“YOU KNOW,” SAID TEDDY
in a ravaged voice. “I was thinking. Every day I read in the paper about the Sicilian Mafia. These guys got balls. Every day they’re blowin’ up a judge or some fuckin’ politician. They even got to a guy in the middle of a motorcade and put a bomb under his car. So I was thinking. Maybe we could get one of their young guys to come over here and work with us. You know. Start all over again. Like a new beginning.”
Vincent Russo shook his head and looked grim. “It wouldn’t work.”
Three of them were in the stash apartment in Marvin Gardens, watching the Barton-Mulvehill fight on cable TV. Teddy was on the black leather sofa with a can of diet soda in his hand. Vin was sitting in a chrome-and-leather easy chair, drinking his fourth beer of the evening and eating almonds out of a cellophane bag. Joey Snails stood in the corner, sniffing and scratching the side of his face. There were racks of men’s suits along the wall and dozens of steel lamps by the door to the swag room. Joey excused himself to go to the bathroom.
“Why wouldn’t it work?” said Teddy, shooting a look at Joey over the top of the couch. “We get a couple of these zips off the boat working for us, it’d be just like the old days. We could take over everything.”
Vincrushed an almond shell and the remnants fell into the cuffs of his trousers. “This ain’t the old country, Ted.” He balanced the beer on the arm of his chair. “It’s the land of opportunity. We brought a couple of them Sicilian boys over here, they’d be listening to fuckin’ rap music and talkin’ to their brokers on car phones in two months. Tradition don’t last in this country. You can’t bind people by the old codes. They just melt away.”
Teddy grimaced and touched his back. “I still say we could get a couple of them zips and rule this town again,” he grumbled. “It’d be like starting the twentieth century over again, only we’d do it the right way.”
On the twenty-seven-inch-wide color TV screen, there was a replay of Elijah Barton shocking Terrence Mulvehill and the rest of the arena with that sudden right hand. As the screen showed a close-up of the deep cut above Terrence’s eyelid, Vin sat up too quickly and spilled some of the almonds on the shag carpet.
“So what’d he say to you?” Teddy asked, yawning and stretching his arms as his face turned florid.
“Who? Anthony?”
Joey Snails came back in the room and Teddy just looked at him. One of the stainless steel lamps buzzed and vibrated above Vin’s head.
“Well, you know, I talked to him,” said Vin. “And, and, the kid’s got an awful lot of confusion in his mind. You know what I’m saying, Teddy? You can understand what kids can be like after what you went through with Charlie.”
Teddy was silent. Vin finished his beer and crushed the can with his fingers.
The second round ended and the two fighters went back to their corners. The camera focused on Elijah Barton sitting on his stool, breathing heavily as his brother squeezed a wet sponge over him and his cut man smeared more Vaseline on his face.
“Again,” said Vin, taking a fistful of almonds and shoving them in his mouth, “it’s this, this, you know. He don’t understand what it was like starting off the way we did. You know. This, this is a different generation. I never got my first blow job from a woman ’til I was about forty years old, just got out of jail.”
Joey and Teddy were staring at him. Vin was babbling on, fueled by the beer and the hour. “I remember it was right by the Steel Pier,” he said, chewing almonds. “Right where they used to have the horses diving in the water. I still remember those horses and her mouth on me. I’ll never have a day like that again.”
Joey Snails was still staring at him without saying anything.
Vin’s eyelids got heavy and silvery-looking. “I guess what I’m saying, Ted, is maybe we shoulda had more babies of our own if we wanted them to stay loyal with us,” he said. “They say it takes the edge off a man . . . But like you said before, the gun wasn’t loaded. I didn’t have enough of them sperms. What could I do?”
He let his head hang down. Teddy’s attention had drifted back to the television set. He coughed and put a hand to his mouth.
“He’s not gonna give us anything. Is that what you’re telling me, Vin?”
“I guess—well—yeah. He don’t want to do anything right now,” Vin said, trying to stay awake. “He don’t want to make any deals. But I’ll talk to him again.”
“He should come in and tell me all this himself,” Teddy said sharply.
“Yeah, yeah, I know Ted. But he ain’t gonna do that right away. He’s gonna go away awhile, clear his head.”
Teddy glared over at Joey. Joey excused himself to go to the bathroom once more.
“What’s the matter, you getting a small bladder?” Vin called after him. He turned back to Teddy. “I used to be able to drink beer all night and only have to go once. It’s all this espresso they drink now. They spend half their time in the can.”
“Things change,” Teddy told him in an exhausted voice.
