Cases

Chapter Nine

The little town of Las Vegas baked in the desert sun. Dunc walked down lower Fremont Street, gaping up at the facades of the gambling halls. The Gladiator had to be somewhere in this five-block area of the Main Stem known as Glitter Gulch, wall-to-wall gaming clubs for high rollers and penny-ante players alike.

He went by the Hotel Apache’s ornate sign, the Las Vegas Club, the Pioneer with its huge neon cowboy in jeans and tight shirt and neckerchief, cigarette in his mouth, ten-gallon hat on his head, his cocked thumb pointing toward the casino. Dunc had already passed the Golden Nugget and the Eldorado Club.

At the curb was a gray 1942 Ford four-door sedan like the one he’d driven up to Fairbanks two summers before. He’d loved that little car, and here was its twin parked only half a block from the gold neon boxing glove marking the Gladiator Club.

On the carved wooden door a pair of heavyweight fighters duked it out, one sinking a left hook into the gut of his opponent — who was just landing a roundhouse right on the first fighter’s chin. Dunc could almost smell the sweat and rosin, hear the thud of blows, the grunts of effort.

Inside, two women in slacks with bandannas around then big pink hair rollers played the slots as if the lives of their kidnapped children depended on the whirring dials.

Over the bar crowded framed photos of tough-looking men in Everlast trunks and sparring poses. A faded blowup was captioned as the last bare-knuckle world championship fight: on July 8 in 1889, the great John L. Sullivan had beaten Jake Kilrain for the title in seventy-five rounds of boxing at Richburg, Mississippi.

No clocks were visible anywhere. You’d have to check your watch for the time — if you hadn’t hocked it for a few bucks to lay down at the tables. In his single afternoon of wandering around town, Dunc had learned that much about Vegas.

He slid onto a stool near a slight, slender man with the most alive eyes Dunc had ever seen, shining darkly in an ascetic olive face as thin and sensitive as a woman’s. He wore a tuxedo and black tie at five in the afternoon, and there was nothing feminine about him: strong chin and high cheekbones, dark brown curly hair. Large, even, gleaming white teeth flashed in his dark face when he laughed.

He chuckled and sipped white wine and said to the bartender in musical, unaccented English, “Everybody but me says Siegel was nuts, Nicky, putting up the Flamingo on the L.A. highway six, seven years ago when you couldn’t get building materials—”

“Hell, Pepe, he was nuts — they killed him, didn’t they?”

Nicky was beefy of neck, massive of chin, dark heavy brows, getting thick around the waist but with no marks of professional fighting. His pink shirt had a high rolled collar and French cuffs with miniature silver boxing gloves as links.

“Maybe. But look at Vegas today. Population almost twenty-five thousand by the last census, growing by leaps and bounds. It’s—”

“In the middle of the fucking desert.” Nicky gave a deep rumbling chuckle. “I’ll believe that Las Vegas News Bureau crap about beating Reno as the gambling capital of America when—”

“But we have Lake Mead and the Colorado River to give us water. With water and gambling this close to L.A., I say Bugsy was right.”

Nicky grunted, turned to Dunc. “What’ll it be, chief?”

“I’m looking for Nitro Ned Davenport. The fighter.”

“Hey, how about a little service here? A martooni for me, a Scotch Manhattan for the lady. Two olives in the martooni.”

The fat man who had crowded up to the bar between Pepe and Dunc wore a light cashmere sweater stretched over big shoulders and heavy arms. Massive hips billowed under his slacks, and the dividing line of his belt rode high up on the mound of belly.

“Aw, serve yourself, asshole,” muttered Nicky after the man turned away, then added to Pepe, who was laughing silently, “He brings all his goddamn broads in here, expects them to get free drinks. How in hell do you make a Scotch Manhattan?”

“Put Scotch in a Manhattan,” suggested Dunc.

“Ha! Well, by Christ, that’s what he’s getting.”

Dunc checked out the backbar mirror; with the fat man at one of the otherwise deserted tables was a blonde in her low twenties wearing a sleeveless blouse and tight skirt, a Lana Turner look-alike.

Nicky flipped open the hinged part of the bartop and carried the drinks over to the table. No money changed hands; the freeloading part was apparently true.

Pepe stuck out his hand. When he smiled, fine lines calipered his mouth, making him look older than at first glance. He said in a courteous, musical voice, “My name is Pepe.”

They shook. “Everybody calls me Dunc.”

“Goddamn Scotch Manhattan.” But Nicky, grousing, had barely returned when the fat man appeared to slide the Scotch Manhattan across the stick.

“Hey, this isn’t right. You didn’t use Scotch in this.”

Nicky grabbed a bottle off the backbar with his big right hand, held it out for inspection. “W-h-i-t-e H-o-r-s-e. White Horse. Scotch.” He turned to Pepe as if the fat man weren’t there. “Why can’t they ask for something I’ve heard of?”

The fat man slapped the bartop twice with a pudgy hand, pointed at Nicky. “Just make her another one, Nicky, okay?”

He grunted and waddled on his heavy thighs back to the table. Nicky took up the returned drink and tasted it.

“Christ — it’s awful. Some people’ll drink anything.” He poured it down the brushed stainless-steel sink. “We’ll try blended — I’ll be damned if that puss can taste the difference.”

Pepe laughed and said to Dunc, “When I was your age, we’d chew a couple of sticks of Juicy Fruit gum while we drank a shot of whiskey, and, wild! Instant Manhattan.”

Nicky took the remixed drink back to the table, set it before Lana Turner with a flourish, came back, and shut the hinged section of bartop. “Now, what’s your squawk, chief?”

“No squawk. I was told Ned Davenport would be playing poker here this afternoon, that’s all.”

“You was told wrong. The poker room’s closed ’til seven.”

“A man named Lucius Breen gave me a ride into town last night. He said Davenport would be here.”

“That Lucius,” said Nicky, “he’s just an old softy. Like iron underpants. Gave you a nice easy ride, did he, in that big black Connie of his—”

“Maroon-and-cream Olds 98.”

“Yeah, sure, I forget. Ride from where?”

“Tucson.”

Pepe said softly, suddenly, “Short odds you’re a college man, hitchhiking around to see the country.”

“That’s it,” said Dunc almost eagerly. “I graduated from Notre Dame a month ago.”

“Nicky, I say the kid’s okay.”

“Ain’t your ass you’re wrong.”

There was a shriek and the sound of cascading coins from one of the slot machines. “I won! I won a jackpot!”

A suddenly genial Nicky raised his voice. “Of course you did, ma’am. Our slots are the most generous in town.”

“I heard one spilled its guts just last Christmas Eve.”

Ignoring Pepe, the fat man called across to Nicky, “That Scotch Manhattan was perfect. Now, how about another round here?”

Nicky mixed the martooni and Scotch Manhattan again using blended. “Told you that puss couldn’t tell the difference.”

He returned to assemble a boilermaker, two bourbon and branch, and a steaming mug of black coffee from a Silex coffeemaker on the backbar hot plate. He cocked an eyebrow at Dunc.

“Just ginger ale.” Too soon after Juárez.

“Didn’t know Tucson had that kind of action.”

“Juárez. The Red Arrow.”

“Notre Dame, huh? The Red Arrow?” He gave a derisive snort of laughter. “Yeah! You’re faded.”

He put the ginger ale and the other drinks on a tray and jerked his head toward swinging doors in the rear wall beyond a piano nobody was playing.

“Poker room’s out back. Tell ’em Pepe the piano player said you was okay. That’ll go over big.”

Carrying his tray in both hands, Dunc pushed open the swinging doors to the casino with his butt. Four blackjack tables, four craps table, three roulette wheels, a faro setup, a three-card monte layout, and a wheel of fortune. A triple row of slots, all deserted. No poker table, no players — only a lone blackjack dealer and his lone customer. The dealer was late forties, with piercing eyes, a large mouth, strong teeth. His white shirt open to the waist showed a V of muscular, hairless chest. The ends of his untied black bow tie hung down on his shirtfront.

“So, Sabine,” he said lazily, “you got hot pants today?”

Sabine was short and dark-haired, with a round laughing face without the laughter reaching dark eyes at once avid and sad. “If I did, I’d go next door and cool ’em off.”

“What’s next door?”

Sabine slowly revolved on her stool to sweep Dunc from head to toe as if he were for sale by the pound. She created a lot of sexual awareness with a pair of enormous breasts under a skimpy black blouse and a short swirly black-and-white-print skirt that emphasized Mae West hips and waist and shapely calves.

“A bouncer who’s hung like a bull.” She dropped ten silver dollars from her potbellied black purse on the table. “Deal the cards, Henri my pet.”

Dunc stayed to watch. Henri gave Sabine and himself each two cards, one of hers facedown, the other faceup. Both of his were faceup. Both were face cards. Sabine had a queen showing. She tipped up the edge of her bottom card.

“Shit,” she said. She scraped her cards on the green felt tabletop twice, said, “Hit me.” A five. She gave a shout of laughter and flipped up a hole six. “There is a. God.” Henri slid ten dollar chips across to her. “You the new bar boy?”

“Sure,” said Dunc. “Poker room out back?”

“Yeah. But play a hand of blackjack before you go.”

He hesitated fractionally, then put his tray of drinks on an unused blackjack table. “Why not?”

He had just two bucks fifty left, but his dad always said, any day you had a place to sleep and food in your belly was a successful day. Well, Dunc had a room for the night he’d paid a buck for, and Lucius Breen had bought him a huge pancake-and-eggs breakfast after they’d hit Vegas that morning.

He put his pair of ones on the baize. Sabine let her ten silver dollars and ten one-dollar chips ride. Henri dealt in a blur of blue bicycles. Dunc’s hole card was a nine. Faceup was a five. Henri had 18 showing, by the house rules couldn’t hit again; but Dunc had to take another card. Sabine flipped her hole card faceup beside her exposed card. Both were faces.

“Double down,” she said.

Henri dealt a card down on each of her face cards. Dunc busted with a 22. Sabine went broke on one hand, won the other. She finger-snapped a silver dollar to Dunc. He smiled and shook his head and slid the chip across the felt to Henri as a tip.

