Casino Moon

by Peter Blauner

  55

  “SO I HEAR THAT kid’s been calling you ‘old man’ again. That’s beautiful.”

  P.F. was in the dressing room a half hour before the fight, watching Elijah trying to tie his sneakers.

  “Who this?” said Elijah, missing the loop on the right lace a third time.

  “The kid you’re fighting tonight. Terrence. He said, ‘Old man oughta go back to the old man home.’ I heard it on TV.”

  “Oh.” Elijah missed the loop a fourth time. “Perhaps tonight I ask him to call me by my proper name.”

  He went to work on the left lace. Pathetic. The man couldn’t tie his own shoes and he was going to fight a kid half his age and twice his strength. P.F. wondered if he’d let someone beat his brains out for a million dollars. But then again, he’d sold his soul to Teddy for a couple of TV sets, so who was he to judge?

  Eventually Elijah’s cut man Victor Perez came over to help him lace up his shoes.

  “You know, I ain’t fightin’ this fight for respect anyway,” said Elijah in an already haggard voice.

  “Oh no?” P.F. fixed the special security badge on the left side of his blue Doubloon windbreaker.

  “That’s right. From now on, I fight for one reason and one reason only, M-O-N-E-Y.”

  The dressing room had plain white walls and a red carpet with bits of brown woven into it. Terrence Mulvehill’s ancient white trainer Ben E. Schulman came by to watch Elijah get his hands wrapped. A young man from the cable TV outfit hugged a clipboard and took deep breaths. Two other guards stood near the door, regarding the scene reverently.

  A waitress came in with a bucket of ice water and then left. Elijah muttered something to the guards about not wanting to see any more women between now and the time the fight started.

  “I gotta get the meanness started inside me,” he explained. “I can’t do it if I see women around.”

  The young man from the cable network got on his mobile phone and began whispering nervously.

  “You know in Vegas they’re taking odds on what round you’ll get knocked out,” P.F. said.

  “Yeah?” Elijah lay on his stomach to get a back rub. “And what kinda odds are they gettin’?”

  “Five to one that you’ll fall in the first round.”

  Elijah smiled.

  Victor the cut man slathered him with baby oil and began pulling his shoulders like they were lumps of soggy clay.

  “Yes, sir,” said Elijah. “I only got one rule anymore: Be comfortable.”

  “If you say so.” P.F. held up his palms.

  The sound of the crowd cheering one of the preliminary bouts bled through the walls. It sounded like a nation entombed.

  “How you fixed, man?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m asking where you got your money.”

  P.F. looked at him blankly. “I dunno, in a bank.”

  Elijah shook his head. “Somebody oughta take you aside, talk to you, man. You gotta get yourself into some triple tax frees and mutual funds. Can’t just leave your money in some insured money market. You gotta make it work for you.”

  P.F. wondered why Elijah seemed so comfortable here, talking to him like they were old friends. Maybe it was just a way of loosening up before the fight. In any case, it wasn’t bad advice, especially coming from a man who was supposedly punch-drunk.

  “You know what the secret is?” Elijah stood up and began to shadowbox. He wore just a pair of socks and a black protective cup over his genitals. “You never put all your assets in one place. I remember when I was just a child I used to hide my money in the flowerpot. Now I don’t put all my money in one bank. I don’t put all my money in two banks. I don’t put all my money nowhere. If the bank falls down today and takes everything I have in there, I still will be able to survive. Because I got...” It took him an eternity to settle on a word. “Reserves,” he said finally. “I got hidden reserves. Ain’t nobody knows about ’em.”

  He threw a right cross at the mirror on the wall. For a moment P.F. thought he’d actually break the glass and bloody his knuckles. He missed contact by less than half an inch.

  “Yup, that’s the only reason to do anything,” he said. “For the C-A-S-H.”

  Pigfucker just looked at him.

  “What? You still think I gotta do this shit for my self-respect?”

  P.F. didn’t answer.

  “Man, fuck that.” Elijah threw a hard left jab that jerked a muscle in his shoulder. “I don’t have to do this to live. I’m forty-three years old, man. I already been the champion twice. I defended my title six times. I don’t need to come out of retirement to earn my self-esteem.”

