Dunc paused inside the double doors, letting his eyes adjust to the Gladiator’s dimness. Nobody played the slots, nobody was at the tables. Only a relief bartender, taking occasional drags from the cigarette balanced on the edge of the stainless-steel sink. And Pepe at the piano in jeans and tennis shoes and a flowery sport shirt, making “Stardust.”
“Play one of your own,” said Dunc.
Flushed with pleasure, Pepe did. Then another, this one evoking city streets and cold autumn wind around skyscraper corners. When he was through, Dunc applauded.
“How did it go with the record producer?”
Pepe banged out “How High the Moon.” “Number one on Your Hit Parade. I cut the demo on Monday in L.A.”
“That’s fantastic, Pepe. And come back when?”
Like a dirge, “There’s No Tomorrow.” “I don’t. This works out, I’ll be playing piano on the Sunset Strip.”
Dunc felt a sudden hole in his life. “I’ll come and see you there.”
“Sure you will, kid. Sure you will.”
Rafe was mixing drinks. Gimpy Ernest was fussing with the bouquet of flowers left by a tip-conscious maid. Carny sat on a red leather barstool, his well-manicured hands carefully rotating a thin cigar in the flame of a silver lighter.
“We’d better get over to the field,” said Gimpy.
“I’m catching it on TV,” Carny said. “He’s got the nigger and the kid to hold his hands, he doesn’t need me.”
Artis was sitting on the couch again, head back and eyes closed. She was wearing a white silk blouse with a gold cross at her throat, dark slacks with high-heeled sandals that had gold straps over the arch of her foot.
Carny removed his cigar. “You give the kid titty last night?” When she didn’t respond, he persisted, “He’s such a cool cat, I bet you gave him titty and stink finger.”
“Lucius Breen came around asking questions about Ned.”
Carny stiffened. Everyone knew of Breen’s power, his love of boxing, his incorruptibility as a referee. He would go to the Boxing Commission, kill the fight if he got proof it was fixed.
“You think Breen’s heard something?”
“Not from Dunc, that’s a gut. The poor sap said all the right things — because that’s what he believes.”
“How about you? What did you say to Breen?”
“Ask Lucius,” she said with a vindictive smile.
Dunc was driving north on Las Vegas Boulevard from the ranch, Ned beside him, Wes in the backseat with the equipment. Las Vegas fight cards were staged at Cashman’s Field, a minor-league baseball diamond a mile and a half north of the Strip. The house would be much greater than the usual two thousand; two ranked heavyweights as headliners, and the Visitors Bureau had gotten The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports to make it the first televised Vegas fight card. To hold the spectators after the cameras were turned off, fireworks would follow the boxing matches.
The ring was set up about where home plate usually was, with a portable wooden floor laid down on the infield for rows of ringside folding chairs at twenty-five bucks. Bleacher seats were ten.
“Nick the Greek has me odds-on favorite,” said Ned, “so a lot of ham-and-eggers are makin’ bets on me. If I lose—”
“You won’t lose,” said Dunc almost sadly. This wasn’t what they had trained for.
The ball field was ablaze with lights, though the sun was hours from setting. The uniformed guard on the gate bent to peer into the car, straightened up with a broad grin.
“You got my money ridin’ on you, Nitro!” he exclaimed.
They walked in under the bleachers, Wes carrying Ned’s gear in a military-issue olive-green duffel bag. Down a set of steps and along a dimly lit concrete corridor to the dressing rooms, lockers, and showers. Ned paused.
“Listen, Dunc, if I don’t show up right after the fight, you an’ Art is get out of Vegas. Check the glove box of the car. Your gear is locked in the trunk. This here is just a what-if, okay? Now, why don’t you go on out an’ look the setup over? You won’t get no chance once the crowd starts gettin’ here.”
Two technicians in greenish coveralls were up ladders in the ring, fussing with a square of lights scaffolded above it. On the second-base side was a sturdy wooden framework to support the TV camera. Heavy cables snaked away into the outfield.
Lucius Breen climbed through the ropes, and a microphone on the end of a cable descended from the metal pipe framework above the ring. One of the technicians caught it, handed it to Lucius.
“Could we do a sound check, Mr. Breen?”
Breen’s voice boomed out over the field. “In this corner, wearing red trunks and weighing in at two hundred twenty-one pounds, Nitro Ned—”
“That’s great. Thanks.”
Breen caught up with Dunc on his way back to the dressing rooms. Dunc’s new guilty knowledge about the fixed fight lay like lead in his belly. Lucius was straight and the fight wasn’t. Dunc wasn’t. They stopped at the head of the ramp.
“Anybody asked Ned to lose the fight?” Breen asked bluntly.
“Ned would never do that, Mr. Breen!”
“To stall, maybe? Maybe pick a round?”
Somehow, Dunc met his eyes. “He doesn’t have to.”
Dunc finally understood that Lucius Breen knew all about the kind of man Carny Largo was, knew about Gimpy Ernest’s gambling problems, had, in fact, gotten Dunc into Ned’s training camp just so he could ask him these questions on fight night.
Dunc almost ran after him to tell him the truth about the fix. Maybe this was the act of moral recompense the priest had said he would recognize when the moment come. But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t his secret to tell. Talk, and he would destroy Ned’s only shot at the heavyweight title. Destroy Ned.
He’d had to lie. What else could he have done?
Chapter Sixteen
Nitro Ned hung up the corridor pay phone and returned to the dressing room, ritualistically donned socks, supporter, cup, trunks, and shoes like a knight donning his armor. Usually Ned would have been deep down inside himself by now, everything else excluded, just him and how he would fight his fight. But not tonight. Tonight someone else was going through the ritual of preparation, of dressing, of hand-taping. Oh, sweat tickled his spine and his mouth felt dry and cottony, as before any fight, but it meant nothing. Nothing at all.
Dunc, wearing unlaced gloves, held up his hands palm-out, and Ned slammed blows at them. A light sheen of sweat covered his body now, his feet working combinations Dunc knew by heart, even though the accompanying punches weren’t being thrown.
Someone knocked. Wes crossed to the door, opened it to a uniformed guard’s face that brought with it a roar from the playing field overhead as from an opened furnace door.
“Last prelim’s star tin’ now.”
Dunc took off the unlaced gloves. Gimpy Ernest’s heavy-lidded eyes were dark-circled, his face pasty. A wilted white shirr clung to the rounded, meaty shoulders under his loud sport jacket. Pudgy fingers were close to shredding his dime cigar. He got Ned in a corner away from the others.
“You sure you got it straight, Nitro?” he said, low-voiced. “You just carry him ’til the seventh, don’t worry about points.” Sweat dripped from his sagging jowls. “I’m countin’ on you, Ned — me an’ Artis.”
“Yeah, Gimp. You an’ Artis.” Ned began slamming his gloved fists together as if Terlazzo’s head were between them.
Surrounded by his entourage, Terlazzo pranced up the aisle first, turning his torso from side to side, arms above his head. He wore a purple robe with gold piping, the hood up to cover his sweat-gleaming black curls.