“Well how d’ya like that?” demanded Sabine, offended.

“I like it,” said Henri. He tapped the chip twice on the table in acknowledgment, pocketed it, squeezed Sabine’s hand as she slid her next bet forward. “Kid has class, you must admit.”

She pulled the hand back. “Are you coppin’ a feel?”

“You come sleep in my room, and you say I’m coppin’ a feel? Jesus Christ!”

“Anyone I’ve met or slept with?”

Henri shook his head as if in pity, said to Dunc, “It’s always and only sex with her. Sex with any man comes along.”

“Or with a goat. Or a dog. Maybe I’ll try a pony one of these nights.”

“You got one nasty mouth on you, Sabine.”

Dunc turned away from the nearly physical scent of sexual arousal that rose off their bantering like the too-heavy fragrance of massed funeral flowers.

“Just deal the goddamn cards, Henri my pet,” said Sabine behind him. “Save the hardnose until you’re off-shift, so I can get something stiff shoved up me tonight.”

Chapter Ten

The Gladiator’s poker room was tricked out as an old-time western saloon. Harsh yellow electric light from fake candles set around a fake wagon wheel suspended by real chains above the round deal table gave the players’ faces highlights with rich brown shadows. The wallpaper was whorehouse red flock, the ceiling was decorated tin squares.

Nitro Ned Davenport’s big left hand held his cards close to his chest as his right hand fanned them cautiously. His hulking shoulders drew taut lines in his black silk shirt. He looked up.

“The question is — who’s lyin’ an’ who’s dyin’?”

Davenport’s voice rumbled deep from the vast cavern of his chest, fuzzed like bad radio reception by countless blows to the windpipe. Scar tissue shone above his heavy brows. He was thirty-three years old, on the far slope of his career.

“You gotta show ’em to know ’em, Ned,” said Carny Largo in a lazy, insolent voice. He was a slender man with a neat, carefully trimmed mustache.

Ned slid chips into the center of the table. “Fifty.”

The door across the room was shoved open by a husky black-haired kid backing in with a tray of drinks.

“Private game, Jim,” said Largo with an unpleasant smile.

“See,” said Gimpy Ernest, pushing in chips. He was a heavy man with graying, wavy hair, full lips, a pouty chin, heavy-lidded eyes.

The kid had kept coming. Largo demanded in astonishment, “Who the fuck is this guy?” and snapped, “Rafe,” to a diminutive rat-faced man who was sitting between Gimpy Ernest and the only woman in the game. Rafe started to get up.

Nitro Ned rumbled, “We’re playin’ a hand of poker here.”

Rafe hesitated, looked at Largo, looked at Davenport, then sank resentfully back into his chair. He was barely five feet tall. Beady eyes were close-set on either side of a high-bridged nose too big for his face. His midnight-blue double-breasted suit coat hung open; it had a vertical chalk-mark design.

Dunc brought his tray into the circle of light. Ned offered a huge paw. “You the kid Lucius was tellin’ me about?”

“I guess I am. Pierce Duncan? People call me Dunc.”

“Dunc’s gonna be out to the ranch, helpin’ me train.”

Everyone looked surprised, Dunc most of all: Lucius Breen had just said to look up Ned Davenport at the Gladiator, that he played poker there most afternoons. Nothing about the kind of job he could never have dreamed about. Excitement, powerful as an adrenaline rush, rose up in him.

Gimpy Ernest began, “Ned, we don’t know nothing about this guy. What if—”

“If Lucius sent him, he’s okay,” said Carny Largo. He chose ten chips from his stack, slid them into the center of the table. The sleeves of his crisp cream-colored cowboy shirt were rolled back two turns. “See you and bump you another fifty.”

“I can’t beat Ned, I can’t beat Ernest, I can’t beat Rafe, I can’t beat Carny,” complained the woman. “Who can I beat?”

She folded her hand and turned sideways to cross long exquisite thighs. They were encased in sheer black hose, displayed halfway to her hips by a one-piece dress of midnight-blue satin, shimmery, clingy. Her opaque nail polish and eye shadow were also midnight-blue. She was stunningly beautiful without being pretty, caught Dunc’s stare, winked at him.

“Rafe?” said Carny. “Hundred to you.”

Rafe’s glittering rodent’s eyes were locked on the woman’s crossed thighs as if they enfolded paradise. He tossed in his hand without another look at the cards.

Gimpy Ernest picked up a lighted cigarette from the closed folder of paper matches he was using as an ashtray, sucked it greedily. From what he had said, he had to be the big fighter’s manager. After studying his hand, he dropped out.

“With Artis already out, that leaves just us, Ned.”

Nitro Ned checked the cards tight against his chest again, looked over at Artis. She blew him a silent and ironic kiss. He took the kiss as reassurance; the irony seemed to escape him.

“I see you,” he told Carny.

As he was tossing another fifty into the pot, Dunc handed out the drinks. Carny was bourbon and water, as was Artis. Gimpy was the boilermaker. Rafe wasn’t drinking. The plain black coffee, not so hot now, went to Ned Davenport; a spilled previous cup had left a dark stain on the felt by his elbow.

Davenport had jacks full, but Carny Largo had a straight flush. Ned sighed and tossed his hand into the discard.

“Chicken feed,” he said.

Carny pulled in his winnings. He looked like a casino dealer, but couldn’t be: house men never bet the hands.

“Jacks full were good for any hand tonight — until this one. You never allow a margin for error, Ned.”

“Back to the ranch, Ned,” said Gimpy abruptly. His maroon raglan sport shirt had no shoulder seams and dark moons under the arms. “Tomorrow you gotta look sharp, the press’s going to be around to watch you spar with Jantzen. If they knew he’d got a decision on you once—”

“Nobody knows that,” chuckled Ned complacently. “If it had of happened, we woulda been fightin’ a long time ago and a long ways from here under two different names. Who’s dealin’?”

“And what’s wild?” asked Carny with a grin.

“Whores, fours, and one-eyed jacks,” said Artis promptly.

Dark hair was pulled severely back from her face to show small ears with dangly gold and blue-stone earrings. Her complexion and predatory eyes were dark, her nose was bold, her wide mouth unexpectedly sensuous. Dunc was still breathless.

Ned rumbled, “You know damn well there ain’t ever gonna be anything wild in any poker game I’m in.”

“Really?” she laughed, then added, “Guts,” and began dealing with blazing speed.

Ned said, “Dunc, have Nicky give you a drink on my tab. You can ride out to the ranch with me when I go.”

As he left, Artis was saying derisively, “Rah-fay-e-lay, quit trying to see up my skirt and put up your ante...”

Now the tables in the gaming room were jammed, the slots whirring and clanking, the noise level deafening. Shrieks came from a group of women playing the wheel of fortune. Sabine was nowhere to be seen, but Henri was still dealing blackjack, his bow tie now in place. They exchanged grins.

All the bar tables were taken by couples and foursomes. The fat man and Lana Turner were elsewhere. Cigarette smoke fogged the lights. Three waitresses in short, bright, sexy one-piece costumes flitted around the room like butterflies, bringing drinks from the bar or food from the kitchen.

The stools around the perimeter of Pepe’s piano bar were crowded. On a felt doily was a big brandy snifter stuffed with singles, near his elbow a glass of white wine.

Nicky, who had been joined by another bartender, said, “Here comes that fucking ginger ale again.” He dropped ice into a glass, swirled it, squirted in ginger ale. “On the cuff.”

“Thanks.”

Dunc went over to the piano bar. Pepe mopped his face, shook his head. “It gets worse later, when all the divorcées who struck out for the night show up. How did it go with Nitro Ned?”

“God, Pepe, I can’t believe it, he’s giving me a job out at the ranch, helping him train for the fight.”

“Not so dumb at that,” Pepe said. “Terlazzo’s fast — and ten years younger. Maybe Ned needs you to push him a bit.”

Ned Davenport shoved back from the table to stretch his long, thick, almost apelike arms over his head. He intertwined his fingers, pulled to make something pop in his upper back.

“Time for me to get my beauty sleep.”

Artis started putting her chips into her purse.

“No,” snapped Gimpy Ernest. “In bed, alone, goddammit. We don’t need any complications right now. And I don’t like you hiring that guy.”

“Lucius says he’s a good kid, smart.”

“Okay, but Artis stays in town for one goddamn night. I’ll be along after Carny and me discuss some business.”

Ned’s deep-set eyes got hot under heavy brows. Any hint of something that might have seemed benign had left his face.

“Not business about Terlazzo.”

“Of course about Terlazzo,” said Carny. “I’m guaranteeing the gate, for Chrissake, we’d better talk about the fight.”

“Just so you know I fight my own fight.” Ned turned to Artis, ignoring Gimpy. “I’ll be up front, baby.”

Loud voices, the clink of chips and whir of slots came through the door when he opened it, were cut off as it swung shut. Carny Largo sighed as he watched torn cigarette smoke eddy together again behind Ned Davenport’s broad departing back.

“If that man had a brain, even a piece of a brain, he’d be fighting Marciano in ten weeks instead of Terlazzo in two.”

“Poor Ned,” said Artis. “Over the hill without a brain — just like the scarecrow.” Contempt lit her face. “Don’t you believe it — and he’s still got that dynamite right hand.”

“So go keep your punchy prince happy,” sneered Carny.

She crossed the room with long savage strides, her hip motion holding Rafe spellbound. Gimpy started wheedling again.

“Carny, not tonight, the reporters are like vultures—”

“He’s only sparring with Jantzen tomorrow, for Chrissake.” Carny leaned across the table, his face suddenly set. “I’ve kept Terlazzo under wraps for two years, but eventually he’s going to need an old-timer like Ned under his belt.”

“I hope you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

Carny leaned back, bit the end from a lean cigar.

“Whatever happens with Terlazzo, a few more bouts and Ned’s hearing bells. Now, we have some serious things to talk over.”