  Elijah scowled at the mirror and saw P.F. watching him from behind.

  “I don’t wake up in the middle of the night worrying,” Elijah said, feinting with his left and throwing a stiff right at the mirror. “I got a beautiful wife, a beautiful son, three beautiful grandchildren. I’m proud. I started with nothing. I grew up in a shack out in the Inlet and I became middleweight champion of the whole wide world.”

  The room was completely silent.

  “I ain’t got nothin’ to be ashamed of,” Elijah said, firing two more furious punches at his reflection. “Just because some punk hit me with a lucky shot when I wasn’t ready and I hadn’t trained. That may be how some other people remember me. It ain’t how I remember myself.”

  P.F. finally looked away as Elijah stopped throwing punches. He’d heard more convincing declarations, from swindlers and con artists in the back of the squad car.

  Dr. Park, the boxing federation’s physician, came into the room smoking a cigarette. A rail-thin Korean man in a navypinstripe suit. Anthony Russo followed him in, wearing a dark suit and a B.U.M. sweatshirt. He seemed nervous and unsure where to put his eyes.

  There was still something about the kid that made P.F. profoundly uneasy. Maybe it was just their common history with Teddy and Mike.

  Dr. Park was shining a light in Elijah’s eyes. P.F. thought he saw the pupils respond a fraction of a second too slowly to its movement.

  “How you feeling?” the doctor asked.

  “Like I could dance all night.”

  The doctor stepped away and Anthony moved in front of the fighter. Clicking his heel on the carpet and jiggling his knee. He was like a raw nerve in a good suit. You would’ve thought he was the one about to get in the ring. P.F. rubbed his eyes and swallowed a Tums.

  “Look,” said Anthony in a bitten-off voice. “I don’t have to tell you your business. You’ve been in the fight game a lot longer than I have.”

  Elijah made a low virile sound, but he wasn’t looking at Anthony. He was staring at some distant spot, miles past his shoulder.

  “I’m not asking you to lay down your life tonight,” Anthony said. “I’m not asking you to risk permanent injury. All I ask is that you fight like a man among men.”

  A man among men. He said it with such great feeling that Elijah’s eyes flicked over and locked on to his.

  “That’s all I ever done,” he told Anthony.

  Anthony shook Elijah’s wrapped right hand, made a note in his Filofax, and walked out of the room with the doctor.

  “Hurt my hands.” Elijah stared down at his fingers. “Every man comes in, thinks he has to show how strong he is by giving them a squeeze as hard as he can. They don’t know this is delicate instruments.”

  “He’s just scared, that’s all,” said P.F.

  “Scared, huh?” Elijah began dancing in place. “You know, I used to be scared too. Scared of dying.”

  “Yeah, so what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I got over it.”

  He threw an abrupt head fake as though an opponent had suddenly materialized before him. “Only thing that scares me now is not knowing how it gonna turn out,” said Elijah.

  John B. returned from the other dressing room, where he’d been watching Terrence Mulvehill get his hands taped.

  “Punched a hole in the w
all,” he told his brother. “He just reached out and punched a hole in the wall. You can see the lights from Pacific Avenue in his dressing room.”

  “He punch through the concrete or plaster?” Elijah wanted to know.

  “I think it was plaster.”

  Elijah looked slightly disappointed and went back to dancing. There was less than fifteen minutes until the fight began. Elijah hopped back up on the training table and John B. began rubbing his shoulders.

  “The Lord have a way,” John was saying. “The Lord will find a way.”

  The smell of liniment oils and leather gloves began to fill the air. Elijah wasn’t talking or moving. He bowed his head as if reaching down deep inside himself.

  And from then until the moment the opening bell rang, P.F. only heard him say five more words.

  “We can never really know.”

  56

  TEDDY AND JOEY SNAILS were in the stash house apartment in Marvin Gardens, trying to get ready for their guest.

  “I was going to buy almonds,” said Joey, putting on his red-and-blue Gore-Tex windbreaker. “You want anything else from the store?”

