“ooooh” and “aaah” like they were taking the shots with Elijah.
But when Terrence moved to the side a little, Elijah didn’t look that shaken. He must’ve been blocking more of the punches than I thought. Terrence was breathing just a bit harder as he danced back to the center of the ring.
Elijah moved after him slowly and reluctantly, like an old groundhog being forced out of his cave. Terrence lunged at him again, ready to throw the left jab. But this time Elijah grabbed him with both arms and pulled him close, like a father grabbing an unruly son. Terrence squirmed and tried to get out of the clinch, but Elijah had him in a headlock. The crowd began to boo. They’d been spoiled by all the action so far. Finally, the referee pulled them apart, giving Elijah some extra warning about holding on to the back of the younger guy’s head.
“WORK THE BODY, CHAMP!” shouted John B. “WORK THE BODY!”
Terrence squared off and hit Elijah with a short left jab and a hard right hook that dug into his rib cage like a Bowie knife. Every time John B. yelled something encouraging to his brother, Elijah would get hit with a worse shot.
A strong left-right combination by Terrence drove Elijah into the corner right above us. I looked up and saw Terrence’s eyes get a little wider as he came our way. I thought of a rabid bull charging a matador. He was swinging harder now. A body shot doubled Elijah over and a right uppercut snapped his head back and showered us with bloody droplets and sweat.
The crowd was screaming and people were rising to their feet. Minutes before they’d been cheering Elijah, but what they’d really come here to see was blood on the canvas. Terrence hit him with a roundhouse right and a chopping left as the place almost began to vibrate. Elijah was getting jolted from side to side in the corner like a big rag doll. With each shot, the crowd got even louder, until the sound was like a hundred thousand monkey’s shrieking in a steel cage.
And then abruptly the sound changed. Without any warning or advance movement, Elijah reached up and put a lightning bolt into the middle of Terrence’s face.
The punch seemed to come from nowhere. I didn’t even see Elijah winding up. He just threw a long right hand and Terrence fell back like the word of God had descended on him. He didn’t just look surprised. He looked astonished. Like he’d never considered the possibility that Elijah might hit him back.
The crowd’s roar had more bottom to it now—more of a satisfied noise. Like they were finally seeing something worthwhile. And instead of standing back and marveling at what he’d done, Elijah began advancing on Terrence, like an old World War II Army tank. A fat left hand smashed the side of Terrence’s head. A right caught him on the bridge of the nose. I’d seen him throw these kind of long loping punches in workouts, but they never had this much force before.
They butted heads and when Terrence backed away, I saw he had a small cut on his left upper eyelid. Instantly, Elijah went to work on widening the seam, like an expert tailor in reverse. A right, another right, and then a powerful left hook brought more blood flowing.
And for the first time I found myself thinking: Hey, this fat old son of a bitch might actually win.
58
“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.”
