Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery by Andrew Bergman Page A

exec appeared to draw an actual blank.
    “Who?”
    “Your seatmate at the funeral. Giuseppe LaMarca. He runs with two other aliases, Joey Little and Joey Big. Take your pick.”
    “He introduced himself as Joe Lane.”
    “That makes four aliases. Do I hear five?”
    “What’s his real name again?” If Aaron was faking, he was doing an absolutely first-rate job of it.
    “Giuseppe—” I began, but then a sound began to arise from above and behind me, a mounting, agitated roar, and I knew without even turning my head that the gladiators had appeared. Aaron and I stood up and gawked like everyone else as Louis and Charles emerged from the stadium dugouts, Charles dancing nervously and Louis as stolid as ever, walking slowly and tapping his gloves together as tentatively as if he had never worn them before. As I watched the two men approach the ring, my heart began to sink into my Florsheims. The champ looked closer to forty than thirty-five: there were bags beneath his eyes, his face looked sallow and puffy, his dark hair was thinning into lonely patches. What he retained, however, was that implacable, impenetrable stare, devoid of anger or fear. Charles, on the other hand, appeared skittish and eager, fairly racing toward the ring. He was jet-black handsome, with bright eyes and marcelled hair, and looked like a flush busboy out for a night on the town.
    Sidney Aaron groaned, “Oy vay, ” as Louis climbed gingerly into the ring. “He isn’t getting any younger, is he, Jack?”
    “If I was Catholic, I’d say a Hail Mary for him. What do Jews say, a Hail Murray?”
    “He’ll be okay if he can get rid of this guy fast.”
    He didn’t.
    In the first round, Charles sped out of his corner like an Olympic sprinter and immediately began belting Joe with a series of disrespectful lefts and rights to the body, including a solid and inadvertent hook to Joe’s nuts that made me clench my teeth and cross my legs. Joe tried to stalk him in that familiar, deliberate style, but his jab kept missing; his thought processes were unchanged, but not his reflexes. In the second round, Joe managed to knock Charles back on his heels with a straight left and the crowd stood as one and started screaming for blood, but the blood never came. Charles danced around the ring until his head cleared, and then started banging the old man’s ribs again.
    And so the fight unfolded, round by round; it wasn’t a massacre, but it wasn’t close. Charles was outweighed by thirty pounds, but his speed more than compensated for his lack of bulk; he insouciantly flicked his jab into Joe’s kisser, and moved the older man around the ring like a housepainter walking a ladder across a room. When Louis made the younger man’s knees buckle in the tenth with a short left to the jaw, Charles gathered himself smartly and foxtrotted out of danger. When the bell rang ending the round, Aaron and I just looked at each other.
    “It’s over,” I said. “That was his best shot.”
    Aaron nodded. “Makes me want to cry. We all used to be so young, Jack. The world lay before us like presents under a Christmas tree.”
    “We didn’t have a Christmas tree in our house.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    I did know; we were witnessing the end of the era that had ignited all of our youthful dreams.
    In the fourteenth round, Charles simply kicked Joe’s ass around the block; by the fifteenth, both fighters were pretty well spent and when the final bell sounded Joe looked like a man who had just lost his wallet. The decision was unanimous and one-sided. The ref, Mark Conn, had it ten-five Charles, but he was just being polite. The judges really stuck it to the champ—thirteen-two and twelve-three. The two men shook hands politely and left the ring. People applauded Joe, but he kept his head down all the way back to the dugout. Then the lights came up in the big ballpark and we all filed out.
    The silence was deafening.
    I felt like I had attended my second funeral