“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.
54
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 lame 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.
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.
