MRS. CAMILLE MARINO
was having another one of those dreams—the kind in which she was a Miss America contestant and her late son, Charlie, was the pageant host. She was about to kiss his cheek and accept the crown, when a voice from above asked where her husband was.
She opened her eyes slowly and saw a tall, square-headed F.B.I. agent kneeling at her bedside with a gun in his hand. He put a finger up to his mustache and indicated that he wanted her to be quiet. At least six other agents were standing by the open bedroom window with their guns drawn. Curtains flapped in the breeze.
“Just tell us where to find your husband, Mrs. Marino, and no one in your family will get hurt,” said the agent beside her bed.
Camille tried to speak, but no sound left her throat. A scream was stuck in her chest. At this ungodly hour, she didn’t know if she was more traumatized by the agents breaking into her house or losing Charlie again in the dream.
“Come on, Sadowsky, we got him!” called a voice from the other room.
All the agents went rushing into Teddy’s adjoining bedroom. Camille struggled to her feet, found her pink robe and fuzzy slippers, and went in after them. Teddy was down on his knees at the foot of his sofa bed with his hands behind his head. He wore only a striped nightshirt, exposing his big white butt.
“What are you waiting for?” he snarled at Camille. “Call Burt Ryan.”
She saw by the digital clock at his bedside that it was a quarter to six in the morning.
Kathy walked into the bedroom hanging on the arm of a muscular agent, like a lovesick teenager. She had no idea who these men were or what they were doing here, but she was lapping up the attention.
It was all too much for Camille. She sat down on the carpet and put her face in her hands. She heard the agents forcing Teddy into some street clothes as they slapped the handcuffs on him and read him his rights. From what she could understand, they were charging him with some kind of racketeering and tax evasion. She tried to shut out their voices. As far as she was concerned, her husband was in the linen business.
They yanked Teddy to his feet and started to haul him away. She went to the window and looked out. Birds were chirping. At least two dozen reporters and cameramen were gathered on the sidewalk. The TV vans were from as far away as Philadelphia. She turned her head and saw Teddy coming down the front steps. His hands were cuffed behind his back and he was surrounded by eight F.B.I. agents.
Kathy was already standing out by the model of the jockey on the porch, hopping up and down excitedly, like she was seeing her first Easter Parade.
The agents brought Teddy over to an unmarked blue Ford parked by the curb. The swarm of reporters followed as if drawn by magnetic force.
One of the agents put a hand on top of Teddy’s head while another opened the car door. The reporters were murmuring as Teddy looked up and saw Camille watching him from the window.
His face looked dark and haggard. For the first time in years, she felt something for him. But it was only pity.
They forced his head down and shoved him into the car, slamming the door after him. Another agent ran around the front and got into the driver’s seat. The cameramen and reporters closed in around the car windows, but Camille could see from the look on Teddy’s face inside he had nothing to say. The car started suddenly and drove away. A couple of reporters made a halfhearted effort to run after it. Most dispersed to their cars and were gone within two minutes. But Kathy was still jumping up and down on the porch, waving and shouting, “Goodbye, Daddy, goodbye.”
With nothing better to do, Camille wandered back into her bedroom and found her sleep mask. The Valium bottle was still open by her bed. She considered taking one. Or two. Or three. Or why not twelve? But then who would take care of Kathy?
No. Relief wouldn’t come so easily. She was stranded in this life, at least for a while.
She put the sleep mask back on and lay down again. And once more went looking for Charlie in her dreams.
WITH THE SIXTY THOUSAND
dollars I borrowed from Danny Klein—at three percent interest, due every two weeks—I was finally able to pay for Elijah Barton’s training expenses and sanctioning fees. Eddie Suarez from the boxing federation took his ten thousand with about as much grace as a parking attendant accepting a two-dollar tip. I swore at him under my breath, but we were on the road. And with Teddy getting arrested, I didn’t have to worry about his interference for a few days.
The first thing John B. did was arrange a public workout at the Doubloon, to drum up press and show everyone Elijah was still in good shape.
But when Elijah walked into the Admiral’s Ballroom that mid-August afternoon, I noticed his face looked a little more bloated and bovine than before.
“What’s the matter with him?” I asked John B. as his brother slowly climbed through the velvet ropes of the ring they’d set up. “Has he been mainlining Häagen-Dazs or something?”
John tried to play it off. “No, no, man. That just the way he look when he’s in training. He’s already been sparring awhile. That’s why his face get all puffed up.”
Elijah began to walk in a circle within the ring, like a shaman priest trying to summon the spirit. He wore a long red robe with his name and the words “... Once and Future Champion” in white on the back. A red Everlast head guard covered most of his face like a mask. He shuffled a little as he walked, like a drunken sailor trying to cross the deck on a rainy night. I wondered if I’d made a mistake in borrowing all that money from Danny K.
