11/22/63: A Novel (83 page)

She lit a cigarette, adding her smoke to the blue veil hanging around the lights. I was on her right, and from where I sat, she looked perfect.

I tapped her on the shoulder, and when she turned, I kissed her lightly on her parted lips. “Kid,” I said, “we’ll always have Paris.”

She grinned. “The one in Texas, maybe.”

A groan went up from the crowd. The black fighter had just knocked the white one on his ass.

The main bout commenced at nine-thirty. Close-ups of the fighters filled the screens, and when the camera centered on Tom Case, my heart sank. There were threads of gray in his curly black hair. His cheeks were becoming jowls. His midsection flabbed over his trunks. Worst of all, though, were his somehow bewildered eyes, which peered from puffy sacs of scar tissue. He didn’t look entirely sure about where he was. The audience of fifteen hundred or so mostly cheered—Tom Case was a hometown boy, after all—but I also heard a healthy chorus of boos. Sitting there slumped on his stool, holding the ropes with his gloved hands, he looked like he’d already lost. Dick Tiger, on the other hand, was up on his feet, shadowboxing and skipping nimbly in his black hightops.

Sadie leaned close to me and whispered, “This doesn’t look so good, honey.”

That was the understatement of the century. It looked terrible.

Down front (where the screen must have seemed like a looming cliff with blurred moving figures projected on it), I saw Akiva Roth squire a mink-wearing dolly in Garbo shades to a seat that would have been ringside, if the fight hadn’t been on a screen. In front of Sadie and me, a chubby man smoking a cigar turned around and said, “Who ya got, beautiful?”

“Case!” Sadie said bravely.

The chubby cigar-smoker laughed. “Well, you got a good heart, anyway. Care to put a tenspot on that?”

“Will you give me four-to-one? If Case knocks him out?”

“If
Case
knocks
Tiger
out? Lady, you’re on.” He stuck out a hand. Sadie shook it. Then she turned to me with a defiant little smile playing around the corner of her mouth that still worked.

“Pretty bold,” I said.

“Not at all,” she said. “Tiger’s going down in five. I can see the future.”

The ring announcer, wearing a tux and a pound of hair tonic, trotted to center ring, yanked down a mike on a silver cord, and gave the fighters’ stats in a rolling carny-barker’s voice. The National Anthem played. Men yanked off their hats and put their hands over their hearts. I could feel my own heart thudding rapidly, at least a hundred and twenty beats a minute and maybe more. The auditorium was air-conditioned, but sweat was rolling down the back of my neck and humidifying my armpits.

A girl in a swimsuit strutted around the ring in high heels, holding up a card with a big number
1
on it.

The bell clanged. Tom Case shuffled into the ring with a resigned expression on his face. Dick Tiger bounded happily to meet him, feinted with his right hand, then unleashed a compact left hook that decked Case exactly twelve seconds into the fight. The crowds—the one here and the one in the Garden, two thousand miles away—let out a disgusted groan. The hand Sadie had rested on my thigh seemed to spring claws as it tensed and dug in.

“Tell that ten to say goo’bye to his friends, beautiful,” the chubby cigar-smoker said gleefully.

Al, what the fuck were you thinking?

Dick Tiger retreated to his corner and stood there bouncing nonchalantly on the balls of his feet while the ref commenced the count, sweeping his right arm up and down dramatically. On three, Case stirred. On five he sat up. On seven he took a knee. And on nine he rose and lifted his gloves. The ref took the fighter’s face in his hands and asked a question. Case replied. The ref nodded, beckoned to Tiger, and stepped aside.

The Tiger Man, perhaps anxious to get to the steak dinner waiting for him at Sardi’s, rushed in for the kill. Case didn’t try to escape him—his
speed had left him behind long ago, perhaps during some tank-town fight in Moline, Illinois, or New Haven, Connecticut—but he was able to cover up . . . and clinch. He did a lot of that, resting his head on Tiger’s shoulder like a tired tango dancer and pounding his gloves weakly on Tiger’s back. The crowd began to boo. When the bell rang and Case plodded back to his stool with his head down and his gloved fists dangling, they booed louder.

“He stinks, beautiful,” the chubby man remarked.

Sadie looked at me anxiously. “What do you think?”