Chapter Eleven

A woman with a sad eroded face and a good figure and an expensive dress asked for “Mood Indigo.” Pepe sang it in a bluesy voice, segued into “Stardust,” finished with “Willow Weep for Me.” The woman cried while he played, stuffed a five-dollar bill into his brandy glass, and fled.

“Oldies but goodies,” said Dunc.

“Like the lady.”

Then he started a seemingly pointless story about a gambler at the Desert Inn, which had opened three years before, the fifth major hotel since 1941 on the extension of South Las Vegas Boulevard now known as the Strip.

“There’s a big Joshua tree out in front of it — Vegas was originally settled by Mormons and they gave Joshuas that name because all those angular branches looked like outstretched arms beckoning to them from the wilderness.”

“And they went forth and they found Vegas,” grinned Dunc.

“And lost it just as quick.” Seemingly of its own volition, his left hand started a Fats Waller walking bass as he managed a small shrug. “Mormons and gambling.” He tilted his head in the direction of a tall lean player who’d gotten up from his table to stretch. He said, “That’s him there — he once held the dice at the Desert Inn casino for twenty-eight straight passes, but he was a careful bettor and walked away with just $750.”

“Sounds pretty good to me,” said Dunc.

“Pretty good? It was a million-to-one chance! If he’d let his winnings ride he would have had $289,406,976. Artis in there at the poker game would never miss her big chance by being timid like that.”

“What is Artis short for?” asked Dunc.

“Heck, Dunc, who knows? She never says.”

“Why do they call Gimpy Ernest Gimpy?”

“He limps — you don’t notice it until he stands up. Says he got it in the ring, but I doubt he ever was a fighter.”

“And Carny? He looks like a house man, but he was betting on the hands along with everyone else.”

“You have a good eye — he owns the place.”

“Then he’s your boss.”

His left hand kept on walking. “For my sins.”

“Okay. The little guy. Rafe.”

“Rafaele Raffetto. Little, yeah — but watch out.” Pepe’s right hand made eerie arpeggios far up in the treble keys. “Rumor has it that he’s a dangerous little bastard if Carny points him in your direction.”

Dangerous, that little rat-faced guy? Well, maybe. Pepe was going on as his fingers roamed the keys.

“Listen, Dunc, a record producer might come out from L.A. in a week, ten days to talk about cutting a demo. That happens, I’m gone like a shot.”

“Jesus,” said Dunc. “That’s great! Good luck with it!”

“Don’t tell anybody — especially Carny.”

Big, grinning Nitro Ned punched Dunc playfully on the shoulder. Dunc’s whole upper arm went dead. Ned exclaimed, “You can always tell a good piano man by his left hand.”

Doing arpeggios with his left hand, Pepe said, “And you can always tell a champion by his right,” and sang:

The other people around the piano recognized Davenport and started applauding. “Place is full of glad-handers,” he said, as if secretly pleased by the recognition.

Artis appeared. Ned put an arm around the tall woman’s shoulders. “What kept you, babe?”

“I had to cash in my winnings.”

“Way you watch your money, you’re gonna end up rich.”

“That’s the idea, big boy.”

“Come on, you suckers, come to Vegas and lose your shirts!” Artis paused outside the Gladiator as she tried to consider Las Vegas through Dunc’s eyes. She gave a little self-conscious laugh, added in softer tones, “Glitter Gulch didn’t glitter until we got neon a couple of years ago. Now Second and Fremont’s the brightest-lit corner in America west of Times Square.”

Dunc believed her. Flashing sequential bulbs spelled out CASINO, CAFE, LAS VEGAS, GAMBLING, MONTE CARLO CLUB, and OVERLAND HOTEL in man-high letters.

The three of them turned east; Fremont dead-ended in a little egg-shaped city park beyond which was the Art Deco train station. Opaque glass-cube windows and wide doors opening on a platform for the moment devoid of even redcap porters. But at 2:00 A.M. the Union Pacific’s City of Los Angeles would steam in with its trainload of hopes.

Overlooking the park was a big, orange brick building with a soaring T-shaped sign reading HOTEL SAL SAGEV. Its front was ablaze with lights.

“Las Vegas backwards,” said Dunc in swift comprehension.

Davenport rumbled with laughter as he stopped at the gray 1942 Ford four-door Dunc had admired that afternoon.

“Took me two weeks to figger that out!”

Artis got into the front seat, Dunc slid into the middle of the backseat.

“Two years ago I drove a car just like this up to Alaska. A 1942 Ford four-door sedan. I called it the Grey Ghost.”

“Ain’t hardly anyone knows Ford sold any ’42s. Quit when the fuckin’ Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, and when they started civilian production again in ’46, they was just jazzed-up ’42s.”

Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941. Dunc remembered listening to President Roosevelt’s “date which will live in infamy” radio speech and feeling scared and solemn. He’d been eighteen days short of his tenth birthday.

Ned was saying in a flat voice, “Not that I can bitch about my war. I spent my army years in the ring fighting soldiers with my fists ’stead of Japs with a rifle.”

He didn’t sound happy about it. Only now did Artis realize that her big lumbering fighter, who always bragged about how he’d sat out the war, had actually wanted in on the fighting desperately.

He’d U-turned the car through the lights and crowds of Glitter Gulch, people crossing Fremont without regard for traffic. He turned off into Fifth Street, then into Clark and finally Las Vegas Boulevard, and the city fell away behind them. Seven miles southwest of Glitter Gulch on the wide dusty boulevard was the fabled Strip: a big splash of light marking a hotel or casino, then relative darkness until the next glamorous resort.

Artis said, with a sudden strain in her voice, “Here it comes, the Fabulous Flamingo.”

She remembered opening night vividly: December 26, 1946.They had been rained out. She had worked her first party for the mob guys from back east that night. Start of her downhill slide.

“Built by Bugsy Siegel, right?” asked Dunc, fooling a little bit like a native listening to Nicky and Pepe talk about Siegel and the sprawling he shaped complex.

“I knew him,” said Davenport. “He liked the horses, liked pugs like me. He was a quiet little guy.”

“Unless you called him Bugsy to his face — or said something nasty about Virginia Hill,” said Artis.

The lush hotel dropped away behind them. Before Bugsy, before Flamingo, this had been a nice little town. She had met Carny Largo at a party at the Flamingo. Even with Bugsy dead and Virginia run off to Europe, the people who had blasted Bugsy scared her. Cross them you got buried in the desert. And you never knew who they were, watching, waiting...

She’d been lucky, maybe the luck of Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt and destroyer of men. She shivered. She had the money fever, true enough; but couldn’t she get what she wanted without helping destroy someone else?

She stole a glance back at Dunc. Just a few years younger than she was, but it felt... nice to be here in the car with her hulking fighter and the kid. Felt as if nothing too bad could happen to her while they surrounded her.

Brightly lit letters spelled out the turn to McCarran Airfield. Built just five years ago, but now there were one-arm bandits in the terminal and the sign was flanked by husky towers aflame with glowing neon propellers.

After another couple of miles, Ned turned left into a narrow sandy road. Their lights, jumping and swooping with the dips and twists of the track, cast long shadows of creosote bush and rabbitbrush out across the desert floor, then locked onto a low rambling adobe ranch house that seemed to go on forever.

“Home sweet home,” said Artis in her ironic voice.

The Ford squealed to a stop. Dunc was ravenous; he hadn’t eaten since Lucius Breen’s big pancake breakfast eighteen hours before.

But Nitro Ned said, “I’ll show you the bunkhouse, kid. Four A.M. comes mighty early.”

Chapter Twelve

“Okay, guys, drop your cocks and grab your socks.”

It seemed that Dunc’s head had hardly hit the lumpy pillow filled with what felt like corn husks. Yawning, he sat up on the edge of the bed. A kerosene pressure lamp was lit, evoking sudden Georgia memories. Thank God no dreams had brought him up yelling in the night. Nothing more embarrassing in a room full of tough guys than crying out like a girl in your sleep.

Some kind soul had neatly stacked sweat clothes and jockstrap on the foot of his bunk. Dunc washed up sketchily and dressed, wearing his own tennis shoes. He walked up to the main house drawing in great lungfuls of air rich with sage, horse manure, and, elusively, food. When was he going to get fed?

A band of predawn light lay against the eastern horizon, so fragile the very pale gold looked off-white. The gray line of cloud above it had a delicate lemon belly. Ned was just coming down the front steps in his own gray sweat suit. He held out a bottle.

“Take a gulp of this.” It was hot water with a lemon squeezed into it. “How long since you’ve done any roadwork?”

“Month, month and a half.”

“You’ll be okay, then. We’re just loosenin’ up anyway. Five little miles, then breakfast.”

They walked side by side out into the desert. By the dim light, Dunc could see they were in twin ruts that would make a ninety-degree left when they met a barbed-wire perimeter fence some distance ahead. Ned suddenly started talking, the words tumbling out as if until now heel had no one to say them to.

“Listen, kid, this is my chance, this fight. My last chance. I take Terlazzo, Marciano’s gotta deal with me. I been close to a shot before, but never this close.”

“I’ll do anything I can to help,” Dunc said lamely.

But what could he do? He’d done a bit of Golden Gloves sparring, but his first loves had been football and the weights.

“Just don’t let me dog it,” said Ned. He started a slow jog. Dunc kept up with him. “We got only about two weeks now.”

Dunc felt the sweat starting out on his body, felt his muscles start to loosen up, get limber. He felt good. The track made another ninety-degree angle to the left inside the boundary fence. A startled snort, the brief drumming of nervous hooves, huge hinking shadows throwing heads in near-dark.

“Horse ranch,” said Ned. He started tossing punches as he ran, snorting like the horses. “Better’n staying in town and trainin’ in a gym — too many distractions, an’ anyone can watch, check your moves. Grub’s better out here, too.”

Dunc’s mind drifted to Artis. What a woman. Ned’s woman. He started snorting and tossing punches of his own as he ran.

“That’s it, kid.” A grin was in his voice. “You’re a natural.”

Ned was throwing combinations, shoulders dipping and weaving as he jogged and jabbed. Dunc kept stumbling while trying to watch those slashing hands in the dim predawn light. He didn’t know enough to do Ned any good.

