“FUCK, NO!!”
Three and a half hours before the fight, Frank Diamond was trying to get me to put on a white sweatshirt with the letters B.U.M. stenciled in blue on the front.
“It’s part of the endorsement deal,” he patiently explained. “This is one of the major sportswear companies in the country right now. And our agreement was that everyone in Barton’s corner would wear one.”
“You’re just trying to make me look like an asshole.”
He grinned and ignored the obvious rejoinder. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t wear the shirt. But then you won’t be allowed into his corner during the fight.”
So I went along and put on the B.U.M. shirt, even though I suspected Frank didn’t have an endorsement deal and was just doing it to embarrass me.
In fact, I was going along with most things he said that day, because I knew he had so much to teach me.
I was rushing around the hotel suite like a little dog, yapping at Frank’s heels, trying to absorb all this information while I had the chance.
“So when am I going to get my advance?” I asked. “We agreed you’d give me a third of the money up front.”
“All good things to those who wait,” he said calmly, resting a telephone against the side of his shaved head. He made a call downstairs. “Darden, bring up the briefcase from the cage. Mr. Barton’s distinguished manager is here.”
I guess Frank was annoyed about having to deal with me at this level, but what could he do? I had leverage on him because of what happened with Rosemary and his fighter.
“So let me make sure we have this straight,” I said, slipping on my suit jacket over the B.U.M. sweatshirt. “You’re going to give me five hundred thousand dollars now and a million later?”
Before Frank could answer, there was a knock at the door and in walked a local manager named George Rollins, who had a fighter in one of the preliminaries. George, a heavyset black guy with wet eyes and a nasty scar on his chin, started pounding the glass coffee table and demanding more money for his fighter, thinking he had Frank over a barrel because he was coming to him on such short notice.
But Frank just draped himself over one of those elegant velvet couches and crossed his legs like Prince Edward as he sipped his tea. “Why George, I’m absolutely astonished,” he said languidly.
“Well, that’s the way it gots to be.” George was chewing tobacco and for some reason, pouring Oil of Olay lotion on his hands. “I ain’t lettin’ my boy fight for no twelve hundred dollars.”
“But you’re coming to me at the last moment with this proposal.” Frank tilted back his bald head and his steam-shovel jaw, looking down his nose at George with obvious disdain. “I’m afraid I’ll have to give your spot on the card to Anthony here, who has his own stable of fighters.”
I just smiled, going along with the story.
George began sweating and chewing his tobacco double-time, realizing he was about to let his fighter’s one shot at national TV exposure slip away. “Well, maybe we could work it out another way,” he said, putting the bottle of Oil of Olay back into his vest pocket.
“Yes indeed,” said Frank, not missing a beat. “In like circumstances, I’ve heard of promoters actually forcing managers to pay to put their fighters on a bill. But, you know, I wouldn’t inflict that on you. Let’s just say we’ll call it even.”
In other words, the fighter would now be getting in the ring for free. George left the suite quickly, before he felt the breeze telling him he’d given up his trousers too.
“That was amazing.” My mouth was hanging open. “You cut that guy in two without spilling a drop of blood on the carpet.”
“It’s just standard negotiation.” He couldn’t be bothered to smile.
Again I was reminded there wasn’t that much difference between these so-called legitimate people from Wall Street and the wiseguys like Teddy and my father.
“I hope you’re not going to try the same thing with me.” I tried to close my jacket so it would cover part of the B.U.M on my sweatshirt.
Frank said nothing and made another phone call. Twenty minutes later, one of his aides arrived in the suite, carrying a briefcase with the name of the casino embossed in gold on the front. He handed it to me and I felt my heart swell, almost like the veins and arteries had erections.
But then I popped the briefcase open and saw it was filled with chips from the casino.
“What the fuck is this?”
Frank covered the mouthpiece of the phone and glanced over at me with total indifference. “It’s a tradition I have with local managers. I always like to take the pre-fight payment directly from the casino’s cage. Don’t worry. You can go downstairs afterwards and have it converted.”
He went back to his phone conversation with somebody on the Japanese stock exchange. I quickly counted there was only three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of chips; as Elijah’s co-manager, I was entitled to just twenty percent, or sixty thousand. Barely enough to cover my debt to Teddy. There’d be nothing for my wife and kids, either. Forget Danny Klein and Rosemary.
“Where’s the rest of it?” I stood up and took a step toward Frank.
“Yoshiki, let me call you back,” he said into the phone. “Yes.
Do mo arigato.”
“There’s only three hundred thousand dollars here.” I pointed to the open briefcase. “We agreed to five hundred thousand up front.”
“Right. You lose a third off the top to taxes.”
“That still leaves about three hundred thirty thousand.”
“Of course,” said Frank with huffy impatience.“And some of that goes toward the accrued expenses that managers are expected to share in. Scoring judges, cost of printing tickets, overhead for keeping the arena open.”
“What about the million you owe me after the fight?” I heard my voice cracking.
