him in jail. Not to mention my kid on death row. Should I twirl tiny umbrellas between thumb and forefinger while watching the sun sink into the ocean and forget these people?”
“Precisely, are you the only attorney left in New York? If you leave will those people get plumbers assigned to represent them?”
“So put my faith in the competence of unknown others? I do that about as often as you express doubt.”
“Well-put perhaps, and probably justified. You’re staying you’re saying.”
“Yes, until that stuff ’s done I’m staying.”
“And in the meantime you’ll be picking up more stuff.”
“I’m not in arraignments for a while as fate would have it.”
“So you don’t want to come get your money? Don’t want to at least see it? It’s truly beautiful when completely laid out before you.”
“No I’m too busy, I’m writing. I’m a writer now.”
“Writing what?”
“A brief.”
“Writing? Told you I tried that when I first failed at perfection didn’t I? It doesn’t work, but find out for yourself if you must.”
“My writing has nothing to do with a failed attempt at perfection because remember that I never made one.”
“Fine but what’s the harm in coming with me now to look at your money? What’s the most you’ve ever eyeballed at once?”
“Not until this detective thing is settled.”
“As you wish, I’m leaving now. If you change your mind about seeing it let me know. I’ll be hanging around a bit longer, truth is I’m rather enjoying the idleness. Also get that detective’s name when you can and we’ll take care of that. Escalera and Whale? We’ll just see what happens, goodbye Casi.”
“Yes, good.”
He closed the door behind him and I sat on the floor. I had this hand-me-down (multiple times) area rug covering the hardwood floors and I picked and pulled at its stray threads. It was so quiet. I lived alone. I wondered how I could have come to live alone. I thought how if I stayed in that space a full week, for example, and didn’t press any buttons I could conceivably go that entire time without hearing another human voice. That in a city with more people than many countries. I tried, concentrating, to hear something, anything, but there was no sound anywhere. The walls that normally felt like they were so close to themselves they might kiss now seemed to recede from me and each other. The place felt immense, in both size and spirit, and I was alone and adrift in it, searching in vain for any sound that might reassure me, betrayed by a silent emptiness that grew out into the stillness. I started talking:
“It’s true,” I said. “I should be exulting.”
I said it was certainly the case that many things I had to worry about before 410 were no longer concerns. I have a lot of money I said.
“Of course, now I have a whole new set of worries,” I said. “Like what do I do with that money? Where do I keep it? How do I convert it into a spendable resource? Laundering the money is the term you’re looking for,” I added.
I stood and walked to the mirror.
“Launder as in to make clean what was once dirty. But what if there are things that once sullied cannot be fully cleansed? That notion may be true. True as it is indisputably true that you have done things that cannot be erased or taken back.”
I looked away.
“Then there’s the matter of possibly getting caught with all that entails,” I concluded and silently decided that this last worry was the greatest of all and rendered the others meaningless. I resolved not to think about the future and what it might bring.
Instead I would enjoy that moment, a moment when someone not overly concerned with accuracy could say I was contentedly sitting on top of the world.
The same place Benitez sat after beating Duran in January of 1982.
The natural next move for Benitez was a rematch against Sugar Ray Leonard but barring that—and Leonard showed no inclination to grant Wilfred that rematch—another logical move was a fight with either of the two remaining members of The Quintet (Benitez, Duran, Hagler, Hearns, Leonard) Benitez had yet to face. Rather than move up another weight class to fight Hagler, Benitez decided to make the first defense of his WBC junior-middleweight title against Thomas Hearns. The fight was scheduled for December 3, 1982, marking the longest stretch between fights for Benitez to that point. Hearns was moving up in weight but at over six feet he had always been exceedingly tall for a welterweight and the move was expected to only benefit him. Coming off his loss to Leonard he promised to be highly motivated for the critical championship fight and his two knockouts of admittedly nondescript opponents leading into the fight with Benitez seemed to indicate that the devastating defeat to Leonard had not caused him any irreparable damage or robbed him of his crippling power. The fight would feature these two brilliant fighters at their peak and predictions were pretty much split down the middle.
Developments leading up to the fight only increased the significance of the matchup. After losing to Benitez, Duran returned to the ring on September 4th in Hearns’s Detroit against some Brit named Kirkland Laing. He looked old and meek and, whether he decided to retire or not following the well-earned ten-round decision defeat to a barely capable retread, the fight surely signaled, everyone agreed, the end of Duran’s career as a premier fighter.
After defending his World Welterweight Championship with a third-round knockout of Bruce Finch in Reno, Sugar Ray Leonard began to complain of vision problems or floaters. He was diagnosed with a detached retina in his left eye (the one that had swollen to gory proportions against Hearns) and three months after the fight had surgery to repair the problem. He was warned of the danger of losing his eyesight if he continued to box. On November 9, 1982, during an odd press conference for some reason held in and around the boxing ring where he made his professional debut, Leonard announced his retirement from Boxing, lamenting that he would not be fighting Marvin Hagler in the fight the universe most longed to see.
