Warriors

CHAPTER 40

Stokely Jones Jr., a battle-hardened American warrior in his late middle age, was a large man.

Whatever.

He was big.

He was black.

Deal with it.

Stoke made his way down the long, long la-di-da hotel corridor to the elevator bank on his floor. Fanciest damn place he’d ever hung his hat in London Town, by far. Gold everywhere, huge columns in the lobby, gold-plated crystal chandeliers as big as small battleships. Mirrors everywhere, just in case you forgot who you were, you know, just walking by.

Claridge’s, they called this joint. Sounded like the name of some beachside condo in Palm Beach to him.

But just walking into the lobby of Claridge’s Hotel the first time, he felt like he oughta be wearing diamonds on the soles of his shoes. Like the old Paul Simon song. He hit the down button and stood there cracking his big knuckles, staring at the gilded angels on the ceiling, and shaking his head.

He should have known better. It was so damn predictable. What he should have done? Checking in? Gone over to Martin, the head honcho, and said, “Hey, Martin, listen up, I haven’t even seen my room and I know it ain’t good enough. All right? Help me out here.”

Handed him fifty pounds on the spot or something. But no, he hadn’t done that. And now look.

Fancha, it seems, didn’t like their room, excuse me, suite.

But.

And here’s the problem. Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Wasn’t that the truth? Wasn’t that the single most important God’s honest truth all married men eventually come to learn for themselves sooner or later? And learn it the hard way, brother? Seriously?

The thing about it was, Stokely had been in London many times, but never once in the company of his fairly new bride, a semifamous and totally beauteous torch singer from the Cape Verde Islands named Fancha. Girl came from nothing, grew up in some ghetto, in one of the island’s tar-paper palaces where the rats ate the dogs.

But she had faith. Just like he’d had. All his life. Belief in one’s self. Yes. Said she always knew from the time she was a little girl she wouldn’t die there, not in that slum anyway. Not in that particular hell.

He knew all about that feeling.

One-name kind of entertainer now. Big time. Cher-style. The winner of the championship title match in a first-round TKO, the new Mrs. Stokely Jones Jr., she was now a woman long accustomed to the deluxe lives of the rich and famous.

All this was, of course, courtesy of her first husband, a deceased Miami nightclub impresario and gentleman of dubious distinction named Joey Mancuso.

People loved the old guy. Called the wide but vertically challenged Mr. Mancuso everything from the King of Biscayne Bay to the Mayor of Miami Beach, you know, back in the day. The Rat Pack ring-a-ding-ding days when Old Blue Eyes had really ruled the roost at the Fontainebleau on Miami Beach, knowing in his heart of hearts that Dino had the better set of pipes. Those were Joey’s salad days, baby.

Now, to be honest, Joey had departed this earth under suspicious circumstances. Leave it at that. Speaking of leaving, Mancuso had left the grieving widow, Fancha, a huge Spanish-style estate overlooking Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Not to mention butlers, Bentleys, a garage full of metallic-painted Rolls-Royces, offshore accounts up the wazoo, and a whole shitload of cold hard cash. That was Joey for you. Praise the Lord and pass the buck, baby.

His reputation predeceased him.

But most people Stoke had met here and there, in Miami Beach and Vegas, people who knew the late, great Joey Mancuso, all said pretty much the same thing about the dead cat:

“Joey reminded you a whole lot of Jackie Gleason, only he wasn’t funny.” Couple months ago, when Stokely had received a very fancy engraved invitation to come to England for a special award, he’d told Fancha he was going to reserve them a room at his favorite hotel, the Hilton on Hyde Park. Fancha gave him a look and he knew he’d once more inadvertently tiptoed into the social minefield that constituted his new life with a rich wife. The heavy-lidded look told him immediately that the Hilton was a nonstarter and that he’d better rethink his notions of what did and did not make for an acceptable hotel in London.

“Claridge’s, Stokely Jones,” she’d said, and sighed. “It’s the only decent hotel in London.”

Decent? It was a damn palace.

Long as you got the right suite.

It was funny. When Fancha wasn’t sighing, she pretty much held her lips tightly together, which told you a lot about the woman and how she felt about Stoke’s lack of worldly sophistication when they were out jet-setting. At home she pretty much let him do his thing, what he wanted to do — work out, wash his GTO convertible, watch golf and football on TV. And the good news in all this was, he loved her and she loved him.

Bottom line, they were still busy acclimating themselves to each other, the way he saw it. Only a matter of time.

He pressed the down button again and waited. Damn. He figured a hotel that stuck you with a nightly room rate of over two grand per would have faster elevators. Think again.

When the door finally slid open, it revealed a woman, a lady who looked a hell of a lot like an angry supersize version of that Murder, She Wrote TV dame. And maybe even was. He entered the lift, as Fancha called it, nodded, said “Good morning,” and stepped inside as the door slid shut.

Woman tried hard to smile, but it just didn’t come natural.

“Nice lift,” he said, just trying to be friendly.

“What?”

She looked at him like he was insane. He noticed she was smoking a cigarette even though there were signs everywhere saying NO SMOKING.

“Filthy out,” she said, taking a puff and giving him the eye. Angela Lansbury, yeah, that was it. Female detective in that cute little town on the coast of California supposed to be Maine or something.

“Filthy?” Stoke said, thinking about it.

Garbage strike? he wondered.

“Freezing, for this time of year. Spitting rain.”

Spitting rain? He didn’t have a clue how to answer that one, so he just started humming and singing a little bit, pass the time.

“ ‘Foggy Day in London Town, had me blue, had me down…’ ” he warbled.

He instinctively knew all Brits loved to talk about the weather. Which seemed weird to him, considering they didn’t have much. No hurricanes, for instance, no tornadoes, no twisters, no nor’easters, nothing at all that qualified as real weather, in his view. But you never met anyone over here, anyone anywhere, who didn’t bring up the weather right off the bat.

“We just got here,” he said to Angela or simply a woman separated at birth from the former TV star. “Checked in last night. Nice place. Claridge’s, right? That how you say it?”

“American. I knew it.” She sighed.

Stoke watched the numbers descending.

“You ever stay at the Hilton?” he asked her.

“Never.”

“You ought to try it sometime. You meet a more relaxed class of people. Lot of salesmen, for instance. Beauticians.”

“Really?” she said, like she was spitting rain. “Salesmen? How utterly charming it all sounds.”

“You’re a smoker, I see. I used to smoke. You like it?”

“No. I just like to cough.”