by Charles Farrell

The first thing I did that night was trade my life for Howard Bennett’s. From there I moved on to smaller problems.

Just before the card’s opening bout, Michael Santore’s first pro fight, I got a feeling that something was wrong.  I still don’t know where it came from.  Maybe it was a general mistrust of Howard Bennett.  Smalltimers can almost never see past the tiny immediate score.

Bennett had been paid to find someone to take a dive in the first round against Michael Santore.  He’d also been given a thousand dollars by me —which I’d been given by Vincent Carvello and John Santore, Michael’s father — to hand directly to the opponent.

I couldn’t find Bennett so I walked back to the losers’ dressing room.  The designated fall guy was a slouching, acne scarred kid with no visible muscle, somehow both scrawny and flabby. There were bags under his eyes.  Southern white trash, he looked less like a fighter than someone who’d knocked up his girlfriend and was trying to make ends meet by working the late shift at the 7-11.

He was attended to by a black sharpie wearing an ornate pimp’s hat — an unnecessary artifact of one exploitative profession transposed to another.

For a moment I watched them going pointlessly through a final warm-up. Because he didn’t factor into the decision-making process, I didn’t bother talking to the fighter.

“Does he know what to do?”

“What you mean what to do? Do he know how to fight?”

“No. I can see he doesn’t know how to fight.  Didn’t Howard Bennett go over things with you?”

“What you mean?”

“He didn’t talk to you? He didn’t pay you?”

“What you mean?  He pay after the fight.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred dollar.”

“And that’s all you’re getting for one round?”

“It for four rounds.”

“Don’t leave this room. Do not go to the ring.  Wait for me. You hear me?  Don’t you leave this room.”

I found John Santore, Vincent Carvello, Ronny Tanner, and the killers at ringside.  With their expensive suits and upscale warmup jackets, lumpy bodybuilder physiques, and deep salon tans, they stood out among the sea of sleeveless tee-shirts.

I told Santore, “We’ve got a problem.  Bennett didn’t fix the fight.”

“We don’t got a problem.  You got a problem.”

Santore got up, threw an arm over my shoulder to draw me in, and, in the middle of the auditorium, opened his jacket.   Firmly resting against his side was a holstered gun.

“Charles, you’ll fix this thing or I swear to God we’re gonna kill you.  We’ll kill that matchmaker cocksucker, killer that faggot promoter, and kill everybody else.  I’ll put the bullet in Alan Shore’s head personally.  Fuckin’ take care of it.  We’re relying on you.  You got about five minutes.”

“I’ll handle it.  Sit tight.”

He withdrew his arm.

“We ain’t going nowhere. I didn’t fly all these people out here to watch you fuck things up. I don’t wanna hear no more bullshit.”

Santore wasn’t making an idle threat; the killers had long resumes.

My first stop was to the box office where promoter Jimmy Perkins and announcer Alan Shore were making last minute preparations for the show.

Perkins was a dilettante who envied and hated fighters.  Shore was a celebrity prettyboy whose success was based on a stupid catchphrase.

“We have to hold up the show for a couple of minutes.”

Shore looked put out. It was his default expression when he wasn’t in front of a camera.

“Hold up the show? For how long? Why?  Who are you?”

“I’m the guy who’s telling you that we’re holding up the show.”

From the auditorium, “The Star Spangled Banner” began playing over the loudspeaker system.

Laine asked me what was going on.

“One of the fighters was supposed to fall down, but Howard Bennett didn’t tell him about it.  I need to find Howard before we can do anything else.”

I found Bennett at the back of the auditorium and dragged him into the losers’ dressing room.   Then I cleared everybody but the fighter and his manager out.

Bennett was an old-time matchmaker from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, a dishonest, furtive, chain-smoking weasel. A lifetime of obsequiousness had twisted his body into the shape of a question mark. But Bennett knew boxing. We’d done business in the past in Greensboro and Pensacola, Florida. Up until that moment, things had gone fine between us.

He gave me a wheedling smile.  Then he coughed.  He fished around his shirt pocket for his cigarettes.

“You didn’t tell him what to do.”

“It’s a one round fight.  This kid can’t fight a lick. He can’t beat nobody.  Your guy’s sure to knock him out in the first round.  Guaranteed.”

“Santore can’t fight a lick either.  And he’s petrified.  If this hillbilly even looks at him wrong, he’s going to keel over.  I’m not even sure Santore can walk to the ring.  You weren’t paid to bring in a stiff.  You were paid to fix the fucking fight. Santore’s crew are about to come in here and kill all of us.”

