The champ’s corner fared better. Grenade huddled closely around Rattlesnake, but from what I could see, he kept speaking loud, taunting the boy, and fondling his gloves and laces.
I turned to Dillian and asked, “He usually berate the champ?”
“Whatever works to get the win,” she answered, almost in a shoulder shrug kind of way.
I kept my eye on Rattlesnake and Grenade and as the men walked to the center of the ring for the final round to touch gloves, it hit me.
Jericho “Rattlesnake” McNeal was fighting dirty with his oversized laces acting as whips. He was getting his ass handed to him in the first round and Grenade untied them a bit so the champ could unleash holy hell.
It was an old trick and hard to detect. When a fighter throws a punch, his laces are underneath the glove, but if he turns his fist even slightly, those laces become something Lash LaRue could use. The lightest whip from a lace could easily open the smallest of cuts with blood flowing every which way. Usually the punches come so fast and furious the ref is usually blind to the dirty deed because he’s preoccupied with all the blood.
As a result, the “Atomic Apache” didn’t have a prayer. The ref stopped the fight halfway through the last round. In fact, there was so much blood Dillian buried her face in my neck for a few moments. That hair still smelled like a lily field.
The crowd began to thin. I could tell some of the high rollers were disappointed as the words farce, lopsided and joke were being thrown around. They weren’t dumb. They knew the Apache could’ve easily won the fight.
The public relations gal in Dillian noticed some of the lukewarm reception. She shrugged her shoulders, unknowing. “We gave them a fight . . . Right, Nick? What did they expect?”
I looked towards Stitch Bromer who was packing up his things. He gave me a smirk and began a mocking slow clap. That kind of condescension I didn’t need. I felt like doing something rude, but now wasn’t the time to salvage my pride.
Dillian and I looked over to the Apache’s corner. They were struggling to get him through the ropes and on his way to the medic. I went over to help, holding open the ropes best I could, and stuffed a hundred dollar bill into the fighter’s waistband. I truly didn’t know what else to do and, frankly, my craps winnings allowed the generosity. A moment later, his manager and cutman both killed me with their eyes. In their shoes, I would’ve done the same.
I walked back toward Dillian, put my arm around her as more of an odd comfort than anything else and said, “Let’s head for the locker room.” To my surprise, she put her arm around me in return. Was Coco Chanel actually warming up to this grizzled boxing hack turned Hollywood wannabe? I’d be lying if I said feeling her arm around my waist wasn’t the highlight of this wacky, somewhat ill-fated, first bout of the tour.
We managed to squeeze past most of the press who seemed nippier than usual. They had blood in their eyes and attacked our poor public relations gal, asking her for a comment regarding the robbery. Robbery? We had no idea what they were talking about.
She gave a no comment and we headed inside. While the winner’s locker room was always celebratory, this was far from it. Dillian and I walked into a storm — the kind of weather this bus trip was enduring more and more.
Casino owner Niles Hetrick, hands outstretched, was explaining to Grenade that something wasn’t his fault.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Grenade turned to me and yelled, “I’ll tell you what’s going on! The gate was stolen!”
I had to shake the marbles from my head. “What are you talking about? Who would be dumb enough to rob this casino?”
“Who? I’ll tell you who,” Grenade barked back. “Them Eyetalians you was messing with the other night.”
I had to set this record straight. “Hold on a sec, Grenade. Last I checked, I have bruises telling me I was roughed up defending this camp. In fact, your boy here helped me set the record straight with those clowns.”
Grenade scoffed and pointed. “Something is telling me you’re a whole lot of bad luck.”
I sighed. ”I should’ve known they’d be back.”
“Did you really expect them to work security?” Grenade asked. “It was a scam from the start. They were going to rob this joint any which way.”
Hetrick interrupted. “Son, I’ve made my career by putting many a boot heel into greasy bastards like them. This ain’t the first time we’ve crossed paths, and I suspect it’s far from the last. This may be a desert, but the city itself was built on a river of blood.”
