A cloud passed over Elijah’s face. “But the last time at the airport, that girl behind the counter couldn’t spell my name right,” he murmured.
“So that’s why you want to fight again? To get your name back?”
“That, and the money.” Elijah put up his guard and rocked from side to side. His wife’s religious program in the kitchen seemed to get a little louder. “Like I say, I’m in it to go the distance. Some of these young boys, who fight now, they just wanna kick butt. I’ve kicked enough butt. Now I want security.”
“All right,” I said, playing devil’s advocate to make sure this deal was going to be worth all the effort I’d have to put into it. “But what about all those people who are going to say you’re too old to fight and you’re just risking more brain damage?”
He threw a big brown fist in my face and for a second my whole world was his knuckles. Then as fast as it came it was gone. The punch stopped short of my nose by less than a quarter inch. If it had connected, I would’ve spent two months in a hospital easy.
“Does that look like brain damage?” He danced away.
“So you’re not afraid of getting knocked out?”
“Hell no.” He threw a quick combination at the lamp in the corner. “Though it must be something. Having the night close up on you like that.” He stopped dancing and punching for a second. “They say it’s hard for a man to live with himself after he gets stopped. I heard tell of one man was lying on the dressing room table after he got knocked out and started to see visions of baby Jesus fighting and boxing with the angels. Imagine that. Baby Jesus, gettin’ in the ring. Man got so scared he ran out naked on the street.”
“Why’d he do that?” I asked, feeling a peculiar chill on the back of my neck.
“I guess he must’ve lost faith,” Elijah said gravely, staring at the ceiling like he’d just seen a ghost flying by up there. “Man spends his whole life fighting, telling himself he’s the baddest man alive. He gets knocked out, he can’t be that way no more.”
He grew still and quiet. No matter how you came at it, this man was forty-three and had been in a lot of fights. There was even scar tissue on the back of his thick, rolled-up neck. But that was part of the beauty of Elijah. In a way, he was just an ordinary middle-aged man trying to chase down his lost youth. Like millions of other paunchy middle-aged men across the country. A fair percentage of whom might be inclined to watch pay-per-view fights on cable TV. I could even imagine a slogan: “If there’s hope for Elijah Barton, there’s hope for the rest of us.”
“So have we got a deal?” I said. “I get twenty percent as your manager for covering your training expenses and sanctioning fees up front.”
“Twenty percent.” Elijah shook my hand. His grip was surprisingly loose and delicate, like an old lady’s.
I started to leave. “Sounds like a helluva thing,” I said. “Getting knocked out.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Elijah sat back down on the couch and took two pills. “It’s never happened to me.”
It was only later that I learned that he’d been stopped cold before the third round in two of his last three fights.
6
JUST AFTER TEN that night, Pigfucker walked into a bar called the Irish Pub, put a fifty-dollar bill on the counter and began drinking whiskey until a halo of colored lights appeared around the bartender’s head.
“Keep pouring,” he warned when he saw the kid hesitate after the seventh drink. “Keep pouring, or I’ll take out my gun and shoot you right here.”
The bar was a little sanctuary of nostalgia. Its dark-paneled walls were covered with pictures of scenes from yesteryear: Lillian Russell in petticoats, Cagney in The Fighting 69th, the 1921 Miss America contestants, and Harry Greb, middleweight champion of 1923. Yellow stained-glass light fixtures gave everything a soft autumnal glow. But when P.F. saw his own face in the mirror behind the counter, it was stark and ghostly. With long sad eyes and no halo of colored lights going around it.
“Hey,” he asked the bartender. “Where’s my goddamn halo?”
A trio of cops came in and sat down at the table five feet behind his stool. Even in his drunken haze, he recognized one of them, Earl Mack, a black patrol sergeant he’d argued with frequently in the last few years. The other two he didn’t know. One looked exactly like a baby, with light, thin hair and wide, innocent eyes. The third was tall and swarthy, with black curly hair. Pigfucker couldn’t tell if he was Italian or Puerto Rican.
“You know,” said P.F., turning halfway on his stool to face Earl and the others. “I feel sorry for you.”
“And why’s that?” Earl Mack’s eyes barely left the list of mixed drinks on his brown place mat.
“Because you are condemned to clean up after federal gang bangs like this DiGregorio homicide, while I enter the vibrant and exciting world of casino management.”
“Is that so?” Earl bit down on his lips.
“It is,” said P.F. with a sage nod, the whiskey making him boisterous and arrogant.
He saw Earl and his tablemates smirking and thought: To hell with them, the lowly beasts. Let them think he was kidding. His ego was rising as free and lofty as an untethered parade float on Thanksgiving Day.
“In eight months I’ll have twenty years on the job,” he said. “And I’ve already spoken to my good friend, Father Bobby D’Errico, vice president in charge of operations at the Doubloon hotel-casino, about his hiring me as head of security.” He leaned over and winked at Earl. “Maybe I could even take on one of you boys as a square badge. You know, as an act of charity.”
“Really?” Earl flashed a very small smile and gave the waitress his drink order.
P.F. saw the halo of colored lights turning counterclockwise around Earl’s head.
“Do you all know Mr. Pigfucker?” Earl asked his tablemates above the din of the Clancy Brothers singing “The Unicorn” on the jukebox.
The baby and the Puerto Rican shrugged.
“Detective Peter Farley,” he said, leaning off his stool to shake their hands. “Pigfucker, number one.”
“You’re all aware why he’s called the Pigfucker, right?” Earl steepled his fingers.
“It’s from the old Republican political campaigns,” explained P.F., glad of the chance to hold forth. “You call your opponent a Pigfucker and then sit back and wait for him to deny it. Same thing that we do at the station house. Throw the perp in the cell and ask him when he started beating his wife. Presumption of guilt. It’s the cornerstone of our legal system.”
Earl sniffed. “Too bad old P.F. here ain’t done a lick of work in about twelve years. He’s been relying on uniformed officers to find his witnesses and boost his clearance rate since I came in the department.”
P.F. saluted him dismissively. Sour-graping from the small people. Typical. Soon all of this would be behind him anyway. He’d have his own office at the Doubloon with a long-legged secretary and a view of the ocean. He’d walk the casino floor, shaking hands with the high rollers and granting favors to the cocktail waitresses.
“Say, P.F., what was the name of that case?” Earl taunted him.
“Which one?”
“You know. The one you couldn’t clear from ’bout twenty years ago. Paulie Raymond was the detective on it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit you don’t. You kept that file on your desk until about five years ago. It was that Irish guy that was mixed up with Teddy and the Mafia. Mike something.”