“I’m telling you it won’t go but one round!”

I turned to the fighter’s manager.

“Take off that fucking hat.”

“Say what?”

“In about one minute, some men are going to come in here and shoot all of us.  They’re going to shoot your fighter, they’re going to shoot you, they’re going to shoot me, and they’re going to finish by shooting this piece of shit.  Now take off your hat and listen to what I’m telling you.”

I turned to the fighter and started giving him instructions.  He was not to throw any punches.  He was not to move far from his own corner.  He was to back into the ropes when hit.  And he was to go down the second he felt a punch land on his face.

He swallowed hard.  He blinked.

“No, sir.  I can’t do that.”

“You’re going to do it.  You have to do it.”

“No, sir.  He come up from New York, so he prolly gone beat me anyways.  But my family’s here.  They come to see me fight. My mother is here.  I can’t just quit.”

I pointed out that they’d rather see him lose than see him dead.  But he wasn’t buying it. He clamped his mouth shut tight and nodded his head vigorously.  He began to shake. Then he burst into tears.

“He’s a big amateur from up in New York.  Prolly kill me anyway.”

Some people were too dumb to realize that fighting was about making money.

“Yeah, he would.  But we’re never going to find out.”

I turned back to Bennett.

“Pay this boy.  Give him everything you’ve got in your pockets.”

“Well, it’s more than what you give me.  Some of it’s the gate receipts.  And some’s my own money.”

“That’s your problem.  Empty your pockets.”

It came to about eighteen hundred dollars.  We gave that to the fighter’s manager.  I also made Bennett promise to throw the kid four straight wins if either of them lived after tonight’s fight.

I had another idea.

“You don’t have to fight Santore under your own name.  Make up a name so you won’t have the loss on your record.  What’s your name?”

“Cal Clevinger.”

“Okay, Cal.  What name do you want to use?”

Seconds passed.  He began panting.  He stared off into space.  It was too much for him.

“Cal…..Bevinger!”

“Cal Bevinger sounds a lot like Cal Clevinger, Cal.”

He was breathing in ragged sobs.  He wouldn’t look at me.

“Mike… Clevinger.”

“Okay, forget it.  I’ll think of a name.  Come with me.”

We all went out to the parking lot. Thankfully most of the customers were already in the building.  The few who weren’t witnessed an odd sight.

I told Clevinger to put up his hands.  As he moved into a marginal fighting pose, I hit him in the stomach as hard as I could.  I’m no puncher, but he was very soft.  He made a noise of surprise.  I punched him in the same spot again.  It moved him back slightly.  What made people think that they could be fighters?

“This is what’s going to happen. Back up when you get punched.  Do not punch back. Don’t even start to punch back.”

He nodded.  I punched him in the face as hard as I could, badly splitting his lip. He hadn’t seen it coming. He was no fighter.  I hoped that the punch might hurt him enough to make him worry about what a real punch would feel like.  He blinked and backed up another step.

I turned to the manager. “You see how it works?  Third punch, throw in the towel.  Toss it in high and make a show of doing it. Yell something as you throw it.  Make sure it lands in the center of the ring where the crowd can see it. Step into the ring if you have to.  You understand?”

“I understand.”

I rushed back to the box office.   Alan Shore was where I’d left him.

“We’re changing the name of the fighter in the first fight.”

He looked down at his notes.

“Santore or Clevinger?”

“Clevinger.  He’s fighting under a different name.  Doesn’t matter what.  Think one up.”

“How about Mighty Joe Young?”

“A nickname?  Motherfucker.  I didn’t think you had it in you, Shore.”

From there, I went to Santore’s dressing room and told his trainer Lester Bowie to wait five minutes before bringing the fighter to the ring.

I got Clevinger going, and then went back to the mob guys at ringside.

“All set,” I said to Santore.

“He knows what to do?  You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Stay right here.  Don’t go nowhere.”

“No, let me get right up under the Clevinger’s corner.  I want to be where they can see me.”

“Okay. One round, right?”

“One round.”

Clevinger and his manager were in the ring waiting for Santore.  If you didn’t know that Michael saw himself as a condemned man walking to the gallows, the slow procession would have seemed impressive.