I looked to the rest of the room to see how everyone else was taking in Hetrick’s rap. Dillian was lighting a cigarette and Popcorn was massaging the champ. The rest of the corner sat slumped near a group of lockers.
However poetic Hetrick figured he was being, it didn’t take away from the fact we were out a boatload of dough. And truthfully, no one really knew whether or not Hetrick was in on the caper. While I didn’t want to believe it, not much shocks me anymore.
ROUND NINE
We chalked up the financial loss in Sin City, hopped on the cramped bus and worked our way through the country, hitting small hollers, backwood gymnasiums and urban social halls.
For the most part, we were a big hit.
Rattlesnake was ever the handsome charmer, smiling when Dillian told him and punching where Grenade saw fit. It was the latter, however, which had me growing more and more concerned. Who needs a crooked promoter when your trainer is the puppet master?
The more I studied the champ, the more I admitted to myself maybe Stitch Bromer was right about this whole stinkin’ camp. It was bad news.
The fact of the matter was that Jericho “Rattlesnake” McNeal was a dirty fighter — and I despised pugs who sullied the sport. The sweet science had enough problems without mucking up the game with cheats. However, there were a lot of people who had been getting in the kid’s head, so I couldn’t blame him completely.
His bag of tricks went deep. In San Antonio, Texas, Rattlesnake jabbed constantly with his thumb and snagged a TKO in round three against Booker Bell, a local cowpoke who was shaped like a cream donut and didn’t hit much harder. Back at the gym, Booker wouldn’t have even qualified as a sparring partner, so the dirty tactics confused him from the start. Lying bloodied on the canvas, poor Booker Bell wasn’t worth a strand of straw to a hungry horse.
Almost a week later, in Jackson, Mississippi, the champ was slathered up with enough Vaseline to grease a poke of pigs. His opponent, Michel “Killer Creole” Le Moyne, was a shifty southpaw at best. Because he couldn’t get a clean punch in, the mulatto was so infuriated and undisciplined he’d punched himself out by the middle of round two. In hindsight, I guess “The Ragin’ Cajun” would have been a better match. Then again, the champ’s camp wasn’t concerned about square matches.
What Rattlesnake did in Louisville, Kentucky, however, was a new one — even for me. While fighting Pappy Smith, aka “The Mad Moonshiner”, I noticed Grenade kept motioning to his neck in between rounds. I kept my eye on Rattlesnake’s leather and then . . . I heard an unfamiliar snap. An uppercut, perfectly thrown, connected directly with the challenger’s Adam’s apple. In all my years in smelly fight halls, I never saw a man drop like that poor soul. If it hadn’t been for the quickness of the ring doctor, we might have had another death on our hands.
I was disgusted and publicly shook my head. I looked over to Stitch Bromer who was right there with me. He fake slashed his throat and gave the fight thumb’s down, a gesture to signify he was done covering our trek across the nation. That, in and of itself was serious, but he’d probably be back at some point. For now, I needed a smoke and to dip my bill into something 90 proof. I had some thinking to do.
Leaving the fight hall, I felt a small hand tug at my sportcoat.
“Hey mister . . .”
I turned around and found a young Negro boy, no more than eleven or twelve years old, looking steamed.
“That was a joke!” he s
aid.
“Huh?”
“That fight. Pappy got sucker-punched.”
I stopped, smiled, and indulged him. “What makes you say that?”
“I’m a boxer. I know a dirty move when I see one.”
“What makes you think I know the champ?” I asked.
He motioned to my threads. “Pfffft . . . You’re wearing the nicest suit here!” The kid had me there. After all, we were in the Appalachian state and there were overalls as far as the eye could see.
He went on. “Plus . . .”
“Plus?” I was wondering what he meant.
“Plus you were sitting next to nicest-looking lady in the room.” He giggled. “She ain’t from ’round these parts.”
That was true. She had all her teeth.
“So you came to see Rattlesnake, huh?”
He nodded. “I’m here with some other boys from my gym. Drove out special. Very disappointed, sir.”