But it was too late to back out. The sparring partners andtrainers had already been paid off and now gamblers from downstairs were streaming in to take seats in the folding chairs around the makeshift ring.
“You sure he’s not punch-drunk?” I asked John B. quietly.
“He just playin’ possum.”
The first of the young sparring partners climbed into the ring and the bell rang. Elijah shucked off his robe and started bouncing around. Rolls of fat jiggled at his sides. I found myself worrying he wouldn’t make his weight for the fight.
“Sure he’s not eating too much?” I asked John B., who sat next to me in the first row.
“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.
“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 in his balls again. He was still getting up in the middle of the night and finding he couldn’t piss.
When Burt finally hung up the phone, he grimaced. “Superseding murder indictment? Based on what?”
“Based on the two DiGregorio homicides.” Burt took another quick hit off his asthma spray. “Or so I’m told. Do you have any idea what witnesses might be talking to them about that?”
“No!” Teddy’s cheeks leaped up toward his eyes. “That’s what I pay you to find out. I’m giving you three hundred fifty dollars an hour.”
The phone purred again and this time the secretary gave the name of a prominent real estate developer. “Francis, I thought I wasn’t going to hear from you today ...” Teddy went back to stewing and reading the two neat piles of documents parked at the edge of Burt’s desk. His eyes stopped on a request for proposal from Lenny Romano’s firm, concerning repairs on the City Hall parking lot. The tender feeling in his groin returned.
He flashed an angry look, but Burt ignored him until he got off the phone.
“I didn’t know about this contract,” Teddy said sternly,as Burt placed the receiver back in its cradle. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
Burt leaned forward and calmly took the document from Teddy. “I thought this had your approval,” he said, looking it over. “Lenny’s company is with you, isn’t it? Are you going to tell me you don’t know what’s going on with your own companies?”
Teddy drummed his fingers on the leather armrests and blushed. “I know what’s going on. I just didn’t know you were handling the contract.”
Burt seemed just ever so slightly annoyed. “Well, the other day I was over at the Doubloon casino, talking to my old college friend, Sam Wolkowitz, who’s in the cable television industry. And he told me your friend Vin’s son Anthony might be involved in managing a fighter named Barton, who might be on TV. But was I asked to be the lawyer representing the contract? No. Because that’s done at your discretion, Ted. And I know everything he does must meet with your approval. So who am I to get upset?”
Teddy felt like he’d been picked up and thrown across the room. Lenny Romano getting the City Hall contract, Vin’s son getting involved with the fights. And no one giving him a percentage. He didn’t want to tell Burt he wasn’t aware of these things, but he wasn’t sure how to keep from screaming either. His insides squeezed together tightly, alerting him that he’d soon have to go pass blood into the toilet again. How could he control his crew if he couldn’t control his own body?
He was having a bad moment. All the details of his life that he’d carefully arranged like items in the composition book were scattering like autumn leaves. And suddenly the leaves were in his abdomen and his head, swirling around, chasing away certainties. If Vin’s son wasn’t giving him a percentage, who was? And if no one was giving him a percentage, what made him a boss? And if he wasn’t a boss, what was he? He felt dizzy and sick, like he was about to vomit dry leaves on Burt’s expensive Oriental rug.
The phone rang once more and Burt picked it up directly. “Oh hi, Bunny. . . No, no. That’s all right.” He giggled. “You will? Oh sto-o-op!” Burt’s voice took a languid upperturn that made Teddy picture him wearing Hawaiian shirts and reading magazines about interior design.
“That’s entirely up to you,” said Burt, his hands performing a delicate arabesque through the air as he watched Teddy fidget from the corner of his eye. “You can get back to me anytime you want.”
He hung up the phone and turned back to Teddy as if he hadn’t missed a beat of their conversation.
“Jesus,” said Teddy in a woozy daze. “I remember when Dixie Dalton was my lawyer, he hardly had any other clients. He’d never take a call when I was in his office.”
“Well, you just can’t afford to have me on retainer like that,” Burt explained with a hand over his heart. “You’re not my only client. Speaking of which, you’re aware, are you not, that you already have an outstanding bill of twenty-seven thousand dollars you owe this office?”
“Madonna!” Teddy almost cried. “I had to put my fuckin’ house up to make the two hundred fifty thousand dollars’ bail. And now I got you squeezing me? Shit, Burt. Have a heart. It’s fuckin’ highway robbery.”
“Coming from you, Ted, that’s a compliment,” said Burt, picking up the phone again.