The sound system blasted out “I Got the Power.”  Santore, a black hood covering his head, was flanked by a somber entourage of large men, all moving funereally.  The group would take a half dozen unison steps, then pause.  With each step and pause, the audience grew more agitated.  They sensed that something different was taking place.  The local fighters didn’t have entourages.  They didn’t have entrance music or wear hoods.  They didn’t look so scary. By the time Santore entered the ring, the crowd was primed for an execution.

Although he was an undersized heavyweight, steroid muscles—plastic bulk fleshing out his pectorals and traps—made Santore look massive next to Cal Clevinger.  Both fighters kept their eyes glued to the canvas during the referee’s instructions.

The bell rang.  Santore, in a panic, tore out of his corner throwing punches wildly.  He trapped Clevinger on the ropes and flung undirected haymakers. From just beneath the corner, I could hear him hyperventilating. Clevinger may have genuinely sagged against the ropes. He was clearly caught by surprise. The noise in the arena was deafening.

Half a dozen punches landed on shoulders and arms before the first blow struck Clevinger’s head.  It landed with full force, legitimately snapping the fighter’s head violently back as a white towel sailed high over the top rope and fluttered to the center of the ring.

The referee jumped between them, grabbing Clevinger around the waist with one arm while pushing Santore away with the other.  Exactly seventeen seconds had elapsed from the opening bell.

The crowd was in an uproar.  It had all looked very real.  If I hadn’t set it up myself, I wouldn’t have known.

I rejoined John Santore and his group.  I received kisses from every one of them, including those who less than a year later would be given the contract to kill me. Tears streamed down both Santore’s and Carvello’s faces.  They were all laughing hysterically.

“You really made your bones tonight, Charles.  You handled things the right way. This was the first step.  But we gotta a lot of big plans. Did you fuckin’ see Michael? He did it!  I couldn’t believe it.  He was an animal! He nearly killed that kid.”

Carvello chimed in.  “Yeah, yeah.  I hope the kid’s okay.  Jesus, Michael just about took is head off.  He’s got an awesome killer instinct.”

“I know. Charles, is that kid gonna be okay?”

I couldn’t believe my ears.  It was as if they thought what they’d seen was real.  Maybe they did.

“I think he’ll pull through.  The ref jumped in on time.”

“Yeah, it’s a good thing he got right in there.  Thank God for that. We coulda had a fatality.”

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘you got that right.’

On and on they went.  They were convinced that they’d brought the next Mike Tyson down from New York City. Better than Tyson even; Michael Santore was white.

Santore and the New York mob got what they wanted.  Cal Clevinger got paid more for seventeen seconds of work than he’d ever make again in his sorry career. The knockout broke the existing record for the shortest fight in South Carolina history. Local sports pages gave the fight a good write-up the next morning.  And people were fooled into thinking that Michael Santore could actually fight.

Under the circumstances, the New York crowd should have been happy with the night’s result and let that be the end of it.  But they weren’t. While I was busy with other things for the next few hours, Santore’s people began to build up resentment over what had taken place.

I managed two other fighters on the card.  I also took a personal interest in Daryl Riddle, the former heavyweight champion, since I was responsible from bringing him to Greensboro.  None of the fights were supposed to be difficult.  They were made to keep my fighters busy, to pad their records, and to thank Daryl by getting him a fast knockout. In two of the three fights things didn’t turn out the way they were planned.

Daryl’s stepson Mike Riddle was knocked out in the second round of his pro debut.  He dropped a fellow fatty named Kenneth Jackson within the first minute of the fight, but then became too exhausted to finish him off.  By the second round, he was in deep oxygen debt, and collapsed without being hit.  The fight was stopped.  Mike then blindly threw his robe over his shoulders and staggered out of the arena, collapsing onto the entranceway.  He lay splayed out for half an hour, desperately gulping air, as appalled latecomers stepped over him on their way inside.

Next up was junior featherweight Verdell Brown, a small, implacable assassin who nobody was capable of beating.  He’d been matched with an alarmingly muscled journeyman named Deon Parks.  The bell rang and Brown feinted with a right jab to the head.  When Parks raised his hands to block it, and Verdell probingly hit him in the ribs with a right hook.  Parks’ face contorted in pain and he dropped to the canvas.  Beating the count, he told the referee that he could continue.  Brown nonchalantly hit him again in the same spot.  Parks collapsed and was counted out.  He was helped to his corner.  Brown, his trainer Rubin Burgess, and his uncle Elmo Brown walked to Parks’s corner, patted him on the back, hugged him, wished him well, then slipped under the ropes.  Brown’s trip to and from the ring, combined with the fight itself, had taken a quarter the time of Santore’s ring walk.