The fence turned again. The horses in the center of the paddock were trotting to keep up with them, dimly seen in the lifting darkness, throwing their heads in delight with the game.

“They run with me every morning I’m out here,” said Ned, then suddenly yelled, “Okay, I race you the last hundred yards!”

Dunc was surprised but turned it loose, legs flashing, arms pumping, but Ned skittered around the corner of the ranch house two strides ahead of him. Hadn’t seemed like five miles.

“Hah! Got ya!”

They slowed to a walk, still tossing shadow punches as they angled toward the barns past a regulation boxing ring set up under a grove of cottonwoods with rough bleachers arranged for maybe forty, fifty spectators. It was full daylight now.

They had the old converted feed barn to themselves. A sprung hardwood floor, a ring, a trio of heavy bags hanging on chains from one of the ceiling beams, two speed bags screwed to the wall on metal frames. The place smelled like every gym: rosin, stale sweat, unwashed socks and jocks. Over this, faintly, the unfamiliar sweet-sour memory of fermented silage, under it an acrid iodine tang he realized was dried blood.

This was for real! This was professional! Damn, he was glad to be here! Ned handed him a pair of cracked, sweat-stiff gloves and started to pull on a pair of his own.

“We spar a little to cool down before we go eat.”

“Oh, uh... should you do this before you box with Jantzen?”

“I just wanna show you a couple things.” Ned gave him a rubber mouthpiece to protect his teeth. “Hey, how can you tell if a girl’s wearing falsies?” Dunc shook his head. “Falsies taste like rubber.”

In the ring Ned kept his feet solidly on the canvas, sliding them, slightly crouched. Dunc tried to ape his stance.

Ned said something that sounded like “Throw a few.” Dunc started sending out tentative jabs. Ned slipped his rubber to say, “I told you to throw ’em. Put some beef into ’em.”

He put his mouthpiece back in and Dunc started putting his arms and shoulders into the punches. None of them hit anything except air or Davenport’s gloves. Getting frustrated, he threw harder punches, a real flurry of punches, roundhouse swings off the floor, now heavy-armed. Ned wasn’t even breathing hard.

“You got strength but... Here, lemme show you something.”

Dunc was reeling backward, vision blurred, his nose flowering blood. Ned had eight fists, all hitting him at once, but without real force: quick light jabs. He tried to block them, but each time Ned’s glove was tagging him elsewhere. A final one in his gut with some muscle in it curled him over. His eyes were watering. A gentle open hand laid against his face pushed him off balance backward so he bounced off the ropes.

“An’ you meet an uppercut comin’ off the floor, an’ you’re kissin’ canvas.”

Dunc stood with his head hanging, his gloved hands on his knees, nose dripping blood on the canvas as he tried to get his breath back. His ears were ringing.

“You gotta teach me how to do that,” he panted. His vision was clearing. “I’d see ’em coming, but I couldn’t stop ’em.”

The fighter was pulling off his gloves. “C’mon, a little rubdown an’ then breakfast.”

Gimpy Ernest and Artis were standing on the front veranda watching them come toward the ranch house.

“Joe Louis once said that if you see an opening, it’s too late. You gotta already have hit the other guy. Otherwise—”

“I’ll be kissing canvas.”

They were both laughing as they went up the weathered steps to the veranda. Ned faked a punch at the dour crippled man’s belly, making him flinch, then opened his arms to Artis.

She avoided his bear hug. “You’re all sweaty, lover.”

The showers were in a converted equipment shed: concrete floor, a few tinny lockers, some benches to sit on. The hot sluicing water felt wonderful. Afterward they lay facedown, nude, on a pair of towel-covered tables to be worked on by a brace of masseurs. Dunc had never had a rubdown before. As strong fingers pungent with witch hazel massaged, rotated, delved, soothed, he forgot his nudity and almost fell asleep.

They each ate a pound of steak sizzling in butter, aided by six eggs each and abetted by a mountain of hash browns and about a half a loaf of toast. Dunc got as many glasses of milk as he wanted. He wanted a lot.

“You can ride into town with one of the guys to get your stuff from the rooming house.” The big fighter dug in his pocket, came out with a ten-dollar bill. “Here. You’re gettin’ twenty-five bucks a week an’ room and board. Just be back by three o’clock for Jantzen.”

A lot of money. He rode in with a man named Max. “The train station at two-thirty,” Max said, and drove off, a battered Nevada license plate swinging off the rattly pickup’s rear bumper by a lone screw.

Dunc walked six blocks to the rooming house and collected his yellow gym bag. The large-bodied landlady said with instant hostility that he didn’t have any refund coming just because he hadn’t slept in the room. He said he didn’t expect any.

At a smoke shop with a rack of paperbacks, he picked up a two-bit Signet edition of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. After being seduced by a chocolate malt at a soda fountain, he let the inevitable one-armed bandit hold him up for his change, and ended up on a train station platform bench, reading.

When Max honked the horn, he’d just got to the part where the teenage prostitute had come to Caulfield’s hotel room for a five-dollar “throw,” and Caulfield had chickened out. Even as Dunc would have done, probably even if Artis was making the offer.

When they got back, cars full of newsmen and hangers-on and avid-eyed women were pulling into the yard. Gimpy Ernest was there. Artis was not. Flashbulbs popped and were ejected onto the ground as fresh ones were snapped into place. Ned wore satin trunks and a light robe with his name embroidered on it. He stood in the outdoor ring, looking out at the well-filled bleachers, nodding to this person, cracking a joke to that.

He saw Dunc standing near the ring, gestured with a gloved hand. Unlike this morning, his fists now were taped to protect them. He kept banging them together.

“Hey, Dunc, c’mon up an’ be one of my cornermen.”

The fat Negro who’d been Ned’s masseur was wearing a T-shirt that had NITRO NED emblazoned on it. He was getting the spit bucket and water bottle arranged. He grinned, stuck out a huge black paw.

“Wesley Harding Jones. Wes.”

“Pierce Duncan. Dunc.”

“You ever tended a fighter before?”

“Nope.”

“No sweat. This ain’t but patty-cake anyway.”

Jantzen climbed through the ropes on the other side of the ring. He was even bigger than Ned, his body white but his face and neck burned dark by the sun like a farmer’s. It wasn’t a face, it was a mask: scar tissue massed over the eyes, the nose a broad splodge between the shapeless lumps of ear gristle on the sides of his head. He grinned vacantly across the ring at Ned.

But when the bell was struck, Jantzen seemed to go crazy, leaping from his corner, snorting, arms windmilling. He hit hard, but Ned picked blows out of the air like swatting flies, and every once in a while would work a lightning combination of his own, thunk thunk THUD, each blow driving Jantzen back. His famous right was never uncorked.

After the caravan of newspeople and hangers-on had driven back toward Vegas, Jantzen asked anxiously, “Ned, I done all right, huh?”

“You done great,” said Ned, putting an arm around the punchy fighter’s shoulders.

Later, when Gimpy Ernest had limped away taking his apparently permanent sour expression with him, Dunc saw Ned slipping the big punch-drunk brawler a fistful of folding money.

Chapter Thirteen

The church was empty and so was the confessional. Dunc went back out into the sunlight feeling relief Heel tried to go to confession and no one was there. He hadn’t done murder, maybe the only truly mortal sin, but he’d helped, jerking the scattergun from Hent’s hand, holding Hent down so the knife could go into his belly. Yet even now he was flooded with confusion about the part he had played. So how could he make confession?

He had to before he could receive communion, that’s how; it was going to be the hardest thing he had ever done. Only by making it an offering for Ned’s victory could he do it.

In the driveway of the church rectory a husky mid-thirties man with dark curly hair had his head under the raised hood of an old junker. In passing, Dunc heard the man’s grunt of satisfaction when the engine coughed into life in the Sunday morning quiet.

The black-haired guy came out from under the hood.

“I’ll meet you at the confessional,” he said.

How had he known? Dunc returned to kneel in the twilight box. The little window slid open. He could dimly see the pries! through the veiled opening.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been eight weeks since my last confession...”

The halting whispered phrases took a long time.

“An evil man, son,” said the priest when he had finished. “Come to an evil end.” He paused. “But you didn’t come here to tell me somebody else’s sins. What was yours?”

Hent, all meanness burned out of him by imminent death, was more vivid in memory than he had been in reality.

“I didn’t try to stop it, because I was afraid if he lived he’d come after me next. Even now I don’t know what I should have done.”

“So your soul shut its eyes and has been silent?”

“No. I’ve had dreams. Bad dreams. Nightmares.”

The priest grunted with the same satisfaction he’d shown when his old junker of a car had turned over.

“Life isn’t a book and the people you meet on the road aren’t chapters. It’s real, they’re real...” The priest was silent for a long time, finally sighed. “Say twelve rosaries, son. Don’t just rattle them off. Take a couple of weeks, contemplate the Mysteries, think about what sort of light they might shed on what you’ve experienced. They’re not your penance, they’re just preparation for it...”

He spoke seriously again. It was not like any penance Dunc had ever heard of. He didn’t know where to begin.

“I... I’ll try, Father.”

“No. You’ll do. You may not recognize the opportunity as it arrives, maybe no one else would, either, but when the time comes you’ll say, ‘This is it!’ and you’ll do it.”

On Monday it was up at four for ten miles of trotting, fast walking, occasional sprints on the soft sand track that would not give them shinsplints like hard-surface city streets. If not twice around the horse paddock, then a single huge loop through the chilly desert on a narrow Jeep track.

The desert runs were pure magic. Ned’s hulking silhouette gaining definition until the risen sun cast their shadows long and thin beyond them. The thud of their shoes, the raucous call of a flicker arrowing above them. Invariably advice.

“Breathe through the nose. Keep your lips pressed tight together. Mouth breathers don’t got no real stamina.”

Once they saw a roadrunner with the curved beak and crazy tufted head feathers made familiar by the cartoons, beating a foot-long lizard on a rock with swift sideways jerks of its head. It dropped its prey, crowed like a rooster, grabbed up the limp reptile crosswise in its beak, and dashed off into the desert.