“Hey, Joey!” Vin shouted toward the bathroom. “Grab my comb if you find it, will you? I been looking all night.”
On the TV, the round-card girl, who wore a red feathered headdress and an uncomfortable-looking sequined swimsuit, finished circling the ring and climbed through the ropes as the bell rang. The two fighters left their stools and touched gloves.
“I don’t know, Ted,” said Vin with a sigh. “I don’t know how you keep up.”
Joey Snails came out of the bathroom with a nine-millimeter Browning handgun and blew the back of Vincent Russo’s head off.
He went around to the other side, put the gun in Vin’s mouth and fired another shot through the top of Vin’s skull.
Teddy looked irritated. “What happened to the silencer?” he said.
“Couldn’t find it. I thought you said you left it in the kitchen.”
“It’s the drawer where we got all the corkscrews.”
Teddy looked past his shoulder and saw a purplish red bloodstain spreading on the white shag carpet. Vin’s Ace comb was lying nearby. It had fallen out of his pocket earlier in the evening.
“For Chrissake, who’s gonna clean that up?”
Joey looked abashed. “Maybe I shoulda thought to lay newspaper. I’ll move the couch over it.”
Vin’s body gave a sudden jerk and slumped down in its seat. At least seven separate tributaries of blood were flowing down his face. It looked like someone had poured a jar of red molasses over the remains of his head. His mouth was open and twisted. The empty cellophane bag was lying sideways on his lap. Unshelled almonds were scattered by his feet.
Joey shot him a third time in the chest and Teddy jumped.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelped. “Why’d you have to do that? Can’t you see the man’s dead?”
“Hey,” said Joey. “What do I look like, a doctor?”
BY THE FIFTH ROUND,
Elijah’s strategy had become clear. He was going to stand in the corner and let Terrence hit him until his arms got tired.
“YOU’RE BREAKIN’ HIS HEART, CHAMP!” John B. shouted. “YOU’RE BREAKIN’ IT IN TWO!”
In the meantime, Terrence was hitting him with every punch in the book: body shots, double hooks, battering rams, more rattlesnake rights, slithering lefts, jabs that came out like crocodiles to snap off little pieces of Elijah. At one point, Terrence stood back in the middle of the ring and looked at him, like: “You sure you wanna do this, old man?” But Elijah just pawed the air with a beckoning motion as if to say, “Come on and fight. This is what we came for.”
All that kept Elijah up was his ability to take a punch. His arms were like picket fences and his gloves were big meaty loaves for absorbing punishment. When a blow did get through, he knew how to move his head just a fraction of an inch to lessen its impact. Like John B. said, he’d learned to take three for every one he gave back.
But still Terrence kept coming. Jab. Jab. Jab. Each shot a little brushstroke of pain. Finally, toward the end of the round, Elijah dropped his hands and Terrence smashed him in the mouth with a devastating right hand. Just the sound of it was terrifying. You could almost hear the ocean breaking in Elijah’s head. Blood sprayed over us like water coming over the side of a boat.
And for the first time all night, John B. stopped talking.
Elijah fell against Terrence and staggered out to the center of the ring, trying to hold on to him. And just when I thought he was about to collapse, the bell rang.
He came back to the corner and sat on his stool. Dark red blood was gushing from the back of his mouth.
“Somethin’ the matter,” he mumbled. “I can move my jaw with my tongue.”
“Might be broken,” said Dr. Park, the ring physician, who’d climbed up the ring steps.
There were five of us clustered around Elijah. Me, John B., Victor the cut man, the doctor, and this cop Farley working for the boxing commission.
There was less than half a minute until the next round began. Elijah’s face was mashed almost beyond recognition. His lower features were so lopsided that they no longer matched with the upper ones. John B. was looking back and forth, unable to make a decision. Victor the cut man was busy with a cold-iron trying to reduce the swelling in Elijah’s jaw. The doctor hung back, maybe waiting for someone to promise to pay him off later.
I looked up at the spot where I’d seen Tommy Sick before. But he wasn’t there. I wondered if he’d moved down to a lower level to be closer to the action.
Elijah spit more blood in the bucket.
“He’s gotta keep fighting,” I said.
“You gotta go out there again,” I told him.
“He’s hurting,” John B. said plaintively. “I’m gonna throw the towel.”
“No, no, don’t take it away from him!” I panicked. “Let him decide. If he quits now, he’s through forever.”
The rest of them just looked at me like I’d suggested putting his head under an eighteen-wheeler.
“Brain damage last forever too.” John B. stared through me.