Daryl Riddle then lost an eight round decision to Eddie Wadud, a dive artist who could fight a little if no one told him not to. That night Daryl and Wadud soon bogged down into a slow grind, their mutual lack of conditioning forcing them to drape themselves over each other in a sodden ring where the temperature was over a hundred. Daryl hung in on heart; Eddie, with the dawning realization that he was going to get a win over a former heavyweight champion.

Riddle caught two lucky breaks.  His main event had been listed on the fight posters as a ten round bout. Feeling a sense of responsibility to Daryl, who was only fighting to help his sons, I climbed into the ring and told overseeing commissioner Curtis Scopes the fight had to continue through the tenth round as advertised. Scopes and I had done business in the past and we planned on doing business in the future, but now were slightly hamstrung; Curtis was Wadud’s manager.  This was one of conflicts of interest that nobody in boxing lets get in the way of things.

“It’s a ten round fight, Curtis. You’ve got one minute before the next bell rings. Better get Eddie’s gloves back on.”

“The fight’s over. The decision’s been announced.”

“It’s been announced to three hundred people who’ll never check the record book.”

Scopes conferred with Wadud.  “Eddie, this is your night.  Riddle is an old man.”

“No way. I ain’t fightin’ no more.”

This response sounded insane, but wasn’t. In small promotions, fighters are often paid by the round. For guys just trying to earn a living, there’s no incentive to go one second past the final bell; it would simply be fighting for free.  Eddie Wadud was being paid by the round.  So after eight rounds, he had demanded his gloves cut off.

I butted into the conversation. “Thirty seconds before the next round. Let’s go.”

“Okay, I see what you’re doing. Can we talk about this in the office?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I just need it to go into the record books as a win for Riddle. Does Daryl win the fight?”

“Shit, yeah. Daryl wins the fight. But do we have to take care of it here?”

Daryl Riddle got his win through some back room maneuvering, and I thought my night was over.

I was heading back to my hotel room when John Santore pulled me aside.

“We can’t let this thing go.  We gotta do something about this cocksucker.”

“Aw shit, John. Why?  The fight worked perfectly—even better than it was supposed to. Just let it go.”

“Nah, we can’t do that.  We can’t let him get away with making assholes outta us.”

“He didn’t get away with it.”

“No. Because he got caught.”

“Right. Because he got caught.”

“But he hasn’t paid for being caught.  He’s gotta pay.”

“He paid eight hundred dollars of his own money. That’s a lot of cash for a guy like Bennett.”

“That’s not how I mean, Charles.  We wanna talk to him.  Go get him.”

That’s when I understood that there was a chance that they might wind up killing me.  Not for doing something wrong, but because I’d seen something that caused them embarrassment.

They were part of the new generation of mobsters who took their cues from New York John Borelli.  Not businessmen at all, these guys were concerned less with accomplishment than with issues of how they appeared to others, their personal status in their world, and the relative state of their own masculinity. Anyone who caused them to question themselves in any way, for any reason, was liable to get killed or badly hurt.

I found Bennett across the street at a restaurant where the fighters hung out after the card.  In a town where most fights lasted one or two rounds, it wasn’t unusual to see the winner and loser of a fight amiably chatting together at the same table. Howard Bennett was sitting with Jimmy Perkins, Perkins’ much older wife, who sometimes bankrolled his cards, and a group of their society friends out for a night of rubbing elbows with their social inferiors.

I motioned to Bennett to come with me.  He picked up his fork and pantomimed that he was still eating and then he gestured to the others at the table.  He was busy at the moment.

The gesture made me angry.  I approached the table.

“Please don’t let me interrupt your dinner.  You don’t mind if I borrow Howard for a few minutes?  He and I have some business to discuss.”

Bennett threw Perkins a pleading look, but Jimmy was a predator.  He had the survivor’s instinct to cut a wounded animal loose.

“Wanna borrow old Howard?  Yeah, I guess we can spare him for a while.”

It took Bennett a long time to walk the length of the restaurant.  He knew I was bringing him to the mob guys and he knew there was a good chance they were going to kill him.

“Charles, please.  He only gone one round.  He got his money.  I’ll never do it again.  Talk to ‘em.  The kid I picked can’t fight.  You seen he couldn’t fight.”