They saw a lot of black-tailed jackrabbits, and a couple of times glimpsed coyotes far off on a hillside. It was Ned who spotted a desert tortoise one morning when they were crossing a deep dry wash called a barranca in this part of the country.

His high-domed shell was deeply incised in concentric diamond shapes with orange centers. He trundled his slow way across the yielding sand floor, totally ignoring the two men. Deep within his 300 million years of dim genetic memories were dinosaurs and great armored fish and pterodactyls, the rise of mountains, the drying up of vast shallow inland seas...

Human beings? What were they?

In the barn they would put on their gloves and spar, working on combinations whose geometry was baffling. Feint with the right, hit with the left. Feint twice with the right...

“The old bare-knuckle brawlers could last a hundred, two hundred rounds ’cause when they threw a fist, they had their elbows out and their thumbs down.”

Dunc threw fists thumb-down until his arms were lead.

“Hell, kid, you’re arm-hitting. Do this.” Ned’s fists flew, Dunc went backward into the ropes, head ringing, covering up. “Good! Good! When I’m comin’ at you, go into your shell.”

In teaching the kid, Ned knew he was reinforcing for himself what he already knew. It would take all his skill, all his guile, all his knowledge, to win this one. His blows traveled no more than a foot, some of his hardest only six inches. His whole body threw his uppercuts. Nitro Ned.

“The left hand delivers the mail, the right covers your chin an’ explodes when the time comes.”

Sometimes he just stood there with his arms at his sides, bobbing and weaving. He slipped most of Dunc’s head shots, and those he took, he took going away, so their force was dissipated.

“Don’t dance — shuffle. You’re a bear, not Fred Astaire.”

By telling Dunc his most cherished secret, he told himself.

“When you throw that right at his jaw, you shift your left foot four inches to the side. If he’s throwin’ a right at your jaw, too, you’ll connect an’ hell go over your shoulder.”

Late in the afternoon Ned would spar between five and ten rounds in the outside ring, never pulling a punch or asking his opponent to do so. There were knockdowns and two broken jaws.

After all that work, play.

Dunc dropped Ned, then parked. He had started calling the little gray Ford Grey Ghost Two, in honor of his original Grey Ghost. Inside, the Gladiator was the same: no Lana Turner, no fat man; but a woman playing the slots, Nicky behind the bar.

“Hey, the fuckin’ ginger ale!” and splashed it all over the cuff of his pink shirt. He shook his wet arm, cursing. “Fucking French cuff. Fucking rolled collar.” He ran a finger around the inside of his rolled collar. “Goddamn wife bought me nine of these things for my birthday, they cost me $189, tailor-made. So goddamn mad, I said to her, ‘I love ya, baby, but you ever do that again I’ll break your fucking neck.’ ”

“The shirt fits you great,” said Dunc.

“Like hell. A guy like me with two chins, f’Chrissake, it makes me look like I got no neck.”

“You do got no neck.”

Pepe had appeared, laughing, moving like a dancer, supple and graceful. He shook hands with Dunc.

“Where’s the freeloaders?” Dunc asked. Nicky didn’t answer. “You know,” he persisted, “the fat guy and the blonde.”

Nicky didn’t answer. Pepe beckoned Dunc back to the piano.

“She pissed him off royally, he slapped her around, made a phone call, and nobody’s seen her since.” He played a few bars of the Marche Funèbre. “It’s a big desert out there, Dunc.” He immediately slid into “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and added, “The record producer’s due in town tomorrow.”

“You’re gonna knock him dead.”

Dunc carried the tray of drinks back to the poker players.

“What’s with him an’ Davenport?” asked Nicky.

“The son Nitro Ned never had,” said Pepe.

After delivering the drinks, he wandered, stopping to become Henri’s first customer at the blackjack table.

“Where’s Sabine?”

“Her divorce came through. She left.” Henri shook his head and chuckled. “With the bouncer from next door.”

“Hung like a bull?” asked Dunc.

“Shit, kid, don’t rub it in!” laughed Henri.

The casino was filling up. A woman in shorts and a T-shirt over pendulous breasts, loose flesh hanging on her legs and a face trashed by excess, turned to her husband with a hand out.

“More nicks for the bandit, baby!”

At the bar a man in a suit was telling a used-up-looking brunette with eyes like distant fires, “Everybody’s having a good time, am I not right? The money’s going, but it’s going slow.”

“Just give me the money, I’m happy.”

“Baby, it isn’t the money, it’s having a good time.”

“With me it’s the money,” she said.

Nicky said, “She’s got bedroom eyes — pillows under cm”

Dunc nursed his ginger ale, feeling guilty about not writing more in his notebook. He’d hoped to take Grey Ghost Two out to Lake Mead and just sit there and write, but poker at the Gladiator was Ned’s relaxation, and he wanted Dunc there.

He showed up at Dunc’s elbow. “Let’s go out to the ranch, kid — I wanna turn in early.”

Gimpy Ernest had lost heavily again and had gone home also. Carny gestured Rafe out of earshot, asked Artis, “You aren’t falling for Ned, are you?”

“No, Carny, but I like him. He’s a square shooter.” That evening she was wearing yellow; on her, it looked like spun gold. Her fingernails flashed as she stubbed her Lucky, lit another. “But the kid has him working like a horse out there at the ranch. Ned’s in terrific shape.”

“So what? Gimpy owes me six grand.”

“What does that mean?”

When he didn’t answer, she snuffed out her new cigarette, went around behind Carny’s chair, took his head between her two hands, and tilted up his face so their lips were touching.

She whispered, “I’ve done what you asked me, Carny, but it seems like forever.” Her tongue darted between his lips. Her eyes were closed. “I need it tonight, baby. From you.”

Carny’s open eyes watched her face. He broke the kiss.

“You’d better go keep the big guy company, Artis. If he smelled another man on you, he’d go crazy.”

She sighed and nodded and stepped back. Rafe was turning a chip over and over across the backs of his knuckles without looking at it. After she had left, Carny sneered at the little man, “Why don’t you go into the men’s John and jerk off?” Then he chuckled coarsely. “Patience, amico, your turn will come.”

At 5:00 A.M. Pepe came out of the Gladiator and turned toward the center of town. Twelve hours straight at the piano, singing and playing in his little monkey suit while no one listened. Play your little tune and rattle your little tin cup, little monkey. He would be glad to leave this place.

The sun was reddening the sky above the casinos. Pepe went by the Golden Nugget and turned right again, up Fifth Street, turned in at his rooming house.

It was fun, just for a few moments, to think about just playing the piano, singing, cutting records...

Chapter Fourteen

It was Thursday afternoon. Nitro Ned lay facedown on the narrow massage table under the hot yellow light. Wesley Harding Jones skillfully slapped and kneaded his big, smooth, lax muscles. Gimpy Ernest came in to sit down on a wooden bench. The green lockers behind him were rusted from shower steam, the air acrid with witch hazel and the ghosts of cigarette butts dead on the floor.

“They’re saying Terlazzo’s a heavyweight Sugar Ray Robinson, hard to hit as smoke in a dark room.”

Ned’s voice was made quavery by the massage. “Then maybe he should wear lace tights an’ take dancin’ lessons.”

Gimpy jerked his head at the door. Wes Jones departed. Ned sat up to reach for his clothes as Gimpy leaned toward him.

“Remember the night the kid showed up, Carny saying you should always figure on having more than you think you’ll need? A margin for error? Well, Carny wants his margin for error.”

Ned sat in jock and socks on the training table. He had been feeling on top of the world. Now he felt lousy.

“You talkin’ fuckin’ dive here, Gimp?”

Gimpy made himself sound hurt. “Jesus, Ned, to even think I’d suggest that!” He swiped bristly jowls with a sodden handkerchief. “It’s just that, uh, Carny needs a round.”

“I don’t trust Terlazzo an’ I don’t trust Largo an’ — goddamn you Gimpy — maybe I don’t oughta trust you, neither.”

“Hear me out. Ned. You... ah, carry Terlazzo until the, um, seventh, then take him. He’s willing to do it for his price, you know what I mean? You make it look like a tough fight, but you manage to beat him. He demands a rematch — an’ you smash him. Then Marciano’s people can’t balk at a title bout.”

“I’ve always tole you. Gimp — no fixed fights, never.”

Gimpy Ernest sighed. “I’m into Carny for six K. If you don’t do this for me, I’m a dead man. Raffetto...”

“It’s a terrible thing you’re askin’ me to do. Ernie.”

“It’s terrible things they’ll do to me if you don’t, Ned.”

Friday morning. Ned, sitting on the edge of the ring, said suddenly, “Early on, kid, Jantzen ast me to carry him to help boost his career. I got double-crossed, lost the decision. He’s never tole nobody about it, ended up punchy, that’s why I use the poor bastard to spar with. I tole Gimp then, no more rigged fights, ever. Then yesterday he ast me to shade the fight.”

Dunc felt sick to his stomach. “You can’t do it. Ned.”

“Yeah, I know I can’t.” He sighed. “C’mon, let’s dance.”

Thirty seconds after they’d entered the ring. Nitro Ned knocked Dunc cold with a right cross. He came out of it sprawled on the canvas, Ned kneeling over him, face tight with remorse.

“I didn’t break no thin’, did I?”

Dunc managed a weak, lopsided grin. He was starting to remember what had happened. He’d taken the punch that had been meant for Gimpy Ernest.

Friday. July 3, 6:00 P.M., twenty-four hours before the fight. Through open windows of Carny’s suite at the Flamingo, resort sounds: laughter, voices, the splash of swimmers from the pool in the-center of the plush hotel. Carny sat with his drink balanced on the soft leather arm of the couch.

“Nick the Greek favors Ned, four-to-one. We’ll clean up.”

Sprawled on one of the twin beds, handsome lean-faced Tony Terlazzo made a derisive sound. He had a beautifully sculpted body, wide in the shoulder and narrow in the hip, was sharp and dressy in a tie-less white dress shirt and tight green pinstripe pants with pegged cuffs.

“I can take that old fart with one hand tied behind me.”

“You’ll take him when I tell you to take him.”