“I think he made it through the first, anyway.” What I
really
thought was that someone should stick a fork in Tom Case’s sagging butt, because to me he looked almost done.

The chick in the Jantzen did her thing again, this time holding up a
2.
The bell clanged. Once again Tiger bounded and Case plodded. My guy continued to move in close so he could clinch whenever possible, but I noticed he was now managing to deflect the left hook that had devastated him in the first round. Tiger worked on the older fighter’s gut with piston-like shots of his right hand, but there must have been quite a lot of muscle left under that flab, because they didn’t seem to affect Case very much. At one point, Tiger pushed Case back and gestured with both gloves in a
come on, come on
gesture. The crowd cheered. Case only stared at him, so Tiger moved in. Case immediately clinched. The crowd groaned. The bell rang.

“My granny could give Tiger a better show,” the cigar-smoker grumbled.

“Maybe,” Sadie said, lighting her third cigarette of the fight, “but he’s still on his feet, isn’t he?”

“Not for long, sugar. The next time one of those left hooks gets through, it’s gonna be Case closed.” He chortled.

The third round was more clinching and shuffling, but in the fourth, Case let his guard drop slightly and Tiger hit him with a barrage of lefts and rights to the head that brought the audience to its feet, roaring. Akiva Roth’s girlfriend was with them. Mr. Roth
himself retained his seat, but
did
trouble himself enough to cup his ladyfriend’s ass with a beringed right hand.

Case fell back against the ropes, shooting rights at Tiger, and one of those blows got through. It looked pretty feeble, but I saw sweat fly from the Tiger Man’s hair as he shook his head. There was a bewildered where-did-
that
-come-from expression on his face. Then he moved in again and went back to work. Blood began oozing from a cut beside Case’s left eye. Before Tiger could increase the damage from a trickle to a gush, the bell rang.

“If you hand over that ten now, beautiful,” the pudgy cigar-smoker said, “you and your boyfriend will be able to beat the traffic.”

“Tell you what,” Sadie said. “I’ll give you one chance to call it off and save yourself forty dollars.”

The pudgy cigar-smoker laughed. “Beautiful
and
a sensayuma. If that long tall helicopter you’re with treats you bad, sugar, come home with me.”

In Case’s corner, the trainer was working frantically on the bad eye, squeezing something from a tube and mooshing it around with the tips of his fingers. It looked like Crazy Glue to me, except I don’t think that had been invented yet. Then he slapped Case in the chops with a wet towel. The bell rang.

Dick Tiger bored in, jamming with his right and hooking with his left. Case dodged one left hook, and for the first time in the fight, Tiger launched a right uppercut at the older man’s head. Case managed to pull back just enough to keep from taking it full on the jaw, but it connected with his cheek. The force of it distorted his entire face into a horror-house grimace. He staggered back. Tiger came at him. The crowd was up again, bellowing for blood. We rose with them. Sadie’s hands were over her mouth.

Tiger had Case pinned in one of the neutral corners and was hammering him with rights and lefts. I could see Case sagging; I could see the lights in his eyes dimming. One more left hook—or that cannon-shot right—and they would go out.

“PUT IM DOWN!”
the chubby cigar-smoker was screaming.
“PUT HIM DOWN, DICKY! KNOCK HIS BLOCK OFF!”

Tiger hit him low, below the belt. Probably not on purpose, but the ref stepped in. While he cautioned Tiger about the low blow, I watched Case to see how he would use this temporary respite. I saw something come into his face that I recognized. I had seen Lee wearing the same expression on the day he’d been giving Marina hell about the zipper of her skirt. It had appeared when Marina had come back on him, accusing him of bringing her and the baby to a
peegsty
and then twirling her finger around her ear in a you’re-crazy gesture.

All at once this had stopped being just a payday to Tom Case.

The ref stepped aside. Tiger bored in, but this time Case stepped to meet him. What happened during the next twenty seconds was the most electrifying, terrifying thing I have ever seen as part of an audience. The two of them simply stood toe-to-toe, slugging each other in the face, the chest, the shoulders, the gut. There was no bobbing, no weaving, no fancy footwork. They were bulls in a pasture. Case’s nose broke and gushed blood. Tiger’s lower lip smashed back against his teeth and split; blood poured down both sides of his chin, making him look like a vampire after a big meal.