The loss of Leonard and the perceived elimination of Duran meant the upcoming Benitez/Hearns fight would create a clear challenger to Hagler and make whoever of the three managed to ultimately emerge the biggest star in Boxing. Along with the bout’s significance there was considerable interest in seeing Boxing’s most skilled boxer against its most fearsome puncher; the fight would feature one of the greatest defensive fighters ever against one of the best offensive ones and it wasn’t entirely clear how it would unfold. On a personal level for Benitez, who had accomplished more than Hearns to that point, a decisive victory would all but erase the negative impact of his only loss. Benitez seemed to recognize the importance of the fight as well as the unique threat Hearns presented because he trained as much as he ever did. And good because on December 3, 1982, in New Orleans, in the ring
just before the opening bell, Thomas Hearns looked scary. The extra seven pounds he was allowed at junior-middleweight appeared to consist entirely of sinewy but granite muscle. Whereas at welterweight he had looked freakishly thin, against Benitez he looked very much like the human cobra his nickname implied he was. Benitez looked good too, solid, but next to Hearns maybe small.
From the outset, Benitez, like every single human who would ever step into the ring with Hearns, was wary of his opponent’s power, especially from the right cross. As a result he moved a lot and Hearns established a good jab and crisp punches while stalking Benitez and wisely eschewing punches to his elusive head for solid body punches. In that manner Benitez ceded the first three rounds as it became apparent he would have significant trouble getting inside Hearns’s long punches to land his own. In the fourth he seemed to solve Hearns a bit, fighting more effectively to win the round and also benefiting from a point deduction by the ref. He appeared to have weathered the storm that was the early rounds against Hearns and seemed ready to begin winning rounds and imposing his skillful will.
But Hearns was too good and in the fifth he bounced a right cross off the top of Benitez’s head so powerfully that Wilfred seemed to lose his legs for a moment until he fell forward, his gloves landing on the canvas for an official knockdown. He survived, but in the sixth he caught another right cross flush at the end of the round and after bending exaggeratedly at the waist he fell back against the ropes in deep trouble until the bell saved him. After a seventh and eighth round that featured more, albeit less dramatic, Hearns dominance, Benitez had a decision to make.
He was clearly losing the fight. Hearns looked simply awesome that night. He was bigger and stronger. He had hand speed that was at least equal to that of Benitez. In Emanuel Steward he had an all-time great trainer and in accordance with his instructions he was executing a perfect game plan. Worst of all was the inhuman power. Benitez felt all the punches, even the ones he blocked. A Hearns punch that landed on his arm, for example, would deaden that spot for minutes.
On the other hand, as the Leonard fight had shown, if Hearns had any weakness it was his chin and stamina. To have any chance to win Benitez would have to go against his nature by forcing his way inside the reach of The Hitman to try and land the bomb that would change the fight. And that was the decision that needed to be made because the fact was that as great as Hearns was offensively, if Benitez dedicated his efforts principally to avoiding being hit he would not be hit. It was that simple and that certain. It was an option. He could go into a defensive shell and circle the ring. He would lose a decision, true, but he would avoid embarrassment and avoid needless pain. Then he could simply say that Hearns’s particular style was too difficult for him and people would agree and no one would fault him too much.
The other option meant getting inside no matter the cost. It meant throwing punches once inside, which meant by necessity getting hit hard and often by punches that Benitez already knew from most recent experience would hurt and possibly knock him unconscious. And either tomorrow or years from now, thousands or millions, when Time has ground our bones into an ashy mist and the very Earth we now inhabit has drifted into its third-generation sun, let the record reflect that Wilfred Benitez, who had more money than a thousand people needed, who’d been bred since infancy to fight at the expense of all else, who seemed like a perpetual child who did not take his career seriously, understood his responsibilities and chose to fight. Let it reflect that he bounced a left hook off the top off The Hitman’s head and that head fell to the canvas as a result. That he came forward winging his fists like he had done since he was seven and that, as expected, he took ugly shots to the head in return. That some of those shots momentarily disrupted communication from his brain to his legs but he never fell again. That he would take two to land one but that he kept taking them, kept trying to win. That he did not relinquish greatness easily but that it had to be forcefully wrested from his grip by overwhelming superior force.
When the fight was over Benitez smiled as always and hugged Hearns. One judge had it a draw but the other two were decidedly for Hearns. The announcers reminded their audience that Benitez was still only twenty-four. They said you could still expect great things from him in his future. If told what that future would hold they would not likely have believed it.