“I told them, Howard.  They don’t care. Let’s go.”

“I’m scared.  Can’t you tell them you couldn’t find me?

“You know I can’t do that.”

The fact was, I didn’t want to do that.  As much as I didn’t want Howard Bennett killed, I felt no sympathy for him. He’d been foolish and had made things tough for me as a result.

Still, killing him made no sense.  Things had worked out well.  No damage had been done.  Bennett’s losing his money, in conjunction with his genuine terror, seemed about right as compensation for the nonsense he’d tried to pull.

They were waiting in a van outside the Bryant.  The side panel door was open.  One of the killers was in the driver’s seat, the window rolled down.  Across from him, I could see Vincent Carvello.  Santore got out of the back seat and motioned for us to get in.  The other killer was in the rear seat.

We got into the van and Santore followed, closing the door.  The driver rolled up his window and we pulled away.  They made Bennett tell them how to get out of town.  He cooperated.  I’d seen that before: people who, in trying to save their own lives, stopped fighting those who wanted to kill them.  I’d never seen it work.

Howard Bennett had begun to shake.  He looked small and old and used up.  I managed to keep from shaking, but I understood how Bennett felt.  Their bringing me with them was a bad sign.

Santore turned to Bennett.

“You thought we were gonna let you get away with this?”

“No, sir.  I’m sorry.  I tried to pick the right opponent.”

Nobody said anything.  I began to think that this really was going to be the end.  The silence frightened me more than anything else.  Bennett would try to say something, to get them to listen to him, but the four men paid no attention.  They didn’t look at him.  Periodically they’d talk among themselves, saying inconsequential things. They even laughed.  That was the most unsettling part: it was as if Bennett and I weren’t there.

We drove for about twenty minutes.  We left the city and the road became quiet.   It was the middle of nowhere.  The van smelled like sweat and cologne, aftershave and Bennett’s tobacco. It smelled like angry and terrified people. It was horrible.

“We don’t let people screw us.  It doesn’t happen.”

Santore addressed the rest of the men in the van.

“What do you think we ought to do with this piece of shit?”

Neither killer said anything.  Vincent Carvello said, “I don’t think there’s anything you can do with a guy like this. You can’t reason with him.”

We had pulled over. It was the middle of the night and the highway was empty.

Bennett started to talk.

“I know I done wrong.  Please.  I’ll never do nothing like that again. I picked a kid who can’t fight.  I shouldn’t have done it.  I should of done what I was told.  Please don’t do nothing to me. I’m sorry.”

His shaking was very noticeable.  He smelled very strong.  This was it.  If it was going to happen, it was going to happen now.  There was humming in my ears, a mounting pressure building in my head. The men looked hazy in the darkened van.

“Charles says we should let you go.”

“Yes, sir.”

Santore got out of the van.

“Get out of the van.  Charles, stay inside.”

Bennett got out.  The killer in the back seat came over the seat and got out of the van.

“Walk away from us.  Take ten steps and stand there. Keep your eyes facing forward.”

Bennett tried to walk but his legs buckled.  He steadied himself and walked ten steps.  I watched from the open panel.

Nobody said anything.  Nobody did anything.

“Get back in the van.”

The killer climbed over me into the back seat. Bennett got in, followed by Santore.  We drove back into town.  When we got to the Bryant, they let Bennett out.

Carvello said to me, “We’ll take you to your hotel.”

“It was smart to let him go.  You made your point.”

Santore said, “No, we didn’t.  This isn’t over.”

I assumed that Santore was just talking, salvaging some coded definition of mob pride.

 

It makes for a good story to say that I had an epiphany that night and got out of the fight business—that I stopped being a gangster.   John Santore and New York group were bad guys.  They could never be trusted and no one was safe around them.  They’d do dangerous and reckless things out of stupidity, vindictiveness, and deep insecurity.

But I was a bad guy too. And I didn’t just stop being one overnight.

I fixed three more of Michael Santore’s fights before deciding that nothing good was going to come of it.  I pawned him off on my friend Tony Nistico, who insisted Santore’s guys make upfront payments before each fight.

Tony safely made Santore’s matches until Curtis Scopes took over.  Scopes was eventually caught by the Feds and went before a Grand Jury in Las Vegas, where he was convicted of fight fixing and sent to prison.  He kept his mouth shut, taking the fall for everybody else.