  Teddy was lying on the black leather couch, still exhausted from his dialysis. He slowly raised his eyes. All six of the stolen digital clocks in the room said it was 9:53.

  “Does he eat almonds?” he asked.

  “Last time he was over my house, he ate the whole bowl,” said Joey.

  “That’s funny,” said Teddy. “Whole time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him eat almonds. Forty-five years. It’s unbelievable. You can know somebody and not know them at all.”

  He raised his head and looked around the apartment. The bar was crowded with untaxed bottles of Chivas Regal and Canadian Club, but he couldn’t drink any of them. He didn’t even have the strength to move the swag and stolen carpets in the next room to the car downstairs.

  Joey looked at him with vacant eyes and a slack jaw. “What else you want me to get?”

  “Get me some fruit,” said Teddy, clutching his side as his eyes glistened. “Where you got that gun anyway?”

  “In the bathroom. Where I always keep it.”

  “That the one you’re gonna use?”

  “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

  “Just don’t fuck around. He carries one in his waistband.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Joey, grabbing the doorknob. “I ain’t gonna shoot the place up.”

  “That ain’t what I’m concerned about,” said Teddy. “You aren’t careful, you’ll get us both shot. He’s a tough old man. I know him.”

  “Yeah, I know him too.”

  “Where’s Richie?”

  “He said he’d stop by later.”

  “Tell him to hurry. We ain’t gonna be here all night.”

  Joey sucked his cheeks in concentration. “Maybe I’ll pick up some chink food while I’m out. I ain’t had any dinner.”

  “Yeah,” said Teddy, “and don’t get too many of them almonds. They’re hard on my stomach the way it is.”

  57

  IT WAS HOPELESS, I thought as I walked through the tunnel under the stands. Elijah was too old, too slow, and too sad to keep up with Terrence. My only solace was that Teddy would probably have me killed before I’d have to watch Elijah carted off to a home for the mentally disabled.

  Just then, Rosemary came tottering toward me on high heels, wearing a tight red sequined outfit with bird feathers on her butt and holding a huge plumed headdress. I’d gotten her a job as one of the round-card girls as a show of good faith that I’d pay her the money she was owed. But here she was with one of those four-alarm-chili, boiling-mad looks on her face.

  “I have had it with you. Understand? I have had it.”

  “Why, wha, what’s the matter?”

  She pulled on her tail feathers like they were itching her. “It’s bad enough I have your father abusing me in my own dressing room, but now I have to deal with your wife?!!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “she had a gun in her bag! She was like Al Capone! She was going to blow my head off!”

  I looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Just put on your fuckin’ bird outfit and start acting normal. I don’t have time for this.”

  I heard the swelling murmur of the crowd above us. Elijah would be coming out of his dressing room at any moment.

  “I don’t have time either.” Rosemary clutched at the zircon necklace around her throat. “After tonight, I never want to see you again.”

  “Very nice,” I said. “After I went and got you this job tonight, so you could be a star.”

  “A star?” She looked like she was about to throw the plumed headdress at me. “Anthony, stars do not walk around in fishnets carrying numbers. Just give me the money you owe me and let’s forget about the rest of it.”

  “All right, all right. Meet me in the parking garage after the fight. Section E 16. One o’clock. I’ll give you the whole breakdown.”

  Though I didn’t know how I’d tell her that Frank had rooked me out of the full amount. I’d already turned over two hundred forty thousand dollars’ worth of chips to John B. The other sixty thousand were in the hotel safe.

  “You better have the whole breakdown.” Rosemary started to walk away from me, going out the exit into the main arena. “Or else.”

  “Or else what?” I ran after her.

  “Or else...”

  The rest of the sentence was lost in the crowd noise, as I followed her down the aisle toward the ring. We were in the lion’s den, surrounded by fifteen thousand people, twenty-five tons of jewelry, and a small river’s worth of cold sweat and adrenaline. A bank of colored lights was suspended over the ring. Various television cameras and news photographers jockeyed for position along the periphery.

  I turned and saw Elijah and his entourage coming down the aisle from the dressing rooms, hands on each other’s shoulders, like the world’s most macho conga line.