What’s the saying? Out of the mouths of babes . . .
“Oh yeah?” I replied. “What’s your name?”
He extended his hand. “Clay. Cassius Marcellus Clay. Pleased to meet you.”
I shook his strong little hand. “You’ll know my name, someday, sir . . .”
I fake punched his chest, which was flatter than warm soda. “I bet I will, kid.”
After such a disastrous night, I walked out of the hall hoping the boy’s dream would come to fruition. The sport needed a real champ. A new legend.
All throughout the trip, I kept thinking I could somehow fix the tour. However, we’d reached a point where if it slipped even one more stich the whole movie deal would unravel — and no movie meant I’d be back to pushing pencils to scrub reporters on an overnight copy desk. I’d be just another front page palooka.
That wasn’t gonna to happen.
The next morning, I heard the Moonshiner was going to pull through. At least that’s what the shoeshine told me at the flophouse, but the morning edition also confirmed it. They reported the champ’s victim — and there was no doubt the Moonshiner had been a victim — had almost died due to a blockage of his airway and a crushed larynx. I threw the paper down in disgust.
It was time to get a little honest with Dillian. I was hoping she’d reciprocate. Quite frankly, I’d had enough. She and Grenade were going to hear this kind of fighting had to stop or I was out.
* * *
The road can be disorienting. I woke up from a deep snore and didn’t know where we were. The landscape told me it was somewhere between the land of cotton and deep Appalachia, but who cared? From the back of the stitched-together bus, it was starting to look all the same.
Maybe I should have stayed behind on the Pinnacle lot to write the cock-and-bull story everyone wanted to see. That way air-conditioning, a steady supply of whiskey, and a comfortable bed wouldn’t be just a distant memory.
I mosied up a few rows to Dillian, plopping down on the seat next to her. She was going over our itinerary for the next few weeks as she sipped from a mason jar of plantation rum.
She offered some my way and I swigged sloppily. “This needs Pepsi,” I joked. “Dunno how anyone drinks this sweet stuff.” I fake spit it out.
“Not a fan?” she asked.
“Sweetie, I wouldn’t be a fan if I were a pirate and this was the last hooch in Never Never Land.”
She raised the jar and said, “Good. More for me.”
I looked out the window, listening to Popcorn’s transistor a few rows back, while the good-looking press agent got a tad looped.
An hour passed and she was resting her head on my shoulder. We began to chat about the next few stops on our tour which included Atlanta, Delaware and Philly.
My plan, however, was to fix our otherwise ill-fated jaunt with an unscheduled stop in Chicago. This camp needed to convey some serious goodwill. I explained to Dillion I was going to deliver it in the form of Our Lady of the Glass Jaw.
“What’s that?” she asked, going back to her rum jar, forgetting it was empty. She gave me a cute grumpy frown.
I shrugged and gestured at the jar. “Don’t look at me. That was all you.”
We got back to business. “So what’s Our Lady of the Glass Jaw?”
“Its biblical name is Saint Vincent’s Asylum for Boys,” I answered. “An orphanage and church in the Windy City.”
“What’s it have to do with us?”
I chuckled. “Baby, it’s our salvation.”
Dillian wanted to hear more. I went on to explain the joint was run by Father Tim, a tough bugger who had been a Golden Gloves champ in his day, fighting as “Tornado” Tim Brophy.
“Once he took up the Good Book, he became a mainstay at the orphanage, where he’s taught many a boy to be a man through the righteousness of the ring,” I said.
Dillian was rightly confused. “Whoa, wait. What’s a Jersey boy like you have to do with an orphanage all the way in Chi-Town?”
I motioned for her to wait a moment, stood up, and rummaged through my leather overnight bag located underneath a seat a few rows up. My father always told me to have a backup flask if you were unsure of where you’d be for over 24 hours. I’d say this counted.
“Cheers,” I said, handing her the flask. I plopped back in my squeaky seat, sipped and said, “What’s a Jersey boy like me have to do with an orphanage all the way in Chi-Town?”