Artis sat beside Carny, her head back and her fine dark eyes shut. Raffetto, lounging in a leather chair across the room, had his eyes on her skirt, ridden high up on her thighs.

“Terlazzo is going to dive in the seventh, isn’t he?”

“I don’t dive, lady,” said Terlazzo. “Only on muffs.”

“Not interested,” she said coldly.

Carny pointed his cigar at Gimpy. “You had to dress it up. Couldn’t tell Ned he had to take a dive, had to—”

“Ned won’t dive even for me, Carny. But this way—”

Terlazzo cut in, “This way, in the fourth Gimpy tells Davenport to let me hit him so people don’t think it’s a fix. He thinks I’m diving in the seventh, so he opens up — whammo!"

Artis stood up, smoothed down her tight green skirt with green-tinted nails. She adjusted one of her jade earrings.

“You’re going along with this, Gimp?”

“Hey, what can I do? I owe Carny a lot of money.”

Artis nodded, sighed. “Ned, the poor sap, wants to be alone to plan his fight, so he has me doing the town with Dunc.”

Artis looked incredibly beautiful in a glittery gown cut on a bias. Her eyes glittered, her teeth glittered, stones set in gold glittered at her throat. She gave a deep, carefree laugh.

“You look... Christ, sensational!” exclaimed Dunc in awe.

Dunc had bought a dress shirt and a tie and a sport jacket, and had picked Artis up in Grey Ghost Two at the Flamingo, where she had a room until after the fight. Dunc hadn’t even entered any of the Strip’s plush resort hotels; tonight he was walking into the exclusive, expensive Copa Room of the Sands Hotel with the most beautiful woman in Vegas on his arm.

They ordered drinks, he tore a match out of a book, stuck it between the second and third fingers of his cupped right hand, lit it, held it to the tip of her Lucky. He’d seen an ex-con do that in some movie. He knew he probably looked ridiculous, especially with his bruised, swollen jaw, but he didn’t care. He was out with Artis for a night in Vegas.

She blew smoke from the corner of her mouth, put down the cigarette. When she took both his hands in hers, her hands were warm. He felt a stirring in his groin.

“Dunc, I want to ask your advice on something—”

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Sands Hotel.”

The M.C. wore a tux; he was there to make the audience laugh out loud so he could count their gold fillings.

“Here at New York’s Copacabana Gone West we have for you the greatest star in the Las Vegas firmament, the Copa’s own Sophisticated Lady, Miss... Lena... HORNE!”

Home sang her special songs. “Paper Doll.” “The Birth of the Blues.” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” to finish with “Stormy Weather.” Dunc hardly heard her. Artis needed his advice.

She never got it. A big hard-looking man towered above them. He was impeccably groomed and wore a silk suit, just like the first time Dunc had seen him outside the Tucson truck stop.

Artis’s smile dazzled. “Join us, Lucius.”

“I’m with another party. Just wanted to say hello.” He looked down at Dunc, intelligence shining from those battered features. “Everything’s okay? Ned’s ready?”

“Better than ready! Dynamite! Nitroglycerin, in fact.”

Breen chuckled. “That’s swell! Then the best man’ll win.”

The evening became a kaleidoscope of casinos and lounges and bars and sexual tension and expectation, with no time for questions. They drank and danced and she taught him roulette.

Noise and smoke assaulted the senses. Hatchet-eyed men watched, beautiful women prowled, suckers crowded the tables four-deep. Anything was possible, even the disappearance of a Lana Turner look-alike into the desert’s anonymous sands.

Anytime he tried to pay for anything, Artis put him off, saying she’d make out big by betting on Ned tomorrow night. Then suddenly the night was over, in the wee hours he was walking her down the silent corridor of the Flamingo to her room. What did he do? Handshake? Good-night kiss? What?

Artis solved his problem. She ground her crotch against his while thrusting her tongue into his mouth for one searing moment, then stepped back with a throaty laugh.

“A lick and a promise ’cause you’re such a sweet kid, Dunc.”

Despite the whiskey singing in him, Dunc was ashamed of his instant erection. She was Ned’s woman, for Chrissake! Then she gave him a chaste peck on the cheek, keyed the door, and was gone. The walk down the thickly carpeted corridor from her room seemed endless. He couldn’t stop thinking about both lick and promise.

Ned was sitting on the front steps by the dark of the moon. Dunc sat down beside him, the guilt at Artis’s kiss forgotten. In a few hours Ned faced the biggest bout of his career.

“Thinking about tomorrow night?”

Ned shook his head. “Gimpy.”

“Jesus, Ned, I thought that was all settled.”

He looked over at Dunc in the near-darkness. “I don’t do what he ast me, Raffetto comes after Gimp, an’ I’m not sure I can stop him. He’s greased lightning with a black-steel Commando knife he carries down the small of his back. But if I do it in the seventh, Gimp’ll be safe — an’ I’ll still win.”

“There’s winning and there’s winning, Ned! You can’t just sacrifice your fight for Gimpy. What if it’s another double cross? He’s the one screwing you over, you aren’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, kid, I know all that.” There was a great sadness in his face. “But dammit, can’t you see, I gotta do what Gimpy’s askin’ me. If I don’t an’ somethin’ happens to him, then it’s the same thing as if I killed him myself.” Then he burst out suddenly, “But Jesus Christ, Dunc, I hate it!”

Chapter Fifteen

Dunc was jerked awake at 6:00 A.M. by the rest of the training crew stirring around. He just wanted to stay in his bunk forever, but only he knew that this fight day wasn’t worth getting up for. He rode into town with Max in the pickup.

“Be at the depot at two just like usual, Dunc. Ned wants you to drive him to the fight tonight in his car.”

Jesus, what would he and Ned talk about in the car? In Ned’s place, Dunc would do the same, but this was Ned’s whole life. Yet if he didn’t... Dunc’s thoughts circled endlessly like buzzards over something dying on the desert floor.

He walked down Fremont. The Fourth of July, Vegas, fight night. It should have been almost unbearably exciting, but he felt only secret shame. Ned would beat Terlazzo, but not as they’d planned. It would be as Carny Largo had planned.

Seven celebrities were out in the middle of Fremont and First, clowning around and stopping traffic. He recognized only Milton Berle, Red Skelton, and Spike Jones, but the girl next to him in the sidewalk crowd knew them all. She was his age, tiny, with a mist of soft red curls framing a pixie face.

“That’s Gale Storm next to Skelton,” she said. “And Anna Maria Alberghetti between Spike Jones and Vic Damone. And of course the tall one on the end in the striped shirt is Herb Shriner. He does five minutes five days a week on CBS radio. They’re doing publicity for the Las Vegas News Bureau.”

He tried to get into the spirit of the day, made himself recall how he’d loved Red Skelton’s goofy movies...

“When I was a kid I thought it was Red Skeleton.”

The girl giggled. She had freckles and a pert Irish nose.

“Are you going to the parade?”

“No. Are you going to the fights? Nitro Ned Davenport is going to be the next heavyweight champion of the world.”

“Boxing?” Her face screwed up in disgust, and she moved away from him. Yawning, Dunc slipped away also. Three hours of silliness and noise until Max would take him back out to the ranch, and he hadn’t brought his book. He’d try the Gladiator.

Nitro Ned Davenport usually slept like a baby the night before a fight, but he woke after only a few hours of troubled slumber. Why the hell did he get involved with people? First Dunc, wide-eyed and hurting ’cause Ned was going along with the setup. Then Artis, hurting, too, in her own way.

In his room a warm breeze stirred the gauzy curtains in the wide window looking out on the horse paddock where they had taken so many training runs. He pulled his steamer trunk out from under the bed. Old and battered and iron-bound, it had been with him since he’d scored his first KO in 1937, at age seventeen. He took out the oiled leather pouch that held his personal papers, signed one of them, and put it in a separate envelope.

In the bunkhouse he pulled Dunc’s yellow gym bag out from under the bunk, packed it, and locked it in the trunk of his car. The envelope he locked in the glove box. If things went okay, Dunc would never see it.

Dunc paused inside the double doors, letting his eyes adjust to the Gladiator’s dimness. Nobody played the slots, nobody was at the tables. Only a relief bartender, taking occasional drags from the cigarette balanced on the edge of the stainless-steel sink. And Pepe at the piano in jeans and tennis shoes and a flowery sport shirt, making “Stardust.”

“Play one of your own,” said Dunc.

Flushed with pleasure, Pepe did. Then another, this one evoking city streets and cold autumn wind around skyscraper corners. When he was through, Dunc applauded.

“How did it go with the record producer?”

Pepe banged out “How High the Moon.” “Number one on Your Hit Parade. I cut the demo on Monday in L.A.”

“That’s fantastic, Pepe. And come back when?”

Like a dirge, “There’s No Tomorrow.” “I don’t. This works out, I’ll be playing piano on the Sunset Strip.”

Dunc felt a sudden hole in his life. “I’ll come and see you there.”

“Sure you will, kid. Sure you will.”

Rafe was mixing drinks. Gimpy Ernest was fussing with the bouquet of flowers left by a tip-conscious maid. Carny sat on a red leather barstool, his well-manicured hands carefully rotating a thin cigar in the flame of a silver lighter.

“We’d better get over to the field,” said Gimpy.

“I’m catching it on TV,” Carny said. “He’s got the nigger and the kid to hold his hands, he doesn’t need me.”

Artis was sitting on the couch again, head back and eyes closed. She was wearing a white silk blouse with a gold cross at her throat, dark slacks with high-heeled sandals that had gold straps over the arch of her foot.

Carny removed his cigar. “You give the kid titty last night?” When she didn’t respond, he persisted, “He’s such a cool cat, I bet you gave him titty and stink finger.”

“Lucius Breen came around asking questions about Ned.”

Carny stiffened. Everyone knew of Breen’s power, his love of boxing, his incorruptibility as a referee. He would go to the Boxing Commission, kill the fight if he got proof it was fixed.

“You think Breen’s heard something?”

“Not from Dunc, that’s a gut. The poor sap said all the right things — because that’s what he believes.”

“How about you? What did you say to Breen?”