Michael Santore retired from boxing just before the Grand Jury convened.  Although not formally accused of anything, he never resumed his career.  More than a million dollars had been spent on him to no useful purpose. But before those things happened, a few other things took place.

I had stopped talking to John Santore and his friends and begun to think that I was out of it, until one of the killers, who liked me, left me a phone message.  He said that he needed tell me about “a few things” and to be by the phone at 10:00.  I knew it was serious.

The phone rang at 10:00.  The killer told me there’d been talk about me badmouthing both father and son.  I said it wasn’t true: I had no opinion of either of them.  He said that they’d heard different and that I better be prepared.

“Are they sending you?”

“Yeah, it looks like it.   Me and the other guy.  ‘Cause they know I don’t want to do it.  But if they tell me to, Charles, I’m gonna.  I’m just lettin’ you know.  Maybe you oughtta talk to them first.”

I didn’t do that. It wouldn’t have helped. I’d been hearing things.  Santore himself called and left messages.  Killing me was now in the pipeline.  I took off and went into hiding, first to La Romana in the Dominican Republic, then to various parts of Puerto Rico.  They soon found out what country I was in.  They just didn’t know where.

Howard Bennett was found dead in his car by the side of the road outside of Greensboro.  Although there were no tire marks to indicate that his car had skidded to a stop, his death was caused by head trauma.

Then there was the bullshit with Tom Cleary.

Tom Cleary was one of those guys you find around boxing—a half smart, half tough jack of all trades who’d do a little of this or a little of that for whoever was hiring.  He was primarily a dive artist, but he doubled as a sparring partner, gofer, and broker of occasional muscle work.

We’d met in Moncton, New Brunswick, where he’d been brought from his home in nearby Old Orchard to serve as a sacrificial lamb to a local seven-foot heavyweight named James Johnson.

Cleary had done a few things for me in New York and Florida.  Always on the lookout for advancement, he’d moved over to Santore’s crew in South Carolina.  He’d thrown a couple of fights to Michael.  Under the alias of Marty Kansas, Tom had been stopped in the first round in Greensboro.  Later, as John Barrymore, he’d been stopped in fifteen seconds in Westbury, New York, edging Cal Clevinger’s record. Some of the local fight crowd recognized Tom though, and the loss is listed on his Boxrec.com record.

I considered Tom a friend even though he’d been the one who’d given me up to Santore by letting him know my whereabouts in Puerto Rico.  That didn’t bother me; Tom had always been an untrustworthy guy, more brave than smart.  I didn’t hold what he’d done to me against him too much because I knew he’d be easy to settle up with when the time came.

When the FBI began sending agents to Santore’s opponents’ houses to recruit them as friendly witnesses in a Nevada fight fixing probe, stories started to circulate about how Tom had suggested to John Santore, that if wanted his silence, he’d have to be taken care of.  I knew then that I’d never have to deal with taking care of Tom myself.

I didn’t.  Cleary died a short time later, falling from a bridge while doing roadwork in Old Orchard.  It was the first I’d ever heard of Tom training.

In their attempt to smoke me out, the mob guys terrorized my friend Cleo Saint James, who they’d also met in Greensboro. Cleo was a blonde, blue-eyed adult film performer who specialized in what she called “girl-girl” scenes. We occasionally traveled together.  Each was good for the other’s business.  I was a hedge against people trying to cheat her.  She was a “how the fuck did he wind up with her?” puzzle for my associates to ponder.

John Santore went to Cleo’s apartment in Woonsocket, Rhode Island and made sure that she saw that he had a gun.  She stood up to him and didn’t give me up.  She got rid of him, and then broke down.  In hysterics, she called me to tell me what happened. I couldn’t understand her for the first minute or so; she was crying too hard to be intelligible. As Cleo began to calm down, I slowly got the story of what had taken place. I told her things would be fine.  She’d be fine.  I’d handle the situation.  It was what she needed to hear.  We said goodnight.

It was the middle of the night.  My coffee farm was at the top of the highest mountain in Las Marias.  My horses were in the barn.  My dogs were in the house.  The only sounds came from the wind, the coquis, an occasional rooster crowing, and the howls of the satos calling to each other from one mountain and the next.  The sky was full of stars.  I liked the air up in the mountains.

The next day I called Tony Nistico in Boston and had him relay a message to John Santore.  I needed him and his group to know that I took their threats seriously and was feeling desperate.  I wanted Tony to remind them that they didn’t know where I was, but I knew where they were.

