A Cool Breeze on the Underground (11 page)

11

“I really don’t want to be doing this,” Neal said to Graham. Neal was seventeen and there were a whole lot of things he really didn’t want to be doing. Lacing on boxing gloves in a stinking old gym off Times Square headed the list at the moment, however.

“I don’t blame you,” Graham answered, “but it’s either this or that kung fooey crap Levine does.”

The gym was on the second floor of a decrepit building off Forty-fourth Street and smelled like the inside of a jockstrap that had been left in the laundry bag about a month. Neal took another look around the room, where a dozen or so honest-to-God boxers banged on speed bags, heavy bags, and each other. Another guy was jumping rope, an activity that looked a little more appealing.

“Why,” Neal asked, “do I have to learn to fight at all?”

“Company rule.”

“It’s stupid.”

The guy lacing up his gloves looked as if he had stepped out of a casting call for
Darby O‘Gill and the Little People.
He kneeled in front of Neal’s stool and blew cigarette smoke in the kid’s face.

“It’s the manly art,” Mick croaked, pulling the laces a little tighter for emphasis.

“I never been in a fight yet they stopped to put gloves on,” Graham responded.

“You hang around a scummy class of people. Okay, kid, on your feet.”

Neal stood up. He banged his gloves together as he’d seen them do on television. The hollow
thwump was
reassuring.

“Take a poke,” Mick offered.

“You don’t have gloves on.”

This amused Mick. He snorted and it sounded like an old steam engine going to its last reward. “You ain’t gonna hit me.”

“He’s probably right,” Graham said.

Neal launched a tentative right that looked like it had all the lethal menace of a kitten swatting at a Christmas-tree bulb.

Mick leaned away from the punch and shot a center-right jab that ended a quarter inch from Neal’s nose. “Keep your left up,” he said with a measure of disgust. “Ain’t you never fought nobody?”

“I run away.”

“Yeah, I knew fighters like that. But the old squared circle gets smaller in the late rounds.”

“Squared circle?”

“Can’t stay on the bicycle all night.”

“That’s why I take the subway,” Neal said.

“We’re gonna have to start from scratch.” Mick sighed.

So they started from scratch. Three times a week, after school, Neal reported to the gym to study boxing under the tutelage of Mick, pugilist. He learned to keep his left up, to pop his jab, to counter hooks with straight rights, and to keep his mouth shut and his chin tucked in. He learned to do push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups. He hated all of it.

After three months of this, Mick decided he was ready to spar with a live boxer.

The great event took place on a Saturday morning and Joe Graham and Ed Levine came to watch. Levine wanted to check on Neal’s progress. Graham averred that anytime there was a chance of Neal getting punched, he was going to be there to enjoy it.

The sparring partner was a young man named Terry McCorkandale. He was from Oklahoma, had a red crew cut, and looked like his mother had conceived him with her first cousin. He was a sparring partner of another pro, who was a sparring partner of a ranked contender.

This record gave Neal some comfort. True, the guy was a pro, but just barely, judging by his record. Besides which, Neal was feeling pretty good about his training. He was no boxer, he knew, but he could hold his own. He stepped into the ring, shook hands with McCorkandale, and flashed a quick smile at Levine and Graham. Then he assumed his defensive stance and shot out a crisp left jab.

He woke up hearing McCorkandale pleading defensively, “I just tapped him. Honest.”

“Glass jaw?” Mick asked Graham.

“Glass brain,” Graham answered.

“What day is it?” Mick asked Neal.

“January.”

“Close enough,” Levine said. “Let’s try it again.”

Neal was on his feet but not quite sure how he had gotten there. He knew he had been humiliated, but he didn’t mind that as much as he did the physical pain. McCorkandale was smiling at him apologetically.

Mick whispered in his ear, “Lucky punch, kid. Go get him.”

Neal had an album of the
1812
Overture at home, and the next three minutes were like living inside the drum section, The Tulsa Terror rattled on him like a snare drum, beat a few timpani shots, and thumped a couple of bass drumbeats before Neal could move his hands. He could not have been more helpless if he had been tied up in telephone wire. He was only grateful this guy wasn’t really trying.

“Interesting strategy,” Levine observed to Graham, “wearing the guy out like that.”

“That Neal’s a terror.”

Neal the Terror did what he could. He started to laugh. It was funny to him now that every time he attempted a punch or a parry, he got hit with three shots, so he covered up the best he could and got pounded on. And giggled.

“I gotta stop this,” Mick said.

“He’s not hurting him,” Ed said.

“This kid’s gotta fight tonight. He won’t be able to lift his arms.”

“So?” Levine asked Mick while Neal was in the shower.

“He’s hopeless,” Mick wheezed. “The worst I ever seen.”

“Yeah, okay. No more lessons.”

“Aw, thank God, Ed. I ain’t got the heart. What that kid does to the Sweet Science shouldn’t be done.”