But no one could make Elijah do anything he didn’t want to do. The way he’d fought so far proved it.
“You all right to do this?” I said.
Elijah pushed himself off his stool and somehow managed to stand again.
“Just point me in the right direction,” he muttered through his wreck of a jaw. “I’ll find him.”
AS SHE DUCKED THROUGH
the ropes to begin herpromenade around the ring with the Round 10 card, Rosemary heard the assholes down in front make that “alley-oop” sound again.
A thousand dollars a seat and they behaved like the morons back at the club. CEOs, heads of insurance companies and law firms, for God’s sake. Men who’d built successful businesses. You’d think they’d never seen a half-dressed woman before. It didn’t help that her sequined red swimsuit was riding up her butt again and giving her a wedgie in back.
The television cameras swung past her without much interest. Her arms ached from holding the giant card and the hot lights were melting her makeup. The ring smelled from sweat and desperation. When she’d first agreed to put on this ridiculous costume, she’d somehow convinced herself it would impress Kimmy watching on TV at home. Not like being a soap opera actress maybe, but something for her daughter to be proud of: “My mommy was on TV.” But now she was starting to accept that she looked like a cheap Vegas showgirl. Hoping Kimmy was already in bed, she affected a hotsy-totsy walk like her pussy was a bowl with boiling soup threatening to spill over the sides.
She passed Elijah Barton’s corner and saw Anthony. Would he be around later to give her what he owed her? She wondered. She finally understood that nothing he’d ever told her was true. The run-in with his wife the other day had finished it forever between them. Forget it. Kimmy had enough stress without strange women lurking around her front door. When this was all over, Rosemary would take whatever money she could get and move to the West Coast, whether she could afford it or not. If she could put up with this headdress, she could survive on food stamps. Whatever.
She looked back at Barton’s corner. The fighter literally looked dead. It was as if someone had scraped out his insides. All that was left was a husk. The cut man shoved wads of cotton into his nose and took them out all violet and wet with blood.
Is that what being a man was all about? Taking physical punishment? Forget that too. She’d caught a few beatings in her time and the pain was nothing compared to childbirth. Men talked about blood and guts and going to war, but having a baby was more than that. It was war in reverse. Shoving all your guts aside to make room for the life and vital organs fusing, pulsing, and growing in your belly. What was the pain of losing a fight compared to the pain of losing a child?
But pain wasn’t the point of it, she was beginning to see. It wasn’t enough just to get by. The point was surviving with some part of yourself intact. And making it. Making it for yourself. Making it so your kids wouldn’t end up giving blow jobs in the back of Honda Preludes. She looked over at Terrence’s corner and saw his father and trainer Terrence Sr., trim and graying, kneading his son’s shoulders like he was trying to mold him into some exact replica of himself. Perhaps that was the main difference between men and women. A man was always trying to teach his son to be as tough and brutal as he was, so that one day he could turn around and say the kid just didn’t measure up. Leaving women to try and protect their daughters from these ferocious, frustrated boys.
What had she said to Anthony’s wife, that sad girl with the gun in her bag? You couldn’t depend on anyone else to rescue you. Rosemary had known that before. But she was only truly feeling it now.
She crossed one foot in front of the other and felt the muscle stretching from her hip to her thigh go as taut as a fishing line. She hoped she’d shaved high enough so there wasn’t any pubic hair showing at the bottom of her outfit. A couple of guys in the fourth row were pumping their fists in the air and making ape noises, so she wasn’t sure.
Fuck them. She was a survivor. She bared her teeth and jutted her hips out. Not even caring if her stomach bulged anymore.
She was coming up on Terrence’s corner. She wished she could climb out through the ropes right there, but then she figured he was too busy to notice. After all, he hadn’t said anything up to this point. His father was still giving him orders. Terrence had his mouthpiece out and his head turned half away, as though he wasn’t really listening. He was looking right at her now and his eyes narrowed a little.
She was sure he couldn’t really be seeing her. He had to be thinking about the fight and what was going to happen next. But she still had an eerie feeling like he was about to jump off his stool and come charging after her for the way she’d set him up. His father put his hands on the boy’s shoulders to get his attention, but Terrence kept glaring at her, even drawing his own lips back to show he still had his teeth. And when she was directly in front of him, he said something to her. At first, she couldn’t hear it above the crowd noise, and she hurried the rest of the way around the ring to get out sooner. But by the time she climbed out through the ropes, she’d put it together in her mind.
“You and me after this is all over, bitch,” he’d said. “We gotta go another round in the sack.”