“How you fixed, man?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m asking where you got your money.”
P.F. looked at him blankly. “I dunno, in a bank.”
Elijah shook his head. “Somebody oughta take you aside, talk to you, man. You gotta get yourself into some triple tax frees and mutual funds. Can’t just leave your money in some insured money market. You gotta make it work for you.”
P.F. wondered why Elijah seemed so comfortable here, talking to him like they were old friends. Maybe it was just a way of loosening up before the fight. In any case, it wasn’t bad advice, especially coming from a man who was supposedly punch-drunk.
“You know what the secret is?” Elijah stood up and began to shadowbox. He wore just a pair of socks and a black protective cup over his genitals. “You never put all your assets in one place. I remember when I was just a child I used to hide my money in the flowerpot. Now I don’t put all my money in one bank. I don’t put all my money in two banks. I don’t put all my money nowhere. If the bank falls down today and takes everything I have in there, I still will be able to survive. Because I got...” It took him an eternity to settle on a word. “Reserves,” he said finally. “I got hidden reserves. Ain’t nobody knows about ’em.”
He threw a right cross at the mirror on the wall. For a moment P.F. thought he’d actually break the glass and bloody his knuckles. He missed contact by less than half an inch.
“Yup, that’s the only reason to do anything,” he said. “For the C-A-S-H.”
Pigfucker just looked at him.
“What? You still think I gotta do this shit for my self-respect?”
P.F. didn’t answer.
“Man, fuck that.” Elijah threw a hard left jab that jerked a muscle in his shoulder. “I don’t have to do this to live. I’m forty-three years old, man. I already been the champion twice. I defended my title six times. I don’t need to come out of retirement to earn my self-esteem.”
Elijah scowled at the mirror and saw P.F. watching him from behind.
“I don’t wake up in the middle of the night worrying,” Elijah said, feinting with his left and throwing a stiff right at the mirror. “I got a beautiful wife, a beautiful son, three beautiful grandchildren. I’m proud. I started with nothing. I grew up in a shack out in the Inlet and I became middleweight champion of the whole wide world.”
The room was completely silent.
“I ain’t got nothin’ to be ashamed of,” Elijah said, firing two more furious punches at his reflection. “Just because some punk hit me with a lucky shot when I wasn’t ready and I hadn’t trained. That may be how some other people remember me. It ain’t how I remember myself.”
P.F. finally looked away as Elijah stopped throwing punches. He’d heard more convincing declarations, from swindlers and con artists in the back of the squad car.
Dr. Park, the boxing federation’s physician, came into the room smoking a cigarette. A rail-thin Korean man in a navypinstripe suit. Anthony Russo followed him in, wearing a dark suit and a B.U.M. sweatshirt. He seemed nervous and unsure where to put his eyes.
There was still something about the kid that made P.F. profoundly uneasy. Maybe it was just their common history with Teddy and Mike.
Dr. Park was shining a light in Elijah’s eyes. P.F. thought he saw the pupils respond a fraction of a second too slowly to its movement.
“How you feeling?” the doctor asked.
“Like I could dance all night.”
The doctor stepped away and Anthony moved in front of the fighter. Clicking his heel on the carpet and jiggling his knee. He was like a raw nerve in a good suit. You would’ve thought he was the one about to get in the ring. P.F. rubbed his eyes and swallowed a Tums.
“Look,” said Anthony in a bitten-off voice. “I don’t have to tell you your business. You’ve been in the fight game a lot longer than I have.”
Elijah made a low virile sound, but he wasn’t looking at Anthony. He was staring at some distant spot, miles past his shoulder.
“I’m not asking you to lay down your life tonight,” Anthony said. “I’m not asking you to risk permanent injury. All I ask is that you fight like a man among men.”
A man among men. He said it with such great feeling that Elijah’s eyes flicked over and locked on to his.
“That’s all I ever done,” he told Anthony.
Anthony shook Elijah’s wrapped right hand, made a note in his Filofax, and walked out of the room with the doctor.
“Hurt my hands.” Elijah stared down at his fingers. “Every man comes in, thinks he has to show how strong he is by giving them a squeeze as hard as he can. They don’t know this is delicate instruments.”
“He’s just scared, that’s all,” said P.F.
“Scared, huh?” Elijah began dancing in place. “You know, I used to be scared too. Scared of dying.”
“Yeah, so what happened?”
“I don’t know. I got over it.”
He threw an abrupt head fake as though an opponent had suddenly materialized before him. “Only thing that scares me now is not knowing how it gonna turn out,” said Elijah.
John B. returned from the other dressing room, where he’d been watching Terrence Mulvehill get his hands taped.
“Punched a hole in the wall,” he told his brother. “He just reached out and punched a hole in the wall. You can see the lights from Pacific Avenue in his dressing room.”
“He punch through the concrete or plaster?” Elijah wanted to know.
“I think it was plaster.”
Elijah looked slightly disappointed and went back to dancing. There was less than fifteen minutes until the fight began. Elijah hopped back up on the training table and John B. began rubbing his shoulders.
“The Lord have a way,” John was saying. “The Lord will find a way.”
The smell of liniment oils and leather gloves began to fill the air. Elijah wasn’t talking or moving. He bowed his head as if reaching down deep inside himself.
And from then until the moment the opening bell rang, P.F. only heard him say five more words.
“We can never really know.”
56
TEDDY AND JOEY SNAILS were in the stash house apartment in Marvin Gardens, trying to get ready for their guest.
“I was going to buy almonds,” said Joey, putting on his red-and-blue Gore-Tex windbreaker. “You want anything else from the store?”
Teddy was lying on the black leather couch, still exhausted from his dialysis. He slowly raised his eyes. All six of the stolen digital clocks in the room said it was 9:53.
“Does he eat almonds?” he asked.
“Last time he was over my house, he ate the whole bowl,” said Joey.
“That’s funny,” said Teddy. “Whole time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him eat almonds. Forty-five years. It’s unbelievable. You can know somebody and not know them at all.”
He raised his head and looked around the apartment. The bar was crowded with untaxed bottles of Chivas Regal and Canadian Club, but he couldn’t drink any of them. He didn’t even have the strength to move the swag and stolen carpets in the next room to the car downstairs.
Joey looked at him with vacant eyes and a slack jaw. “What else you want me to get?”
“Get me some fruit,” said Teddy, clutching his side as his eyes glistened. “Where you got that gun