“Ask Lucius,” she said with a vindictive smile.

Dunc was driving north on Las Vegas Boulevard from the ranch, Ned beside him, Wes in the backseat with the equipment. Las Vegas fight cards were staged at Cashman’s Field, a minor-league baseball diamond a mile and a half north of the Strip. The house would be much greater than the usual two thousand; two ranked heavyweights as headliners, and the Visitors Bureau had gotten The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports to make it the first televised Vegas fight card. To hold the spectators after the cameras were turned off, fireworks would follow the boxing matches.

The ring was set up about where home plate usually was, with a portable wooden floor laid down on the infield for rows of ringside folding chairs at twenty-five bucks. Bleacher seats were ten.

“Nick the Greek has me odds-on favorite,” said Ned, “so a lot of ham-and-eggers are makin’ bets on me. If I lose—”

“You won’t lose,” said Dunc almost sadly. This wasn’t what they had trained for.

The ball field was ablaze with lights, though the sun was hours from setting. The uniformed guard on the gate bent to peer into the car, straightened up with a broad grin.

“You got my money ridin’ on you, Nitro!” he exclaimed.

They walked in under the bleachers, Wes carrying Ned’s gear in a military-issue olive-green duffel bag. Down a set of steps and along a dimly lit concrete corridor to the dressing rooms, lockers, and showers. Ned paused.

“Listen, Dunc, if I don’t show up right after the fight, you an’ Art is get out of Vegas. Check the glove box of the car. Your gear is locked in the trunk. This here is just a what-if, okay? Now, why don’t you go on out an’ look the setup over? You won’t get no chance once the crowd starts gettin’ here.”

Two technicians in greenish coveralls were up ladders in the ring, fussing with a square of lights scaffolded above it. On the second-base side was a sturdy wooden framework to support the TV camera. Heavy cables snaked away into the outfield.

Lucius Breen climbed through the ropes, and a microphone on the end of a cable descended from the metal pipe framework above the ring. One of the technicians caught it, handed it to Lucius.

“Could we do a sound check, Mr. Breen?”

Breen’s voice boomed out over the field. “In this corner, wearing red trunks and weighing in at two hundred twenty-one pounds, Nitro Ned—”

“That’s great. Thanks.”

Breen caught up with Dunc on his way back to the dressing rooms. Dunc’s new guilty knowledge about the fixed fight lay like lead in his belly. Lucius was straight and the fight wasn’t. Dunc wasn’t. They stopped at the head of the ramp.

“Anybody asked Ned to lose the fight?” Breen asked bluntly.

“Ned would never do that, Mr. Breen!”

“To stall, maybe? Maybe pick a round?”

Somehow, Dunc met his eyes. “He doesn’t have to.”

Dunc finally understood that Lucius Breen knew all about the kind of man Carny Largo was, knew about Gimpy Ernest’s gambling problems, had, in fact, gotten Dunc into Ned’s training camp just so he could ask him these questions on fight night.

Dunc almost ran after him to tell him the truth about the fix. Maybe this was the act of moral recompense the priest had said he would recognize when the moment come. But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t his secret to tell. Talk, and he would destroy Ned’s only shot at the heavyweight title. Destroy Ned.

He’d had to lie. What else could he have done?

Chapter Sixteen

Nitro Ned hung up the corridor pay phone and returned to the dressing room, ritualistically donned socks, supporter, cup, trunks, and shoes like a knight donning his armor. Usually Ned would have been deep down inside himself by now, everything else excluded, just him and how he would fight his fight. But not tonight. Tonight someone else was going through the ritual of preparation, of dressing, of hand-taping. Oh, sweat tickled his spine and his mouth felt dry and cottony, as before any fight, but it meant nothing. Nothing at all.

Dunc, wearing unlaced gloves, held up his hands palm-out, and Ned slammed blows at them. A light sheen of sweat covered his body now, his feet working combinations Dunc knew by heart, even though the accompanying punches weren’t being thrown.

Someone knocked. Wes crossed to the door, opened it to a uniformed guard’s face that brought with it a roar from the playing field overhead as from an opened furnace door.

“Last prelim’s star tin’ now.”

Dunc took off the unlaced gloves. Gimpy Ernest’s heavy-lidded eyes were dark-circled, his face pasty. A wilted white shirr clung to the rounded, meaty shoulders under his loud sport jacket. Pudgy fingers were close to shredding his dime cigar. He got Ned in a corner away from the others.

“You sure you got it straight, Nitro?” he said, low-voiced. “You just carry him ’til the seventh, don’t worry about points.” Sweat dripped from his sagging jowls. “I’m countin’ on you, Ned — me an’ Artis.”

“Yeah, Gimp. You an’ Artis.” Ned began slamming his gloved fists together as if Terlazzo’s head were between them.

Surrounded by his entourage, Terlazzo pranced up the aisle first, turning his torso from side to side, arms above his head. He wore a purple robe with gold piping, the hood up to cover his sweat-gleaming black curls.

Ned’s red robe billowed out around him in regal splendor. The roar was deafening as he went down the aisle: the common guy’s choice, the battered club fighter who’d worked his way up through the years with honest bouts against all comers.

He went to the rosin box and scuffed his shoes in it. His bitterness at the fixed fight didn’t show. Wes and Gimpy Ernest were his cornermen. Dunc had the closest seat first row ringside; the seat next to his was for Artis.

A tuxedoed announcer strutted around the ring, his amplified voice boomed out over the public address system.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are very lucky to have with us tonight a legendary figure of the fighting world, former heavyweight champion of the world, Mr.... Jack... DEMPSEY!”

Dempsey bounded up into the ring, pushing sixty and a little paunchier than when he had won the title from Jess Willard in 1919 by KO. He shook Ned’s gloved hand, then Terlazzo’s.

“Ladeez an’ gennelmen... Ladeez an’ gennelmen...”

Artis, looking haggard, slid past Dunc. She patted a purse bulging with betting slips. “Out getting my money down.”

Dunc hadn’t bet. The announcer was introducing the fighters; the din was terrific. Wes pulled the robe off Ned’s shoulders. His skin was sun-baked dark as a red Indian’s, he wore three days’ beard to toughen his face against cuts.

Tony “the Tiger” Terlazzo flicked the robe away with a dramatic gesture, dancing and throwing punches and shadowboxing all over the ring. Ned, solid as a monolith, just stared at him.

Breen gestured both fighters into the center of the ring, instructed them on how he wanted the bout fought, gesturing to show no low blows or rabbit punches. They both nodded, accepting the well-known instructions. The fight was only moments away.

Pepe packed methodically. Carny Largo had been a shitty boss, but that had been a given going m. He’d liked Nicky okay. And Dunc. The kid always asked to hear Pepe’s own stuff, and actually seemed to listen. A good kid. But after tonight, Pepe would be out of Vegas. As usual, he wouldn’t miss it. He went someplace, did his job, moved on. Then the phone rang.

The opening bell. The fighters came out, Terlazzo dancing, Ned shuffling. They touched gloves in the center of the ring over Breen’s outstretched arm, Terlazzo instantly tagged Ned with a strong right hand that reddened his forehead. The crowd gasped. Ned had been slow in covering and had thrown no counter.

“He’ll be okay, he’ll be okay, he’s just feeling his way,” Dunc chanted, his upper body jerking slightly to the action in the ring as if he were throwing and taking the punches himself.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Artis said obscurely.

Dunc didn’t say anything about the seventh round, although she had to know about it. He couldn’t bring himself to speak of it. That’s why Ned was so lackadaisical, wasn’t it?

In his room at the Flamingo Carny Largo relaxed against the leather couch. On the television a cartoon parrot was hawking Gillette Blue Blades between rounds. Gimpy had played Davenport perfectly, after all. The big stupid bastard was going along with the fix-to save Gimpy, well behind on points already.

Terlazzo was trying for a KO. Why not? He didn’t have to wait for a certain round. And if Davenport made it to the fourth, Gimpy would tell him to open up and let himself get hit so it looked like a fight — and the Tiger would pounce.

“Open a bottle of champagne,” he told Raffetto. “We’re both going to score tonight.”

Rafe made even Carny a little queasy. But hell, there were no guarantees in this life. Artis was a hell of a woman, dynamite in bed, but she knew too much. Dangerous. After Rafe had her, shed be harmless. Hell, she’d be wishing she’d become a nun.

Dunc watched the second-round action with stunned eyes. Ned was merely covering up, while the Tiger was coming in with roundhouse lefts and rights now, savaging the big fighter all he could before taking his dive in the seventh. But what if he wasn’t going to dive; the fix was in, but what if there was another fix in? No. Gimpy would have to be in on it...

One of Ned’s instructions to him came back.

If your man loops his punches, go inside.

He realized he was shouting it at the top of his voice.

“Go inside! Ned! Go inside!”

Ned just kept backpedaling, covering up. It was Terlazzo who started to go inside, crowding Ned, pumping blows into the heart and the belly. Not even Ned could stop all of them.

If he’s a body puncher, keep your elbows in and snap jabs at his jaw as fast as you can pump ’em.

“The jaw! Ned! Jab his jaw! Jab—”

The bell.

Back in his corner, Ned sprawled on his stool, eyes shut. Some of the fight fans had started stamping their feet in unison. He should be giving his followers at least the illusion of a fight, but it didn’t matter, except for Dunc seeing it. He had to await Gimp’s instructions in the fourth to be sure.

Wes sponged him down, gave him water to spit into the sand bucket. “What you doin’ out there? He’s whuppin’ yo’ dumb ass.”

Ned asked, “How’m I doin’, Gimp?”

“Don’t listen to him, you’re looking great, kid.”

Crowd noises died during the third except for the stamping of feet and a rising crescendo of boos. Ned kept clinching, what heel told Dunc to never do; each time Breen separated them, Terlazzo got in a solid shot to the kidneys.

Ned slumped on his stool. Wes used the styptic pencil in the open cuts above his eyes, trying to stanch the bleeding. Lucius Breen came over to take a look. Gimpy Ernest hung back.

“Is this fighter okay?” Breen demanded.