She nodded.
“A very perceptive question.”
I explained to Dillian that, like every other immigrant family, we were just as penniless when we passed through the gates at Ellis Island. My parents were almost kids themselves and had four little ones to feed.
“Oh no . . .” Dillian said, comforting me. “Did they put you in an orphanage?”
I laughed. “That’s not it. Can I just tell the story?”
She motioned to continue. I told her my father’s brother was already stateside with his own family and had called for my father to join him in Chicago. Back then, Uncle Nunzi ran rum for an operation owned by a fella in cahoots with a small-time bootlegger. One thing led to another and Nunzi found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.
“The situation was practically a cliché,” I said. “These days, Uncle Nunzi would be portrayed as the sap in a double feature gangster flick — the one that gets shot just for driving a truck.”
“So, Nunzi was hijacked?” she asked.
I nodded and told Dillian that he died a few days later. It didn’t take long for my mother to insist we move some place where Tommy guns weren’t heard every 15 minutes in the distance, but my pop refused.
“We guineas have a lot of pride. My father wasn’t about to leave his sister-in-law or her kids behind. But . . .”
Dillian raised her eyebrows. “But . . .”
I sighed deeply. “No one anticipated Aunt Philomena would catch tuberculosis. They called it consumption back then.”
“This story just gets better and better.” She took some more sips. “What about Uncle Nunzi’s family?”
I shook my head and was quiet a moment. “My father was kidding himself. He could barely take care of four kids and a wife much less three more.”
Father Tim took in my cousin, Pete Moretti. His two sisters, Theresa and Michela, wound up across town at Sacred Heart for Wayward Girls.
“Tim taught Pete the sweet science and for a small moment, Pete looked like he was going to become someone.”
Dillian now knew why I brought Chicago up and her eyes said, “Ah-ha . . .”
I tried to be as earnest as possible. “Dillian, stopping in Chicago at the orphanage would not only help the champ’s image, but maybe give hope to my cousin.”
“Hope? How?”
“He’s a trainer now. Runs his own gym. I figure, he may have some stand-up prospects for us.”
The slick PR gal once again emerged.
“Nick, we don’t need any more flies in the ointment right now,” she said with a tone suggesting she wa
s still fiercely protective of Rattlesnake.
“Flies in the ointment? You mean an honest fighter . . .”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shot her a look that said I knew otherwise. “Sugar plum, let’s get something straight,” I said. “Night after night, I’m watching guys get the ever-loving snot beat out of them and it ain’t because your boy is fighting on the up and up.”
She ordered me to keep my voice down.
“Why should I? Half the press already knows. I’m just trying to figure out if this camp is delusional or actually endorses it.”
“Yes, Nick, we’re well aware Jericho is not the most popular guy in the room.”
“That’s because killing people in dark alleyways has a tendency to wreak havoc on a reputation.”
It was obvious our voices were carrying through the bus. I noticed a few members of the camp shifting in their sleep.
It was time to do one better.
“Hey, driver!” I shouted. “Stop the bus! It’s time to get off!”
I grabbed my bag, threw my sportcoat over my shoulder and said, “This is my stop, Turtledove . . .”
That was the bait. It was up to them to take it.
ROUND TEN
I watched the taillights of the bus fade into the horizon. The open highway looked like a long, black velvet drape and I just sighed. It was muggy and dusty, and I was literally in the middle of who knew where? Yawning, I mock exercised my thumb since it would ultimately get me to where I needed to be.
About an hour later, a trucker who needed company picked me up. His name was Sam and his game was used tires. A bit chatty for my taste, but then again who could blame him? Staring at the parallel lines of the open highway would also make me batty with double vision. To him, I probably looked like a ripe peach in a yellow summer dress. Sam asked where I was headed. I explained I was looking to get a beer and a bed, specifically in that order. He suggested a place about 45 minutes away.
Front Page Palooka: A Nick Moretti Mystery Page 7
