“I understand you wish to speak with the commissioner,” he said, bowing slightly to John B. and then me.
Soft hands, light Spanish accent, skin as smooth as a leather briefcase at an airport duty-free shop. Obviously not a street guy like Ospina. I wondered if he was the appointments secretary or something.
“Yeah,” said John B. “My brother, he’s looking to get the title belt put back around his middle, where it belong.”
“Ah, yes, your brother Elijah,” said the man in the paisley ascot. “We’ve often passed pleasant afternoons playing golf on the courses of South Florida. Many humorous hours have gone by, looking for his balls in the woods.”
He smiled at us, but something about him made my gut squirm. He said his name was Eddie Suarez. I couldn’t figure out how he knew what we wanted. I’d seen Sam Wolkowitz go up to the panel on the stage and sit down next to Pedro Hoyas Ospina without giving any signal.
“So your brother is intent on making a comeback,” said Eddie Suarez, standing with his back against a long marble pillar as Ospina went into the tenth minute of his speech.
“We want to see him get ranked,” I jumped in. “We understand it’s the only way he can get the fight.”
Suarez solemnly touched his lips with his fingertips. “You know, my friends, the commissioner is very concerned about the youth of today. Many more temptations are available to them. The drugs, the credit cards, the pornographic videos .. .”
“They have it too easy!” said John B.
“The commissioner feels it is important for the youth to have an outlet for their . . . energies,” Suarez continued. “A place to go. You understand. So that is why the commissioner wishes to build a gymnasium in Panama City.”
“What do you want us to do about it?” I asked.
Suarez’s eyes got a little wider and a little darker, as if they were trying to fill the gaps in what he was saying. “A contribution is needed. Certainly you are both familiar with the high cost of construction, even in a country as poor as ours.”
“Yeah, so for how much?” I asked.
“In the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars,” he said.
I whistled loud enough to turn several heads nearby.
“So this is a bribe?”
His smile said you wouldn’t want to see his frown. “I have no authority,” he told us. “I’m merely a friend to all parties. A builder of bridges.”
Fair enough. I guess a lot of bridge builders get paid off too. Except we were already fifty thousand dollars in the hole for the normal expenses.
I swallowed hard and tried to look unconcerned. If we didn’t pay this guy off, we couldn’t get Elijah rated in the WBF top ten, and therefore, the TV guy Wolkowitz wouldn’t talk to us. In my father’s trade this was what was known as a shakedown. Except these guys had custom-made suits and corporate offices. I should’ve turned on my heel and left right then. They were exactly the same as Teddy’s crew. It mademe think of that kid’s game, Chutes and Ladders. You start off at the bottom and end up at the bottom with hardly any time in between.
But it was still my one chance at getting out. Sure, boxing was a dirty business, but it was a way into the legitimate world, where I belonged. I couldn’t go back and work for Teddy in six months. So instead of Chutes and Ladders, I told myself it was an obstacle course, with a great reward waiting for me at the end.
I asked Suarez for his card and said we’d get back to him.
“Do not make the mistake of waiting too long, my friends,” he warned us. “This fight is scheduled for ten weeks from today. It is possible another light heavyweight may be chosen from the ranks.”
“It wouldn’t be the same as having Elijah up there,” John B. told him in a panicky voice.
I tried to play it cool. “We’ll come to terms when we come to terms,” I said. “We’re not desperate, you know.”
13
P.F. WASN’T SURE if it was the hangover or the clams that were nauseating him as he stood in front of the grocery on Florida Avenue, talking to Teddy and his two soldiers, Joey Snails and Richie Amato.
“So I’ve been asking myself,” said P.F. with a hand over his stomach. “Who would wanna do a thing like that to poor Larry DiGregorio? Senseless.”
The heat was like a gorilla suit. Teddy, sitting on a milk crate, pried open a clam, sucked out its insides, and threw the shell into a white plastic bucket at his feet.
“That’s three times I been asked the same question,” he told P.F. “First I had the feebs. Then the state troopers and now I got you. The man was a friend of mine. Ask anybody. I never wanted to see him chopped up like that.”
On their milk crates nearby, Richie and Joey Snails exchanged bad-boy smiles and talked about the movie Dances With Wolves. The baking sun turned the sidewalks salt white and conjured a murky stench from the bucket at Teddy’s feet.
P.F. felt the gorge rising in his throat. “Well the word is you were having some kind of problem with Larry’s son Nicky . . .”
“Ah, bullshit.” Teddy struggled for a few seconds with a clam that wouldn’t open and then tossed it into the bucket at his feet. “You know the only reason you come around asking questions like that is because I have a last name that ends in a vowel. It’s discrimination, that’s what it is. Being Irish and a drunk like you are I would’ve expected better from you.”
P.F. gave up a smile he’d meant to keep to himself. On his crate, Joey Snails put his fingers up to his head like horns and told Richie “de-tonka” was Indian for buffalo.
“God forbid a robin should fall out of a tree, I’d get blamed for it,” Teddy went on. “Why don’t you do something about real crime? I heard there was a shooting down in the Inlet last night. I don’t see you working on that.”
“I had no idea you were so concerned about the violence in our minority community. You ought to think about organizing a volunteer patrol.”
“There’s crime going on everywhere, you wanna look for it. Look across the street there.”
Teddy pointed to a small Vietnamese restaurant with a yellow-and-red sign out front. “Every night I see twelve guys coming and going out the back of that place,” he said. “So don’t tell me they haven’t got a card game going back there or an illegal shipping operation.”
Three young Asian men dressed in black and wearing sunglasses got into a white Lexus and drove away laughing.
“Sure that’s not just jealousy?” asked P.F.
He’d heard Teddy was getting squeezed these days. Something about Jackie from New York coming into town.
“Poor fuckin’ buffalo,” said Joey Snails. “They hadda go whack most of ’em. But there are still a few left. I saw some the other day when I was driving up the Turnpike ...”
“Get the fuck outa here,” said Richie, admiring the new biceps and traps the steroids had given him. “There ain’t no buffalo in Jersey. They’re all in upstate New York. That’s why they named a town after them ...”
Teddy coughed uncomfortably and dropped another clam in the bucket. “You know,” he said, looking up at P.F. “I hope you didn’t come by here looking for a payoff again, like you used to with your old partner.”
The memory and the gorge in P.F.’s throat seemed to rise simultaneously. Twenty years ago. Coming by with Paulie Raymond, to collect televisions and carpets as bribes.
“No,” P.F. said, trying to keep himself bottled up. “That was Paulie’s game. I was just along for the ride.”
“Good thing too,” Teddy grumbled. “’Cause there ain’t any more where all that came from. A man oughta work for a living anyway.”
“I had occasion to think of those days recently.” P.F. cleared his throat. “Michael Dillon. He was a friend of yours too. I wonder whatever happened to him.”