  Over the P.A. system, they were playing his theme song, the Commodores’ “Brick House.” The crowd cheered like they were greeting an old friend. Elijah climbed through the ropes and began sauntering around the ring with that drunken sailor gait he had. His blue-and-white robe looked like a cardigan somebody’s uncle would wear. I began to worry about him all over again.

  The worry turned into a snake in my guts when Terrence didn’t show up for another five minutes. It was clearly part of some psych-out game meant to tax Elijah’s patience and concentration.

  But instead of just standing there dull-eyed and slack-jawed, letting it get to him, Elijah turned the whole thing around. He began working the crowd like an old revival-show preacher. He looked at his wrist like he had a watch on. The crowd laughed and clapped appreciatively. Then he tapped his foot. When that didn’t produce Terrence, he grabbed the American flag off one of the ring posts and started waving it around in his gloves.

  The place went nuts. By the time Terrence finally made it into the ring, skipping around and forcing his seconds to chase him to get his robe off, the crowd was a hundred and ten percent against him. Boos rained down like a pestilence. I still had this awful feeling, though, almost a premonition about what was going to happen.

  I looked up toward the mezzanine section and thought I saw Tommy Sick standing there by the railing, wearing a red shirt, red pants, and a blue blazer. I remembered Tommy once telling a story about shoving a gerbil up the ass of a guy who owed Teddy money, all the time laughing and shrugging: “What can I tell you? I’m sick!”

  There was no two ways about it—there was barely even one way. I needed to have Elijah go the distance. If he didn’t, my life was over. They’d be hanging parts of me from the telephone lines on Florida Avenue and feeding the rest to a gerbil. My future was riding on every punch.

  The Marine color guard came into the ring to hold up the flag while some girl group from Terrence’s old neighborhood in the Bronx lip-synched the national anthem. I stood and sang every word w
ith my hand over my heart. The land of the free and the home of the brave. But I still wasn’t sure if being brave was what set you free.

  The referee called the fighters to the center of the ring to give them their final instructions. Elijah had this soft half-smile on his face and his eyes were shining like buffed marbles. Goddamn it, I thought as I climbed the steps into his corner. They must’ve given him painkillers in the dressing room. The fighters touched gloves and went back to their corners. The bell rang.

  Terrence moved out first. He was all spring in the legs and coiled strength in the arms. Elijah plodded out after him, his stomach jiggling like pudding. They met in the middle and Terrence snapped my guy’s head back with a jab like a cobra out of wicker basket.

  “STICK AND MOVE, CHAMP!” I heard John B. shouting, “STICK AND MOVE!”

  But Elijah just kept lumbering in a lazy circle, his right leg dragging behind him as if it was caught in a bear trap. Terrence was prancing from foot to foot, rocking his shoulders, bobbing his head. Like he couldn’t wait to get this over with so he could go chase girls at a disco. He lunged forward and hit Elijah again with a right like an M-80 rocket. Elijah fell back a few steps and I saw his mouthpiece turn sideways. My jaw ached, like I’d been punched too.

  “YOU GOT ’IM NOW, CHAMP!” John B. yelled. “YOU GOT HIM ON THE RUN!”

  Terrence planted his feet and hit Elijah with a left cross that sent him spinning into the corner diagonally across from us. Oh shit, I thought. Here’s where the beating begins. Terrence chased after him and for a few seconds all I could see were his shoulders and elbows, pumping like a couple of pistons. The crowd kept going “ooooh” and “aaah” like they were taking the shots with Elijah.

  But when Terrence moved to the side a little, Elijah didn’t look that shaken. He must’ve been blocking more of the punches than I thought. Terrence was breathing just a bit harder as he danced back to the center of the ring.

  Elijah moved after him slowly and reluctantly, like an old groundhog being forced out of his cave. Terrence lunged at him again, ready to throw the left jab. But this time Elijah grabbed him with both arms and pulled him close, like a father grabbing an unruly son. Terrence squirmed and tried to get out of the clinch, but Elijah had him in a headlock. The crowd began to boo. They’d been spoiled by all the action so far. Finally, the referee pulled them apart, giving Elijah some extra warning about holding on to the back of the younger guy’s head.