Wes didn’t look up from his work. “He’s fine, ref, he’s okay, nothin’ wrong, jes a little ding ’bove de eye.”

“Then what the fuck you doin’, Davenport?”

“Fightin’ my fight, Lucius.”

“You’re fighting somebody’s fight,” said Breen.

Gimpy was beside Ned in an instant. “Even the ref seen it — you been covering up too much. Open up. Fake a few at him, let him tag you a time or two, make it look like a fight...”

The warning buzzer sounded. Artis said suddenly to Dunc, “Terlazzo’s going to KO Ned this round.” Dunc started to his feet, but she said, “I told Ned last night, put all my money on him tonight. But only he and God know what he’s going to do.”

Wes started to put Ned’s mouthpiece in, but Ned stopped him with a gloved hand to say, “Better pray, Gimp.”

The bell sounded for round four.

Chapter Seventeen

Ned seemed to be following Gimpy’s instructions. He not only opened up, he actually had his arms hanging down at his sides. Terlazzo danced in, throwing punches, Ned bobbed, weaved, moved his head fractionally as the blows came at him — as he’d do with Dunc when they were sparring.

“Jesus!” whispered Dunc.

Each time Tiger Terlazzo missed, Ned struck, wham wham WHAM! combinations as fast as a striking snake. Gimpy Ernest was limping up the steps to the ring with a towel in his hand. He would throw it in the ring to stop the fight. But as Gimpy threw, Dunc snatched the towel out of the air.

Nobody even saw it. Tiger Terlazzo and Nitro Ned were toe-to-toe, mid-ring, slugging it out. Blood, snot, sweat flew, both men grunted with the effort of blows thrown, taken. The crowd was on its feet, screaming. Dunc was, too. It was coming, the secret that Ned had never told anybody but Dunc.

When you throw that right at his jaw, shift your left foot four inches to the side. If he’s throwin’ a right at your jaw, you’ll connect an’ he’ll go over your shoulder.

Both men snapped off cannon-shot right hands. Everybody in the first five rows heard Ned’s terrible blow shatter the Tiger’s jaw. The back of his head rebounded off the canvas. Lucius Breen started the count, steady as a metronome. At ten he went to the neutral corner and raised Ned’s arm in the air.

Dunc laughed out loud. Ned had won it fair and square. But Artis had hold of him, wouldn’t let go.

“Carny’ll come after us, all of us!” She was wild. “I’ve gotta cash in. Get Ned, pick me up at my house.”

The ring was filled with excited men, Breen and a doctor were shielding Terlazzo from trampling feet. Ned went through the ropes, Gimpy hanging on to his arm like a puppy.

“Ned, you gotta square this with Carny! Gotta tell him it was your idea, not mine... An’ I... I bet all our money on...”

Ned’s puffy lips drew back in a grin. “We ain’t gonna need money where were goin’, Gimp. Not you an’ me.”

Carny Largo’s beautifully manicured right hand switched off the TV set. He kept twisting the knob until it came away in his fingers, then threw it into a corner as he cursed in a low guttural voice. “Nitro Ned. And Gimpy Ernest. And Artis. And even the kid. I want all of those fuckers dead. Dead.”

Rafe said, “When I do Artis, can I—”

“Make sure she’s dead first. Then do whatever you want.”

Carny started pacing. He had to come up with something, quick. Look what the people back east had done to Bugsy when they thought he had been holding out on them. And he’d been one of their own. Carny was no made man, just a guy who owned a Glitter Gulch casino and did them favors now and then...

Yes! They wanted to become his partners in the Gladiator as Bugsy Siegel had done to that degenerate gambler Wilkinson who had owned the Flamingo. So what if he offered them the Gladiator, free and clear, to prove he hadn’t ripped them off?

His hand shook as he reached for the phone to try and reach Meyer Lansky in New York. It would work. It had to work.

Ned pushed by anyone wanting to talk with him. Sweat still gleamed on his face, one of the unbandaged cuts above his eye still oozed blood. “Is Artis in the car?”

“She left right after the fight to cash in her tickets. She said she’d meet us at her place. She said—”

“Artis an’ her goddamn money.” Ned stopped dead, his face foreboding. “Not good, kid. Not good. If...” He trailed off and shook his head. “Okay. Do what I said. Go get her...”

Raffetto would want to do them at the ranch, it was too public here, but Gimpy was taking no chances. He switched off the lights, checked the deserted hall before stepping out. Drive straight to McCarran field, catch the first flight out.

He went up the steps. High in the sky above the parking lot was a thump! and a flower of twinkling colored lights. The crowd above and behind him went “Oooh!” and “Ahhh!” As he took his car keys from his jacket pocket, a man stepped around the front of his car. Barely five feet tall and wearing a midnight-blue suit and black shirt and white tie.

“Carny told me to give you this.”

Rafe’s right hand, lengthened by eight inches of black steel, slashed horizontally across Gimpy’s throat. Gimpy made a strangled sound. He’d thought Rafe would be waiting at the ranch; should of left a margin for error. Rafe wiped his blade on Gimpy’s coat, thrust it back into the sheath between his shoulder blades, faded back into the other shadows. Nitro Ned next. Then the kid. The best for last. Artis.

As he opened his car door, a familiar voice said, “Rafe?”

Carny Largo, phone to his face, was doing the selling job of a lifetime. It had taken him a half hour to track down Meyer Lansky, not in New York but in Miami.

“Yessir, Mr. Lansky, the Gladiator, that’s right, your accountants can... Thank you, Mr. Lansky. Thank you.”

As he hung up he heard Rafe coming back in. He turned, using his wadded handkerchief to wipe the sweat from the hand that had held the phone. He gasped.

Nitro Ned Davenport, battered but whole, said amiably, “I called ’em before the fight, anonymous-like, tole ’em you an’ that fighter of yours, Nitro Ned, was workin’ a cross against ’em. I should of knowed you’d talk your way out of it.”

“You’re a dead man, Ned,” said Carny. “So’s your bitch girlfriend and Gimpy and the kid. I sent Rafe—”

“Yeah, you did, didn’t you?” Still grinning amiably, Ned advanced like an earthmover. “So now Rafe ain’t here. I am.”

Carny emptied all five steel-jacketed slugs from the .25-caliber revolver in his jacket pocket into Ned’s lemon-yellow shirtfront. Ned staggered, but kept coming. Still grinning. Carny’s lips thinned, panic flickered yellowly in his eyes as he tried to twist away. Too late. Ned’s huge hands had him.

“The margin of error you was always bleatin’ about, Carny. Five pills would stop ’em all in time — all of ’em ’cept me.”

His dying hands folded Carny Largo’s head back at a right angle to his body as if it were on a hinge, snapping his neck like a cornstalk.

It was a two-story frame house in a residential area south of Fremont Street. A little run-down, Dunc could see by the streetlights as he slammed to a stop at the curb, but lived-in, inviting. Like the homes on a thousand tree-covered streets back in the Midwest. Lights were on upstairs and behind the front door. Thank God. Artis had made it and he was in time. Without a map, it had taken him twenty minutes to find the place.

Dunc jumped out, ran up the walk. The front door was ajar. She wouldn’t have left it that way. He should have brought the tire iron from the car. He could barely breathe for fear, but there was no rime to go back for it.

Straight ahead a flight of carpeted stairs led up to the second floor. The stairwell light went out: it was pitch-black except for slight illumination from the streetlight outside.

“Artis!”

A small, quick stairwell shadow came bounding down at him, led by a gleaming blade. Raffetto! Dunc’s arm swept it aside, grappled with him. But the little killer was quick as an eel, strong as electricity. He broke free, ran down the stairs. The front door slammed.

Light showed under the closed door of the front bedroom. Dunc smashed it open.

Artis was sprawled on a dressing bench at the foot of the bed, leaning back against the coverlet. Her once-white silk blouse was red. The sweetish smell of blood filled the room. One hand clutched a small gold cross with a thin broken gold chain. One foot still wore a blood-spattered high-heeled sandal with gold straps over the arch. The other sandal lay on its side a yard away. Dunc dropped to his knees beside her.

“I’ll get help. Don’t move, it’ll be okay. I’ll...”

Those intense black eyes opened to look at him sternly. She had so much to tell him. Had to tell him a whole lifetime of never being a player, just one of the suckers. Had to tell him about her murder.

“Christ, kid,” she said, “it hurts.”

Then she died.

Four police cars were parked at odd angles in front of the Flamingo, revolving lights spilling blood over the crowd. An ambulance was just pulling away, siren keening.

“Two men dead,” somebody said.

“One of ’em was the boxer,” said another. “Nitro Ned.”

“Other one was some gambler ran a casino in Glitter Gulch.”

“Bet the fight was fixed and they fell out over the split.”

Dunc went back to the car. Suddenly he was crying, swiping the back of his hand across his face like a little kid. He hadn’t cried when his grandpa had died, and he’d really loved that old man. But this... Ned... Artis...

He should go to the cops and... And what? Raffetto had killed Artis — but he had no proof. He had nobody to fight for, nothing to hang on to. Ned and Artis were both gone. So was Carny Largo, but Raffetto was still out there looking for Dunc.

Like Pepe, it was time for him to leave this town.

Fifty miles west of Vegas he was stopped at a barricade across the state line. Uniformed men asked him if he was carrying any fresh fruit into California. The question was so bizarre he started to laugh, but it choked into a sob. They waved him on without noticing.

At Baker, a little town in the desert, he stopped at an all-night gas station with a café attached. He wasn’t hungry, then wolfed down everything in sight. Back outside, he saw the black desert night was awash with stars, felt the cold desert air. Sage was acrid in his nostrils. Just a few weeks ago he had been going toward Vegas on a night like this, hopes high and excitement surging. Now...

God, what would his nightmares be like from now on?

He got his gear out of the trunk of the car and opened the glove box as Ned had told him. In it was the title slip to Grey Ghost Two, signed over to him. Ned must have done it yesterday, before the bout, after Artis had told him about the fix.

Even then the big fighter had known what he was going to do — and had known he wasn’t going to make it to California.