“We’ll see how much of that is left.” He stood up and walked across the room to a silver tea service on the marble-topped bar. For a big man, he glided gracefully in his Gucci loafers. “Remember, you have to pay for the legal fees, the attending physicians, and the cost of laying cable. I wouldn’t expect the back end to be more than one hundred and twenty thousand dollars if I were your fighter. Subject to taxes, of course.”
“I’ll sue your fucking ass, Frank.” My take for the night was going to be eighty-four thousand dollars, thirty-six thousand short of what I owed.
“You and your lawyers are welcome to review my accounting practices,” he said, making himself a fresh cup.”They will stand up in court. Naturally, if I were you I’d want to avoid legal proceedings, especially given your background.”
Now I was the one feeling the breeze where my pants used to be. “Oh my God. This is outrageous. How am I going to pay my people?”
“Out of the advance I’d give you if I decided to take an option on Elijah’s next fight.”
“And what would it take to get you to pick up the option?”
“A strong showing tonight,” Frank said with a faint smile. I noticed he held his pinky out when he sipped his tea, like a dainty English maiden.
I felt dampness on the inside of my thigh and hoped it was sweat. “You mean Elijah has to win before we get paid the full amount?”
What was left of my world was collapsing. Elijah was an old man who’d been knocked out sparring the month before. He didn’t stand a real chance against Terrence. At his age, just climbing through the ropes was an achievement.
“He doesn’t have to win,” Frank told me. “He has to go the distance and do it in credible fashion. Not just holding on in the clinches. He has to put on a real fight.”
“In other words, he has to have the shit kicked out of him and remain standing?”
“Something like that.” Frank rang a bell for a servant to come and take his tea service away. “But I’d never say he had to win. That would be unreasonable.”
“WE GOT ONE RULE,”
said Teddy as the car sped along the Garden State Parkway, “whenever we find a rat, we kill him. No ands, ifs, or buts about it.”
Joey Snails, the ex-junkie with the oily skin and the crevices shaped like seahorses in his cheeks, was driving. He raised his eyebrows and the seahorses got longer. Tommy Sick in the seat beside him giggled moronically.
It was almost dusk. Tall stark pine trees stood on either side of the road like elongated shadows.
“Way I figure it,” said Teddy, the collar of his shirt creeping up toward his jaw as he sank down in the passenger seat, “they have to have somebody who can put me in onna conspiracy for killing Larry and his son, even though I wasn’t there. You know?”
“The only ones who was there for both of them was Anthony and Richie,” said Joey, sniffing.
“That’s what I was thinking too. And I know Richie ain’t no rat.”
The Le Baron hummed along quietly. Not bad for a leased car, thought Teddy. But who wanted to be driving a leased car? The thought never occurred to him before. What’d he have to show for himself? A leased car, insurance forms, and a bunch of lawyer’s bills? Another hot flash gave way to a sudden chill. His life was getting smaller and smaller. If he wasn’t sitting in some lawyer’s office, he was going for his radiation. Or he was stuck at home, hooked to his dialysis machine. It was worse than prison. He started getting angry all over again.
Joey took Exit 38 and swung the car onto the Atlantic City Expressway.
“All right,” said Teddy. “Then we have to get Anthony to come in and talk to us.”
“I wouldn’t come in if I was him.” Joey wagged his head as he reached into his pocket for change to pay the toll. “I’d be afraid we’d try to whack him.”
“Heh, heh, that’s sick,” Tommy Sick said with a machine-gun laugh. His forehead bulged unnaturally, and he scratched a septum that had been deviated since his father broke his nose for trying to get into the bathtub with his sister at the age of seventeen.
Joey pulled up at the toll booth and took a good thirty seconds to figure out that a dime and three nickels were worth as much as a quarter. He gave the girl in the booth the change and a look that made her back away from her window.
“Maybe you’re right,” said Teddy as they drove away. “That’s the whole problem with getting people involved who don’t belong to this thing of ours. They don’t have that blood loyalty. Fuckin’ mutts. They deserve to die.”
“Every one of them,” said Joey.
“Heh, heh,” said Tommy Sick.
Three lines appeared on Teddy’s brow. “I told Vin to get that kid away from me. But he kept after me, ‘Just gimme another chance, Ted, just gimme another chance, I’ll straighten him out.’” He threw up his hands in disgust. “So first I gotta tolerate him putting nothing in the elbow, when he owes me his life. Then I gotta see him running around on my niece. And now look at the mess we’re in. The kid Anthony’s talking about us to the feds. He’s a rat.”
He was silent for a couple of minutes. Atlantic City was visible at the edge of the horizon. The red names of the casinos burned like bonfires in the darkening sky.
“You know who I blame for it?” Teddy said in a sullen voice. “Vin. It’s his fault for not controlling this kid. I love the man, but I gotta tell you, Joey, I feel like he betrayed me. He told me he’d take care of it, and then he sold me out for this son of his, that isn’t even his son. While I have to suffer with the memory of my own boy. I’m sick about it, Joey. I’m sick.”
“Heh, heh, that’s my line, Ted,” said Tommy Sick.
Teddy leaned forward and punched him in the back of the head.
Traffic was starting to slow down. They were stuck in a long, long trail of cars arriving early for the fight at the Doubloon.