“You want a milk shake?”

“I can eat solid food. I want a cheeseburger.”

Neal and Graham were at the Burger Joint, of course, after the big match. Neal’s jaw was a little puffy and he had a black eye.

“That was fun, Neal. I enjoyed that. Thanks for the afternoon.”

“That makes it all worth it, Graham.”

“You did pretty good. I think your ribs bruised his hand once.”

“I had him right where I wanted him. Another ten minutes, he would have dropped,” Neal checked his face in the mirror on the side wall. “Carol’s not going to like this.”

“Are you kidding? Women love that stuff. If you had a broken nose, she’d propose to you.”

“I need an iced coffee.”

“For your face?”

“It does kind of hurt.”

Neal took small bites of his burger. The iced coffee came and Neal alternately sipped at it and held it against his jaw. He felt really tired all of a sudden.

“Forget about it. Guy was a pro.”

Neal shook his head. “That’s not it. I don’t know what to tell Carol. Her parents.”

“She doesn’t know what you do?”

“Get real.”

“We’re not the what-do-you-call-it, the CIA, son. You can tell her.”

“If I tell
what I
do, I’d have to tell her how I got doing what I do.”

“So?”

“So she’ll split. And if she doesn’t, her parents will make her split.”

“You got quite a problem there, son—”

“Tell me about it.”

“With your head.”

Graham tossed a five on the table, chucked Neal under the chin, and left. Neal sat there for a while and then went home to get ready for his date.

So a couple of dates later, Neal told Carol all about himself. About never knowing who his father was, about his junkie mom and what she did for a living. About how she’d disappeared and he lived on his own. And he told her he did some work on the side for sort of a detective agency, but how that wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to be a professor.

And she hugged him and kissed him and he took her back to his place and they made love and it was all wonderful and they talked about going to college together and always being there for each other.

A week later, Carol’s dad took him aside when he went to pick her up. Mr. Metzger led him into the study. Carol had told them about Neal’s life and both he and Carol’s mother didn’t think that she was ready for quite such an exposure to the real world just yet. Certainly Neal could understand, and they could still be friends in school.

Neal and Carol snuck around for a while. She would tell her parents lies and get a friend to cover for her, and sometimes she would even spend the night at Neal’s. At first, it was exciting and romantic, but then it got to be just tiring and sad, and Neal figured that he did enough sneaking around in his life. He should be able to love in the open. So after a while, they became just friends, and then not even that.

One night over a late dinner, Neal told Graham the story and capped it off with his mature judgment.

“You can’t trust anyone, Dad.”

“That’s not true, son. You can trust me.”

12

Neal came back from Connecticut to an empty apartment. It didn’t surprise him, even though Diane had been sleeping there more nights than not lately.

They’d had one of those quick but wicked fights the morning he’d left to meet Graham at the train. She couldn’t understand that anything could be so urgent that he had to miss an exam, or that anything could be so confidential that he couldn’t tell her where he was going or what he was doing. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t understand it, either, but the rules told him to keep his mouth shut.

“Am I allowed to know how long you’ll be gone?” she’d asked.

“I’d tell you if I knew.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“How’s the studying going?”

“Great.”

He didn’t doubt it. He knew Diane was smarter than he was and worked harder to boot. She was the star of every class and seminar, and so insecure, she was the only one who didn’t see that.

They’d met in Boskin’s Eighteenth-Century Comparative Lit seminar just a few weeks after the Halperin job. He’d been reading and drinking, more drinking than reading, when they managed to contrive a conversation in the hall. He took her to coffee and she took him to bed, explaining somewhere in there that she had time for a relationship but not for a courtship. He found that the pageboy cut of her dark brown hair and the hats and vests and baggy clothes she wore disguised a quite feminine body. She made love like she studied, with a fierce concentration and attention to detail, and she slept right through the nightmares he was having in those days.

So now, he called her room at Barnard. She answered on the fourth ring.

“Yeah?”

“Hi.”

“You missed a hell of an exam.”

Might as well get this over with.

“I have to go away for a while.”

He could feel her anger over the phone.

“More secret guy-type stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“I sleep with you, you know?”

“I know.”

“So when do I get to know you? When do I see the other half? What’s so bad? What’s so special about
your
secrets?” she asked, then added with a small chuckle, “Hey, Neal, you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

His chest felt tight. It hurt. “If I show you that stuff, you’ll leave me.”

“If you
don’t show
me that stuff, I’ll leave you.” It hurt a lot more. He didn’t have anything to say. “Besides,” said Diane, “I’m not leaving you, you’re leaving me.”

“Can I come over?”

“All of you or part of you?”

Part of me, and fuck you.

“I guess I’ll see you when I get back,” he said.

“Maybe.”

She hung up.

Good going, Neal, he thought. Well, probably for the best, anyway. You’ve raised self-pity to an art form; this will give you a chance to create another masterpiece.