Everyone in the auditorium was on their feet and screaming. Sadie was jumping up and down. Her fedora fell off, exposing the scarred cheek. She took no notice. Nobody else did, either. On the huge screens, World War III was in full swing.

Case lowered his head to take one of those bazooka rights, and I saw Tiger grimace as his fist connected with hard bone. He took a step backward and Case unloaded a monster uppercut. Tiger turned his head, avoiding the worst of it, but his mouthpiece flew free and rolled across the canvas.

Case moved in, throwing haymaker lefts and rights. There was no artistry to them, only raw, angry power. Tiger backpedaled, tripped over his own feet, and went down. Case stood over him, seemingly unsure what to do or—perhaps—even where he was. His frantically signaling trainer caught his eye and he plodded back to his corner. The ref commenced his count.

On four, Tiger took a knee. On six, he was on his feet. After the
mandatory eight-count, the fight recommenced. I looked at the big clock in the corner of the screen and saw there were fifteen seconds left in the round.

Not enough, it’s not enough time.

Case plodded forward. Tiger threw that devastating left hook. Case jerked his head to one side, and when the glove had flown past his face, he lashed out with his right. This time it was Dick Tiger’s face that distorted, and when he went down he didn’t get up.

The pudgy man looked at the tattered remains of his cigar, then threw it on the floor. “Jesus wept!”

“Yes!” Sadie chirruped, resetting her fedora at the proper insouciant slant. “On a stack of blueberry pancakes, and the disciples said they were the best they ever ate! Now pay up!”

By the time we got back to Jodie, August 29 had become August 30, but we were both too excited to sleep. We made love, then came out to the kitchen and ate pie in our underwear.

“Well?” I said. “What do you think?”

“That I never want to go to another prizefight. That was pure bloodlust. And I was up on my feet, cheering with the rest. For a few seconds—maybe even a full minute—I wanted Case to kill that dancing all-full-of-himself dandy. Then I couldn’t wait to get back here and jump into bed with you. That wasn’t about love just now, Jake. That was about
burning.
”

I said nothing. Sometimes there’s nothing to say.

She reached across the table, plucked a crumb from my chin, and popped it into my mouth. “Tell me it’s not hate.”

“What’s not?”

“The reason you feel you have to stop this man on your own.” She saw me start to open my mouth and held up a hand to stop me. “I heard everything you said, all your reasons, but you have to tell me they
are
reasons, and not just what I saw in that man Case’s eyes when
Tiger hit him in the trunks. I can love you if you’re a man, and I can love you if you’re a hero—I guess, although for some reason that seems a lot harder—but I don’t think I can love a vigilante.”

I thought of how Lee looked at his wife when he wasn’t mad at her. I thought about the conversation I’d overheard when he and his little girl were splashing in the bath. I thought about his tears outside the bus station, when he’d held Junie and nuzzled beneath her chin before rolling off to New Orleans.

“It’s not hate,” I said. “What I feel about him is . . .”

I trailed off. She watched me.

“Sorrow for a spoiled life. But you can feel sorry for a good dog that goes rabid, too. That doesn’t stop you from putting him down.”

She looked me in the eyes. “I want you again. But this time it should be for love, you know? Not because we just saw two men beat the hell out of each other and our guy won.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. That’s good.”

And it was.

“Well look here,” said Frank Frati’s daughter when I walked into the pawnshop around noon on that Friday. “It’s the boxing swami with the New England accent.” She offered me a glittery smile, then turned her head and shouted, “
Da-ad!
It’s your Tom Case man!”

Frati came shuffling out. “Hello there, Mr. Amberson,” he said. “Big as life and handsome as Satan on Saturday night. I bet you’re feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this fine day, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I? I had a lucky hit.”

“I’m the one who took the hit.” He pulled a brown envelope, a little bigger than standard business-size, from the back pocket of his baggy gabardine slacks. “Two grand. Feel free to count it.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I trust you.”

He started to pass over the envelope, then pulled it back and tapped his chin with it. His blue eyes, faded but shrewd, sized me up. “Any interest in rolling this over? Football season is coming up, as is the Series.”

“I don’t know jack about football, and a Dodgers-Yankees Series doesn’t interest me much. Hand it over.”