I said nothing the whole time I thought about that and now the silence was bugging me again so I released some music into the room. What was I thinking protesting the quiet? Silence was a gift. You needed it to listen to real music and my ear was mysteriously better to boot. I closed my eyes. It was rapturous.
But I wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with my CD because I heard a faint percussive knocking I didn’t recognize, although I mentally acknowledged I could’ve simply failed to notice it before since, healthy or not, I didn’t have the best ear.
Or a simpler explanation could be that there was someone knocking on my door, which there was. When I opened the door I saw Herbert. He was wearing a light-colored, possibly-white, satiny jacket and holding what appeared to be a bowling bag.
“Hi Herbert,” I said.
“Call me Herb,” said Herb.
“Done.”
“The music.”
“I’m sorry was it too loud?”
“No pal o’mine, I just noticed you went right to the second movement.”
“Oh, yeah, uh.”
“Well, as I’m sure you know, the second movement of the Eroica is a funeral march. A funeral march, y’unnerstand?” his eyebrows rising in wait.
“Okay, and?”
“Well it’s just that when someone goes right to the funeral like that I start thinking maybe something’s wrong you know buddy?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“That’s right pal. Nothing is wrong. You keep listening to that music is what you should do. There didn’t have to be music you know. Anyway I hope this isn’t about what I told you with the detective and all. Because that’s nothing to concern yourself about.”
“Why do you say that Herb?”
“Call me Jackie,” said Jackie.
“Fine Jackie but why do you say I shouldn’t be concerned? Not that I am mind you.”
“It’s like this letter I once got saying the government was investigating my taxes. You shoulda seen how I got myself all worked up over it, hoo ho! I had myself convinced I was being investigated for not reporting a clock with a horse in its stomach, I mean a horse with a clock in its stomach ha ha!”
“So what happened?”
“Oh my friend calmed me down. Anyway pal, wanna go bowling?”
“Bowling?”
“Yeah, you do bowl don’t you?”
“Sure all the time. Well I mean I bowl quite a bit. Actually, well, I have bowled in the past, once or twice, maybe, I think.”
“Let’s go then.”
“No I better stay, I have a lot of work to do.”
“Oh yeah? Whattya do?”
“I write.”
“Okay, suit yourself pal.”
“Before you go Jackie.”
“Yeah?”
“How did your friend calm you down that time with the tax investigation?”
“Oh I see. Well think of it this way. This detective that’s investigating you.”
“I’m not sure I’d call it that but what about him?”
“Can he put you up in front of a firing squad?”
“No.”
“Can he push you over a cliff?”
“No.”
“Can he string you up there on the end of a rope?”
“No I guess not,” I laughed slightly. I felt better. Jackie was right. “Thanks Jackie, I feel better, you’re right,” I said.
“Never mind that Jackie business,” he said walking to the door and turning his considerable back to me. “Call me Ralph.”
“Ralph,” I muttered.
Ralph opened the door and started to walk out. Then he popped his head back
in. “The worst he can do to you is send you to the federal pen!” he said and immediately left.
I sat back down. The federal pen. Ralph was right. Well it wouldn’t be a federal pen but at that moment it seemed almost probable that I would end in state prison. It was true that the press had already lost interest in the 123rd Street Massacre but that was only because the monster wasn’t being fed anything new. The arrest of a public defender with a weird name for any involvement in the deaths, however peripheral, would certainly qualify as a press case.
Given that, and the DA’s office usual reaction to those types of cases, I thought I’d be fortunate to get something like 5 years determinate on a plea. Five years in lonely prison, I would do six/sevenths of that.
I wouldn’t talk to anyone the whole time I was there. I would pull what that guy who accepted Chekhov’s Bet did where he read everything under the sun while voluntarily imprisoned for fifteen years. I would read everything ever published; I would learn a few more languages, learn all day and every day. It would actually be a great deal of fun in that sense. I would have some time to think. I could write. Not briefs or anything boring like that, majestic stuff. No less a supernova than El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha was detonated from prison. I could write about what happened to me, what I did, nah.
“I should just pipe down is what I should do,” I said. “I have too much to do to sit around here thinking of this bullshit. The only thing I should be thinking about is the writing I have to do. I’m going to go outside and get some fresh air then come back and write until I drop, how’s that?”
I left the door open and went outside. Ralph was gone. It was less cold that day. I walked half a block and felt someone following me, first just with their eyes then with their entire body. I stopped and waited. He came up to me.
“Casi?” he said.
“What?”
“Are you Casi?”
“Never heard of him.”
“I happen to know you’re Casi.”
“Oh Casi you said?”
“Correct.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Can I have a moment of your time?”
A Naked Singularity: A Novel Page 70