“What’re you gonna do about it?” asked Joey. “Anthony ain’t gettin’ anywhere near us.”
“If you can’t get to the rat, you get someone who’s close to him,” said Teddy, as though it had all been decided by some great force beyond him.
Joey frowned and wiggled his buttocks uncomfortably in his seat. “You’re not talkin’ about whacking Vin, are you?”
Teddy’s expression did not change. “The rules is the rules,” he said. “You got any idea what he’s doing tonight?”
“I don’t know.” Joey shrugged. “I talked about coming over and watching the fight with him tonight. But you ain’t serious, Ted. Vin loves you.”
“Have him stop by the Marvin Gardens house,” Teddy instructed him firmly. “Tommy, you go to the fight and keep an eye on Anthony. We’ll kill two birds, one stone.”
“But, Ted, we’re talkin’ Vin,” Joey protested.
“He’s gotta go,” said Teddy, tightening his face like a petulant child. “He’s gotta be taken out of the way so we can whack Anthony without any problems afterwards. Otherwise, we’d have Vin coming after us for revenge.”
Tommy Sick was silent. Joey stared at his fingers on the steering wheel. “Jeez, Ted, you’re gettin’ to be kinda a hard-ass, ain’t you?”
“Just paying the cost for being the boss,” said Teddy, staring straight ahead.
THE ANGRY RED BALL
of the sun had sunk behind the silver casinos.
Frank Diamond had me in a true balls-to-the-wall situation. If Elijah didn’t put up the fight of his life tonight, I was a dead man.
But I decided to enjoy my night on the verge. Damn it, I’d come this far, I wasn’t going to quit. That whore called respectability was about to lift her skirts and let me have a go at her.
At half past eight, I went down to the lobby to watch all the celebrities and high rollers arrive. They’d set up the porte cochere entrance so that each VIP had to walk past a gauntlet of fans and photographers once they got out of their limos.
At first I didn’t recognize anybody. It was just needle-nosed guys with big Brillo pads of gray hair and taut laugh lines around their mouths wearing tuxes with ruffled shirts and velvet bow ties, accompanied by flimsy-looking young blondes spilling out of their gold lamé dresses. Then came the old crones collapsing inside electric-blue evening gowns and the sclerotic old men in business suits with heavy wattles and features small enough to fit on a postage stamp. Soon the faces became more familiar. Here was a former vice president and the head of a credit card company. There was an actor who always played the stud in his movies, but when you saw him with his little hands and his twitchy butt, you knew he’d never touched a woman. He was with an actress who had to be about fifty but still giggled like a Betty Boop doll. They were followed by a former junk bond king and a famous dress designer.
Looking at them, you’d think the standard wasn’t how much jewelry they wore but how much plastic surgery they’dhad. Paulie Raymond would’ve loved it. There were tit jobs, dye jobs, face-lifts, hair plugs, people with the fat sucked out of their cheeks, cellulite scraped off their asses. You half expected a second division to come along, made up of the cast-off parts.
Still, you couldn’t deny the excitement in the air. All these famous people had come to see a fighter managed by me. The only disappointment was not having a father around to see what I’d accomplished. But Mike was long gone and I could never speak to Vin again.
Instead I saw Dan Bishop, the Vegas casino owner, getting out of a limo, and I went running over. Frank Diamond was standing there to greet him as he climbed out of the car. Bishop was heavier than in the pictures I’d seen and there was more gray in his hair. He’d had plastic surgery too.
I sidled up to Frank and stuck an elbow in his ribs. “Introduce me, you sleazy fuck,” I murmured.
He ignored me for a few seconds and began talking to Bishop until I elbowed him again. Then he turned with a glacial smile and guided my eyes toward Bishop’s.
“Dan, I’d like you to meet Anthony Russo,” he said in a low reluctant voice as the blitzkrieg of flashbulbs went off around us.
This was a moment I’d dreamed about for years. Meeting Dan Bishop. Who’d started off running numbers down in the Inlet and wound up getting invited to the White House. I wanted to tell him how much I admired what he’d done, and how maybe one day soon I’d be out in Vegas and we could talk about some opportunities. But before I could get the words out, I realized he was staring down at my shirt. His eyes began to narrow and his lip began to curl. I realized I was still wearing the B.U.M. sweatshirt Frank made me put on.
“Nice shirt,” he said.
Almost as an afterthought, he shook my hand. His grip was weak and cold. I’d been dismissed before I’d been introduced.
“Talk to me later about Terrence,” he muttered to Frank as he went by. “I think I got something you might be interested in.”
He signaled for a tall black bodyguard and a stubby redhead in a chiffon dress to lead the way. I noticed his tux looked a little tight in the back and the hair on top of his scalp was too shiny, like he might’ve been wearing a piece as cheap as Larry DiGregorio’s. And what I kept thinking was: He blew it.
The great Dan Bishop. I finally got to meet him and all he had to say to me was “nice shirt.” Well screw him, I thought. He was on the way down anyway. He could’ve taken a second to talk to me about the future. But instead he blew it. Someday he’d realize he’d made a mistake. All I needed to make him see that was a miracle out of Elijah.