Nistico called back later that day.

“I told him that you were the kinda guy who if you got too scared would definitely make a move.  I said I thought they were pushing you too far.  Maybe if they backed you into a corner, you’d decide to find them first.”

I still don’t know whether I would have done that.  I was very scared, so I was thinking about it.

Messages were sent back and forth, all filtered through Tony Nistico. We all knew that something had to break the stalemate.  Once the third party talks had reached a certain point, I came down from the mountains in Las Marias to the tiny airport in Aquadilla and flew to New York to meet with John Santore, Vincent Carvello, Ronny Tanner, and a few of Borelli’s crew to set up a truce brokered by Ben Levy.

We agreed to meet in the tiny office that Ben Levy kept behind the front window of his antique shop in an upscale neighborhood in the lower east 60s.  Levy might be able to keep me safe.  He was Ronald Sargent’s director of boxing—a tough old man who was as close to fearless as anyone I’d ever met.  He and I were close friends, but our friendship wasn’t the only reason he was looking out for me.

A year or so earlier, Tony Nistico and I had flown in from Boston to meet Al at the shop. The three of us talked through the morning and afternoon, finally coming up with an arrangement for Nistico’s fighter Barry Finnerty to fight for the world heavyweight championship.  Levy’s under the table cut came to nearly three hundred thousand dollars. Everything had gone smoothly, so Ben Levy had good reason to think well of me.

I got to his building more than an hour before the meeting was scheduled.  I walked across the street to the delicatessen where ben and I often had coffee.

The dining area was in a large glass enclosure with picture windows looking out to the street.  I took a seat toward the middle of the room, far enough from the tables nearest the street to not be easily seen.  I waited for Santore, Carvello, and the others to arrive.  I watched the street to see if anyone stationed themselves near Ben’s building.

Just before the appointed meeting time, Ronny Tanner arrived and went inside.  He was alone.  A few minutes later, Santore, Carvello, and a bodyguard got out of a car and entered the building.  The killers weren’t with them.  I waited for ten minutes.  A couple of delivery trucks pulled into parking spaces near the building, but the drivers made their deliveries and left.  Nobody parked near Ben’s building and no one was loitering nearby.

I left the delicatessen and quickly walked across the street and into Ben’s shop.

The four men were crammed across from Ben in the office.   There wasn’t enough space to accommodate them. It reminded me of the night in the van.

Ben Levy got up and kissed me.  Santore looked very tight and drawn.  He nodded at me but didn’t shake hands. Carvello looked uneasy too. The bodyguard remained impassive.  Tanner rose and shook my hand.

I didn’t sit down.  It seemed smarter to signal that this should go quickly. Ben Levy gave us all a hard look.

“There’s no reason for this to be any more complicated than it has to be.  I’m calling for a truce.  Peace is good for business.  I’m prepared to give Michael a promotional contract with Sergeant-at-Arms Productions.  We’ll be able to move him.  I haven’t seen him yet, but I understand he’s an aggressive kid.  That’s good. An aggressive white kid, Ronald can always use.  We’ll just slot him in.”

“Charles is to be left alone.  Understood?  If something happens to him, your kid won’t be welcome anywhere in the world. I want that clear.  He won’t get fights and he won’t get rated.  If he does manage to get a fight, you’ll wish he hadn’t.”

“What’s done is in the past.  Nobody here is going to talk about it.  Charles is with us; he’s with Sergeant-at-Arms.  He doesn’t want to have to watch his back for the rest of his life.  And neither do you.  We’ve all got better things to do, so let’s move on.  I’m done.  Any questions?”

Santore turned to face me.

“Charles, you know the Feds are starting to breathe down everybody’s neck, right?”

“I know that.”

“I mean, I know nothing happened and that you don’t know nothing.  But you don’t say anything if they squeeze you, right?”

“Squeeze me about what?  Some of my fighters were on the same card as Michael a couple of times.  That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Right, exactly. That’s what I’m sayin’.”

“That’s what I’m saying too.”

“And it ain’t gonna change?”

“John, now you’re starting to insult me. Do I look like Sammy?”

Everybody laughed.

We all stood up, shook hands, hugged, and were friends again.

Even so, turning the tree-lined corner of East 62nd Street after leaving Ben’s antique shop, my back involuntarily clenched, anticipating the shot. But nothing happened.  My car was where I’d parked it so I drove away.

 

 

• Welcome to Entasis.