Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery by Andrew Bergman

agree.”
    “What was your client like?”
    “German refugee. Quiet, shy. But troubled.”
    “About?”
    “That I can’t tell you yet.”
    “Something he got killed over.”
    “Probably. This one could go very deep.”
    “You always like the deep ones. Nothing light for you.”
    “True, but this one is special. And no fun at all. Poor bastard left two kids, one of them thirteen years old.”
    Toots sighed.
    “Stinks.” He looked away, then back at me. “Okay, back to work.” He tore a sheet of paper out of his typewriter, inserted another. “Who do you like in the fight?”
    “I have a really bad feeling about Louis,” I told him. “I think my glorious youth ends tonight.”
    Toots shook his head. “Charles doesn’t have enough meat on his bones. I say the old guy puts him away before the sixth. You’ll buy me lunch tomorrow and tell me all about it.” He turned back to his afternoons work, resuming his rapid-fire typing. I took the elevator back upstairs and returned the file to the morgue, then took my leave of the News building and strolled across town on 42nd Street. It was four o’clock and the temperature had climbed to near seventy degrees; a beautiful early autumn afternoon, one that should have made me cherish all the pleasures and promises of daily life. All the sunlight and warmth in the world, however, couldn’t make me stop thinking about that little girl with her face buried in her mother’s coat, following her dead father and clouded future out onto Amsterdam Avenue.

SIX
     

     
    According to the newspapers the following day, the crowd at Yankee Stadium for the Louis-Charles fight was just over twenty-two thousand, but I thought it was smaller than that, and God knows how many tickets had been given away by the promoters. While the ringside was packed and the bleachers had partially filled up with the plebeians, the upper deck was nearly empty and the mezzanine only about half filled. It was depressing and somehow ominous to behold all those ghostly seats in the big ballpark.
    “It’s being carried live on CBS, that’s the problem,” Aaron shouted over to me during a prelim between two clumsy heavyweights—Elkin Brothers, which sounded like a moving company, and Dutch Culbertson, which sounded like Dutch Culbertson. Both pugilists were pretty awful, but Brothers was stronger and the Dutchman was en route to a quick demise. “We’ve created a monster with television. I hope it doesn’t kill live sports.” Aaron was wearing a brown hounds-tooth jacket, dark wool slacks, a white monogrammed shirt, and a silk necktie from Sulka featuring pheasants in flight that alone cost more than my suit. But he sipped his Ballantine ale from a bottle, just like a regular working stiff.
    “I don’t think television’s the whole story,” I replied. “I think a lot of people stayed away out of fear. The possibility of Louis falling on his ass is just too goddamn depressing. Like Bing Crosby singing flat or Fred Astaire stumbling over his shoelaces. Each one is another milepost on the way to the cemetery.”
    “Cheery thought, Jack.”
    “I have my dark side.”
    Aaron took another slug of beer.
    “Well, the hell with it,” he said. “Too bad for everybody who didn’t show. It’s a gorgeous evening for a fight.”
    It was in fact gorgeous, a perfect autumn night to be seated three scant rows from the brilliantly lit ring, watching various luminaries file in as the time for the main event approached. Governor Dewey waltzed by, shaking every hairy hand in sight, followed by Acting Mayor Impelliteri, Judge Pecora, and a gaggle of city councilmen, commissioners, and other assorted parasites. A heavyweight title fight was a force field of power, and it drew politicians as irresistibly as Mecca draws Muslims.
    “So you really don’t know Joey Blinks?” I said without warning to Aaron, half a hot dog stuffed in my mouth.
    My calculated remark didn’t get the anticipated result. The NBC