Artis looked incredibly beautiful in a glittery gown cut on a bias. Her eyes glittered, her teeth glittered, stones set in gold glittered at her throat. She gave a deep, carefree laugh.
“You look... Christ, sensational!” exclaimed Dunc in awe.
Dunc had bought a dress shirt and a tie and a sport jacket, and had picked Artis up in Grey Ghost Two at the Flamingo, where she had a room until after the fight. Dunc hadn’t even entered any of the Strip’s plush resort hotels; tonight he was walking into the exclusive, expensive Copa Room of the Sands Hotel with the most beautiful woman in Vegas on his arm.
They ordered drinks, he tore a match out of a book, stuck it between the second and third fingers of his cupped right hand, lit it, held it to the tip of her Lucky. He’d seen an ex-con do that in some movie. He knew he probably looked ridiculous, especially with his bruised, swollen jaw, but he didn’t care. He was out with Artis for a night in Vegas.
She blew smoke from the corner of her mouth, put down the cigarette. When she took both his hands in hers, her hands were warm. He felt a stirring in his groin.
“Dunc, I want to ask your advice on something—”
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Sands Hotel.”
The M.C. wore a tux; he was there to make the audience laugh out loud so he could count their gold fillings.
“Here at New York’s Copacabana Gone West we have for you the greatest star in the Las Vegas firmament, the Copa’s own Sophisticated Lady, Miss... Lena... HORNE!”
Home sang her special songs. “Paper Doll.” “The Birth of the Blues.” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” to finish with “Stormy Weather.” Dunc hardly heard her. Artis needed his advice.
She never got it. A big hard-looking man towered above them. He was impeccably groomed and wore a silk suit, just like the first time Dunc had seen him outside the Tucson truck stop.
Artis’s smile dazzled. “Join us, Lucius.”
“I’m with another party. Just wanted to say hello.” He looked down at Dunc, intelligence shining from those battered features. “Everything’s okay? Ned’s ready?”
“Better than ready! Dynamite! Nitroglycerin, in fact.”
Breen chuckled. “That’s swell! Then the best man’ll win.”
The evening became a kaleidoscope of casinos and lounges and bars and sexual tension and expectation, with no time for questions. They drank and danced and she taught him roulette.
Noise and smoke assaulted the senses. Hatchet-eyed men watched, beautiful women prowled, suckers crowded the tables four-deep. Anything was possible, even the disappearance of a Lana Turner look-alike into the desert’s anonymous sands.
Anytime he tried to pay for anything, Artis put him off, saying she’d make out big by betting on Ned tomorrow night. Then suddenly the night was over, in the wee hours he was walking her down the silent corridor of the Flamingo to her room. What did he do? Handshake? Good-night kiss? What?
Artis solved his problem. She ground her crotch against his while thrusting her tongue into his mouth for one searing moment, then stepped back with a throaty laugh.
“A lick and a promise ’cause you’re such a sweet kid, Dunc.”
Despite the whiskey singing in him, Dunc was ashamed of his instant erection. She was Ned’s woman, for Chrissake! Then she gave him a chaste peck on the cheek, keyed the door, and was gone. The walk down the thickly carpeted corridor from her room seemed endless. He couldn’t stop thinking about both lick and promise.
Ned was sitting on the front steps by the dark of the moon. Dunc sat down beside him, the guilt at Artis’s kiss forgotten. In a few hours Ned faced the biggest bout of his career.
“Thinking about tomorrow night?”
Ned shook his head. “Gimpy.”
“Jesus, Ned, I thought that was all settled.”
He looked over at Dunc in the near-darkness. “I don’t do what he ast me, Raffetto comes after Gimp, an’ I’m not sure I can stop him. He’s greased lightning with a black-steel Commando knife he carries down the small of his back. But if I do it in the seventh, Gimp’ll be safe — an’ I’ll still win.”
“There’s winning and there’s winning, Ned! You can’t just sacrifice your fight for Gimpy. What if it’s another double cross? He’s the one screwing you over, you aren’t—”
“Yeah, yeah, kid, I know all that.” There was a great sadness in his face. “But dammit, can’t you see, I gotta do what Gimpy’s askin’ me. If I don’t an’ somethin’ happens to him, then it’s the same thing as if I killed him myself.” Then he burst out suddenly, “But Jesus Christ, Dunc, I hate it!”
Chapter Fifteen
Dunc was jerked awake at 6:00 A.M. by the rest of the training crew stirring around. He just wanted to stay in his bunk forever, but only he knew that this fight day wasn’t worth getting up for. He rode into town with Max in the pickup.
“Be at the depot at two just like usual, Dunc. Ned wants you to drive him to the fight tonight in his car.”
Jesus, what would he and Ned talk about in the car? In Ned’s place, Dunc would do the same, but this was Ned’s whole life. Yet if he didn’t... Dunc’s thoughts circled endlessly like buzzards over something dying on the desert floor.
He walked down Fremont. The Fourth of July, Vegas, fight night. It should have been almost unbearably exciting, but he felt only secret shame. Ned would beat Terlazzo, but not as they’d planned. It would be as Carny Largo had planned.
Seven celebrities were out in the middle of Fremont and First, clowning around and stopping traffic. He recognized only Milton Berle, Red Skelton, and Spike Jones, but the girl next to him in the sidewalk crowd knew them all. She was his age, tiny, with a mist of soft red curls framing a pixie face.
“That’s Gale Storm next to Skelton,” she said. “And Anna Maria Alberghetti between Spike Jones and Vic Damone. And of course the tall one on the end in the striped shirt is Herb Shriner. He does five minutes five days a week on CBS radio. They’re doing publicity for the Las Vegas News Bureau.”
He tried to get into the spirit of the day, made himself recall how he’d loved Red Skelton’s goofy movies...
“When I was a kid I thought it was Red Skeleton.”
The girl giggled. She had freckles and a pert Irish nose.
“Are you going to the parade?”
“No. Are you going to the fights? Nitro Ned Davenport is going to be the next heavyweight champion of the world.”
“Boxing?” Her face screwed up in disgust, and she moved away from him. Yawning, Dunc slipped away also. Three hours of silliness and noise until Max would take him back out to the ranch, and he hadn’t brought his book. He’d try the Gladiator.
Nitro Ned Davenport usually slept like a baby the night before a fight, but he woke after only a few hours of troubled slumber. Why the hell did he get involved with people? First Dunc, wide-eyed and hurting ’cause Ned was going along with the setup. Then Artis, hurting, too, in her own way.
In his room a warm breeze stirred the gauzy curtains in the wide window looking out on the horse paddock where they had taken so many training runs. He pulled his steamer trunk out from under the bed. Old and battered and iron-bound, it had been with him since he’d scored his first KO in 1937, at age seventeen. He took out the oiled leather pouch that held his personal papers, signed one of them, and put it in a separate envelope.
In the bunkhouse he pulled Dunc’s yellow gym bag out from under the bunk, packed it, and locked it in the trunk of his car. The envelope he locked in the glove box. If things went okay, Dunc would never see it.