He checked the clock. It was 11:30. He dialed Levine at home.

“Hi. I hope I woke you up.”

“Not exactly.”

“And you answered the phone? How is the little woman? On top of things?”

“What do you want?”

“I’ll need a safe house.”

“What’s wrong with a hotel?”

“It has other guests. I’ll need a safe house.”

Neal could hear Janet’s voice in the background. A fine whine that had improved with age.

“I’ll work on it,” Ed said. “What else?” “Cash.”

“Keep accounts.”

“When Allie ran away before, did
you
pick her up?”

The pause was just a shade too long. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Nice try, you lying sack of shit.

“Nothing. Listen, go back to what you were doing.”

Levine slammed the receiver down.

How come everyone’s hanging up on me tonight?

He dialed Graham.

“Dad!”

“Son…”

“Find anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“How about in Ed’s desk?”

“Zip. If we ever dealt with Allie Chase, there’s nothing there to show it.”

“Well … thanks for the effort.”

“Always a pleasure. When do you take off?”

“Tomorrow. Next day. I’m waiting on some stuff from Ed.”

“Mind if I go back to bed?”

“Sweet dreams.” He hung up quickly, just to break the pattern.

Neal rooted around the refrigerator until he found a beer hiding in the back. He popped it open and drained about half of it in the first swallow. Maybe if he just showed up at Diane’s, displayed his sweet, sad face, she’d take him in. Probably not. He finished his beer and went to bed.

The phone woke him early.

“Wake up, fuckhead,” Levine said.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing,” Ed said. Then he hung up.

The doorbell rang about noon. Neal was making coffee, strong, black hangover coffee. The kind of coffee meant to bring life back to your fingertips. He wasn’t thrilled to hear the doorbell. Maybe it was Diane, but probably it wasn’t. He thought about ignoring it, until it went off again, machine-gun-style, as if somebody was leaning on the button.

Joe Graham was leaning on the button.

“Wakey, wakey,” he said when Neal opened the door. He didn’t wait to be asked in, but walked past Neal, sniffed the coffee, and grabbed a cup out of the cupboard. He examined it carefully. “Is this clean?”

“I washed it personally.”

“I’ll take a chance.”

He poured himself a cup, found milk and sugar, and poured in a healthy measure of each. Then he poured another cup—black, no sugar—and set it down on the counter. He lifted his own cup in a toast. “Bon voyage.”

“You know something I don’t?”

Neal took a sip of the coffee and believed once again in the possibility of a supreme, merciful God.

“I know a lot you don’t know, son, about everything, but I also know that you’re leaving tonight at eight o’clock,” Graham said. He took a ticket packet from his jacket pocket and tossed it to Neal. “I know that some guy named Simon Keyes—are you ready for this? he’s a safari guide—will meet you at the airport. He’s going to be gone most of the summer. You can use his apartment to detox the kid.”

“A safari guide?
This is getting bizarre, Graham.”

Neal started on his second cup.

“He safari guided The Man once. Friend of the family, so to speak. Guess what else I know.”

“Decency doesn’t allow—”

“You’re supposed to have the kid back by August first.”

“Any particular time?”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously.”

Graham ground his rubber hand into his natural one, the way he always did when he was worried. “This coffee isn’t too horrible. I’m surprised. They also don’t want her back much
before
August first.”

“Children should be seen and not heard?”

“Something like that.”

Yeah, something like that, Neal thought. John Chase is walking a narrow line, and he thinks he’s the only one who knows it. He wants Allie back just long enough to play her role in “The

Waltons Go to Washington,” not long enough to sing “Daddy’s Little Girl.” He must want to be Veep pretty badly to take that kind of risk.

“Today is what, May twenty-eighth?”

“Twenty-ninth.”

“Twenty-ninth. That gives me something like nine weeks to find her, get hold of her, fix her up, and persuade her to come back, and these people want it brought in on the button? Gee, what if I can’t?”

The rubber hand was really busy now, rubbing away. Graham didn’t like this thing, either.

“If you can’t bring her in on the date … forget it,” he said.

“Forget it?”

Graham shrugged. It was an eloquent gesture, the answer to a Zen koan.

“Yeah, okay,” Neal said. “I get it.”

Allie is useful for a few days if it’s the right few days. Otherwise, leave her where she is.

“Smells, right?” Graham said, rubbing a sheen onto the rubber hand.

“Like a garbage strike in July.”

“Right?”

Graham poured another cup. Neal saw he wasn’t finished with the news.

“What else do you know?” Neal asked.

“Your graduass-school thing. You can pick it up again.” Graham stirred the sugar in with great care. “Next fall.”

Could be worse, Neal thought. They could have just tossed me out. But the rubber hand was turning again. There was more, and he knew what it was.

“
If
I bring Allie back by August first.”

Graham frowned and nodded.

The sound of one hand clapping.